Greetings from Beijing

It's...21:31 Beijing time and I feel like pulled an all-nighter, which, considering it's really 6:30 PST and that I only got an hour of sleep before going to the airport, is not so surprising.

Weather in Beijing: muggy. Not nearly as hot and stuffy as Guangzhou and HK yet, though, so I am really not complaining.

First impression of Beijing: not much; it feels like another developing Chinese city. Except people speak Mandarin instead.

Unexpected surprises: being on the same flight as Brenner and Bauld. Apparently they came to participate in a kung-fu tournament. Eh, exchanged a few words...but wasn't sure if they were on the same flight, so didn't seek them out on the plane. Only before and after.

Language problems: Forced to speak Mandarin to airport people because I had to go against the traffic flow to find Mother, who was waiting for me. Had to speak broken Mandarin (as I really don't want to guess how certain words are pronounced in additional to my already horrible accent) and get tongue-tied. The whole experience was rather....ew.

Plane: UA is crap, as usual. Have they reduced the space between seats again, or have I grown both vertically and horizontally (more of this type) again? Anyway, everything about them were far from satisfactory. Slept for two or three hours; drew and played sudoku for most of the remaining hours. I drew a lot. And I love using the blue pencils :D　Oh, and the kid that sat behind me (Pauline, age ~3?) kept kicking my seat. Left big toe (the one with the funny bone bump) started hurting again. Wah.

Shopping: not much today. Father bought some gimmick-making books of some sort, and Mother bought a color-illustrated 本草鋼目. [will look up name later?]

Nothing really happened today...and I am dead tired. Eh, I have some comments about the "three-person" hotel rooms here and the substandard 4/5 starredness. Well, I should at least be grateful for the free wireless in the hotel. I noticed that blogger changed their language to simplified Chinese, no doubt according to the IP. Blah.

Great Wall and some other Beijing sights tomorrow.

Signing out at 22:49.