another week passed that seems exactly how it was the week before. nothing new to say about our project either. i miss the pure adrenalin rush when ur heart is pumping u get excited about ur work. it's comparable to the extreme thrill of bungee jumping (exageration ofcourse). the only thing that's new is that we may be starting w/ another one in another city. it's a 5,000 sg.m. KTV. a mixture of family-oriented & traditional. & when i say 'traditional,' it doesn't mean conservative. u may wanna watch 'house of flying daggers' by china's zhang yimou, a movie set in 859AD, u will know what i mean. the peony pavilion.

this picture shows the bicycle parking lot outside our favorite korean restaurant in shi jia zhuang. not much choice for food down there, it's either korean, chinese (the hotel's chinese reastaurant), mcdo, KFC or pizza hut.

just came back from shi jia zhuang. spent 2 nites there, solved whatever problems they had since last week when we didn't visit the site during the holiday. nothing interesting except that the project is starting to look real good (in my opinion, at least). tom's gonna be another tiring day. have to visit a prospective client in another town. back to the train again.

one thing that's interesting though is a guy we encountered at the subway this afternoon. heard this guy, looking like just any other ordinary, old chinese man in plain clothes, carrying his bag, singing loudly like some opera singer while walking to where he's going, mindless of other people's stares. mind u he isn't asking for money and he's really good, like some kind of chinese pavarotti. everybody's coming out from where they are & lookin' for "the voice" w/ admiration in their faces. the beautiful voice... so clear, so crisp, shameless & proud.

by the way, i read the script of the Star Wars- revenge of the sith from my palm at the train. couldn't wait for the movie.

by monday, we will be back to normal life. that means the long holiday is over & spending an afternoon in Beihai Park turned out to be a wise decision. it used to be the imperial palace of the emperors in successive dynasties, called the Winter Palace by Westerners. it's a sprawling park around a lake w/ lots of restored chinese pavilions. that enormous milk-bottle structure is what they call a dagoba, erected first in 1651 and later in 1741 in honor of the Dalai Lama's visit.

actually, we didn't have enough time to go to the northwest part of it. too tired & it's way too windy. gonna check it out some other time. anyways, the park is really neat.

may day holiday is almost over & finally we decided to go walk around join their festivities, well... in a way. went to a nice park quite near our place yesterday - the nanguan park - a stamp-sized park near the russian embassy. small but nice, w/ a water feature made of blue (bathroom?) mosaic tiles that looks like it's been done by some chinese gaudi. not bad although the fountain isn't workin' yesterday. the place is perfect for all sorts of people, cean likes it a lot w/ a complete playground like that which also includes a trampoline, duckpin bowling lane & cars.

we also went to cean's school yesterday morning to submit few papers they require from us, found out he's on the waiting list but got the call last nite he made it finally to the list.

walked to one of beijing's computer centers. (passed by this new SOHO building on the way there.) saw a lot of things i really like now i couldn't decide which one i like the best or what do i really need. like a fone w/ pda & camera or a pda w/ camera & mp3 or the i-pod or i shuffle w/ fm accessory or a fone w/ pda, mp3, radio & camera or... i really don't know. definitely, the price matters to me...

it's the middle of the may day holiday here & i never thought a week w/o going to our project site at shi jia zhuang would be boring. we just stayed home, work for few hours just to catch up on some items we need to finish, chat online w/ friends & families, walked to the nearest mall. planned to check out the park across the russian embassy but, i don't know, i feel lazy. couldn't go to the bigger malls or park. they sure are packed w/ local tourists it's like kissing each other's faces.