Timely Snow

(For the title reference, see: http://www.doctorjazz.freeserve.co.uk/page17.html and see the paragraph right after the picture of Jelly Roll Morton).
One of my discoveries this trip is Yunnan Coffee, packaged by the Yunnan Coffee company (http://www.sinohost.com/yncoffee/) and sold in the large supermarkets in Beijing that sell exotic foreign goods like paper towels. They sell vacuum-packed bags of ground coffee; [...]

The picture below comes from the May 25th Self-esteem holiday, something that’s less popular than the May 1 Workers’ Day or the June 1 Children’s Day holidays.

The sign says: May 25, University psychological health holiday group counseling recruiting
I saw a videotape of the activity itself, although I didn’t see it in person. Faculty and groups [...]

Below is the cover of a magazine I bought a few years ago in Changsha, Hunan. It’s a good example of malicious translation (the Chinese title means something like “Weekend Literature Collection” or more colloquially, “Readers Digest”, although that name might be taken).

I use that image in a slide in courses where I talk to [...]

One problem with email is that it’s too fast. Chris Sells describes how to set up an automatic pause before email is sent (e.g., 1 or more minutes), which is pretty straightforward (http://www.sellsbrothers.com/spout/#savingYourCareer)
If you use Outlook XP, the procedure works like this:
Tools->Rules Wizard
New
Start From A Blank Rule
Check messages after sending
Which condition(s) do you want to [...]

I’ve now posted some pictures of the pailou outside the PassBy Bar in Beijing, a very pleasant courtyard bar, restaurant, internet bar, and lending library. It appears that it really, though, is a front for a child clinical psychology operation. Here’s the picture:

The sign on the left says:
“Chinese Academy of Sciences Psychology Research [...]

The quote is attributed to Yogi Berra (http://www.famous-quotes-and-quotations.com/yogi-berra-quotes.html). It comes to mind because of two books I’ve been reading. One is a collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling (I wouldn’t recommend them), but I was struck by this passage in a story featuring an automobile:

“A quarter of an hour at illegal speeds caught us a doctor [...]

Friday night we went to dinner with two friends who work at the Institute of Psychology. Because of SARS, we haven’t seen them nearly as much in the last month as usual, and they’ve mostly stayed at home and worked from there. Their Institute is being extensively renovated during this time, so it would have [...]

One of the interesting things about living in China is the ready access to recorded music and video. Certainly some of it is pirated, although it’s a bit difficult to figure out. I think the US recording industry is really making a mistake in pricing its products as high as they do—I think people in [...]

Today, as last week, my wife and I went on a long run downtown (or at least I ran and she biked along beside me). It’s one of the more pleasant things we get to do together here, and it’s a nice chance to talk. Now that my marathon was cancelled, I’m in a “maintenance [...]

UPDATE —Last night I found a great billboard to go with the comments at the end of this, so it’s now enclosed below:

 
With every passing day, life in Beijing is slowly getting back to normal. Yesterday, my wife and I biked downtown and came back along the second ring road, in the midst of the [...]