Timely Snow

Here’s today’s progress on the kitchen repair project.

I’ve filled in the hole, and am waiting for it to dry. Next step will be cutting a board to replace the horizontal piece that was cut out.

There’s a thick wet snow coming down. This is what it looked like this morning, although there’s at least another inch that’s accumulated since then.

While my wife is in South America, I’m trying to take care of various small but disruptive home improvement projects.

Sinosplice | Archives | Suzhou: any good?

This is a great website about China and Chinese language and culture. I cite it now because his impression of Suzhou is very similar to mine, when I visited there about 10 years ago. I had trouble getting a ticket on a train out of Suzhou and ended up [...]

Visa Wait Times

This is a useful website for foreign students, including those who might be going home for the summer. It says the average wait time for an interview for Student/Exchange visitors visas in Beijing, for example is 22 days.

In New Delhi, it’s only 7 days for Student/Exchange visas, but 112 days (!) for [...]

A year ago on this date, I was in Ann Arbor negotiating my move to the University of Michigan.

Global Health Corps Proposed to Fight AIDS (washingtonpost.com)
The proposed Global Health Service (GHS) would be an overseas cousin of
the domestic one that sends medical workers to isolated or underserved
parts of the country, according to Fitzhugh Mullan, a former U.S.
Public Health Service physician who chaired the panel.

My wife was part of the domestic version of this [...]

Oneaday

This site gives you your daily dose of cheng2 yu3 (成语) the 4 character Chinese expressions that allow you to add a thin veneer of fluency. Today’s entry:

废寝忘食 fei4 qin3 wang4 shi2—forget about sleeping and eating, literally waste sleeep and forget food, because you’re so absorbed in something else.

So there’s a new pope, Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI. He’s been basically the assistant principal of the Vatican, and it’s possible that he’ll grow into his new role.