ACTUALLY THE NAME'S ERIKA, BUT OTHERWISE -- FAIRLY ACCURATE...

The night before last I drank a little too much whiskey and a few lucky folks back home got my drunky phone calls during what was late morning/early afternoon on the West Coast and the Midwest. It was great to talk to some good friends and I know I will be able to see many of them in about a month, so I shouldn't be complaining, but I guess it just made me a little blue about the prospect of almost a year in Beijing sans peeps. Of course I am enormously excited and I do know how very lucky I am but damn it why does the world have to be so freaking big? I want EVERYONE to be able to come and visit me, at the very least so they can climb the Great Wall, visit the Forbidden City, imbibe the thick, mineral-rich Beijing air, and take a trip down to beautiful Shanghai with me for a weekend. Mark Siano has already thrown down the gauntlet, having just written to tell me that he is planning to come to Beijing in May 2008 and to stay on for the Olympics. Who will be next to, er, pick up the gauntlet, or kick it -- or do whatever it is you actually do with a gauntlet?

Aside from missing my friends, I don't have much in the way of homesickness, but I did have a tiny pang of it the other night when heading to my neighborhood night market for dinner. In passing a relatively nondescript restaurant that I've passed by dozens of times, I noticed that the walls were decorated with framed maps and I was stopped in my tracks by a familiar topographical configuration. Closer inspection revealed that under glass and framed in pale pine was a Metro King County transit map showing the greater Seattle area. Which actually didn't make me sad at all, but just made me smile.

Man, this place is weird, so weird in fact, that they serve these at McDonald's:


A rice-bun burger! Fascinating!
But not tasty.

Not tasty at all.