"Miss" is a strong word

I mean, I'm sure you missed me and all, but don't expect those feelings to be mutual. It has been one hell of a long time since I've last updated on the going ons of my life here in the real Chinatown. I've secretly been trying to find time to post here, but the end of the semester is next week and I've been quite the busy beaver (ew) wrapping up classes, having students who are leaving early take their final exams, and teaching for an additional 3 hours in the evenings now. With all that and my new-found drive to get in shape on a bike has pushed 'blogging' towards the bottom of my "list-of-things-that-I-should-do-but-end-up-forgetting-to-do-and-remembering-again-at-inopportune-times-in-the-future" list (I've gotta come up with a shorter name for that). So here's another Greatest Hits style post from the last month or so here in the Orient.

First things first, new PODCAST. this one's been sitting in the tank for a while. The first track is produced by a kid I used to ride the bus to Junior High with. His name is Nick Phillips and he's working as a hip hop producer out in NYC working with people such as Talib Kweli, Dead Prez, Common, and more. He did a remix album of tracks by Common, with all new music done entirely by Nick (no samples) which you can download for free here. My hat's off to Nick. I remember swapping headphones on the bus to school in 8th grade, talking music in Jazz band, all that geeky music kid stuff that eventually fades out when you realize you're going to have to do something 'real' with your life. And now here I am teaching music, and this kid I used to share a seat with is living what we talked about almost a decade ago. The second to the last track of the podcast (the one before DJ Shadow) is an overseas collaboration between myself and Mr. B Golle Goob. Let me know what you think about it if indeed you do think anything about it.

Greatest hits time:

1. About a month ago I raced in that cross race I talked about in my last real post. I got 4th place (holla). Not a podium finish so no prizes, but since it was the last race of the season there was free beer for the racers. The race organizers brought too many cases of Corona, ended up with a surplus and told us riders we could take as much as we wanted home with us. Since many of us were riding our bikes home this limited our bounty, but we managed to squeeze beer bottles wherever we could. I rode the 13 miles home with 18 bottles of Corona in a bag that was also carrying an extra pair of shoes, a U-Lock, a pump, tools, and some clothes. I felt pretty good about myself when I got back to my apartment and awarded myself with a free beer.
2. Immediately after the weekend that involved this race and a long ride the next day, I got slammed by bronchitis. That sucked like whoa. It took about 3 weeks to clear up.
3. Just as the Bronchitis was clearing up my parents came to town. They spent about 5 days here in Beijing during which we did things like go to dinner, see a light show at the water cube (China has turned the worlds fastest swimming pool into a giant water fountain), and went to the great wall. The day we went to the great wall turned out to be the coldest day in Beijing in December in 57 years. It was quite the adventure, if you want you can see pictures on my Dad's website here.
4. After the five days my parents spent here in Beijing, all three of us went to Hong Kong for Christmas. It was nice to get out of cold, windy Beijing. It was nice to have family here for Christmas. That said, it was kind of odd not seeing snow at all and not being in a large group of family for Christmas. THAT said, I hope all of yours were great (Christmas that is)
5. New Years was New Years. Happy that too.
6. I started teaching 5 individual music lessons after school everyday, meaning that now on top of my 4 hours of straight teaching in the morning, I have about 2 hours of prep time in the office and then teach again from 2:45pm straight through to 6. Buh. It's really nice to be teaching music finally, but needless to say I'm really excited to be done with health so I can focus on this more and have a little more free time.
7. I met some guys at a birthday party for a co-workers girlfriend that asked if I'd be interested in playing in a band with them. Would I? Yes. I would. A lot. So that's in the works now with music playing happening at an undetermined time in the future.
   
8. Anecdote time. Some of you already heard about this via the facebook. I got into a cab the other day and as per usual didn't pay attention to what was on the radio because I expected it to be one of two things: 1. Chinese talk radio or 2. a Chinese pop song, neither of which I understand or particularly enjoy. To my surprise after a few seconds in the car my ear recognized words coming out of the speakers. "Huh, this is in english" I thought to myself. Then "Snap! This is Biz Markie!" Uh huh. That's right. The B-I-Z on Beijing radio 88.7. Crazy stuff I know.
   

So that's the last month or so in a nutshell. As I said before, the semester wraps up next week. It's finals tuesday through thursday. I think someone has a birthday somewhere in there (ahem). Two weeks from tomorrow I'll be in India. Starting next friday I get about 3 and a half weeks off for Chinese New Year. I'm spending 2 of those weeks in India visiting my friends back at my old school and possibly doing some traveling around in the south. I'm pretty darn excited about that. I think that's about it for now. If you didn't download the podcast, scroll back on up the page and do that (click on the word podcast up yonder).

Lastly, if you send me an address I might (and that's a strong might, I make no promises) send mail to that address.

It's good to be back in the inernets.

-USD