Last week’s column

This should seem pretty familiar to you regular readers, like CARRIE WELLS. Do you think my responses to reader letters are too pithy? THE EXPAT LIFEBy ALAN PAUL A Hike in the Hills OffersAn Escape From the CitySeptember 14, 2006 6:43 p.m.Beijing…

Selling Out

We went out to an interesting and fun dinner last night. A surprise 40th birthday party for a new friend who works at the Embassy in a pretty big job, and we met a lot of new people, interesting folks. There were two guests there who read my…

Interesting blog

This is an interesting blog. A mirror image of mine. Young chinese woman studying at columbia and recounting her experiences in NYC. Skip all the homework stuff at top and scroll down. I thought it was quite interesting.Note: Alan De Zon, who…

Music Lovers Check This Out

There is a site called Rock's Back Pages -- www.rocksbackpages.comwhich includes about 5,000 articles by a host of rothe mbest music writers of the last 30-40 years, including, ahem, me. I've only given them a few things actually but the real…

Catching up with summer Photos: Maple Mountain

I am on my laptop at the orchard, a beautiful restuarant nearby where we are having our birthday party next week. In fact, I came by to discuss plans and brought my laptop to do some writing in the gardens. Unbenownest to me, they have wireless,…

Portrait of the artist as an aging but still sort of young man, or "Happy Birthday to Me"

I had a nice birthday last week. Did the hike on Weds., which was my real celebration. Had a regular day on Thursday, even a Chinese class. That night we all went to dinner at Kagan, a nice Japanese bbq place downtown, which the kids love. I…

Hey, where’s my post about the hike I took last week?

Did anyone ever read it? I wrote a long post about my hike. It double posted so I deleted one and just realized it is not there at all. Strange. I would repost it but I decided to write my column this week about it so you can wait two days and…

Eli lost a tooth

He yanked it out in the bathroom at school today. The big one is already half in. He is so proud. I managed to load this picture of him holding it up over my sorry ass internet connection.He still believes in the Tooth Fairy and I had to tell…

A little update

I'm still kicking and things are fine.. except my DSL is down again and I am connecting via narrowband, which has really cramped my style. I hope to have that resolved by next week and get back to more regular, picture-loaded postings. All is…

Hiking Trip — photos and story added

So the hike the other day was great. We drove a little less than two hours Northwest from here. About 45 minutes up the Badaling Expressway (north) then you get off and snake Northwest on twisty mountain roads. You come down into a beautiful…