GMail letting me down
I can't believe this. I can't get my email. I've been getting this message all morning. Very annoying. It makes you realize how much we take technology for granted and how tenuous it can be.Server ErrorWe're sorry, but Gmail is temporarily unavailable.…
RIP, Ali Farka Toure
I really dig the music of Ali Farka Toure, which draws such a distinct line between blues and african music. i was really sad to hear about his death. I strongly recommend anyone checking him out.He did an album with ry Cooder called Talking…
Hockey and George "Ice" Gervin come to Beijing
Posted below is my Sports Talk column for the March That’s Beijing, which is out now. It is the first time I have ever written about hockey. Sometimes when you don't know what you're talking about, it pays to just keep talking. The game was…
Sara B news update
Below is a letter from Sara Blumenstein, Becky's youngest sister. She is a senior at the University of Chicago and the acceptance letters from architecture school are rolling in.As you can see, she recently began adpoting an architecture school…
Tangential — Cheerleader breaks neck, keeps cheering.
I found this story to be pretty damn warped. It also made me remember going to Pitt basketball games as a kid and my dad screaming at the cheerleaders, “That’s dangerous! Someone is going to break their neck!” It was sort of embarrassing,…
Brave man
Sorry but this is funny. Thanks your honor.
“You’re Fired!”
First, the good news. I am feeling much more confident today that Eli is going to be okay. Dixie examined his wound this morning thanks to the miracle of Isite and is convinced that the wound is indeed superficial, which is to say surface based…
Early reader response to column
You know I love this one:Alan,As a Chinese living in US, I read most of news about China from all sorts of US papers and magazines. Now, every morning, the most enjoyable thing for me to do is to read your column while sipping my green tea.…
New column, up today
THE EXPAT LIFEBy ALAN PAUL The Backstreet Boys LureAn Unlikely Fan in BeijingThough I wouldn't cross the street to see the Backstreet Boys back home, I recently trekked from one end of Beijing to the other to see the past-their-prime boy band…
Eli update
We are not out of the woods with Eli quite yet. His leg is about 85 percent well healed, but the remaining 15 percent is infected and looking pretty nasty though I have been assured it is a superficial infection requiring nothing more than cleanliness,…