Updates

I haven't been updating much lately. Life is nonetheless good.
If anything I have been taking more pictures that before and breaking in the new camera. Flickr is getting all the new ones.

The barely sprouting worked! Found the wholesale grain market and bought a bunch of barely along with some other grains and beans. Sprouted 1kg more worth of barely, but unfortunately left for the weekend and came back to the barely well over-sprouted. Dried it, roasted it, cracked it, and made a test batch of barely wine with it. The wine is currently fermenting and smells great!

For the weekend I went to Dali with a big group of people for an expenses paid weekend and rock concert. The concert was lame, but we climbed a nearby peak on one of the days. A bit cold, and steep, but lots of fun.

The following week we the closest tallest mountain around kunming early one morning to get a vantage point. I was a bit disappointed. There was too much smog to see much at all, even at 9am. Kunming gets good air quality ratings compared to other chinese cities, but as i mentioned before the Chinese air quality scale is much more lenient that the US scale, so even our regular green scores turn out to be worse than LA. Fun kunming pano.

I gave a presentation on the US economic crisis and the US government's response to the crisis this week. The audience was a masters level class on investment economics. The prof had me give it in english, but I think only a few students understood most of it and no one got it all. In the followup class today we had an extensive question and answer session mostly in chinese to clarify. Next week members of the class will report on region effects of the crisis in china.

Last weekend I went to a nearby city with the rest of the international students from the forestry university. 1 canadian(born in hong kong of chinese decent), 1 dutch, 2 thais, 25 vietnamese, and me. The city turned out to be yet another tourist city all fake and built in the last several years just for tourists. We got to 'learn and experience' yi minority culture and food. I got married to an yi lady as part of the dinner show only because i am white. It was fun though. We also got to attend a cherry festival a bit outside the city. The cherry festival saved the weekend. Not quite like flathead rainier's or bings, but delicious all the same. By my best assessment of cherry eating speed, cherry pit refuse, and minor bloating, I consumed 3kg that day and another 1kg on the following. We participated in a cherry eating contest. At which two of the vietnamese students got 1st and 2nd place and received 5kg of cherries as a prize. Being white, I received an honorable mention and 1kg.