I am on the 4th ring road driving Aidan home and the subject of animals comes up. I ask him if animals can think and he thinks they do. I ask him if animals can speak Chinese or English or any other language. He thinks not. I ask him how they can they think without language. I ask him if he can think without language. He smiles. I do not know if it is a thinking or unthinking smile. I mention to him that maybe we do think without language. Maybe that is why sometimes you feel happy or angry and can’t explain why. We drive on. Traffic is heavy and I need to focus on the road. ...

We are sitting down to lunch on the first day of a three day weekend. A drill from construction nearby starts to buzz. And buzz. And buzz. It is loud and annoying. Lydia asks Yang to complain to property management. Yang makes a phone call and the drilling stops a moment later. If I had only known it was that simple. Living in an apartment complex in Beijing means you put up with a fair amount of noise. Most of it you just get used too. Cars driving on wet pavement, buses heaving, shutters opening, the occasional pipe making itself known. Construction noise comes from time to time too however the past 18 months it has been almost non stop from our neighbors’ apartments. By neighbors I mean next door, above, and below. It first stuck me in December of 2010. I was home, laid up with some kind of stomach virus. I could not sleep, think, or relax. Drill, drill, drill. As I spent the next year working from home the noises would subside for a few weeks and then pick up again. The only way I could get any peace was to wear headphones. It was a contributing factor on why I returned to a job in a normal, mostly quiet, office. ...

It is 4pm and I’m looking for the remote control so I can listen to some music as I write this. It is 4:10pm and I am still looking for the remote. I give up. I think maybe I should enforce a house rule to put the remote back on the TV stand when you are done watching TV. But I don’t want to be that dad. The enforcer dad of things kids will figure out anyway. ...

I am driving Lydia to a classmates birthday party. We are a bit late. We can blame my driving or we can blame China. Yes, it is a China moment. To get directions to the party was a bit of a challenge as I only had the place name in Chinese. I used the phone number to find the address and English and then used Google maps to get me driving directions. Once on the road I naturally missed the exit which means I had to take the next exit and make a U-turn. On the Beijing expressways this means a 20 minute detour. I found the street I needed to turn onto and it was a disaster. It is a scene a bit hard to describe but one familiar if you’ve spend anytime exploring Beijing. A village surrounded by urbanization. Narrow streets with cards squeezing by in both directions and occasional deadlocks when street obstacles only allowed one way traffic. Everyone, from pedestrians, to bicycles, to carts, to cars, to buses all operating by their self interest. ...

Elisa is asleep in the back seat as Yang is driving me to the airport to catch my 3:35pm flight to Singapore. I’m running a bit late but not too late until we hit a traffic jam at the airport expressway. Traffic jams on the airport expressway are not too uncommon as police often escort third level diplomats from third world countries. The delays tend to be brief and traffic picks back up as soon as the diplomat passes by. In this case, however, cars were not moving. 10 minutes passed. Then 20. Yang calls he friend who works for the airline and he asked them extend the last check-in time to 2:40pm. But at 2:40pm we were still 5K away from the terminal with traffic at a stand still. Some people in the cars behind us got out and started jogging or walking along the expressway. I would not have been able to make it by 2:40pm if I ran so I stayed put. ...

I have just joined a conference call at work and I’m waiting for it to get started. It doesn’t look to be a very exciting call. One of those calls where either my manager or myself should be on the call, but not both. So I take a peek at facebook on my phone to check in on my niece Catie’s status. She’s dead. I reread the post from my sister in law a few times to make sure there’s no misunderstanding. There is none. My body heaves. The call continues. ...

Aidan comes into the room bleeding from scraps on and near his knee. He says how much it hurts. I ask him what happened and he said he fell off his bike. This is not too hard to imagine. He gets going fast enough that he loses control or runs into a curb and down he goes. I check out the wounds which are just a bit deeper than skin scraps and ask him to wash it off. He will be fine. ...

I heard recently that scientists have pinned down the age kids go from adorable to annoying. It is 4.5 years old. I am thinking about this when Elisa comes into the room and says to me, “Baba, teach me all English”. I know why she is asking and her intent is pure. She is just so perfect for a toddler not quite four. I know this moment, the way she is at this precise age, will be gone. It will be gone before I even notice it. That’s just the way kids age in a parent’s eyes. It’s like seeing that one week old baby and remembering what your kids where like then. Even if that memory is hard to grasp. ...

I am pushing Elisa in her stroller when I notice her head leaning to the right. I sneak a look at her face and see her eyes closed. Nap time. I keep pushing her to Lido Park where I prop the stroller flat and let her sleep. I stand and listen to podcasts all the while thinking this is the last spring I will be doing this with her. With any child. Until maybe our kids have kids of their own. ...

I am at The Den with my friend Steve and we have just ordered dinner and a beer. We’ve been meeting at The Den every Wednesday night for about a year. It is 2008, my third year in Beijing and Steve’s forth. Strangely enough the early years for an expat in Beijing are often the easiest. You are busy trying to learn the language, the culture, and the bustling city drags you along. There are waves of new foreigners in town that are having similar experiences and it is easy to feel connected. Opportunity feels limitless, even if no real opportunity is at hand. Everything is just so new that you feel renewed. At least the part of you that isn’t feeling homesick and isolated, for sure that is part of the experience as well. ...