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I pay for the drinks from a monthly work meal allowance of 600 RMB ($90 USD). A meal allowance that I’m never short of, in fact if I added up my unused meal allowance it would total about 7,000 RMB. Drinks in hand, I leave Starbucks with a Java chip frappuccino for Yang and a green tea soy latte for myself. Three three beggars glance my way, and they do some type of implicit triage and one of them walks towards me. She says “hello” as near and nudges herself into my walking path so that I must either make eye contact or walk around her. I walk around. She slides into my path and is sure to get her paper cup and arm against mine as I walk by. I move my head ever so slightly “no”. Her voice gets a little louder as I pass. “hello, hello” but is never aggressive beyond not respecting my physical space. The other two beggars, move on to other foreigners walking by. ...

I had such an amazing weekend after a hard and productive work week. Friday night was low key, spending time with my two daughters and watching a DVD. A perfect mood setter for the rest of the weekend while my wife had a well deserved girls night out. Saturday came and I was grateful to have the kids all to myself, during the week sometimes I only see them at the day’s bookends. Making them breakfast, taking them to starbucks which is right downstairs, listening to their stories. Played some games with my boy on the Wii and then it was Quesadilla time! Down to the tex-mex restaurant also right down stairs for a hearty lunch. Best thing after a big lunch on the weekend – family nap time! And man, was I out. Sunk deep into that couch. Barely woke up when my little girl came over to show me her latest masterpiece – a drawing of a dog and his food. ...

What a totally fucked weekend. I go through the entire work week deferring and compromising myself saying that I will make it up on the weekend. Sleep in. Read a book. Exercise. Fuck. Write a story. Learn Chinese. Play with my kids. And then the weekend comes and I never ever never ever never ever catch up. I just get more unsatisfied. Take this weekend for example. On Friday night I am supposed to meet my wife for a late dinner after work. Kind of low key. Be nice to go back home and get some after. When she text messages me that she will be playing majong, home late, thanks for understanding. I get home my two daughters are there, one is so tired she is throwing a huge fuss, she listens to me but i want to tune her out. ...

At 6am my cell phone vibrates and before the first ring completes I press a button that makes it stop. This is so much ingrained in my daily routine that I cannot describe what the ring sounds like or what exactly I press to make it stop. I just know I do. I awake, not feeling rested, never feeling rested at 6am, and shower. Aidan needs to get up soon to catch his school bus so I give a shout out to the room he’s sleeping in … “aidan, need to get up”. Showed, shaved, brushed, and toweled I wake up Aidan before I dress. Wake up is not quite right. Yang and I cajole him into waking up, first with gentle reminders, then gentle threats, then just picking up up off the bed. ...

I am sitting in the lobby of the mega spa, one that I wrote about in this space a year or two ago. We are back here because York is visiting and because it has been damn cold in Beijing. As far as I know the cold snap and York’s arrival are purely coincidental. A Beijing winter tradition is to visit SPAs and when I asked Yang about this tradition being in contrast to the general phobia of Beijingers about hot/cold weather she looked at me like I had just asked why the sky is blue. Me, I am not a big fan of the spa in general and in particular being the only foreigner in a spa with hundreds of Chinese. This on the back of a work offsite where I am the only one of two hundred co-workers who doesn’t understand Chinese. So, I’m sitting this one out, in the lobby, taking the chance to catch up on my reading and my writing. It has been a heck of a few weeks in terms of getting behind and not being able to catch up. For my work, for my running, for my sleep, for my time with family. ...

Elisa wakes up in the middle of the night and fusses enough to wake up Yang. Says in something in Chinese Yang can’t quite understand. Then Yang can start to understand her “hē shuǐ 喝水” she says. 喝水. “Drink Water”, “Drink Water”. Yang grabs the water glass and brings it to Elisa’s mouth. Elisa shakes her off. Points at Yang. Yang needs to drink water. Yang needs to drink water because Yang always drinks water when she breast feeds Elisa. ...

As I make the right turn towards the wudaoko subway station a bead of sweat slips off my forehead and hits the tip of my nose. Today is a warm day and it feels like summer is hanging on by a thread. Or a drop as it were. As I make that right turn I notice a young man – late 20s or early 30s – dressed in a baby blue adidas track suit. You know the kind with the matching top and bottom that used to be in vogue when my generation was in vogue and me personally was decidedly not in vogue. I’m not sure why i noticed him, foreigners in that part of Beijing in the late summer of 2009 are not an unfamiliar site. The track suit, yea, it was a little extreme but there are others wearing more extreme. Maybe it was he was crunching into a Big Mac at the time my eyes noticed him. In any case, I made my right and headed east. ...

Having just finished visiting where the great wall enters the sea, we are driving around central Qínhuángdǎo looking for a place to kill the next couple of hours. A modern mall where the kids could run around and we could relax a bit would be nice. Aidan is sitting in the passenger seat with Yang and wants an ice cream from KFC. I am trying to navigate the traffic with is heavy and tight and slow going. I light turns red and I stop. Just then Yang’s mom Yihong – who has been soundly asleep in the back seat along with Lydia and Elisa – wakes up. Without missing a beat she says “Lai Ba” (“we’re here”), wakes Lydia, and opens the car door. She’s about to step out into traffic when Yang calls her back and she realizes we have not parked but remain stuck in traffic. ...

Yang drives into the heart of Beijing in order to buy freshly roasted Chestnuts. With fall comes Chestnut season in Beijing and the street side store Yang is going to is the most famous and the best roaster of all. As she gets near the stand she notices the long line and the complete lack of parking. Lack of parking except for an illegal spot right in front of the stand. With kids in the car and the prospect of having to drive in endless circles Yang contemplates the illegal park. Then she notices the the two soldiers standing right in front of the illegal spot. Two soldiers holding automatic (think AK47) weapons. So Yang does the only rationale thing, swing in between the soldiers and the takes the illegal spot. I mean, after all, what type of Beijing police would bother to ticket a car when it is being guarded by two of the nation’s finest. ...

I walk into my office and shut the door. I am mad and angry and there is no where to go with it. Mad at amateurs who tried to give me the equivalent of “throw strikes” advice and angry that I could not just brush them off. I want to sit under my desk and hide but instead I scan my office for something…looking…and then my cell phone rings. It is Aidan. He tells me he just got home from school and he sounds like he is in his normal cheerful mood. At once I am a bit more relaxed. ...