MoonCarolCafe

There is no top 10 for me. I will enjoy watching her see what I take for granted with fresh eyes. When she arrives and is over her jet-lag I'll tell her "Here is a map. Here is where we are on the map. We will go anywhere you like. I'll stop you only if it is really dangeous to go there." Farmers markets. Las Vegas. 20-screen cineplexes with stadium seating. Shooting ranges. Home Depot. The DMV. Skid row. Miniature golf courses. Pacific Coast Highway. Head shops. Baseball games. Political conventions. Demolition derbys. White Castle/In-N-Out/FatBurger/Krispy Kreme. 99 Cent stores. All of it, everything.

Yes, they do rent cars in China. Yes, to get a rental from an agency you will need a Chinese drivers license. No, your international drivers license is no good in China. I don't think traffic is all that bad. Most parts of GZ I would not want to drive in, more because they have a great public transit system than for fear of traffic. A car is spot-on for intercity travel. Not having to take buses everywhere is the donkeys' danglies, plus you get to actually EXPLORE!! For instance, there is an outdoorsy roadside restaurant somewhere outside of HeiShan where the chickens that are to be served for dinner are pecking in the dirt around your feet at lunch, and the parking area faces the field of taro that will be served to you freshly yanked from the ground. Ordering fish? There is a large pond on the premises... This is the sort of stuff you will never see while taking the local equivalent of Greyhound. Visiting the wife's home village becomes a trivial excercise. Getting into a bang-up is a definite risk (Trauma room? Ha!), and the way they mark construction zones makes for exciting driving after dark.

Eh?

I concur. She is a good person to deal with.

At my wife's request, I am posting this because my wife, Ping, wants her friend to come to America. If she wants to help her friend to come to America, she should contact the USA consulate/embassy and see about getting an immigration visa. Otherwise this sounds about as wrong as hearing one of my friends suggest that I get my wife to hook them up with one of her Chinese friends because they prefer thier women to be docile and obedient.

In China I won't use tap water, even when cleaning my teeth. The only thing I use tap water for is to wash my birthday suit, and even then I am careful to keep my eyes and mouth shut. I have yet to experience any problems with intestinal distress!

I see legislation proposed by Democrats and I want to laugh... I see legislation proposed by Republicans and I want to cry... Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, Here I am stuck in the middle with you

It's done via software. If you are at an internet cafe ask them to turn it off, or it will fuxor your typage.

Learning Chinese while living in a small American city has got to be even harder than learning English while living in a small Chinese city. To do more than practice your listening skills will be quite hard, you have no one to practice your spoken Mandarin with.

There is a black guy working a booth in the Tech Mart (the place where you get the computer hardware cheap, and the pirated software cheaper, a couple blocks south-east of Times Square mall). He's not me. Don't confuse him by shouting MoonCarolCafe at him, just let him keep making those er, backups. Yeah, he needs 200 backups of Microsoft Office XP, that's the ticket! This afternoon I was at Watson's (Chinese version of Rite-Aid/Save-On/Thrifty). Without the wife. Picking up skin whitener for my TT. Look at my picture folks. I'm sure they believed me when I said it was not for me...

Regarding the Ice Cream, I guess it should be decent. Stay away from any place that claims to know how to make a rootbeer float. I made the mistake of ordering one in a Chinese Cafe... Twice. Once I got "coke" in my rootbeer float. The next time I got club soda. Listen people, you've had 3000 years to get it right; 16 ounces of root beer and then add the two scoops of vanilla afterwards. Never before, always after. I was out and about in central-eastern GZ today (near the park with the memorial tower for Dr. Sun Yat Sen inside). And you guys also had an easy shot at me this morning when I was at the Bank of America Plaza. I saw plenty of round-eyes, but no one said the magical phrase...

:-) Today I ate lunch at a smallish cafe in south-central GZ. At first everything looks strange, but if you look carefully things here are much like they would be in the USA. The restaurant was near a residential area, it had an open grill area, patio for outside dining... cashier near the door... just like some of the places I eat at in Los Angeles. Loads of fun, except the argument the missus and I had over the purchase of a new space heater

Howdy all. I'm done with the business side of my trip to GZ. Now it is time for the fun and games. Let's play... Spot the Negro! Rules: Approach me and say the phrase "Moon Carol Cafe ma?" and I'll treat you to dinner at the Moon Carol Cafe. The game is in play until 19:00 on November 15th. Even though I am an unrepentant "double-stuff oreo" it should still be easy to spot the hei-sede skinned chap running around GZ for the next few days, right? Game on!

Exsqueeze me? Pay how much?

Feeling GROOVY because I got the I129f reciept today! 60-180 days expected on the reciept, but 30-90 days expected according to the BCIS website.

What makes Pimsleur Mandarin better than the rest?

Hello Li!

You have a few more weeks to go before you should even start to get worried. Even watched water evaporate, bamboo grow, or concrete cure? You are 12 days into a process that will take many months. Grab yourself a cool one from the fridge, pull up a chair, and welcome to our waiting room.

Did you notice any extra paperweights on yuor desk/shelves after they left?

So China revalues it's currency to 4.2RMB/1USD... the balance in my BOC account is worth twice as much overnight ? I bet the IRS is still going to want a cut.

Hip hip Hooray! OK, OK, OK, so how about it being MY turn next?!?!?!?

Dave, we both know you won't be able to sleep tonight. Stop by Blockbuster, order up a pizza, and contemplate the fact that your "bacherlor" lifestyle is about to come to a joyous end.

By all means, teach your children multiple languages!! The hardest part about learning Russian was indeed having to remember that letters that looked like somthing in English had a different pronunciation in Russian. For example PECTOPEH is Russian for "restaurant", and if you pronounce it while visually decoding for russian it sounds like "restoran". If your mind slips and you decode for english you'll end up saying "pec-to-peh" and nobody in either language wll understand you.

Lots of luck to both of you. According to my sources in HK the economic/employment environment there is very bad right now, with no improvement expected any time soon. It may be easier for you to find a job in the mainland, instead of her moving to HK. Of course you are actually there right now so you may have slightly more accurate information than what I hear second hand. You say Jiefly cannot seek employment with her business visa; do you mean that she cannot work or do you mean that she can't even look for work? If she can look for work, then indeed her best bet is to interview with a business in HK and hope they are willing to do the paperwork for her. Or... you could make her an honest woman and marry her.

And fresh warm pineapple pies Which still cost almost exactly what a pie would cost in the USA