Bad air continued at the beginning of the week, reaching a climax on Tuesday when a sandstorm entered the mix giving the sky-dome a post-apocalyptic sepia hue. After a couple of rainy days though the skies have cleared again, granting optimal Sunday morning run conditions. The damp of early spring combined with central heating having just gone off (its centrally controlled) leaving Beijing feeling chillier than it does even in the middle of winter. Seems like interchanging weather when out on my run and shuttling between the shadows of the sky-scrapers into the interstices of warm silky sunlight.
No Saturday line-in, as I made by 70 minute commute over to the west side for the school’s Adult Ceremony. Had to be home by 16:10 for my European Team Championship match against Denmark but that left just enough time to nip into the Go club and get a comfortable victory over Mr Ma in our present 10 game series (currently now down 3–2). The chap with the cowboy hat on (see photo) is quite the character and regularly comes over to flaunt English vocab when I’m in the middle of a match; thankfully my ear protectors are at hand to deal with such disturbances.
Even Arthur has been feeling the cold: he normally refuses to sleep under the duvet throughout winter, but has been nesting himself up snuggly in bed the last week. Jibbering furiously but still nothing particularly cogent, I suppose not much different from myself.
Zhouzhou’s been super busy and awesome around the house this week (her classes for the next term are only due to start next week). Since we’re signing up for a new 3-year rental agreement we decided to invest a bit more effort into making the apartment a bit more the way we want it. My favourite alteration being the removal of the obnoxious TV as the focus of the room, and instead using a projector which works surprisingly impressively during the daytime.
