Beijing: Boy do I need Mandarin lessons!

Lovely weather here in Beijing this morning - today and yesterday has been the best weather I've ever experienced in this City. 25 degrees, no humidity and blue skies. Obvious left-over from the Olympics - wonder how long it'll last?

Contrast this with the weather in HK. I left my apartment @ 05:30 yesterday morning and at that time the temp was already in the high twenties and the humidity was approaching 100%. Hearing that a typhoon was about to hit HK last night, I went to the HK weather observatory site and discovered that, at 01:00 in the morning, the local temperature was still 34 degrees! Sure enough, a big typhoon is rolling thru and it might impact my flight home tomorrow.

Anyway Mandarin lessons. I had an hilarious lunch yesterday with the team here in Beijing - hilarious because they were ordering me Chinese vegetarian food ... weird and exotic mushrooms with chilli and garlic .... chinese cabbage leaves drenched in vinegar chilli and garlic ... stir fried cucumber complete with chilli and garlic and, of course, all of these dishes were liberally sprinkled with cubes of pork and fried pork fat.

The team were trying to teach me Mandarin. I used to have (I think!) a great ear for languages, but for me, Mandarin goes in one side and comes out the other totally garbled.

I thought I'd mastered the art of asking for something (e.g. a beer please). But my order of fried eggs this morning magicked into aloe vera yoghurt and a large poster in (one of the many Beijing-based) Starbucks pronouncing 'no dairy products here today' provoked my order of a 'Venti Espresso' - so naturally I got a Large Soya Milk Frappucino. Too exasperated to argue.

M