i always pick the worst days to wear my light khakis: meeting pansusu for lunch when he orders the hot plate steak splattering oil all over my pants; wear khakis to go eat hot pot last saturday and once again getting splattered with hot oil; and finally this morning, when it was rainy out and the ground was muddy. the price of being a slave to fashion! i sound like these are the last pairs of pants i'll ever own, but i tend to forget i live across the street from a large mall i've yet to visit, with plenty of new clothes to choose from.

i used the snooze button on my cellphone today, but i was afraid it wouldn't work so i couldn't fall back asleep and waited for the alarm to go off again 10 minutes later. i went to bed at 12:30 last night. i got out of bed around 6:45, left the house by 7:20. still had time to grab some meat buns for breakfast.

my sinuses are a bit stuffed up and i have a scratchy throat. i thought maybe it was the polluted chinese air but i wonder if it's a cold?

when i was in taiwan i kept meticulous track of my expenses. however, once i arrived in china, i haven't really kept an eye on my money. for one thing, since i'm working here and drawing a salary, my china funds get replenished every month. but a part of me doesn't take china money seriously. it's hard to explain, but it feels like play money. it's not like i'm spending RMB$ like crazy, in fact the exact opposite. i'm exported my miserly american ways here to china. even when something is already pretty cheap, i try to get an even better deal. actually, i feel it's my patriotic american duty to earn as money here in china as possible, then return to boston and spend it on the local economy. just doing my small part to help my country!

it's saturday and i'm at work. my body is in the office but my mind is elsewhere. i vow to do as little work as possible on saturdays, my form of civil disobedience.

after lunch i watched an episode of breaking bad. that's also something i never thought i'd do, following the story of walter white out here in greater chongqing. the IT guy came to install adobe acrobat on my machine and thought it was kind of weird seeing me watch an american show without chinese subtitles.

i discovered that my formerly-anonymous QQ friend (ms.xiang) is from an eastern area of chongqing province that has a high miao population. when i asked her if she was miao, she said she's half because her father is a miao minority. not that you can tell from looking since miao people look chinese anyway.

instead of hot pot i had dinner at the office. i got back home by 6:30 and went straight to the large supermarket to get some soap (RMB$6.59, romano men soap), shaving cream (schick RMB$25.90), a box of lipton black tea (RMB$16.80, formerly $22), some hainan bananas (RMB$8.50), and some sponge cake (RMB$7.80). i finally returned to my apartment by 7:00. after a shower, i indulged in some american television shows i downloaded, including the 2nd episode of breaking bad.