A Good Day

This morning I woke up with a strange, unfamiliar feeling affecting my entire body: warmth. Actually, it would be more appropriate to call it "not-freezing". They finally turned on the heat in my apartment, which has upgraded my living situation from "torturously frigid" to "barely livable." It's a cause for celebration, but still, the moment I get a job I'm moving to a real apartment. Obviously, my enthusiasm for the authenticity of Chinese tenements has caught hypothermia and died.

This afternoon I went out with my classmates to a gigantic shmorgasmboard (like a shmorgasboard that causes orgasms) of Japanese and Korean food. Word up to all-you-can-eat sushi, barbeque, stir-fry, and fresh vegetables.

Then I took a couple classmates to my favorite tea house where we spent an enjoyable hour or two playing cards over lemon tea and pumpkin bread. I love games, and I'm so damn good at them... eight rounds of some wacky Korean Crazy-8's type game, and I didn't lose once.

At five o'clock I swapped coffee shops and landed at a Starbucks downtown, where I was scheduled to meet with an Englishman who runs the Dalian office Dezan Shira, a boutique consulting firm that apparently gets a good chunk of the market helping foreign companies invest and establish bases in China.

The guy I met with was smart, interesting, and friendly, we talked for a good hour and a half, and I obviously left a good impression. He's not in charge of hiring people, but he's going to contact his boss about finding me a position researching and writing for the company's blog and magazine, China Briefing. Certainly no promises, but it would definitely be a very cool job, and would allow me flexibility and room for development.

While I was waiting for him, I bumped into one of the recruiters I'd met at the job fair last week, a young Swedish man working for a software-park development company. He told me my resume had been processed by HR and I should expect to hear from them soon about an interview.

Now it's coming up on 8 pm, and I'm getting ready to head back to campus to meet some friends for a late night dinner at the Roast Meat Store (is there a more graceful way to translate 烤肉店?)

Spirits are high----- ONWARD, Christian Soldiers! To Victory!!!