It’s Friday afternoon (6:30 PM) back in the States and it’s Saturday morning (6:30 AM) here in China. This is possibly one of the most confusing parts of orienting myself. This means that although it’s Saturday morning, the New York Times for Saturday is not available yet. It seems to become available around 5 AM New York Time (5 PM here).

Yesterday I mostly laid around the apartment, reading and sleeping on and off. Oh yeah. Eating. I was eating like crazy. Once again excellent food was provided by our hosts. This time Elizabeth did all the cooking since Jeremy was at work most of the day.

I am enjoying sampling all the different foods.

I also downloaded my next China read yesterday: Mao: The Real Story by Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine.

I was reading the sample on my Kindle when I decided it was the bio of Mao I wanted to read and ordered it. As you might expect ordering a book from Amazon on your Kindle is extraordinarily easy. But it does depend on your wifi connections. Attempts to download the book kept failing, so I just read the sample. A

The cool thing was as I was reading, Kindle finally managed to download the book and it automatically kicked me into the spot where I was reading in it. Suddenly instead of being 34% into the sample I was 2% into the book. Very cool since otherwise I would have to manually have moved from the sample and found my place in the new purchase.

This biography takes into account more recent research than any other English bio. Docs from Russia and China that have never been used before inform its story. Plus it’s written in a readable style. Cool beans.

Yesterday I got very groggy in the afternoon and laid down and slept at Elizabeth’s and Jeremy’s apartment. This ended up being very restful despite the cautioning of everyone that I would not be able to sleep in the evening.

In between napping I read a bit in Jonathan Lem’s goofy Gun with Occasional Music.

Bubble gum for my tired mind.