I made it to Harbin safe and sound. And it sure is a good thing I woke up at 4:45 and took that 7am flight, because when I got to my hotel at 11 and called my boss, he said we should meet at 3. Great. And then I went out to get myself lunch, and as soon as I ordered he called and said we should have lunch. Great. So basically, I gave up my Sunday to come to Harbin and have lunch. Awesome. Now it's 5pm and I'm exhausted, but luckily I used my early morning departure as an excuse to get out of dinner with my boss's old driver (he used to live here), so I'm going to lay in bed and order room service. And I don't care that I'm about to pay $18 for a burger, I'm going to do it anyway. And I might even order another alcoholic beverage, because fuck it.
On the bright/interesting/only-in-China side, the woman we had lunch with runs the international department of a university here in Harbin, and she asked me to come and lecture at the university. That's weird. I think it's weird when college age kids are put in touch with me for advice on anything, which has happened a couple of times. It gets especially weird when they call me Mr. Minsky. I'm not ok with that. Now imagine what's going to happen if I start lecturing at a Chinese university. Weird weird weird.
But enough of that. On my flight here today, I listened to a lot of Joni Mitchell. I just bought the Blue album because it was $5.99 on iTunes, and if your album is $5.99 and there are any songs that I like on it, I'll probably buy it (I also bought Tracy Chapman). But anyway, I bought it, and then I wanted to sleep, so I listened to it on repeat, and it's very nice. Also, you can totally hear how she influenced Laura Marling (read: Laura Marling totally rips her off. But I mean that in the best way possible because I love Laura Marling). Speaking of trying to sleep on my plane ride, I'm reminded of another story from today. I got on the plane, it wasn't so full so the couple next to me moved to an empty aisle. Which was fantastic, because then I had an aisle to myself. I fell asleep, and about 30 minutes later, this fat Chinese dude came and sat next to me. And I'm not talking about sitting in the same aisle as me. He sat in the seat next to me. Which I was leaning on and using as a headrest. And he didn't care the the aisle seat next to him was empty (which I emphatically pointed at and tried to get him to move to, but he didn't care). So he woke me up, which meant I then couldn't fall back asleep. He was nice enough to offer me his shoulder to sleep on (no joke. Total stranger offered me to sleep on his shoulder). And to make things even better, after 5 minutes they started serving food, so he left back to his original seat to eat and never came back. My airplane nap just wasn't meant to be. But I digress. A lot. Today's song is A Case Of You, by Joni Mitchell, off of Blue. (Side note: James Blake also does a great cover of this song).
On the bright/interesting/only-in-China side, the woman we had lunch with runs the international department of a university here in Harbin, and she asked me to come and lecture at the university. That's weird. I think it's weird when college age kids are put in touch with me for advice on anything, which has happened a couple of times. It gets especially weird when they call me Mr. Minsky. I'm not ok with that. Now imagine what's going to happen if I start lecturing at a Chinese university. Weird weird weird.
But enough of that. On my flight here today, I listened to a lot of Joni Mitchell. I just bought the Blue album because it was $5.99 on iTunes, and if your album is $5.99 and there are any songs that I like on it, I'll probably buy it (I also bought Tracy Chapman). But anyway, I bought it, and then I wanted to sleep, so I listened to it on repeat, and it's very nice. Also, you can totally hear how she influenced Laura Marling (read: Laura Marling totally rips her off. But I mean that in the best way possible because I love Laura Marling). Speaking of trying to sleep on my plane ride, I'm reminded of another story from today. I got on the plane, it wasn't so full so the couple next to me moved to an empty aisle. Which was fantastic, because then I had an aisle to myself. I fell asleep, and about 30 minutes later, this fat Chinese dude came and sat next to me. And I'm not talking about sitting in the same aisle as me. He sat in the seat next to me. Which I was leaning on and using as a headrest. And he didn't care the the aisle seat next to him was empty (which I emphatically pointed at and tried to get him to move to, but he didn't care). So he woke me up, which meant I then couldn't fall back asleep. He was nice enough to offer me his shoulder to sleep on (no joke. Total stranger offered me to sleep on his shoulder). And to make things even better, after 5 minutes they started serving food, so he left back to his original seat to eat and never came back. My airplane nap just wasn't meant to be. But I digress. A lot. Today's song is A Case Of You, by Joni Mitchell, off of Blue. (Side note: James Blake also does a great cover of this song).
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