Well today was another day at the Microsoft office. I'm trying to finish up all of the Microsoft Certified Masters tests, and since I can only do that from the office, I have to commit a few hours each day to get over to the office, get setup, and then to get back. Most likely I'll be back tomorrow as well.

It seems the air quality over the last 3 or 4 days has been really bad, maybe even the worst since I got here 2 weeks ago. About 6 days ago, we had a 2 or 3 day stretch were the sky was clear and blue, and it was absolutely fantastic, but the rain has left, and we are back to smog. Hopefully this will clear up for tomorrow, since it's opening ceremonies for the Olympics.  The fireworks may be difficult to see if this doesn't clear up. The good news is that it sounds like we may get some rain over the next 2 or 3 days, so perhaps later next week we will have clear sky's once again.

We stopped in for a quick lunch at a local Hot Pot place next to the Olympic Common Domain (OCD). The food at this place was great, and while I'm trying to decrease my pictures of food on the blog, and increase my pictures of other things, I couldn't help but post about this. A traditional hot pot, is a type of soup (or several types of soup, as in our case), that is put on a burner at the table. So while you sit there the soup is warmed up to a rolling boil. Once it's hot enough, you can take many different types of meats and vegetables, and place them into the soup to cook them. Many things usually take 5 or 6 seconds to cook, other things like potatoes, and some vegetables, you leave in for a while so that they soften. you can see from the first picture, the soup on the right is made with more peppers and spice, and so it has a nice red color to it, and has a little more oil. The one on the left is better for vegetables, and is more creamy. I also added a picture of the guy that made up our noodles. These are made by hand, and he swings them around like a baton, until the noodle is thin, and stretched. Once it's finished he adds one to each of our soups, and we get to enjoy. It was a great show to watch him work his magic.

Another crazy site on our way back to the apartment was some wonderful Beijing driving. Now first off, I have to say the lines on the road that usually tell you which side you belong on, yeah those are just a general recommendation in Beijing, and pretty much no one listens to the rules. you basically can do anything you want to get from point A to point B, you just better be out of the way if the car or truck is bigger than you. Also Car's have the right away not pedestrians, so if you are going to cross the street, take your chances, and run quickly. It should be comforting to know that the truck on the right was a gasoline tanker, and these were maybe 3 inches apart when they first stopped. The second picture is of the bus leaving when the light turned green. 

I went back to the apartment to work on some email, and other things, and to play a little XBOX, that is until my drive started making some crazy noise, and now I cannot use any disks. I tell you with this thing it's been one thing then another, then another, and now the drive is dead. Following some guidance I found on YouTube (the most reliable source around), I tried some tricks with stiff paper, plastic, and a penny. None of which worked, so I'm going to leave it drive less for the next 3 weeks until I get back to the states to send it in for repair. So for now it seems XBOX Live Arcade will be the answer.

More inline with what I'm here to be doing ;-), I'm currently attempting to find Olympic venue tickets for sale (hard task indeed), and I'm working the most on finding tickets for the Women's Gymnastics, as I find those to be the most interesting, and I think we have the best head to head competition with China here (other than Basketball US vs China, but those tickets are 10,000RMB right now). The US Olympic team is quite strong, and is lead by a few fantastic athlete's, like Shawn Johnson, you can watch a great summary video of Shawn here: http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=OnrS4o-dQLE. I'll update back if I'm able to track down some tickets for the events.

-Chris