Odd
day. Up all night working on a
must do doc. Couldn’t fight sleep
at midnight, back up at two. Sent. Now. Two different negotiations have just reached the arm
wrestling stage. Back and
forth. Hopes, disappointments,
revisions. And you need to keep
everyone abreast of all that’s going on and keep everyone on it, striving.
Meanwhile another negotiation that’s already done, has a new snag. Could mean a week or more of delay on
something that I’d already thought was largely settled. I feel like I’m working my way through
the bush with a machete.
Guests are over visiting tonight. Friends from eight years ago, or so, from when we lived in
Hong Kong. A great, time-honored
friend of my older daughter’s has joined for the night. They’re talking in the other room. So glad to be able to help maintain
friendships like these for the girls over time. I can remember moving twenty five minutes across the county
when I was her age and I never saw a single soul from that town again, in all
the time since then.
Happy Fourth of July.
You have to really go out of your way in Beijing to find much of any
testimony to this particular day here in Beijing. Just got off the phone with two dignified friends down in
the immigrant kingdom of Shenzhen.
They were fresh off work and we got riffing about the birth of our nation. And, with all the complexity of trying rhyme a word
like “Loco” in Spanish we set about to find appropriate rhymes for the
word. This sets one out on an
initially invigorating, process of finding all the things that rhyme with “nation.”
Game on, my mind goes immediately to “Pastime Paradise”
another offering from the bicentennial year, by Stevie Wonder featured on “Songs in the Key of Life” fin which goes
on about “dissipation, race relations, conciliations, segregations, etc.” When Stevie with the utmost
seriousness, emphasizes “Mutilation” I think I speak for many in wanting to
introduce a substitute like “constipation” and “masturbation.” It was on this level of foolishness
that we laughed ourselves stupid with insular with our 语无伦次[1]
. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastime_Paradise
Friends up are from Hong Kong. They were all but unaware of the protests underway. Everything is always captivating from a
distance. That the protests weren’t
all consuming caught me by surprise.
Meanwhile, have a look at this article about South Korea and China. This is interesting, as it suggests not
only that China and South Korea may develop some rapprochement, with Xi in
town, but that it opens up new possibilities for reconciliation between Russia
and North Korea and even North Korea and Japan. This could be China’s one diplomatic bright spot among
border nations.
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