Archive for October, 2005

After my and Clint’s very conspicuous entrance at the VIP Room on Wednesday night as the only costumed attendees to what we thought was a massive Halloween party, I was wary about donning my second costume (gay leather-clad biker) and decided to be an aloof bystander at what promised to be a very raucous Halloween [...]

I walk up towards VIP and as the hostess starts checking the guest list, the two promotion girls start pointing at me and whispering. This is OK, because people whisper about me all the time since I have an oversized head, but then they start giggling and I get a little antsy.
I walk into the [...]

The place I live in Shanghai is sort of like a townhouse in a gated community. Most of my neighbors (whom I have never had the motivation to go meet) are mostly expatriates from Taiwan, Korea, and countries that manufacture white people. There are some scattered locals here and there, and most of them are [...]

Raphael ended his Eastern Europe/Central Asia/Silk Road trek last week in Shanghai, where I had first met him a year and a half ago at Hongqiao airport on the way to our Tibet adventure. Herr Bick is quite the fortunate traveler, having missed both the tsunami last December and the earthquake in Kashmir. It was [...]

The problem with trying to discipline yourself to a strict regimen of healthy living is, well, that it’s so fucking hard to do! After two weeks of this “program,” in which I steadfastly refuse to go out drinking late during a weeknight and go to the gym every other day, I can already feel the [...]

All you can eat Arabian food at Zahara, and then a killer time at (where else) Guandii. Hope Nicole and her posse all had a great time. We know we sure did.

I named my new bike Julie. I wish there were some really amusing story about how I came up with that name, but really it’s an incredibly dull explanation. Eugenia was staying over for a few days because she was working the F1 race, and one night she wanted to watch “Before Sunrise.” We rode [...]

I haven’t been out all week, and tonight I’m taking a break from the gym, which gives me the perfect opportunity to blog about the two things that are on my mind right now.
I love my new bike. It’s not so much the bike itself as the concept of the bike. I’ve ridden it twice [...]

A lot of things have happened in the past week since I’ve returned from Qingdao:
- My gym was shut down by the authorities for not paying some sort of fee/tax/lease.
- My friend Jia Hua snorted too much coke at Armanni and I had to carry her home.
- I got a new bike.
The gym thing really [...]

Karen was super nice enough to pick Clint, Steve, Clare, and myself up from Dave’s apartment (thanks Dave for letting me sleep in your bed and shed unsavory things onto your sheets) in her BMW-for-a-week and drive us to the airport on Monday morning, even though technically she was supposed to be working. Apparently she [...]