Alexander's

After living for one year in a japanese student home it seems like any room that can contain more than a bed and a table feels huge to me. With that in the back of my mind the hotel room I have here is still big. I live on the twenty first floor, one entire wall is a huge window and the bathroom wall facing the room is also made of glass. I can very well understand why this hotel has ratings describing it as perfect for lovers. I mean here I could lie on my bed and watch the sunset on my right or a beautiful girl shower to my left -- at the same time -- how cool is this?

The huge flat screen TV, the provided computer and the broadband internet[^1] connection are a nice bonus. I guess just in case the stunning girl you share the room with is not enough, or you missed the sunset and are getting bored.

One problem for me is, that currently there is no beautiful girl in my room that I could admire while she takes a shower and the beauty of the sunset is slightly dampened by the air pollution, that makes the sun vanish, before it can reach the horizon. Luckily if there is a problem as serve as this there will almost always be a solution near by.

For example yesterday, while enjoying my time on Skype I got a phone call -- at 23:00 local time. I'm not really supposed to get phone calls here in Beijing on my hotel number. Only very few people know which hotel I stay at and I told nobody the room number. Maybe they have a problem with my credit card -- it would not be the first time here in Asia -- so I go and pick up the phone.

Yes
Ah ... Hello English?
Yes how can I help you?
Massagi?

It's the middle of the night and someone calls me to ask if I want a massage? Nice service from the hotel.

Oh wait it's the middle of the night, I get a call on my hotel phone and a girl asks me if I want a massage -- no thanks. I guess it would be kind of hard to explain to the girl I'm skyping with.

Well such is life -- full of suboptimally timed events.

So today I get home from a shopping spree[^2] at 16:00. Tired from walking around all day and not finding nice cheap shoes in my size I just want to take a relaxing hot shower and rest for an hour or two, but my keycard for the room does not work. I roll my eyes, take the elevator down again, they repair my card, but just in case send someone up with me to check everything is alright.

She rings the doorbell to make sure she will not be intruding, opens the door for me and

Where do you come from?
Austria -- Europe Austria
Want a massage?

[^1]: notoriously monitored, annoyingly flaky and heavily restricted [^2]: It seems like shoes in Beijing fit the category "cheap, good looking, available in my size - pick two"

As some of you might already know I'm currently traveling around in China. The food is great the air is very polluted and the Internet is ... shall we say not as wide and unlimited as I remember it. Especially the part where Flickr,[^1] the photo site I use for all my travel shots, resides seems to have fallen of the map (right along with Facebook and YouTube)

Since the webspace on this server is by far not large enough to accommodate my photos and I don't feel like searching for a photo site that is acceptable in China, there will be no new shots of my last days in Japan or from my travels in China until I return home. Also no Facebook updates and I gave up on Twitter when my time was rapidly vanishing in the last few months in Japan.

[^1]: I'm not going to comment on the idea of blocking a photo-only site, when most journalists use sFTP or something similar, to get their photos out of China

Look at him isn't he the happiest man in the whole world?

Watching the dusk in Yokohama with a nice girl lying next to you in the grass, there is not much to add to the observation of these two passerbys. After hearing that we just look at each other and laughed in surprise. It was a great day, just as many other days lately.

In this last month my Japanese finally became good enough to understand simple conversations and talk to my friends in Japanese most of the time. Yes Japanese is a hard language to learn and outside of Japan it is most likely not very helpful, but all this is more than compensated by my friends, that repay my every effort trice.

In the last week I had a guy crying at my shoulder and a girl tell me she had sore muscles in her face from laughing so much.

Indeed these were great and happy days, some of the best I've ever had. Sure the nail that sticks out will be hammered in -- or break in the process -- but the more you are embedded in the Japanese wood the more fun it becomes. Maybe after a few years, when you still stick out a little bit, it will become bothersome, but for now I'm very much looking forward to coming back.