Thursday, November 23, 2006

Today It's...

... Beaujolais Nouveau Thanksgiving

We don’t want to favor one country over the other as far as traditions are concerned so since we didn’t drink, we are not eating turkey either!!!

This is NOT a turkey
(It would be pretty pathetic!!)


Note from the writer: Jeff happened to be touring China for the Beaujolais and in Paris for Thanksgiving. That’s all there is to it, don’t worry it’s not the War of the Roses at Casa S.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

It Can Be Beautiful Too

Sunrise from our apartment

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Jeremy Is Hard At Work

Jeremy decided to help clean the city from pollution…..

A square inch of sidewalk at a time!!!!

Monday, November 20, 2006

Pollution??!!

You Mean It's Not Fog??


Really Bad

Not As Bad

Better


Beijing air quality tops pollution index

Beijing(Reuters) - Air pollution in Beijing, under pressure to provide clear skies before the 2008 Olympics, reached the worst level on a government air quality index on Tuesday.

Beijing's air pollution was rated "hazardous" --the highest category in the China Environmental Monitoring Center's index-- for the 24-hour period ending at noon on Tuesday, Xinhua said.

Since the fog started late on Sunday, police have shut down parts of six highways near Beijing and a ring road on the outskirts of the city, Xinhua news agency said.

For a second consecutive day, Beijing was blanketed in heavy fog, which reduced visibility to a few hundred metres, and had delayed at least 80 flights, the official Xinhua news agency reported. [...]

[...] Beijing has pledged to cut air pollution in the lead-up to the Olympics but faces an uphill battle as its increasingly wealthy population rushes to buy exhaust-emitting cars. one out of every three days were classified as polluted in Beijing and 15 other major cities and had affected the "physical" and "psychological health" of some 15 million people, the State Environmental Protection Agency said on its Web site.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Today It's...

…Beaujolais Nouveau

I couldn't even tell you if it's a good year... 'cause I didn't drink any

(What a shame coming from a Frenchie!)


Wednesday, November 15, 2006

The Heating Is On

You might be surprised by the title of this post thinking she’s pretty desperate to post anything on her Blog if she has to tell us that she put the heat on. Well, au contraire, this is BIG news in China. Let me explain:

Officially speaking, Beijing's winter usually starts on November 15 every year.
Mother Nature is not behind this miracle of scheduling. Rather, this is the date that the municipal utility authority is scheduled to start providing heat to all residential quarters. […]
On the morning of November 13, the Beijing-based Legal Evening News reported that roughly 1 million households in the city were connected to the heating system. The temperature in 80 per cent of those homes was no lower than 16 C. Every residences pay a fee to receive heat in the winter. The fee is based on the household's size in square metres. […]
A community coal-fired boiler used to supply the heat in residential buildings and caused some problems.
Industrial and household coal burning, car emissions and flying dust are Beijing's three top causes of pollution, but coal has always been the most serious offender. When autumn arrived, coal was piled in front of the boiler next to the apartments building, while strong winter winds would carry the soot everywhere.[…] Next year will witness a landmark achievement, as every coal boiler and furnace in the city proper of Beijing will be powered by gas or electrical systems by the end of 2007. (Source: China Daily)

That’s not helping with pollution!!!

Saturday, November 11, 2006

After The One Child Policy...

…The One Dog Policy

It's the year of the dog in China (which is by the way my 本命年 ‘‘Ben Ming Nian’’ meaning roughly my year because I was born on the year of the dog which make this year supposedly really special for me… too bad it will all end on February 18th), so as I was saying this is the year of the dog but it's not a good year for man's best friend: an effort to stamp out rabies has prompted authorities to limit families in Beijing to only one dog.
Xinhua News Agency said Beijing was instituting a "one dog" policy for each household in nine areas: Dongcheng (That’s us!), Xicheng, Chongwen, Xuanwu, Chaoyang, Haidian, Fengtai, Shijingshan and Yizhuang Economic Development Zone.
"Only one pet dog is allowed per household in the zones, and dangerous and large (apparently bigger than 35 cm??!!) dogs will be banned. Anyone keeping an unlicensed dog will face prosecution (5000 yuans, 500 euros and I let you figure out the Dollars!!)," Xinhua said.
Rabies is on the rise in China, where only 3 percent of dogs are vaccinated against the disease, […]Rabies killed 318 people nationwide in September, according to Xinhua. There were 2,651 reported deaths from the disease in 2004, the last year for which data were available, compared with 159 reported fatalities in 1996. In the first three quarters of this year, the country recorded 2,254 rabies cases, an increase of 29.69 percent over the same period last year.
Dog owners also were forbidden from taking their dogs to public places like markets, shops, parks, exhibition halls, community gym zones, amusement parks, railway waiting rooms and sightseeing areas, Xinhua said. (Source AP)

WARNING: This post has nothing to do with the previous one!!!!!

Sunday, November 5, 2006

If That's Not A Good Life...

..Then I Don't Know What Is

Playing games on the internet seems to be my latest passion. Well it’s not that difficult, let me tell you how to do it

  1. you need to turn the computer on (It’s the big button)
  2. wait until the mountains come on (windows background screen)
  3. then you need to push on the orange and blue button (we use firefox!!)
  4. and nickjr is bookmarked on the toolbar…
  5. After that it’s a piece of cake to go from one game to another.

And when it’s time for lunch, Ayi just feeds me lunch in the room... but I’m not suppose to do that so don’t tell maman!

Surfing the Internet while being fed by Ayi!

Reporting from Beijing (China), Jeremy Q.


Note by Maman: I think it’s time to go to school (in January) before he’s totally spoiled.

Friday, November 3, 2006

Can It Be True...

...Billboards In French!!!

After 希拉克 Xi1La1Ke4 (aka Chirac) visit less than 2 weeks ago…. French seems to be the “Langue du Jour”!!

Billboard in French (Ok in English and Chinese too) seemed to pop out from everywhere due to the China-Africa Summit that took place in Beijing in the last couple of days.

It is so nice to be able to read without even thinking about it. In fact my brain is so not used to seeing French and/or proper English for that matter that I didn’t quite realize it was written in 2 languages I could actually read without thinking too much about it. I decoded the first four characters (Friendship: Youyi 友谊- there are a few stores called youyi around town, in fact they were the first stores opened to foreigners. And Peace: heping 和平, don’t ask how I know that one when I cannot say really simple things to the ayi!!!) so as I was turning around to ask my driver what it meant I realized that there was 2 other languages on the billboard that I was pretty confident reading. Why make your life simple when you can make it hard.


On a side note this big meeting was also a preview for the traffic plans for the Olympic (Source: AP)
Beijing ordered the government officials not to drive and asked motorists to do the same during a summit with African leaders, keeping normally jammed traffic flowing and previewing measures the Chinese capital is considering for the 2008 Olympics, officials said Monday.

In one of its most expansive traffic campaigns ever, the city flooded state-controlled media with appeals not to drive, sent text messages on mobile phones, banned construction and ordered government agencies to halve car use, the officials from three city offices said.

The combination of control and persuasion proved remarkably effective, taking off the city's streets about 30 percent, or 800,000, of the capital's 2.8 million vehicles during six days of meetings between Chinese and African leaders that ended Monday, the officials said.

The China-Africa summit served as a tryout for one of the thorniest logistical problems the city is facing for 2008, its often gridlocked traffic.

The arrangements were not trouble-free. The Africa summit was the largest high-level diplomatic gathering Beijing has hosted, with presidents, dignitaries and entrepreneurs from 48 African countries shuttling around the capital. Police shut down roads to make way for the motorcades, forcing traffic on to smaller streets that then easily clogged.

For the Africa summit, Liu, the transportation official, said no compulsory restrictions were issued to private car owners. Only government fleets were given orders, with city offices told to keep 80 percent of their cars off the streets and central government agencies 50 percent.


That explain… why we could drive so easily and why the sky was so blue!!!

Wednesday, November 1, 2006

I'm Thinking of Importing Rice!!!

Yet I’m still thinking of importing some rice…

I miss my Uncle Ben’s, Fluffy and Non Sticky
just the way I like it!!!


OMG… There is nobody at Carrefour, what’s going on!!!

The Promotions look… promising