i left LA on the night of the 30th and arrived in manila on nov. 1, missing halloween completely. strangest feeling.

we spent 5 hours at the cemetery yesterday commemorating all saint's day by picnicking beside my grandfather's mausoleum. he died before i was born. i desperately wanted to leave earlier, but was reminded that he was my grandmother's husband. she loved him a lot and must have wanted to stay even longer. with terrible traffic at the cemetery on nov. 1, i asked why we don't go another day when it's less congested. she said we had to be there on all saint's day because what if he comes back and can't find us? broke my heart.

i'm moving to shanghai on nov. 5.

Currently Reading The Last Empress: The She-Dragon of China By Keith Laidler see related

...There was in China (and to a lesser extent there still is) a general proclivity among officialdom for denying the obvious, for flying in the face of common sense, and, with apparent conviction and sincerity, brazenly naming black 'white'. This was brought home to me most strongly in an interview with a Chinese forestry official in Sichuan. Outside the office trucks passed noisily down the track at a rate of one or two a minute, packed to the gunwales with huge tree trunks, cut from the forests near the Tibetan border and destined for some construction site in the provincial capital, Chengdu. Their passage shook the thin walls of the small office we sat in.
          'Where exactly do these lorries deposit their timber?' I asked. 
          The official stared back, his eyes puzzled, 'What lorries?'
          It became obvious later in the interview that Party policy said no timber should be cut from this region. Therefore, for the official, the lorries simply could not exist. Everyone knew the problem was not to be discussed, so everyone pretended it was not there. That way, in a typically Chinese solution, the business would go ahead, Chengdu could get its timber, and at the same time Party policy was adhered to - because nothing was happening! To me it seemed like madness.
          At the end of a heated discussion I was given a very important piece of advice, a key of sorts to understanding much of the Middle Kingdom's history. 'You must understand,' the official told me earnestly, and with every indication of sincerity, 'facts are different in China.'

-excerpt from the Author's Note of The Last Empress: The She-Dragon of China by Keith Laidler

a former president was judged guilty of plunder and given life imprisonment. we must be the only country in the world that uses "plunder" as an actual legal term. it makes him sound like a pirate. arrrrrr. plunderrrrr. after the verdict, he declared the proceedings to be a kangaroo court. huh? where did these terms come from and why did they stick? i don't hear them anywhere else.. O_o