Weekend is already over

I really don't like having to think of titles for each post. Each post is about lots of random shite so an "overarching" title is a little hard to come by unless you work making advertising slogans and are good at catchy taglines for useless crap.

Now reading: War and Peace, Larissa Volokhonsky & Richard Pevear translation. I should say continue reading since I read a few hundred pages in SF before I left for china but the book was too heavy and big to put in my checked luggage. This is supposed to be the best translation, and so far it is much better than the last copy I read which was a really old translation that probably missed the eloquence of Tolstoy's style. I also read Anna K by them, and it was fantabulous, so I'm very excited for this translation.

Last night I went to Kro's Nest with the Iveys and had real pizza for the first time in a month - it was amazing. I had pepperoni and then got to do my customary explanation of why I eat pepperoni and bacon. I need to coin a new phrase for my dietary habits because its really an annoying five minute explanation that I and kinda sick of repeating.

Afterwards I had a tug of war between going home and not spending money since I really don't have any until I get paid on the China side, or going to an ATM, running my US side dry and going out with Em, whose plan for the evening includes white rabbit, which only gets good after 4 in the morning. I decided that you only have saturday every six days so the right decision was to go. Most of the night was uneventful and even boring since I was sober and didn't like the music they were playing at White Rabbit later, but the Hip Hop concert we went to first at Star Live was AWESOMEEEEEE!!!

There were two acts and it was all in chinese so I understood nothing, but the crowd was really into it so we were too. The fist group was three guys who just rapped to beats by a DJ, a lot of which were pulled from US songs, and then the second group had a backup band and sang over that. T he frontman for that one puzzled me for a long time because I could tell he wasn't entirely chinese but couldn't figure out what he was, later we learned that he was half Chinese half Swedish. Strange combo. They also freestyled for a while and beatboxed... all in all it was wickedly tight / off the hook. I wonder what they are rapping about though since they can't criticize the government at all. A lot of Hip Hop comes out of criticism for the system and the man, so I feel like it must be tough to be so limited is your lyrics.

Rest of the night was blah, the only highlights were onion rings at Nashville and watching Gossip Girl at 6AM when I got home.

This morning I woke up and met the Iveys again at PangJiaYuan market where we shopped for a few hours. I got an awesome ring.