My reading teacher asked me what I was thinking of doing my thesis on. This prompted a half-second moment of panic as the first topic I was thinking of looking at was Taiwan-China relations (namely the likliehood of a Two-China settlement), hardly politic to say to a PRC citizen, and the second was China-North Korea relations. I could hardly mention that in a room full of South Koreans... some of whom will have been in the Korean army. In the end I plumped for Chinese relations with "er, like, the world".

I am going to Shanghai next weekend with Korean flatmates. They were going and invited me along and I just cannot turn down a visit to Shanghai. I'm going to take them to get a Sunday roast dinner. They love doing traditional British things.

I was getting the taxi back from a restaurant yesterday and I reallllllly needed to pee. No worries, I thought, be home soon. Every single bloody traffic light was red. The lights here all count down the seconds left, which is normally a useful thing, but in this instance each geologically long countdown just mocked me in the cruellest way. I mentioned to the driver that I hated red lights. He agreed. For those interested, I made it home without an embarrassing accident...

The thermometer is slowly creeping up in Qingdao but I am still making the mistake of trying to make the weather match my clothes rather than the other way around. Consequently-brrr.