long time no something.

Well,

Rob went and did it.  In fact, two of the Rob's that I know went and did something.  The first Rob went and had himself a baby girl--that would be the now famous in the Albuquerque North Valley-Ida Rose.  Happy Birthday kid, we love you and don't even know you.

The second Rob did something that effects us more directly in this place that we are now. He started a blog.  His blog is called "Elephant Rock" (I wonder if it is named after a state park in Missouri) .  In starting his new blog, he has given me a 

virtual-space dare to get off my hands and type something.  It has been 5 or 6 months since my last one.  I'll try to make them a little more often.   

So if I haven't called or emailed you in a while, we are doing good.  Beijing is getting hot--it was supposedly over 90 degrees yesterday and seems just as hot today.  We can tell that we actually reside here now because we have a couple of friends and a couple of people we loathe.  Life is like that famous daoist circle and you haven't really lived until you've seen both the light and the dark.

You might ask, what has gone on in the last 5 or 6 months?  The answer is simple--a lot of stuff.  The dark side of the circle had Brynna and I working for this place called "The Learning Center" starting last September.  You know how in the book Dune, Paul Atreides has like three names--Paul, Muad'ib and Usul.  Well, we didn't realize that The Learning Center also had three names:  "The Learning Center", "Fucked Up Place with Crazy Bosses" and "Fake Decaying Villa of Death".  Unlike Usul, the Fucked Up Place with Crazy Bosses did not have some poetic meaning unless you think sharp increases stomach acid is poetic.   To make a long story short, we thought about giving up and leaving the country, but just about the time the Fake Decaying Villa of Death tried to IBM our ass by giving more hours with less pay, Brynna got offered an insanely good job at an international school called ISB and we quit The 'Learning' Center as of December 17, 2008.  This was just the capper to a really hard, hard year for B and I.  We went home for Christmas and it was nice.

When we came back, we experienced Chun Jie which looked like this:

I had a little time off and was able to compose some music which was fun.  Then I started working part time at a University at the edge of town.  I like working with college kids.  Brynna is working, I am working, we are feeling creative and ready to explore.  Brynna's folks are coming next week and we are gonna go to Zhang Jia Jie.  I guess there is something wrong if I can write for a week about the negative things and not too much about the great things.  I guess words aren't that peaceful to me.  Not that they are aggressive, but they are often out of excitement, anger, loopiness and frustration.  You ever notice that Yoga doesn't involve a lot of talking?