School has started again. It’s great. I’m back at Dong Fang (东方) and I lucked out with a wonderful teacher: 赵红 (Zhao4 Hong2). She is probably the most experienced Chinese teacher I’ve had so far. In the past, most of my teachers have been relatively young, uninterested women — not interested in teaching, not interested in learning. Anyway, this is our second week and I’m still happy. I’m also taking a morning class twice a week for speaking (口语) and listening (听力). The teacher for that class is also pretty good. She has a good knack for keeping everyone participating. Pretty remarkable.

These are my books:

First Year Chinese Course, Level 3, Vol. 2 [ISBN: 7-5619-1672-8]
汉语教程第三册下 (fancy new edition! 第十四课到第二十六课)

Short-term Spoken Chinese 3 [ISBN：7-5619-0705-2]
马箭飞 （2004）。汉语口语速成:提高篇。北京：北京语言文化大学出版社。

I’ve already studied the first six chapters of the second book, but I don’t think that will make me suffer too much. We’ll see.

Also, lucked out with some good 同学 (classmates). They seem really cool. Hard to say exactly who will register for the class, but I think for the most part people really like the teacher and they’ll stick around.

On an unrelated and random note… I was reading a thing on Salon.com just now when I was distracted by an ad. Now this is a good ad campaign! Check it out:

I feel cleaner and happier just looking at their website!

Mostly, today I wasted the day in front of the computer. I was preparing a bit for a conference call I have later this evening with some folks from St. Louis about a website. But also just fooling around — hence the changes to the blog here. Heh.

Last night I watched A Scanner Darkly, the new movie based on Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi novel. Unfortunately, the dvd I bought (5 kuai<$0.75) although it had the proper DVD menu, was totally a bootleg recorded by video camera in a movie theater. Kind of a bummer. The sound was bad, so I missed a lot of the dialogue (the English subtitles were gibberish). Still the animation was cool. I remember liking Waking Life — same director, same effect — except for the fact that it had NO plot. Anyway, this movie had a plot, but I think one of the twists was foreshadowed a bit too bluntly. I wonder if anyone else noticed (spoiler). Anyway, recommended.

A deathly glumness enveloped me again today. Of course, the computer doesn’t help, but I feel such a void. I excuse my hermit-like behavior as not wanting to bum out other people. But that’s so infantile!