i woke up 10 minutes early so i could be ready by 7:00 to say hello to my family back in belmont while they were about to have their thanksgiving dinner. this year's turkey - 24 lbs. - seems smaller when view across thousands of miles and on a tiny computer screen. having feasted twice on peking duck the past 2 days, my appetite for bird was already well satiated. one of my original plans was to take a month-long leave of absence at the end of november so i could go back home and enjoy thanksgiving. but there would've been a good chance that once i was gone for that long, i wouldn't want to return to china anymore. and the round-trip airfare made it cost-prohibitive to shuttle back and forth between the 2 countries. my time (and money) was better served staying in china. when i eventually leave, it will be for good.

i have a backlog of 3 weblog posts from within the past 5 days that i still need to finish. with my terrible track record of retroactively updating blog posts, i'm very much afraid those will never get updated.

* post-layoff "survivor's" guilt - saying good-bye to liu

* contract distribution and request to sign your life away for another year - my contract is not with the mix (since my contract is with a 3rd party in shanghai)

* shuttlecock action - admiring xiaowei - mr.lee old pro

* yuwei treating loren and i to xinjiang lamb dinner

* 40 minutes walking home from old city to new city - i needed to go the bathroom and yuwei walking in heels

* picked up my clothes from the tailor: couldn't find my original buttons, removed secondary shirt buttons for cuffs, clothes all smell like smoke from the mahjong parlor