Tailors and Tragedies

I think my tailored made suit went pretty successful. It is not perfect by any means, if you look close you can tell that they made it kind of rushed and I am eager to see how long it holds up. But it is pretty nice for a three button suit, even though I should have took the Golzer's advice and went with a two button. I think It would have looked much better as a two button. What do you think of me trying to get my Obama on?

The total cost of the suit with two tailor made shirts (I got French cuff dress shirts and I am not quite satisfied with the result, next time I will get regular shirts or bring a shirt to copy) was a total of 1050 RMB and if goes math is right, which it is always is that's about $150 dollars depending on the exchange rate. I think that is a good deal for two shirts and suit. If you like what you see, and I mean the suit not me, (I know I like good, I love me some me) go check out the third floor of Yashou. Maybe you can find the tailor we used, I am not going to tell you which one because if people keep accidentally reading this blog and actually take my advice, they might just go and our tailor might starting raising the price on us. And that's not what this blog is intended for, it is definitely not intended to make things in China more expensive for me.

Something that I have noticed that I didn't think was the case when I was first here in 2005 is that Chinese are more willing to donate money to certain causes. Maybe I didn't notice because there was not huge disasters when I was here last time, but many people have been giving money to help with the relief, well when I say many people all the people in my office who were there when they were going around collecting money. I think maybe I am naive and this has been going on for a long time, but I am pretty sure it is a new thing that goes a long with the growing discretionary incomes When, I tried to ask about it, I got answer that did not go along with my theory so I largely ignored it. The answer was that in the last earthquake many Chinese gave what they could, but that was 1976 and the country was not nearly as prosperous as it is today. So, I will just go with my original theory no matter how wrong it is.

But speaking of things that don't change, the Chinese superstitious tradition is still alive and well. I was hearing from some of my Chinese colleagues that the Olympics partly to blame because of this. It was all in jest, but still interesting. There are people saying because the Olympics is on 8/8/08 at 8pm, the tragedies have happened because of this. Since there is four 8 there will be four tragedies, so far three have happened: the earthquake, the snowstorms, and the protest. I am interested to see what the fourth will be. So far none of the tragedies have happened in Beijing or in the North. I guess the North is next.

Highlight of the Day: Being completely wrong but still getting a home cooked dinner.