There's only two more sleeps to christmas

I went to a German Buffet today. They had a string quartet playing christmas tunes. I drank a cup of strong coffee and a litre of beer, the first thing in my stomach all day, and nearly cried to hear christmas music for the first time this year.

It's not that beijing isn't christmassy (which the spellcheck agrees is a word, thank god), it's just that spray-painted "merry christmas" logos on the windows of japanese restaurants and mechanized santa mannequins in every shopping center doesn't really give one the feeling of home. I realized today that the 23rd was always my favorite day of Christmas. Walking around downtown, looking for a cooking utensil, not talking to anyone, drinking a movie theater. The unmortgaged time so rare in any other season.

I ate my first snail sausage, and they had chocolate mousse. It cost forty dollars for both of us. We were surrounded by germans telling restaurant horror stories about life in Beijing.

I started drawing again, learning about guidelines and proportions from a chinese Manga instruction book. I did some sketching at the table, eating one ginormous meal a day has an absurd effect on one's state of mind. I found a store last week that sold proper drawing books and those thick hexagonal sticks of graphite I love so well.