Tis the Season | ChinaLegalBlog.com

2010-02-09

Tis the Season

I took the day off from blogging yesterday for unusual reasons. A weekday absence usually means that I'm busy with other things, but yesterday was special. I wasn't able to catch the Super Bowl when it aired in the U.S., so I had to see a copy this afternoon. So from yesterday morning to this morning, I imposed a news moratorium on myself. No sneaking peaks at my RSS feeds, no going online, nothing. If you find out who won before you watch the game, it's just not worth it.

So my Inbox is overflowing. Saw the game earlier today — not bad, by the way. Best part was knowing that one of the players on the field is actually older than me (Matt Stover, kicker, 42).

I also had to devote a bit of this evening to my catsitting responsibilities. My wife and I are watching two cats (sort of a catsitting exchange program) over the holiday for a young couple who are going back home for the week. So we're dealing with four cats who don't know each other — rather tense situation at the moment requiring constant vigilance to avoid bloodshed.

Anyway, I wanted to point out at the beginning of the week that from now until about two weeks or so later, not all that much is going on here. We are squarely in holiday mode here, and while the traffic is horrible and the shopping is frantic, news will no doubt slow down a bit.

It's weird timing. No sooner than I saw this from Danwei:

The fireworks craziness – to celebrate the Chinese new year – starts today and won't end until Lantern Festival (元宵节) which this year falls on February 28.

than I starting hearing the explosions outside. That means from now on, it'll sound like a freakin' war zone out there. If I wanted to live in Oakland, I'd move back to California.

One other comment on the holiday season. I had the distinct displeasure of spending a few hours yesterday at the local Carrefour supermarket. The place is crowded most times, but yesterday it was hopping, full of pre-holiday shoppers.

Bleah. It was awful. I was battered about the legs and ass from people shoving shopping carts against me in a rude attempt to push me out of the way. That's normal, but yesterday there were more people, all of whom were frantically scooping up boxes of chocolate, fruit, etc.

We came away with the basics: a couple tiger-themed paper things to put up on the door, plus a big fuzi. Gave the dui lian a pass this year — couldn't find one we liked. I was amused to see that Pooh and Tigger were prominent on many of the knick-knacks (I suspect without license from Disney, but what's new?).

I probably have PTSD from the whole shopping experience, so once the holiday is over, I will begin the search for a good therapist.

Tags: China News