Winter Holiday, Working and Sunshine

Today I got up around 10:30, a bit early for me in these lazy times, threw on a classic rap album (so I'm told - Das EFX - Dead Serious - 1992) and continued to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez' first volume of his memoirs, Living to Tell the Tale. After Dead Serious finished, I put on Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth, Soul Brother Number 1, another canonical hiphop album, and continued to read and chatted online with my buddy Andrew in New Zealand. After a good long chat, my friend Adam came by and he, Sam and I got some chuan cai. After lunch, Adam and I went to the Travel Safety Office for our medicals but were told to come back tomorrow between 830 and noon. So he went off to the university to pay his fees and I went home, bought some food at the market (sausage, potatoes, onions) and then Adam and I went to a Starbucks at Wu Hou Ci (a local tourist trap next to a renovated alley of tourist shops called Jin Li). We sat in the fashionable garden and drank our delicious coffees (literally exactly the same taste for the espresso - which is a great taste i've missed in my recent penurious state), reading our novels in the decadent January sunlight. It seemed like a spring day and was a delight to ride around on our bikes, soaking up vitamin D and smiling like adolescents after a dance. (I guess maybe Marquez is making me verbose, his style and energy is really quite contagious - maybe that's what i'll use my vacation for - now don't get too ahead of yourself with delusions of marquez-like grandeur Reid - that's enough of an aside). But yeah, I had forgotten how much of an influence weather has on me, that was really one of the prime reasons I loved austin so much, mainly the fact that when weather everywhere else was such shit it was lovely in austin. so yeah, its great, no clouds, which is quite rare, and a beautiful sunny day, with temperatures maybe in the teens. so surely my laundry will be dry tomorrow, which will be nice. So yeah, no work tomorrow, I have yet to know about friday so we'll see but i dont have my hopes up. Then a week of no work, probably a lot of reading and drinking coffee, going to the bars that are open and eating chinese food, maybe lighting off some firecrackers. it's been an interesting winter but i'll make it through, should be off to yunnan in a couple weeks, then when i get back andrew will be here, then just a couple weeks til the spring semester starts and we can put away winter clothes for a bit. but yeah, sunshine is underrated, especially in the Sichuan basin. more to come.