John’s officially a bad person. Not only is he a blog butcher, but he’s responsible for me finding out about Desktop Tower Defense, a flash game of crack-like addictiveness.
Desktop Tower Defense has officially made all other work both impossible and pointless. If you something that you need to get done, today, by all means [...]

Last night, Rika threw a dinner party over at my place. Since she and Martin already sold most of their things, including their refrigerator, to the Tealit vultures, she had to make the food over at my place. I’ve been really busy with work recently… but hey, they’re leaving and the party needed [...]

Last spring, I wrote about an “awesome blog” I’d found. The writer, John B., was an American who had just moved from Hangzhou to Shanghai. He wrote about language learning, cultural observations, and a number of other topics. In particular, he had written an inspiring post about his goal of learning five [...]

Last week John B. wrote about his thoughts concerning the simplification of Chinese characters.
Then, in the course of my varied and meaningless reading, I stumbled upon a character that reaffirmed my belief that, for all its faults, simplification was the way to go. The new word I encountered was 抓阄, meaning “to draw lots.” I [...]

I have a new favorite blog, this month. It’s called johnbiesnecker.com. John’s an English teacher in China with an ambition for learning languages that you can’t help but respect. He’s striving to learn five languages in one decade, and I think he’ll make it! Not only that, but he writes [...]