For my seven past summers in Beijing, and actually all my more than 30 past summers, I either didn’t lived in an air-conditioned home, or when I live in one, I seldom used air-conditioners. I don’t like big electricity bills or the air blown from long-serving air-conditioners that smells of old dust particles.

But, this summer is different. My family now live in a home we can call our own. My wife and I bought it last year literally right before we could no longer afford it. For your information, the price of our apartment in southern suburban Beijing has sky-rocketed by around 85% since we bought it last June.

So, on paper, we are a millionaire family. But, in reality, we have to live with a mortgage that is a drain on our income. This will be the case for another 14 years if we cannot pay it off earlier. According to Rich Dad, our home is a liability because it does not generate cash and only takes it away from us.

We will have another drain soon this autumn though another very sweet one: My wife is expecting our first baby this November. To make our home a better place to live in this summer, we will buy at least one air-conditioner this Dragon Boat Day holiday. We will need it to live through the coming hot summer days, as well as late autumn and early spring days, when it can be very cold at home before and after centrally provided heating is available.

By at “least one”, I mean we may buy two, each for the living room that we hope can cool and warm three indoor spaces (the living room, the south bedroom, and my home office) and for the north bedroom. This depends on our money-related moods and sales skills of the shop’s staff.

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Update: We bought two Grees.

For the Chinese who are interested in those big-picture things, at least two things are what they’ve been holding their breath for. One is the Olympics games and the other is the political spin-off of Taiwan’s elections.

People like me have been expecting much from and doing much for the big event.

Times’ China Blog reported very unlikely awards presented to Beijing for its improved air quality and cleaned transportation system. To me, these awards are as laughable as when someone tells me he thinks it a good idea to present an award to North Korea for the world’s best fed people. The only plump figures I could see from TV and Internet photo reports about DPRK are Kim the Big Belly and his swine-faced son who had been turned around and asked to go at a Japanese airport.

In Beijing, if you have the luck to enjoy a day of clean air or fresh-looking streets, it might be because it’s rained or blown hard enough, or the Beijing municipal government tests its control over the city’s transportation system by house-arresting even or odd numbered vehicles on an even or odd number calendar day.

Taiwan’s Chen Shui-bian has gone berserk. This Republic of China President is impatient to get rid of his China tag and install in its place a Republic of Taiwan or Formosa. This lawyer-turned politician has very tanned complexion and shifty eyes. Every time I saw him jerking his well-groomed head and brandishing his fist in his public speeches, I recalled Germany’s Adolf Hitler. His manipulative control over the government on Taiwan stirs up everything there. His Democratic Progressive Party and his opponent Kuomintang seem to be busy with presidential elections year after year and the people they may or may not represent are also busy with fighting each other. The people of the Republic of China don’t seem to think they are Chinese. At least these are what the media has painted the island to be.

A question in the air is: what will become of China if Chen’s recklessness cannot be contained on the island?

Here are more photos from the trip…

To come here was a tough decision. I doubted my decision of giving up my long accustomed life back home. I was awed by the uncertainties of future in Beijing and the disbeliefs of my competence racked me. Nonetheless, I came here on November 10, 2002.

Life here could be real tough. Without enough money to pay for things I need, I would have to live with a poorer standard of living than at home, for example, sharing with my roommate a cold room in a one-story house without an indoor toilet in the winter.

Beijing is different from Harbin. It’s a national city, if not an international one while Harbin is just a regional city. I could hear Chinese people down the street in Beijing speaking almost every language and dialect known in China. Sometimes, I would sit in a corner on a bus and be amazed, wondering if I was really in China because a Chinese man who pressed his cellphone against his ear talked a total foreign tongue, neither English nor others I could identify, it’s an unknown Chinese dialect no other people than himself on the bus can understand.

Being in a national city means I have more opportunities than in a provincial city. The bad news is that I may have more than I can chew.

It’s the second week I’d been in Beijing that I decided the adjustment to a new invironment was enough–I needed a job desperately. I sent numerous resumes through 51job.com, chinahr.com and zhaopin.com and printed dozens of copies of my application letter and resume and sent them out to my potential employers by post.

I still remember three of those job interviews.

The first one appeared to be a success for the immediate offer of the job. My job would involve translation in the fields of communications and set-top-boxes, something attached to the top of a TV set to receive paid programs.

I balked at the second interview. I crossed from the western to the eastern part of Beijing after changing several buses. When I got there, it turned out to be a PR (Public Relations) company that had something to do with The Oracle. The first interviewer was a formidable young man wearing a dark business suit. He told me that his was a medium-sized PR company hiring dozens of people and the successful candidate would deal with translations of PR materials.

After he left the room, a woman came back to test my spoken English. I told her that I might have come to a wrong place to look for a job because I didn’t think I was good with people, which were an essential part of a PR position, otherwise PR would make no sense. I did not bother to take the following written test designated for each applicant. I came out of the impressive, imposing building, sighing. A company full of sexy women and big men is not my place. I’m happier with a much smaller company with a relaxing working atmosphere or a larger one without the dressing-yourself-up routine. Let me just think. Actually, I am not sure I like a large company because I’ve never been in one and don’t have an idea of it.

The third company, a translation firm, was extremely small and amazingly young. It’s not only that it just got started, but its boss was also a burgeoning one. I am sure we were born almost the same year and we should be friends, not employees and bosses. After a short spoken test and a long written test, he decided to hire me. But I’d decided I would not accept a job offer from a company with a few girls looking like university kids under a young, novice boss. I left the young company, envying the young man’s position of being am employer. I’m also young, what am I?

Things did not happen as expected. Jiang, the man who’d made his immediate offer of the translating position, seemed to be reconsidering his “rash” decision. He made a follow-up phone call right after I left his office in a corner office building, telling me to do a test of translation. Later on, I did another test. I failed all of them. The translation of contracts regarding Set-Top-Boxes was more than I could chew.

There are at least two kinds of open positions in Beijing when I look for a job–one that I’m worthy of and the other that I’m not.