That said, far and away most of my idle internet cycles have been ploughed into Quora lately (my profile being here).

Most people in the office seem to be rooting for the Lakers. Kobe is pretty famous here in China and I wonder if they are largely just rooting for him?

I also learned today that in the many encounters the Celtics and the Lakers have had in the NBA finals, something like 11 times, the Celtics have won 9 of them. I didn’t realize that head to head the numbers were so lopsided. Both teams have racked up an impressive number of championships though.

Luckily so far the only 2:30 games I’ve been really anxious to see have fallen on days where I didn’t have work the next day, and so, it’s been a lot of fun. It’s a really entertaining experience to be in a bar at 3 in the morning surrounded by equally enthused people chanting USA. It’s even more fun, I think, when the other half of the bar is English and has much more creative cheers only to get drowned out by an even louder round of U!S!A! Thankfully, the experience was a pretty fun feel rather than one of unveiled hostility or contempt. I was standing next to this Brit and he had the good humor to answer some of my rooted-in-ignorance questions (mostly about the lineups of both teams since I really don’t know anything).

I’ve started reading The Goal Post since I can’t be bothered to go out and find commentary myself, I’m relying on their “Best of AM/PM” digests to keep me somewhat informed. So far so good, I guess.

GOOO USA! (ps thx Green)

As such we’ve chatted about it a bit as I’ve played around with it. I am definitely a subvocalizer and so presumably that is limiting my reading speed in a major way. I read something like 500-700 wpm. This is about as fast as a friend of mine here in China reads English as her second language. I guess I pause less to look up words I don’t know but the notion of reading as fast in Chinese as I do in English seems impossible enough as it is. Her Chinese reading speed is probably faster than her English by a significant factor too.

When I asked if she subvocalizes, I first had to explain what I meant by that, and when I felt like I had succeeded, the answer was a clear no. I asked a few guys at work too (those adjacent to my desk, basically) and after struggling to explain to them as well, the answer was again mostly “no” (that or “I don’t understand”.

The sample size is obviously too small but I wonder if most Chinese readers do not subvocalize what is it about Chinese education or culture or ideographs or whatever that causes them not to develop the habit as I have for reading?

I’ve been going back and forth with him on emails and some of the questions he’s asked me I feel like I want to think about a little more so I’ve tried to use them as a basis for this post.

I think I’m in a fairly lucky position of having a bunch of pretty good friends who I can visit that are concentrated in a handful of cities in the US. It makes any visit to those cities into a good trip and if ever I do manage to move back to the US it’ll leave me in a position to hopefully avoid the awkward situation of starting out with absolutely no social network to speak of, as was the case when I moved to China.

There are certainly things I miss about the US while I am in China and things I miss about China while i am in the US. I think one of the big things I appreciate about being in China, and only realize that I have come to take it for granted when I go back to the US, is the cheapness and convenience of a lot of things. Food in particular comes to mind – it’s a really fantastic that I can basically go downstairs and across the street are 4 different hole-in-the-wall restaurants any one of which I can go to and get a delicious dinner for no more than a couple bucks, USD.

It’s a little weird to go back to the US and feel like I’m a visitor there now. I mean, every day in Beijing I am faced with this very obvious sense of being not like everybody here, but it’s a new thing to have that happen in the US, I guess. Sure, in somewhere like NY a great many people are not from there but at the same time it was an experience I am not used to and am unsure if I will ever get used to.

That all said, I’ve gotten pretty comfortable I guess. Daily routine things have not shifted in some dramatic way for me. Some people when they come to China lament the coffee options and eventually upon discovering where to buy better coffee then lament how it’s relatively expensive compared to other options. I imagine this’ll change as people in China drink more and more Coffee but we’ll see. I’m not a coffee drinker so this particular experience never really came up for me. My breakfast routine was always basic stuff like yogurt, or eggs, or oatmeal, all of which are no trouble at all.

I liked how friendly people seemed when I first moved here though now it feels a little superficial. People aren’t screaming “HELLO!” for much of any other reason as to point me out as a foreigner and demonstrate that they can. Maybe I’m being too harsh, I don’t know. I do like that in the US I can readily engage in a deeper conversation with most people simply because we have a shared language. My Chinese proficiency still really isn’t good enough for me to get into seriously meaty conversations. At the rate it’s improving I wonder if it ever will be unless I really drop everything and seriously resume studying for a while.

I don’t know, we’ll see. I’m still having a pretty good time, and still when people ask “how long will [I] be here?” I answer “as long as it stays fun and interesting.”

Where are the best Japanese restaurants in Beijing?

In terms of "where" geographically, my guess would be up near Anjialou, where I understand there to be a higher density of Japanese expats. Up there is a little pocket of a bunch of Japanese restaurants, of which I've only tried two, but both of which I liked a lot.

One is Sake Manzo but the other, next door, is my personal favorite. It's called Takenosuke and is so far one of only a couple places I've found to eat okonomiyaki here in Beijing.

Continuing with places elsewhere in the city: the only other place I've had okonomiyaki is Izaka-ya in Sanlitun. I found the okonomiyaki to not be as good but their other offerings quite tasty.

While Hatsune strikes me less a Japanese place and more a Californian take on Japanese, it does nonetheless end up on most lists of good Japanese options in Beijing.

There are a bunch of all-you-can-eat/drink types of places, be it for sushi (eg Tokugawa), or teppanyaki (eg Tairyo). While they can present a good value in the right circumstances I wouldn't argue for them being the best at most things.

There are a bunch of nondescript little Japanese-style curry places dotted around Beijing which vary a lot in quality but one I found particularly tasty is Tonkatsu and Curry Rice in Wudaokou. There's little highbrow about the place but damn if it isn't tasty.

Finally, Oden is an interesting place that places an uncommon (in my Japanese dining experiences, at least) emphasis on oden. Being a big fan of the stuff, I've liked my meals there, though the austere decor is perhaps not the most inviting.

Anyway… What is it like to be a hapa in an Asian country?

One thing for me has occasionally been the expectation of language skills. I learned no Chinese growing up and occasionally this is seen as a failure on my mother’s part. This however I suspect is not unique to being a hapa in China as I know this happens for many Asian Americans in Asia as well.

There seems to be this assumption that 混血兒 (mixed blood) people are smarter and better looking. I can’t really tell if this is just something that people say as flattery or if this is a widely held belief, though I am coming to suspect the latter.

My experience has mainly been one of a (white) foreigner in an Asian country and less so a hapa in an Asian country though. I guess unlike an actual white foreigner though, I do occasionally get mistaken for minority Chinese until I screw up in conversation and say something only a foreigner would say.

On second thought, being a hapa I find I get a lot of passes where somebody who was either fully Asian or fully something else would not. For every time I’m told the Chinese half of my family has failed to instill me with Chinese language and culture, I’ve no doubt there are many instances of it simply being chalked up to my non-Chinese half/upbringing.

In basically any situation I can choose to emphasize one half over the other as it suits me, which affords me a nice degree of flexibility and eases dodging any sort of ethnicity based assumptions that would work against me.

Edited after Owen’s answer: The above refers pretty much entirely to my experience in China. Elsewhere in Asia (India, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam) I am pretty much 100% white guy foreigner, probably in no small part as a consequence of spending my time in those countries as an obvious tourist.

Note June 8: updated here because I updated it there too.

More recently, I find myself coming to find the trend of movies in 3D to be a little tiresome. Roger Ebert who is no fan has said as much about 3D in a variety of places. I think he’s got a lot of pretty good points.

The first movie I’ve seen so far that I think really did a great job of using 3D was Avatar. That’s the only one though. I had a great time seeing it, it looked great, it was fun and bright and vibrant and generally a good time. I admit, I haven’t seen it in 2D and so can’t really compare but, still. Actually that’s true for all of the movies I’ve seen in 3D with the single exception of Up! which I feel didn’t really benefit from it very much, either.

Yesterday, I went and saw Alice in Wonderland and it was to me a pretty big disappointment. Not just the 3D-ness of it, which was pretty bleh, but in general the sort of discombobulated sense of confusion I had through much of it. I guess a lot of people say they enjoy the fanciful sense of whimsy something something Alice something blah blah but I just got annoyed and bored by turns while watching it.

Update: I saw How to Train your Dragon and actually that wasn’t that bad either. We’ll see, maybe when Toy Story 3 comes out here it’ll be improved for having 3D too.

What are the best sleep habits?

In a very broad sense the best sleep habits are the ones you can maintain.

The number of hours will vary from person to person, and naps or snoozes are “okay” in the sense that they can do wonders for alertness and wakefulness but may also be decidedly “not-okay” in terms of fitting in to one’s life (i.e., I cannot easily duck out for 30-60 minutes from work which is in my personal experience about how long I tend to nap for).

Regularity is an important element of sleeping that will keep you well rested and getting the most out of the hours you do sleep. Sleeping the entire weekend then having erratic and fitful sleep habits through the week is not something I’d encourage anybody to do because it’ll wear you down. The consequences of being insufficiently rested I assume anybody looking at this question is already personally familiar with.

Sleeping in a dark room is supposed to improve quality of sleep. Anecdotally if you spend a lot of time in bed not-sleeping (watching TV, using a computer [note also that these are both bright lights which could throw off your sleeping cycles], etc) you may find it harder to fall asleep when you want to as well.

Other things you can do to improve quality of sleep in this regard are to make sure that the place you are sleeping is comfortable (get a mattress that isn’t terrible, adjust the temperature to what suits you) and free of things that are going to disturb your sleep (besides light, noise is another thing to consider).

If you have the flexibility to test out your sleep schedule you could just stop using alarms of any sort for a while. Sleep when you’re tired and wake up whenever you do. You might find that you naturally gravitate towards being asleep and awake at certain times and this knowledge will help you to better structure your schedule to take advantage of that. In general though if you’re feeling tired during the day you would probably do well to get more sleep at night.