Happy New Year everyone! While everyone is quite busy ringing in the new year, it seems many people are overlooking that this is Pandapassport’s first anniversary. Did you guys not mark that on your calendars?!
Well, it was about one year ago that I started up this site. I wanted to make a China related site, and I ended up settling on the domain name “Pandapassport.” (Note: I came very close to choosing Smellypanda.com, but upon further consideration I chose against it.
Anyway, there’s a game of “internet tag” floating around blogosphere right now, and Ryan of The Humanaught and LostLaowai.com has tagged me. He challenged me and 4 others to write “7 Successes of 2006″ and/or “5 Things People Don’t Know About Me.” Never one to back down from a challenge (unless it involves significant effort on my part), here goes nuthin’:
Seven Successes of 2006:
I passed the HSK chinese language test, after spending 2 semesters at Dongcai. However my overall grade was a 3 (the lowest passing score). My speaking and listening are ok in daily life, but it turns out that in the test my grammar and reading did me in…
Thanks to my good friend Nick, I discovered my favorite writer ever: Haruki Murakami. For anyone in Dalian, you may be able to track down some of his books at the Foreign Language Book Store.
Me and my girlfriend bought an apartment here in Dalian, more for investment than anything else. It just makes more sense than throwing away cash on rent here during the next two years.
We got a dog. Well, that’s not the success. Buying this dog was not my idea, but my girlfriend’s. So the success is that I have so far managed to avoid pitching it out my 23rd floor window. But to be honest, I have to admit that little Pepe is starting to grow on me a little.
I managed to get home (to Newfoundland, Canada) once this year. That likely not a big deal to most people, but seeing as how I live on the exact opposite end of the globe (there is no place farther from Dalian than Newfoundland) I was quite happy to get back home to see everyone.
I landed a new job at a computer company here in Dalian.
I got this Pandapassport website off the ground. It didn’t start off as a Dalian website, but that’s where it ended up. I’ve decided to scrap my blog in favor of riding Ryan’s coat tails, and write for Lost Laowai. I’ve learned a ton in the past year, mostly from watching old Dalian friends Ryan, Derek and Dan. All those guys are brilliant… Please go check out their websites. Lots of China information between those three guys.
5 little-known facts about me:
I lived in a small town of about 150 people up until I was 18. Yes, population 150.
I used to be a chess fanatic. In fact, I even used to coach little kids once upon a time back in Newfoundland. However my brother is much better than I am, and is fast approaching master level.
Although I’m living in China, my girlfriend is from Japan. That makes for some interesting exchanges with locals to say the least.
I probably know more about vampires than anyone you know. I majored in literature back in uni, and wrote my honours dissertation about the 1921 German Expressionist movie Nosferatu, based on Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. Before you start thinking I’m some kinda goth weirdo, I mostly did it because I was interested in that style of art, not vampires.
And now I get to tag some other people, just as Ryan tagged me. To be honest I don’t know many people who have sites, but I’ll try my best to make up five.
I figure I’ll bring some of the other bloggers here in Dalian: Derrick, Valehru, Steve, Andrew, and Alex/Penfold**.
**NOTE: Ok Alex, I know that’s not a blog, but maybe you can get the ball rolling anyway! Perhaps challenge the Dalian Community?
I’d have added Chris as well, but Jeremiah beat me to it. Aside from Alex, I don’t know any of these guys personally, but I hope one of these days I might run into some of ‘em sooner or later.
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