Silence

Beijing is a really noisy city. 

Cars honk at the mere suggestion that you might be within their path. 

Little 3-wheeled electric bike/delivery units beep while taking over the pedestrian/bike paths. 

Some cyclists like to warn everyone of their presence by constantly ringing their bell. So that way you hear them from a couple hundred feet away. (Experience from this morning no less!) 

Then there's the constant hum of air conditioning at work (too hot at my desk), or the drone of air purifiers taking little particles out of my indoor apartment air. 

It's only on rare clear air days when I turn all my filters off and the refrigerator isn't rumbling, that I get to experience something that we all take for granted: a moment of silence. Otherwise, it always seems like there's someone screaming in your ear (like the overly enthusiastic helpful waiter today) or some car getting ready to cut you off. 

In other air quality news...

New York Times article on China / India Polluttion
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/upshot/the-next-big-climate-question-will-india-follow-china.html?abt=0002&abg=0

You know how I know if it's going to be a good day?

When I wake up, glance at my air quality monitor in my apartment, and see a number like 157 on the readout.

The next thing I do is immediately check the outdoor air quality published by aqicn.org.

Then I open my curtains, and if it's not freezing, my windows.

Thus is the reality of living in Beijing.

brrrr....it's cold

On the air
We've just had two days of fantastic air due to super strong winds that came in and blew all the pollution away from Beijing. See? Look at those views:

Of course, as I type this note, the air pollution index has reached 150 -- which is pretty much what Beijing averages most of the time. It doesn't look like that anymore. It's grey. :(

It has also hit freezing here -- last night, I was walking towards the nearby subway station and on the sidewalk were patches of ice where cleaning workers had dumped pails of water that froze over before it could seep away. Definitely a tripping/slipping hazard.

In other news, I think my office is still 30C. I also purchased a small air purifier for my office area, so I'll be running it when the air quality gets bad, in hopes that I can substantively improve the air quality in my area (we shall see - the monitoring device is at home today, so no data yet).


On transit
I had a meeting this morning at a client site which was at least 1 hr away by taxi (if I could find one) through heavy traffic. Unfortunately, it was 9am when I left the house and there was a massive traffic jam outside near where I lived because the traffic lights at intersection were down. Huge mess -- left hand turning traffic was completely blocking the movement of almost all other traffic. Subway would have required me to walk 15 minutes, and then transfer twice (at a cost of 5 minutes ea) -- too much trouble.

I ended up taking a "hybrid" approach -- I took a taxi from west to east (along the route where a future subway line will be coming online early next year), hailed using the traditional hand-raising method (as opposed to the popular, though often useless taxi-hailing apps), and hopped onto a north-south subway line that took me within 3 minutes walk of the client office. Easy.