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.
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