An American Expat in China

My students finished and presented projects on cell signaling this Thursday.  The next unit, Genetics, is likely to involve a lot of lecture.  So in an effort to make things more interesting and shaking things up I am experimenting with another biology board game called "Genotype", which I am using to teach Mendelian genetics. I used a board game called "Cytosis" to teach cell biology in the past.  This game is made by the same people so it should be good.  On Friday night I went to my friend from work, Khashi's, house for dinner with his family. His wife cooked a lovely dinner and I enjoyed our conversations.  I skipped the gym so will need to make up my workout today.  Faye reached out to me on Friday.  After not hearing from her since Tuesday I was not sure she would talk to me again.  I asked her how she wanted to proceed and she signaled a desire to work things out. I told her I would reach out to her Saturday after the hash. The hash on Satu...

Sihai Park Last Sunday, March 12th after my last post, I visited Sihai Park for a stroll.  It is a pretty park.  Seems like a nice place for a picnic. Work Week My work week was pretty good.  I had a notable experience at the gym when I stepped on the scale and it read 157.  When I realized it was set to pounds instead of kilos I switched it back to kilos and it read 78kilos. For those who know how to convert kilos to pounds they will probably already know what is wrong with this.  Seventy-eight kilos does not equal 157 pounds.  I am now convinced that scale at the gym is malfunctional.  According to the kilo setting I am very overweight but according to the pound setting I am within an acceptable range.  Maybe the gym has the scale calibrated high to keep people motivated by shame.  I have not made them aware of this discrepancy but from now on I am switching the setting to pounds before I step on the scale.  I think the pound setting i...

These flowers are in bloom all over the city right now. I have not posted about my life in a couple of weeks so this post will cover events from February the 27th to the present.  The work week after my last post was routine. The only thing of note was that I seem to have faltered on my weight loss goals somehow and had regained a little of the weight.  According to the scale I had regained 0.55kilos (1.21lbs).  I was pretty pissed off.  I had been sticking to my diet and had lots of exercise.  I decided to start waking up early on Tuesdays and Thursdays for runs and increasing my cardio regimen each M, W, and F from 15min to 20-25 minutes. I am back down to 78.4kilos now and hope that I continue to make progress.  I, and Faye, have noticed an increase in muscle tone.  I am reducing my food intake a bit as well. Faye came to visit on March 4th and we got our nails done. Then we went on a 10.5km hike on Nanshan on Sunday the 5th.   The work we...