But it's not my birthday!

When I was heading out the lobby of the media village building this morning, one of the front desk staff asked me to wait and produced a gift from under the desk. It was a neat wood and fabric fan depicting Chinese opera characters. Kind of neat...think I'll send it to my mom (hi mom!). Then when I got to the Main Press Center, one of the bathroom attendants (one of the two who always chats me up) gave me a good-luck braid that he says he asked his grandmother to make for me. How cool is that? I'm trying to score the little guy some tickets that nobody in our group wants, but so far the only ones I've been able to offer him were for a venue that he said would take him 2 hours to get to on the bus so it just wasn't do-able. I'll keep trying...especially after the nice gift...since otherwise, I don't think he'll get to see anything.

I was down in the central business district prior to starting my shift this morning, and from my taxi, spied one of the four Catholic churches in Beijing. I was able to dig out my camera quickly since we were at a stoplight, but wasn't able to get out and check it out because I needed to get to work. (Notice the ever-present surveillance camera on the right side of the photo...I chose not to crop it out because the things are everywhere.) I've heard that the Chinese government definitely keeps a grip on religion, through enforcing a "registration" process to selectively dictating what can and cannot be practiced or studied. Here's a neat article I found online about the State versus Catholicism, for those interested.

Found another western-style bar/pub/restaurant called Frank's Place last night for dinner.