Letter

Dear Nick

The Admissions Committee are absolutely delighted to offer you place on London Business School's MBA Programme, starting in August 2008 (MBA 2010).

Your offer is an acknowledgement of the unique attributes we feel you possess and the contributions we think you will make to the class and to our School community.

Our mission is to provide our students with the knowledge, skills, attributes and networks - the global business capabilities - required for leadership and success in demanding careers in the global economy. Our aim is to involve you in an outstanding business school experience that you will look back on as the most important career move of your life.

We will be in regular contact throughout the year and hope that you will continue to keep in touch and let us know if you have any questions. We will be able to give you access to a London Business School Portal Account early next year.

We are very proud of what we achieve at London Business School, and think you will be proud of what you can achieve working with us. Please accept our warmest congratulations on your offer. We look forward to welcoming you into the London Business School Community.

Please note that to confirm your place in next year's class you will need to pay your non-refundable Commitment Fee of £1500 by 31st October 2007. Your non-refundable Reservation Fee of £6000 will now be due on 25 January 2008. As a member of MBA 2010 you will be charged fees for that class which will be £44,490. The relevant payment forms are attached to this e-mail.

We very much look forward to welcoming you to the London Business School community and hope that you will continue to keep in touch and let us know if you have any questions.

If your contact details change, please be sure to update us so that we can stay in touch.

We look forward to meeting you in August 2008.

Kindest regards,

Tamsin

And I say to you, well done, Sir.

Steve Jobs can do no wrong.

I just took a look at Apple's new iPod-Touch and video iPod Nano. If you haven't yet seen these, check out Apple's website.

Wow. Speechless.

Gotta love this country

There were two bizarre stories about China today on the top stories of CNN.com. No coincidence that both occurred in Southern China in Guangdong Province (its the heat... it makes people crazy).

In one story a man playing MMORPGs for 3-days straight died at his computer from exhaustion. In no other country in the world is Internet addiction a severe problem. But it is in China! There are people who's lives have been destroyed here because they can't pull themselves away from World of Warcraft or other similar games.

In another story a man who was involved in a quarrel with some local villagers invited all of the parties involved to a restaurant for dinner, AND THEN BLEW THEM UP WITH EXPLOSIVES! Apparently because guns are forbidden here (well, I've once seen mafia with them) and fireworks are very easy to obtain, a common way of exacting revenge on people in China is to blow them up with fireworks!

You gotta love this country!

Great T-shirt

The Chinese have an affection for any clothing with English words on them. Often the words make no sense or say bizarre things.

Walking near my house a few days ago, I was behind a man with a shirt that said:

"Baby drank alcohol... Ooops!"

I would have given anything to have had my camera on me at that moment in time.

Oh, Pizza Qing, why did I ever doubt you?

A month or so ago my friend Barbara and wanted pizza and decided that instead of our regular pizza joint, Pizza Qing, we would try the new Korean pizza place Han Sung Pizza. We had a beef pizza delivered to my apartment and ate it while watching a movie. Pretty darned good, we though.

A few weeks later my friend Martin and I ordered a Hawaiian pizza, and were a little disappointed... they had put waaaay to much cheese on the pizza rendering it soggy.

Tonight I decided to give Han Sung one more try. I ordered the Hawaiian Pizza. Oh my. Pizza Qing, I am sorry for ever doubting you. The "Hawaiian Pizza" from Han Sung arrived with not ham and pineapple, but also all of the other fruit toppings you find in a typical can of fruit cocktail, complete with the cubes of gelatin that the Chinese like to put in fruit salad.

Yes, I had a ham, pineapple, peach, grape, jello, and cherry pizza tonight. Yuck!

Bush is a baboon... a blithering baboon

...not like we didn't already know that, but you can't make this stuff up. Political comedy writers of our generation couldn't ask for a bigger idiot running our country.

Visiting Australia for the days leading up to the APEC meeting, Bush in one speech managed to refer to the country as Austria (White House official transcripts covered up this error... kinda defeats the purpose of a transcript) and thanked the country for being such a gracious host of OPEC Summit. Really? Last time I checked, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Oil & Petroleum Exporting Countries weren't members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. The Gulf is no where near the Pacific ring of fire... but hey, this is what happens when nepotism runs wild. Moron.

Icing on the cake... Bush walked the wrong way off the stage and nearly fell off the edge of the stage before being redirected by John Howard, the Prime Minister of Australia. Now, why couldn't Johnny-boy have grabbed the reins a few years ago and not blindly followed Bush into Iraq in 2003? Bush could have used some guidance back then as well as today.

Air quality

Ever day driving home from work, I come over the crest of this one hill and look down on the valley where Yantai University is along with my apartment. Most days there is this huge cloud of haziness blanketing the entire area. 30 seconds later you can no longer see the cloud because you are actually in it... can't see the forest for the trees.

Anyway, healthwise I'm pretty sure that living in China for two years is the equivalent of chain smoking cigarettes for 6 months (two days ago was my two year mark in Yantai!).

我中文说的不好

身在我hui谐一百二十汉字差不多。我hui看二百汉字差不多。什么时候我去英国我xiang能看he谐一千汉字可是我太mang。我不学xi。我是不好学生。

Cheap Seafood

One of the great things about living in a seaside city in China is the ridiculously cheap seafood. Fish is a major staple of the diet here, although during certain times of the year I understand that it is technically all black market fish; they ban fishing during some months to preserve the fish populations.

Anyway, tonight I made seafood gumbo, a dish which in the US would have cost me a pretty penny to make. But with prices like these, it was about the same cost as eating out at a local restaurant.

• 2 lbs (2 斤 (jin) actually, roughly 2 lbs) large shrimp- 35 RMB (approx $5)
• 1 斤 of shucked oysters - 15 RMB (approx $2.5)
• 2 斤 of mussels - 8 RMB (approx $1.05)

Interestingly enough, mussels are so cheap here that at a Chinese business dinner, they will not serve them to important guests as it would be a sign of disrespect for choosing something so cheap. I once picked mussels out, telling my hosts I really liked them, but the shook their heads and refused to buy them! An appetizer of mussels in the US can be one of the more expensive things on a menu!

Sad day for beer

Michael Jackson died today (no, note the accused pedophile/pop-star). Michael Jackson, the world's leading authority on beer, who wrote numerous books about beer, its varieties, and its history, and also starred in the TV series The Beer Hunter, was found dead in his flat in London from a heart attack. He was 65.

Michael's love of Belgian brews has often been credited with the surge in popularity of Belgian beer in the US; Michael was known for matching beer to various food dishes similarly to wine. This practice was picked up by high-end restaurants around the world and lead to a "renaissance and renewal" of beer culture.