I spent my May Day weekend down south at Guangdong province, celebrating my friend Gary's wedding to his wife Lily and my friend Raymond's baby (also called Raymond) having somehow survived an entire month, which is apparently something to celebrate in this country. It was good times. Pictures to come soon.

"You know," I thought, shampooing my hair this morning, "I should really find a way to link Google Adsense and Analytics reporting so I can find out which of my Google Adsense blocks have the best click-through rate."

Then, I get in front of the computer this morning and see that Google has just linked their Adsense and Analytics Services. Rock on.

Yup, I haven't updated this blog in like, almost a year. That what happens when your blog comes under bureaucratic scrutiny. Point is, I'm back, and planning a wealth of features for this blog, including cleaning it up and making it not suck.

Almost all of us have heard about last week's 7.9 magnitude earthquake in China's Sichuan province, but many of us don't know how we can respond or what we can do as individuals to try to help the victims of the quake, most of whom have seen their entire lives destroyed in the blink of an eye and many of whom are still in desperate need of relief. I've put together a collection of links for people who would like to donate money to various relief funds, and I hope you'll take the time to explore some of these possibilities and donate what you can. Even if your donation doesn't seem like a lot to you, it will surely make a huge difference in the lives of the people who were affected by the quake.

So I'm on vacation. Thank God. It couldn't have come fast enough. I made the decision to head south, back down to Guilin, where I lived when I first traveled to China in 2002.

Seriously. This drilling must stop. My next-door neighbors (with whom I share an adjoining wall) are renovating their apartment. And apparently that means drilling and hammering, all fucking day long.

I can't even watch a goddamn movie over here with the volume turned all the way up. I can't get any fucking work done over here. And there's absolutely nothing I can do about it, nor the fact that they seem to think that seven o'clock in the morning is an acceptable time to begin this kind of thing.

What the hell happened to the earplugs I brought over here?

Life is good.

Friends will know that the last few months have been a pretty hard time for me - I've been pretty lonely, pretty sad and generally not myself. Mostly I've been keeping to myself here in my little corner apartment in Beijing, and when I do go out, I tend to go a little bit over the top to make up for the time I've spent away.

Hopefully that's all going to change, starting now. Spring has finally come to Beijing, and with it, spring rains to wash away winter's general funkiness. I've always loved it when it rains, and today is no exception. Although I do wish the rain was a little bit warmer, and a little bit cleaner.

Strange things can often happen to a person in China. When you're me, though, it just seems like strange things happen more often than they do to other people. It's not just in Beijing that this happens to me; it's everywhere. I am strangely attracted to strange and unusual occurances.

That's why, when I woke up this morning in my bed in my 14th floor apartment here in Beijing's Chaoyang district, I wasn't actually surprised at all to see a man hanging by a rope there, knocking on my window.

This is why I love Facebook.

Some time back I joined a Facebook group. It was called, oddly enough, "Castro is a Robot."

Friends of mine will remember to be a long-held conviction of mine the belief that Castro is, in fact, an army of robots like Dr. Doom was in the old Fantastic Four comics.

Now, this is neither the time nor the place for such a debate. This is, however, just the right time and place for me to include an excerpt of the recent comments written on the wall of the "Castro is a Robot" Facebook group, in the hopes that you will find them as humorous as I did:

When you're living in China, sometimes you just want a little homestyle television to keep you company, fill your apartment with the language you're familiar with.

Luckily, thanks to the internet and blatant, widespread copyright violation, you can enjoy the television shows you know and love in China without trekking down to the DVD store and paying out the nose.