Keeping Up With the Wangs: The Rise of the Middle-Class in China


This is a fascinating (and slightly frightening) article about the economic - and as a result massive construction boom - occurring in China.

Keeing Up With the Wangs

Grandstand

The date of this post indicates that I haven't written in a while. It's not that I haven't had my usual dose of ideas, questions and doubts whirring through my head, I just haven't really known what to entrust to the keyboard and what to leave in my head.
On top of it all, I have been increasingly more busy in the real world.

The real world.

That idea is funny and in some ways accurate. I often feel that what I engage with and write about here on my blog is somewhat detached from how and what I live like day to day. I feel that I run to the real world and try and busy myself - hoping to find something that will ignite me and keep me occupied enough so as to escape my over-analytical tendencies - only to find myself in a couple of weeks returning to the keyboard and asking more questions.

I guess in that respect blogging is for me an unappreciated friend.
I rely on it and yet run from it and yet repeatedly return to it - all the while not knowing how I feel about it.

Perhaps the problem is that I expect to run through life and then return to the keyboard with daring adventures and determined answers and yet instead return with more and more questions.
But then again I guess thats was why my blog was named what it is: Late Night Over Pancakes

"danny and I spent another late night over pancakes
talking about soccer and how every man's just the same
we made speculations on the who's and the when's of our future
and how we're both lonely but still we just couldn't complain..."

During this period though I have spent a lot more time reading other's blogs (most of whom I have linked here) and listening to other's thoughts along their life's journey. I have enjoyed this very much. I'm often quick to speak, quick to decide and yet slow to listen or weigh out consequences and yet compared to what I once was I have made great progress and see myself in the future perhaps even getting slower to speak and write and slower to assert me. Me in the grand scheme is incredibly insignificant.

I am completely resolved on the Way out of here as well as being completely resolved on the Truth that guides and defines. But when it comes to the Life that such resolve produces...I am both student and spectator. Learning hard lessons but all the while thankful for just being at the game.

rain drops and coffee beans

rain drops quench the thirsty ground
as the highway puddles and glistens
causing tires to spin round and round, grabbing when traction is found

a cup of espresso moistens my parched throat
and quickens my napping pulse as i sit
today the door of the coffee shop is propped - sign illumined, products to boast

the windows are fogged as the overcast sky breathes on the finger-smudged glass
the a/c hums overhead and sneaks out the propped door
offering its cool and the warmth of a mug to those who pass

how do you pass your sunday afternoons?
wrapped in the arms of a cat nap?
in a leather chair with book and brew?
or maybe with salt and sun on the beaches dunes?

i don't know you but can i tell you i miss you?
a kiss in the rain has been traded for a rain soaked afternoon
the anxiety of an evening once was enough to make this heart race
now its espresso, pastries and the nightly lager
until i see your face

until i see your face
until i see your face