shankar2k's Journal: Apartment? Check! Bike? Check!

Things are definitely coming together in Beijing. Just yesterday, John and I secured an apartment in Beijing through Craiglist. Our apartment is a lovely three-bedroom, two-bath place with air conditioning, heating, television, washer/dryer, and internet access (though currently only for Windows grrr....). It's pretty far north on Xue Qing road (so far that the taxi driver only knew it as Xue Yuan road). This morning, I was morbidly curious just how far it was from the Sigma building (the office where we work), so I persuaded John that we should both walk. It took about an hour and a half.

But I still wasn't keen on paying for a taxi everyday to get to work. Fortunately our labmate Tie came through for us. He took us behind the Sigma building near where he lives. I noticed that there were bicycle repairmen about every 20 feet on the road, but I never thought twice about them. It turns out that they fix up old bikes and sell them. So John and I were able to procure bicycles for under 100 yuan each. They aren't the greatest bikes, but that provides some anti-theft protection.

So now all we need are some cheap cell phones and we should be rolling!

[Update: Check out pictures of our new apartment here.]