Bryan Crosby Dot Ca

Coffee ‘culture’ seems to be really taking off in Nanjing. This isn’t to say that it is a relatively new phenomenon as international coffee house brands have been in China (and Nanjing) for awhile.When I first arrived, Starbucks had a three store presence in Nanjing.  The two outlets in Xinjiekou (Da Yang and the now [...]

Some late night readings helped to fill in a few holes in the my question of the year…what is going on in these cities? Despite being surrounded in an uber-left wing environment during my time at UVic, I don’t hold very strong socialist tendencies. However, there are a number of items I feel should involve [...]

Obama’s smiling face graced the pages of a number of local dailies on display in my local Suguo CVS this morning. I’ll admit that I only maintain a passive, layman following of US presidential politics. As a non-eligible voter my opinion amounts to squat and this probably influences the amount of time I dedicate to [...]

I was debating whether or not to share this tidbit of inside information but have since decided that it is now post worthy. This change is probably not only because I find this particular item slightly amusing and maybe even a little pitiful also because I think it highlights how much information can be gathered [...]

After several weeks of lecturing regarding the financial and time benefits of utilizing the Nanjing transit system, I managed to convince a friend to step on one of the buses….and the verdict is…”Ah, it wasn’t that bad!”Exactly. It never will cease to amaze me how few foreigners take advantage of this system and rely completely [...]

This will be the first entry posted suing scribefire, a nifty Firefox plugin which allows direct postings from within Firefox – thus avoiding the somewhat annoying process of logging into my CMS to make an entry (one is aware of living in a “now” generation when the simple process of logging into a website is [...]

The Olympic Torch (yup, the same one that caused all the trouble in Europe) moved it’s way throughout Nanjing this morning.  It’s route took it about 5 minutes from my apartment, but I decided against attending festivities for a number of reasons.  Mainly because I just have no interest in the Olympics and even less [...]

There is a thread going on over at The Straight Dope asking the fairly straight forward question of “do you go to bars alone?” The verdict seems to be it is quite common among many. You can now add me to the category of ‘those who hang out AT the bar, IN the bar…alone”. In [...]

The Park View Dingshan Hotel （丁山花园大酒店）is another Nanjing real estate anomaly and easily as puzzling as the Greenland Financial Center. An afore mentioned warning…the following is written by someone who hasn’t got a clue what he is talking about and is really just a bunch of mush observations backed up by hardly any evidence thrashed [...]

Grass-roots earthquake relief efforts are well underway in Nanjing and out in full-force this weekend. I donated money on Wednesday and was asked again at my company on Thursday. That night I also unknowingly attended a benefit concert at a local bar. But this morning I encountered a rather unwanted situation around the Shanxi Lu [...]