Day: 2013-12-14

The Milkman Cometh

Soon after our Yue Sao moved in, she set us up with a delivery of three bottles of yogurt and one bottle of milk every morning.

Put the empties out at night, and new ones are delivered by 7 am. (The box can be locked, but we so far haven’t done so.)

Some other services that we get in Beijing that aren’t typical in the States:

  • Banks open seven days a week (except for national holidays)
  • Mail delivered seven days a week (same as above)
  • Package deliveries well into the night

btw, the reference in the title to The Iceman Cometh is deliberate… Eugene O’Neill is my favorite playwright.

Building Three

Building three, with buildings two and one in the background.

I think that all there were originally built around the same time, but that the two front buildings were rebuilt somewhere along the way. Building one (in the back), has wood timbers with a ceramic tile roof. Building two has wood timbers with a metal roof.

Building one, unfortunately, has a pre-poured concrete slab roof, with each slab approximately one meter in width. The reason that this is unfortunate is that, given that the walls are made of unreinforced brick, with the right type/magnitude earthquake, the building will pancake faster than one can say, well, IHOP.

Use of such slabs was supposedly prohibited in Beijing many years ago, but I saw a government building next to mine constructed with them in the last six months.

I avoid going into such buildings whenever possible.

Oh, the majority of building three was the kitchen. I’ll have some interior shots later.