YJ and I want to thank everybody for a wonderful time last night at our St. Patrick’s Day-Housewarming-Engagement party. We met a lot of new people and got to spend time with old friends, I hope that everybody else had as good a time as we did. At one point there were representatives from the USA, UK, Germany, Holland, Canada, France, and at least three provinces/municipalities of China (unfortunately no Irish–Brendan, where were you?) and conversations in at least three languages going on at any one time. The local Xinjiang restaurant provided the chuan’r and “gan zhao tu dou pian’r” (homefries) and Zoe and Greg from Walled Off were spot on with an early delivery of pizza. Chris Waugh and his wife were there. (Let me say that Chris is one the world’s true nice guys.) There were a host of others–the usual suspects–and representatives from all corners of the Beijing experience. YJ and I felt badly we couldn’t join all the different conversations going on and I hope people can forgive us our host duties. I thought it was also a real treat when I….er….got a chance to propose to YJ at the behest of some of our guests.