Kunming in 2010 was a good place. The traffic has gotten worse. But you could bike around the entire metro region of Kunming without much trouble back in the old days. Salvador's was the place the ex-pats hung out back then too. Now it's a little more diversified.

Finished "The Dinner" the protaganist wasn't very likable. But it was interesting, his propensity for violence was drew his wife toward loving him. But the book ended with his son implying that there were more acts of violence that had been previously acknowledged. In fact, the violence against the homeless man at the subway station wasn't even mentioned. So Peter just wanted his son: SUCCESS, that was the alpha and omega of the situation. The means proffered was pretty much irrelevant. And the author mentioned that working as a dishwasher previously allowed him to see how circumstances could make one so low on the status totem pole that people wouldn't care if you lived or die.

Yeah I got a little further into it....

JT: saw your post and decided to check out the book (only about 20% through the text, people go to restaurants and bars to socialize....20% food, 80% socialize....so putting so much emphasis on the ambience and the food seems a strange way to relate to the situation.

I'm getting an error message from my VPN "could not validate the server certificate". Anybody had this happen to you?

My VPN server says try another one....but I don't know if this if this fault of the VPN or I'm just being blocked.

Thanks....