China is a very civilized place, I tell my wife.

No Twitter.

No Facebook.

There may be other reasons for that, besides simple national good taste and refined judgement, but there you go. She rolls her eyes. She yeah yeah yeahs. And she reminds me how Facebook has been useful to her, a mature professional woman with no time for silliness but a considerable desire to connect. Okay. I make a grudging concession, and she goes back to the VPN (Virtual Private Network) that allows her access. Apparently, all the cool ex-pats do it. But not Jay Cool.

Long story short: you can’t follow me on Twitter

(And for the life of me, why would anyone want to? Right now I am typing. A moment ago I was eating. I plan to read. In an hour or so, I’ll turn in early. Several hours later, I will wake up to pee. Several hours after that, repeat. And tomorrow will be another gripping day of doing.)

But I AM considering doing some Twitter-esque blurting on here, mostly things that I wonder about, notice, or remember. This, mind you, is not out of any sense that the world needs my thoughts on this or that, but just as an excuse to record what is usually quite fleeting (by the nearest thing I have to Tweeting). Just for the sake of an external challenge — playing tennis with  a net, as Robert Frost might have suggested — I may even observe the 140-character limit that Twitter imposes. But I AM NOT A TWIT.

Blurt the First is coming. Warn your children. Guard your pets.