After 3 days worth of teaching games and analysis, I think my problem is that I'm too eager to play moves that gets me points, instead of defending my position.  Yan Laoshi constantly reminds us to make our position strong first, before doing anything else.  Anytime there is a weakness in my position, Yan Laoshi never fails to exploit it.  When I play online against my equals, they don't see the weakness, and that's how I was able to get by.  But when facing a strong opponent, your position must be rock solid.  What is encouraging for me is that whenever there is a weakness, I can intuitively feel it, although I can't really point out exactly what it is.  Starting from now on, I'm going to try to fortify my positions when this internal warning pops up.  I'll probably end up with less points, but at least I'll have solved the one problem that Lan Yaoshi keeps pointing out.  Maybe then he can tell me how to get more points.

I embarked on a solo mission to a grocery store last night.  Ok, first of all, why is there a shelf full of aftershave creams and lotions but no shaving cream?  Second, why are you so suspicious of my 100 RMB bill?  It's a 10-freaking-0 RMB, for crying out loud...

One of the regrets I have about my trip to Japan 5 years ago was that I didn't talk to the locals enough.  This time, I'm being more ambitious in that front.  I bought a small egg-tart from this bakery...  there were two girls holding up the shop, and I was able to grab me some sweet goodness for 3.5 RMB.  Something about me must have been hilarious, cuz they kept on busting out laughing whenever I said something.  Maybe it was because I hadn't shaved in 6 days...