By the time you read this missive, plucked from a cleft stick by my colleagues in London, I will have been a foreign correspondent for all of four weeks. I have long wanted to report from China and as the plane touched down in Beijing last month I felt a tiny flutter of excitement and trepidation.
Little did I realise that my first assignment would be a trip to the city's sizable Ikea store to buy a desk (for anyone wondering, it is not so different to Brent Cross, being rammed with bickering middle class couples). I have often thought that journalism involves the thrilling and utterly mundane in equal measures. But it is particularly true when arriving in a new country.
Covering stories requires preparation, much of it pretty boring: registering with officials, acquiring a local mobile, sorting out an internet connection. The most pressing and vital task has been to find a fixer, the person who helps us navigate through the bureaucracy and deal with office administration, arrange appointments, find subjects, sweet talk interviewees and translate.
Unlike most new correspondents, I have the advantage of not replacing but supplementing the Guardian's existing reporter. Jonathan Watts is both a fine journalist and a welcoming host, and correspondents from other papers have been generous with their advice, too.
But with every day I spend here it seems more and more absurd to have a "specialism" which consists of the world's rising economic and political power: a vast country with 1.3 billion inhabitants of numerous ethnicities and cultures. All I can do is watch, read and listen as much as I can -- and ask as many questions as possible, of everyone I encounter.
Last week I left Beijing for the first time to cover the effects of China's harsh weather, travelling first to Guangzhou - where migrant workers had been queuing for days to get home - and then riding the train with them, up to Chenzhou, the city which lost power and water thanks to the blizzards.
Shivering through the night in a hotel room well below zero, with only my emergency pack of chocolate biscuits for company, I was reminded of two things. The first was the sage advice on journalism which I received as a rookie: "Wear a warm coat with a hood and carry a Mars Bar." Not much use when I worked in parliament, but quite handy when out on the road.
The second was that, as a reporter, you are almost always cushioned by privilege, with colleagues on the end of the phone and cash in your pocket. Changing countries is a pretty minor adjustment.
