“I can tell you are a good person from your kind eyes. I hope we meet again someday!”

I was Yonghe Gong Lama Temple, and this lady came up to me. She wanted me to take a picture of her, first asking if there was a fee. When I told her no, she kept saying that she could tell I was a good person. She thanked me profusely after I took this photo, and then repeated that first line while holding my hand. I was a little wary that she might be trying to con me into something, but after a few more emphatic repetitions, she just smiled and walked away.

I had a wonderful first afternoon in Beijing- after the visa office, I took the subway to Gulou Street, where I spontaneously rented a bike from a random hostel. I rode around by myself for about two hours and happed upon the old drum and bell towers. I decided to go up the bell tower, and ended up getting shadowed by two little girls who were afraid of heights and the dark (the stairwells are steep and can be almost pitch black even in the daytime). When we got up to the top, there was an old man all by himself, reading about how the bell tower was constructed in 1272.

Well, since that day one week ago, I’ve had food poisoning and sinusitis via bad pollution + dry air, so I haven’t been able to go out in the gloriously beautiful weather. But today, finally, today I can go outside and not feel dizzy or achy or feverish.

Not too sure where I should visit today, since I saw a lot my first time around when Crystal was here. Perhaps I’ll go see Mao.

Like pretty earrings? Check out my new Goodies section! On the left, under “More”, or just click here.

Happed upon beautiful Tibetan earrings while scouring a fabric market and wanted to share my lucky find.

More photos there, but just a few to get you started…

caught in a summer storm on bike, second time. first time we didn’t have umbrellas and got completely soaked riding home. this time i had my very small umbrella from japan, and we still got soaked. we heard a couple people laugh when we rode past them.

these little buggers are the background choralists for summer’s soundtrack here. it doesn’t feel right on the hot days without hearing the constant buzzing of the cicadas.

random cute baby.

i brought my underwater camera to the gym, and we used it in the pool. yes, cap and goggles are mandatory for all the pools here.

no, just one pack will be fine, thanks.

took the wrong bus to a beach that should’ve been only an hour away, but it took us two hours. two hours. to a beach with hot water, imported sand, no waves, and jay chou on the loudspeakers. alas, we were had at “beach” and couldn’t resist.

this was about half an hour ago, when it was pouring.

this is now, as the french say, “il pleut comme la vache pisser”. storm on!

2. It’s possible to be a succesful artist and own a thriving unique/cozy/ coffee shop, without having gone to school related to either.

3. As of tomorrow, “yellow mold season” in Shanghai will be over and although not as humid, it will start to be VERY HOT.

4. Cheesepuff is the best cat ever. He likes attention but isn’t clingy or naggy, he’s really clean, and he’s super quirky.

5. You can type “7456!” when chatting in Chinese to say “气死我了” about something annoying or frustrating  (lit. makes me angry to death!)

6. Most older people regret not traveling more while they were young.

2. Another way of thinking about careeer path, via Ricky’s friend’s:”My Dad just read me something from a book, that experts become so after 10,000 hours doing something. So your job is what you do, and more than likely, if you’re ever really good at anything, then its going to be your job. Your career. And so one of the questions I ask is, “What do i want to be good at?”

3. 欠: qian4, que1. To lack, to owe, to be deficient of.

4. There are such things as liquid dehumidifiers.

Went to Zhujiajiao yesterday with Ricky and his friend visiting from the States. It’s a small water town, kind of like a little Venice of Shanghai, but quiet and quaint. You can walk along the river, but you can also venture into the residential alleyways, where we saw this little guy. It looked like he was planting something in a small pot. Anyway, we saw into the homes through countless open doors and windows. Lots of people playing majang or hanging up laundry. Life seemed so simple and uncomplicated here that I couldn’t help but wonder…

i thought about just leaving all of these little pictures without any explanation, but i thought it’d be more fun if you actually knew what was going on in all of these. maybe next time, i’ll just leave a slew of photos for your viewing and guessing pleasure, hehe.

for the may 1st holiday, ricky and i went to visit my parents in chengdu. it appears that in preparation of the expo, pudong airport suddenly became the popular place for strange silver people. we also saw a couple sitting in some of the waiting area seats with their silver laptops.

in chengdu, we visited the excavation site of the jinsha ancient civilation (discovered in 2001), which is estimated to have existed about 3000 years with a sudden disappearance, comparable to the inca’s. 

there ricky found an interactive touch-screen which wasn’t running the proper informational software. he managed to find his way to ‘paint’ and proceeded to create his own version of …   what should’ve looked something like this:   .

engrish in chengdu. 

we also visited my parents’ new apartment on the 33rd floor! this is the view looking down from their laundry room.

back in shanghai, i usually cross the suzhou river  on the way to work, and from the bridge i saw a group of migrant workers playing cards and laughing in the early morning. 

this was actually one of the first nice weather days we had, so you can guess how much we miss sunshine, if this is considered a nice day.   

we went to the expo, and this was on the way to one of the entrances. (almost) completely empty. 

there were tons of people once we got in though, and we heard that to get into the chinese pavilion, you have to wait at 6 in the morning for a reservation ticket that gets passed out at 9. we settled for a picture on the outside, except it wouldn’t fit in the picture even though we kept backing up, because it was just too darn huge. our estimation was that it was about 40-50 stories high. 

didn’t get inside too many other pavilions, but we made it into spain, which was cool for the most part until we got to the end where a giant baby god-robot stared down upon us all.  

really cool concept for the uk pavilion, but being as it was very small and not informative about the uk at all, it makes us wonder if england is just good for having 60,000 seeds (which were actually provided by the kunming institute of botany) 

i also permed my hair the day before. tada, uk pavilion from the back, on gray astro-turf. 

we had dinner one night at a xinjiang restaurant where at about 9pm a few studly xinjiang men came upstairs to sing and make us dance with them. quite the unexpected exciting night.  

on a rainy night, ricky and i randomly stopped at an outdoor cafe outside jing’an park. see previous post. 

mouse at work! apparently it ate a poison pill and so it was slowly dying my coworker tried to sweep it onto a dustpan but it had a second wind and started scampering away. the girls screamed and i chased it down with a trashcan. the janitor later came to take it away. 

maybe i should bring my kitty to work. all the fruit shops here have cats to keep away the mice and other pests. my kitty is a weirdo; i found him chilling on the side of my bed with half of his body hanging off the edge.

i woke up one morning at 5 because i had to pee, walked into the living room and got blinded by the rising sun. while i was taking this picture, i had a feeling my aptmate was going to come home, as he often does at crazy hours. strangely enough, as soon i clicked the button, i heard his key in the door. 

ricky and i got an electric scooter! well i’m planning to take this one so ricky can get a bigger and faster one. i rode it home for the first time tonight, and it was really fun but scary maneuvering through people and odd obstacles, not to mention other scooterists on the sidewalk. yes, we all ride on the sidewalk. 

I’m going miss nights like this, detouring through Jingan Park to the nearest metro but making a spontaneous liesurely stop at an outdoor cafe for peach tea.

Click on Comments to see the whole panorama.

I seriously cannot believe how time flies. The days go by so much quicker when you have a job. And even though there are so many more things I want to post about, the longer I wait, the longer I postpone, and then I end up forgetting what I wanted to post in the first place.

Starting to think maybe I should go back to posting more photos, especially since even though I’ve been learning about and improving my studio shooting, I really miss shooting outdoors.

With that, here’s to Chengdu, a beautifully comfortable place to live, also known as home of the pandas.