Tracy opening her present

Beijing DVD stores are filled with great findings.
Skinemax was one of those hilariously awesome finds.

sanksgiving en la china

Last Saturday we celebrated Thanksgiving. I went to Ross and Ariel's a bit early and helped clean up and prepare for the festivities.

Ross made stuffing and sweet potato. I made mash potatoes and gravy. Ana brought some veggies. And Tracy's husband made some kick ass Arroz con Tofu! We bought a chicken and a duck which I was hoping would somehow morph into a turkey, but no luck. The party was a success. We played Corey Ruffins and came up with some amazing drawings of dead children and elicit superhero porn.

Hopefully, there will be another party soon.

Be on the look out for the new Corey Ruffins blog.

Here are some pictures, mostly of the aftermath...


all of us eating and chatting at Ross and Ariel's


Aftermath leftovers. I was so nervous I hardly ate, so when everyone left Ross Ariel and I pigged out on leftover slop and it was de-lee-she-oush!



tired but still hungry

found at ross' corner shop

immediately eaten.

春咬 Spring Bites

A cute satire of a famous Chinese poem (春晓)...

春眠不觉晓
处处蚊子咬
打上敌敌畏
不知死多少

Two translations: the first is from babelfish, the second is from me:

Spring sleeps unconsciously understands
everywhere the mosquito to nip
gets the phosphate insecticide
not to know dies how many

Spring slumbers unconsciously understanding it is time to wake
Everywhere Everywhere one finds biting mosquitoes
We receive the insect poison
It is not known how much we will die.

a ride on a three wheeled box car 坐三轮车

When I get out of the subway exit closest to my house there are tons of these small sort of cars. What they are, are three wheeled motorcycles (三轮车) with a sort of box in the back where you can sit. They're only 5 kuai and take you to anywhere relatively near. I was exhausted yesterday, so i decided to hop on one and was at home in no time.

my young driver who in this picture is weaving through on-coming traffic


The back door is held by a bungee cord and so it cracks open while you're riding.

a fogged-up window painting inside a hotpot place that was so-so

the waitress drew it and laughed at me when I photographed it

ross photographing; us dancing

国都公园 GuoDuGongYuan

Last Sunday, Ross, Ariel and I visited an abandoned theme park called 国都公园(National Capital Public Park). The park is right off 北苑 (BeiYuan), a subway stop in Northern Beijing. It seems that whoever built this park thought that the subway line would bring people, which was obviously very wrong. The park seems to have opened on February 25th, 2005 at the same time as an adjacent park, which has a very similar name, 国都宠物公园 (National Capital House Pet Public Park) that was very popular at one point because they had tunnels and tracks for the dogs to play on. Dogs and their owners still go there, but it's just a piece of land now. I'm not sure what happened in the last two years, but it doesn't seem like much. The kiddie park is very small and seems to have been very cute at one point, but at the present is something else entirely. As we were roaming around in awe and taking about a million pictures, a woman saw us and screamed, "买票!" (buy a ticket!) as she smirked and walked away. People are funny here.

We wandered away from that park and headed towards 国都宠物公园. It was full of extremely cute big dogs and their owners, which you don't see in the middle of the city that often. The middle of the city has cute dogs and owners, just not big dogs. As we wandered out of that park we noticed that the entrance had been turned into a bus stop for some unexplainable reason.

We left the park and did some more roaming in a field with beautiful tall trees and weeds which germinated by attaching themselves to our socks and having us pick them off. We reached a long fence that Ross was scared to touch in fear of being electrocuted. Along this fence we found two shepards herding their sheep and goats. Walking along a bit more, we realized we had been cornered by the toxic chemical canal of death. We had no choice but to cross the canal by walking, or crawling rather, on 3 pieces of trees that were lodged between the canal walls.

We finally made it back to civilization and had a victory 小吃 meal.
Sometimes Beijing feels like a strange place where the past and present are having a bloody fight.



Some pictures:


Monkey on a pole




people use this space to husk corn now


Ross and Ariel


park name-stamped tiles with a weed


The canal of toxicity
WHAT is your name WHAT is your favourite colour? WHAT is the average speed velocity of an unladen swallow?? African or European? AHHHHHHHH!!!!


The shepards' sheep and goats who secretly terrified me

a picture-less post

Seasons are strange.
It's fall but it's really cold.
This morning, I woke up in my bed and couldn't bring myself to take the covers off because of the unbearable cold awaiting outside my sobrecama cocoon. When i finally gathered the strength to take a bath, I had trouble turning off the hot water. Ahhhhhh!

miami! 我真想你啊！