Sunday, June 29, 2008

Way too much food.

Well, I have realized that I do not have nearly of pics of things I've seen here in Beijing. Only what I've eaten. I don't that is the highlight of my days by any means. It just seems like that is the only time I have to sit and take a picture. Sorry if it seems one-sided, but there will be pics from the great wall soon. It was awesome!

Here's some pics from my first ever Beijing subway ride!


Friday, June 27, 2008

More pics, from the Red Panda.

There seriously was chicken in there somwhere...

Peanut Smooth Ice!

Coconut Ice Milk with coconut pearl milk tea and melon! A highlight!

Uni-Cha (cantonese milk tea) is what dreams are made of... notice the small "shooper" of liquid sugar they give you... No mixing or granulated slurpage!

Harumph.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Pickies

This is my favoritest beverage in the entire planet.The door to Base FX, a holy VSFX company with thumb print identification!
Seriously I quit smoking, and there was an ashtray right beside the sign!
The underground Wal-Mart.
I don't know why I took a picture of this, I liked the colors.

The hugest cars in all the world!

I am mystified still as to why there are so many of the largest class of sedan's in this city. Mercedes S600 V12's, Audi A8 L's, Bentley's, Maybachs, Buick Regals, Cadillac DeVille's... I saw an A8 L, trying to navigate a 90 degree turn the in the ancient HuTong district, people were throwing planks underneath the tires in order to have it fit over the curb. I just can't imagine the need for the biggest cars in the industry to be here. Sure sure status symbols need to happen, peeps need their fast cars, but in the city!? There is a cc regulation on motorcycles, which to my dismay is why I don't see any street bikes or awesome old chinese choppers. Why not a width regulation on cars? I don't get it. Out.

The Maowie Zowie good time!

So the second weekend I was here... A guy I work with, Chris Bishop, was scheduled to leave. There was a big dinner planned for him the morning of his last day. We were told that it was really far away, and that it was sooo amazing that we had to come. "It's all about the cultural revolution and stuff! You will miss out! It's so rare! We will never go again!" The only resistance I had towards it all (cause I'm down for whatever) was that we were scheduled for our first Chinese class at school, which we pushed so hard to get a trial lesson before we paid, and had it all scheduled... but I called and got the date moved to a Monday... so all was safe. So some people from the office piled into someone's Peugeot mini-van... 9 people in it... no seatbelts! But it was ok, cause we didn't really go about 20mph. Anyway... we get there and after a salute at the door this is what we saw.


So, these are pics that someone managed to snap at the restaurant. It was very forbidden to take pics there and the guy who took these got yelled at. I actually didn't have a camera at this point. Once we sat down, everything was out of my hands. There is a huge show that happens at seven o clock. And all through the ordering process (which I had no part in because it was all in chinese) there was an auction happening for scrolls and paintings with calligraphy on it. It was a very high pitched woman, that rambled on for what seemed forever. It became a buzz of noise after a while. Then the real show started. The red flags got passed around. The stinky tofu (that's what it's called) came to the table. Some of my co-workers were absolutely enthralled with the music. Some were looking around very perplexed. I kinda sat there with my mouth open grinning at the stage. I'm easy to entertain. There was all sorts of food brought out. It was a blur after a while. Then they started with the beer. Many bottles.

I think the craziest thing throughout it all was the spirit from the whole place. When common hymn's and whatnot came up, there was a sea of red flags being snapped in sync. Some of my co-workers knew the songs... but they became a mess of high pitched vibrato singing that I coudn't understand. I really equated the whole experience to Medieval Times in the States. Very theatrical... but no other color knight except red... and the knight is Mao. People were requesting songs by the end, paying about 500 quai for one song, about $75 bucks. Needless to say, unless they were going to bust out a little John Denver "Country Roads", I wasn't forkin over my sheckles... Praise Mao!

Chevrolet Type R??????

Why would someone do this? Why ever? Doesn't he know anything? Does his brother work for a vinyl sticker store? Chevrolet Integra? Where's the integrity? Are there other's that do this? Is there a club for that kind of oxy-moron's? Emphasis on the moron.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

I still use a doorframe to scratch my back, just like pops.

Here are some pics that I took with Ron's handycam before I got my piece. This top pic is of the huge everything mart called Ya Show, next is the biggest UNI QLO store I have ever seen which will be open soon. The last is this card on the table of this new Uzbequie (sp?) restaurant we went to... enhances woman organisms huh....

Monday, June 16, 2008

Here are some of my work building and Fu Li Cheng










This is a statue of Robinson Crusoe or something in our courtyard.

Some street pics






These are some pics I snapped on the cab ride after work. Pedestrians are brave!

I got a panas camera... love to take the phoootographs

So I finally got a camera at YaShow the other day, and I've been trying to snap snap snap away. More to come!Amazing chicken! That's what it's called!


MMM snap peas with chile's!
BEER! Cheaper than water!

Our language center where I am learning Chinese

These guys are nuts! Helping each other climb!

Friday, June 13, 2008

snaaaaaaaaaaaakkke!

So the electronics market is completely not awesome. Neither are Tomato Mexican Chicken flavored Lays potato chips. I don't think I'm going to even try the French Chicken flavored Lays...

We bought a DVD player for the apartment cause we did not have one, and it was kind of annoying after a while not being able to watch a movie. So we went out and bought one for 200RMB and it turned out to be ridiculously bad. This thing skips randomly through disks, and the remote only works from about one foot away. Then our school took one from the AV supplies and gave it to us, it works, but doesn't play American DVD's. Oh well... looks like I'll have to buy $1 dollar a piece bootlegs. I think I'm going to buy the entire Battlestar Box Set... maybe even Scrubs. Futurama, Office OH MY! My freaking laptop bag that I bought here... the strap broke off. Kind off expected but still annoying.

I am definitely buying a new camera soon. Need to spend like $100, for pointing and shooting awesome stuff like yesterday when we walked into our apartment complex and there was an old lady on the bench playing an oriental flute. It was like a movie soundtrack. Plus the gardens and stuff around our apartmen't is real sweet. There was even a group of people doing dusk tai chi. One of these days I'll try and join in... but I know not the ways of the tai chi.

We went to Shin Kong place yesterday, which was right by the English/Chinese learning cafe that I think I am signing up for with a couple other people. Shin Kong is a mall of epic proportions, and epic prices. It is the most upscale mall I've been to, rivals Short Hills in NJ, nothing in Savannah. We're talking Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Moschino... anything you can think of. Kind of intimidation for a T-shirt and jeans kinda guy like me. The food court was what we were interested in because we had to wait to speak to the manager of the Chinese school, and boy was that a project. Trying to eat something sensible but not KFC or Subway. Anyway's when we walked around we went up to the fifth floor and saw all this amazing emerging technology from Panasonic. We were all weary travelers and needed some vittles, so we pressed on to the food. Once we ate and headed out of the mall, we got completey turned around and wound up on the other side and had to walk around the entire complex to get back to the street that we wanted to be on. There were so many sitting areas and fountains, it was so awesome. It's like they generally wanted people to loiter at the mall. Not like in every other mall where it's like 6 feet of sidewalk with a bench that's been spit on and skateboarded on and cops are there to enforce loitering. On the walk though I saw up on the third floor or so my favorite place to buy jeans. Energie! (and Miss Sixty Jill!) It's going to rock to go back there.

Well in other academic news. It seems that I will be teaching my own class on Digital Imaging, which is kind of nice; riding on the laurels of my roomate Brendan, who taught me many things about HDRI, IBL setups, spherical pano's and with the addition of my stereoscopic skills, I should be able to make a pretty sweet elextive out of it all. I'm excited!

the title of this post is dedicated to all those playing the new metal gear... STFU!

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

It's a pretty decent drink!

So my new favorite drink is Milk Tea. It's like a cafe-latte but with tea. It's sweet. And apparently mad decent! I've been drinking one called Matcha Latte, which is a distinct blend of Japanese Matcha... don't know what it is but the tag line for the drink is... "A distinctive Matcha blend. It's pretty decent!" What a modest drink, humble in claim... bold in taste!

Matcha - 抹茶 - Matcha is a fine, powdered green tea used particularly in the Japanese tea ceremony, as well as to dye and flavor foods such as mochi and soba noodles, green tea ice cream and a variety of wagashi (Japanese confectionery).

Sorry I've been lax on the pictures... they will come. I don't really have any to post right now... until I get a new camera... which is going to be a haggling battle.

Monday, June 9, 2008

Too much to see!

Just thought I'd give a much needed update on my doings from the past couple days. For my own reference I have been cataloguing some prices for many different things here in Beijing.

One RMB, 1/7th of a dollar. There are so many things that blow my mind...

Bottled water... 1 RMB=($0.14)
Coca-Cola "light" 6pack cans... 11 RMB=($1.50)
Premium Custom Tailored dress shirt with your choice of fabric, collar, cuff, buttons... 250 RMB=($35.00)
Longest cab ride... 20RMB=(2.8)
32oz Yan-jing beer (Beijing local)... 14RMB=(1.75)

It is really easy to spend money here... I have to be careful. Sadly, my dreams of getting a Canon 40D with lens for less than amazon... Went to a big place called BuyNow, the place sounds like buynow in chinese but it means (a hundred brains (computers)). I asked a guy how much a 40D was (body only) and he put in a calculator 6853 ($979)... I though ok... first price and he's high balling me... lets talk lens combo and see what happens, I picked out a comperable lens, and that brought his total he showed me to $1300, I put in $1000, and he laughed and threw the calulator down and walked away from me. I pissed him off haha!!! Then I wanted to buy a simple DVI-VGA plug, one that comes free with every video card haha, and these guys tried to tell me 120RMB which is like 22 bucks!!! I laughed at them and walked away! Not to mention the one they showed me looked like it got kicked around on the floor haha.... good times.

On to the tourist things... Me and Ron met one of our co-workers Alex Robinson, who is very fluent in Chinese at the North Gate of the Forbidden City. We didn't want to go in but we hiked up to the top of this hill that overlooks the whole complex. It was a tease to look out over the entire Forbidden city. We could see so much stuff from the top of that hill. The old Hu-tong courtyards that used to sprawl out over the enitre inner ring of Beijing. Then we headed out to the ancient drum and bell tower, and saw a quick drum performance. After that we ventured into BeiHai park for some lunch. What an awesome place! There is a small lake with stores and restaurants all around it, with boats that are apparently very cool to get in and take someone special with some take out and a lady playing that ancient chinese guitar... I forget what it is... but that needs to happen! Then we ventured into the Hu-tongs for quite some time, went in some vintage stores and all sorts of little courtyards, and the coolest part was we saw this courtyard that Alex used to live in. It was so cool! All the rooms were about 7 feet deep, and facing the courtyard in a sqaure. He used to heat it with real, carbon-monoxide releasing coal! Really awesome to see.

Then we ventured out to do some serious tourist shopping. I think first we went to the Ya Show clothing market. You buy anything there from raw fabric, to bags, shoes and custom tailored shirts. I shouldn't have brought any clothes! There is so much to see there I am sure I will be back for a new wardrobe or two.