When Emma and I moved out, we put the couch out on the curb with a "Free" sign on it... I guess no one took it for a while! Sherbie swears it was still there in September... Whoops!
3.27.2008
Our Couch!
A quick search on Google Maps for 632 Adams St. NE, a click on "Street View", a little rotation, a little moving north, and what do we see?
When Emma and I moved out, we put the couch out on the curb with a "Free" sign on it... I guess no one took it for a while! Sherbie swears it was still there in September... Whoops!
When Emma and I moved out, we put the couch out on the curb with a "Free" sign on it... I guess no one took it for a while! Sherbie swears it was still there in September... Whoops!
Beijing Part 4! (And Hopefully the Last Part)
So the final full day we had in Beijing was very chill... We started out by heading to the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong (or Mao-soleum, as I like to call it) which is located in Tiananmen Square... Why? Well to make sure he's still dead of course!
I think we were the only Westerners in line to go through and see Mao's body... We had to check our bags and cameras before we could enter the Mao-soleum, so we weren't able to take any pics of good ol' Dongy (my pet name for him) but here's a frame from a Simpsons episode to give you a feel for what it's like...
Of course Mao-mo was behind various thicknesses of bulletproof glass and various degrees of waxy fake face material, but basically it's the same... Not sure if the hammer and sickle was there...
When we entered the actual building of the Mao-soleum, it was absolutely silent... And we were hurried through very quickly, with only about 30 seconds or so of actual look-a look-a time... And then, horrendously ironically, the room right after Mao's body was a huge Capitalist-esque gift shop where you could by all the Mao branded merch you could want! Mao commemorative plate? Sure! Mao lamp? Yeah! Mao silver medal thingy? Why not! I didn't have enough time to study Mao closely while we were hurried through the tomb, so I couldn't tell if he was in fact spinning in his grave...
After checking out Ol' Dongy, we headed to the Jingshan, which must be Chinese for "Big Hill Made Out Of the Rock Dug Up To Make The Moats Around The Forbidden City"... There's a couple cool shrines on top of it, and it offered us a bird's eye view of Beijing (if that bird had glaucoma) and of the Forbidden City...
After that we headed north to the HouHai area, which sounds naughty but in reality is just a bunch of restaurants and bars around a small lake... We had lunch at a really good restaurant, and even got to have authentic Chinese lettuce wraps (Take that P.F. Changs!)...
After lunch we headed around the lake and, between fending off rickshaw offers, were able to check out a local festival of some sort... Some guy rocking out with traditional Chinese instruments... Then we made our way back to the hotel, Emma and I took a nap, we got pizza again for dinner, and got price-gouged on some beers!
And so wrapped up our stay in Beijing... A nice place to visit and a covertly oppressive place to live! Our final day consisted of breakfast buffet, a ride to the airport with Shoe-Tran, and a flight back to Japan! Whoo!
So ends my blogging about Beijing... Which is good, because I'm running out of witty Communist and smog quips...
I think we were the only Westerners in line to go through and see Mao's body... We had to check our bags and cameras before we could enter the Mao-soleum, so we weren't able to take any pics of good ol' Dongy (my pet name for him) but here's a frame from a Simpsons episode to give you a feel for what it's like...
Of course Mao-mo was behind various thicknesses of bulletproof glass and various degrees of waxy fake face material, but basically it's the same... Not sure if the hammer and sickle was there...When we entered the actual building of the Mao-soleum, it was absolutely silent... And we were hurried through very quickly, with only about 30 seconds or so of actual look-a look-a time... And then, horrendously ironically, the room right after Mao's body was a huge Capitalist-esque gift shop where you could by all the Mao branded merch you could want! Mao commemorative plate? Sure! Mao lamp? Yeah! Mao silver medal thingy? Why not! I didn't have enough time to study Mao closely while we were hurried through the tomb, so I couldn't tell if he was in fact spinning in his grave...
After checking out Ol' Dongy, we headed to the Jingshan, which must be Chinese for "Big Hill Made Out Of the Rock Dug Up To Make The Moats Around The Forbidden City"... There's a couple cool shrines on top of it, and it offered us a bird's eye view of Beijing (if that bird had glaucoma) and of the Forbidden City...
After that we headed north to the HouHai area, which sounds naughty but in reality is just a bunch of restaurants and bars around a small lake... We had lunch at a really good restaurant, and even got to have authentic Chinese lettuce wraps (Take that P.F. Changs!)...
After lunch we headed around the lake and, between fending off rickshaw offers, were able to check out a local festival of some sort... Some guy rocking out with traditional Chinese instruments... Then we made our way back to the hotel, Emma and I took a nap, we got pizza again for dinner, and got price-gouged on some beers!
And so wrapped up our stay in Beijing... A nice place to visit and a covertly oppressive place to live! Our final day consisted of breakfast buffet, a ride to the airport with Shoe-Tran, and a flight back to Japan! Whoo!
So ends my blogging about Beijing... Which is good, because I'm running out of witty Communist and smog quips...
3.18.2008
Beijing Part 3!
Day 3 in Beijing started with the obligatory pile of bacon and French Toast at the breakfast buffet... After consuming mass quantities of said breakfast stuffs (and washing it down with copious amounts of expresso coffee) we headed out into the Beijing semi-sun...
Catching a taxi in Beijing is ridiculously easy, as they are everywhere... And they all are pretty new Volkswagons (which is German for "People Wagon") or Hondas (which is Japanese for "Small Car That Will Never Break Down") and are ri-donk-ulously cheap... I'm talking 10 RMB for a 3 km ride... (I know there are at least two things in that sentence that you don't understand...) Or, to convert to Americanizalistic measurements, $1.41 for 1.86411 miles... Which, when you split it 4 ways, is pretty damn cheap...
We took a taxi to The Temple of Heaven, where the Emperor used to make prayers and thank the gods n' stuff... It was pretty cool, and, like everything in Beijing, contained large open stone and concrete areas... There were two large temples, and then an open air altar at the south side... Pretty cool...
After T.T.O.H, we decided it would be a fabulous idea to walk back to Tiananmen Square through a fabulous shopping street that we saw on our tourist map... However, after walking for a couple kilometers (approx. 1.242747 U.S. miles) we realized that the shopping street was being either built or torn down in order to make a new trolley system... So instead of getting to do some shopping, we got to see some old timey Chinese neighborhoods, or Hutongs if you are in the know (and you now are), and a bunch of "tored-up" houses making way for the soon arriving trolley system...
We then visited Tiananmen Square again at our leisure, rather than having Shoe-Tran tell us we have 10 minutes to soak it in... Just kinda chillin' at the Square... Not promoting democracy or free markets or anything... Not standing in front of tanks... Just chillin'... Nothing to see here... Move along police officers... Keep marching Chinese soldiers...
You definitely felt the police and military presence while there... And I would venture to say I also felt the need to keep a low profile... Not that I was spouting Capitalist propaganda or anything...
But there were tons of Chinese people just hanging out in the square too... Kids flying kites, people having a picnic, people reading... So it's really a public square, but one that is under the watchful eye of the police...
After round two of Tiananmen, we headed back to the hotel, but not before picking up some more Tsingtao beers... We decided that since Beijing had an American style Pizza Hut, that we'd order pizza for dinner... The ordering process was pretty intense, what with "Pieces" and "Pizzas" sounding almost exactly alike to the Chinese ear, but we managed to get 3 pepperoni pizzas... It had been a long time since I had American style pizza, so it was a welcome treat... (Japanese style Pizza Hut pizza looks like this crazy hot mess...)
So ended our second full day in Beijing, eating Pizza Hut and drinking Tsingtao... Awesome! Check out the pics here!
Catching a taxi in Beijing is ridiculously easy, as they are everywhere... And they all are pretty new Volkswagons (which is German for "People Wagon") or Hondas (which is Japanese for "Small Car That Will Never Break Down") and are ri-donk-ulously cheap... I'm talking 10 RMB for a 3 km ride... (I know there are at least two things in that sentence that you don't understand...) Or, to convert to Americanizalistic measurements, $1.41 for 1.86411 miles... Which, when you split it 4 ways, is pretty damn cheap...
We took a taxi to The Temple of Heaven, where the Emperor used to make prayers and thank the gods n' stuff... It was pretty cool, and, like everything in Beijing, contained large open stone and concrete areas... There were two large temples, and then an open air altar at the south side... Pretty cool...
After T.T.O.H, we decided it would be a fabulous idea to walk back to Tiananmen Square through a fabulous shopping street that we saw on our tourist map... However, after walking for a couple kilometers (approx. 1.242747 U.S. miles) we realized that the shopping street was being either built or torn down in order to make a new trolley system... So instead of getting to do some shopping, we got to see some old timey Chinese neighborhoods, or Hutongs if you are in the know (and you now are), and a bunch of "tored-up" houses making way for the soon arriving trolley system...
We then visited Tiananmen Square again at our leisure, rather than having Shoe-Tran tell us we have 10 minutes to soak it in... Just kinda chillin' at the Square... Not promoting democracy or free markets or anything... Not standing in front of tanks... Just chillin'... Nothing to see here... Move along police officers... Keep marching Chinese soldiers...
You definitely felt the police and military presence while there... And I would venture to say I also felt the need to keep a low profile... Not that I was spouting Capitalist propaganda or anything...But there were tons of Chinese people just hanging out in the square too... Kids flying kites, people having a picnic, people reading... So it's really a public square, but one that is under the watchful eye of the police...
After round two of Tiananmen, we headed back to the hotel, but not before picking up some more Tsingtao beers... We decided that since Beijing had an American style Pizza Hut, that we'd order pizza for dinner... The ordering process was pretty intense, what with "Pieces" and "Pizzas" sounding almost exactly alike to the Chinese ear, but we managed to get 3 pepperoni pizzas... It had been a long time since I had American style pizza, so it was a welcome treat... (Japanese style Pizza Hut pizza looks like this crazy hot mess...)
So ended our second full day in Beijing, eating Pizza Hut and drinking Tsingtao... Awesome! Check out the pics here!
3.09.2008
Beijing Part 2
I realize this is taking a while... But when you think it took Swift at least 5 years to write Gulliver's Travels, then it's not so bad...
So after the Forbidden City, we headed toward The Great Wall, which is about an hour's drive north of Beijing, and made a brief (or not so brief) stop at a jade "museum"... Curiously, this "museum" had quite a few pieces of jade for sale... Hmm....
Anyway, Emma bought a very nice jade ring (which was promptly destroyed a week later by an errant high five and a smooch with a Tungsten Carbide wedding band during a post-strike bowling celebration) and Joe bought a "Happy Family Jade Ball" which is a ball with several independent layers carved out of a single piece of jade... S'cool...
On our way to the The Great Wall, our bus stopped at a really touristy souvenir shopping mall for lunch... Curiously, whenever we had no control over our own transportation, the tour bus kept taking us to shopping areas... Hmm...
Lunch was good... It was a variety of family style Chinese dishes on a lazy susan... They also gave us a free bottle of what can best be described as "The Worst Tasting Alcohol That Has Ever Existed In The History Of Mankind"... I know what you're thinking... No, it wasn't a bottle of Paramount Rum, it was some horrific turpentine-y terribleness... Perhaps it was liquidized Beijing smog... No idea... All's I know is we didn't even drink it when it was free and I will never drink it again...
After lunch, we curiously had about an hour before the bus was going to be back to pick us up... Hmm... An hour to kill in a huge souvenir store... Hmm.... I wonder what we were supposed to do... Hmm....
After aimlessly walking around the souvenir shop wishing they sold Snickers bars, we were finally on our way to The Great Wall...
After walking on The Great Wall, I think a more befitting moniker would be "The Tall Walkway Where Souvenir Vendors Constantly Annoy You And Slowly Destroy China's Cultural Heritage"... The less said about The Great Wall, the better... Ask me sometime when I've had a few beers and I'll recount the tale much like I do with the "Ding Dong, Willard's Dead" story... Right now all thinking about it does is piss me off...
After T.T.W.W.S.V.C.A.Y.A.S.D.C.C.H., we went to a small tea shop and got a nice schpeal about the different kinds of tea in China, and how they are properly made and drank... And then made our way to a Peking Duck dinner... Yum!
The dinner was good! Lots of different dishes with a variety of tastes... Again, they were served family style and on a lazy susan... We shared our dinner table (as we had done at lunch) with 4 Japanese college guys who were in our tour group...
After munchy-wunch-wunching on AFLAC's spokesperson, we headed back to the hotel for some hotubbing, Tsingtao beers, and risque photography... All in all it was a very eventful day!
I realize this blog post is ridiculously long... Thanks to those who made it all the way to the end!
Coming soon, Part 3!
So after the Forbidden City, we headed toward The Great Wall, which is about an hour's drive north of Beijing, and made a brief (or not so brief) stop at a jade "museum"... Curiously, this "museum" had quite a few pieces of jade for sale... Hmm....
Anyway, Emma bought a very nice jade ring (which was promptly destroyed a week later by an errant high five and a smooch with a Tungsten Carbide wedding band during a post-strike bowling celebration) and Joe bought a "Happy Family Jade Ball" which is a ball with several independent layers carved out of a single piece of jade... S'cool...
On our way to the The Great Wall, our bus stopped at a really touristy souvenir shopping mall for lunch... Curiously, whenever we had no control over our own transportation, the tour bus kept taking us to shopping areas... Hmm...
Lunch was good... It was a variety of family style Chinese dishes on a lazy susan... They also gave us a free bottle of what can best be described as "The Worst Tasting Alcohol That Has Ever Existed In The History Of Mankind"... I know what you're thinking... No, it wasn't a bottle of Paramount Rum, it was some horrific turpentine-y terribleness... Perhaps it was liquidized Beijing smog... No idea... All's I know is we didn't even drink it when it was free and I will never drink it again...
After lunch, we curiously had about an hour before the bus was going to be back to pick us up... Hmm... An hour to kill in a huge souvenir store... Hmm.... I wonder what we were supposed to do... Hmm....
After aimlessly walking around the souvenir shop wishing they sold Snickers bars, we were finally on our way to The Great Wall...
After walking on The Great Wall, I think a more befitting moniker would be "The Tall Walkway Where Souvenir Vendors Constantly Annoy You And Slowly Destroy China's Cultural Heritage"... The less said about The Great Wall, the better... Ask me sometime when I've had a few beers and I'll recount the tale much like I do with the "Ding Dong, Willard's Dead" story... Right now all thinking about it does is piss me off...
After T.T.W.W.S.V.C.A.Y.A.S.D.C.C.H., we went to a small tea shop and got a nice schpeal about the different kinds of tea in China, and how they are properly made and drank... And then made our way to a Peking Duck dinner... Yum!
The dinner was good! Lots of different dishes with a variety of tastes... Again, they were served family style and on a lazy susan... We shared our dinner table (as we had done at lunch) with 4 Japanese college guys who were in our tour group...
After munchy-wunch-wunching on AFLAC's spokesperson, we headed back to the hotel for some hotubbing, Tsingtao beers, and risque photography... All in all it was a very eventful day!
I realize this blog post is ridiculously long... Thanks to those who made it all the way to the end!
Coming soon, Part 3!
3.06.2008
Beijing Part 1.5!
So I left off on the first night we spent in Beijing...
Our first morning in Beijing we awoke fairly early and took full advantage of the breakfast buffet... It was a rare opportunity to have real bacon (Japanese bacon is neither smoked or salted, so it's basically... um... pork I guess...) and some delicious coffee... After breakfast we met Shoe-Tran (our Chinese tour guide) and headed first to Tiananmen Square for a few minutes... We spent more time there on a later day so I'll talk about it then... We snapped a couple photos and then headed on into the Forbidden City...
The Forbidden City is HUUUUUGGGEEEEE.... It just keeps going... Huge open stone floored areas separated by huge stone and wood gates... The Chinese really enjoy their huge open stone areas...
We made our way through the Forbidden City, taking some pics as we went... They also had some exhibits of old-timey jewelry, jade sculptures, and clothing... We made a quick pit stop at an art gallery for some tea, and then headed to the tour bus to head to The Great Wall...
And.... I'm gonna stop there because it's late and I just had to grapple with our Vonage router for about an hour in the middle of typing this...
Our first morning in Beijing we awoke fairly early and took full advantage of the breakfast buffet... It was a rare opportunity to have real bacon (Japanese bacon is neither smoked or salted, so it's basically... um... pork I guess...) and some delicious coffee... After breakfast we met Shoe-Tran (our Chinese tour guide) and headed first to Tiananmen Square for a few minutes... We spent more time there on a later day so I'll talk about it then... We snapped a couple photos and then headed on into the Forbidden City...
The Forbidden City is HUUUUUGGGEEEEE.... It just keeps going... Huge open stone floored areas separated by huge stone and wood gates... The Chinese really enjoy their huge open stone areas...
We made our way through the Forbidden City, taking some pics as we went... They also had some exhibits of old-timey jewelry, jade sculptures, and clothing... We made a quick pit stop at an art gallery for some tea, and then headed to the tour bus to head to The Great Wall...
And.... I'm gonna stop there because it's late and I just had to grapple with our Vonage router for about an hour in the middle of typing this...
Tuneage!
If you look over on the right hand side of the page, you will see a new addition to my blog, which is a mini-player from my Reverbnation account that allows you to listen to some of my songs... The songs are all performed by me or by me and some of my friends or family... Check it out!
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