I’ve used the North Face Backtrack 50 for the last two years. It is an effective pack system designed for world travelers that is built with quality materials and is designed to withstand a fair amount of strain over a prolonged period of time.
November 6th, 2009 in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
For the past three months, its been my pleasure to be instructed in one of the world’s most important languages by individuals who love their discipline, and more importantly love their jobs.
谢谢, 大家！非常感谢你们给我一个美好的夏天。
For my tribute, here’s a small series of portraits featuring the teachers and my classmates in action over the course of our field trips.
September 12th, 2009 in Journal, Photography | No Comments »
Second time back to Summer Palace (Yi He Yuan) and once again I’m none the wiser. Throngs of people, high heat — what do you expect from Beijing in July?
This trip was an outing sponsored by my language school. I about dodged out of it but my classmates managed to convince me to alter my plans. As per the last outing, my teachers had the customary homework sheets ready for me to interrogate the unsuspecting masses with.
August 5th, 2009 in Journal, Travel | No Comments »
I love Beijing for its virulent growth.
You won’t find a city with as many construction cranes dotting the skyline. As others have said before, it is the fast changing nature of the city that makes Beijing a place unlike any other. For its beauty and the scars it took to make it what is is — and is becoming — I wanted to share a few of my photographic observations.
Here is a short pictorial of how the city’s looked through rain, darkness, smog and sunshine this past summer.
August 5th, 2009 in Photography, Travel | No Comments »
Friday was a much welcomed reprieve from our normal class schedule, or so we thought. Our teachers planned an excursion to 大觉寺 (Da Jue Si) — a thousand year-old temple located about 1.5 hours outside of Beijing.
Their goal was to advance our exposure to Chinese culture and customs.
July 2nd, 2009 in Journal, Travel | 1 Comment »
Right, so by now you know that Faye works at a Montessori Kindergarten.
Periodically, I come to visit in order to a.) see her in her place of work and b.) take photos of her children for scrap-booking purposes. I enjoy the opportunity mainly to see her daily life in action (a career much different than my own) as well as contribute a little something to the organization.
April 17th, 2009 in Journal, Photography | No Comments »
A confession — the Olympics were not an event I “seized” in the traditional “live life to the top” sense.
In many ways, I might as well have been in Siberia watching it on a small black and white TV screen. I didn’t fling myself into the mob at Tiananmen Square and witness the fireworks during the opening ceremony. And I certainly didn’t crowd in at Wangfujing to watch it on the big screen.
Instead, I went out with friends, hit the Saddle, and came back to watch the opening festivities at home.
And then I went to the light-weight and light heavy-weight boxing matches the next day. A friend hooked me up with two tickets. The other “cool” venues were out of my price range. So all in all, I got to watch 21 matches.
Russia whooped on Sweden. The US beat out Argentina. The Irish kicked ass because, well, they’re Irish and this is boxing. And China barely won against some small country I can’t even remember.
(The Chinese guy wasn’t good, but the People carried him to victory. He had no choice but to somehow win. For that matter, the People carried all of the Chinese athletes to victory with a force I haven’t before witnessed in my life.)
But anyway, boxing was fun until I got bored and uncomfortable sitting in chairs designed for someone two feet shorter than me.
That’s it really.
All attempts at politicizing the games aside, the Beijing games went off flawlessly. The plan was sound and the people rose to meet the occasion with a sense of diligence and honor rarely seen.
I was impressed. The sincere kind of impressed, not the one laced with cynicism and the word “but.” And this from a guy who hates pageantry and “feel good” events.
And if you were to press me further, I would have to say the 2008 games were most remarkable because for the first time in several hundred years, the Chinese people, as a whole, had something to be genuinely happy about.
Something to be proud of that wasn’t tainted or contaminated. Something they earned for themselves in the wake of rebellion and unforgiving natural disasters.
To understand the Chinese mentality, you only had to watch the opening and closing ceremonies.
No one stood out. There were no individuals. Instead, there was a force of people moving in synchronized coordination to accomplish something grandiose.
That was China moving at its best. It is also China’s strength and its most staggering weakness.
And in the coming years, I’ll be keen to to see if they’re able to keep their footing together.
August 26th, 2008 in Current Events | No Comments »
August 13th, 2008 in Photography, Travel | 1 Comment »
