Wasted subscriptions

the New Yorker is a great magazine, but it's articles are so long and I'm so lazy about actually sitting down and reading it that I have no idea what to do with all these issues. Tried leaving it in my bathroom at home, but the articles are way too long to be finished in that kind of session, unless I started using masques for that sole reason.

Better skin for better literacy, what a great campaign that'd be.

The day our stuff got jacked in Shanghai

So, at the start of August I take a weekend to visit yzhou. On the day that I go visit the mini-propaganda museum in the basement of an apartment complex with a friend from high school, however, my phone gets jacked. We carry on a bit. A few hours later, my friend's wallet, complete with cash, atm cards, credit cards, student IDs, driver's license, and the like, get pickpocketed from her bag while were at the Bund. Hélas.



We sought out a policeman and here are a few lovely pictures from the drive over to the police station in a paddywagon.





a clearer view of the locked part in the back for criminals (no, we were sadly not allowed in there)





Shanghai, mind you, is not all roughness. A few pictures from the previous night:

Please don't put coins in the water because it is harmful for the fish

Note the coin, note the lack of fish :(

the Met

Banana-esque Bread

I sort of just realized, as I finished a very moist but tasteless slice, that the recipe may have called for 3 cups of ripe banana, and not 3 ripe bananas, which were what I was saving this week. Maybe I'll make some sort of frosting later :\

Two reflections

1) The baby carrots which I just essentially binge-ate (as much as you can binge on fresh items), in retrospect, tasted a little funny

2) In my rush, I also opened the side of the bag without the ziplock slide. I figured baby carrots this cheap came in impractical packaging...

Oh

someone who spends an awful lot of time in the eng1neering lab tried to hide the paper towels she stole off of the janitor's cart while he was cleaning a bathroom

Experimentations with takeout

Egg foo young was not what I thought it was. Not at all.

Nasty.

Happy V-Day, all!

(apologies to twang)

I love the "ha gao, siu mai" woman, even though the one at Hei La Moon doesn't shout in Cantonese. Helas.

On my legacy

Upon my tragic return to Beijing tonight, my aunt presented me with a large figure of an African woman, wrapped in a silk cloth. The quality and color of wood was was beautiful, but the depiction was probably among the most racist I've seen.

Is this from Africa?
Oh, no, your uncle bought it in Beijing.
Ah.
He got one for your brother too. It was of a bull.
Really. (ok, I didn't say this, but you would have)

Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about it since taking it into my possession. I obviously can't display it, and to get rid of it in any manner would raise the question of why I attained it in the first place. After I die, this figure will be discovered among my possessions and my biography will portray me as some sort of horrible racist, colonial fetishist.

Hélas.

On a related note
Before I left the country, my family found that we either lost or recycled my birth certificate at some point. Well, rather, I probably recycled my birth certificate. My future biographer can only rely on local folklore to ascertain my origins.

(For her future reference, it was in a shady opium den next to an Ethan Allen in Connecticut.)

(could've been better taken and edited, but hélas!)

The ridiculous smog might almost be romantic, if you weren't reminded of exactly what it was when you cleared your nose and saw specs of dust everywhere as if you were in Europe.

It does add a nice sepia touch to photos...

Xi'an