Another trip

I’m no good at packing. Or rather, I’m no good at packing ahead of time. In fact, the only time I can really make myself do it is to force myself to get up early the morning I leave. So now it’s after midnight, and I need to leave a little before 6:30 in the morning to get to the airport on time. Eh... I can pack tomorrow.

In the meantime, here’s an amusing article—my friend’s Food and Wine debut.

Morning exercise

It’s good to get in your morning exercise, especially if it involves using a couple of giant fans:

Beauty of nature

There was a beautiful sunset over New York this past Friday:

Giant sculpture

A little over a year ago, I saw a Richard Serra exhibit in the Guggenheim Museum in Spain:


Last night, I went to a work event at the Museum of Modern Art in midtown:

Back east

A friend was in town this weekend, which made for a fun and pleasant time. But I took no pictures of any of it. So here’s another picture from China. This is the guy in Yangshuo that Debbie bought two instruments from:

Sunday night fun

I went to a barbeque on Sunday night. Unfortunately, the main food wasn’t ready until midnight, so I didn’t stick around for dessert. It was still pretty good:

Ominous weather

Scaaaary clouds over the financial district yesterday:

The best things in life are free

Actually, very little in life is free. And even less in New York, it seems. But in fact, some things are free. And as it turns out, you can go kayaking in the Hudson River—absolutely for free. You show up, these people give you a life jacket, paddle, and a boat, and away you go (within the area around the launch):


Amazing.

Safety

Shanghai always seemed to be very active early in the morning. One morning, while walking along the Bund—the pedestrian street along the Huangpu river—I saw a lot of people flying kites. I think this man takes kite-flying safety very seriously.

Dong music

Eventually I’ll take a break from the China photos, but I haven’t really been taking many photos these days, so these will have to do for now.

Zhaoxing is a Dong village. The Dong are an ethnic minority known, among other things, for their singing. We wound up seeing (partially by accident) a couple of shows, each put on by one of two villages. The latter show, in Chengyang, involved lots of musical instruments, many made from bamboo. Aren’t these amazing?


Debbie actually bought one of these smaller instruments during the trip, although we couldn’t get nearly as good a sound out of it as these small children did. Lord knows, we tried:

Livestock in the streets

We stayed for a couple of nights in a little village called Zhaoxing. There was a variety of traffic in the streets.


(I know these pictures aren’t that great, but they should give you some idea).