Thursday, July 17, 2008

Folks

All right, I know how much everyone like photos, so I snapped a few more recently to show a little slice of Beijing life.

The first one is of a bar with the ridiculous name: "Liky Bar." Sounds like my kind of place! I love these translations, which are an endless source of amusement for me here.


This one is Miss Gao Ang. She's a reporter for the Beijing Times. Let me tell you the story of how we met. When I was standing in line at SFO, waiting to check in, a large group of Chinese guys weaseled in front of me. I was furious, but much too tired to protest. So they barged all their bags in front of me and I just waited. Anyway, I noticed that among them was a cute girl and I said to myself, "Nick," I said, "she's OK. She's cute and I'd like to meet her. I wonder what she's like?" Anyway, I soon forgot the whole thing between the baggage and airport scene. Soon enough, I found myself walking down the plank to the airplane (飞机, or "flying machine" in Chinese, one of my favorite words) then looking for my seat. As I parked my ass for the 12 hour trip, I lamented the fact that every single damn time I take a flight, I get stuck next to the fat guy. I let out a small, silent prayer: God, please let it be different this one time. And guess who it was: the cute girl from the line, Gao Ang! (Thank you, God!) Recently, she took me to an uber cool restaurant, which she claimed was owned by a Chinese pop star. Very cool.


Next up: Bo Yang. Bo Yang is an EECS major from Berkeley (Go Bears). He's here for the summer working on wireless sensor networks. He's one of the lucky ones who speaks both Chinese and English perfectly, having been born in China and raised in Canada. As a result, he has become the translator-in-chief around here. The rest of the kids love hearing us argue about translations, Americana, etc. Anyway, today, he had to get this sheet of aluminum painted or coated in some way, so when he informed me of his mission to a Chinese hardware store, I jumped at the opportunity to go along. On our way, we found all kinds of great stuff.


These soldiers/policemen/rent-a-cops are stationed everywhere with these umbrellas. They are very, very good at standing stock still for hours on end. I have no idea what else they do. But I can tell you this: despite the fact that they will instantly start staring straight ahead if you express even the slightest interest in them, they are always watching...


A motor with "diesel" written on it. My mom informed me that when I was a mere baby, upon the opening of the hood of our car by my father, I busted out with, "Mo-mo!" 'Nuff said.


Finally, we go to the "hardware store" which consisted of these two characters in front of a storage compartment like storefront with piles and piles of power tools in it. Beer bottles everywhere. I think I could be happy with that life. Am I a simpleton?


This lady was next door managing a business of... coating of metals in some way? You'd have to ask Bo Yang. All I know is that the guy he needed to talk to wasn't there. So what did she advise? Come back at 10:30 at night! Ha, ha! OK!


Lastly, here is a Beijing bike shop. It is a pile of tools pulled from this dude's cart and spread out under an overpass of the highway. Why oh why can we not do this in the US? Wouldn't life be so much easier? No surprise that three thousand years of civilization has made some things so much better and more logical.

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