Lots of July work

I did a ton of work in July.  Here is some of it that I can show now.  


this is my goodbye present for my friend angel, my first friend in Beijing.  she is moving to London.  this is a rare item because i don't do paintings.

this was a quick drawing for her going away party invite.
this is 1 of 5 illustrations for slate.com which will be a series for each day of the week about the possible ways the USA could end such as sucession, global warming, totalitarian takeover, and mormons.  Will run next week 8/3/09 

for THE (Times Higher Education) UK.  about why US patent lawyers a better than UK patent lawyers.  the answer is because they are overall more qualified.

second illo for THE (Times Higher Education) UK.  about why US patent lawyers a better than UK patent lawyers.  the answer is because they are overall more qualified and they seek out marketable, patentable inventions

box of NPR 2010 calendars featuring my art for the month of April!  They use big illustrators every year so I was happy to be asked to do the calendar this year.

My art for the 2010 NPR (National Public Radio) Calendar.  month of april.  me on my bike riding through the hutong alleys of Beijing listening to my ipod.  good times.  notice the little beijing gremlin dog on the side.


NEW mobile Hotmail. Optimized for YOUR phone. Click here.

July Overtime

More of life in Beijing as I work like a dog chasing that $

My bikes front brakes got messed up somehow and i tried for 15 min to fix them and then just went to one of the many many bike fixing guys on the street and he fixed it in literally 5 seconds but taking a socket wrench and loosening or tightening one wheel nut.  They know their stuff.


In order to try and cut down on my waste I am trying these yogurt packets instead of the big plastic containers i always buy.  you drink it with a straw.  I don't know if i can get used sucking my yogurt out of a plastic bag.


also tried this fruit bread which is always at the store and tons of people buy.  It was sweet and probably made of lots of bad stuff like bleached flour and other badies. 


This one is dedicated to Salih, who loved to try drinks in beijing.  I guess I have been in an adventurous mood at the grocery store lately.  Here are some that i tried.


from left to right:  50% tomato, apple and orange juice was overpoweringly strong with tomatoes, won't buy again.  Matcha Latte milk tea, sweet and a little weird, would buy their regular milk tea next time.  Minute maid grapefruit "juice", not really juice probably very bad for you lots of sugar but darn it if these minute made fake juice drinks are the most refeshing thing on a hot summer day.  Hawthorn berry juice, potent, sweet and sour, thick, kind of like drinking a bootleg smoothie.


from left to right:  mystery berry drink, i didnt get to drink this i think my roomate did (ball punch!).  Purple Drank, tastes just like grape coolaid, second most refeshing drink.  30% tomato, strawberry, grape, cherry drink was overpoweringly strong with tomatoes again.  Milk Coffee drink, sweet, doubt it was real coffee, did not feel any needed caffenie boost either.


From left to right:  Corn Juice, what was i thinking, tasted just like corn juice, sugar and flour.  like if you drained the juice from a can of corn added 2 tablespoons of sugar and 2 table spoons of flour and mixed it up.  grossness.  Minutemaid random fruits drink, minute maid wins again with their fake juice drink, at least they all have 100% C on the bottles which i hope means 100% of your daily vitamin C is contained inside.  Blueberry drink, think it was %100 blueberry juice, pretty potent and not really an enjoyable drink, but at least its real juice.  This weeks lesson:  Don't drink corn juice.


our g-darn refigerator broke again.  we got the same guy to come and fix it again.  i hope my roomate said some mean things to him because we told him last time that it sounded weird and i had a feeling that it would break again after he had "fixed" it.  he was here for like 4 hrs off and on through the day until 9 pm.  Looks like he was pumping refigerant or cooling liquid or something into the fridge somewhere.  that poor guy.  and we didn't pay him anything either.


this is probably my favorite piece of paper.  I've watched him grow and mature.  once a thin piece of computer paper now he is coated with about 50 layers of acrylic paint on both sides.  i've painted at least 30 different backgrounds for illustrations on this guy.  I want to see how long i can keep it up. 


I have to plug this beverage again.  Taiwan beer.  it is tasty!  maybe its the Ponlai rice that i see listed as an ingredient.


taiwanese food.  the taiwanese sausages are sups yummy, they taste like they have cinnimon in them.


simple cooked asparagus served cold with something sauce.  prefect summer food.


speaking of summer it gets hot, thats why i was sad to see this, they said the gov't made it so you can't lower the air conditioner temp lower than 26.5 celcius.  this was at KTV


I don't know if it made the news in the west but in Asia the Eclipse was all the rage.  once in 600 yrs they say.  Shanghai and other parts of China directly in the path of the moons shadow had a 100% eclipse, while beijing had like a 79.1% partial eclipse.  I woke up at 8 am to see this sheit only to see a total pollution eclipse which occurs once every 2 days.  the Sun could not be seen.  i went back to bed.  Here is zizzo with his special eclipse viewing apparatus that tons of people bought.  i heard in india lots of people were even more superstitious than china and some craziness happened.


i have been meaning to take a pic of the crazy looking magazine stands here since i moved to china so i saw a good one sitting here near my house finally.


i don't think i ever posted pics of my room since i moved in.  here it is super messy after weeks of non stop work.  lots of inspiration taped up on all the walls.




lots of the bar "obiwan" down the street from my house in my life these days because I will finish working at 3 am or something and ride down there for a drink on the rooftop.





Windows Live™ Hotmail®: Celebrate the moment with your favorite sports pics. Check it out.

July Hustle

Not a lot going on because I have been hustlin' even more since the last post.  Since returning from Japan I have amazingly reached my money goal for moving there because i have been working 16 hrs a day non stop on projects that i have had the luck of getting.  Looks like you guys will be able to come visit me!

I like how i need these on my mac's dashboard or whatever it's called.  I have the currency converter that i use all the time, so far this year i have needed to use USD, pounds, singapore dollars, Japanese yen, chinese yuan, Hong Kong Dollars, South Korean Won, either for traveling or work related reasons.  I also need to use the world clocks for tokyo, beijing, New york, Los Angeles, and London all the time for work and play.  anyway i think its pretty cool that i need to be using these widgets because i have a cool job and because i am travelling.

hawthorn berry juice looks like a big market.  there are a lot of choices at the chinese supermarket.  it basically tastes like raspberry juice.  Thought i would give it a try, but even at 65% juice its still super strong!


thought i would try some new "Cheese"  "Beijing Cheese" and "Cheese Noble"  the beijing cheese tastes like cheddar if they were to make a cheddar weaker than mild.  I like my cheddar extra sharp, but this stuff here is like super dull plastic kids shears.  i will still take it over cheese noble and the other processed cheeses that are available. 


i did go to the bar down the stree from my house saturday night at 3am after i had finished this character design deadline for this agency.  there was a reggae party going on to my surprise which was cool.  what was not cool was i was there by myself and it was 3 am. 


this restaurant i always eat at was suddenly gutted and almost completely rennovated right under my nose before i even knew about it.


i love these still


the time cards of the workers at a restaurant.


i discovered this cool hutong near the lake where i always go to study japanese.  it is all twisty and has this crazy brick hill.


and is so skinny at some places like that turn up there that you think, what the heck is this really even a street?  and yep it is.  I love discovering these alleys, there are still tons more to get to so i have taken to riding my bike and studying rather than sitting down these days.


angel came over and we all made dinner.  curry and the tomato and egg thing and fresh veggies with korean hot sauce and soybean like dipping sauce.


I have started teaching these two girls on the left english 5 days a week for 2 hrs.  its a 5 week deal.  they just graduated from high school and are moving to canada at the end of august for college.  the girl on the right is the manager lady.  I am teaching because I need experience for when i go to japan.  the good thing is the place is a 5 min bike ride from my house!



Hotmail® has ever-growing storage! Don't worry about storage limits. Check it out.

2 Illustrations from June I think


teachers can't decide what to do with grades.  they don't know if they are a good or bad thing.  for The Times Higher Education in London.  I liked doing this sad little A, like he is a poor little street urchin that the headmasters at cambridge university are deciding what his fate will be.

For Golf Magazine. monthly rules guy column. this asked if your ball issunk really deep in the sand if there is a penalty for pulling out out.the answer is yes!


Windows Live™ Hotmail®: Spread the word when you add celeb photos to your e-mails. Check it out.

After Japan

sorry no posts for a few weeks.  i have been hustlin to make the money so i can move to japan so you can come visit me.



this guy IS summer.  for probably half the population of Beijing this guy represents summer at its finest.  burlap shorts, no shirt and a custom made faux burlap sack backpack with god knows what inside, down by the dirty dirty river.  hahaha


i tried 10 shots to get the purple right on my cam but couldn't get it.  anyway debbie mentioned a few times how shes never seen so much color in her life, especially purple.  I have to say purple is the hot color this summer in China.  here is a prime example.  the purple bros.  they could give 2 F's about what you think Yankee!  we are the purple bros.  we are in your face whether you like it or not, and at least these purple shirts are better than those burlap shorts you're wearing.


in Japan I had "hureshi toe-ma-to", fresh tomato at a drinking place and it was like the best thing i've ever had.  fresh tomato with japanese mayonnaise has reintroduced the tomato to me in a light i've never before seen it in!  actually not true my grandma used to serve sliced tomato and mayo in the summertime but i had forgotten about it until now.


my buddy jin went back to korea forever.  he has been in china for 13 years.  there was a little going away party for him, everyone was korean including me, except everyone there has been living in china for at least 6 years.


beautiful day studying japanese on my ipod by west lake. but wait....what's that i hear?.......



it's a cat that is in the middle of this floating watercress patch, unable to get out.  the only way i can think that he got out there was that someone had to have thrown it there.  no one helped it all day.  I wonder how long he was hanging out there clinging to the plants.  you know how i feel about cats.  anyway this teenage kid was throwing rocks at it.  rocks.  and its not my place to repremand the kid, i am not a member of Chinese society, there were plenty of old men, ladies, etc around and they all seemed to be ok with him throwing rocks at a drowning cat.  the cat probably deserved to be out there.  but i threw a rock at the kid (no i didn't hit him) and gave him the murderface and he went away.  i hate saving cats.



rode down a couple alleys around the lake and discovered lots of chickens and chicken coops.


i like how this section in the front is bright red and lit up.  restaurant by angels house.


some kind of lamb soup thing.  this cooking cauldron is huge, the pic doesn't do it justice, its bigger than the whole combined area of a regular american stove top though.  huge!


cool design.  salt, and mystery powders


cooking our lamb soup


lamb meat sandwich-ish tings


i had a flu for 2 days and i was scared because my friend QQ got quarentined in a hotel for 7 days after somone who supposedly had swine flu touched her.  i can't afford to let that happen to me so i stuck it out and it was gone after 2 days.  at the height of my flu my roomate brought me home this.  what a life saver!


thought i would try this black bread from the store.  don't knwo what it says but it tasted like potato bread. and im still alive



still searching for a V8 subsitute.  there is not substitute.  all you can get here is tomato water.  gross.  even campbell's tomato juice in the states that is just made of tomatoes tastes good.  but this stuff is gross.  even drinking tomato soup would be better.


My roomates friend brought her dog over.


people watching a michael jackson video.  you know that red arm band he wore?  did he steal that from the chinese?  they wear red armbands.  some are to show they are workers or something but i dont really know why they wear them here.


in front of higher and higher that bar we always drink at and sit outside in sanlitun.  this is gross.  they are actually playing beer pong on the street.  the ball is hitting the ground!  if you know the game beer pong the ball hits the ground a lot and you just wipe it off and resume play which means you try to get the ball in a cup of beer so that person has to drink it.  playing it in the states in someones house is gross enough but on the g-darn streets of china!  there are aids, hepatitis b/c/a, ebola virus, small pox, elephantitis, and whooping cough all over the streets especially in front of that bar what are they thinking!


zizzo went and got this done to his hair.  he has been hanging out at this jamacian themed bar called T7 nightly


i thought this was a bowl of those eggs you always see laying around but nope, they are plastic peeing babies for some reason.  wtf


Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that's right for you.