End of Beijing

Only 6 more days left in Beijing.  Here is last weeks crap.

phones outside the little bodega next to my house


will miss being able to eat this for $1.50.  dumplings and ja jang mein noodles


another trip to 798.  this guys stuff has been up for a while but i got to really take a look at it this time.  awesome, sinister looking kids he does.






i swear i took a pic of his name plaque and other paintings but i guess the files don't lie.  so now i don't know who this artist is, so if anyone wants to drop a comment with his name that would be awesome.


i have seen these in other peoples apartment complexes but now it has finally appeared in ours.  not really necessary either since it costs 12 rmb ($1.70) for a guy to come and deliver the same 18.9 liter thing to your house.  will this put the water guys out of business?  probably not for a long while since it will take people a long time to warm to this very out of place machine.  what an eyesore.


Finally got a pic of this taiwanese toast gravy loaf thing.  its probably super bad for you.  its light fried bread filled with some kind of seafood white gravy.  gravy + fried = you know what.


went to papa john's.  check out their blurry logo at the bottom in chinese.  def not the same as the US papa johns but just as expensive.  um can i have some sauce on my pizza please?


this is a funny story.  So who can deny, deep deep down inside, that they haven't found great pleasure at least once in their life, from extracting a decent sized golden nugget from their nose (commonly known as a booger)?  That you haven't marveled at the creation that just effortlessly evacuated your nasal cavity?  Well that is what it feels like when you use one of these bad boys, an ear spoon.  ear spoon is a gross word.  With an ear spoon you can extract golden ear nuggets.  anyway chinese, japanese, and korean people use these things, and probably many other people in the world too.  I bought mine in Kyoto and use it now and then.  One day a month ago i used it a little TOO much.  I had gold rush fever.  I finally got around to going to the hospital a month later


Zizzo took me to the Army hospital.  Less of a wait he says.  i guess anyone can go there, its just priority given to the military.  I went through like 4 rounds of tests.  The first old doctor guy sat me down and rifled through this little drawer of those ear things that they stick on the end of their hand light to look inside.  only these were not sanitary disposable plastic ones, these were metal, there were some shiny ones, but he conciously picked up 2 shiny ones only to throw them back and pick out the most dirty rusty looking one in the drawer to stick in my ear.  maybe it wasn't rust but there was def some kind of dirty oxidation going on there.  back in the drawer it went, not the garbage.  Next the sound test.


5 min of tiny noises going off in random ears, didn't tell zizzo or I what to do.  could she have just been testing for 5 min or did i fail super hardcore, with a score of 0 because i sat there like a primate.


sound test again in the "sound proof room" which wasn't sound proof at all.  Zizzo talks loudly, so him and the doctor/nurse lady were talking and i couldn't really hear the little sounds.  do they not know that the room is not soundproof?


an endoscope or something looking at my ear drum.  gross.  one more test they stuck something in my nose and then that was it.  in the end they said everything was fine.  everything is not fine though.  I don't trust their conclusion.  Also i now know that if anything ever happens to me in china that i don't want to go to a chinese chinese hospital because i have seen their awesome sanitation practices.



this has been my life for a few days.  the packing game.  juggling btwn 2 suitcases.  i am only allowed 1, 20 kg (44lb) suitcase.  no one can move to another country with one suitcase.  so i have to have the other one go with me as unaccompanied baggage which cost sooo much.  i also have to mail a box of stuff back to my parents and a box of my necessary art books to Vivi in Japan.  These are the expected but unexpected costs of moving that i was afraid of.




this is how many people i have met this year that have given me biz cards.  below are some intersting ones for one reason or another.


left to right:  drummer at Johnny Ribiero's wedding party in Osaka, Manager girl at the chinese school i went to for 3 months, 6 hrs a week only.  Hiroko who i met in that chinese class 1 time when she was taking a trial class but now moved back to tokyo.  2 of my old astoria roomie Seung Eun's illustrator friends in Seoul.  This Tibetian guy i met a few times on the street that does tours including up the himalyas.


left to right:  Angel's ogilvy card, the please take me to the Beijing Riviera because i am a foreign devil and can't speak chinese card.  my buddy ryan's graphic design card-don't know why his name is el dubby - 2 of my biz cards - singer at jonny ribiero's wedding party in osaka, my buddy Jennie's hand bag design card in Hong Kong, That jerk Yoon's card for when he worked for the Incheon Global Fair and festival.


from left to right:  some girl from the strip club before jonny's wedding party in Osaka, my buddy yuri's docomo card in tokyo, the hike tour lady from the rice terraces in guangxi province, Mr. Pei the driver that drove my parents and debbie and salih - mr. pei is the man.  Alicia the girl who is making me a proper suit right now.  The washington post driver's niece who i was forced to play tennis with against my own will once.
anyway its nice to go through this stuff and reminisce a little.  it will be fun someday to go through all of my asia journey's stuff and see what weird and funny things pop up.

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