It's picture time

Here are some random pictures that I thought I would show for no particular reason...

Sometimes I curse at the tangle of wires behind my computer and my TV/DVD/CD player. You think Chinese utility workers do the same?

I like phone booths.

Stereotypical Beijing bus stop sign.

The Baiyun ("White Cloud") Taoist Temple

Inside the Baiyun Temple.
Living quarters for the monks. A monk.
And two pure white doves overseeing it all.

Beijing Aquarium

I went to the Beijing Aquarium today.

It was a school field trip, I was told that I just had to go - not work. Of course, we know how that worked out.

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The link for this post goes to the Frommers travel guide review of the aquarium. I linked to it, not because of its review of the aquarium, but because of its brief mention of the nearby zoo.

What Frommers says about the zoo is true.

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So, you ask... How was it?

Not bad actually.

Riding herd over 24 kids aged 3.5 to 6 isn't easy, but I've done the field trip thing before, so I know what to expect as far as that is concerned.

There were some cool looking fish, and some nice displays.

We went through the place fairly quick, so I didn't have time to actually look at the fish AND the descriptions. Of course, the descriptions were in Chinese, so that didn't really matter.

The seal and dolphin show was okay. Of course, I'm spoiled. Having lived in San Diego, I've done the Sea World thing a number of times.

My review: If Sea World is a 9, and the actual ocean/lakes/rivers are an 11, then the Beijing Aquarium would be a 5. Review might have been a little lower, but there were no crowds. When you spend time in Beijing, you really come to appreciate the time without people.

But... the Zoo. Avoid at all costs. I mentioned this a year ago when I went there. It's depressing. Do NOT visit the Beijing Zoo. Aquarium is okay though.


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Here are some pictures of the Beijing Aquarium. Taken today. Hot off the press, so to speak...

Magores is trying to upload the pictures that he couldn't upload the other day...

WhooHoo! I got the picture upload to work.

Kinda sucked. I wasn't able to upload more than a couple at one time, so this took a little while. Hopefully, you'll think the time spent was worthwhile.

Backstory...

These pictures were all taken on October 5... The last day of the Mongolia trip. Why did I skip all the way to the last day? No reason.

These pictures are mostly landscapes.

The night of 10/4 we stayed in Chifeng. Then, on the 5th we drove from Chifeng to ... (can't remember the name right now). In ??? we had lunch at an obnoxiously fancy restaraunt. The food was exotic crap like the Emporer and his buddies used to eat.

Also in ??? was a old Emporer retreat. Beijing gets very hot, and very cold. So he would come here to escape the extreme weather. We did the park... Paid for the guide, the bus ride to the top, the private golf cart escort to the bottom, and the horse ride just for grins and giggles.

After all that, we finally headed home.

The following are just a few pictures from that day. (Actually, I only took a few pictures that day... The memory card on my camera was full. I had to keep looking for things to delete, in order to take new pictures.)

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As usual...
1) Click on the picture to see a bigger version. Bigger is always better.
2) Descriptions are ABOVE the photo.
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The hotel we stayed at in Chifeng was next door to the main government building for the city. What do you see at a government building? Inevitably... A flag.

Down the road a bit was the new main government building for the area (not just the city). Place was HUGE. Distinctive style of architecture.

The only reason we were allowed to drive our car to where it is, is because the driver had some kind of special placard that signified, "We have already been checked out by authorities bigger than you. And those guys say we are allowed to go places and do stuff."
(aka... "These aren't the droids you're looking for.")

I'm breaking my little rule about pictures of people, because even in the big size,
noone is really identifiable.

Here you see
1) The boss I'm not hitting on, 2) My friend, the driver,
3) The cop, saying "I know you have clearance, but can you PLEASE move? I'll get in trouble."

Of course, this is a fairly rural part of China, so we saw plenty of these...

After leaving Chifeng, we drove for a good while. 4 hours? 5 hours? Something like that.

The next batch of pictures are landscapes from Chifeng down to that other city that I can't remember the name of for the life of me.

The people were having a controlled burn in the fields in this picture.

I mentioned that we went to the park that used to be a retreat for the Emporer(s).
Here is a random picture from there.

There is one thing that I don't quite "get" about China, and the world outside of the US.
It seems to me that the US, as a country, has a fairly short memory.
You attacked us 60 years ago? Okay. That was then.
You were pointing nukes at us 30 years ago? Okay. That was then.
For better or worse, Americans tend to "move on".

Other parts of the world don't quite think the same way.
Some places hold grudges for longer than Americans can understand.
(This American, at least.)
Maybe its just short attention spans due to TV?

Notice this placard in the museum we went to.
The text is fairly straightforward, but the title is telling...

Magores is trying to upload pictures, but its not working

I promised more pictures from Mongolia, but for some reason its not working.

I'll try again later, and see what happens.

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One interesting part of being here is the way the internet works.

Basically, sometimes it doesn't.

There are some sites that I could not access from here:
-http://www.bbc.co.uk/ was one, but the front page, at least, seems to be okay now
-My own blog was another one, but that has been okay since sometime in the summer (when I didn't have access myself)
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page was another. But, once again, the main page seems okay at the moment. (A quick look at slashdot shows this has been true for just a week or so.)

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If you read between the lines, you may notice that... Yes, I was unable to access this site before September. But, how did I post things before that? Welcome to the internet-China style.

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I'm sure that the no-picture thing is just a temporary glitch, but then again... You never know.

Magores has more pictures: Great Wall, Tiananmen Square

Boy... You people are a tough crowd!

I post some cool pictures of Mongolia, and I only get one comment.

(It was nice to get the request for pictures of me.)

Couple things regarding pictures...
1) I generally won't post pictures of identifiable people. It's not cool to post pictures of people onto the intratubes without their permission.
2) I don't have my own permission to post pictures of myself on the intratubes.

It may be a tinfoil hat thing, but, oh well.

For anyone that really cares, I can email a few.

Anyway... Regarding pictures....

I was digging around on my hard drive, and I discovered I didn't lose quite as many photos as I thought when my other camera got stolen. So...

Here are some pictures from The Great Wall of China, and Tiananmen later that day

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1) These aren't as big as more my recent photos
2) I think my newer pictures are better "photographs", but this is what I have from then
3) Click on photo to see a bigger version
4) Description is ABOVE the photo

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The bus ride up to the Great Wall at Badaling.
The Badaling stretch of the Great Wall is the standard tourist part of the Wall. There are other sections that you can go to that aren't as "rebuilt". I want to go to those sections next.

Kind of eerie photo along the way to the Wall.

This is a long distance view of the Wall. You can sort of see it going from left to right, just above the center of the picture.

There IS walking involved, of course.
Bus lets you out, and you walk the rest of the way. You can see on of the guard towers in the distance.

Lots of walking involved with the Great Wall. It's long. It's steep. It's crowded.
Try to follow the path of the Wall out in the distance. The thing is LONG.

What can you expect to see on the Great Wall of China? Ummm. Camels.

Kind of a cool photo looking out one of the guard tower windows.

A random view from atop the Great Wall of China.

We actually did a lot more than just go to the Great Wall that day. We also went to Tiananmen Square and flew....

I'm telling you... There was something mildly surreal about sitting in Tiananmen Square and flying kites. I don't know why it seemed weird. Lots of people were doing it. But this was all new to me. Keep in mind, that this was back when I had only been in China for a very short time while. Now? I wouldn't even think twice about doing it.

No. These guys aren't praising my kite-handling skills.
This is the Monument to the People. Or something like that.

After awhile, it got dark in Tiananmen. We had to move our spot because we were getting attacked by mosquitos. We moved to a place where we could lay out blankets and bags and have a picnic. Picnic in the dark in Tiananmen? Like I said... Surreal.
(Still not something I would do if I wasn't with natives.)

THis is a photo of the building across the street from where we sat.

This is some of the government buildings actually in/surrounding the Square.

Another perspective of the above scene.

My roommates (at the time), singing and dancing in Tiananmen, in the dark, with about 10 random passersby staring, and applauding, and an army guy stationed about 100 feet away, while we sat on the ground and ate the Chinese version of prepackaged snacks.

Did I mention surreal?

So, there you go... Pictures from China.

I still owe you all more from Mongolia, and I do have all of those here at the house now, so I'll do that soon. Also, some of the others I found on my harddrive are from my visit to the Forbidden Palace. I'll try to get some of those up soon as well.

Like em? Don't like em?

Magores re: blog changes, voting, Mongolia

The blog...

A little different look, a little wider, some new links, a Chinese lesson of the Day/Week/Whatever

Better?

Tomorrow is "Embassy Day"

My main "thing" for tomorrow is to go to the US Embassy.

I need to find out how to vote. Never done absentee while in a foreign country before. Dunno how it works.

I won't tell you how to vote, nor will I tell you how I am voting, but I WILL tell you to go vote.

You have to do it. It's your DUTY as a US citizen. It's not only your "Right". It's your "DUTY".

While I'm there, I also have some questions about renewing the Visa, and other housekeeping-type issues.


I'll have more pictures of Mongolia in a few days.

I did some file rearranging today.

Turns out I have a few more pictures than will fit on one CD. And, that doesn't include the movies that I have either.

Basically, I need to find time to sit at a co-workers computer and move things around/sort/select/etc. (Damn her for using her own computer!)

Plus, there are some that I want to get printed. Thats even more sorting and selecting.

It's times like this that I wish I had a 1 terabyte USB drive, so I could just save everything and not worry about it. But, I don't. So, I have to.