Life is good.

PS - here’s a picture of my dad, my father-in-law and San Quentin.

I visited the Albany Waterfront park for the first time on Saturday. Odd place. It’s a small peninsula sticking out into the bay that’s crisscrossed by walking paths in various states of repair.

It feels like a former industrial area—maybe a port or warehouse district, I’m unsure of the history— gone wild. There is a sort of main path that runs along the water, but it intersects with a bunch of smaller paths that twist through the area. Tall grasses and plants (six, seven feet tall) make some areas feel like you’re walking through a maze. Remnants of previous structures(?) (concrete, rebar, chucks of asphalt) and bits of metal and driftwood jut out of the ground from time to time. (According to Albany Today the site was a former landfill–I just learned that, BTW.)

The most interesting thing about this weird little park is the art. Local artists have made lots of… stuff from the flotsam and jetsam. Some are elaborate (like the figure above or the dragon/sea monster complete with rider below) and some are simple–stenciled graffiti or a piece of driftwood that’s been given a face.

We went around dusk and the light was failing, but I plan to go back and take some more pictures.

If you’re in Albany, it’s worth checking out.

Watching the Growth of Walmart Across America.

Wow…

From:
Internal Revenue Service <service @yahoo.com>

Subject:
Tax refound (28371231) $620.50

Body:
You have get a Tax Refund on your Visa or MasterCard.
Complete the formular, and get your Tax Refund.

(Your Refund Amount Is $620.50)

[strange IP address URL here]

Copyright © 2008 - Internal Revenue Service. All rights reserved.

First a walk on the beach…

…then a bath.

the bagels were good

So, join me now on a walk to the Albany Post Office to mail my taxes. There will be sidewalks, train tracks, plants and more!

As a bonus you’ll get an assortment of FUN facts about my new town! Impress your friends and co-workers at your next cocktail party when you work the official town motto of Albany into the conversation.

Also, I didn’t skimp on the coverage. You’ll get THIRTEEN action packed minutes of walking… and… er… talking!

Act now!
(Or when you have some time to kill.)

XXOO
- peebo

ps - Since I know nothing about video compression, this is a pretty massive file (36 Megs). If you have trouble viewing it in your browser you might try downloading the video by clicking this link and then opening it.

Enjoy.

When we arrived on a night train from Shanghai, the infamous Beijing smog was covering the city. However, a storm swept through on our first night and cleared the air–resulting in beautiful blue skies for the rest of our stay.

Here are the highlights of our stay in Beijing.

- Two nights at a courtyard hotel (Lu Song Yuan) in a hutong, an old Beijing neighborhood of narrow streets and courtyard residences. Many hutongs have been torn down during Beijing’s modernization but the Banchang hutong where we stayed has been well preserved. The area is a mix of residences and businesses catering to the Chinese inhabitants and trendy restaurants, coffee shops and bars, which have discovered that the area has a large appeal to tourists and foreign expats.

- A Jingshanling to Simatai hike along the Great Wall. (For pics, see previous post). Incredible views and quite a workout. The Beijing Downtown Backpackers hostel organized this day-long excursion, so all we had to do was show up (and pay).

- A midnight dinner at a hot pot restaurant on a late-night dining street in Beijing–fun and delicious (see video below). Hats off to our waiter for patiently teaching us the hot pot techniques although we could only communicate in gestures.

- Soaking in the sunshine and watching the performances of Beijing Opera by its fans in the Temple of Heaven park on a Sunday afternoon.

- A 25+ course dinner at the Li Family restaurant in the Yangfang hutong. It was an amazing culinary experience in an intimate, home setting. The restaurant has a prix fixe menu that starts at 200 RMB but can go up all the way to 2000 RMB if you choose to include the rarer of the local delicacies. We went for the 400 RMB menu, which included sea cucumber (not a vegetable as Katy thought and definitely an acquired taste) and snow frog (tastes like chicken)

Here are the pics:

China - Beijing

We enjoyed China even more than we expected to. When it was time to leave for the airport, we wished for at least a few more weeks to further explore this fascinating country. Maybe next time…

- Peebo (and Katy)