There’s nothing like waking up, with ginger in your cup!

Where would you rest or put out your cigarette?

Safety + Chinglish = ha ha ha

Ancient Eco-friendly Chinese Courtyard

Cooking with Fire

Night Street Vendor

If you wake up on the floor of a random bathroom, and you see a trashcan with a strainer attached to it, odds are you are in China.

I don’t feel like writing, so I’ll just post pictures instead.  Here’s to making it 365 days in a row.

Bring Your Baby Bike to Work Day

I should have mine revoked.  I absolutely suck at this.  I used to be so good at it, too.  What has happened to me?  Ugg, I don’t know.

Phil’s parents are visiting for the first time.  It’s been interesting to say the least.   The weather has been sorta sucky.  Cold and rainy.  The fireworks on Sunday should be impressive.  It will be an experience for them for sure.  I don’t know why, but I feel that the fireworks this year will be even more insane because it is the year of the dragon.  I guess we will find out.

One of these days, I will renew my blog license.  I just don’t know when it will be.  I’ve lost my blog voice.  All of the interesting things I see don’t motivate me like they used to.  Maybe that means I need to move on and find a new muse.  If only I knew where to go.

Life, it’s so complicated.

In other news, I am working on getting my novella published.  I can promise you that if and when that happens, I will write all about it.  Also, I am working on my first sci-fi piece.   I’ve enjoyed writing it, but I find it more difficult.  There is an art to sci-fi, and I am still trying to figure that out.

Well, back to my world.  Take care.

Nothing too exciting happening in Shanghai, so I went diving into my picture collection and found some amusing ones to share with you.  All of these were taken in Linyi, China.

Usually, when you need to escape a building, there are multiple exits – at least two sets of stairs.  This was not the case of the building that we lived  in Linyi.  There were two sets of stairs, but only one would go all the way to the bottom floor.  On the third floor, where we lived, the middle stairs continued down to the restaurant below us only in the case of an emergency.  Unlike some of the emergency doors you would see in America, this one could not be opened by simply pushing it, thus causing an alarm to sound.  In the event of an emergency, we would have had to find the person who had the key to open the door, had a handy pair of bolt cutters, been willing to chuck something very heavy at the door or pray that our parachutes were ready for action because the window would have been our only remaining option.  Thankfully, there were no emergencies in the ten months we lived there.

Hrm.  How does one fight against time, and publicly nonetheless?  And why do you have to strive for efficiency(not spelled correctly on the sign) privately?  Isn’t it easier to make things better when you work with like-minded people?  Hrm.  I don’t think I get this sign.  I found it in the F building of Linyi University, which is the Foreign Language Building.

Well, I suppose it makes sense right?  An elevator is very much like a floating stair.  Out of curiosity, I Googled the term airstair, and found out that the term is real, but it isn’t quite an elevator.  Wikipedia tells me that an airstair is “a passenger staircase that is built in to an airliner — often, though not always, on the inside of a clamshell-style door. The stairs can be raised or lowered while the aircraft is on the ground, allowing passengers and ground personnel to board or depart the aircraft without the need for a mobile staircase or a jetway.”  You learn something everyday.