Cops, Robbers and Impersonators

Something that kind of bugs me here in Beijing, even thought it doesn't really affect me much, is the police cars. They always have their lights on. Whether they need to get someplace or they are just moseying along on a Sunday afternoon, red and blue strobes all the time. So no one pays attention to them. I don't know if it's police policy here to do that, or just that the individual officers want everyone to know who they are, but it seems very self defeating if you ask me. If they were an emergency no one would move out of the way because they always use the lights. Or if there were a crime taking place the perpetrator would likely see the cops coming and stop.
So that's bad, but what's even worse is that ordinary people install lights and sirens in their personal vehicles. Today I saw a guy in his SUV trying to make a U-turn so he turned on what sounded exactly like a police siren to get the other vehicles to make room for him. He definitely wasn't an officer because I could see he was dressed in a polo shirt and driving a luxury vehicle and he wasn't in a hurry because he was sucking on a popsicle as he made the turn.
Any way, that's my rant for the week.

Snapshot of China

The other day I saw a scene that made me laugh, I was just riding by on my bike.
There was a black tinted-window-freshly-washed-I-think-I'm-a-big-deal car that pulled up to a closed gate. The driver was just laying on the horn. Not honking, just holding it down.
The funny thing was that there was a guard sitting on a chair slumped over and fast asleep. Didn't hear the car at all.

Earthquake

Most of you have probably heard about the massive earthquake yesterday here in China. The epicenter was in Sichuan province in southwestern China. Please pray for the people of Sichuan, it is a very mountainous and poor area and it has been difficult for rescue workers to reach some of the hard hit areas.
The quake was 950 miles from Beijing. Kara and I were out having lunch at a first floor restaurant when it happened and we didn't feel anything but most of my coworkers felt their buildings sway or felt dizzy from it. That's like an earthquake happening in Dallas, Texas and us feeling it in Minneapolis.

Just a thought

I had a thought the other day that I've never had in America. I was in a cab driving past a construction site when I pondered: "Why is that building only going to be fifteen stories tall?"
This struck me as odd considering the last place I lived didn't even have a fifteen story tall building in the city. Here, just fifteen stories seems like a waste of horizontal space. If you're going to use up a square block on the ground you might as well make use of as much vertical space above it, right?

Stars

Kara and I went down to Wang Fu Jing (a shopping area downtown) today and found a couple bookstores with a whole bunch of English books. It was exciting, Kara even found Norton Critical editions which are her favorite. They have a classic book and then essays and critiques on the those books all in one edition. We rode the subway and ate at a hot pot restaurant with our friend Tim.
The stars were out tonight in Beijing, we counted them: 15.

Two more weeks of photos

These are mostly pictures from the car. My favorite one is the fashionable lady on her pink bike with the horse drawn cart behind her.

The first picture is of me and some friends in giant inflated spheres on a pond. They are impossible to stand up in unless you run at full speed. I'll put up some video of it sometime. There's a picture of our favorite coffee show when it was closed for filming a TV show one day, some pictures of our newly painted green wall, a picture of the doctor on the street outside our building, the market near our house and some guys in camo (camo is kind of big here).

April 6th - April 15th

This is a fun group of pics. We've got a couple mistranslations which are always fun, a picture of our apartment just before we moved in, some pictures from our recent youth retreats (thanks David Nugent), and the Olympic stadium. Enjoy.

Pictures for March 27-April 5

These are mostly pictures that we took while on a photo scavenger hunt at the summer palace and some other random picture. Our team came in last place, but we still got a pretty awesome jumping picture using the automatic timer.

Also I'm going to put up a couple more posts of pictures this week to catch up and from then on I'll be posting "words" on Mondays (our time) and "pictures" on Saturdays. That's right, a bold prediction that I may or may not follow through on, but I'll try.