waterfalls, auroras, comet

march 26, 2013's astronomy picture of the day!

dunzo pt4

more than anything, the thing that most bothers me about captain R is that he doesn't take responsibility for things. he hands off the blame to others when he's the one who should know better. not only is he captain, he's the only space captain that goes to the captains' meetings. so that right there means you're in charge and therefore responsible for getting things done properly and on time.

lately i've gotten a couple emails from him either blaming me for not giving enough advance notice, or blaming certifier A for not covering his responsibilities. i had fucking had it. i'd talked about this stuff at every captains meeting, i'd emailed schedules and updated and detailed spreadsheets, tweeted, fb'ed... below is a clip of the email i sent:

"I will accept emailed paperwork until midnight tonight but I will not accept this type of irresponsible behavior again. The tournament is a few days away and I do not have time for this, which is exactly why I set the deadline for completion of requirements (sans CPR) for year-round steering certification nearly two months ago. You have missed multiple deadlines with nary a sorry. Instead from your emails it seems that perhaps your leadership should review what their own responsibilities are."

i got that apology. and i also finally got that fucking paperwork. it's so crazy to think that all it took was an angry email for them to finally get their shit in line. i don't know what certifier A is going to do next year. she had talked about quitting. a lot of the vets have either already done it, or are seriously considering quitting. it makes me sad, honestly, it really does. i do really like the team, and nearly everyone on it. i just can't stand the way it's being run. i know that no matter what team i join there will be drama. but hopefully it'll be the dumb crap of who's sleeping with whom. none of this blaming innocents when you fail to do your job.

the only questions now are 1. do i keep my jersey? and 2. do i go to year-end banquet to say goodbye.

ruby sparks

i recently watched ruby sparks. it's about calvin, "a novelist struggling with writer's block finds romance in a most unusual way: by creating a female character he thinks will love him, then willing her into existence." he writes about her on his typewriter and one morning, when he wakes up, she's there and she's real.

while initially freaked the fuck out, he ends up falling in love with her. i mean, he modeled her after the perfect woman, so why wouldn't he? but since she really is "a real person" of course they start to have the problems that all real relationships do. she eventually asks for some space.

after telling his brother ruby's "creation story" he says that he's no longer going to write about her. the brother asks why? after all, he can do anything: make her hotter, or less annoying. calvin says no.

but after ruby asks for some space he rethinks the situation. he's miserable, and she isn't at all. in fact, she's flourishing. so he sits down at his typewriter and makes her miserable. she immediately calls him and wants him back and and she is a freaking weirdo. she can't stand to be alone, not even for a little bit. he unwrites that and makes her "effervescently happy". she becomes weirder still. it's like she's a little kid. a little kid on e. it's exhausting."she wasn't happy. so I made her happy... and now she's like this all the time."  and now he's in a bit of a pickle. the brother asks why he doesn't just write "and ruby went back to normal." calvin says that before he started writing about her again, she was probably just about to break up with him.

i wonder what i would do. if i could change rip, would i? i probably would. little things mostly. like so he wouldn't ever chew with his mouth open again. but would i mess with the "big" things? the things that actually have to do with the essence of him? ...to be honest, i don't know. there are things, serious things, that we just don't agree on. and it would be so nice and easy to just make him. haha. but that would be unethical. ...but would i care? would you?

comet castle

march 22nd's astronomy picture of the day!

china 9 - vancouver (6/20)

my last morning in china i didn't do anything. i ran some errands, packed, showered, and went to the airport. i was almost home! ...sorta. hahah. i had an 8 hour layover in vancouver before actually getting home. originally i had a four hour layover but i do like vancouver so much that i decided to schedule a longer one so i could actually leave the airport and see the city.

my flight was without note, except for the lady next to me. she was the most annoying person i've flown next to. incredibly nosy and completely unaware of personal space. she watched movies over my shoulder (tho she had her own working screen), put up our dividing arm rest without asking me first, kept talking to me tho i was giving her every indication that i didn't want to talk to her, bleh. at some point i "forgot" i knew chinese. i did, however, get a free cup o noodles from a flight attendant. :) it made me really happy cause on my flight to beijing i also got a cup o noodles. the whole plane did actually. i think it was their way of making up for the flight delay? whatever. i love cup o noodles!

macleod's. obviously. god, i love me a firetrap of a bookstore!

it rained the whole time i was in vancouver. bah. but at least it wasn't a heavy rain. i went to macleod's books for a bit and on the way there i found an alley filled with really great street art. macleod's was smaller than i thought i'd be. but i found a couple great books anyway. i wasn't expecting for everything to go so quickly (customs, the metro, the walk, the bookstore) so i had a bit more time that i had expected to have. before i'd left for china i'd had the vague notion of meeting up with some space people since a number of them were getting in early for alcan. but i'd never gotten in touch with anyone (i've been shutting myself out because i feel guilty about switching teams next year). also, i didn't have fb in china and that's how most of the teammates talk to each other.

love this piece! it's so northwest tribal art. fantastic!

since i was close i went to canada place and the convention center to walk around and to see the olympic cauldron from the 2010 winter games. it was cool cause i'd seen some olympic stuff in beijing too (tho not the cauldron). i hadn't been to either place since their olympics. eventually i went and had an early dinner at fatburger which makes me laugh cause i've always wanted to eat there but never have and finally do in canada tho it's a chain that started in southern california! i probably should have eaten at taco time cause i see them all the time in canada, but i can't really bring myself to cause we must have better mexican good down here in socal, no?

anyway, i eventually get back to yvr and get on home. and that was it. trip over. i've come to realize that these china trips are like summer camp. you go somewhere, meet new people, live and eat and go on "field trips" with them and after a week or so it ends.

final thoughts? china is not the place for me. much as i think it's an amazing place to visit, i could not live there. of all the things to dislike about the place: the spitting, the toilets, the unsanitary-ness, traffic, noise, lack of credit cad friendliness; there's so much more to love. but the thing that got to me was the beijing metro. at all hours of the day there are people trying to get somewhere. it's an actual river of people. i kept thinking of it like sperm. sperm swimming and rushing and i hate that god awful crush of people. esp cause there's less racial diversity there so most everyone looks alike with their black hair; it's even worse. a person could get lost there. reminds me of a line from amy tan's the joy luck club: "and he proceeded to pour a riverful of the salty black stuff on the platter, right before my mother's horrified eyes."

digital orca by douglas coupland

vancouver - still love it. i thought i might hold against it our extended layover from the first half of the trip. but, no, of course not. in some way i love vancouver even more now that i stumbled on the graffiti filled alleyway and found that i could use my credit card anywhere. anywhere. from the metro to the bookstore to the restaurants, i love it.

last last thoughts? i'm looking forward to next year. whether it be in china, singapore, taiwan, or wherever. i'll be happy to be there. :)

china 8 - beijing (6/19)

my last full day in china was spent at the 798 art district. neither alex (a harvard paddler who had stayed behind) nor i wanted to do anything super touristy so when he suggested an artists' colony i was immediately interested. even better is that soso recommended it as did both of my guidebooks.

alex and i met up late morning and spent the entire afternoon in the district just walking around. turns out we have a lot in common, so the afternoon went by pretty quickly. and after a few days of looking at the more traditional side of china, it was nice to wander around a more modern section of town.

the 798 art zone was originally state owned factories that were eventually converted to art galleries and studios. there was a ton of great and really varied art around: traditional water colors, calligraphy, oil paintings, pastels, sculptures, furniture, jewelry, mixed media, photography, graffiti... i love graffiti. seriously.

 

eventually we headed back to soso's apartment so we could all go out to dinner. soso and i had planned to get peking duck, but alex is a vegetarian (vegan, actually, but on vacation he's just vegetarian) so we nixed that. i asked soso to take us somewhere "a local would eat". so she took alex, me, and her friend edward (who does also speak english) to... a korean place. lol. i had a few dishes i've not had here before, but overall, i think the korean food here is better. :)

alex and i had talked about going to the lake district after dinner to see some of the nightlife, but it was pretty late after dinner already and the place was not too close. i also got the feeling that alex wanted to party a bit, and i was not so much interested in that. after walking him to the metro station i went back to soso's apartment where edward eventually joined us and we had a nightcap. it was a great end to my time in beijing.

funny story. when the three of us were talking after dinner, edward mentioned that when he was younger, his dream was to go to harvard. he was quite sad that it would probably never happen (he's married with at least one kid). coincidentally, when i was in taiyuan i'd received a few harvard trinkets: a jersey, a rubber bracelet, and a leather luggage tag. edward seemed so down that i went to my luggage and pulled out the luggage tag and bracelet and gave it to him. the luggage tag came in a really nice box too, so it was pretty fancy looking. edward was so surprised i had this stuff. he seemed pretty over the moon about it when i insisted he take them. (i did not give him the jersey, however, haha. it's a women's extra small and edward needs more of a men's extra large.) but i felt pretty lucky to have happened to have these things and was really happy to be able to possibly make his day especially since soso had been so kind to me.

china 7 - beijing (6/18)

tuesday very early morning i arrive in beijing and eventually "check in" to my airbnb place. it's a little bit far from the metro station, but it's so nice! soso, the appt owner is really cool, it seems like so far. smart, very friendly and casual, which i like best.

view from soso's appt

i eventually head out to find banks. including a couple on the list that the moneygram person told me about, and one that lonely planet mentions does western union, and of course no one knows what i'm talking about. at least the western union accepting bank does know about money transfers, but alas, they don't take moneygram, just western union, of course, lol. at this point i give up. at each bank i get hopeful and it doesn't work out. over and over again. i'm also tired from the weather, humidity, and walking, and hungry since i haven't had a real meal in a couple days now. i'm really just emotionally exhausted from this whole mess. i actually walk away from the last bank and start to tear up. good thing for sunglasses! i get home and call rip and tell him to get his money back. honestly i'm not upset at anyone but myself. i'm clearly the world's biggest fucking idiot for forgetting to bring a backup. but everyone has been really nice about everything. rip wiring me money, moneygram people finding banks for me (even if they don't work), tour person taking me to the bank... just wasn't meant to be, i guess.

the famous bird's nest stadium

also very famous water cube

anyway, i head out again to sightsee a bit. i hadn't done much research on beijing cause i had planned on taking it sorta easy here. i had better planned the rest of my trip and had thought to do this portion more on the fly. so i head out to the one thing i had actually planned to see: olympic stuff!

donghuamen night market

which was just okay... it's still super hot and i'm still pretty tired and hungry and the walk from the subway to the olympic stuff is pretty far and each thing is pretty far from the other and i think maybe this stuff is much better seen at night so i plan to come back later. i want to be home when soso gets back so i can properly meet her since i met her for just a minute on the street early in the morning. i get back and wait for a while, shower again, take a nap, and she still hasn't gotten back so i head out to donghuamen night market which is so crowded and kitschy. this place is "famous" for scorpions on a stick. live scorpions which they then grill dead and you eat. i do not eat. lol. of course. at this point it's getting kind of late and the olympic stuff is not too close so i go home to say hello to soso.

starfish and scorpions. normal stuff too, of course.

and she really is great. she's interesting and about my age and so so so nice! we talked about our day and i told her about the bank stuff (after the bank stuff in the morning i had decided that i could go without extra money. i knew i had enough to get me to vancouver and that's all that mattered) but she volunteered to give me money. straight up. i didn't even ask. i ended up borrowing about $45, so we're not talking about a lot here, but it was definitely enough for a day and a half. and she didn't stress about when i would pay her back. i asked for her paypal but she said she'd give it to me later. honestly, it was just that she was so damn nice. everyone i'd met on this trip thus far had been pretty cool. i don't normally need much help back home, but i wonder if people in the states are quite so friendly? i can't help but think no.

china 6 - datong (6/17)

the next morning i was at a slighter further bank when they opened. they didn't know what wire transfers were. on the way back i went to the first bank i went to, which, of course didn't suddenly accept money transfers. i went back to to my hostel and called the moneygram people, explained the situation, and got a really great rep who said she would call me back with a list of datong banks which worked with moneygram. she calls me back with the address of one bank. one. it was frustrating to say the least because the moneygram site listed like 70+ banks in the city where you could get money. anyway. i had no time anymore to get there but i told my tour people the situation and (since this is china) they were really cool and said they would take me to the bank after the tour.

hanging temple

and off we went on the tour! our first stop was the hanging monastery which is not terribly close. we hit traffic a couple times on the way there, and at one point our driver started driving on the other side of the highway. it wasn't just him tho. a bunch of cars were going in the wrong direction on the other side of the four lane highway. at some point the road narrows a bit and so we start to play chicken with cars going in he correct direction. it was pretty spectacular. the swiss couple, english couple and i were really amused. not sure what the two korean girls thought about it. but i think it's one of my favorite moments from this whole trip: rickety bus with windows open speeding along on the wrong side of the highway, driving at other cars and slipping away last moment, cars so close that you can reach out and slap high fives with the opposing drivers if you weren't worried about getting you arm knocked off but not scared cause the drivers here are so precise that you know if you got your limbs snapped off it'd be your fault entirely and no one else's.

the vertical posts don't support much

the hanging temple was kind of cool but not really too much? it's small. and it's very sturdily supported by crossbeams going into the rock tho they're hard to see and what you really see if the spindly sticks that don't look like they can hold up much of anything. but it's neat. they built it 491 which is ridiculous and that's not a typo. but they built it halfway up the mountain so the flood waters wouldn't get to it ad so it wouldn't get blown off the cliff up above.

built right alongside the wall!

after the hanging monastery we went back to town for lunch and then the tour person took me to the bank where, no surprise, they also had no idea what moneygram was. no card? no account? no money. duh! ...

of the 53 grottoes, a few were closed for renovation :(

then we went to the yungang grottoes which are pretty close to town and really quite awesome. they remind me of petra, which i really hope to go to someday.

 

the entrance to the grottoes are really weird. new stuff with indian influences. which is very strange to see in china. tho i do of course know that buddhism came from hinduism. but while very pretty, it's not nearly as cool as the grottoes themselves. they started way back in 450 it took some 50 years to carve over 51,000 statues into 53 grottoes (caves). the smallest carvings are only 2cm high and the biggest is 17m high. while there is certainly damage due to water and other elements, a lot of the carvings are still very beautifully preserved.

the grottoes are definitely the most amazing thing i saw on this trip. while i certainly love pingyao it's not awe inspiring the way the grottoes are. many of the images were carved by monks or artists employed by the emperor, but a number of them were carved by ordinary people just moved to do. it's pretty cool.

that night i got on an overnight train to beijing. before coming on this trip, this was the only portion i had "worried" about. going from xian to chengdu in 2005 the overnight hard sleeper was a room with four beds. there were four walls, tho the doorway was open, covered with a curtain. turns out that i needn't have worried. this train had 6 people in a "room." three walls and a completely open fourth "wall" that was actually the walkway for the entire car. i also think our car was completely full. the guy across from me in silk boxers was leering a bit, but i just put on my eye mask and frowned at him until i fell asleep.

china 5 - datong (6/16)

after spending two night in pingyao i was off to datong on sunday morning. i took a car back to taiyuan and then another long distance bus to datong. i was smart this time tho. rather than get yelled at again, when a gypsy bus person asked if i was going to datong i said sure. i figured that it was probably like what happens in south america where most people get on the bus outside the station, so they get discount "tickets." (honestly, it wasn't so that i wouldn't get yelled at, but by now i already knew that i was seriously short on cash).

creeper photo i took on the bus

my datong lodging was not spectacular. i was in a crummy room with two other beds (but no one else ever showed up) and the shared bathroom was on the floor below mine. two floors shared two squat toilets and a shower. i squat pooped for the first time in my adult life (i went camping a lot as a kid). and did i mention that this hostel was right next to a train station? good thing i had brought ear plugs!

lining up for fresh soy milk

after finding out how much the train was going to cost and hearing that i couldn't charge anything (hotel or train ticket) i was worried. i couldn't find my atm card which i couldn't remember if i'd actually packed or not (harry unexpectedly came over the morning i was packing / leaving for china and i got distracted cause i hadn't finished with my stuff yet). in any case, rip gallantly offered to wire me money via moneygram. i said no because i was pretty sure i would be okay once i made it to beijing (i had already paid for my lodging in advance). but rip made a pretty good case for it and the bank was pretty close so off i went with high hopes.

veggies on the ground. the ground!

...and got totally rejected. the bank people had absolutely no idea what i was talking about (wiring money is apparently not really a thing here?). after a lot of back and forth with the bank people, rip, and money gram reps, i got the address of the central bank located in middle of town. but by now the banks were closed for the day, i was leaving datong the next night, and i had pretty much a full day tour already booked. i had one hour to get money from the bank in the center of town and get back for my tour. i asked the hotel lobby person and she said the bus took 45 minutes from center of town back. not including walking time. didn't want to risk the cab money, of course. rip and i figured i figured an alternate plan and i kept my fingers crossed for the next day.

cat tied to a branch =\

china 4 - pingyao (6/15)

as i said in my last post, pingyao is great. one of the coolest things is that for ~150rmb (which is actually very expensive. i have no idea how local people can afford to travel in china...) you get access to like 18 different mini museums and to the city walls. to climb the bell tower at city center it's just another 5rmb. probably the best 5rmb i've ever spent, honestly.

"surrounded by one of china's few intact ming city walls, pingyao's streets are lined with a wealth of traditional chinese buildings, including couryard houses, temples, and more than 3,000 historic shops."

"pingyao's treasure trove of ming and qing architecture is a legacy of the town's affluent days as a banking center, which ceased when the qing dynasty defaulted on loans and abdicated, leaving the banks empty. the transferal of the country's finances to shnaghai and hong kong turned the city into a backwater, saving it from development and, ultimately, preserving its character."

"the 39-ft high, crenelated enclosure dating from 1370 is said to resemble the outline of a tortoise. its head lies at the south fate, its four feet at the east and west gates, and its tail at the north gate."

 

the walls are "more than 6km in circumference... punctuated by 72 watchtowers (lonely planet)" "every 164 ft (50m)."

 

i walked about half of the wall. not every gate has access, and of course i'd already visited (at some point or another) all of them by the time by the time i decided to get up there. did the math later and i was out for about 9 hours that day. cut a couple hours for breaks (no meals), and i probably walked 7 hours? multiply that by three (3.1 being the average miles per hour walking) and you get 21. i walked like 20 miles on saturday alone. sheesh. for a person who pretty much hates exercise and doesn't do it when i can get away with it, i sure can bang it out while on vacation!

(quotations from dk eyewitness travel guide except where noted)