Arrived in Beijing
We landed safely in Beijing last night. The trip itself was long, but uneventful. I think door-to-door it was some 23 hours of traveling (getting to LAX, being 3 hours early for an international flight, a 2 hour layover, etc.), with 14 hours of flight time.
14 hours confined to a small portion of a small metal tube is a lot of time to do some self-discovery. For example, one thing I learned about myself is I have an amazing knack for picking really bad, really long movies. Finding most things related to espionage interesting, and, though I’m not sure I should publicly admit this, a fan of Matt Damon, I started with The Good Shepard. A good 90 minute movie, that unfortunately is 3 hours long. Ugh.
I followed that gem up with another one, Blood Diamond. Holy crap, DiCaprio, you suck. The whole time watching it, I could escape the feeling that DiCaprio had seen the response Don Cheadle got for Hotel Rwanda (a very good movie) and thought “Hey! I can be socially relevant too! I know, I’ll make a socially conscious movie about Africa too! This will be as good as joking with Al Gore at the Oscars!!” The only upshot to the move was DiCrapio dies in the eye. And no, I don’t feel bad if I just spoiled it for. I just did you a favor. I actually wonder how many people will now go out of their way to request conflict diamonds specifically to spite this movie.
That’s all for now. I’ll write about Beijing once I hook my camera up to my laptop.
June 24th, 2007 at 7:53 am
Won’t the great firewall limit your posting???
I think you should do a whole series about yourself in China. A 6′6″ Chicago-an in China or something.
June 24th, 2007 at 9:41 am
I am not sure how much time you have, but if you can get to the Panjiayuan market it is a blast! Just the spot to pick up some brand new “antiques” to give your apt at home that hip LA Buddhist vibe.
If you want to hire a local photographer to shoot with (I had a great time doing this), stop by the Da Kang photo shop in the market and tell that I sent you.