Wimpy Photographer

Eilin is a wimp because she has no guts to ask strangers for permission to take photos, nor to blatantly whip her camera out and start snapping away.

So she either regrets sorely for missing great photo ops, or resorts to using her pathetic phone camera to sneak shots incognito.

What a loser.

Beijing, Beijing

I am misty-eyed and in love with Beijing.

Misty-eyed, not because I have to part with a Beijing boy, but because I had just braved dusty winds to walk on miles of the capital's sidewalks. Some say the particles in the winds are Gobi Desert sand, but I have a nagging feeling that they are in fact due to ubiquitous piles of dirt left by the roads for the let's-use-them-if-we-ever-decide-to-build-something-but-not-now construction, the same conclusion that I had drawn about Hanoi.

Never mind that.

And in love, because Beijing is like no other:

Where else in the world can an old man drive a tiny boxed-up scooter, bring a dozen songbirds in a dozen birdcages, hang them all up like artwork right by the palace wall, then leave to take a leak (right by the palace wall too) while an old lady stops to listen for a while?

Where else do they bundle up your book/CD/DVD purchases like packets of Chinese medicine?

Where else can you be with 17 million people and yet have an entire stretch of pavement all to yourself?

And Peking Duck. Need I say more?