Odds and Ends

Mulberries growing outside a cafe. Sweet, tart, slightly hairy.

This texture-rich corner is by a wall just under the Thai Embassy (with no apparent entrance).
I remember distinctly, maddened with a desire for green curry, considering scaling the wall
in order to ask people who would /surely know/ where to find such a delicacy in Xiamen.

In the wintertime, hulu bingtang, or gourd-shaped candied-coated fresh fruit on a stick,
is for sale on most streets. Here you see a bouquet of hawthorn and strawberry treats.

Mmm, fractals for breakfast! Fractal bractal broccoliflower.
Reminds me of a joke: What do you call a flying dinosaur with 2.8 dimensionality?
A fractal pterodactyl. Or as I prefer: a pterofractal.

Vegetarian breakfast with 2.8 dimensionality.

Finally, I can buccaly ravage a magnificent sea of spirals.

Guard cat and guard dog curl up together at the edge of the sea boardwalk.

I've been holding out on this, not sure if you would want this image in your brain-pan.
But I decided to let it haunt you. Mitch has knowingly eaten dog meat off a menu.
To the best of my knowledge, I have not partaken of the (somewhat unpopular) item.
Here, two de-haired paws stick out of a bag in the front of a Sichuan restaurant.

Here's something else you probably didn't want to see, but I just had to show you
how I appeared after a week of successive suction cupping treatment for my back pain.
Because... I match the shower curtains! And also, in case you were into tentacle pr0n.

Big black and blue bee doing a strange backwards spiral dance on the sidewalk.

The school talent show concluded with an elegant ballet number.

Ballet dancers in front of flower bowers.

Dancers undulate in a soft coral formation.

The view from my bedroom window in my apartment on Yingcai campus.
This is part of the reason I don't live here, rather finding it worth the hour commute to Baicheng.

Please compare with the view from my bedroom window at the Baicheng apartment.

The view from the balcony, a gauzy sunset over the placid South China Sea.

Crystal bauble light fixture at the cafe near the mulberry tree.

If life is a bowl of fish, why is this the flakes?

It was a crowded few days for the bowlfish, until the pregnant guppies moved away
and the finny black one was offed by the foppish ladyboy with the attitude problem.

Kong xin cai-- Empty Heart Vegetable, so named for its hollow stems.

This is why I didn't give you my home address for mail delivery... not exactly trustworthy.
As I live in apartment #404, I'd hate for you to try and reach my address just to get 404ed.

Nightscape in the Hubin area with a full moon on the rise.

City chromospectroscopy across the surface of the saltwater lake fed by the ocean.

You know that building I like to photograph at night? Here it is again,
with "The Plaid Thing on the Hill" behind it, as my childhood writing teacher calls it.
(It's the building that looks like a giant golfball on an oversized tee).

Mmmrrr. Mmmrrrrrrr! Flthrrrrrthrrr!! That will be all.

The most important part of my experience here, my lights, my loves, brilliantly shiny people I'm blessed to know.
Front to back, left to right: Stephanie, Jamie, Daniel, Stella, Annie, Catherine, Sophie, Jack,
Mr. Gao, Shelly, Cindy, Cherry trying to hide, me, Johnny, Davis, Lewis behind Alan, Paul, and Mitch.
<3