through the looking glass

first blocked in china, now overwhelmed with comment spam. sigh.

fortunetely, a miraculous event nine months in coming finally materialized a few days ago. no, I wasn’t pregnant. I GOT MY CHINESE DRIVER”S LICENSE! Yes ladies and gentlemen, I am at long last legally entitled to operate a motor vehicle on this side of the planet. and to top it off I was actually allowed behind the wheel for a while, the director wanted to see my driving in action and handed over his keys. needless to say, in an officer’s car with him in the passenger seat I wasn’t exactly a nascar contender (and I do think nascar would be the appropriate analogy for driving in china rather than my preferred indy). but who cares, I got to drive.

I’ll try to get my act in gear and post a pic of the little piece of paper in its pretty black plastic case (provided), which I find particularly amusing since some trick of the lens has my head looking entirely too big for my body in the attached picture. apparently bad license pictures are a global phenomenon. but right now I’m running around asking just about everyone I meet on the street if they know where I can pick up a used car. any used car.

if I strike gold I’ll take some time to check out the mechanicals and do some maintenance, then I’ll be heading west towards the high end of gansu and, if all goes well, on into xinjiang. keep your fingers crossed for me : )

well it seems blogsome has been added to the blocked list. who knows how long this will last. sigh. kind of ironic, really, but there you go.

new photos are up. it might take me a while to update this site with actual images, but for those of you who can see this, just go to imageevent for the latest pics ::
gannan trip
fuxi festival opening ceremony
more home base (begins with my birthday walk at the bottom, continues with the end of winter, beginning of spring, through to the cool animals that have been hangin round my neighborhood of late and the cool lady I should have photographed long ago)

still on the hunt for a beijing jeep. turns out cars ‘expire’ after about 15 years. got to give em back, though to whom is anyone’s guess. so my long standing tradition of getting beater cars for next to nothing might be a bit stalled on this side of the planet.