A Simple Story

These days everyone and their moms claim to be "interested in photography" on their resumes, and have all the fancy equipment and SLR cameras. I don't recall interest in photography being such a ubiquitous thing before -- perhaps the transition from film to digital has made photography more accessible since you don't have to pay for having the film developed or have to do it yourself in a dark room. Anyway, having a super shallow depth of field and cranking up the contrast on your computer, or Adobe Lightroom-ing a photo to make it all yellowy and vintagey-looking, seem to be what pass as good photography nowadays, at least on blogs (and no, I'm not saying mine are any better). It bugs me that it's a formula for creating aesthetically pleasing pictures and that's what everyone (but not literally everyone) does Where's the creativity? I just think it leaves something to be desired.

So much has happened in the last few months, and I guess we got lazy.. well really lazy in updating our blog. In D’s defense, she’s in law school, and in my defense.. well I guess I don’t have an excuse..

I’ve been on the move again for a new job but hopefully this is the last time in a while (unless I get laid-off..haha). I looked back and realized that I’ve moved five times from city to city in 2008, and now I’m ready to stay put, at least for a little bit.　

I moved out here to Shanghai a week and a half ago and just started my second week at work. I cannot say I have much of an opinion on this city yet since I’ve pretty much just stayed within the distance of work and home. Not having much of a work-life balance means all I want to do after work is fall asleep. Though yesterday I did get off early (around 7:00pm) and realized I have no idea what I should do with my time. Not sure where this post is going but.. I’ll write something more meaningful next time and hopefully posts some pictures of Shanghai (meaning I’ve actually ventured out of my area!).

Oh! It’s Chinese New Year in two weeks and a rush of people with boxes of decorations just came into the office, now they’re on ladders and such making our office red and gold J

Being a girl who's lived in Los Angeles for 7 years, you'd think I'd be immune to traffic.

Beijing is definitely the Asian reciprocal of LA, I've once again taken rush hour traffic into account as I plan my daily schedule. I'm not looking forward to when they take off the odd-even license plate system (which is going to be September 20, the end of the para-Olympics). Cars have gotten increasingly cheap that people just buy a second car to go around the inconvenience cause by the regulation. With the influx of households with 1+ cars, I can't imagine the amount of traffic on the street after the 20th. At least here I wouldn't be the one driving. Maybe with more cars on the road, my taxi drivers won't be able to drive like maniacs on the streets, then I can finally arrive home at the end of each day without headaches.

Apparently one of the main reasons Jamaicans have been winning a lot of the sprints is because of this fast-twitch muscle they were blessed with.

From the Slate: Jamaican Me Speedy

I'm living in Brooklyn for a week until I leave town. I moved my stuff here pretty early this morning and was really beat so I plopped down on the bed right away to nap. It has got to be the most pleasant couple of hours I've spent in NY. I could actually see the sky and there was sunlight coming into the room. I could hear birds chirping instead of the traffic. There's even a tree outside my window with what appear to be fuzzy green balls growing on it =P

I'm really glad S and I started this blog, it feels like we're creating something together that hopefully will still be around after some time.

So I have much less blogging experience than S, and am not a particularly good or conscientious writer either. I'm actually making a conscious effort right now not to write in sentence fragments or have comma splices or use smiley faces or "haha" as punctuation. I guess it feels like, as S said, we're publishing something that everyone can read, so I'm trying to hold myself to a higher standard. Of course, whether this post will be read by more than one person is an entirely different story.

The idea of blogging is a little foreign to me. On blogs people seem to write about everything and nothing; when I talk about those nothings in real life it seems so trivial, so why would I even put it down in writing? Anyway, with any luck this will lead me to think more deeply and talk more coherently about things and have something worth writing about.

My best friend, D, and I are constantly located on opposite ends of either the country or world. Though physically miles apart, words --typed and spoken-- always bring us back together at the end of the day.

It's kind of exciting to share some of those words with the rest with the world. That's what so great about blogging, someone can become an author and write about everything and anything, without pressures from publishers or anyone about content, etc, for the world to read. Well, if someone chooses to read. :)