More Macro Of Uglyfuchsiaflowers, Courtesy Of My Mother's Garden.

More macro of ugly fuchsia flowers, courtesy of my mother's garden.

View in high-res please. 

I entered the church, without fear this time, for it was now my house too. I offered prayers to Christ, who is alive. Then I raced down the hill on the left and raced up the hill on the right—to offer thanks to Lord Krishna for having put Jesus of Nazareth, whose humanity I found so compelling, in my way.

-Life of Pi by Yann Martel

It turns out, Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst is similar to the way I imagined it — a vibrant, chaotic, anomalous neighborhood lined with Taiwanese bakeries and Italian pawn shops, where fierce Orthodox Jewish women drove strollers full of squirming Jewish babies down sidewalks cracked with dandelions. In a local park, I saw old Asian men tapping mah-jong tiles at one picnic table while old white men played chess at another. Once while I tried to cross the street, a young Latino in a silver sedan pulled up in front of me, rolled down the window and said something sweet and mildly offensive. Along 86th Street between avenues 18 and 23, fruit vendors took advantage of the rare summer weather to run haphazard stands halfway out their front doors onto the sidewalk while the D line thundered on elevated tracks above the bickering of barterers and beggars...

Sorry for the self-indulgent rambling, but I actually didn't take as many photos as I wanted to and I have a bad memory. 

In other news, I spent half my vacation reporting on the Illinois primaries, helping my editor who filled in the results while attending his grandfather's funeral. This inhumanity will be absolutely indicative of the quarter to come. 

Lastly, Etch-a-Sketch stocks have skyrocketed? Our nation is run by infants.  

Beijing Day 11: 森林公园

So my impression of China this visit has been unexpectantly positive. It's been the result of not only living more or less on my own but also speaking to medical professionals and social workers about issues currently facing the country.

For once, I'm seeking my own facts on the state of a society about which I'd previously only been informed through hearsay and speculations and international media analysis. It's a difference of consciously analyzing social infrastructure rather than passively experiencing.

On a semi-related note, I've found the more human interest stories I work on as a journalist, the more I'm truly convinced that my documentary adviser was right when he told my class "There's no such thing as 'bad guys.'" 

There's a lot to complain about in China but at least the people are complaining. And they're taking social change into their own hands and thinking with open minds, or rather those who know better are trying to educate the rest. 

Change is happening. It's slow in the making but it's inevitable.

Beijing Day 22: 前门 and 王府井

1. Ate everything

2. Got stalked by a crazy man who slowly pedaled after us on his bike for half a block while repeating a salacious verse  

3. Watched Alice step in poop

4. Wandered aimlessly around high end malls, soaking up the free air conditioning

5. Spent precious millimeters of personal space playing Dragon Fly on the subway at rush hour

This page was ironically censored by the PRC just as I tried to access it while disconnected from my school's VPN. Take a look. It's horrific.

The world's most censored country?

It’s not Iran, says the Committee to Protect Journalists. And it’s not North Korea. The world’s 10 most censored countries.