I am sitting in the Yahoo Internet cafe in Narita Airport right now. The internet is free here and you get to sit however long you wish (maybe) in front of a 12″ monitor and a Japanese keyboard.

After 4 days of being ill from consuming foul seafood at a Beijing shabu shabu joint, I was able to get on the plane for New York at 8am this morning. It was a rough morning after I said goodbye to my dad. Then that Jay Chou stepped on my foot in the Beijing airport terminal train. He said sorry and I gave him a mean stare.

I am still a little ill and definitely went for the barf bag after reaching altitude of 30000 feet. I went for the barf bag in the bathroom, after meals were served, and after the man next to me finished his meal so I wouldn’t have to bother him to get out for the bathroom during his meal. I am glad it was an easy flight because I think I was in there for a long time…

With my 7 hour layover in Tokyo, I decided to go into Narita. Coincidentally, the drum(?) matsuri was in session. Pretty cool… I suppose Narita is worth a visit if you have a 6 hour layover and don’t want to go into Tokyo. It is a really small town but it is only 1 stop away from the airport. There is this one big temple there, some traditional crafts stores, pickled vegetables, a grocery store, a drugstore and many eel restaurants. Oh, and there was a takoyaki place right outside of the Keisei Narita station if you want your fix.

Photos to come… I am heading back to New York now.

Visited Central Academy of Fine Arts campus today. Shook hands and chatted with Lu Shengzhong, a pretty cool artist dude. I saw his stuff at the V&A Museum for the first time last year in London and was pretty blown away by it… so it kinda felt like I was meeting with a celeb.

This is for the Isozaki-philes.

What happens when there are more than 365 things, places and etc to talk about in one day? In more than 360 degrees? Today, I visited 798, an artist/gallery community in the eastern part of Beijing for the first time. I am not going to talk about the site history, but it is really cool so you should really check it out. Anyway, it was interesting to see this so-called “avant garde” part of the Chinese and Beijing’s culture. There were some good and bad art, but the experience was really unique. The photo above is a busted steam pipe (?) on one of the streets in the community. I sat there and watched it for about 15 minutes… I wonder if someone fixed it eventually?

Mirror image/time machine.

This is the current progress at the CCTV site in Beijing. My brother lives around this area so I see this thing every time I visit Beijing.

This other one below is from almost exactly a year ago… This other one is from September 2006, nothing was visible above the construction site walls.

Beijing Zoo & the area around

Is the approximate total cost of racing pigeons I saw today.

Today, I visited a pigeon loft in the outskirts of west Beijing with my father. My father is pretty smart with racing homing pigeons, he is considered as one of the top 10 international pigeon experts in the industry. It is very possible that you will read about him in Pigeon Times one day. The first photo is my father holding a Belgium pigeon which the loft’s owner purchased for 300,000 euro. I think he is trying to say… “Wurrrd.”

From Ueno! Asian things places and etc this week. Stay tuned.

It has been a little while since the last ridiculous wrong number caller. Here is another one from this morning:

Call transcript from anonymous caller at 917-664-3xxx:

<Phone Rings>

Paula: “Hello?”

Caller: “Who is this? Somebody call me from this number? What business is this?”

P: “I am sorry, I didn’t call you from this phone.”

C: “Then why do I have your number on my phone?”

P: “I am sorry, I don’t know.”

C: “You F***ING IDIOT…”

<Caller hangs up phone>

P: “…”

Is there such thing as bad phone karma? What did I do to deserve verbal assaults over the phone? Why is everyone who calls my work phone so angry?

Hint: It has something to do with this.

Mom is in town so she is making me all kinds of food. These bug-eyed little guys went into my dumplings tonight.