No new photos? None. Unless you check my Instagram stream, where the photo-curation has a lot to be desired.
I bothered to blog today since it is the second day of the lunar new year, and feet don’t like the outside today. Also, it is oddly warm in this city this week, that the Spring Festival season actually lives up to its name. Last year, there was snowfall.
So, what is up with me?
Panic ensued the last quarter of last year, because of an employment situation where I might need to go home. This was the second predicament of this sort since my second tenure here in Shanghai. Things self-resolved, I’m back on a payroll. Lots of compromises here and there, but all necessary.
December marked another year lived, and I took a weekend break and made my way to Hangzhou, which is comparable to the reputation Baguio has (had?). I tried to take photos with a proper camera, though I think should’ve just settled with a phone.
Oh, and the birthday selfie:
Hangzhou was bike heaven, and they had a well-renowned public bicycle system that I wanted to get into, but time, the language barrier, and an immense lack of planning for the entire trip, wasn’t on my side. I did like the solitary train rides to and fro, and disliked that my pagoda ‘climb’ (note escalator on photo) proved that my acrophobia still exists, which is now further taken into account whenever I do my laundry.
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My new apartment is now in a more convenient location -no more 10 minute walk to get to a bus stop- and is a two room settlement I am sharing with another Pinoy who works in the same office. I preferred high-rises, I exclaimed when we were house-hunting, and I got that part of my requirement, but the room I’m in now is probably the smallest room I have lived in around ehre, with the upside being there’s less space to clean. We’re on the 19th floor, and the laundry area is only separated from a great fall by a 3-foot tall balcony wall.
Yesterday, after I aborted from a temple shoot I wanted to repeat from last year, and was walking to our building, there were about half-a-dozen people looking curiously at the facade of another building around our community: two apartments, about 3 floors apart, appeared to have figured in a fire. There were covered in black soot, and I can only assume some fireworks might have lit the place up, with hanging laundry to further spread it.
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Homebound in a week, I have a paltry three days to shove familiar food in my mouth, and enjoy the fact that I will be spending time with my mother (who lives in the US), my sister (who lives in Canada), and a new nephew I have not met yet. One major aim in this reunion is to shoot a proper collective portrait, and this justified a tripod purchase the other week. See, we did have one taken a few years ago, when my father was still with us, and my other brother and his family were still back in the Philippines, but they were just casual snapshots. Maybe this time, we should come up with something to hang on a wall.
PS
THIS BLOG IS 9 YEARS OLD.