Beautiful day for a Prelude

Christmas Eve was actually quite beautiful, which was unexpected considering the time of year. I hadn't been able to shoot some decent photos of my car up till then, so here is a few of what I managed to take. I hope to use these as a portfolio to possibly get some work taking photos for other people's cars. Whether that works out remains to be seen, but one can always try, and the beauty of photography is that there are many different subjects one may choose to capture.

Updates

So.... I got back from China a couple weeks ago, and have been busy updating my website as well as catching up with friends, selling items on ebay, and generally preparing for the next quarter in school. I'd love to hear what you think of the new site, so go check it out!

paulwhittaker.net

I Also bought a new macro lens for my camera, and have been playing with it a little bit. Here's a few photos as I peer into the world of miniature photography.

Where We Eat

We Have many places where we go find food around BeiBei, but one of my favorites would be what we affectionately call "Eat Street", a back alley with lots of vendors willing to cook all kinds of varieties of local cuisine. We take motorcycle taxi's there sometimes too, which can be a fun/scary experience at times.

Turkey Day - At the Marriott Hotel

For Thanksgiving we made it to the Marriot Hotel in Chongqing, and relished in an oustanding buffet of turkey and other delicious goodies. It was a wonderful change from Chinese food, and was definitely a Thanksgiving to remember.

Cheap Chinese Motorcycles

On the 14th we toured a Motorcycle production facility. It was interesting to see how the quality of a Chinese producer differs from a Japanese manufacturer; subpar is the word that comes to mind when looking at the quality of these motorcycles. But, they did look nice from a few feet away!

Southwest University

Here's a few photos of campus for your viewing pleasure.

Chengdu

Last weekend we visited the city of Chengdu, a 4 hour train ride West of Chongqing, our city. While there we went to the country's largest Panda reserve, and hunted down many a yummy Western restaurant. It's amazing how much you can appreciate a good burrito after you've been craving one for 2 months!

A Mountain Hike

It's 4:10 in the morning here, and I can't sleep. Good time to post some pics of a hike we took yesterday I think! There is a local mountain (about 900m tall we estimate) with a temple complex and pagoda at the top of it, and one of our teachers here suggested that we go hike up the mountain instead of having class. Gee, that's a tough decision!





























Oh, and here's two photos of the back of our dorm. There is a pre-school/kindergarten behind us, and they line all the kids up and play the national anthem and various other songs over and over every day.

Chongqing

Okay, here's some photos from ChongQing and BeiBei. People pulled out their umbrellas for about a week and a half, as we experienced weather surprisingly like Seattle.

Three Gorges

Here are some more images of the three gorges tour...