A Tibetan Lake 

Potala Palace 

Josh took these pictures during his trip to Tibet. Tibet, I am coming soon! 

China Scene

Josh Blumenstock found the text below on China Daily under a section named China Scene. It's almost the Chinese version of The Onion. Only that these are all supposedly based on facts.

Drunkard drinks boiling water: A drunk man in Nanjing drank boiling water directly from a thermos bottle and seriously injured his throat, neck and chest, reports Yangtze Evening News. The man surnamed Liu, 35, likes drinking spirits very much and is always getting drunk, according to his wife. Liu had a gathering with several of his friends and got drunk again one night last month. When he returned home, he shouted that he was very thirsty. Before his wife could offer him water, Liu took the thermos and started drinking from it.


Spitting blood after meeting pretty woman: A young man was so excited at his Internet lover's pretty looks, that he spat out blood on the spot, reports Information Times Daily. Fang is a university student in Anhui. He got to know the Internet girlfriend, who is living in Guangzhou, about two years ago. After Fang received the girl's picture, he was captivated by the girl's good looks, and decided to meet her in Guangzhou. When meeting the girl face to face, Fang found her real figure is much more beautiful than that in the picture, and he was so excited that he fell into a faint for nine hours after spitting blood.

Internet game venture turns deadly: A man in Qingdao, Shandong Province, collapsed in front of his computer after playing Internet games constantly for four days without sufficient food and sleep, reports Qingdao Morning Post. The 28-year-old man loved playing computer games, but his wife always complained. During the week-long May Day holiday, his wife went back to her hometown. Without any constraint, the man started playing games from the evening of May 2. In the next five days, he didn't go outside and only slept 11 hours. His only food intake during that time was seven bags of instant noodles and bread. On the morning of the 7th, he fainted before his computer. Fortunately, his wife went back home shortly afterwards and sent him to hospital immediately. The man said he would never play computer games again.

Free meals are not so tasty: A man managed to get into jail by committing robbery in order to get free meals, but was then disappointed to find the meals were not as delicious as he had expected and felt sorry, reports Information Times&

Break up after wife hides food: An elderly man from Xinzheng, Henan Province, complained his wife often locked up their food and left him hungry, which caused him to ask for a divorce, reports Zhengzhou Evening News&

Pick-up rushes into lane pursuing stolen chicken: A pick-up rushed into a narrow lane in Shanghai causing a bicyclist who took a chicken that had fallen from the car, reports Xinmin Evening News. The driver sounded his horn to urge the man to return the chicken last Friday morning, but was ignored. The angry driver then followed the man into a narrow lane, where the pick-up almost his pedestrians. The driver finally ran down the cyclist, crushing the bicycle's rear wheels. Police then arrived to resolve the issue.

Dogs are truly man's best friend: Two dogs are helping their master, a disabled beggar in Wuhan, Hubei Province, by pulling him around on a trolley, reports Chutian Metropolis News. Zhou Wangfa has been unable to walk for the past 10 years, and he began begging after his financial situation sharply deteriorated two years ago. "The dogs are like my children, I raised them since they were very little," Zhou said, "When we get some food, I will let them eat first."

Mixed classes help students, study shows: Girls and boys sitting together in the classroom has proven to be beneficial to academic progress, according to a trial project at Beijing's No 171 Middle School, Beijing Youth Daily reports. Parents and teachers of middle school students in China forbid dating, which is thought to affect students' academic performance. (note: this is true) But Zhang Lin, a teacher who conducted the pilot project in her class, began arranging mixed seating for boys and girls at the same table and found that the arrangement has helped them make great progress in their studies and other fields.

Twilight years spent online: A computer has allowed an elderly woman in Beijing to make her life easier thanks to online services, reports Beijing Daily. Meng Wenjie, 71, a retired teacher of the Gucheng Middle School in Shijingshan District, began to feel lonely after her three daughters got married. A couple of years ago, one of the daughters bought her a computer - and Meng was hooked. But she spends so much time chatting online and surfing the Internet that it has upset her husband, who says Meng neglects the housework. However, the online services have made their lives easier, since Meng often shops on the Web.


Student flees through window to Net cafe A 15-year old boy who was so obsessed with the Internet fled home last Wednesday through a window to go to an Internet cafe, reports Yangtze Evening News. The boy cut his bed sheet into pieces and escaped with the rope made from the sheets. But he fell from the second floor, waking his neighbors who called the police. The boy was finally found in an Internet cafe the next morning.


Arm-wrestling ends in broken bones Two young men in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province, suffered broken bones when an arm-wrestling match went wrong, reports Information Times Daily. Song and He are two giants in their factory. Song challenged He one day to a match. But victory hung in the balance after three rounds. When the fourth round started for only two seconds, Song's right arm lost strength suddenly, and could not move. At the same time He was sent to hospital immediately, and was diagnosed as having fractured his arm.

Man walks around with knife in windpipe A man has had a knife removed from his trachea after living with it for eight months, reports Tianfu Morning Post. The 36-year-old, Mao Qiang, swallowed an 8-centimeter long, 1.6-centimetre wide knife to evade police checks when he was found taking drugs while being detained at a police station ins Chengdu, Sichuan Pprovince. Doctors who removed the knife said it could have killed Mao at anytime.

Star Rated Toilet 

How succinct the Chinese language is. 

Long Long Day

Everyday's encounter keeps reminding me how different people are in this world. It is commonplace for us to assume, or at least hope, that people function in similar ways as we do. I am not exactly sure if it is genetics or different environments in which people are brought up that shape people's personalities and help them to form their own ways of seeing the world and handling day to day chores. The world presents us with multifarious characters, who make our every day life interesting and every encounter full of excitement, less mundane.

Nevertheless, the apparent disparity can be quickly drawn from the short paragraph above. Expectations sometimes derail us from otherwise simple tasks. When we expect others to behave in one way and the reality is that they're more likely to be different, we get often times frustrated at the expectations failed.

I see two solutions to this problem. One, we expect differently. Two, we stop expecting. You might expect we humans to learn from past failure and quickly adapt our expectations to the real-world case. Quickly though, I predict this solution to fail simply at the challenge of the daunting task of getting to know a person in his entirety. We usually only know people at their face values for lack of sensory faculties to see beyond. And the fact that we don't usually know other people renders our expectations more likely to bifurcate from the reality. The natural evolvement of such failure is, without any doubt, the shear frustration that is so strong that we give up expecting at all, i.e. solution 2!

If we know that is where we will end up with, why do not we begin with it and avoid all the hassels? Well, in real life cases, I don't object to the idea of a small mixture of both where there are definitely people we know inside out and can feel comfortable wage our expectations with. For the rest, please be advised that you're better off simply let it be and stop want/make it be.