Grateful for green thumbs

Who needs paint when you've got plants?

Imagine no bridge at all

Dongzhimen Bridge on a rather rainy,

pre-holiday *&* typical Friday evening rush-hour jam

Home-sweet-home on the left

http://ss14.sinaimg.cn/orignal/6449d57949071b982789d&690

No helmets! Yay?

In front of the Canadian embassy at Dongzhimen-wai Road.
Note: I was on a similar bendy-bus when taking this shot.

Motorcycles with sidecars are all the rage with expats in Beijing. You'd be hard-pressed not to see at least one while out the streets in the embassy district of Sanlitun, night or day. Helmets are optional for drivers and their passengers. Of the 74,000 road deaths in China last year, one wonders how many of those needlessly died young.

Stormy day

11:30 am in Beijing

The distant thunder woke me up a few hours before the storm really set in. Sharp cracks of thunder and giant lightning bolts - one after another. Will have to read up on how to catch the lightning on camera. Needless to say, there were several periods of intense downpours of rain - during the one above, the skies were so dark it was like nighttime.

Snowy day in Beijing

From the rooftop

Out of the bedroom window

Out of another bedroom window

Down on the ground

Somwhere in between all this...

... is my new flat.

The Canadian Embassy
a kilometre away

The massive, new PetroChina headquarters
across the street

Nanguan Park
around the corner

A giant SWAT truck
on the other corner

The Russian Embassy
at the end of the street