Part of the Collective Weel

I’ve been using Flickr for about a year now and I’m really quite pleased. I’ll quibble that they don’t show titles or descriptions when you view a slideshow, but aside from that it’s a wonderful platform from which to store and share my shots and sometimes, just sometimes, even people I don’t know wander into my small domain (protected under a free, Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License) and brighten my day with unexpected praise or sometimes something stranger.

Today is one of those days.

No, today was not a day when I discovered a porn maven had favorited pictures of my sisters and girlfriend (a true story, that person is now blocked from my account), and today was not a day that I found a shot posted up on a local Shanghai city-blog (also true)

Rather, it seems the shot I took here, at my grandparent’s house in Yarmouth Port, Cape Cod, was spotted by a contributor to Wikimedia Commons (his profile indicates age 31, from Israel) and used to illustrate an enyclopedia entry for flowering Bluemink (Ageratum Houstonianum). Lovely.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Ageratum_houstonianum_(alverson).jpg

In other news, I recently cleaned our 5-gallon water dispenser. I’ve heard horror stories about cloudy water and ensuing food poisoning. We weren’t quite at that phase but it seemed time after a year of use and, indeed, a strange film of orange substance had collected on the internal holding chamber. Naturally, I thought it would be exceedingly wise to doubly disinfect by flushing the system with a bit of alcohol. Tequila to be precise. See, not wanting to waste the spirits we actually drink, I chose to sacrifice our neglected bottle of José Cuervo Silver. Unfortunately, every glass of water since then has carried a hint of Mexico. ¡Qué lástima! Ah well, on the upside our coffee now has more of a kick.

Photo Footprints on Shanghaiist

Photos that made it into our favorite city-blog over the last few weeks:

Live-Electronica at musky Antidote C’s last Thursday. Photo #5:

http://www.shanghaiist.com/archives/2006/09/01/photos_antidote.php

A Stroll in Sim City, posted up by Shanghaiist to accompany a byline:

http://www.shanghaiist.com/archives/2006/08/15/extra_extra_52.php#comments

Same pic at my Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alverson/213900642/

Help Our Basil!

We’re being ravaged over here. Anyone know what these guys are:

Our solution, to be implemented tonight, is the following organic pesticide:

Garlic Insecticide
Pulverize in a blender a couple of whole cayenne peppers, a large onion and a whole bulb of garlic with a little water. Cover this mash with a gallon of water, let stand 24 hours and strain. Spray daily on roses, azaleas, and vegetables to kill an infestation of bugs. Don’t throw away the mash; bury it among the plants where insects occur.

And, for your optical pleasure, the world’s cutest Flickr set: Tiny Animals On Fingers

Wikimaps

Found a fun new mapping site called wikimapia. It makes blogging maps much easier than in the past, and users can contribute their own sites. Thought, I’d post a few arials of where wer live in Shanghai:

Update: Apparently this doesn’t work as I had hoped. Attached links now instead of actual pictures. Boo.

The city area we frequently travel: (My work location is on the upper right peninsula on the east side of the river; our flat’s neighborhood is near the park area – if you can distinguish that – towards the lower left)

Close-up of our neighborhood: (Xujiahui Park lower left; intersection near our house upper right)

Close-up of our building: (long whitish building to the south-west of the intersection at the center of this photo)

Guess the next step is to post actual pictures of the flat… getting there. Just installed some panoramic stitching software

Organic is Sexy

Hi Guys – Great to hear from so many of you recently. Sorry I’ve been out of touch. I’ve managed to let about fifty messages from friends and family pile up. I’ve devoted this whole weekend to catching up, aside, of course, from our newly habitual bike ride to O-Store – China’s only organic food store [pause for memories of WholeFoods]. And, since we were there, we also stopped by Shanghai’s Third Annual Adult Toy Expo… O!

Aside from not replying to you all, I’ve been busy with a lot of fun stuff. Have a gander at these ecclectic pics for a glimpse into my last few weeks. It’s hard to offer too much by way of explanation for these, but here it goes:

- Thanks to work, and a few recent “field visits”, I managed to procure (and temporarily enjoy) a firesuit. And a Chef’s hat. You know what that means around my household

- Thanks to Mom and Dad for sponsoring a tantalizing Birthday dinner. Fully my doing on the belated side but it took a while to gather the international troops and find the right restaurant. Our group was dazzled by the fabulous courses at Li Family’s Imperial Cuisine. The set menu consists of Empress Dowager Cixi’s favorite recipes memorized and smuggled out of her royal kitchens by one of her Generals. The public’s tastebuds have been thankful ever since 1985 when his descendant’s opened a restaurant following success at a PRC Iron Chef-esque national competition. Their new flagship restaurant was opened in Shanghai this May.

- Prep for Lou’s upcomining “café” venture at Shanghai’s 2nd largest kitchen kit supplier

- Every morning we wake up to chopping sounds emanating from behind our flat. It’s one of two downsides to our otherwise incredible 2nd floor flat – the other being roaches, but those are mostly under control since we engaged in small chemical arms race. I’m not quite sure what these women were doing but it looked like they were stuffing intenstines with other intestines. Mmmm. Their meat pail has a shiny hypnotic allure. Quite planely, their partner in gastronomic crime is ashing on his vegetables. We never eat there.

- Sexpo.

Other big news, I’ll be back in the US for a grand East Coast tour with Louise from about September 28 through October 10 (just after Columbus Day Weekend). No schedule yet, but wanted to let y’all know I’ll be coming ’round the mountain, and probably DC, NYC and Cape Cod too. Hope to see you all while I’m home.

All manner of umbrella holding

Hiya. Yangshuo photos are up here. Unfortunately, no photos from our river excursion or Buddha Water Cave. Need a second small digi for convenience. Fear for mama Canon in the rain. Though, David has a few good ones that he’ll post when he gets back to London.

Off to deliver a bike to Ms. K at xiao long bao next door. A seven on the cicada index today. Melty.

Priit and Lamiaa’s housewarming tonight.

Need new flip flops.