Could they make it any more difficult

So I have moved into my new place and I want to get a parking pass for my neighborhood, how does one do this?

Well the district is generous enough to give me a 15 day parking pass while i get things in order, so lets see how this works.

How to get your Vehicle Registration and Inspection

1. A District license or non-driver ID is required to register a vehicle in the District of Columbia.

District law requires that you obtain a District of Columbia license prior to registering a vehicle. Both License and registration transactions can be done in one visit if you have all the necessary paperwork to complete both transactions. This is great.

Get a DC license

1. Proof of identity, proof of social security and proof of residency are required to obtain a driver license or non-driver identification. For licenses, we also require proof of ability to drive. Sounds easy enough, I am well on my way.

2.DMV must receive the vehicle title to register your vehicle in the District. Now I have a lien on my car so I fax to my bank the request for the lien to be sent to the DMV, it takes 7 days for the bank to send over the paper work (7 days – 15 = 8 days to come in, its not so bad I have 8 to go and register my car…I can do that.

3. The District requires vehicle inspection prior to registration. (Hmm, this is a small kink, but I have 8 days, it should be cool) All vehicles registered in the District must have a valid DC inspection sticker. Valid inspection stickers from other jurisdictions are not accepted. Click here to make an inspection appointment online. You can use your current out-of-state tags to take your vehicle through inspection. Well that is nice they have you make an appointment so you don’t have to wait 2 hours to get your car inspected. …. Clicking here…. Uhmm September 16th is the earliest inspection avaliable….mayday mayday I think we have a problem.

4. Your vehicle must be insured prior to vehicle registration. You must maintain continuous insurance on your vehicle for as long as it is registered in the District. The proof of insurance document must contain valid coverage dates, the VIN of the vehicle and your District address. Well that also takes about 7 days to have the new insurance sent with my new address.

I suppose it is all just one big silly riddle… or DC needs to do better math. I have 15 days to do what takes no less than 23 given you can’t pass go without your title being faxed to the DMV and you can’t park unless you have passed the finish line. Ahh our government at it’s finest.

transforming furniture

Alright school has started and I am in my new place so lots to do. One of the many things that is on my list of things to do is to finish/start building my couch, I decided to build my couch so that a) it fits in the space perfectly and b) I am not spending more than $100 on a 8′x8′ L shaped couch. Along the way I have been checking out web sites that are all about space saving and DIY projects. Upon one of my many searches I came across this video of an amazing company out of Italy, it is by no means a DIY video, but man is it awesome.

Check out the video of furniture inspired by the transformer movie.

As for my apt. I will post pics as soon as I am done with all my projects.

My new digs

So after a very stressful search and a short biding war I finally found my new place to call home. It is an entirely new area, one which Jess (my old housemate) and I don’t really know but are very excited to explore. Unlike our old neighborhood which was loud and full of bars our new neighborhood is calm and while still full of shops, restaurants and bars there is a decidedly more neighborhood feel to it…I might even start riding my bike again, something I would never have done in our old hood for fear of being run over. Well words are great but I thought pictures would be better.

This is the weekend market that is two blocks away

This is our street

more of the market, this is the year round portion of it

This is our building, we have the lower level

the living room

the kitchen

my bed room, it's just a tad bigger than than the 12x7 room I had before

Oh, I should note that the stuff in the room is not mine, it is the tenants that had been living there.

SO that is it, one more week and my three months of living out of two suitcases will be over! Well actually as soon as I move in I am leaving for PDX and then coming back to work for one day, then going to upstate NY, then coming back only to go on a white water rafting trip for three days. But hay I will have two days where I can hang clothes in my own closet and sleep in my own bed (if I get it out of storage).

Back in the states and bouncing around

Well I am back in the states and it has been a whirlwind since I have gotten back. After a grueling 13hr flight I was ushered onto another airplane only to sit on the tarmac for an hour before the pilot admitted the computer did not work and so we went back to the terminal, waited 40 min got on another one, waited 40 min for the weather to clear and then I was off for my final destination of my friends couch. Thus was the beginning of a week that kicked my butt, wrapped me around a pole and left me realing.

I know you probably want to hear abut my time in China but I just don’t have it in me to explain it all just yet, thus my explanation for the start of my week.

But I will tell you that I had an amazing time and had tried to stay longer, but there were literally no tickets available during the time that I would have needed to come back.  So I promise there will be lots of pictures and stories later, but for now I will have to say good bye.

Hi from China

I arrived in Beijing a little over 24 hours ago and this is the first time that the internet would let me log onto my Blog, so it looks like my posting may be as random as the internet is here.

Well I have settled in to my place. it is actually fairly nice but most would not like the beds (one step up form the floor) but I am not minding the hardness, in fact I might even like the stiffness. Other than that the room is like any typical dorm, the one difference from a dorm in the states is that there is made service that brings us hot water thermos for tea and new towels, not bad.

My official classes start today, but we had a three-hour orientation class with the director yesterday, he is from Beijing but has lived in the US for a long time, this comes through in his candidness He is extremely personable and does not have the academic air about him that some of the older professors have in China, in fact he may be more laid back than most of my AU professors. We are studying China’s Nationalism today, and since I am the only one who is not Asia studies which means that even while reading the book he assigned I lack the historical knowledge to really grasp the issue well, so I think I will let the rest of the class lead in the discussion, I will just listen and learn.

Oh, one down side is I caught the dreaded airplane sore throat sickness, but I got some strange Chinese medicine so all will be good;)

Well I am not much for words at 6 in the morning so I am just going to show the very few pictures I took of cool buildings and funny things while out in the town yesterday.

This is a lake on campus.

I don’t know what SOHO really stands for over here but I would say it stands for pure awesomeness, these  types of cray buildings are everywhere and they all say SOHO.

Do you see the bus in the picture, the scale of this strange outdoor pavilion thing was something else. There were several structures that reminded me of a sifi move were people built structures that looked a little odd and then later you find out that they are actually built to help aid in an alien invasion, that is what this structure reminded me of.

Apparently there is a real problem with brass bands making too much noise in the neighborhood.

Well that is it for now, got to go read more for class.

lowering and rising of the sun

As the days fade out, night snubbing the sun down into the horizon I begin  to get excited, for as the sun is fading on me now it will be rising on me in the following weeks.

7 More days

Well sometimes when you say or write something you are just begging for it to come true. I need to remember this as I write in this blog. To explain since the last post I have had a veritable of ups and downs almost perfectly mirroring the story I told.

1. get PERFECT internship in Beijing

2. miss final exam because the time has been changed and you don’t know it

3. Go to the “green” awards, listen to President Clinton (he’s there, in all his glory), get offered another job in Beijing

4. Go home to check out the second job offering….computer dies…big question mark comes up on screen

5. Have a good day at work, get connected through a customer to some expats living in Beijing

6. Boyfriend walks by work sees you chatting it up with said customer (a really hot guy, but really gay), possible sees the email exchange..not happy

7. Take exam, maybe a A maybe a A-….the word clinamen was one of the deffinitions (Latin name Lucretius gave to the unpredictable swerve of atoms, in the atomistic doctrine of Epicurus.)…did not get that one, mind you this was a economics exam

8.  Get computer fixed

9. Now having less than favorable reaction to Typhoid Vaccine, dont think I am going to be able to do any of the thousand errands I need to do

10. Sitting at the table feeling sick as a dog, get an email from new internship, work is EXACT replica of my thesis. Might stay in Beijing for whole summer:)

So the ups and downs in life have made me cry and laugh all in the same day several times in the past few days and all I keep on saying to myself is “bring it on” it is almost getting to be comical.

And on that note I am going to lay down because my stomach is starting to be less and less agreeable with me.

Orientation Towards Life

there is an old chinese story that is meant to explains life in a most beautiful and simplistic way and as I am struggling finish up this month I am finding myself constantly thinking of it to keep my focus. Thus I would like to share it for perhaps it may bring some solace to you as it has to me.

The story goes as such: There is an old farmer who’s old horse ran away. Knowing that the horse was the mainstay of his livelihood, his neighbors came to commiserate with him. “Who knows wat’s bad or good?” said the old man, refusing their sympathy. And indeed, a few days later his horse returned, brining with it a wild horse. The old man’s friends came to congratulate him. Rejecting their congratulations, the old man said “who knows what’s bad or good?” And, as it happened, a few days later when the old man’s son was attempting to ride the wild horse, he was thrown from it and his leg was broken. The friends came to express their sadness about the son’s misfortune. “Who knows what’s bad or good?” said the old man. A few weeks passed, and the army came to the village to conscript all the able-bodied men to fight a war against the neighboring province, but the old man’s son was not fit to serve and was spared.

This story goes on as long as a person patience permits. The fundamentals of this story expresses that the world is constantly changing and full of contradictions, that there exist in a event a positive and a negative. So next time there is a moment that seems to be breaking you or brining you bliss remember the old man and his wisdom and perhaps life will seem a little more manageable and the chaos will seem a little more predictable.

Best Wishes

A

Life is Hard

Now I know that everyone that follows my blog lives in or is from the west North and South and therefore you might not understand how hard it is in East. I mean I went to my friends Bev and Keith’s farm this week and it was so hard deciding what I wanted to do and what views I wanted to have.

So as you can see the east coast is a tough place to be.

No, for all it’s beauty it still is hard not comparing the east cost mountains to that of the West, the mountain in the foreground is actually one of the taller ones in the whole state of Virgina

A few remarks from great environmentalist of our time

I read a lot of amazing and in many cases heavy books and typically I would not want to bombard you all with the somewhat depressing facts that these books typically shower me with. But this weeks reading is somewhat lighter and has a few quotations that I would like to share.

The first one is a bit out of character for me to be readings as it has some religious undertones and well I am not a big fan of such things but I am my mothers child and this quote comes from Oren Lyons faith keeper of the Onondaga Nation he is addressing the United Nations ” I do not see a delegation for the four-footed. I see no seat for the eagles. We forget and we consider ourselves superior, but we are after all a mere part of the creation. And we  must continue to understand where we are. And we stand between a mountain and the ant, somewhere and there only, as part and parcel of the Creation. It is our responsibility since we have been given the minds to take care of these things.”

“we see fulfillment but settle for abundance. Prisoners of plenty, we have the freedom to consume instead of the freedom to find our place in the world”  Hamilton

This next one just makes me sad, but is also something that we have the power to change by our behaviors and reliving pressures on our youth by setting boundaries and showing them what we once knew, which is that so many wonderful things in life are based on human interactions not goods and commodities. ” [T]he average American child in the 1980s reported greater anxiety than the average child receiving psychiatric treatment in the 1950s. There is  [also] a decreasing level of social connectedness in society, as evidenced by declining levels of trust in other people and in the governmental institutions. because trust is important predictor of societal stability and quality of life, the decreases are of considerable concern.”  Dienert and Seligman

This next one was written in 2003 by William Greider, but it early ring true today ” if an activist President set out with good intentions to rewrite the engine of capitalism to alter its operating values or reorganize the terms for employment and investment or tamper with other important features the initiative would very likely be chewed to pieces by the politics. Given the standard legislative habits of modern government, not to mention its close attachments to the powerful interest defending the status quo, the results would be marginal adjustments at best and might even make things worse”

This one makes me almost laugh, as you could pretty much write this about the politics in DC right now any day of the week. It is amazing the ploys and sabotaging that is occurring write now to stall out on voting on just about anything that threatens the “same old same old” mentality. Things like  Senator Graham (Rep) stalling on the announcement of the final climate bill because he was not happy about the politics of another bill (immigration). This is not an isolated event but given that I just sat down at a REP (Republican environmental Policy) dinner last Tuesday and listened to him give a 30min speech on how important this bill was to him and that it is a disappointment to him that not more republicans were backing the bill. I can help think that it is true that President Obama will be able to get little done so long as we sit complacent allowing “standard legislative habits” to be acceptable.

Ok enough of that and I realized that to those of you reading this you might not see any of the above quote as light, but from my perspective they all point out behavioral issues and as we have proven as a society our behavior is easily augmented..it is just a matter of finding the golden key to change our behavior as a conglomerate. And this my friends is a much lighter prospect than most of my reading.