A Great Fortification Of Inconvenience

So, my day has been quite fun. I've spent a good half workday trying to figure out how to put pictures on this blog, because of an error in accessing this site from China. No, it doesn't keep me from the blogs, or facebooks, reading them, or writing in them. Just the pictures. I feel like instead of the Great wall, it should be called the Great Inconvenience. 

Despite all the effort put into stopping social media access and only being successful in confusing picture software, I think I still found away to get past it the moment I changed my thought process from make-this-work-darn-you to guess-I-need-something-else. 

So, here are the links to the first Of Place article, holding pictures of the apartment I'm staying and showing off a few funny objects I've found.

Introduction

Chances are you found this blog through the Facebook link. Therefore, you probably know me, what this blog is about, and why I am doing it.

So, now to introduce this blog, what it's about and why I am doing it. Being roughly 6,438 miles* away from family and old friends, there will be some problems with keeping in touch. I'm not sure why, though. After not talking to family at home, you'd think not talking to them abroad would hardly be a change of pace. Expected even. Nevertheless, here is a blog where I can keep people more informed of how things are going.

*And if you correct this figure, that's because it's hard to load Google here.

At first, I was merely going to use my much neglected Facebook to post updates, but then I clicked on the Get Timeline button under the mistaken impression that newer things are better things. Instead, it was like I stepped on to a user interface designed for the people in Picasso paintings, only even more visually confusing. So, I'm using blogger, which will give me more control over the presentation, and no garbling mess of blue boxes attached to a rope.

This blog will generally have three kinds of articles:

1. Of Place
2. Of Story
3. Of ... Whatever. I'm sure there will be a third kind of article when it comes to me

Of Place will focus on pictures with anecdotes to establish impressions of daily life. They'll help the reader to visualize the setting in which stories will take place, or just be some amusing observation about the odd things that can be found in Harbin. These will be articles like of my apartment, neighborhood, or the street market.

Of Story will be ... that's fairly self explanatory. It'll be a story of something that has happened here. Usually of interest. I do not know why I'd bother sharing a boring story. And if I do share one and you think it is boring, that's because you are wrong. Best stop being wrong.

Onwards and upwards! Or ... downwards. Being in China. You know, other side of the planet, everything that is up is down. Yeah. You get it. you get it.