A traffic stop in Lanzhou. A city of about 3.3 million, it is considered a small city.

Stilettos and a bike? Yup.

A nightmarket stall in Dunhuang.

Uighur kids selling souvenirs in Turpan.

A mom and her daughter at the Mingsha Shan, desert theme park.

A goat herder in Turpan.

Dancers at a stage show in Dunhuang.

Mass of humanity at the Turpan train station.

And lastly, some tourists at Jiayuguan. What an awesome pose.

I had an awesome night out with my Melbourne colleagues tonight. We had good Thai good and a good amount of alcohol (that $35 bottle of Wolf Blass Gold Label 2005 Shiraz was the bomb!), and great conversation. I’m glad that I have a bunch of work mates that can talk to each other about more than just work stuff. As my manager said during the dinner, we really do have a bunch of great people in the team right now. All of us just click and get along with each other so well.

Coming back to an empty hotel room though does dampen the mood slightly. The Internet, my laptop and my music enliven things a little. It makes me wonder how did people do this back in the day before Internet – there’s only so much expensive in-house porn that one can watch on the hotel TV. I know, ‘cos I’ve tried. Ah Japan, good times. Hahah!

So yeah … I get reminded that I’m not home as soon as I leave the company of my colleagues. I miss the noises that I took for granted at home. I miss the smell of my mother’s cooking as soon as I step into the house. I miss Snoop running to greet me at the door.

All of which pose a quandary. The working environment in Perth is more mundane and lifeless because I don’t interact with my colleagues face to face and I don’t hear their idle chit-chat and laughter in the office. But family and friends in Perth is a stronger pulling force and so it is that I miss working in Melbourne when I’m in Perth and I miss my life when I’m working in Melbourne.

Still, I’m glad that I get to come here to Melbourne on these occassions. And although I’m missing out on The Stanton Warriors in Perth tonight, having a great night out with my colleagues ain’t too bad of an exchange.

And yup, I do dance with myself when I’m bored and alone.

So after catching on Fox8 the not too bad Stafford Brothers reality show, one blonde bimbo girlfriend notwithstanding – DJs, music, girls, parties, what’s not to like?! – I saw the title of the next show which was “Rehab: Party at the Hard Rock Hotel” and I was intrigued. Not knowing that Rehab was the name of the pool party at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, I thought it was some sombre drug rehab / intervention kinda show.

I was wrong. And I got sucked in for another hour watching it. It’s vacuous, shallow and quite mindless and I loved it! Hahah!

I must say that, after watching this and its depiction of the American party scene it is making me more and more itchy for Miami next year. \0/

The famous Cathay Cinema, on the corner of Hua Hai Lu and Mao Ming Nan Lu.

A pretty shop front.

Another one.

Outside of a restaurant.

Holes in the wall, outside of a bar.

Inside of a funky bar that you get in by knowing a 3-digit code that’s changed daily. Ch-yeah.

All of the above are places around the Mao Ming Nan Lu and Zhang Le Lu area. I love Shanghai.

Enrique Iglesias ‘Tonight (I’m F**kin’ You)’ feat Ludacris & DJ Frank E (Explicit) from Jacuzzi FILMS on Vimeo.

(sexy scenes and language highly NSFW)

Have you all seen or heard Enrique Iglesias’ ridiculously bombastic “Tonight (I’m F**kin’ You)”? Imagine being such a sex symbol that you can walk up to a girl in real life and actually say that.

Please excuse me, I don’t mean to be rude but tonight I’m fucking you.

Ch-yeah awesome. Except everytime you overhype things like that, there’s the danger of bitter disappointment on the guy’s part. Hey, it happens to the best of us. It has a mind of its own and sometimes either it doesn’t get excited or it gets too excited. Know what I”m saying?

Once you proposition a girl like that, you better bring your A-game.

Come on rude boy, boy
Can you get it up?
Come here rude boy, boy
Is you big enough?

It’s more like a turtle that’s scared in its shell
That’s gonna run to the ocean
If you grab and yell!

Hahah!

Saturday night, Metro City. After a fun night out with Gary, Simon, Sylvia, Evelyn and Wei Yi, we were tired but elated and were heading home in Gary’s car. At about 5:30am, whilst taking the girls home we got pulled over for random breath testing on Kwinana Freeway (they closed it down to one lane – ONE LANE on a 3-lane freeway!) – something that you may have read about.

‘We will catch you,’ police warn drink-drivers – The West Australian.

Gary blew just on the limit (0.05% blood-alcohol) and had to go wait inside the booze bus for about 20 minutes before getting re-tested. Meanwhile, the rest of us had a tense wait at a carpark nearby. Half an hour later, Gary’s blood-alcohol level came down which meant he was free to go though the cops advised him to wait another half an hour before driving again. Big phew all around!

Gary and I were both talking about how it could have ended very differently, and probably very badly.

For example, if …

• the girls didn’t get chatted up by some guys as we were leaving the club,
• we didn’t have to walk to Simon’s car to get Evelyn’s keys,
• Evelyn didn’t subsequently forget to get them anyway, hahaha …
• we then didn’t have to drive to Simon’s house in the opposite direction to get the keys,
• the girls didn’t get hungry and wanted some McDonald’s,
• some of the city streets weren’t closed off and thus causing us to drive one big circle to get there…

All those little delays meant that Gary’s body had more time to process the alcohol. If we didn’t have to drop the girls, him and I would have just driven home straight from the club and oh boy … that would have been bad.

And also, all the delays meant that we got a little more time to spend with the girls even though at the end, it was mostly silent because they had fallen asleep whilst waiting around. Hahah. But hey, a moment of silence is better than no moment at all right?

Yeah, I got thinking about “Sliding Doors“.

Nokton @ flickr

A wise woman said to me,

Perth is a small city but yet you seem to know most of the good looking women in it. I’ve seen the photos. So it can’t be that bad right?

Ahem, well … it is when they are just ornaments that you are not boinking.

I’m like a poor sales girl who works in a Cartier shop. I’m surrounded by all these nice things but I don’t own any of it. Still, it sure is nice to be surrounded by pretty things though.