2002-05-17 8:37 p.m.

Ok, so it is Friday night, and here I am at Harbin Hot Springs. Traffic getting here was unbearable. I spent about three hours of this afternoon having a long, hard lesson about first gear and braking. But, it was not so bad, really�I just stayed positive and pretended that I would not have had it any other way. The hills and trees and sky seemed more crisp and vibrant than usual as I drove north, but, everything seems more beautiful when compared to "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones", which I saw today before I left.

The first thing I did when I arrived was eat a healthy, balanced dinner. Balanced like yin and yang, good and evil, positive and negative, warm and cold. The first half of my meal was a vegetarian Indian platter, with spinach, eggplant, and peas. Now, it also came with rice and bread, but I did not eat those parts. My gay friends really limit their carbohydrate intake, and they are thin and good looking, so I figured I would be trendy and not eat dumb carbs, either. Of course, in order to create a proper energy/spirit balance with the first half of my meal, I made sure to conclude with an extra large portion of chocolate cake with raspberry filling and extra whipped cream. Balance, peace, health, perfection�Dinner started like a sparse, open symphony that praised the airyness of springtime, and ended like a GWAR concert, complete with eight�foot tall penis monsters spurting gore everywhere.

Dorm "style" rooms at Harbin. Comfort, privacy, luxury, spaciousness, high ceilings. Seriously, it is hard to see from this picture, but there are three beds on the left and one on the right. Even standing at the center of the room, at a mere 5'8" even I am too tall to stand up straight.

After carrying my too many bags to my too cramped and unbearably warm dorm�style room, I felt like playing my guitar. I "followed my bliss", sat on the grass, and started to play. Luckily, I got kicked out of the grass area within 60 seconds and was told that I could only play music in the "garden" which was "down the hill and through the gates and then down a path a ways". Hm, talk about a hint. I decided to give the security woman the benefit of the doubt�maybe there actually was a garden area and she was not just shooing me away to Tsurenam or Algeria. So I walked. The garden really was down a hill and there were also gates and paths and even some stairs. It was not close. But, it was gorgeous when I got there�flowers, herbs, trees, sculptures. This garden was far better than where I had been playing when I got banished.

What Mz. Security Woman did not tell me was that, although the lush and colorful plants reminded one of paradise, that the primary crop growing there was mosquitos. Not the big kind that people complain about, but the small kind. The kind that are thin from malnutrition, and therefore very, very, very hungry. I returned my guitar to my room, and decided that it might be better to write a little and make some buttons, so that is what I will go do right now.



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