I get it

When this is the view from your bed, there is no need to do anything except sit (or lie down, if you're so inclined) and gaze. The ship sails on whether you go to lunch or play bingo or walk the decks or not; you are accomplishing destinations without the slightest bit of effort on your part.

Although sipping a latte while sitting on the balcony is also highly recommended.

At sea

Literally. The big vacation has finally happened; not quite as over the top as the aborted Egypt trip last year, but a somewhat scaled down version more appropriate to these frugal times: a twelve day cruise from Barcelona to Cyprus and back again. Not that a Mediterranean cruise is anyone's idea of hardship. I've just always traveled unsupervised, and usually alone, and the world of tour guides and lollipop signs with the bus number, not to mention a cruise ship the size of a large town, complete with glass elevators over the water and an atrium that would do any pretentious middle-class hotel proud, is a whole new world to me.

This is not how I thought I would be seeing Egypt.

On the other hand, I will be seeing Egypt.

Country Roads

What is more perfect, and full of possibility, than a country road viewed from the front seat on a sunny July day?

(Assuming you can ignore the shrieking, screaming and occasional sobbing from the four teenage girls in the backseat, that is. Geraldine is a saint.)

Violation House

Mohican Lake. I love the way the reflections of the trees across the road becomes part of the chaos inside.

Jeff Bank

I spent the Fourth of July weekend with my friend Geraldine and her four daughters at Mohican Lake in Sullivan County. It's rural, but not exactly cut off from civilization. Still I found this bank charming. And hilarious.

Back down to earth, with dragons

This is a detail from doors in the Man Mo temple on Hollywood Road.

(Photographed through choking thick clouds of incense. To remind us that we are still terrestrial.)

One more harbor shot, just because I can

Old and New Hong Kong

In the middle of the modern architecture of Central, our office building is encased in bamboo scaffolding that looks like something from a crafts project gone seriously awry. I've seen bamboo scaffolding in Beijing, where it somehow seemed more appropriate -- the workers balanced on the platforms there were all tapping away with hammers, without so much as one power tool anywhere in the vicinity -- but never in Hong Kong.

And though it doesn't look as though it's meant for any practical purpose, this morning two window washers were lounging outside my thirteenth floor window taking a cigarette break.

City in the clouds

Or from the clouds. Or, from a hotel room fifty-something stories up, which is almost the same thing.

Hong Kong has one of the most beautiful harbors I've ever seen (and I grew up in San Francisco) but it's a very different city viewed from hotel towers or Victoria Peak than it is when you're down on the ground in the crowded, humid streets. This doesn't feel like Asia; this feels like an outtake from Attack of the Clones.

Welcome to Hong Kong 2009

Where they seem much less hysterical about H1N1 flu, and much more efficient. They were monitoring our temperatures as we shuffled through immigration, and though you don't see many masks on the street, almost every shop clerk is wearing one.

x

Shabby Chic

Another building on Southwark Street, near the Borough Market. It appears abandoned, but then you wonder about that tree.....

Another wall of windows

Another wonderful wall of windows, this one appropriately near the Tate Modern, on Southwark Street. It reminds me of the plaid skirt I wore in grammar school.