Surreal in Beijing

The Cube, originally uploaded by Cocoabiscuit.

This is "The Cube", the place where Michael Phillips won all his medals. From the outside, it looks as if the wall itself is filled with water, but it is an illusion. By the way, Facebook is blocked here, so the only way I can post is put a photo on Flickr, blog it to blogspot (which is also blocked), and blogspot automatically transfers to my Facebook I'm assuming). Also, for some reason the Philadelphia Inquirer is blocked (but not the New York Times). The first day here, he went to the convention center next door in a Kafkaesque experience to register for the conference. The building was filled with a convention of magicians so everywhere we went we asked "Medical?" and we were told "Magic, yes". Now, I know doctors are sometimes thought to do magic, but this was a bit odd. Every hallway we were sent down had people doing magic tricks-- rabbits from hats, disappearing coins, etc.. Apparently a national obsession here in China right now. Jet lagged as we were, we kept trudging along, but the trick was on us, because our conference was actually in a different conference center across the park, where indeed there was little magic happening.