Visibility in today's weather forecast: 400 meters

I don’t want to beat a dead dog with this, but China is polluted.

I’m told the pollution is because China is a developing country and with so much ‘stuff’ to do (to develop, I guess) there is no time to stop throwing wrappers on the ground or exhausting all up in the air.

Either way, I accept it as fact that China won’t stop polluting because I decide to, one day, beat a drum. The foreigners in China take pollution as a given. Eventually, if you’ve been here long enough, the snot you blow into your tissues will be a little tinted to the color of, say, dirt, or you will wake up feeling like you smoked a pack of cigs the night before. The only reason I’m actually a little concerned today is because I’m sick (flu), it’s exam week (nothing to do with pollution, really), and I’m going on my 9^th straight month of having a rather admirable hacking cough (which I’m rather proud of) … I’ve never cultivated one this bad in America. Living in crystal clean, sustainable Vermont has actually had the opposite effect upon me i.e. making me more healthy (drat).

So, without much ado (and because I don’t think many people from the US get to see photos like this that are taking by an actual friend and not from a news wire trying to make some righteous point) –-- has anyone noticed how much I’m using parentheses in this post? –-- here are some photos that I took this morning when I woke up.

*inhale

*exhale

I must say, there is nothing quite like the taste of 9 million people’s grime in your mouth at 8am.