Parking

Nicholas Quirke was wondering if there was a word that described how he spent his day on 20 April 2020, in fact how he was spending his days, when he travelled from Public Park to Public Park, in search of relics of old China. It had been a particularly frustrating day as the some of the videos he and Peng had shot of the day before would not download and his original plan of travelling across the city for a canal walk was ditched as time ran out. He felt he was wasting time on a small but important element and found it difficult to get past. The process became so frustrating that once he had got lunch out of the way and there was still no success with the technology he decided to put on his new Camper shoes and go to a local park, Taoranting, to calm his frazzled spirit. It was a dispiriting moment after cycling in the cold wind to discover he had to book to get into the park and it had to be done 24 hours in advance. He discovered from Peng that there was another Park, Lontong which he could go to. This was more of a mission but as he had aborted the blog he felt freed and was desirous of cycling around despite the cold. Once again he found himself discovering new elements of Beijing as he made his way, south east, across the City. He rode past The Temple of Heaven, saw the street his hotel had been on and spotted an interesting, closed amusement park before arriving at the dramatic oriental entrance gate of Lontong. As always the combination of water and examples of Gong buildings and Taoist architecture provided peace and calm and even the blustery cold breeze that blew through landscape could diminish his enchantment. Once home, with a fresh mind he set to solving the conundrum which seemed impossible to solve, even for Peng who returned home from work and offered his aid. By 10pm the case had been cracked and finally he was able to publish the blog, although the friendship had taken a battering as his impatience with the situation became impossible to hide. He had spent at least 8 hours on this one problem and it felt like a great relief to be able to go to bed with the matter resolved, thanks, once again to Peng.

6 Comments

  1. Thank you Nick for persisting with your tech problems. I reslly enjoyed the video today. X

  2. Looks like a nice calming day in the park with the willow trees, glad you resolved your tech issues xx

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