bad news

This post is about a broken lens in Baoding. Some parts are missing, so the repair works will take longer than we thought.

This is my room number in the underground hotel I am staying at.

As I am writing this, the night guard just blasted out an explosion of intestinal gas that I could hear on top of his TV and through two closed doors.

Awe-inspiring!

I didn’t move much today. Instead I went to an internet café and stayed there for about eight hours in the blue haze and the smoke of the people that never seem to leave.

I should have taken pictures to show you but I didn’t think of it because I was too busy sorting out stuff and moving my photos onto the server.

Then the phone rang and THE BAD NEWS came all the way from Beijing into my ear and into my dumbfounded brain:

—repair work on the lens will only start next week because there are replacement parts missing—

Now what am I going to do?

My feet are basically okay and willing to continue walking.

But I have no wide angle, and with every step I take I am further away from Beijing, which means it’s going to be a bit more of a hassle to get the lens back once it’s fixed.

I was going to shoot self-portraits every day, too. I wanted to document the process. And I need a wide angle for those self-portraits – otherwise it just won’t work.

I think I will leave on Friday. Maybe I’ll slowly walk in the direction of Shijiazhuang 石家庄 and continue on my way. Or maybe I’ll rest. It doesn’t matter.

After all, I knew all along that things could, and eventually would, go wrong.

But why did it have to happen so soon?