urban decay, or, welcome to our neighborhood

The little lady has been sick for the last few days, and after not going outside for 3-4 days, was starting to get a bit stir-crazy. So, we decided to get out for a while and take a walk around the neighborhood. I took advantage of the opportunity to take a few photos so you can see what it's like where we live.

We started out on the lane just north of our apartment building. The restaurant with the red sign is where we had lunch last Saturday:



Looking down the lane:


See the tricycle-looking thing with all the crap on it? This is not an unusual sight:


The building on the left (NIC) is where we live. The building on the right is the Westin. Our gym membership is at the Westin gym:


There is a school of pharmacology in the neighborhood. The next two photos were taken on its campus:




This is where we like to get potstickers. Notice the Arabic writing on the sign--it's a halal restaurant (no pork, food preparation acceptable by Muslim standards). We ended up having dinner while we were out since we didn't have much food at home to eat.



Potstickers:


Wonton soup and roasted beef fried ramen noodles:


Good food, and dirt cheap. We had 21 potstickers, two bowls of wonton soup (about 10-15 wontons per bowl), and the noodles, all for less than $6.

Shops across the way from the potsticker/ramen joint:




We have our very own poo river--a time-honored symbol of urban decay:


Looking down the street:


Looking at all this, you of course won't be too impressed with where we live. It is a major understatement to say that we live in an island of modernity, surrounded by a sea of decay and relative filth. That said, I love the fact that we have so much variety right outside our door. We don't even have to walk five minutes and can find grocery stores, restaurants, a bakery, clothing stores and more. The shopping mall in between our building and the Westin also has high-end shopping (Calvin Klein, Bulgari, etc.) if that's your thing. In short, we've got a lot of cool stuff really close to us, and I like that a lot.

I'll try to take more pictures later.