The China pictures that I have up so far can be divided into two groups: those that I took in 2004 while studying abroad in Chengdu for a semester, and those that I've been taking since I came back to China in 2006 to study at Beijing Film Academy. The older bunch includes pictures from all over western China, although the vast majority of the galleries are of pictures taken of friends in Chengdu. The more recent gallery includes photos from Shanghai, Inner Mongolia, and Beijing. This is the only section of my photos that will be regularly updated (I hope), since I currently live here in China and hope to add pictures of friends and events as I take them.

Although I have five full semesters of pictures that I took at East West Center events, all I've had time to put up are those from the Fall 2005 and Spring 2006 semesters, although looking at those galleries alone could keep you busy for a few days. There are also a number of pictures of EWC people from non-EWC events that can be found in the Hawaii photos section. A good number of the pics in the Fall 2005 section are from volunteer trips around Oahu that we did as part of Stuart Coleman's leadership class, so you will see a lot of the same faces in many of the pictures of those galleries. Even at larger events with more of the EWC student body present, most of my pictures are of people I was more familiar with, especially the infamous Indonesian Wilmar Salim.

Much like the East West Center section, the Hawaii section only includes pictures from my last two semesters studying in Hawaii. While I'm sure people would prefer to look at scenic pictures of Hawaii, this section - like all the others - only has pictures of people and events. The majority of the galleries are comprised of pictures of Academy for Creative Media (ACM) events and people, as well as several events involving EWC people but not sponsored by the East West Center. Most recently I've added pictures I took at the 2006 Hawaii International Film Festival while I was back in town, which also includes several ACM events that occurred during the festival.

Though I spent almost two years total in Japan on two separate sojourns, the only pictures I've put up in this gallery so far are those I took in the last two months of my second stay. I was teaching in the JET program up in the northern prefecture of Akita at the time, and since I knew I was heading off to scenic Hawaii a few months later and for the first time in my life had a little bit of disposable income, I invested in a Canon 10D digital SLR camera, which is what the vast majority of the pictures on this website were shot with. For pictures from my first stay in Japan many years earlier, check out my site Jay's Juicy Japan Junk, which in addition to a lot of (really bad) pictures has all sorts of silly stuff about my stay in Fukuoka and my travels around the Land of the Rising Sun.

I lived in Korea for two months in the summer of 2006, where I was studying Korean at Korea University (the equivalent of America University back in the States... uhhh...?). To be perfectly honest, I didn't really get out and do much while I was in Korea, because I was desperately low on money, I had a very limited amount of time there, and I ended up spending almost half of that time editing my film Dao and designing the Academy for Creative Media website. I still managed to have a lot of fun the few times I did venture out though, and my last weekend in the country I went out with a Korean-Japanese language exchange group (where I was exchanging Japanese for Korean... I was the only "foreigner" in the weekly gathering of Japanese and Korean students) for an MT ('management training'... a Konglish word for a crazy weekend retreat into the mountains for heavy drinking) a few hours outside of Seoul.

The vast majority of these pictures are of the crazy adventures of the Rice Lads mens soccer team (often accompanied by the womens team), in particular pictures from my last year at Rice. As anyone with a soccer player in the family probably knows, people who partake in the violent, bloody sport of soccer are typically a very crude bunch, which means they often take very crude pictures. So be warned that if you have an aversion to seeing (pale white) asses, people puking in the streets of New Orleans, and much worse, then you had best not look at these galleries (and that goes for more than just pictures with the soccer team). There are also several galleries of pictures I took with the Rice Ultimate Frisbee team, which I joined my last semester at Rice and ended up abandoning in their time of need halfway through the semester to devote myself to my senior design project. There are also two Beer Bike galleries, which of course mostly contain pictures of people from Brown College, my residential college while at Rice.

I finally made it to Vietnam, a place I had long yearned to visit, in December 2006 to photograph the East West Center's biennial alumni conference, this time held in Hanoi. I went to Hanoi a little early and left early the next morning for the northeastern province of Cao Bang to visit my old East West Center friend Dr. Anh in his hometown. After two days spent primarily on the back of his motorcycle, I came back to attend the conference and take tons of pictures, which comprise the vast majority of the pictures in this section. After the conference ended, I spent half a day shooting engagement pictures of my friend Hoang and his fiancee around Hanoi, then I took off with several EWC friends for the northwestern mountain backpacker mecca Sapa. I stayed there for four days, spending part of the time staying with a local family and part of the time hanging out with the APLP group from the EWC.

Date: Summer 2004 (duh!)
Pictures: 1569
A gallery of pictures I took between June and August 2004 on several different short journeys in China. I began with a boat ride from Incheon, Korea (after attending my Korean friend's wedding in Seoul) to Qingdao to visit another Korean friend working there. From Qingdao I took a bus south to Suzhou, where my Japanese friend was working. From there I hopped on a 40-something-hour train to Chengdu, Sichuan, where I was to begin a homestay while studying Chinese at Sichuan University. Using Chengdu as a base during the summer, I took one trip to Xishuangbanna in southern Yunnan province in July, and then in August I begin a longer trip that took me to a Tibetan horse race in western Sichuan, the famed Grotto caves and massive sand dunes of Dunhuang in Gansu province, and the vast and beautiful Xinjiang, China's massive far western province that borders central Asia and is home to the Central Asian Uighur ethnicity. I designed this gallery myself, and despite having many more lovely pictures that I took later that year throughout Sichuan and in many other places more recently, this is the only proper gallery of my pictures I've ever taken the time to design and put up online.

Date: February 2002
Pictures: 249
This was my first time to play ultimate frisbee with the Rice Ultimate team (Cloud 9), and I couldn't have picked a more perfect tournament. It's probably hard to tell that I am being sarcastic. Maybe if I told you that it was damn near freezing outside, the wind was blowing at least 40 mph (which isn't good for playing Ultimate in ANY temperature), and none of us brought adequate clothing with us because it was well over 80° when we left Houston, then you might begin to recognize the sarcasm. And feel our pain. But despite the miserable playing conditions, we had a hell of a fun time, my team got our arses handed to us on a plastic disc, and we totally rocked the party that evening. To top it all off, I got my arse signed by the Callahan winner from that year (I think that's the name of the award... anyway, it's the award they give to the best female ultimate player in the country every year, or maybe in the world, or maybe only in Baton Rouge... I don't really know, but everyone was talking about her so I went over and politely introduced myself, handed her the permanent marker - which unfortunately wasn't permanent enough - dropped trough, and laid out over the pool table in the middle of her game). If you don't believe me, just take a peak at the pictures. And please look at the other pictures too, as there is more to life than just Jay's arse.

Date: October 2001
Pictures: 573
My last and very possibly best (maybe only because I don't remember much from the previous ones) New Orleans trip with the Rice Lads. Even though it was supposed to be a 'dry' trip this time around, the booze ran free as usual and our freshman and newbies were hazed and harassed in proper Lads fashion. We didn't lose anyone this year, although Daniel Smith lost his dinner behind the van. Ok, so he wasn't the only one, but his was the most beautiful by far, and his was the only one I managed to capture on camera. Anyway, this special gallery I put together for the trip is not for the weak-hearted or for those who watch 'The Price Is Right' in their free time. Yes, I'm talking about you Mrs. Fisher. You really don't want to know what your son was up to on this trip. Be warned that there is nudity and a whole lot of lewdness and crudeness within the windows of this gallery... so what are you waiting for. Start looking!

Date: November 17-19
Pictures: 263
While living in Hong Kong, I joined my old expat soccer team from Taipei (aptly named 'The Taipei Animals') in Manila to attend the ultimate expat soccer tournament in Asia - The Manila Nomads International 6-a-Side Football Tournament. Only after meeting up with the boys the first night in Makati, the heart of Manila's night life, did I find out exactly why this tournament was the highlight of the year for most of them, and I can assure you it wasn't the soccer. Be warned that many of the pictures in this gallery are extremely crude and should not be viewed by persons with pacemakers or other heart conditions. You think I'm joking. I do not endorse the behavior of my teammates and was only along on the nights out to document their ludicrous behavior in hopes that someday I would be able to use them for blackmail.

Date: October 1997 - August 1998
Pictures: A LOT!
This is actually more than just a gallery of pictures from a single trip or event. It's a website I made after returning from my first year abroad in Japan, and even though some of the design and content of the site is pretty silly, it's a nice reflection of what it was like living abroad for the first time. It's full of pictures (albeit very very bad ones), as well as stories and other goodies. There is also a link in the site to another site I made for the JTW program that I participated in during that year in Japan.