Jan 11 - Leon Bridges

I went to a wedding dress market today. I have a friend getting married soon, so she was thinking about getting a dress custom made in China before moving away. Being the wonderful, amazing human being that I am, and having wonderful, amazing skills at Chinese, I agreed to go and act as a translator. I also thought it would be a weird, bizarre and interesting experience, because where else in the world would you have an entire mall that pretty much sells nothing but wedding dresses?

Lizzy and I entertaining ourselves while dresses are tried on

Lizzy and I entertaining ourselves more
with funny, matching jackets

 Well, it turns out I was right about what a wonderful, amazing human being I am. I was not quite as right about how interesting it would be. In fact it was pretty boring. And I hope I never have to do it again. But in my friend's defense, she was very good about getting in and out quickly. We only spent 2 hours in the mall, and I did get to pick a hideous wedding dress for her to try on and keep me entertained. And we had another friend with us, Lizzy, so I wasn't sitting alone looking at wedding dresses the entire time. It's also pretty amazing how cheap you can get some of these dresses for. As in, it could be cheaper to fly to China, have a vacation while you wait for your dress to be custom made, then take it home, and it might still be cheaper than just buying a dress in America.

After the market, the deal was that we would go and see stuff in Suzhou, since I'd never been to Suzhou before. So we went and had dumplings and then decided we were really tired and wanted to just go home and so we just went home. Suzhou apparently has some nice gardens that it's famous for, and there's temples and whatnot as well, but in the end I just couldn't be bothered. At least I got dumplings and a story, though.

Then we found dresses made out of balloons

I also fell in love with this song today, Coming Home. The world needs more music like this. Leon Bridges only seems to have two or three songs, but that voice. It reminds me of the first time I heard Kwabs (who now makes a completely different style of music, but also has an incredibly deep, rich voice that's just captivating). I'll definitely be looking for more by this guy, and waiting for it to get onto Spotify. And also by Kwabs, who should finally be releasing his album this year.