when the dust settles on you

woke up this morning to discover gloomy orangy skies and everything covered by a layer of yellow dust. it was like half the Gobi desert was dumped on Beijing overnight. cars that there parked outside somehow all turned yellow. whoever wrote the "graffiti" on the car above put it very aptly: "raining sand here in Beijing!"

see imagethief's take about car ownership and sandstorms in Beijing. he's an American spin doctor who's married to a Singaporean.
now I regret not buying that kaffiyeh scarf in Jerusalem. should have come in handy this morning. actually some Beijing ladies are going around wrapping a see-thru scarf around their face. this view demonstrate how gritty Beijing looks today, even worst than the usual smog, car exhaust, smoke-stack spewing carbon kind of pollution.
back at work, the cleaners were busy vaccuuming the grounds to get rid of as much dust as possible. you can have a good idea how thick it was: the yellow layer and the dark grey grounds.
the walkway outside looked like the yellow-brick road, even though the tiles were actually grey.
close up of a smothered car parked out in the open. looks like someone had chucked a bucket of sand on the car windows. seems like the only one that were happy about this situation are car wash operators. our only hope is for strong winds to pick up tomorrow and blowing the dust away but this will only transfer the problem. the dust will reach Korea, Japan and as far south as Taipei. we are now paying for the environmental problems of desertification and over-grazing...