Sunday, March 27, 2011
How ghosts actualize
Have you ever worried that you'll die on the same day as someone like Meredith Vieira? Cuz on that day, your loved ones will be gathering in sorrow, and someone will have read in the newspaper that she died, and say "Hey, did you hear Meredith Vieira died today too?" And then your 8 year-old grandson who has no clue who that is will be like "Who's Meredith Vieira?" And then they'll have this long discussion about who she was and what she did... Remember how she hosted "who wants to be a millionaire" and that a baby cold have done a better job hosting. How she somehow rose to the top of network programming despite the obvious shortcoming of having a totally bland, uninteresting personality. And then your relatives will start to feel bad for her. Meanwhile, you're dead and pissed that your family is mourning Meredith freaking Vieira. And that the day that you died will forever be correlated with hers. So like three years later, people will be like "Hey, remember three years back when Evan died? Sad day" And then someone else will say, "Oh yeah, that was the same day Meredith Vieira died." Thus explaining ghosts.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
death of music
Recently something pretty drastic has happened to me -- I can't enjoy the mindlessness of popular music. The place it had in my head has died. This has caused me to reflect on it's life, and what caused it to decay so quickly.
Indeed, the life of my enjoyment of popular music was short, lasting only about five years. When I was young, I didn't buy cds or listen to the radio outside of it serving as my alarm clock in the morning. The notion of popular music was not approved by my parents, both Peabody Institute educated with a library of knowledge on how to appreciate more complex and sophisticated music. Their idea of how best to plant the seeds of their music was the same method that china uses to get people to buy into their government (sorry for the china reference, but it's still in me), namely obfuscate the outside influences and hope whatever is inside the walls is absorbed and embraced. Not that I have anything against the strategy, although it did make assimilation into normal society a rockier road. That's probably for the better though, I've never felt that doing what was popular was for me.
That is, until around the time when I was able to drive a car. I was about 19 at this point. This allowed me to escape the social norms of the house, and one of the results was being able to find out what music was able to survive in urban America financially. That is of course indicated by what is on radio stations.
This logically led me to conclude that their popularity indicated their superiority. This is not hard to conclude. Indeed, if some kind of music was good, it must have been marketed to the radio stations. After all, radio stations are trying to make money, and to make money they need to be listened to, and the best music would get the most number of listeners, therefore warranting air time. Thus, the best music was on the radio stations. Unfortunately, this logic is flawed in that the radio stations aren't playing the best music, just the safest music. That is to say, the music which is proven to appeal to the lowest common denominator by virtue of a top 100 list, which is arranged by number of requests each song has accumulated. Of course, any song on the list had been played on the radio station in the first place, so there's no possibility of a write-in. So the top 100 list is like choosing the sport you'd play in gym class. Some will choose volleyball, some will choose the official sport of satanism (water polo). But in the end, you're choosing something on the list. Obviously this isn't the most shocking development, and I knew this all along, and everyone else listening to the radio knows this, but it was easy to overlook the flaws because some of what was on the radio station, admittedly, sounded good.
Jazz listening slowly crept into the rotation later on, around the ages of 21-22. I moved to China, which didn't really effect my listening to music except for making it much more accessible. You could download music from Google's front page. Or Baidu's front page.
And then about a week ago, I was listening to katy perry being played on the radio station for the billionth time, and wondered why I was putting up with it. Not only in the sense that it sounded very bad, and it did. But the fact that the same exact song had been played about 20 minutes beforehand on the same radio station was like the radio station telling me I'm an idiot. Out of spite, I started listening to public radio and a waltz was playing. And it was something you actually had to think about. No more overanalyzing why that idiot rhymed "firework" with "colors burst". That doesn't fucking rhyme, by the way. Nor does it with "what you're worth". Dammit. Instead I was listening to professional musicians who'd spent a lifetime perfecting their instrument working together to play a piece of music which flowed on it's own, each aspect contributing something unique and appreciable, something you could either really think about a lot, or just relax to without thinking at all. Now I'm fully aware that music like this is definitely for me, and that while there will definitely be a song in the popular music realm that I will like from time to time, it's definitely not for me.
Various other things which contributed to the death of popular music:
- The Black eyed peas at the super bowl
- Fergie's terribly botched facelift
- Fergie's addition to the black eyed peas
- Mystikal spending 10 years in jail
- Kesha's birth
- Jay-z's opening to "umbrella"
- DJ tall kathy's utter lack of talent
- Guests on maury doing the "lean with it, rock with it" dance when discovering they are not the father
- Young dro's name
- Baby Sham's verse in "We could take it outside" from the Busta Rhymes album "when disaster strikes" (There's a reason you've never heard who this is, please never listen to this)
I'll probably think of others later
Indeed, the life of my enjoyment of popular music was short, lasting only about five years. When I was young, I didn't buy cds or listen to the radio outside of it serving as my alarm clock in the morning. The notion of popular music was not approved by my parents, both Peabody Institute educated with a library of knowledge on how to appreciate more complex and sophisticated music. Their idea of how best to plant the seeds of their music was the same method that china uses to get people to buy into their government (sorry for the china reference, but it's still in me), namely obfuscate the outside influences and hope whatever is inside the walls is absorbed and embraced. Not that I have anything against the strategy, although it did make assimilation into normal society a rockier road. That's probably for the better though, I've never felt that doing what was popular was for me.
That is, until around the time when I was able to drive a car. I was about 19 at this point. This allowed me to escape the social norms of the house, and one of the results was being able to find out what music was able to survive in urban America financially. That is of course indicated by what is on radio stations.
This logically led me to conclude that their popularity indicated their superiority. This is not hard to conclude. Indeed, if some kind of music was good, it must have been marketed to the radio stations. After all, radio stations are trying to make money, and to make money they need to be listened to, and the best music would get the most number of listeners, therefore warranting air time. Thus, the best music was on the radio stations. Unfortunately, this logic is flawed in that the radio stations aren't playing the best music, just the safest music. That is to say, the music which is proven to appeal to the lowest common denominator by virtue of a top 100 list, which is arranged by number of requests each song has accumulated. Of course, any song on the list had been played on the radio station in the first place, so there's no possibility of a write-in. So the top 100 list is like choosing the sport you'd play in gym class. Some will choose volleyball, some will choose the official sport of satanism (water polo). But in the end, you're choosing something on the list. Obviously this isn't the most shocking development, and I knew this all along, and everyone else listening to the radio knows this, but it was easy to overlook the flaws because some of what was on the radio station, admittedly, sounded good.
Jazz listening slowly crept into the rotation later on, around the ages of 21-22. I moved to China, which didn't really effect my listening to music except for making it much more accessible. You could download music from Google's front page. Or Baidu's front page.
And then about a week ago, I was listening to katy perry being played on the radio station for the billionth time, and wondered why I was putting up with it. Not only in the sense that it sounded very bad, and it did. But the fact that the same exact song had been played about 20 minutes beforehand on the same radio station was like the radio station telling me I'm an idiot. Out of spite, I started listening to public radio and a waltz was playing. And it was something you actually had to think about. No more overanalyzing why that idiot rhymed "firework" with "colors burst". That doesn't fucking rhyme, by the way. Nor does it with "what you're worth". Dammit. Instead I was listening to professional musicians who'd spent a lifetime perfecting their instrument working together to play a piece of music which flowed on it's own, each aspect contributing something unique and appreciable, something you could either really think about a lot, or just relax to without thinking at all. Now I'm fully aware that music like this is definitely for me, and that while there will definitely be a song in the popular music realm that I will like from time to time, it's definitely not for me.
Various other things which contributed to the death of popular music:
- The Black eyed peas at the super bowl
- Fergie's terribly botched facelift
- Fergie's addition to the black eyed peas
- Mystikal spending 10 years in jail
- Kesha's birth
- Jay-z's opening to "umbrella"
- DJ tall kathy's utter lack of talent
- Guests on maury doing the "lean with it, rock with it" dance when discovering they are not the father
- Young dro's name
- Baby Sham's verse in "We could take it outside" from the Busta Rhymes album "when disaster strikes" (There's a reason you've never heard who this is, please never listen to this)
I'll probably think of others later
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Stayin' sane
OK so, long time no post. I found this in my "draft" folder in my e-mail, which at the time was an attempt to stay connected with people. That was my new year's resolution for 2010, hence the effort. But it was a mild effort, and obviously I am not as well connected as I had hoped. Anyway it's funny to read now, 4 months removed from the experience.
=======================================
--Some time in 2010--
First, blogspot is blocked in China. So if you were wondering why I wasn't posting, you might have assumed that nothing really interesting was happening with me. Coincidentally, nothing was really happening at the time it got blocked. So I guess the timing work out perfectly. Now you might be wondering, how did he post this? I wish the answer was using a proxy server, but I haven't gotten that to work (thus also explaining my absence from facebook). I gave in, and gave my little sister my google password. So I guess I did sortof use a proxy...
There's nothing really specific I can think about to discuss. Everything has become normal. Some of it has become bothersome, and I keep having to tell myself that they just have totally different brains than I have. It's truly a remarkable place though, that fact has not been lost on me, even after a year plus.
I think I get this place now, or at least the gist. You see people squatting in the street while eating a bowl of noodles out of a paper bowl, grandmothers carrying babies wearing pants which completely expose the baby's ass. These things are normal. After a while, you get used to it. But there's no way around it: As open as I am to other cultures, Wuhan is the least civilized place I've ever known. People often act very brutishly, yet there’s still an air of confidence and nationalism. They’re stuck deep in traditions, habits, pastimes that have been a part of their culture for thousands of years. I think this is mostly due to two things, isolation (in terms of both inability to travel outside China and inaccessible outside media), and the vast number of people (the cause of everything in China). The confidence and nationalism can be explained easily -- Most people in this city have never seen what it’s like in other places, thus the assumption of normalcy. But they can also see what’s happening on their streets, they’ve been seeing it most of their lives – a massive effort of economic growth. But while the layout of the city changes monthly, traditional thought doesn't change so easily...
I was going to meet a friend in Hankou. I plowed my way through the sea of pedestrians, who wave their arms blindly and look in directions other than the one they are moving, totally oblivious to the concept of order in achieving their goal of getting to point B. I arrived at the bus stop, which was almost the length of a football field, and, conveniently, found the schedule at the farthest point. Now we were meeting at a station called "Han Kong Lu," and I know the characters for "Han" and "Lu," so I was able to find my bus relatively easily. This was something I became very proud of being able to do, by the way. Even through frosted, scratched plastic and faded graffiti, I can read the necessary characters to arrive where I need to go.
You really can't appreciate how big Wuhan is. 8 million is such an easy thing to say. But nobody really has a concept of how big that is. Wuhan officially has that many people, not including the migrant workers and other unregistered citizens. Add those into the equation, and it's closer to 10 million, maybe even more. Now, I live basically in the center of Wuchang, one of three major districts in Wuhan. I was meeting my friend in downtown Hankou, one of the other three major districts. To get there, the bus ride was going to take an hour and a half. With no traffic, it's thirty minutes. The whole time, you are riding through a forest of giant buildings. The horizon is close enough to walk to, because of the smog.
So I hopped on the 715 and crammed in. I had an hour and a half to avoid stares. I thought to myself, 60 years ago, Mao Zedong founded the PRC. And 60 years later, it's doing pretty well. There's a lot of good things happening here, the city that I have come to know certainly didn't look this way back in Mao's day. It's become much more modern since then. But, there's also a ton of problems. Lots of people have shitty, dead end jobs, some even have really seamy jobs. Prostitution is supposedly illegal, yet there are brothels located across the street from government buildings, advertising proudly in illuminated pink lettering. Living conditions aren't good. Most apartment buildings you see are pretty run down and unattractive -- each window is encompassed by a prison-like cage. Next to every window is the end of a metal ventilation duct where burning cooking oil is fanned out of, underneath which you see obsidian streaks on the dusty concrete.
What would China be like today if Chiang Kai-Shek had won instead of Mao? While interesting to think about, it’s too involved for me to take a simple guess. I’d bet, though, that Wuhan people, in the capacity that I’ve seen them (that is to say, random on-the-street encounters), would be exactly the same as they are now. If you’ve ever been to Hong Kong, you know that it is possible for native Chinese people to obey western customs such as letting people out of a bus before entering it. That said, Hong Kong is not Wuhan by any means. In fact, Wuhan is a city whose size is unmatched by any US city, except New York. So could Chiang Kai-Shek have brought prosperity to Wuhan faster? Probably. Globalized faster? Definitely. Made the size of Wuhan bigger or smaller? Definitely not. Changed the culture at all? Maybe in the sense that they’d be more aware and accepting of other cultures, but otherwise, I doubt it. Something that feels omnipresent by living in Wuhan — your needs are more important than others. That’s tangible here in bus rides, trips to the market, traveling, etc. It’s like this because Wuhan people are living in a giant place where it’s basically impossible to be considerate. If you let cars merge in front of you, you’d be sitting on the street for hours until you decided you’d had enough and subsequently cut somebody off, like you’re supposed to. It’s not so obvious in America’s politically correct culture, super-sensitive to others opinions. But when the cabin pressure is low, you put on your oxygen mask first, and then you assist others. That's pretty obscure, but still.
=================================================
Haha, so weird message, and obviously very unfinished. I think I was mad at Wuhan traffic when I wrote this.
That is, if anyone can read this!
=======================================
--Some time in 2010--
First, blogspot is blocked in China. So if you were wondering why I wasn't posting, you might have assumed that nothing really interesting was happening with me. Coincidentally, nothing was really happening at the time it got blocked. So I guess the timing work out perfectly. Now you might be wondering, how did he post this? I wish the answer was using a proxy server, but I haven't gotten that to work (thus also explaining my absence from facebook). I gave in, and gave my little sister my google password. So I guess I did sortof use a proxy...
There's nothing really specific I can think about to discuss. Everything has become normal. Some of it has become bothersome, and I keep having to tell myself that they just have totally different brains than I have. It's truly a remarkable place though, that fact has not been lost on me, even after a year plus.
I think I get this place now, or at least the gist. You see people squatting in the street while eating a bowl of noodles out of a paper bowl, grandmothers carrying babies wearing pants which completely expose the baby's ass. These things are normal. After a while, you get used to it. But there's no way around it: As open as I am to other cultures, Wuhan is the least civilized place I've ever known. People often act very brutishly, yet there’s still an air of confidence and nationalism. They’re stuck deep in traditions, habits, pastimes that have been a part of their culture for thousands of years. I think this is mostly due to two things, isolation (in terms of both inability to travel outside China and inaccessible outside media), and the vast number of people (the cause of everything in China). The confidence and nationalism can be explained easily -- Most people in this city have never seen what it’s like in other places, thus the assumption of normalcy. But they can also see what’s happening on their streets, they’ve been seeing it most of their lives – a massive effort of economic growth. But while the layout of the city changes monthly, traditional thought doesn't change so easily...
I was going to meet a friend in Hankou. I plowed my way through the sea of pedestrians, who wave their arms blindly and look in directions other than the one they are moving, totally oblivious to the concept of order in achieving their goal of getting to point B. I arrived at the bus stop, which was almost the length of a football field, and, conveniently, found the schedule at the farthest point. Now we were meeting at a station called "Han Kong Lu," and I know the characters for "Han" and "Lu," so I was able to find my bus relatively easily. This was something I became very proud of being able to do, by the way. Even through frosted, scratched plastic and faded graffiti, I can read the necessary characters to arrive where I need to go.
You really can't appreciate how big Wuhan is. 8 million is such an easy thing to say. But nobody really has a concept of how big that is. Wuhan officially has that many people, not including the migrant workers and other unregistered citizens. Add those into the equation, and it's closer to 10 million, maybe even more. Now, I live basically in the center of Wuchang, one of three major districts in Wuhan. I was meeting my friend in downtown Hankou, one of the other three major districts. To get there, the bus ride was going to take an hour and a half. With no traffic, it's thirty minutes. The whole time, you are riding through a forest of giant buildings. The horizon is close enough to walk to, because of the smog.
So I hopped on the 715 and crammed in. I had an hour and a half to avoid stares. I thought to myself, 60 years ago, Mao Zedong founded the PRC. And 60 years later, it's doing pretty well. There's a lot of good things happening here, the city that I have come to know certainly didn't look this way back in Mao's day. It's become much more modern since then. But, there's also a ton of problems. Lots of people have shitty, dead end jobs, some even have really seamy jobs. Prostitution is supposedly illegal, yet there are brothels located across the street from government buildings, advertising proudly in illuminated pink lettering. Living conditions aren't good. Most apartment buildings you see are pretty run down and unattractive -- each window is encompassed by a prison-like cage. Next to every window is the end of a metal ventilation duct where burning cooking oil is fanned out of, underneath which you see obsidian streaks on the dusty concrete.
What would China be like today if Chiang Kai-Shek had won instead of Mao? While interesting to think about, it’s too involved for me to take a simple guess. I’d bet, though, that Wuhan people, in the capacity that I’ve seen them (that is to say, random on-the-street encounters), would be exactly the same as they are now. If you’ve ever been to Hong Kong, you know that it is possible for native Chinese people to obey western customs such as letting people out of a bus before entering it. That said, Hong Kong is not Wuhan by any means. In fact, Wuhan is a city whose size is unmatched by any US city, except New York. So could Chiang Kai-Shek have brought prosperity to Wuhan faster? Probably. Globalized faster? Definitely. Made the size of Wuhan bigger or smaller? Definitely not. Changed the culture at all? Maybe in the sense that they’d be more aware and accepting of other cultures, but otherwise, I doubt it. Something that feels omnipresent by living in Wuhan — your needs are more important than others. That’s tangible here in bus rides, trips to the market, traveling, etc. It’s like this because Wuhan people are living in a giant place where it’s basically impossible to be considerate. If you let cars merge in front of you, you’d be sitting on the street for hours until you decided you’d had enough and subsequently cut somebody off, like you’re supposed to. It’s not so obvious in America’s politically correct culture, super-sensitive to others opinions. But when the cabin pressure is low, you put on your oxygen mask first, and then you assist others. That's pretty obscure, but still.
=================================================
Haha, so weird message, and obviously very unfinished. I think I was mad at Wuhan traffic when I wrote this.
That is, if anyone can read this!
Saturday, March 28, 2009
So far
I've got some time on my hands, so I'll do a little recap of some of the main events that have happened for me in 2009 so far:
- The first school semester came to an end -- with it was a dinner that the department paid for to reward it's employees for their hard work. Wisely, I brought a camera.
The biggest table I've sat at so far. Before everyone sat down, they made a huge deal out of me and Michael sitting down first, and made sure that we sat facing the door. The location of your seat and the order in which you sit is apparently a sign of respect. We just wanted some grub.
Michael knew what he was getting into. He's done this before. Me.... I sorta had an inkling, but it was made immediately clear as soon as I tasted a microscopic amount of bai jiu (white wine). The bai jiu they make in China fucks you up.
A dinner like this isn't really a dinner. I mean, for me it is. I calmly sit down, taking as much of the food in as I could, drinkin a little bai jiu here and there... This dinner started with a table-wide toast, then some more toasting between certain employees at the table, and then everyone sat down, which was my cue to eat. Mostly everyone else, though, walks around the table with the glass of bai jiu in their hand, toasting each other for a job well done.
- New foods -- I was able to scratch many different items off of the "things I have never eaten" list. My ballpark guess is around ten. I am also becoming a big fan of "huo guo" style restaurants. Huo guo means "hot pot." You get this sesame paste on the side as a dipping sauce... it kinda tastes like peanut butter except it's a bit more liquid. My bosses took me to a huo guo place before the holiday where I ate a bunch of really crazy crap.
It's probably pretty obvious how this works. They give you a plate of some ingredient, e.g. potatoes, lotus root, thin slices of meat, cabbage, tofu, etc., and then you let the ingredient settle in the hot pot for an amount of time of your choosing. Root vegetables stay in the pot for 5-10 minutes, while the meat and leafy vegetables usually only takes about 30 seconds to cook (the meat is in very thin slices). Remember though, this place was pretty fancy, so there were more unusual ingredients being offered. First, beef lung. Really wish Mr. Dong hadn't told me what that was. This actually isn't that fancy of an ingredient, but in some places in China it is a delicacy. Second, Hard boiled quail egg. I've always wanted to try these and they were good! I mean, they were basically just like normal eggs, but smaller. Third, and most disgustingly, duck blood. I know, it doesn't make sense. It was explained to me by Steven as duck blood, I checked to see if he knew what blood meant, and he definitely knew. I don't know what to say about this. It actually wasn't bad. I'm never eating it again, but not bad.
Oh yeah and that's sea cucumber. Pretty special thing to eat apparently, but disturbing as hell to eat an entire animal, let alone one that looks like that. When you eat it, you can feel every detail... it's smooth exterior, thick gelatinous skin, and "ambrulacal feet" covered underbelly.
- Gym -- I've gained about 7 pounds since the beginning of the year, and am about 7 pounds away from my arbitrarily chosen target weight of 77 kg (170 lbs). I've been pretty true to my new year's resolution so far, going to the gym at least 4 times a week since early February. Though I'm still drinking more coke than I want... baby steps I guess.
- Poker -- I play poker about once a week. I haven't lost money in a long time. In fact, I haven't needed to go to an ATM for cash in about a month. I don't joke around when I'm playin. I mean I joke around, just, I like winning.
- Chinese -- I have a tutor, she's been teaching me a ton of stuff, not only about the language, but also about the geography, culture, etc. I think it's a good investment at this point, cuz I really think my speaking is coming along quickly. The language has a bunch of hard words to memorize, but a lot of words are just simple combinations of other words. For example, Cell phone = shǒu jī = "hand machine." That's a pretty logical connection. Another example, bread = miàn bāo = "noodle bag". Bread can easily be seen as a noodle bag. For some reason I am pretty good at memorizing sounds (probably a result of my line-memorizing days in theater class), so I'm at the point now where I can talk to people for extended periods. Of course I sound like a clown, but they're very tolerant of my inability.
- And finally, I decided to stay in China for another year. The why would take too long to explain...I guess simply put, I like it here. I want to find out how I can use what I know, what the long term plan should be for me, and how best to go about doing that. But nowadays, these things revolve around my head with another idea -- finding out how I can do all that in a place like this. I don't know what I'll find out, but these days, I'm starting to feel strangely confident about how my future is starting to shape out. Very odd indeed hehe
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Wuda making news
The big news around campus is about a mother and daughter, who recently visited the campus to have their pictures taken under the cherry blossoms. Perfectly normal -- the only problem was that these Chinese women were sporting Japanese Kimonos (which, btw, are hot as hell if you ask me). They were verbally harassed to a harsh extent, enough that my boss (Mr. Dong) felt ashamed on behalf of the university.
The event really brings to light the awkwardness of these trees. I guess I'd never really thought about the context that much... I mean they're so beautiful, people pay to get into the university to visit them. The university advertises them in their brochures and website. And yet, they can be seen as a symbol for a very dark period in China's history, one which has certainly not been forgotten. Many older Chinese people still feel a strong bitterness towards the Japanese, and the relationship is certainly awkward to say the least.
Mr. Dong tried to explain the situation to me. He read an article which wondered if the students took it one step further. These trees, like Kimonos, symbolize Japan. So the article raised the issue: if it's ok to harass people wearing Kimono's, it suggests that what has happened in the past between Japan and China should be eschewed, in which case the cherry blossoms should be cut down from the campus. Although the trees serve as a beautiful, although disturbing, reminder of what occured, I'm sure most people agree that what happened should not be forgotten, and that their patriotism can be more displayed in more respectful ways. After all, that's what the article told them to think... :)
The event really brings to light the awkwardness of these trees. I guess I'd never really thought about the context that much... I mean they're so beautiful, people pay to get into the university to visit them. The university advertises them in their brochures and website. And yet, they can be seen as a symbol for a very dark period in China's history, one which has certainly not been forgotten. Many older Chinese people still feel a strong bitterness towards the Japanese, and the relationship is certainly awkward to say the least.
Mr. Dong tried to explain the situation to me. He read an article which wondered if the students took it one step further. These trees, like Kimonos, symbolize Japan. So the article raised the issue: if it's ok to harass people wearing Kimono's, it suggests that what has happened in the past between Japan and China should be eschewed, in which case the cherry blossoms should be cut down from the campus. Although the trees serve as a beautiful, although disturbing, reminder of what occured, I'm sure most people agree that what happened should not be forgotten, and that their patriotism can be more displayed in more respectful ways. After all, that's what the article told them to think... :)
Thursday, March 19, 2009
You know it's Spring in Wuhan when...
Small history lesson: In 1938, the Japanese and Chinese were in the middle of the second Sino-Japanese War. As both Beijing and Nanjing had been taken by Japan, Wuhan became the wartime capital of China because it was a hub of industry and transportation (having both the Yangtze River and several important railways). The Japanese predicted that the fall of Wuhan would be too harsh a blow to the Chinese, who had already succumbed much of their country to Japanese control. Thus gave way to the battle of Wuhan, a major battle which ended in Japan victory. The Japanese military chose the most beautiful area of the city to set up shop -- Wuhan University.
So the school is pretty famous for its beauty -- The architecture has a unique style, the university is built around a mountain and next to a lake, and the plant life is as various as it is pretty. BUT, as if it wasn't beautiful enough, every year around this time, the cherry blossoms that the Japanese planted here begin to unfold. People from all over come to the campus to see them.
I took some photos cuz I told my dad I would as a way to do something for his birthday, so here are some of the highlights:
The rest are here
So the school is pretty famous for its beauty -- The architecture has a unique style, the university is built around a mountain and next to a lake, and the plant life is as various as it is pretty. BUT, as if it wasn't beautiful enough, every year around this time, the cherry blossoms that the Japanese planted here begin to unfold. People from all over come to the campus to see them.
I took some photos cuz I told my dad I would as a way to do something for his birthday, so here are some of the highlights:
The rest are here
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Just to get the wheels movin again...
It's been awhile... There is some good to it though -- I've been keeping myself pretty busy for the last few months.
The social life's changed a lot. I've met several expats through poker games, business dinners, and sometimes just an odd circumstance. The two guys I hang out most with are chris and johnny, because the three biggest ways I enjoy spending my free time here are also their favorite things to do -- poker, frisbee, and going to the gym. They also live very nearby.
They're both nice guys. Chris is from North Carolina, went to Haverford, and is teaching at a university like me. He's very charming and definitely a talker, but despite this, he finds himself getting people a little uncomfortable and sometimes angry at him. Johnny was born in China, moved to New York when he was seven, and came back to Wuhan after college for studying, though he still works as a teacher. Johnny is in great shape -- he goes to the gym very often and is really into frisbee and poker. He's definitely a smart guy and likes to control and set up things. Both of them have sortof been showing me the ropes of life around here.
It ain't all sunshine though. When my little sister got her first job, she was being shown around by her boss, a person whom she could immediately tell didn't respect her. She was introduced to a few of her coworkers, "Hey guys, this is Mimi. She's the new girl here, so she doesn't really know anything." Hehe. But it's kinda the same feeling when I'm with these guys. The conversations are usually more about them educating me about what impressions they have of life around here than anything else. That's fine, but the problem is that I'm not being perceived as a peer. If I try to talk about something else, it's quickly extinguished. If I try to tell a story, I get halfway through it.
I wish I was a clever writer. I'd probably try writing a book about living here and the relationships I've made. The clever part would come when I'd subtly indicate that my interactions with the Chinese people and with the Americans here are equal in the sense that a lot of what I say is falling on deaf ears. The Chinese, because they can't understand what I'm saying, and the Americans, because they don't really care. There's some strange common bond between the majority of people here that I'm still trying to figure out. Maybe it's because they're all teachers who, like me, spend the majority of their time preaching to a bunch of people who can't fully comprehend what they're saying. Or maybe it's because they're all americans, I mean I guess it used to be pretty hard to find people who listened well.
Don't worry though, there are exceptions. It's funny that the person whom I most enjoy talking to is still Ms. Han, who's command of English is, at best, basic. She still gets most of my social time, and deservedly so. She's a beam of energy, and is always smiling despite her shitty as hell job. I bring her flowers pretty regularly just to keep charming her for being such a great friend.
Other than all that drama, and teaching, the next biggest time-eater is that I'm getting tutored in Chinese. A girl, Li, comes over to my house twice a week for about 40 rmb/hour. My latest big accomplishment with Chinese -- talking with a cab driver for the entire ride to class.
Not sure what else to say. I'm still enjoying my time here very much. I guess I should say that I'll try very hard to get back to the pace of updating that I was goin at before. It's still pretty interesting to live here i guess :)
The social life's changed a lot. I've met several expats through poker games, business dinners, and sometimes just an odd circumstance. The two guys I hang out most with are chris and johnny, because the three biggest ways I enjoy spending my free time here are also their favorite things to do -- poker, frisbee, and going to the gym. They also live very nearby.
They're both nice guys. Chris is from North Carolina, went to Haverford, and is teaching at a university like me. He's very charming and definitely a talker, but despite this, he finds himself getting people a little uncomfortable and sometimes angry at him. Johnny was born in China, moved to New York when he was seven, and came back to Wuhan after college for studying, though he still works as a teacher. Johnny is in great shape -- he goes to the gym very often and is really into frisbee and poker. He's definitely a smart guy and likes to control and set up things. Both of them have sortof been showing me the ropes of life around here.
It ain't all sunshine though. When my little sister got her first job, she was being shown around by her boss, a person whom she could immediately tell didn't respect her. She was introduced to a few of her coworkers, "Hey guys, this is Mimi. She's the new girl here, so she doesn't really know anything." Hehe. But it's kinda the same feeling when I'm with these guys. The conversations are usually more about them educating me about what impressions they have of life around here than anything else. That's fine, but the problem is that I'm not being perceived as a peer. If I try to talk about something else, it's quickly extinguished. If I try to tell a story, I get halfway through it.
I wish I was a clever writer. I'd probably try writing a book about living here and the relationships I've made. The clever part would come when I'd subtly indicate that my interactions with the Chinese people and with the Americans here are equal in the sense that a lot of what I say is falling on deaf ears. The Chinese, because they can't understand what I'm saying, and the Americans, because they don't really care. There's some strange common bond between the majority of people here that I'm still trying to figure out. Maybe it's because they're all teachers who, like me, spend the majority of their time preaching to a bunch of people who can't fully comprehend what they're saying. Or maybe it's because they're all americans, I mean I guess it used to be pretty hard to find people who listened well.
Don't worry though, there are exceptions. It's funny that the person whom I most enjoy talking to is still Ms. Han, who's command of English is, at best, basic. She still gets most of my social time, and deservedly so. She's a beam of energy, and is always smiling despite her shitty as hell job. I bring her flowers pretty regularly just to keep charming her for being such a great friend.
Other than all that drama, and teaching, the next biggest time-eater is that I'm getting tutored in Chinese. A girl, Li, comes over to my house twice a week for about 40 rmb/hour. My latest big accomplishment with Chinese -- talking with a cab driver for the entire ride to class.
Not sure what else to say. I'm still enjoying my time here very much. I guess I should say that I'll try very hard to get back to the pace of updating that I was goin at before. It's still pretty interesting to live here i guess :)
Sunday, February 1, 2009
My year
When I was very little, I lived in North Carolina. Riding on the bus to West Lake Elementary School, I'd peel away at the duct tape covering a scar in the seat in front of me, then readhere it. There were better ways to pass the time. I would think to myself about the year 1997. It seemed so far in the future. Thinking beyond that year was a bit too scary, because I don't think I wanted to get any older than that. On the bus, I thought about what I'd look like in 1997, where I'd be, what kind of girls I could get, whether I'd be able to resist the temptation of smoking, how well I'd be doing in school, etc. I pictured myself as a pretty tall guy with natural blond hair, wearing sunglasses, a denim jacket and bright orange shorts with a dragon motif. I very much wanted to talk to him. I would be twelve in that year.
Summer of '97, I turned twelve. I had been living in Pittsburgh for about a year after five years of North Carolina. My golden hair had wilted into dirty blond. Much to my chagrin, I did not own a denim jacket or sunglasses. I was a little taller, but not much. That was the last time it was the year of the ox. The first time in my life it was the year of the ox, I was born. I probably figured that out sometime that year. We probably went to a Chinese place and put the pieces together with the help of one of those paper placemats. But the foresight I was able to access when riding on the bus to school in North Carolina was a gift that had been lost. What would I look like in the next year of the ox? The thought never occured. Again, probably because of fear, or at least the desire to be ignorant. I don't think I wanted to know... The weight of the world has always been a pretty scary thing. Was I wiser when I was younger? I've always thought so. But then again, I was also more ignorant...
Jan. 31, 2009, it is the year of the ox again. I started living in China after 12 years of living in Pittsburgh, and the weight of the world is still a very scary thing. Maybe it's better that I didn't waste time thinking of what could happen
Some hanging clothes that caught fire because someone lit a rocket off of a nearby rooftop.
I also took a video of midnight in Wuhan, but I can't get it to work online.
Summer of '97, I turned twelve. I had been living in Pittsburgh for about a year after five years of North Carolina. My golden hair had wilted into dirty blond. Much to my chagrin, I did not own a denim jacket or sunglasses. I was a little taller, but not much. That was the last time it was the year of the ox. The first time in my life it was the year of the ox, I was born. I probably figured that out sometime that year. We probably went to a Chinese place and put the pieces together with the help of one of those paper placemats. But the foresight I was able to access when riding on the bus to school in North Carolina was a gift that had been lost. What would I look like in the next year of the ox? The thought never occured. Again, probably because of fear, or at least the desire to be ignorant. I don't think I wanted to know... The weight of the world has always been a pretty scary thing. Was I wiser when I was younger? I've always thought so. But then again, I was also more ignorant...
Jan. 31, 2009, it is the year of the ox again. I started living in China after 12 years of living in Pittsburgh, and the weight of the world is still a very scary thing. Maybe it's better that I didn't waste time thinking of what could happen
........
The celebration for the year 2009 was complacent and uninspired. I was with four other people when it happened, and I felt like we were the only ones in Wuhan celebrating. Jan. 1, 2009 isn't really important to people here. On New Year's Eve, people are more concerned about writing "09" on their checks instead of "08". However, a few days ago was the Chinese New Year. For the past two weeks, hearing a loud explosion outside your window is something which occurs several times an hour. If you didn't know that you were in China, you'd guess that you were in Gaza. At night it's pretty interesting to look outside my window because at any given time you can probably find, somewhere in your field of view, fireworks exploding. Every small store is closed, except for convenience stores (which are really only in business to sell fireworks).
I guess that's interesting enough, but at midnight on the eve of the Chinese New Year, everyone who had been lighting fireworks all week consolidated their efforts into one giant eruption. It was amazing! I've never experienced anything like it. It was like the city was exploding.
Some hanging clothes that caught fire because someone lit a rocket off of a nearby rooftop. I also took a video of midnight in Wuhan, but I can't get it to work online.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Four months
Been here four months. Notable accomplishment: I can speak a little chinese (still illiterate).I made a list of chinese words that I know today..it's the picture to the right. Pretty crazy how much of this alien language I've figured out. The best I can do these days is say VERY basic sentences. Most of the words on this list were written because I know the chinese character for them, but I wrote a few down so that I could practice recognizing the characters that are more complex. It's kinda funny...there are a few characters that I do recognize, but don't know the chinese word for. For example, the character for "entrance" looks like a box. Also note that all of these words that you see have a tone associated with each syllable. This is not indicated on the words to the right, I'm not sure how to write that on a computer yet.
As of yesterday, my vacation officially started. It took so long to finish grading all of the exams. There were 43 students, each with 9 total pages of tests to correct. Then there was the oral portion of the exam, and the essay part of the exam. The oral part was about an 8 minute session with each student, asking them simple questions where they'd have to use their brain to come up with a logical response to a question. I felt like a blade runner, asking ridiculous hypothetical questions to determine if my students were robots or humans. The written part was a 100 word paragraph about a basic topic. This shouldn't have been that hard, and for some it wasn't, but still. For some it was awful. UGH.
I caught three students cheating. They honestly must think I'm an idiot. Their tests were identical. Even the questions that asked for a short answer had word-for-word identical responses. They definitely weren't the only ones cheating either, just the most obvious. I guess it's unfair that because they were the suckiest cheaters, they get the shaft. When they come back, they're gettin a "stern talking to" by Mr. Jenkins. I have no idea how to address this problem. I really don't want to lose the friendly ambience I think my classroom has, but at the same time, this cheating crap is an insult. Sometimes I feel like my job is the ultimate fatherhood training job. Sidenote: only about 1/3 of my students answered the following question correctly: "What is a sentence?"
Enough about work. Right now in China is the Spring Festival. The Spring Festival is the equivalent of our Christmas break; people go home to their families and have big dinners to celebrate the coming of spring and the new year. By the way, the Chinese new year is in a little more than a week. Not sure what I'm doing yet, but I'll let you know. I don't have any plans for the break yet. I was going to go to Xi'an, because I really want to see the terra cotta warriors of qin shi huang di's tomb... but I need to go with someone who can speak chinese. I don't think I have enough of a rapport with anyone here yet to ask if they want to go somewhere like that.
It's ok. Wuhan is a kickass place that I want to explore a little more. Check out this place I found the other day. Nerd alert. I also haven't seen Huang He Lou, which is basically the symbol of Wuhan. I mean, the highest price and therefore best cigarettes are called "Huanghelou." There is also a theory going around that, because the number of unemployed migrant workers is increasing, there's a greater danger to people traveling around China (especially white people who are rich as hell). Right now is obviously a busy travel season, so I guess it makes sense. By now though, most people are home with their folks, eating big dinners and whatnot. Pretty funny that, two weeks ago during the Christmas break, everyone was throwing down in karaoke bars and nightclubs.Only six months left. Still not really sure what my story is.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Miscellaneous pictures
I added a few more photos to my google picture sharing account. Here's the link: [ pictures ]
First, if you eat one of these....
Welcome to hell. I researched these, and they're called "Sichuan peppercorns," a necessary ingredient for any sichuan style food. Basically, any time you go to a market and get a rice dish, expect to find these in your food. The amount you see in this photo is the amount that an average rice dish with sichuan style food will have in it. The flavor these little things add is pretty unique...It's like a spicy, tingly, borderline numbing flavor. The first month here, I'd eat one of these during every meal by accident. Once you eat one, you immediately know it, and there's nothing you can do to change what'll happen next. You sense a "numbing hotness" from the spot where you made contact with the peppercorn, and the sensation slowly invades the rest of your mouth. The pain stays with you for hours. I've been told that in ancient China, they used to use these peppercorns whenever doctors were performing oral surgery. I usually cure my frustrations with....
YOU ZI! I'm still obsessed with these.
That last picture makes me want to get up and buy one immediately.
And here are some more pictures of my university:
First, if you eat one of these....
Welcome to hell. I researched these, and they're called "Sichuan peppercorns," a necessary ingredient for any sichuan style food. Basically, any time you go to a market and get a rice dish, expect to find these in your food. The amount you see in this photo is the amount that an average rice dish with sichuan style food will have in it. The flavor these little things add is pretty unique...It's like a spicy, tingly, borderline numbing flavor. The first month here, I'd eat one of these during every meal by accident. Once you eat one, you immediately know it, and there's nothing you can do to change what'll happen next. You sense a "numbing hotness" from the spot where you made contact with the peppercorn, and the sensation slowly invades the rest of your mouth. The pain stays with you for hours. I've been told that in ancient China, they used to use these peppercorns whenever doctors were performing oral surgery. I usually cure my frustrations with....
YOU ZI! I'm still obsessed with these.
That last picture makes me want to get up and buy one immediately.
And here are some more pictures of my university:
I walk by this alley every day. One of my favorite views!
It's hard to tell...but these bushes are really beautiful. They're trimmed to about shin-high.
When I first saw this walkway from afar, I was convinced that someone was walking on water. In fact, they were walking on this thing.
Wuda's famous old library. Insanely beautiful.
The girl's dormitories, right in front of the old library. Mind-blowingly gorgeous.
Street level view of the girl's dorms. I won't use another combination of hyperbole and a synonym for beautiful, but you get the idea.
New Year's with pictures
For the last three or so years, I've spent New Year's at a friend's house and we just played poker all night until about 15 minutes until the last moments of the year. That's definitely my idea of a fun way to spend New Year's Eve. This time around was also entertaining, but obviously different than the norm. I took a ton of photos this night because of the lack of photos taken during X-mas week. Here's the cast of characters:
Not too many details.
Left to right: Han Jie (aka Ms. Han), me, Michael, his girlfriend, and Ms. Ding
Not too many details.
- Michael did his thing; talked about hangin out with the Eagles (the band), the books he wrote, conversations he's had with Milton Friedman, and so forth. Ms. Han innocently made fun of him the whole time, it was pretty funny.
- The best quote of the night was some totally jerk thing she said. Before we made New Year's resolutions, Michael and I were having a fascinating "conversation" (which is pretty one-way if you know what I mean) about the property he owned. Anyway to change the subject, I asked everyone what their New Year's resolutions were. So everyone explained what they intended to do that year... When we got to Michael, I asked him, "What's your New Year's resolution, Michael?"
"Well..."
Then Ms. Han immediately interrupts sarcastically, "Maybe you can buy another house!" Everyone lost it.. he wasn't a fan of hers that night I think. - What was my New Year's resolution? Get into better shape, even though I think that's my resolution every year.
- There were frickin cheese and crackers! Michael found a place that sells cheddar, so this was the first time since I arrived here that I ate some. I savored the hell out of this.
- We tried to watch a DVD, but only one worked: The Eagles - live in concert. I guess it was better than watching Hu Jintao giving some official address to the nation about the coming year.
- I wore my Penguins jersey as a gesture of hope for a better year (especially given their performance in recent weeks). Plus it looks cool, and I haven't worn it in a while.
- And here's a few more general pictures from the night:
Friday, January 2, 2009
X-mas week (part 3)
'Twas the fight before Christmas....what was Tim Allen thinking. Don't worry I'm not gonna start off with a similar play on words with that poem. Its become a bit trite these days, don't you think?
Thursday (25th) -- Christmas Day. A creature was stirring in the morning, namely me (Didn't see that one coming did ya!) I didn't have to work, but I did need to play the role of Santa. I put the presents in a bag, grabbed it and the mini bamboo plant that I had bought on Christmas Eve, and headed out the door. 8:30 am. On the way to the office, I bought a newspaper and a small role of tape for wrapping purposes. I had only had a limited amount of time to shop (due to the "illness" I suffered over the last few days), but I was able to get a few good presents for my bosses. I gave the plant to Steven and a foreign bottle of wine to Mr. Dong. All I was able to buy for Han Jie was a box of foreign chocolates and a few DVDs. I wanted to get more, but I told myself I'd get something else later in the day. I met Han Jie at around 9:30 so that I could get the presents into the office, and then made plans to have dinner with her later that night. The plan wasn't set, but I wanted to make her something delicious (I make good sandwiches), have a bottle of decent wine, and watch a DVD that we could both understand (i.e. something American with Chinese subtitles).
11 am. I had taken a taxi back home and was back in my bed. Four hours later, I woke up. I had to clean the place, buy food, and maybe buy another nice present for the babe coming over. I cleaned the place a little bit before I left.
4 pm. I headed over to the DVD store to buy something appropriate. While I was looking around, the phone rang. Han Jie. She was calling to tell me that she had invited her friend and her friend's sister to come over. Sick! ... So, new plan, I had to buy a ton more food, and clean up the place way more than I'd originally thought. I bought another Will Smith movie, "the pursuit of happyness," cuz it seemed like a good chic flick and the dude at the DVD store recommended it for the situation that I explained to him in very broken Chinese but expertly executed body language.
Now I was in the supermarket buying food for the get together. I scrapped the idea of getting her another present cuz I wasn't really pleased about the surprise party she just pulled on me. You might be wondering why I'm explaining all of this. She called me again. She explained that her friend actually wasn't coming, so instead it was now just her that was coming over. Why do chics do this.
So, back to the original plan. The only problem is that the original plan needed a lot more time than I had to work with, time which had been cut into thanks to her skullduggery. I bought potatoes and sandwich stuff, went home, and started prepping everything. I was definitely not pleased with the whole situation.
8 pm. She arrived, it took me about five minutes to get over it. Btw, she loves the sandwiches and fries I make. You can't really go wrong with bacon and cheese in a sandwich. We opened up the bottle of wine, and then watched, yeah, "Brokeback Mountain." I mean, it was the only movie I had which was enough of a balance of chic flick and understandability. I also didn't really need to translate much; the movie isn't exactly centered around dialogue. I'm not sure how good of a job I did translating though, she still insists that Jack Swift (Jake Gyllenhall's character) is straight. Sidenote: Anne Hathaway slept with someone to be in that movie. Overall though, a fun way to spend Christmas Day. It was the last day we could hang out for a few days; she had weekend plans, and I had plans for Friday.
Friday (26th) -- Had to teach again. It went ok...I showed them the Simpsons Christmas episode I was in the middle of downloading when I had to leave my place on Christmas Eve.. you know, the one I was originally planning on showing them instead of Toy Story. Anyway, I showed them the episode, we went over a few vocabulary words that popped up during the episode, and then we practiced speaking a little more. Afterwards, I went home and slept. I had plans for the evening.
Remember Justin from Canada? I had gotten a text from him on Wednesday, before I went to the KTV, asking if I wanted to hang out on Friday night. I was down. It's not often that I get to speak English at the normal rate, and he also seemed like a cool guy. I woke up from my nap at around 3 pm and told him I could meet him in Hankou district, which is far as hell away.
Hankou is across the Yangtze river, which is a big ass river. Thus, there's a big ass bridge that was built to cross it. As you might imagine, traffic gets nuts on this bridge because, uhh, there's like 9 million people living here. As a result, the government issued a rule to control the traffic on the bridge. If your license plate number ends in an odd number, you can cross on, say, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of that week. If it's even, then you can cross on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. I'm not sure about the exact days, but the day you can cross it depends on your license plate number. So when I was trying to meet Justin in Hankou, I had to find a cab with an even license plate number. In Wuchang, the district I live in, it was a rare commodity to find an unoccupied cab that could cross the bridge. At 5:30 pm, I started trying to find a cab, and I got one at 7 pm with an incredible stroke of luck.
I was dropped off in Hankou at 7:30 pm. Hankou district is the place to go for the good parties, bars, restaurants, and so forth in Wuhan. The taxi left me at the base of a large, commercial-looking, glass building. Justin met me at the door and took me up to whatever we were doing. I realized quickly that I had no idea what was going on, so I asked, "So, what's going on?"
"It wouldn't be fair if I told you."
The music became louder as we approached a dimly lit room. There was a lot of light coming from the right side of the room, and we headed through a sea of people towards it. I looked into the room. It was a fairly small theater, probably only meant for private parties or small shows. A dance crew was dancing on the stage to a very, very loud track. The place was filled to the brim. Justin yelled as loud as he could but I could barely hear him, "Wait here, I'm going to see if I can find seats since we got here a little late." He walked ahead while I watched the performance from an obstructed view. A little later, he waved me on.
We started walking to the other side of the room, but we crossed over the front row. Then he sat down in a seat, "OK here we are." I sat down in a seat, and then I leaned forward and touched the stage with my hand. He laughed, "See, it wouldn't have been fair if I told you." The show was a holiday talent show put on by his ex-employers, a private ESL training company, and he was a special guest. I guess he just wanted to freak me out a little. The performers actually were a mix of staff, faculty, and students. For example, the dancers were the girls that worked at the reception desk. It's a job which hires based on a few qualities, most notably appearance. They were hot.
In the middle of the show, they were going to select two tickets from a box to give a prize to. Guess who the special guests to choose the prize were? I went onto the stage and captured the audiences' hearts with a grab bag selection so dramatic it reduced many audience members to tears. "200438." Screams, followed by Chinese gibberish from the MC. Apparently, my hand guided an audience member's fate towards good health, as I won her a one year membership to the gym downstairs.
After the show, I met people! Three guys from the US, one from Australia, and one from New Zealand, all teachers at the ESL place that was hosting the show. We went to dinner at a kickass expat restaurant. The owner is a jolly but also very dangerous looking man from Maastricht, Belgium. After the meal, Justin, Louanne, the owner and I talked over a shot of Jenever. That took a while to finish. I was over the sickness from the hangover, but the after effects had lingered longer than normal. I still had trouble eating food and drinking alcohol like normal. I was already knee deep in a glass of Duvel, a famous Belgian beer with about double the alcohol of a normal beer, so my brain was already pulsating.
We talked for a while. He told a bunch of hilarious stories, like the Belgian version of Santa Claus, St. Nicklas, who beats children if they're bad. The best was about the shot of Jenever that we were "enjoying." His Grandmother drank a shot every night before bed for thirty years. He also said that in Belgium, if someone comes over to your house, you must offer them a drink. Usually it's Jenever. So, when it was payday in Belgium, if you wanted your mail to be delivered earlier, you'd offer the mailman several shots before you sent him on his way. The more shots you offered, the earlier he'd come. You can guess how that story ends.
At the end of the day, I'd made five new friends, saw a crazy Chinese talent show, gave someone a free one year gym membership, and had a new favorite restaurant. On the taxi ride back, I was able to find out more about the people I'd just met. I had explained the whole Michael situation, so we talked a little about Michael. The guy from New Zealand asked, "What's his story?"
"Huh?"
"Well, come on. Everybody's got a story." What a thing to say. It'd never really occured to me to ask it, but thinking back, it was pretty obvious. What was his story, indeed... Suddenly, I felt a little more at home than I had before.
Thursday (25th) -- Christmas Day. A creature was stirring in the morning, namely me (Didn't see that one coming did ya!) I didn't have to work, but I did need to play the role of Santa. I put the presents in a bag, grabbed it and the mini bamboo plant that I had bought on Christmas Eve, and headed out the door. 8:30 am. On the way to the office, I bought a newspaper and a small role of tape for wrapping purposes. I had only had a limited amount of time to shop (due to the "illness" I suffered over the last few days), but I was able to get a few good presents for my bosses. I gave the plant to Steven and a foreign bottle of wine to Mr. Dong. All I was able to buy for Han Jie was a box of foreign chocolates and a few DVDs. I wanted to get more, but I told myself I'd get something else later in the day. I met Han Jie at around 9:30 so that I could get the presents into the office, and then made plans to have dinner with her later that night. The plan wasn't set, but I wanted to make her something delicious (I make good sandwiches), have a bottle of decent wine, and watch a DVD that we could both understand (i.e. something American with Chinese subtitles).
11 am. I had taken a taxi back home and was back in my bed. Four hours later, I woke up. I had to clean the place, buy food, and maybe buy another nice present for the babe coming over. I cleaned the place a little bit before I left.
4 pm. I headed over to the DVD store to buy something appropriate. While I was looking around, the phone rang. Han Jie. She was calling to tell me that she had invited her friend and her friend's sister to come over. Sick! ... So, new plan, I had to buy a ton more food, and clean up the place way more than I'd originally thought. I bought another Will Smith movie, "the pursuit of happyness," cuz it seemed like a good chic flick and the dude at the DVD store recommended it for the situation that I explained to him in very broken Chinese but expertly executed body language.
Now I was in the supermarket buying food for the get together. I scrapped the idea of getting her another present cuz I wasn't really pleased about the surprise party she just pulled on me. You might be wondering why I'm explaining all of this. She called me again. She explained that her friend actually wasn't coming, so instead it was now just her that was coming over. Why do chics do this.
So, back to the original plan. The only problem is that the original plan needed a lot more time than I had to work with, time which had been cut into thanks to her skullduggery. I bought potatoes and sandwich stuff, went home, and started prepping everything. I was definitely not pleased with the whole situation.
8 pm. She arrived, it took me about five minutes to get over it. Btw, she loves the sandwiches and fries I make. You can't really go wrong with bacon and cheese in a sandwich. We opened up the bottle of wine, and then watched, yeah, "Brokeback Mountain." I mean, it was the only movie I had which was enough of a balance of chic flick and understandability. I also didn't really need to translate much; the movie isn't exactly centered around dialogue. I'm not sure how good of a job I did translating though, she still insists that Jack Swift (Jake Gyllenhall's character) is straight. Sidenote: Anne Hathaway slept with someone to be in that movie. Overall though, a fun way to spend Christmas Day. It was the last day we could hang out for a few days; she had weekend plans, and I had plans for Friday.
Friday (26th) -- Had to teach again. It went ok...I showed them the Simpsons Christmas episode I was in the middle of downloading when I had to leave my place on Christmas Eve.. you know, the one I was originally planning on showing them instead of Toy Story. Anyway, I showed them the episode, we went over a few vocabulary words that popped up during the episode, and then we practiced speaking a little more. Afterwards, I went home and slept. I had plans for the evening.
Remember Justin from Canada? I had gotten a text from him on Wednesday, before I went to the KTV, asking if I wanted to hang out on Friday night. I was down. It's not often that I get to speak English at the normal rate, and he also seemed like a cool guy. I woke up from my nap at around 3 pm and told him I could meet him in Hankou district, which is far as hell away.
Hankou is across the Yangtze river, which is a big ass river. Thus, there's a big ass bridge that was built to cross it. As you might imagine, traffic gets nuts on this bridge because, uhh, there's like 9 million people living here. As a result, the government issued a rule to control the traffic on the bridge. If your license plate number ends in an odd number, you can cross on, say, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of that week. If it's even, then you can cross on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. I'm not sure about the exact days, but the day you can cross it depends on your license plate number. So when I was trying to meet Justin in Hankou, I had to find a cab with an even license plate number. In Wuchang, the district I live in, it was a rare commodity to find an unoccupied cab that could cross the bridge. At 5:30 pm, I started trying to find a cab, and I got one at 7 pm with an incredible stroke of luck.
I was dropped off in Hankou at 7:30 pm. Hankou district is the place to go for the good parties, bars, restaurants, and so forth in Wuhan. The taxi left me at the base of a large, commercial-looking, glass building. Justin met me at the door and took me up to whatever we were doing. I realized quickly that I had no idea what was going on, so I asked, "So, what's going on?"
"It wouldn't be fair if I told you."
The music became louder as we approached a dimly lit room. There was a lot of light coming from the right side of the room, and we headed through a sea of people towards it. I looked into the room. It was a fairly small theater, probably only meant for private parties or small shows. A dance crew was dancing on the stage to a very, very loud track. The place was filled to the brim. Justin yelled as loud as he could but I could barely hear him, "Wait here, I'm going to see if I can find seats since we got here a little late." He walked ahead while I watched the performance from an obstructed view. A little later, he waved me on.
We started walking to the other side of the room, but we crossed over the front row. Then he sat down in a seat, "OK here we are." I sat down in a seat, and then I leaned forward and touched the stage with my hand. He laughed, "See, it wouldn't have been fair if I told you." The show was a holiday talent show put on by his ex-employers, a private ESL training company, and he was a special guest. I guess he just wanted to freak me out a little. The performers actually were a mix of staff, faculty, and students. For example, the dancers were the girls that worked at the reception desk. It's a job which hires based on a few qualities, most notably appearance. They were hot.
In the middle of the show, they were going to select two tickets from a box to give a prize to. Guess who the special guests to choose the prize were? I went onto the stage and captured the audiences' hearts with a grab bag selection so dramatic it reduced many audience members to tears. "200438." Screams, followed by Chinese gibberish from the MC. Apparently, my hand guided an audience member's fate towards good health, as I won her a one year membership to the gym downstairs.
After the show, I met people! Three guys from the US, one from Australia, and one from New Zealand, all teachers at the ESL place that was hosting the show. We went to dinner at a kickass expat restaurant. The owner is a jolly but also very dangerous looking man from Maastricht, Belgium. After the meal, Justin, Louanne, the owner and I talked over a shot of Jenever. That took a while to finish. I was over the sickness from the hangover, but the after effects had lingered longer than normal. I still had trouble eating food and drinking alcohol like normal. I was already knee deep in a glass of Duvel, a famous Belgian beer with about double the alcohol of a normal beer, so my brain was already pulsating.
We talked for a while. He told a bunch of hilarious stories, like the Belgian version of Santa Claus, St. Nicklas, who beats children if they're bad. The best was about the shot of Jenever that we were "enjoying." His Grandmother drank a shot every night before bed for thirty years. He also said that in Belgium, if someone comes over to your house, you must offer them a drink. Usually it's Jenever. So, when it was payday in Belgium, if you wanted your mail to be delivered earlier, you'd offer the mailman several shots before you sent him on his way. The more shots you offered, the earlier he'd come. You can guess how that story ends.
At the end of the day, I'd made five new friends, saw a crazy Chinese talent show, gave someone a free one year gym membership, and had a new favorite restaurant. On the taxi ride back, I was able to find out more about the people I'd just met. I had explained the whole Michael situation, so we talked a little about Michael. The guy from New Zealand asked, "What's his story?"
"Huh?"
"Well, come on. Everybody's got a story." What a thing to say. It'd never really occured to me to ask it, but thinking back, it was pretty obvious. What was his story, indeed... Suddenly, I felt a little more at home than I had before.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
X-mas week (part 2)
...So at noon I was to meet with my students at what they know to be my favorite place to eat in China: Pizza Hut. They got the typical weird pizzas with seafood on it, and I watched them eat the pizza with their forks and knives. I told them "once you get into Canada, eat it with your hands!" Keep in mind, I was in terrible condition. I felt bad. I had an opportunity to eat pizza with my students for likely the last time, but it didn't go the way that they wanted. The thought of eating anything was too dangerous to provoke, and I was huddled in my seat trying to keep warm even though the place was probably overheated.
Once they finished, Mr. Dong, Steven and I headed downstairs to buy things. This would've been fun, but after I bought one X-mas present for Han Jie, I was starting to feel real sick. I told them I needed to go immediately.
On the way back I felt my saliva starting to taste a little more salty than usual. "Stop the car." I studied the area in a millisecond, rushed to the most secluded area (VERY hard to find), and keeled over with saliva pouring out of my mouth. After about a minute of waiting, nothing happened. I'm pretty sure my stomach was empty at the time, so this was probably for the better. We floored it back to my place and I slept for the next 4 hours.
Ms. Han's "party" was happening at 6:30 that night. I woke up from my nap in time to look presentable, but I was obviously still very ill. The party took place in a theater strangely enough. This was one of those moments where you think you have an idea of what's going on, and then when you get there, you realize that you had been preparing for a word that wasn't correctly used...namely "party." The more accurate definition of what this was going to be was "talent show."
I saw Michael in the front row and sat down next to him. He asked me, "How are you feeling?"
"Like Hell. You?"
"I woke up at 2 this afternoon."
"Yup." There was a spread of fruit and sunflower seeds just for us in the front row. I felt like a king! Mustering the courage to eat something was tough, but worth it.
The show started off really weird. A group of strangely dressed people, obviously characters from either video games or japanese cartoons, performed a choreographed "walking around the stage" number to some Chinese rock music. I only recognized three of the twelve or so characters -- Cloud, Aeris, and Sephiroth from FF7 (i.e. some video game characters). I guess they started like this to give me the false impression that everything following it was going to be weird as hell. The remainder of the show was actually a medley of normal performances, including music, dancing, games, magic, and plays. Very entertaining...and it was fun to see my students doing what they enjoy. My only complaint would've been that the speaker volume could've been turned down a little in light of my situation. There were way too many occurences of mic feedback that hurt way more than they should have.
Wednesday (24th) -- Christmas Eve. Can you believe I had class on this day? There was much to do...
First, I did not want to teach. The illness had not passed, like I expected, and I mean, it was Christmas frickin Eve. So I woke up that day and started looking for two things: Christmas presents for my coworkers, and Christmas DVDs at the local DVD "store." I was only able to find one Christmas DVD -- The Santa Claus 3, starring Tim Allen and Martin Short. Check out the cover:
There was no way in hell I was showing anyone this movie. I wanted to ask the guy at the desk if he had any christmas movies, so I called Ms. Han and asked her what the word for "Christmas" was in Chinese.
"Sheng dan kuai le!" she yelled.
Equipped with my knew word, I asked the clerk, "Ni you sheng dan kuai le DVD ma?" I eventually learned that "sheng dan kuai le" means "Merry Christmas," and "sheng dan" means "Christmas," so I actually asked "Do you have Merry Christmas DVDs?" In other words, once again, I sounded like a clown.
He replied, "dfjksaafsdssdfdslaspdk- mei -skjaskdjsdfsdfasdfa." As soon as I heard "mei," I knew he didn't have anything.
So, I got the idea to show them a christmas episode of the Simpsons. While I was still in the store, I bought a few DVDs for myself, such as "Seven Pounds," starring Will Smith. Yeah I know it was just released in theaters like a week ago. It's out on DVD here now. Anyway I went home to try downloading Simpsons episodes. On the walk back, I saw a beautiful miniature bamboo plant being sold on the street. It seemed like a great gift, so I bought it and then continued home.
Downloading crap is always hell. My first attempt needed a password to decompress. The second download worked, but the episode was in Russian or something. My last try was cutting it close; I started downloading at 2:15pm (with class at 3:40). I then got a call from Steven telling me to be at the front gate at 3:15...so I didn't have enough time to finish the download.
My backup plan was two options. The first was to show them "Jingle all the way," starring Arnold Schwarzeneggar. I watched this movie beforehand just to see if it was watchable, and it sure as hell was not. But, it was Christmas related. My other option was to show them "Toy Story," but that really had nothing to do with Christmas. It was, however, entertaining to all ages and pretty simple, so I grabbed it and headed out.
I arrived at the gate and met Steven, Mr. Dong, and Ms. Han. We were going to take a group photo with the students together for the last time. It was pretty sad... I haven't seen any of them since.
I got to class, showed them some of the movie, and then headed out the door. While I was waiting for the elevator, five of the girls from the class told me they had a Christmas present for me at their dorm. These girls are so adorable. I walked with them there and they were all locked arm-in-arm the whole time. We got to the warehouse that they live in and they gave me a box of chocolates. So cute! I wanted to say "thank you," but it wasn't enough, so I told them "I'm going to give you a hug!" They were clearly confused, so in the moment of confusion I grabbed THE most shy girl in the group and gave her a hug. Her face turned bright red. Then the other four girls understood and screamed with laughter, running over to hug me. It is definitely a fact that every girl in China is adorable like this.
In the meantime, I'd called Ms. Han and told her to meet me at the dorms. She, myself, Steven and Mr. Dong were all going to "xiao xi tang" (small restaurant) to celebrate my first Christmas in China. Afterwards, Steven had made reservations at a KTV, which I had seen around the city but didn't really know anything about. We got to xiao xi tang and we ordered the usual -- peanuts, something green, and a hot pot (pictured below). I was still feeling pretty uneasy, so I only ate three bowls of rice. Oh speaking of which... Hunger is often measured in bowls of rice. If you eat only one bowl of rice but you've eaten everything else on the table, you'll hear "eat more!"
We finished dinner and headed to the KTV. On the way, I asked what it was. It's a place where people reserve rooms to stay in for a few hours to sing Karaoke together. So...that's how I was going to spend Christmas Eve night. That's the way it is here, except the KTV's are even busier at around midnight. The mission is to go out and party, not stay home and wait for santa claus. I actually got a few drunk text messages from my students wishing me a merry christmas. One was in Chinese haha.
Anyway back to the point, we were at a KTV and that was that. That's how the four of us were going to spend the next four hours. The staff brought some beers to make singing a little easier. Even though I was still recovering, it was welcome. Also, the music selection had some English songs, so I wasn't completely on an island. I mean, I was the only one who would choose English songs. My coworkers were only choosing sad, slow Chinese love songs to sing. It was sad! I wanted to hear happy songs, so I was only choosing the fun ones that I know really well. "September" (Earth, Wind & Fire) was a hit. But then after me, it was back to tearjerking slow Chinese music. BLEGH. Thankfully, Ms. Han is trained in classic Chinese-style singing, so it was cool to mix it up and hear her sing a few of those classical types of songs. It sounded like what you hear on the radio, very professional.
I was tired of this after about an hour and a half. Maybe its my slow attention span, but I just can't put up with that crap for too long. Definitely an interesting experience though, and it was funny to see my bosses singing. We headed out, and the traffic was even worse than before. Again, the party was just starting for Wuhan. For me, it was done. I had a plan in the morning...
Once they finished, Mr. Dong, Steven and I headed downstairs to buy things. This would've been fun, but after I bought one X-mas present for Han Jie, I was starting to feel real sick. I told them I needed to go immediately.
This is where the pizza hut is, sorry I don't have a daytime photo to help you picture the scene more appropriately.
On the way back I felt my saliva starting to taste a little more salty than usual. "Stop the car." I studied the area in a millisecond, rushed to the most secluded area (VERY hard to find), and keeled over with saliva pouring out of my mouth. After about a minute of waiting, nothing happened. I'm pretty sure my stomach was empty at the time, so this was probably for the better. We floored it back to my place and I slept for the next 4 hours.
Ms. Han's "party" was happening at 6:30 that night. I woke up from my nap in time to look presentable, but I was obviously still very ill. The party took place in a theater strangely enough. This was one of those moments where you think you have an idea of what's going on, and then when you get there, you realize that you had been preparing for a word that wasn't correctly used...namely "party." The more accurate definition of what this was going to be was "talent show."
I saw Michael in the front row and sat down next to him. He asked me, "How are you feeling?"
"Like Hell. You?"
"I woke up at 2 this afternoon."
"Yup." There was a spread of fruit and sunflower seeds just for us in the front row. I felt like a king! Mustering the courage to eat something was tough, but worth it.
The show started off really weird. A group of strangely dressed people, obviously characters from either video games or japanese cartoons, performed a choreographed "walking around the stage" number to some Chinese rock music. I only recognized three of the twelve or so characters -- Cloud, Aeris, and Sephiroth from FF7 (i.e. some video game characters). I guess they started like this to give me the false impression that everything following it was going to be weird as hell. The remainder of the show was actually a medley of normal performances, including music, dancing, games, magic, and plays. Very entertaining...and it was fun to see my students doing what they enjoy. My only complaint would've been that the speaker volume could've been turned down a little in light of my situation. There were way too many occurences of mic feedback that hurt way more than they should have.
Wednesday (24th) -- Christmas Eve. Can you believe I had class on this day? There was much to do...
First, I did not want to teach. The illness had not passed, like I expected, and I mean, it was Christmas frickin Eve. So I woke up that day and started looking for two things: Christmas presents for my coworkers, and Christmas DVDs at the local DVD "store." I was only able to find one Christmas DVD -- The Santa Claus 3, starring Tim Allen and Martin Short. Check out the cover:
There was no way in hell I was showing anyone this movie. I wanted to ask the guy at the desk if he had any christmas movies, so I called Ms. Han and asked her what the word for "Christmas" was in Chinese.
"Sheng dan kuai le!" she yelled.
Equipped with my knew word, I asked the clerk, "Ni you sheng dan kuai le DVD ma?" I eventually learned that "sheng dan kuai le" means "Merry Christmas," and "sheng dan" means "Christmas," so I actually asked "Do you have Merry Christmas DVDs?" In other words, once again, I sounded like a clown.
He replied, "dfjksaafsdssdfdslaspdk- mei -skjaskdjsdfsdfasdfa." As soon as I heard "mei," I knew he didn't have anything.
So, I got the idea to show them a christmas episode of the Simpsons. While I was still in the store, I bought a few DVDs for myself, such as "Seven Pounds," starring Will Smith. Yeah I know it was just released in theaters like a week ago. It's out on DVD here now. Anyway I went home to try downloading Simpsons episodes. On the walk back, I saw a beautiful miniature bamboo plant being sold on the street. It seemed like a great gift, so I bought it and then continued home.
Downloading crap is always hell. My first attempt needed a password to decompress. The second download worked, but the episode was in Russian or something. My last try was cutting it close; I started downloading at 2:15pm (with class at 3:40). I then got a call from Steven telling me to be at the front gate at 3:15...so I didn't have enough time to finish the download.
My backup plan was two options. The first was to show them "Jingle all the way," starring Arnold Schwarzeneggar. I watched this movie beforehand just to see if it was watchable, and it sure as hell was not. But, it was Christmas related. My other option was to show them "Toy Story," but that really had nothing to do with Christmas. It was, however, entertaining to all ages and pretty simple, so I grabbed it and headed out.
I arrived at the gate and met Steven, Mr. Dong, and Ms. Han. We were going to take a group photo with the students together for the last time. It was pretty sad... I haven't seen any of them since.
I got to class, showed them some of the movie, and then headed out the door. While I was waiting for the elevator, five of the girls from the class told me they had a Christmas present for me at their dorm. These girls are so adorable. I walked with them there and they were all locked arm-in-arm the whole time. We got to the warehouse that they live in and they gave me a box of chocolates. So cute! I wanted to say "thank you," but it wasn't enough, so I told them "I'm going to give you a hug!" They were clearly confused, so in the moment of confusion I grabbed THE most shy girl in the group and gave her a hug. Her face turned bright red. Then the other four girls understood and screamed with laughter, running over to hug me. It is definitely a fact that every girl in China is adorable like this.
In the meantime, I'd called Ms. Han and told her to meet me at the dorms. She, myself, Steven and Mr. Dong were all going to "xiao xi tang" (small restaurant) to celebrate my first Christmas in China. Afterwards, Steven had made reservations at a KTV, which I had seen around the city but didn't really know anything about. We got to xiao xi tang and we ordered the usual -- peanuts, something green, and a hot pot (pictured below). I was still feeling pretty uneasy, so I only ate three bowls of rice. Oh speaking of which... Hunger is often measured in bowls of rice. If you eat only one bowl of rice but you've eaten everything else on the table, you'll hear "eat more!"
To the left of xiao xi tang. It's located in the middle of a residential complex.
The entrance to xiao xi tang. It's seriously a dude's house.
A hot pot inside xiao xi tang. Very delicious, but you have to be careful...normally many of the ingredients are not meant to be eaten. Typical ingredients that can be eaten include: meat (watch out for the bones), carrots, potatoes, cilantro, and hard tofu
We finished dinner and headed to the KTV. On the way, I asked what it was. It's a place where people reserve rooms to stay in for a few hours to sing Karaoke together. So...that's how I was going to spend Christmas Eve night. That's the way it is here, except the KTV's are even busier at around midnight. The mission is to go out and party, not stay home and wait for santa claus. I actually got a few drunk text messages from my students wishing me a merry christmas. One was in Chinese haha.
Anyway back to the point, we were at a KTV and that was that. That's how the four of us were going to spend the next four hours. The staff brought some beers to make singing a little easier. Even though I was still recovering, it was welcome. Also, the music selection had some English songs, so I wasn't completely on an island. I mean, I was the only one who would choose English songs. My coworkers were only choosing sad, slow Chinese love songs to sing. It was sad! I wanted to hear happy songs, so I was only choosing the fun ones that I know really well. "September" (Earth, Wind & Fire) was a hit. But then after me, it was back to tearjerking slow Chinese music. BLEGH. Thankfully, Ms. Han is trained in classic Chinese-style singing, so it was cool to mix it up and hear her sing a few of those classical types of songs. It sounded like what you hear on the radio, very professional.
I was tired of this after about an hour and a half. Maybe its my slow attention span, but I just can't put up with that crap for too long. Definitely an interesting experience though, and it was funny to see my bosses singing. We headed out, and the traffic was even worse than before. Again, the party was just starting for Wuhan. For me, it was done. I had a plan in the morning...
Saturday, December 27, 2008
X-mas week (part 1)
I haven't kept in touch with anyone back home for the past week or so. This post is an attempt to justify/be payment for that. Also sadly, I did not take a single photo this week, despite the insane number of opportunities.
Weekend (Dec. 19th-21st) -- On the upcoming Monday, there was to be a final exam for the small class. This would also be my last class with them, which was a pretty big downer. I got pretty close with most of the small class because everyday I would make them tell me stories about themselves and I would often tell them (choice) stories about me. We had also spent tons of time together and usually had a great time doing it. It was easy to be successful in their class.
The weekend was fairly eventful, I met with my favorite "zhong guo ren" (Chinese person) Han Jie everyday for various reasons -- Friday we went out for drinks, Saturday I helped her buy shoes (thank you Bravo TV), and Sunday we had dinner with students from the big class to celebrate some winter festival that was happening that day. Apparently the tradition is that you have to eat "jiao zi" (dumplings) that day in order to ensure health during the winter. Jiao zi is a small dumpling that is usually sold on the street; they make them right there in front of you, throw them in a huge pot of boiling water, and then serve them to you in a bowl of hot water so that it can cook while you are holding it. So I guess it's pretty obvious that eating it definitely has a warming effect.
It wasn't easy to find free time. For some reason the big class students are a little more outgoing...meaning they want to do stuff with me outside of class. Also Han Jie is a starting to get less flaky, in fact most of what we did this weekend were her ideas, but who knows how long that'll last. Regardless, my time to plan the exam became more limited, which sucked because it took about 5 hours to make.
Monday (22nd) -- Gave the exam. All of the students were told about this last week, but, like usual, four of the really unmotivated students strolled in about 30 minutes late, holding bowls of soup they'd brought to eat during class. I wonder if they were surprised when everyone was quietly taking their exams? These tests are also stressful as hell because even if you tell them the consequences of cheating, like getting thrown out, they'll cheat anyway. I could go on a tangent now about why I think this is the case, but I won't bore you with that. Basically, proctoring sucks. The oral exam also included a conversational part, where I had to speak with each student individually for about 5 minutes. In the afternoon, I taught a writing class to the big class.
Monday evening was...an odd one. The university planned a dinner for all of the foreign teachers which was to be held at this nice ass hotel:
I was excited about the free meal and, surprisingly, the opportunity to meet other foreigners. Every chance to speak English normally is something that I don't take for granted nowadays. It's probably seems shallow, but I like dressing up and going to these types of things, tryin to act classy and adult and whatnot. Of course I'm kindof a joker, but it was hard to stand out at this party. I was going to go to this dinner with Michael.
I will dignify Michael with a paragraph of summary. He's the other foreign teacher who works in my office, but his students are going to Australia instead of Canada. I'd met him about a week before this dinner, despite the fact that we'd been working at the same place for three months. He's 45 and I'd guess 5'11", 230 lbs. This guy is fuckin unreal. Every time I've seen him, he's wearing a tweed jacket with no shirt underneath, shades, and a long, white wool scarf. I learned about all of his accomplishments, how much money and how many assets he owned, and enough about his life story to write a small book about...and I didn't even ask! For example, he graduated from Stanford, has at least one masters degree and two PhD's...one in philosophy, the other I don't know. He also owns real estate amounting to around $5 million, including a house on Madison Avenue. Foreshadowing alert: much of what I learned about him was after about 3 glasses of wine and a few very heavy rum & cokes, so forgive me if some of the details about him are blurry. I like his company I guess, because company is so hard to find, but the guy's ego is bigger than Anne Hathaway's grotesque mouth (sorry, watched brokeback mountain again recently).
The dinner was entertaining. I wanted to just relax after having dealt with that exam and teaching that day. Michael, myself, and two of our Chinese colleagues attended. Having Michael around as someone to talk to was good at first. He immediately made friends with the wait staff by paying them money to make sure he "didn't see the bottom of his glass." After the first 5 minutes of the dinner, a waiter refilled his glass. I hadn't drunk alcohol in a while, so I kept my pace relatively slow. I also realized that my colleagues weren't having much fun, not only because they had no one else to talk to, but also because Michael was flustering them by complaining about the job. At one point, he saw that people had brought friends, and asked why his girlfriend wasn't allowed to come. Ms. Ding said she didn't know, and that it was probably OK if other people were doing it. Hearing this frustrated Michael, so he immediately called his girlfriend and told her to come over. I couldn't wait to meet her!
In the meantime, he talked to a couple that was sitting at our table for about 5 minutes, and then headed off to get more food and socialize. As soon as he left, I looked at the couple. They looked at me. "Who is this guy?" It was a good ice breaker, especially welcome since they seemed like a nice couple to talk to. The man, Justin, was from Canada, and his wife Louanne was from China. There was obviously tons to talk about. They asked me where I was from. "Pittsburgh." I asked where Louanne was from. "Wuhan." Then I asked Justin where he was from. "Nova Scotia." I know where that is. "Sidney Crosby!" Maybe I've been to the Penguins' website a little too much. If hockey and being in China weren't enough to talk about, there was always Michael. Justin asked me if I'd ever heard of a book called "The Game," written by Neil Strauss. Believe it or not, I'd actually heard about it and know a little about the contents of it. Basically, Neil Strauss is a pick-up guru, and he wrote a book on how to pick up women. I could go on, but it just seemed like Michael had read about this too and was putting it into practice all night. But, Michael wasn't really a poster child of this book...I'd say as far as examples go, he was more like that mutated fetus from "Total Recall" that was growing out of a dude's chest.
Michael's wife showed up and met my colleagues. I didn't really see her coming in, so I knew I'd see her as soon as we were introduced. I turned around. "Damn." I don't know if I said that outloud, but these days, it's not like it matters heh. She was actually pretty hot though. Good for him. At this point, he was pretty drunk. He told her he wanted to go around to every table and introduce her. She looked at me. "Sounds like fun!" She definitely wasn't going to go along with this, so he went to all of the tables himself. Another opportunity to chat it up with the nice couple at our table. The party was settling down, and a Chinese host told the room the nice version of "get out."
Ten minutes passed, and the wait staff was starting to clean everything up. -doong doong doong- "Ladies and gentleeeeman." No way. Was it the Joker? Nah, but I turned around and saw some joker slouched over the podium adjusting the mic. "You may remember me as the guy who just visited all of your tables. We are going to go carousing after the party, so if you're interested, you can meet us at the hotel bar." I knew what to do. I looked at Justin and Louanne, and they laughed, "If you want, we can grab a coffee or something." I was alright. Michael is definitely rough, but I felt like going with him was at least good for a story. Plus he was buyin the first round. I was down. Justin & Louanne and I exchanged numbers, and then I headed out with Michael and his girl.
We went to the hotel bar -- "the Piano bar." I was appalled to find no piano in the place. We decided instead of buying a round of drinks, to get an entire bottle of Bacardi rum and a bottle of coke. With only us three, it was gonna be a hell of a night. I can't believe I'm saying this, but thank god some French people showed up. They were actually really entertaining though, and spoke English ridiculously well. I mean, they were French of course, but it was interesting to hear about what French people do.
By the end of the night, we'd ordered and finished a second bottle of rum. I made my own drinks -- 1 part rum, 1 part coke. Is that how you're supposed to make them? Well they tasted good, but damn. I guess I haven't drunk in a while. This is bad for two reasons...first, because my tolerance is that of a 15 year old girl's, and second, because I've forgotten how to drink. I got back to my apartment at around 2 am and immediately went to bed.
Tuesday (23rd) -- The next morning I had one of the worst hangovers I've ever had. I got up at 6 am couldn't get back to sleep. 7 am, first vom in China. I also didn't have drinking water in my fridge, so I was waiting for 8 am when the convenience store downstairs would no doubt be open. This wasn't good. First, Han Jie had been planning a big student "party" for this night. I also got a call from my boss at around 11am saying that one of my students wanted to take me out to lunch at noon. Thankfully, I didnt have classes Tuesday because Han Jie's party was a pretty big deal....
...to be continued...
Weekend (Dec. 19th-21st) -- On the upcoming Monday, there was to be a final exam for the small class. This would also be my last class with them, which was a pretty big downer. I got pretty close with most of the small class because everyday I would make them tell me stories about themselves and I would often tell them (choice) stories about me. We had also spent tons of time together and usually had a great time doing it. It was easy to be successful in their class.
The weekend was fairly eventful, I met with my favorite "zhong guo ren" (Chinese person) Han Jie everyday for various reasons -- Friday we went out for drinks, Saturday I helped her buy shoes (thank you Bravo TV), and Sunday we had dinner with students from the big class to celebrate some winter festival that was happening that day. Apparently the tradition is that you have to eat "jiao zi" (dumplings) that day in order to ensure health during the winter. Jiao zi is a small dumpling that is usually sold on the street; they make them right there in front of you, throw them in a huge pot of boiling water, and then serve them to you in a bowl of hot water so that it can cook while you are holding it. So I guess it's pretty obvious that eating it definitely has a warming effect.
It wasn't easy to find free time. For some reason the big class students are a little more outgoing...meaning they want to do stuff with me outside of class. Also Han Jie is a starting to get less flaky, in fact most of what we did this weekend were her ideas, but who knows how long that'll last. Regardless, my time to plan the exam became more limited, which sucked because it took about 5 hours to make.
Monday (22nd) -- Gave the exam. All of the students were told about this last week, but, like usual, four of the really unmotivated students strolled in about 30 minutes late, holding bowls of soup they'd brought to eat during class. I wonder if they were surprised when everyone was quietly taking their exams? These tests are also stressful as hell because even if you tell them the consequences of cheating, like getting thrown out, they'll cheat anyway. I could go on a tangent now about why I think this is the case, but I won't bore you with that. Basically, proctoring sucks. The oral exam also included a conversational part, where I had to speak with each student individually for about 5 minutes. In the afternoon, I taught a writing class to the big class.
Monday evening was...an odd one. The university planned a dinner for all of the foreign teachers which was to be held at this nice ass hotel:
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| From Wuhan |
I was excited about the free meal and, surprisingly, the opportunity to meet other foreigners. Every chance to speak English normally is something that I don't take for granted nowadays. It's probably seems shallow, but I like dressing up and going to these types of things, tryin to act classy and adult and whatnot. Of course I'm kindof a joker, but it was hard to stand out at this party. I was going to go to this dinner with Michael.
I will dignify Michael with a paragraph of summary. He's the other foreign teacher who works in my office, but his students are going to Australia instead of Canada. I'd met him about a week before this dinner, despite the fact that we'd been working at the same place for three months. He's 45 and I'd guess 5'11", 230 lbs. This guy is fuckin unreal. Every time I've seen him, he's wearing a tweed jacket with no shirt underneath, shades, and a long, white wool scarf. I learned about all of his accomplishments, how much money and how many assets he owned, and enough about his life story to write a small book about...and I didn't even ask! For example, he graduated from Stanford, has at least one masters degree and two PhD's...one in philosophy, the other I don't know. He also owns real estate amounting to around $5 million, including a house on Madison Avenue. Foreshadowing alert: much of what I learned about him was after about 3 glasses of wine and a few very heavy rum & cokes, so forgive me if some of the details about him are blurry. I like his company I guess, because company is so hard to find, but the guy's ego is bigger than Anne Hathaway's grotesque mouth (sorry, watched brokeback mountain again recently).
The dinner was entertaining. I wanted to just relax after having dealt with that exam and teaching that day. Michael, myself, and two of our Chinese colleagues attended. Having Michael around as someone to talk to was good at first. He immediately made friends with the wait staff by paying them money to make sure he "didn't see the bottom of his glass." After the first 5 minutes of the dinner, a waiter refilled his glass. I hadn't drunk alcohol in a while, so I kept my pace relatively slow. I also realized that my colleagues weren't having much fun, not only because they had no one else to talk to, but also because Michael was flustering them by complaining about the job. At one point, he saw that people had brought friends, and asked why his girlfriend wasn't allowed to come. Ms. Ding said she didn't know, and that it was probably OK if other people were doing it. Hearing this frustrated Michael, so he immediately called his girlfriend and told her to come over. I couldn't wait to meet her!
In the meantime, he talked to a couple that was sitting at our table for about 5 minutes, and then headed off to get more food and socialize. As soon as he left, I looked at the couple. They looked at me. "Who is this guy?" It was a good ice breaker, especially welcome since they seemed like a nice couple to talk to. The man, Justin, was from Canada, and his wife Louanne was from China. There was obviously tons to talk about. They asked me where I was from. "Pittsburgh." I asked where Louanne was from. "Wuhan." Then I asked Justin where he was from. "Nova Scotia." I know where that is. "Sidney Crosby!" Maybe I've been to the Penguins' website a little too much. If hockey and being in China weren't enough to talk about, there was always Michael. Justin asked me if I'd ever heard of a book called "The Game," written by Neil Strauss. Believe it or not, I'd actually heard about it and know a little about the contents of it. Basically, Neil Strauss is a pick-up guru, and he wrote a book on how to pick up women. I could go on, but it just seemed like Michael had read about this too and was putting it into practice all night. But, Michael wasn't really a poster child of this book...I'd say as far as examples go, he was more like that mutated fetus from "Total Recall" that was growing out of a dude's chest.
Michael's wife showed up and met my colleagues. I didn't really see her coming in, so I knew I'd see her as soon as we were introduced. I turned around. "Damn." I don't know if I said that outloud, but these days, it's not like it matters heh. She was actually pretty hot though. Good for him. At this point, he was pretty drunk. He told her he wanted to go around to every table and introduce her. She looked at me. "Sounds like fun!" She definitely wasn't going to go along with this, so he went to all of the tables himself. Another opportunity to chat it up with the nice couple at our table. The party was settling down, and a Chinese host told the room the nice version of "get out."
Ten minutes passed, and the wait staff was starting to clean everything up. -doong doong doong- "Ladies and gentleeeeman." No way. Was it the Joker? Nah, but I turned around and saw some joker slouched over the podium adjusting the mic. "You may remember me as the guy who just visited all of your tables. We are going to go carousing after the party, so if you're interested, you can meet us at the hotel bar." I knew what to do. I looked at Justin and Louanne, and they laughed, "If you want, we can grab a coffee or something." I was alright. Michael is definitely rough, but I felt like going with him was at least good for a story. Plus he was buyin the first round. I was down. Justin & Louanne and I exchanged numbers, and then I headed out with Michael and his girl.
We went to the hotel bar -- "the Piano bar." I was appalled to find no piano in the place. We decided instead of buying a round of drinks, to get an entire bottle of Bacardi rum and a bottle of coke. With only us three, it was gonna be a hell of a night. I can't believe I'm saying this, but thank god some French people showed up. They were actually really entertaining though, and spoke English ridiculously well. I mean, they were French of course, but it was interesting to hear about what French people do.
By the end of the night, we'd ordered and finished a second bottle of rum. I made my own drinks -- 1 part rum, 1 part coke. Is that how you're supposed to make them? Well they tasted good, but damn. I guess I haven't drunk in a while. This is bad for two reasons...first, because my tolerance is that of a 15 year old girl's, and second, because I've forgotten how to drink. I got back to my apartment at around 2 am and immediately went to bed.
Tuesday (23rd) -- The next morning I had one of the worst hangovers I've ever had. I got up at 6 am couldn't get back to sleep. 7 am, first vom in China. I also didn't have drinking water in my fridge, so I was waiting for 8 am when the convenience store downstairs would no doubt be open. This wasn't good. First, Han Jie had been planning a big student "party" for this night. I also got a call from my boss at around 11am saying that one of my students wanted to take me out to lunch at noon. Thankfully, I didnt have classes Tuesday because Han Jie's party was a pretty big deal....
...to be continued...
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Views
Just in case your didn't see the pictures link, they're here. I took a few more recently, namely a few views that I have from the three places I spend the most time in...
The first few pictures are of both of my teaching buildings. In the first picture, teaching building 5 (where I teach the small class) is in the center of the foreground, and teaching building 1 (where I teach the big class) is looming in the background. BTW, chinese lesson for today, "background" = beijing. I learned that when my coworkers were in the middle of a conversation about photos and I thought they were talking about going to Beijing (my basic understanding of Chinese only allows for me to assume simple-minded conversations, but at least it's progress from nothing. Still, I probably look like an idiot hehe).
The first few pictures are of both of my teaching buildings. In the first picture, teaching building 5 (where I teach the small class) is in the center of the foreground, and teaching building 1 (where I teach the big class) is looming in the background. BTW, chinese lesson for today, "background" = beijing. I learned that when my coworkers were in the middle of a conversation about photos and I thought they were talking about going to Beijing (my basic understanding of Chinese only allows for me to assume simple-minded conversations, but at least it's progress from nothing. Still, I probably look like an idiot hehe).
Teaching buildings 5 (foreground) and 1 (background)
Big classroom (Teaching building 1) view 1. I teach on the 18th floor.
Big Classroom view 2. The view is of the East Lake and some of Hankou District
Another picture from my class. It can be pretty distracting sometimes!
From teaching building 1, taken at around 8 AM. That's right, I'm awake then.
View from the small class (teaching building 5).
The only decoration in my classroom. I recommend taking a closer look at this one.
This was taken from my apartment. I took it because there's a group of kids playing badminton on the roof of the building, without adult supervision. Not to sound like a mom. It's just like, they're pretty high up.
A picture of where I buy fruit, most notably the you zi and pineapple. You can see the you zi's; they're the big, round, yellow fruits in the middle.
Speaking of, when you buy a pineapple or you zi, they peel it for you. What a country! The service is top notch every time.
This is where I live. My apartment is visible, I just don't know which one it is in this picture. Somewhere in the middle.
Big classroom (Teaching building 1) view 1. I teach on the 18th floor.
Big Classroom view 2. The view is of the East Lake and some of Hankou District
Another picture from my class. It can be pretty distracting sometimes!
From teaching building 1, taken at around 8 AM. That's right, I'm awake then.
View from the small class (teaching building 5).
The only decoration in my classroom. I recommend taking a closer look at this one.
This was taken from my apartment. I took it because there's a group of kids playing badminton on the roof of the building, without adult supervision. Not to sound like a mom. It's just like, they're pretty high up.
A picture of where I buy fruit, most notably the you zi and pineapple. You can see the you zi's; they're the big, round, yellow fruits in the middle.
Speaking of, when you buy a pineapple or you zi, they peel it for you. What a country! The service is top notch every time.
This is where I live. My apartment is visible, I just don't know which one it is in this picture. Somewhere in the middle.
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