"From the Republic of Conscience" in Paragraph Form

Just because I happen to like it better this way.

///


When I landed in The Republic of Conscience, it was so noiseless when the engines stopped I could hear a curlew high above the runway.  At immigration, the clerk was an old man who produced a wallet from his homespun coat and showed me a photograph of my grandfather.  The woman in customs asked me to declare the words of our traditional cures and charms to heal dumbness and avert the evil eye.

No porters.  No interpreter.  No taxi.

You carried your own burden and very soon your symptoms of creeping privilege disappeared.

Fog is a dreaded omen there, but lightning spells universal good and parents hang swaddled infants in trees during thunderstorms.  Salt is their precious mineral.  And seashells are held to the ear during births and funerals.  The base of all inks and pigments is seawater.  Their sacred symbol is a stylized boat - the sail is an ear, the mast a sloping pen, the hull a mouth-shape, the keel an open eye.

At their inauguration, public leaders must swear to uphold unwritten law and weep to atone for their presumption to hold office -- 

--and to affirm their faith that all life sprang from salt in tears which the sky-god wept after he dreams his solitude was endless.

I came back from that frugal republic with my two arms the one length, the customs woman having insisted my allowance was myself.

The old man rose and gazed into my face and said that was official recognition that I was now a dual citizen.  He therefore desired me, when I got home, to consider myself a representative and to speak on their behalf in my own tongue.

Their embassies, he said, were everywhere, but operated independently, an no ambassador would ever be relieved.

///

Peace out.

Clutches

Every time that I think I'm about to escape the clutches of English teaching forever, it comes right back at me.

I got a new schedule this Saturday morning that claimed that I would be teaching nothing but math all the time basically from now on.  I'd be teaching it to the 3rd and 4th sections of kids going to USA and also the 1-year section of kids going to Canada.  I basically jumped up and down when I saw the schedule, I was so excited.

But then today, the fourth section of USA kids dissolved.  There weren't enough of them, they didn't think they had enough time, and they didn't think their English was good enough to handle the curriculum we run.  So they moved them into another section of some other crazy class, and now there's no fourth section of USA kids.

So instead, I get to teach more English.  And to top it all off, I also get to go to a meeting at 8AM tomorrow (even though I don't have anything until 3:30 in the afternoon) to tell me that I have to teach English again.

I don't know if there will be any more math classes that start this year.  I'm really afraid that I'll have to teach English all year.  What a nightmare that would be...

Peace out.

Burj Dubai

Sometimes when I'm in high places, I get really bad cases of The Call of the Void. I think it originally comes from a French term, which I don't have the motivation to Google at the moment. But basically, it means that when you're standing next to some type of high ledge, you get an urge to jump over the edge or try to fly or try to jump to the nearest platform otherwise and see how it goes.

I have a couple of problems with things like that. When I'm rooftopping, a lot of times I'll be standing next to the edge, and the next thing I know I'm experiencing a wild fantasy of myself jumping over the edge and then free-falling almost all the way down. I can kind of feel it in the pit of my stomach, but wake myself out of it before something bad happens. It's kind of similar to the feeling I get when I'm driving and I imagine myself being rammed by an 18-wheeler from behind every time I change lanes, or for some reason swerving into the car in the oncoming direction. Of course I never want any of those things to happen, but they play out in my mind all the time.

Maybe it's because September 11th was coming up again and people were talking about the anniversary before it came, but I suppose that jumping had been on my mind a little bit. And sometime over the weekend - perhaps Saturday night - I remember having a quite vivid dream of myself at the top of the Burj Dubai, somehow outside of it, and then looking over the edge and just jumping. It's about 2,700 feet down from there, and my dream held me there to experience the fall. I remember thinking about what the impact would be like, what must be going through someone's head as they're falling. Jesus, did I seriously make that decision? There really isn't any going back now. I wonder if this will hurt. I wonder how much it'll hurt if it does. How long could it possibly hurt? I'd pretty much die instantly, right? Dream me thought all of those.

Peace out.

Telecom

As you probably know if you've been talking to me (or reading my blog), I've been pretty upset with the internet speeds here for basically no reason except that it prevents me from doing the online job that I have in the states, which I am always a little bit hesitant to detail, but maybe I will do sometime.

Anyway, I went to the apartment of a teacher who lives nearby recently to check their internet speeds with regards to servers in New Jersey, and discovered that the download speed he has is about 5.3x faster than what I have. I'm at .36mbps, and he's at 1.85mbps, or some numbers very very close to that.

I need to do another test again at another time to be sure that those are actually the speeds I'm getting, but if that's the case, then it might actually be worth it to find a place that I can just use for ONLY doing work. But I'd have to figure out how much it would cost to do that and how much more I would make. So let's do that here!

In the last 10 days, I've made about $240 on the site, which is about 1/5 of what I would normally make. Of course, I would work less because I'm in China. But so let's assume that I'd make maybe $2,000 per month, as opposed to the $700 that I'd be making now, so we have $1,300 to play with. China Telecom DSL is about 190RMB per month, which is ~$25. So unless an apartment is like $1,200 I guess it looks like it is actually worth it.

So maybe I should do that. I'll have to ask if there are cheap apartments anywhere that can just be a work cave. But I also wonder if it'd be worth it if I end up getting other jobs. I guess we'll see.

Peace out.

Jerbs

Two people have offered me jobs since I got here, which is like two more jobs than I've been offered in my life basically.

Well, not really, but it does feel kind of different when people personally reach out to me to see if I'd be interested in something like that.

The first one was extremely unexpected. A couple of the girls upstairs, Jenny and Kara, were having a pot luck dinner and invited a bunch of teachers to come and join. James and his wife were there, Danni and Courtney were there, and a few other people. A former teacher at JCIE also came named Keith, who looked and spoke fluent Chinese, but was actually Korean. We all talked a bit about colleges somehow, and it came up that I'd gone to a bunch of them.

Sometime shortly before he left, Keith asked if I'd like to talk to some of his kids about the different places I went, what I liked and didn't like, and what I thought about transferring and all the applications and et cetera. I said sure, why not, and we arranged for me to go about two weeks later. After I talked to the kids for a while (just gave a presentation to about six of them because many were away), he asked if I might like to work with his company part time to help kids with all the miserable parts of the US admission process. I told him sure, though I also told him I'd likely leave China in May. So we'll see how that goes.

The second one was a bit more predictable to me. I was just sitting on the rooftop playing guitar and James, who is Chinese and married to our teacher Angela, and asked me to keep playing and singing. I sang the first verse/chorus of Seaweed Sheets, then did the chill vamp at the end of it, and figured that was enough. The song is too long to do the whole thing, so I just called it quits there. He asked me afterwards if I liked to play in bars by any chance, and if I would be interested in playing at some local ones nearby that he knows needs some players. I was pretty sure someone would ask me this eventually in China, but what I was surprised about was that he only saw me play guitar, which I am complete shit at to be very honest. I told him that I could possibly do it, but I would only play guitar for a maximum of 40 minutes, but I could do longer if I had a keyboard. I really don't feel very comfortable on guitars at all. He said he'd talk to his friends and see what they needed.

So I guess we'll see how that goes. They could both be pretty interesting, because I think both will probably help me meet more Chinese people than I do here. I mean, sure I meet the kids, but this place is kind of like a jail for them and I don't ever really see them at all after class, which makes me very sad and also makes it hard to motivate myself to learn Chinese. But maybe these will help.

Peace out.

Blue's Guitar

The guitar that I got here is a very stark blue color, kind of like the color of my eyes, though it has gradients going along the curves so it's not a uniform color. I think that it would look kind of girly with most people, but I think it matches me and my style and all the colors I wear (and also my eyes).

It's actually not a very good guitar. I got it for about $30 at a store up the road, and I thought it was okay at the store, but now I'm a little bit eehh about it. The neck is bent inward for the middle strings, which for some reason I though I had heard was an advantage for barring chords, and now I'm realizing probably, if anything, makes it more difficult, and also makes it impossible to use my capo which I brought from home. Also, I'm pretty sure some of the frets are misplaced because if I tune the guitar to within about 1Hz or 2Hz when the strings are open (which is extremely close to perfect), then some chords sound good and some chords just sound miserable, like the guitar isn't even close to in tune.

Anyway, it's fine enough because I'm not actually good at guitar, don't really like guitar, and I'm cheap as hell anyway. Sometimes I wonder if I'd like guitar or be good at guitar if I actually had one that didn't suck, or used the right strings for me so that I wouldn't still be afraid of barre chords.

The only place that I really feel comfortable playing my guitar is on the roof because almost no one can hear me, although Angela and her husband James can hear me sometimes because they keep the window open. It's starting to get a little bit cold now, and tonight I wished that I had a jacket when I was on the roof. I'm worried that I won't have anywhere to play anything as soon as it starts to actually get chilly. I think that possibly some of the classrooms might be left open at night, but they're supposed to be locked from what I know.

I've thought about getting an electric keyboard too - I found an 88key online w/ MIDI input from Taobao for $200 - but I fear that I would bug my neighbors. I considered asking to be put in the apartment down the hall so that I wouldn't bother anyone. I should actually look into that and see if it can be done.

Peace out.

Fee Lines

There are a lot more cats in my life here than I had imagined.

I just came back from the Taiwan style rice restaurant that I talked about in my last post, and the xiaomao was there again. It came in and out of the dining room, and once was only there for a few seconds, but later I managed to capture it and make it sit with me. I put it on my lap and just rubbed his shoulders and face and pet his back. I guess it's a him, but I really don't know. He's mostly white with some black and orange and is very cute and fragile. I gave him some chicken, and he seemed to like it.

There's also a family of cats that lives to the north of the school near all of the apartments and buildings there, and I think they mostly take refuge in the plants-that-are-actually-gates-and-fences that separate all of the different properties from each other. When I charge my bike, I notice them going in and out of the bushes, jumping up and down from the ledges to get back home. One of them is a kitten, a little brown and black guy, and he likes to hang out in front of the college, and sometimes even goes and sits with the security guard or sits underneath his chair. Apparently he's a little shy and doesn't really like to be touched. Angela asked the security guard, what are you going to do about him? Won't he be a problem here? And he said (in Chinese, of course), oh, no, it's okay, he usually gets bored and goes outside to do anything he wants.

I thought that was a nice attitude. And that's how JCIE accidentally adopted a kitty.

Last night when I went upstairs to play guitar on the roof, I noticed a cat in the hallway of the sixth floor when I got off the elevator. It was black and white and full-grown but looked cute, so I started walking down the hallway towards it, but it was a while away. I suppose that it got scared either by my footsteps or the elevator closing behind me, but it jumped and then ran into the door that was open in front of it. The owners closed the door behind it, and I didn't get to see it again. Kara and Jenny told me today that his name is something like Socks or Mittens. Seems fitting.

Peace out.

Don't Get Off, Just Get Off Me

I had dinner at the "Taiwan Style Rice" restaurant across the street on Friday night around 6:30, which is a confusing name because their rice is just like everyone else's in China. Maybe I've only been eating Taiwan style rice. I'll never know.

Anyway, I brought some flashcards with me to study before my food came, but I forgot to pick them up because I was pulling my wallet out of my pocket as I stood up from the table and paid. I got an ice cream cone or bar of some type and went back to the school to eat it in the main courtyard (actually a basketball courtyard), and realized just as I was about to go back inside that I'd forgotten my flashcards. I was worried they'd throw them away - actually, I was worried they would have thrown them away already - so I walked back to the restaurant right away. It's a 60-second walk, so it's not too annoying or anything.

As I was walking over, right as I got to the corner of the street, I just heard someone shouting, "Hey! Hey!" into the street. I was about 99.9% sure it wasn't me because I really don't know anyone in the area, and anyone that I do know certainly wouldn't shout "Hey!" to me in the street like that. I remember thinking the only way it was possible is if it was someone from maybe Semester at Sea or high school or PSU or something like that who noticed me. I looked around. I noticed Azam walking behind me and to my left, and he also seemed to be unphased by the shouting.

I swear that as soon as I turned my head back around, there was some 20-something Asian girl standing right in front of me. I was sure she must be confused. She said, hello. I said, do you know me? She said, no, how are you? She put her hand out to shake, so I shook her hand and said I was good. As she shook my hand, she leaned in closer and closer, and I realized that quite likely she was trying to kiss me somewhere between my neck and collarbone, though I couldn't figure out where. I backed off as quickly as I could, and also realized that she was crazy.

I tried to take my hand out of the hand shake, but she squeezed and wouldn't let go. She kept talking, but I don't have any idea what she said. I was much more concerned with the things I was saying at that point, which were along the lines of "Let go of me," "Get the f*** away from me," and "What the f*** is wrong with you, leave." I noticed that she had come from a table that included some foreign people (and also her English seemed pretty good actually). I looked to them, maybe for support or something, and they just kind of shook their heads and waved their hands. I had no idea what that meant.

Was she drunk? Was she just crazy? Did they make her do it as a dare? Did they just say, "Oh, any old foreigner, they love Chinese chicks, take your pick?" If that was her mindset, it must have been quite a shock to her when I literally jerked her off my body, getting close to throwing her on the ground, and went into the Taiwan style rice restaurant to pick up my flashcards.

I thought about staying there for a few minutes so that the girl would definitely go away, but I didn't want her to control my actions. I also thought about walking the long way home but, again, didn't want to alter my life because a crazy person existed. So I just walked back.

She saw me again, and came at me again, talking loudly, but I have no idea what she was saying, again. She grabbed my arm/hand, not in an affectionate way but in a way that made me feel like I was being assaulted, and I really, really wanted to get her off at me. I yelled at her again and tugged my arm, but she didn't let go. She held on strong and tried to pull me back. She pulled my arm across her body and I remember it touching her stomach, which wasn't quite fat and wasn't quite thin. I had managed to walk to the big road across from the school at that point, looked out in front of me, saw a few seconds of opening, jerked my arm from her forcefully and darted into the road. I figured she'd have to be absolutely crazy to chase me into the street like that. I also realized that if she continued to chase me in the street, I could hold her in the street in a dangerous position until she had to choose to either run away or die, at which point I'm sure she would choose run away. I didn't really want to do that, but I'm going to be honest, it did cross my mind.

//

I asked Azam if he remembered seeing it happen on Monday when we were at lunch. He said he didn't. I asked anyone else if they knew anything about some girl who did that at Jack's Place. No one said they knew anything. A guy in a restaurant overheard me talking about it and said, "Ah, yeah, being such a chick magnet sure is a curse," and I responded, "No, really, I felt like I was being assaulted."

So that's twice now.

Peace out.

8AM

I've never had trouble waking up early in my life before. In high school, waking up at 6:37 or so every day seemed like nothing. And I'd fall asleep at 11:30, sometimes as late as 12:30, with almost no problem every night.

What a luxury, man.

I teach 8:00 AM classes three days a week now, and they are killing me. I don't know why, I have literally no idea, but I haven't been able to fall asleep until after 2:00 AM by myself at the absolute earliest since I got those classes assigned to me. Some nights I took some fraction of a sleeping pill because I knew I was going to die in class if I didn't, but some nights I just try on my own, and sometimes I'm up until 3:00 or 4:00 on those nights struggling to fall asleep.

I got a pad for my bed, which didn't really seem to help. Making it colder so that I can use the big comforter does seem to help a little bit, but not really.

Normally I wouldn't really mind. I get to all of my classes on time, even if I feel a little dead. But I feel so exhausted afterward that sometimes I fall asleep, and that's gotten me in trouble twice so far. Once, I fell asleep at 4:00 PM or so and didn't wake up until 7:10 PM, which was ten minutes after I was supposed to be on duty at night study. That sucked. The other time, I just completely slept through a science meeting. I woke up at the tail end of it and rushed in just in time to talk to my boss about my classes' progress, but I still felt terribly stupid about it. I feel like it might have messed up other things, as well, but I can't remember them at the moment.

Sigh.

I know that a schedule change is coming up next week because some teachers have to go out to the sticks for a few weeks to teach some special program. I really, really hope that maybe I'll get moved from 8AMs because I just can't do it. But I'm also really afraid that - since some of the English teachers are leaving - I'll have to teach English again.

And god damn, do I hate teaching English.

Peace out.

Derangements

I gave my kids in my Canada class a problem today that was basically like this: A monkey is throwing a ball labelled 1, 2, 3 into boxes labelled 1, 2, 3 randomly. What is the probability that none of the balls go into the right box?

For something with such small numbers, it's easy to do by hand. One student was trying to figure out the rigorous way to do it and asked me what the answer was, so I just laid it out by hand and finished it in a minute or so. But then he said, "But what if it's a bigger number?" So I started to work on it with, say, 20 boxes.

So I started to work on it in class, but didn't solve it. I went to dinner and thought a little bit about it, but didn't really make much progress and got distracted by Chinese and also food. So I started to work on it when I came back to my apartment, and it turned out that it was much more difficult than I had anticipated for n greater than 5 or so.

It turns out that you need to use a concept called derangements, which is basically when you find all of the permutations where nothing has been mapped to its proper spot. As in, 1 doesn't go in the first position, 2 doesn't go in the second position, etc. There was a famous problem that was equivalent to "define derangements" from a long time ago called the hat problem (or umbrella problem) where n people go to a party, and you want to find how many ways (or the probability) they leave with all the wrong umbrellas.

I eventually figured out and understood whatever I needed to know about it. !n = (n-1) x (!(n-1) + !(n-2)). Basically, imagine that the first guy at a party picks a hat, call it hat #k. Now think about what guy #k does. If guy #k picks the hat #1, then what's left is !(n-2). Since there are (n-1) ways that guy #1 can pick a guy #k, this is (n-1) x !(n-2). Now imagine that guy #k doesn't pick hat #1. So there are (n-1) ways that guy #1 can pick hat #k, and then we still need to derange !(n-1), so that's (n-1) x !(n-1).

It took me way too long to understand that paragraph above. I think most of the reason why is because I misread the Wikipedia summary of the explanation. I actually went so far as to edit it with my own misunderstanding, and then edit it back when I realized I misunderstood it and why. But anyway, after that, I was able to understand pretty much whatever else there was about it, including the summation formula and another proof via the inclusion-exclusion principle, which I wish I had seen first, sigh.

I don't really know why I wrote this. It was a little bit nice to do math for like 4 hours tonight, but also a little bit dumb and I felt pretty miserable with myself for taking so long to understand some of the things I was doing and solve some of the problems I was working on. I need to do more problem solving and programming, but also more Chinese, and also more music and guitar and drawing, aye...

Peace out.

Proximity

As frustrating as it was sometimes to live in the orphanage in Cambodia, one thing that I didn't realize about it until just now was how effective it was at helping me to learn Khmer. The only other foreigner there with any regularity at all was Mike, and sometimes even he would just randomly disappear. So if I wanted to have any interaction, there was a very good chance that it had to be in Khmer. I mean, I lived with 70 kids or so, of which probably about 15 could speak reasonable English. So for 55 of the people I lived with, I had to learn Khmer to really communicate with them in any effective way.

Here, though, I live exclusively with foreigners. On my floor, there's one American guy who's married to a Chinese woman, but she speaks really good English and I don't think he speaks really any Chinese at all. And elsewhere in the building, it's the same - either only English speakers, or just people who speak really good English in general.

So there's no reason to speak Chinese here. In Cambodia, I needed it if I wanted to say or explain or listen anything at all with what was going on around me. Additionally, there was a lot more commotion because there were 70 kids running around. Here, I just live with a bunch of English speaking adults. We all sit in our apartments and stare at screens.

So I've done a poor job with the Chinese so far, and I'm pretty disappointed about that.

Peace out.

Chhaya

I remember that once I was angry with Chhaya, the driver for Palm Tree, because he wasn't around to drive the bus when I wanted to take everyone to the river for a boat ride. I was talking to Srey Art about it, how I was so upset about it. Half of the kids couldn't go because we didn't have any transportation. She told me that it couldn't be his fault. A few years ago, he and Phearun had gotten in a huge fight, and they didn't speak to each other any more after that. I'd only told Phearun about my plan, and he never told Chhaya. She also told me about how he would take care of her when she was little, like she was his own daughter even though he didn't have one yet and wouldn't for years, and how he'd put blankets on her at night when he thought she was cold.

He was a child soldier in the Khmer Rouge. He has tattoos all over his body because he, like many other terrified enlistees, believed they made them bullet proof. He can drive a tank.  He can play guitar.

Peace out.

All This Ringing in my Fingers

I haven't legitimately played a piano since July 6th.  It's now August 26th.  That's 51 days.  I think this is the longest I've ever gone without playing a piano in literally a full decade.  It makes me upset.  I feel uncreative.  I really hate not playing.

Even in the middle of the ocean, there were pianos, even though they tried to ban me from them.  Even in an orphanage in one of the poorest countries in the world, I could find something close enough to a piano.

Peace out.

//

Edit:  I also really miss roller hockey.  It's weird what things end up being the most irreplaceable.

泰

I found a Thai restaurant.  Did I mention this before?  It's located at the very northern end of the clubbing district in Nanjing, which is called 1912.  It's really quite nice, supposed to be kind of an upper-class restaurant, but of course I do my very best to cheapen the place as much as I can.

They do have pad thai there, which is typically called "Thai shi" or written like this: 泰式(炒虾).  The characters I put in parenthesis, "chao xia," means "fried shrimp," which is the variety that they have on the menu.  Of course, I really dislike shrimp, so I asked them if they could replace it with chicken.  When I tried this same maneuver in Shanghai with Hokwan, it worked perfectly fine.

I didn't know it would be a problem, though.  One of the waitresses was quite insistent that they could not do it.  This seemed ridiculous to me.  They have chicken on the menu.  They can take that chicken, and put it into this food.  It's simple mathematics, really.  Anyway, on the first night I went there, I ended up getting something that I thought was beef pad thai, which doesn't really exist, and of course I was very wrong.

This time I had a better excuse (or so I thought).  I told them that I wanted that, but that I was allergic to shrimp, so could I replace it with chicken?  They didn't seem to understand me when I said the Chinese word for chicken, so I tried it again more forcefully, and the waitress seemed to understand.  But then the forceful young waitress from last time approached the table and said it was impossible.  So I just had it with no chicken and no shrimp.

Like I said, I do my best to cheapen the place, but tonight I made some mistakes.  Really, they made the mistakes, though.  They put an appetizer on my table basically without asking, which is a very cheap thing in general so I assumed that probably it was free if you ordered an actual entree.  They also put a wet towel on the table, also without asking, which I never touched.

When I left, they charged me an extra 5R for the appetizer and 2R for the towel.  They also didn't reduce the price at all for not including the shrimp.  I know that the amount of money involved is very small, but it seemed like an especially dick move to pull that on someone who didn't speak your language.  I was pretty angry at them, but what could I do?  I guess bitch about them on the internet.  Oh, well.

//

Remember Taj Mahal?  Well, I noticed another sign that had the character 泰 in it on our street today.  I was on my way back to the school when I noticed it across the street and thought to myself, ooohhhh, that's the red and yellow sign they meant!  After stopping in the Suguo (Nanjing's awful version of Wawa), I headed down there to check it out.

As I approached, a family sitting in a room right outside what appeared to be the entrance noticed me, and the woman came out, probably about 50 years old.  She asked me what I was doing in Chinese, which I didn't really understand.  I stumbled through my explanation, because I hadn't been prepared for this.  "I don't know how to say this in Chinese.  Oh, um....  Thailand restaurant??"  They spoke, and also pantomimed sleeping.  I got the picture and said, "Oh, okay.  I saw 'tai'."  And another woman responded in Chinese, "No, hong tai."  Which means, of course, hotel or motel.

Peace out.

Respect

So as written in prior entries, my phone had been messed up for a while. I eventually decided that it probably was a broken digitizer, which the internet had been suggesting since my very first search but which I had been trying to find my way around endlessly. I tried frying it with a hair dryer twice. Used a lot of electricity, but still no luck.

First I asked the foreign liaison here to help me find a place to fix it, and she called around a little bit while I was in the office and found the official Motorola repair store in town. When I went there one day, they told me it would be $100 to fix it. I mean, I could almost buy a new phone for that much money. No, I could buy a new phone for that much money. I decided to not agree to the price on the spot, walked away, and figured I'd give it one last go on my own before agreeing to such a ridiculous price.

I ended up finding a post online that was rather recent and had suggestions for cell phone repairs in Nanjing, so I tried the number listed there. It said that he always had one English speaker on staff, but I discovered immediately upon calling that they did not. I asked the class master for my Canadian kids to call for me, and I felt bad because she was watching a TV show during her lunch break when I called. She said that they could out how much it would cost and that they would call back.

I got wrangled into doing some office clean up on the way out of her office, but he called back shortly after. I had already forgotten how to say "Wait a minute" in Chinese, which Sarah had just told me, so I just had to keep saying "Okay" or "Ni hao" or "Hao de" or something like that while running to Sarah's office. They said they could do it for 200RMB, which is roughly $30, which is a way better deal. So I said I'd go there. I got the address and went.

The place where I went to get it fixed was really quite crazy. It's this enormous underground market (literally underground, you have to take a 10m subway down to get to it) that's filled to the brim with all types of cell phone vendors. And when I say filled to the brim, I mean very definitely more than 100 shops, possibly more than 200, all just in one big room, more or less. It took me a few minutes to even find the store I was looking for, #011.

The store that we had called ended up not having the part themselves, so they took me to another store that did. It was pretty crazy; they just had bucket after bucket of cell phone screen and digitizer replacement sorted by brand and make, literally hundreds of them, some from companies I didn't even know existed. I had printed out a paper describing my problem, and with the help of that and a woman who spoke a little bit of English, we were able to get things under way.

The real muscle of the entire operation at this store, though, appeared to be this one guy, quite tall, strangely muscular considering his job, with a markedly flatter face than most Chinese people, wearing an athletic shirt with a shiny black main portion and yellow mesh sides, sitting straight up at a work bench fixing every phone that came his way, testing the ones he fixed, and often working on more than one at a time. He had a bunch of drills, dryers, coolers, soldering irons, and everything else you'd need to fix a phone right in front of him, which made me feel a bit relieved with the whole operation.

Beyond that, it was clear that this guy had serious skill. When he got a phone in his hand, it always looked like he knew exactly what to do with it. It didn't even look like he'd just memorized all the different styles of phones, which was totally impossible, but more like he understood the motifs behind phone design and how to get to every part of each one. For instance, in my phone you have to peel up half of the sticker underneath the battery to get to the screws that hold the casing together. I don't think my phone is sold in China, but he still knew exactly where to look. And he swapped back and forth between working on mine and three or four other phones, never seeming to lose track of where he was.

I did notice that at the very end, he put my phone all the way back together and turned it on. Then he looked to the case where he'd been keeping all of its parts, and noticed that the speaker was still in there. He had to pry it back open quickly and click it back into place. He then tested it for a few minutes, declared it good, and handed it back to me.

I have so little skill with my hands, but I have so much respect for people that do. I don't care if it's sewing, drawing, painting, fixing cars, electronics, phones, whatever. I can't do any of it, and it seems like it's some kind of magic to me. It took about an hour for him to fix my phone and the other ones he was working on, but it was mesmerizing to just sit there and watch him pound through them. I found myself wishing that I could do something like that. I realize that I probably never will, that it's not even 1/100th worth the investment unless I make some kind of job of it, but I thought the whole time, damn, I wish I could do anything like this.

Peace out.

Dry Socks

I washed my clothes last week. I have enough clothes here that I only have to wash them every 14 days or so, assuming that I don't wear shirts twice or any of that stuff. So I did it last Sunday.

We don't have a dryer in our apartments, and I don't have a drying rack. All we have is some space outside the back of our apartment with big iron rods held above the ground, which is where we're supposed to do our drying regardless of season, temperature, or precipitation.

It has rained every single day since Sunday, often times when I'm teaching, eating lunch, or otherwise away from my room. I tried to dry my things in my room, but they just ended up smelling like a swamp. Today, it rained three separate times. I was out for one of them, so they're still wet.

It's just weird to think that it took me a week to dry some socks. That's something that really shouldn't take so long.

Peace out.

Sodome

I got an electric bike! I'm glad that I finally worked up the courage to do it. I'm so afraid of making big purchases. I mean, this was only $350, but to me, that feels like a lot a lot a lot. The only thing I've ever really bought that was more expensive was plane tickets, and those are easy to justify to myself.

When I went to the store, I looked up and down at the rows of bikes for about twenty minutes, then thought to myself, "If they sell locks and helmets, I'll just buy it now." I spotted the locks, but not any helmets. I asked a lady if they had them with the help of a Chinese dictionary on my phone, and she just laughed and said, "Haha, no." In Chinese, of course, but the emotion was clear.

She actually got me the keys of the bike and let me drive it around the store, which was called Carrefour. I found that pretty weird, but I guess it's a normal thing there.

Actually, before I got to that point, I walked out of the store. I saw an ATM machine, which would be the only way for me to get the 2,200RMB needed to pay for it. I stood there, leaning against it, for about ten minutes, possibly more, mulling over the decision. Should I buy it? Shouldn't I? Will they have locks? If I get the money in my hand, will I feel forced? Is it worth it? Will I die? Will I use it enough? Is $350 really cheap enough? Do I want an electric? Should I just say f*** the license and plates and get a gas one? They're faster, you know!

While I was mulling, a white guy and an Asian guy (native English speaker) walked over to me and said, "Hey, random question." Seriously: "Do you or any other non-Chinese people you know have a really good knowledge of Tai Qi? We're making a documentary about it and need foreigners that are good at it. Not that good, just pretty good." Unfortunately, I didn't, but I told them that I worked with a bunch of foreigners and I could ask around on Monday.

(Today was Monday. I forgot to do it, and would have continued forgetting if I hadn't written this post.)

After they left, I decided to just screw it and do it. I told myself I was going to stop living like such a poor person when I came to China and not be afraid to buy a little bit of convenience from time to time, and now seemed like the time to do it. I should mention that earlier in the day, I had spent 2 hours walking to a western store to get a towel, pillow, and pillow case. It would have taken me minutes on a bike. I realized that I could have made about $60 at my job online if I had biked instead of walked, at which point I realized my cheapness was getting ridiculous.

It's a pretty nice bike as far as electrics go, actually. It has two huge batteries, so it has a good range - apparently you can safely take three or four round-trips to fairly distant locations in the city before you have to worry about it, especially if you're light, alone, or not pushing it all the way. It looks pretty nice, has a nice seat, a storage space in the back and underneath the seat, etc.

I actually drove it out of the store and back to the school. I went down a little street with not too many lights on and not too many people. I realized that I would have been straight up petrified had I been in the US, but in China, I felt very secure that no one would try to hurt me. It's really amazing how freeing that kind of feeling is.

Anyway, I'm getting away from the detail of the moment, so I'll stop here so I don't ramble. I'll finish just by saying that I'm glad I made myself do it. It makes the world much more convenient, and I think it'll be worth it, definitely so if nothing gets stolen/broken and I can resell it at the end.

//

Phone is still screwed. I think it's the digitizer. I'm going to try a Motorola repair shop tomorrow. I sure hope they have this model of phone! (DOUBT IT, YOU GUYS!)

Peace out.

Nevermind

I think I may have fixed my phone by pointing a hair dryer at it on low power for about 4 hours tonight while I was doing some other work. Everything seems to be fine, except the lower right hand corner's button seems to require about 10% stronger of a push than it did before, but I'm fine with that. Here's to hoping for no problems with that in the future.

//

I thought that I was done teaching English for good recently. I think I might have written about emptying my folders and throwing my books in the trash. Unfortunately, I was wrong. I have to teach one more English class on Friday for two hours. Only once. And hopefully that will be the last last last last last last last time I ever have to teach English. Here's to hoping for no problems with that in the future.

Peace out.

My Phones are Always Awesome

The BlackBerry that I had in Cambodia was broken basically from the first week that I got there. The scroll button in the middle wouldn't go down, and then stopped going left, so I had to find lots of shortcuts or other annoying workarounds to get to anything I wanted to. If I wanted to look at a new email, I'd have to go to the email client, hit "N" for "next day," and then scroll all the way up to the new email that I was looking for. Often it would freeze for upwards of 20 minutes. By the time I was leaving, the battery would only last for about 10 hours. It was terrible/useless.

I thought that things would be better here since I got my mom's old Droid 2 Global. I put a couple of Chinese dictionaries on it, even a character recognizer so I could draw by hand and get pronunciation and definitions. I was going to download the audio part of that soon, too.

But no, of course not. The problem first started happening when I touched the phone after taking a shower. My finger really wasn't that wet - just damp like it would be after using a towel - and almost as soon as I touched it, the phone started acting up. The screen would ghost-touch in the lower right corner, launching the app page, then launching random apps, etc. It took me minutes to set the alarm, which is a trivial task normally. It's continued doing that ever since.

I found a place that can fix Motorola phones, but I don't know if they can do this one since it's an American version and possibly not found in China. Furthermore, it's in English and I have no idea what the actual problem is. Sometimes it does it, sometimes it doesn't. It's worse in regular mode than it is in safe mode. So it could be the hardware, or the software, or both.

So now I get to find the place, go to it/take a cab or whatever, try to explain what's wrong in Chinglish, possibly pay a repair fee that fixes it for a while and doesn't work, etc. Hopefully it does work, but if it doesn't then either I can buy a new phone for a few hundred dollars, and go through the process of unlocking it, which is a nightmare even when I'm in America, or get a non-smart Chinese phone which would be cheaper, but have none of the functionality that I wanted this phone for - email, dictionaries, characters. Hooray.

Sorry to complain. Also I'm very tired. Also I wish the internet didn't suck here because it makes my other job impossible.

Peace out.

Foreign Expert Certificate

I got my foreign expert certificate for China today. Hooray! The inside of the front page says the following:

"This certificate is valid in the People's Republic of China.

The bearer of the Certificate is a foreign expert confirmed by the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs of the People's Republic of China or the administration departments of foreign experts affairs of provincial people's governments. The bearer is entitled to conveniences and treatments for foreign experts provided by the government of the People's Republic of China."

I'M NOT SURE WHAT THOSE CONVENIENCES AND TREATMENTS INCLUDE, BUT I BET IT'S A LOT OF REALLY AWESOME THINGS, YOU GUYS.

Peace out.

Syrup

There's a restaurant in the alley right next to the college that has Sunday brunch including bacon and french toast. There's another teacher that I make go at the same time with me because I don't like eggs and she can't eat french toast, so we trade. And of course, to properly eat french toast, you need syrup. But the restaurant only has honey.

I asked around, and found out that a store just up the street had some syrup. They said it wasn't anything we had in America, but that it looked like maple syrup and maybe I could give it a try. I actually don't recognize the name brand, and it was about $5 a bottle (for a pretty alright size). I was a little wary, but I decided to get it.

I feel really sheepish carrying it into the restaurant. The owner is out in the area all the time, and I thought he might get mad at me. But when he saw me holding it, he just looked at me and the bottle and said, quote, "Whoa." He's Chinese, if that makes it any funnier. It did to me.

But in either case, the real point of the story is that it's actually AWESOME and I'm really glad I got it because it makes it taste so much better and now I can have something like a western breakfast once a week, which is something I didn't have at all in Cambodia, so that's nice.

In other news, another foreigner at the restaurant today saw me holding it and asked, "Hey buddy, where'd you get that syrup?" I thought that was funny, and also that I should start a Chinese syrup business.

Peace out.

Worst Superhero Ever

I hate it when songs disappear. Mostly I hate it because you never know the last time that you'll hear them, so you can't appreciate them.

There was a girl on Semester at Sea who played guitar, song, wrote, and apparently was a DJ as well. I never talked to her much, just a few times, but she seemed nice. I think the first time was when I left a tour to go cliff diving in Hawaii when we weren't supposed to and she was photographing people jumping. Another time she borrowed my guitar and I listened to her play when she was in her room with a few other friends.

One of the songs that she played that time, I think, was called "Worst Superhero Ever." I'm pretty sure her friends pushed her to play it even though she didn't really want to. I don't remember a lot of the lyrics, but I remember that it was a nice melody that would relate to some aspect of a superhero, but always tagged on a "without ..." and then the redeeming quality of said hero, which I thought was clever. And the chorus had a very simple but catchy mix of chords, lyrics, and melody as well, ending with "I'm the worst superhero ever."

Part of what's sad about things like this is that you'll never get to know all the analogies and clever jokes that are in it. But what makes me saddest about it really is that the songs I love most are always ones written by people I know, even if I don't know them incredibly well, even sometimes if the songs aren't killer. There's just something way more interesting and personal about it and it feels like that's how art's supposed to be, accessible to you.

The last few days on SAS, I found out she recorded a few of her songs for friends. Someone said that I could have a copy, but that she was shy about it and I should ask her first. I didn't see her again before we got off the ship.

I remember that I asked her once if she would send me a copy of that song. She never replied.

Peace out.

Taj Mahal

My favorite for-real food in the whole world is pad thai. I've been trying to find a thai restaurant here pretty much since I showed up with very limited luck. The one that I've seen in real life is really intimidating, like you're only supposed to go there if you're very rich and have both an entourage and a reservation. I am not rich and have neither of those things, so I'm afraid to go in. Maybe I could wear a shirt that says "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY" in Chinese, but I don't know if the humor translates.

I asked two of my students tonight if they knew where any Thai restaurants were in the area, and they pointed to an alley right next to the school. "REALLY!?" I shouted excitedly. They assured me yeah, just walk back there and I would find it.

I walked back, and I saw a restaurant with the character for "Thai" in its name, which I've memorized just in case. I wasn't sure that this place would actually have pad thai, but I decided if it was worth a try. In my currently terrible Chinese, I asked if the host spoke English. Nope. I looked at the menu which was in English, and it appeared to be pretty much exclusively Indian items. I asked some more in my terrible Chinese if they had Thai food, and after a while they agreed that no, they didn't, and I should try yet another street (which I later tried, and also failed).

I found out that the reason "Thai" was in the name is because the name of the restaurant is supposed to be "Taj Mahal," and they use the sound of the Thai character for the Ta in Taj.

Peace out.

Me First

People say that one of the problems with China is that the people have a "Me First" complex/issue/problem. I don't know if it's true of every single person or in actually meaningful situations, but it definitely applies to cutting in lines. It doesn't matter where you are - train station, police station, bank, hospital, your own funeral - someone will try their best to cut in front of you if you leave even a millimeter of space between yourself and the body in front of you. That might be part of why Chinese people pack so tightly in those types of places.

I was at the store across the street tonight getting a recharge card for my phone. I tried to do it online, but I spent about 20 minutes navigated the site in Chrome-translated Chinese and made no progress. I don't think paying online here is as easy as it is in the states. Anywho, there was one little old Chinese lady at the counter. I was standing right by her, leaning against the counter with maybe ten inches of space between myself and the old lady.

I saw a youngish girl walking towards the store. I thought to myself, "Hm, I wonder if that's enough space for someone to try to steal it. I bet this girl wouldn't be that rude."

WRONG.

She came back to the counter when she had her things and bolted right for the space in between me and the old lady. I couldn't believe it. Before she could cement herself to the counter in front of me, I reached my arm forward and gave her a little elbow on the side and basically boxed her out of the way like you would in soccer or basketball. I should say that I've NEVER seen the victim of cutting do this in China before.

The girl seemed quite taken aback. She gasped a little bit. I forced her behind me in the line. She tried to say something to me in Chinese. I didn't catch much except for the phrase "don't have." I wouldn't have cared even if I understood, so when she spoke I just turned and glared daggers at her, which I'm told I'm pretty good at. Once I turned back around, we didn't glance or speak to each other again.

Peace out.

Little Meow

The Chinese word for "cat" is "mao," which I'm personally convinced is an onomatopoeia for the sound that the animal makes. The word for a kitten is just "xiao mao," where "xiao" means small/little. So in my head I think of the Chinese word for kitten as "little meow." I dig it.

I was in a restaurant a couple days ago just across the street from the college and on the second floor of the restaurant, one of the ones I don't go to very often and I'm actually not sure of the name of right now. It's very thin, with vibrantly colored floors and menu and a TV that's way too loud. I haven't had much luck with the things I've ordered there before, but I don't just want to go to the same two or three restaurants for 10 months so sometimes I try to do something new.

When I showed up, a guy who I'm pretty sure is the owner was sitting at a table two across from me, and there was a kitten on the table with him that kept poking at his food. The waitress girls - possibly his daughters - were eyeing it, and then I think he picked it up and put it on the ground. It kept running around his feet searching for bits of food or trying to pull its way back up, so one of the girls grabbed it by the scruff of its neck, opened a door to another room in the side of the eating area, and closed the kitten behind the door. I was a little sad, because I wanted to eat with him/her.

Later, after my food came out, the kitten managed to walk out of the door when someone else walked through it. It walked around for a little while, and then I think one of the girls noticed it again. She picked it up and was walking towards the door, but an older woman noticed that I was watching intently, and probably looked sad. She said something, and the girl looked at me. I put my hand out. I didn't know what to say, because I didn't know the word for "cat" or "kitten" yet. I know the words for "I want" and "it," but I don't know if it's for humans or animals. If it's for humans, I didn't want to look at some 14-year-old waitress girl and say "I want it." I ended up just saying "Wo yao!" [I want!]. It was clear enough what I was talking about, so she came over and handed the little meow to me.

It sat on my lap for the first little while and I pet it while it rested on my knee. Sometimes it was claw and knead my knee, which I didn't mind because it's just a kitten and not actually painful in any way. Eventually he got a little bit nosy and started aiming for my food, and then insisted on jumping up on the table. I held him off for a little while by putting pieces of meat on a napkin in very small chunks and letting it try to eat them, which it would manage after a bit of effort. But then it kept going for the noodles, and I didn't really have anything more to give him. He wanted the whole plate, not just the pieces. So I put him back on my knee, but he didn't like that, so he hopped down to the floor, and the waitress took him back again.

Peace out.

Not Creative, Just Poor

My desk was too low.

Peace out.

The Rules

1. The Rules are written in pencil so that you can change them if you really fucked up. They go into effect at 12:30PM, Monday, August 6th, 2012, China time. But you should start earlier than that.

2. Write a blog post every day. It doesn't need to be long, or current, or true. It can just be an idea. But you have to do it.

3. Carry your camera with you outside of class. Remember your graduation speech? Remember how happy you were to see your Digital Pictures 2 folder? Who cares if your jean pockets ruin one per year? It's worth it!

4. If something is too personal for a blog, that's why you're going to do your absolute best to take up stick figure art again. You'll be glad you did. So grab a fucking hard-back spiral bound journal ASAP and get on it.

5. Stop feeling inadequate/being a pussy and try to write some fucking songs. And don't blame the guitar. Stop being lazy, get over it, and get better at it.

6. You have 30 minutes on Reddit per day. No link hogging. DO COOL SHIT instead.

7. Email or elsewise contact old friends sometimes. You'll both appreciate it.

8. Explore more once you get a bike. Look for buildings to climb, good public pieces, places you could put your own, ways to interact with the environment.

9. DETAILSDETAILSDETAILSDETAILSDETAILSDETAILSDETAILSDETAILSDETAILSDETA

10. Spend as little time eating as you can. Be wary of lingering conversation.

11. Studying Chinese gets moved up the priority list. Now is th etime.

12. Once you get a bike, exercise at least 4x/wk. Try to get skates/stick/puck.

13. Acceptable pastime activities: Blog, photograph, draw, guitar, piano, write, email friends, study Chinese, exercise, watch a movie/lecture, read a book, do math.

Unacceptable: Reddit, Facebook.

14. You listen to to-do lists so MAKE SOME! And then follow through.

15. Read the rules sometimes to help remind you of them/enforce them.

THE AMENDMENTS

I. Program for at least 15 minutes a day. Project Euler counts; so does Udacity.

II. Aim for 3 pages of AoPS per day and 1 page of The Math Book. per day.

//

In real life, they're highlighted and underlined. I didn't write the word "pastime." I actually wrote "past-time" and realized that it was wrong, underlined it to shame myself, and draw a smiley face with equal-sign eyes over top of it.

Peace out.

The Mobility Myth

I just happened across this post at SomethingAwful in their prison thread and thought it was pretty interesting, so I'm just keeping it for posterity... of myself.

"There is political opposition to asking questions like 'Why do people commit crime?', because the answer- 'In many communities, the best choice for an ambitious hard-working upwardly-mobile youth is organized crime.'- doesn't fit into our national myth of egalitarian upward mobility through hard work. So the very idea of trying to understand social issues at all is demonized and ridiculed."

Peace out.