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.