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.

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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.

Long Exposure

I hope the formatting on this doesn't come out like poop.

((O_O))

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Edit: Holy yay! I can email pictures to my blagonet!!! So ya'll can expect from pictures from China/Cambodia.

Peace out.