Depressing notebook sold in school supply store

Do we still have nothing?

Mistress City 二奶成

So, I'm standing beside the road, waving down a taxi. I want to go home. In this city of five million there are several ways I can give directions to my house. Well known landmarks, intersections, or pointing and grunting (a favorite of foreigners who can't speak the language). What do I do? Well, I refer to a well-known landmark: my apartment complex.

"Take me to Mistress City (二奶成)" I say to the taxi driver. The taxi driver smiles, compliments me on my (horrible) Chinese, and promptly drives me home.

That's right. I live in Mistress City. We got mistresses filling up these apartments, all congregating, strutting thierstuffs out in the brick court yards with small dogs in tow. Flashing thier cellphones and getting phone calls to meet up with thier men and go do those other things mistresses do.

Now, you may say, wait... that sounds strange... where do you live again? Well, let me clarify. I live in an average looking apartment complex in a third tier city in China. An apartment complex which is well-known for it's abundance of "kept women." Remember, this is Chinese culture. A much different culture than the West.

China has one of the highest rates of infidelity in the world. They also have a lower divorce rate than the West. So "cheating" is often accepted as a fact of marriage. Let's also not forget that prostituion (depsite being illegal) is essentially tolerated. Also, some of the most successful rulers of China were children of concubines--and that's not a hushed up secret.

The idea of having a second wife (or third, or fourth) if you can afford it, doesn't hold the same connotations as it does in the West. If you can afford a mistress, keep her well dressed, and she is awfully pretty and young: well then you, sir, are a baller.

The wealthy Chinese business man doesn't sneak around with his mistress, he brings her to the most expensive restaurants. He goes to the mall with her and buys the best clothes. She wears the bling, and she is his bling.

Before coming to China, I read several websites which left me with the impression that Chinese culture was traditional and painfully chaste. Well, let me say here that it isn't true. From sex shops publically displaying thier wares, to pretty girls hawking condoms in the supermarket, to "bath houses" which offer "massage and other services" I can tell you China is a very sexually aware place.

But there are different rules to it also. In some ways it isn't as in your face in the West. I noticed that underwear models were always white women--so I assumed that meants that the Chinese loved white women. Nope. Chinese consumers are too emabarassed to see a Chinese girl scantily clad like that in public.

So, well, "let the white girl" do it.

But it's a different land out here. When I leave my apartment complex, I usually hear the click click click of knee high, polished, high heeled boots and the Chinese titter of a mistress gabbing into her cell phone. God they are gorgeous. They seem so beautiful, so perfect, so amazing.

But we all know they have a price.

Shenyang China coal station

In Shenyang, China, the heat is provided by government run coal stations. This is inside one of the smaller ones. The man to the right is adding coal.

Dead girl in the street

This chinaSMACK article brought about this little post.

I live in China now. In a city where they let people die in the street sometimes. Why? Read on.

I’ll never forget the girl I saw dying in the street. She lay prostrate in the middle of the road, beside a mangled bike and in front of a car with a smashed windshield. There was no ambulance, no police, traffic just slowly edged around body as she lay with open eyes and blood pooling beneath her head.

You could say that’s Chinese culture to only care about your own, but it isn’t the same in Hong Kong or Taiwan. So that tells me it isn’t Chinese culture to let someone die in the street, just the local laws shaping the society.

I live in Liaoning province and I’ve been told by several people–both foreigners and Chinese–that if you call the ambulance, you will be held responsible for all medical bills if the injured person can’t pay. Why would you help anyone with rules like that? (Or maybe it isn’t true?)

Especially when you consider hospitals will simply stop treating you for curable cancer if you run out of money to pay for treatment–which is how my friend’s Aunt died–why risk spending your money to save someone else’s life when it could cost your own?

Well, I tired of my life and picked another

I moved to China now, where I am studying Chinese and teaching English. "What!? China!? That place is undeveloped, oppressive and horrible!" some may say... but alas, I will suffer the fate I have chosen.

Living in Boston and being under-employed/paid (see: temp agency purgatory) I was consistently breaking even money wise. Rent, food, maybe a night out--always seem to put me at $0 by the end of the month. And this went on for over a year.

A more pragmatic gentlemen may have moved into his parents home and found work, saving money and perhaps starting graduate school. Fuck that. I'm moving to China.

So now... I actually have some money left at the end of every month. I actually work fewer hours then I did in Boston. I'm actually enjoying myself. We'll see how long it lasts.


P.S. Blogspot, Facebook, Youtube and most other internet venues of free expression are blocked in China. It makes it difficult to post on this--but sometimes possible. Wish me luck.

Don't steal bikes, it is mean. Saw this note today.

The Last Air Bender sucked

I went to see the last Air Bender today... sigh...

Did you know that that before the movie was a multi-million dollar production, it was actually a children's cartoon on nickelodeon?

For fans of the cartoon--fear not! The dialogue in the live action film is as asinine as anything those creative souls who wrote the cartoon could have dreamed up.

And the violence, oh the violence. The movie is rated PG, which sort of tells you what type of violence there will be. Swords to cut people, fires don't burn people. They just knock people over to the ground, where they lay until the camera changes angles.

Check out the brains on her!

The thing about living near Harvard is that you run into smart people. You know that guy at the laundry mat fumbling with his quarters? Dr. of 19th century American lit!

You know the drunken bumbler, looking-to-be-freshmen kid stumbling down the street at 11pm? Brand Harvard freshmen!

You know that 32-year-old woman at the bar trying to buy you a drink? Harvard teacher, Doctorate from Princeton with five years experience lecturing. Or so she says.

Yeah, so I was like at this bar and stuff looking to eat my bacon cheeseburger and this voice comes from beside me, "Did you come here to eat a cheeseburger or watch the game?"

The bar is in the center of Harvard square, it is well kept, hip, a bit fashionably dingy, with a red theme. The Celtics game is flashing on TV screens around us. I looked at her, respectable looking. Well put together, not homeless (very important to establish at bars in this city), looks like she might be an interesting chat partner.

"I came here to get out of my room," I say, taking a bite from my cheeseburger.

From there on, it all went downhill. She had taught at Princeton, she said. She was really smart and spent most days locked in her room doing smart things, she said. Harvard "owed me a drink" she said.

I told her I had had enough to drink, leaned forward to pay my bill with a $20 and heard her say "going already?"

So I decided. OK. She is smart, relatively pretty. She wants to talk to me. "You want to talk to someone that much?" I said, pulling back from the bar.

She smiled weakly. My stomach lurched left right and center. I need to use a bathroom, I decided. "I can buy you another one," she said gesturing to my near empty glass. Either she was lonely--something I can empathize with entirely--or she was a cougar--something I have never encountered in the wilds.

So I chat her up. She chats me up. I ask what she thinks Cuba will be doing. Economic reform? Human rights improvement? I express my hope and elation when Raul came into power, but explain things have been slow to reform. These are the things I care about, I say. She nods.

"Human rights?" she says. "I wonder if you're willing to look at America's human rights record. Look at Vietnam, that's one big violation."

I look at her. She looks at me. "You think that, per person, the US has more human rights violations than Cuba?"

She says she doesn't know. Says she isn't sure. And I'm sitting thinking: this conversation isn't enjoyable. Don't get me wrong, she is nice. But my burger is done, my drink is drained and I'd really like to walk the few blocks home to my apartment bathroom. Not use the bar bathroom.

"I guess thinking about this is good practice, huh?" she asks.

"Ha," I say, "good practice." I pull $3 from my pocket, place it on the bar and begin to walk away.

"You gone?" she says.

"Yeah," I say. And we both wonder what could have been.

I think I will try to bring this back from the dead. Mainly because I see a passing acquaintance doing what I think I can do, better. Or, well, just doing what I think I can do.

Now I need to freakin figure out the formating...

Eating my food before buying more. This sucks.

A few weeks ago I read a news story about how much money people could save if they just ATE all the food they BOUGHT before it went bad.

So, having no job, I said to myself "I shall follow this news story's advice." It went well for a few days. I ate some old (but not bad) bread, made sure I used up all the peanut butter. Ate macroni and cheese. Did away with the sandwich meats.

Then, for a midnight snack tonight, I got down to just the Raman noodles and the pasta sauce.

I did half a flavor packet in the Raman and cut up some garlic before mixing it with the pasta suase.

Anyway, I'm full. And my fridge is almost bare!

My goal is to make it to Thursday without buying more food. After Thursday I should have thanksgiving leftovers. Those might last a while. What do I eat tomorrow? And Wednesday? Sighhh....

Laughinghoodism

OK. So I haven't been here in a while. I apologize to all those who read this. Or those who read this. Or he who reads this. Or, whatever. I apologize for not updating this shit. I've been busy with other things.

Anywho. I've been absolutely blown away by these prank wars. And that's saying something, because I rarely get blown.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

MUSE: Livejournal y life

At my High School Livejournal was popular, so much social pollution flooded the pages. This or that catty comment, this or that heartbreak expressed out loud, to the internet, to the school, to the heartbreaker.

I wish that back then we could have had a picture of life now. That's such an innocent saying, a common saying, a cliche. But, really, I look back and know if I could have worked a little harder at one thing in old life and ignored another thing in my old life things would be different. How different? It's scary.

But here I sit. Now. Knowing this is a passing feeling. Knowing I will be happy tomorrow. Knowing things will go on with rhythm of the real world.

Knowing.