I am The White Stripes

I haven't been blogging at all lately, truly a dissapointing development for all of my loyal fans, but I have been keeping track of all the things I want to write. Right now, I have saved up about 10 blog entries and tomorrow I think I will finally get around to it, but something happened tonight that I feel I should write about before the adrenaline dies down.

John, Garret, and I were getting sick of eating the same three Chinese dishes that we're comfortable with, so in order to take a step out of our "comfort zone" we were going to go the Pizza Hut in Beijing. The closest one was about 20 minutes from our dorm, but that was no prob Bob. Now a felt a little guilty about eating a lot of pizza, so I decided to start running at 8 pm. When we were getting ready to leave at 9:30, it occured to us that the Pizza Hut's in China might not be open 24 hours a day, so we decided to get a move on. At 9:55 (apparently it closed at 10, how Communist...), we skidded in the door and demanded that they make us a peperoni pizza or face the wrath of America. They did, and there was much rejoicing.

This is where things start to get interesting. They made us go outside to eat it, so they could close the restaurant. While we were eating outside we noticed a woman singing in front of a decent sized Chinese crowd at some sort of sidewalk bar, but at the same time wondered what was going on, because she was a pretty awful singer. When she went to go sit down with her friends, we realized that it was some sort of open mic night, and they had a guitar sitting right there. John said I was thinking:

"Do it man. You gotta do it."

At first I was pretty petrified of the idea. It didn't seem like I could just waltz up to the stage and start playing, but in the end, after about 15 minutes of debate, that's exactly what I did. In front of about 100 Chinese people, I walked up and asked if I could go, and they handed me a guitar. At first they tried to tell me that it cost money, but this was obviously a bluff, because they didn't care at all when I said no.

The first thing I realized when I was in front of a crowd of 100 Chinese people is that the only guitar songs I know well are White Stripes. I tried to think of anything else, but all the my fingers would allow were Jack White's blues. I was possesed, and the White Stripes it was going to be.

"Hello!" I shouted, and then for good measure "Nii hao!" which means hello in Chinese. "I'm gonna be playing a rock and roll song for you by the White Stripes. Who likes the White Stripes?!"

Dead Silence.

From this point on, I decided to keep audience interaction to a minimum and just show them what my sould looked like. Before I had walked up, I was planning on playing "Fell in Love with a Girl", but I just didn't think it would go over that well on the accoustic guitar that they gave me, so I went with "Hotel Yorba" and it was a mighty good choice. For the most part the Chinese people were eating it up, though there was one little kid that didn't seem to be into it--he stood about 5 feet from me with his hands over his ears. I sold the act as much as I could, yelping and dancing and pretty much making a fool of myself. When I finished, if I might say so myself, the crowd went wild.

When I had decided to go up there, I had planned to play one song and get the heck off the stage. But when I went to leave the owner of the place told me I couldn't go. The funny American was attracting a ton of people to his bar. By the time I was about to start my second song there was at least 200 people that had gathered around.

For round two, I went "Fell in Love With a Girl", because I had located an electric guitar on the stage, and figured that if I was really gonna rock them out this is what it was gonna take. This was probably a mistake, because the electric guitar sounded awful. Furthermore I started forgetting the lyrics about half way through the song (is that even possible for this song?), and as anyone whose ever song in front of other people knows, this is a problem that just gets worse and worse. Also, my pick broke, and I accidentally unplugged my guitar while dancing around the stage. This was actually kind of perfect, because the same thing happened to the White Stripes when they were on Conan, so I felt like I was truly in their shoes. Also I handled it like a pro, plugging it back in and then shouting out:

"1234!"

and then finished rocking them out, though again, this performance was not up to the same standard.

But they didn't seem to care. They cheered me on, and I was again forced to continue. I slowed things down considerably, playing Blackbird, and I think this one went really well, although Garret said he thought that the failure to continue rocking was probably a mistake. Blackbird, by the way is a song that literally every American who's ever picked up a guitar seems to know, but in China that didn't matter. I gave a good vocal performance and the couple of British guys that were sitting on the right side of me, seeed to enjoy it thoroughly.

By now, I had given up on leaving any time soon, so I went into a funny little White Stripes medely, because with Blackbird out of my system, they were again all that I could remember. I kicked it off with "Lord Send Me an Angel" and then moved into "Let's Build a Home/ Memphis". This was by far my craziest moment up there, but the nuttier stuff I did, the more they seemed to like it, so that by the end of the song I was on my knees thrashing the guitar and screaming. I knew this would get a reaction, but artistic integrity was important to me to, so I decided to go out with a bang.

"This is my last song," I told them, and let ring the opening riff to "Dead Leaves in the Dirty Ground". I absolutely destroyed (in a good way) the song, because it is one of the few White Stripes songs that never ventures out of my range. Although, when I finished, and told them goodbye, the bar owner vehemently protested (there had to be 300 people at this point), I had learned long ago to leave them wanting more.

"Thankyou!" I shouted to the crowd, and for good matter added the Chinese word for thankyou, "Xie Xie!" to a roaring round of applause.

So what did I learn from my Kareoke experience? First of all, rocking out in front of people is lots of fun. Who knows how many times I've stood in my music room playing the guitar dreaming of thousands of screaming fans hanging on my every word. This wasn't thousands, and, ok, they didn't understand a word I was saying, but it was great. I amazed myself a little, too: I wasn't nervous at all.

Second, and I think this is a big one, I need to get really well-rehearsed at something besides "The White Stripes". Yes, this worked in a setting where noone had any clue what I was playing, but I think, should the opportunity ever present itself again, then it would be good to have a couple other tricks up my sleeve. After the show was over, I realized a couple other songs I could have played (The Shins!), but as they say no regrets.

Finally, and most importantly, this experience led to me to realize something about myself. Though I have had doubts along the way, though at times my vision was blurred and this truth seemed strange and impossible, though some might have protested, and to this day may continue to, there is one thing in this world that is, in the end, undeniable: I am the man.

When It Rains, It Pours

Yesterday a mighty rain came to wash the filth from the streets of Beijing (Taxi Driver anyone?) Unfortunately it washed the majority of that filth directly onto my socks. You see, Beijing has the worst drainage out of any city that I've ever seen. I contend that they must employ some sort of anti-drainage system that makes things worse than if there was nothing at all. If they're not pumping resevoirs into the streets as soon as the rain starts, then I don't know how else to explain the spontaneous formation of veritable lakes and rivers on what once were streets and sidewalks.

Anyways, as I said, my socks got very wet and very dirty, so what better place to go than the Silk Market. In spite of it's name, the silk market does not sell very much silk, but instead offers myriad ripoff goods, and things that are designed to break the second they leave the silk market. It's amazing that they were able to design this technology, and that it is actually cheaper than just selling stuff that works, but they've obviously done the math.

Although I only had 40 kuai I love the art of the Chinese bargain, so I decided to pretend like I was interested in just about everything the merchants were offering. In China the concept of a set price is non-existant, a typical exchange with a shopkeeper might go something like this:

"Excuse me sir, how much is this chess set?"
The guy will then size you up, apparently performing some very complex mental math.
"1ooo kuai"
"Hmm, that's a little too expensive. I think I'll pass."
Then your supposed to walk away, although the gesture is usually cut very short.
"Please, please. What is your price?"
"Hmm, well it's a little beat up isn't it. I'd say a fair price would be 10 kuai."
"Surely you gest! 500 kuai is my absolute final offer!"
"20 kuai"
"I begrudgingly accept."

When you actually wanna buy something this routine can get kind of old, but if you have no money, then it can be a lot of fun. I played a game of seeing how much below their original price I could get the shopkeepers to go down before I walked away. I thought 25% was good, until I got a 2000 kuai sweater down to 150 kuai. It almost made me wish I could buy it, but then I realized that the sweater was one off the crappiest looking garments that I'd ever seen.

One time we decided that we were going to play a little joke on a shopkeeper. We expressed some interest in a Mao watch, which is probably the most common piece of junk sold in China.

"How much?" We asked.
"How much you want to spend?"
"2000 kuai" which is about 300 dollars. Bear in mind that she was probably ready to sell this thing for about 10 kuai. She paused for a second, either out of surprise, or to try to make it look like we were getting a deal, and then said:
"Ok, I will give you two"

At the Silk Market I started buy some cheap stuff. At the video game store a hilarious misunderstanding got me a good deal on the soccer game, Winning Eleven 8.

"How much for this one?" I asked.
The guy showed me five fingers.
"Five kuai?" I asked.
"Fifty kuai!" He said but his girlfriend/business partner didn't hear him.
"Ten kuai, final offer" she said, and he gave her what I will call a dirty look. This could have all been an act to get me to feel like I was getting a deal, but the embarassed look on that girl's face was so palpable that I have a hard time believing that it was anything but sincere.

I also but a Mao pin for 1 dollar american, as well as some lovely yellow socks with pictures of lambs on them. You are probably wondering where I got all the money in order to afford these luxurious items, and so I will tell you. On Saturday morning, we had the option to go to a class to help them evaluate teachers for next year's Princeton in Beijing program. If we went they would give us 100 kuai (about 12 bucks American). Well, in spite of the fact that I had slept an average of 3 hours the previous two nights (though averaging seems somewhat inappropriate in that one night I got no sleep and the other 6 and why am I talking about this anyway, I can't stand people that talk about how much they slept: earth to them...I don't care!), I still cannot turn down a chance to make money that I can quickly waste.

The class started at 8 am, and I was appalled to see that I was assgined to the same classroom as an infamous Korean girl, who is widely believed to be the absolutely most annoying person in the history of planet earth. This girl seems to have no idea how loud she is speaking, because she literally shouts everything. I have never met anyone like this before. And if you hesitate for one second in your response she will cut you off and start answering your question. She made those four hours for me a complete hell on earth.

One of those questions that I had a hard time answering was when the teacher used a vocab word that I had forgotten. She said a sentence about "Baozi" and I panicked when I realized I had no idea what "Baozi" was, and apparently the annoying girl didn't either, because she made no effort to cut me off.

"Baozi?" I asked, and the lady that was trying to be a teacher here next year, formed her hands in a circle and said "Baozi". Now I'm sorry but if I have no idea what something is, showing me that it is about the size of a CD is not going to help me, unless that thing is actually a cd.
"Sorry," I said, watching the trainwreck unfold before my very eyes "I don't know what baozi is" at which point she repeated the gesture. This went on for about 30 seconds, and I fear that I might have severely hurt this poor woman's chance of ever teaching with PIB, which I have deduced is the absolute holy grail for Chinese teachers (by the way, baozi is stuffed bread. I feel so stupid for not knowing that, especially with the helpful hint!)

Another quagmire that I got myself involved in during this Saturday class was a teacher getting me to practice the pattern "As soon as I start doing something, I do it for this long" She asked me "As soon as you start reading, how long do you read for", to which I responded "As soon as I start reading,I can't help but read for 10 hours!" This hilarious exchange gave me an idea:

Hello, my name is John Turkington, and I have a problem. As soon as I start reading something I cannot help but read it for 10 hours. It is a serious flaw with my brain, that medical science has yet to explain. You may doubt the severity of such an affliction, but please imagine, even if the thing I am reading is but a single line, I will read it again and again for 10 hours. When it comes to cereal boxes and name placards, this can become most uncomfortable! I have been to numerous doctors, to no avail. At first, they gave me some pamphlets to read, although almost instantly they realized that this approach was ill-conceived.

Please tune in next time for the story of Shanghai, Chinese acrobactics, and to hear how my adventures with audioscrobbler are going.

Losing iTunes

My friend Parisa lost her entire iTunes library, which scares me more than a little bit. I'm not too worried about losing my songs, Chris has got me backed up on that front, but there's another issue: Play Counts. As readers of this blog know, I'm currently knee deep in "Operation: Dumbo Drop" which is my mission to get a play count of 1 on every song in iTunes. If I were too lose my iTL it would be devistating: hours and hours of listening for nothing! But then, I asked Parisa how she lost her Library, and she told me that she accidentally dropped her computer into a tropical fish aquarium. I'm not too sure how this happened, but I really don't think I have to worry anymore.

Complaining

I realize that I'm in China, and I'm very grateful for everything, but there are just a couple things that I have to get off my chest.

First of all there is this insufferable girl that I am sitting next to during all my classes right now (oh cruel fate!) She is sort of a hippie with an identity crisis. For example, yesterday at Chinese Table, she said that she didn't eat meat and ordered all manner of disgusting Chinese vegetables for the rest of us. Then when the food came she ate most of the one beef dish that I had managed to lobby for. The other day, she somehow managed to steer a class conversation about ping pong into an outrageous argument about abortion. Debating this issue in English is hard enough, but in Chinese it becomes sort of surreal. However, what basically emerged from the discussion-- that some of my classmates liked babies and some liked freedom--was eerily similar to the euphemisms spewed from the mouths of many Americans.

Then today, we were talking about schools in America, and my teacher asked me if I thought poor students and rich students had the same opportunities in America. I said definitely not, that poor students often have to have a job during high school, and have a hard time with school. The girl chimed in and said that it didn't matter, as long as your grades were good you could go to any school you wanted...The American Dream. I then invited her, in Chinese, to spend some time in Compton, which seemed to shut her up.

Another thing was that today my teacher had a horrific accent. I could definitely tell that her mangled pronounciations were not orthodox, but I tried to not make a big deal out of it. We got caught up though when she kept correcting my obviously correct pronounciations refusing to budge until i mimicked her. This would be like a Bostonian scolding their student for refusing to "pahk the cah" After a while, the other students were growing restless so I caved in. This marked my second run-in with a teacher in as many days, because yesterday I was genuinely struggling with this one word, and after saying it incorrectly about 50 times I told the teacher "Enough! I will practice on my own". We ended that individual session a little early.

I think I was getting a little impatient, because I was pretty tired. But this afternoon things started looking up, when I found a miracle elixir: Japanese Coffee. Chinese coffee is a pitiful little drink, more water than grounds, and stimulates at best a 15 minute buzz. Japanese coffee on the other hand comes with a little pot of honey, and a lot of love. I'm still riding high on the tsunami of energy that it has awakened in me. I feel like a new man!

Maybe I'm just excited that during Chinese table today I wore my "Singapore is a Fine City" shirt and the entire table spent a good 15 minutes discussing and laughing at its many charms. This, for me, was a dream come true.

For Crying Out Loud

WOULD EVERYONE IN THIS PROGRAM THAT IS GOING TO GO TO LUNCH WITH THE CHINESE TEACHERS AND ME PLEASE LEARN THE CHINESE WORD FOR LAMB SO THAT THE TEACHERS WOULD STOP SAYING "BAAAA" WHENEVER ANYONE ASKS WHAT THAT ONE ITEM ON THE MENU IS. ITS NOT FUNNY! IT IS ANNOYING!

Ricky gervais is a genius:

Funny man Ricky Gervais made a bit of a boo boo yesterday - when he told the vast Live 8 crowd that Tony Blair and George Bush had agreed to quadruple aid for the third world.

The tubby celeb told the crowd that as their goal had been reached the concert could stop there and then, before adding:

“I’m joking of course…they haven’t quadrupled aid, we can carry on.”

Embarrassingly the joke fell on its arse and was greeted with silence and then booing.

The audience soon perked up though and asked him to do his notorious Office dance routine.

Probably already feeling like a bit of a twat, Gervais obliged but not without declaring it would be the last time he ever performed it in public.

Richard Curtis, one of the event’s organisers is reported in the Sunday Mirror as saying:

“Ricky Gervais doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. He was using world poverty for a gag. I don’t know who invited him here.”

Can someone please Tivo "Extras" for me?

Domination

Shanghai post coming soon.  In the meantime, enjoy this chess game played against the self-proclaimed "Chess Master"


Tom Knight v. Chris Knight
July 18, 2005
Yahoo Chess

1. d2-d4 d7-d6
2. c2-c4 c7-c5
3. d4xc5 d6xc5
4. d1xd8+ e8xd8
5. c1-e3 b7-b6
6. g1-f3 c8-b7
7. f3-e5 d8-e8
8. b1-c3 g8-f6
9. o-o-o e7-e6
10. e3-g5 f6-d7
11. e5xd7 b8xd7
12. c3-b5 a8-c8
13. b5xa7 c8-a8
14. a7-b5 a8xa2
15. b5-c7++

If you want to watch this masterpiece unfold, then go to:

http://www.chessclub.com/chessviewer/pgnform.html

And copy and paste the following into the textbox:

[Event "Complete Domination"]
[Site "Yahoo Chess"]
[Date "July 18 2005"]
[EventDate "?"]
[Round "1"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Thomas Knight"]
[Black "Chris Knight"]
[ECO "A02"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]
[PlyCount "30"]

1. d2-d4 d7-d6
2. c2-c4 c7-c5
3. d4xc5 d6xc5
4. d1xd8+ e8xd8
5. c1-e3 b7-b6
6. g1-f3 c8-b7
7. f3-e5 d8-e8
8. b1-c3 g8-f6
9. o-o-o e7-e6
10. e3-g5 f6-d7
11. e5xd7 b8xd7
12. c3-b5 a8-c8
13. b5xa7 c8-a8
14. a7-b5 a8xa2
15. b5-c7++





If anyone actually takes the time to do this please let me know, so that we can make fun of Chris together.

The Mile Swim

Back when I went to summer camp...uh boy scout summer camp, they always ended the week with a mile swim that everyone could choose to participate in. My first year there, I was the scrawniest kid in the whole camp, but with little other reason than I was growing tired of archery and electrolyte slurpee beverages I decided to go for it. Noone thought I could finish, and they told me to my face, and this includes the adults. But, I made it, bravely performing an unholy rotation of strokes that consisted only of the doggy paddle and the float.

Now, I think you see where I'm going with this. Chinese is my new mile swim. Except now I have giant concrete blocks tied to my feet, and there are no lifeguards, and actually my arms and legs were removed before they threw me into the lake. And the lake is lava. And the lava has fire proof sharks in it.

But today I managed to move a little towards that buoy in the distance. You see, when people fail during Chinese class and stammer on an answer, and things get really desperate...I mean really desperate, I've seen a student-teacher stalemate that lasted the better part of 10 seconds, the teacher just standing there as the student helplessly quivered in his seat...but when things get real bad, there's usually a go-to guy, who the teacher can depend on for quick assistance. Today it was me! I knocked my first answer of the day out of the park, and then when another student was getting destroyed, I got pointed to by the teacher. She might as well have been saying "you, go board that space ship to explore Mars and cure poverty and remove The Killers from the face of the planet". And the best part is, I didn't screw up the go-ahead goal! And then, I pretty much sucked the rest of the class.

I did have one other highlight moment. The teacher was asking us what we look for in a girlfriend. And this teacher was pretty good looking, so I planned out a little joke. I could see that my buddy across the room was scheming something to, so I had to hope that I would get called on first, before he stole the glory. The waiting was tense, but, thank heavens, she chose me, and I let rip.

"For me, it is important that a girl be not only smart, but also Chinese" I said and laughter filled the room.

I could see the look of dissapointment on my friends face: his time had passed.

Two days earlier I bought a ping pong paddle for 8 bucks, and we went to the facility here where ping pong champions are made not born. It was a lot of fun, but I was a sweaty mess by the end of it, and, besides chess, I feel that pingpong is probably the most embarassing sport to sweat because of.

That night we decided to go get a massage. In China, massage is done almost exclusively by blind people. We knew that going in, but what we didn't know was that these would be giant, strong blind Chinese people that could inflict severe pain with a single finger. My friend that I went with...not coincidentally the same lad whose joke opportunity I would steal two days later (not coincidental in that I don't have too many friends, so if I'm gonna be with a friend it's gonna be about one of two people)...had had some severe back problems, so he was pretty terrified that the guy was gonna do some damage. I had only had one very minor back injury which was the result of one too many battles with the football hitting dummy affectionately known as "Tall T". There was no way, I thought, that he would find that little injury, buried somewhere in the deep recesses of my spine.

Oh, he found it.

In discussions later, my friend and I agreed that the real joy to Chinese massage is the relief that you feel once the pain has stopped. Some of the more grueling moments came during the butt, calf and shin "work". What this was was this giant chinese man basically beating you up on these parts of your body. The main point of the game is to see if they can make you cry in front of your friends, which I did but only for a little bit. Kidding! Please don't make fun of me.

We got back late from massage, but I decided to watch my pirated DVD of "Friday Night Lights" which put my bed time at an estimated 3 am. The next morning I was to wake up at 730 for a trip to a giant gorge (longqing gorge, though I don't know why you care), so I was surprised to awake to the sounds of my roommate frantically packing at what my clock told me was 805. We had forgotten to set our alarms in act of either stunning bravado, or unfathomable stupidity. In the rush, I managed to pack my camera, with no memory card, my ipod, with no headphones, and my wallet, with no money. Remember this last one, it'll be important in the story later on.

At the gorge there was bungee jumping, but because I had no money I couldn't do it (at last the careful foreshadowing pays off). Actually I had American money, but the stupid people running the bungee jump would not accept, no matter how favorable the exchange rate they were offered. I was going to pay them twice the price of admission, in American, but they were so stupid that they said no. And we wonder why the Chinese were once referred to, by Rudyard Kipling as "the heathen Chinee". Note to Chinamen everywhere: if I am offering you a chance to double your money, take it! This is called doing business...welcome to capitalism!

So, instead, I went with a small group up a little mountain trail and took some pictures, which will be posted as soon as he sends them to me, because as I mentioned I lacked a memory card. Because I was in the forgetful mood, I decided to leave my really nice sun glasses behind that day. I hope they find a happy home.

That night, I decided to go my first Chinese night club with the aforementioned friend. Let me just say this, in spite of everything you may think you know about me, in a sea of Chinese people, I actually look like a pretty good dancer.

A Little Behind on Blogging

There's quite a bit of stuff that happened that I haven't written about. We went to a giant gorge. I bought a ping pong paddle and played ping pong. Went to some really nice district of beijing with super nice restaurants and lots of foreigners. Right now, I don't really have time, but I will get to it. Stay tuned!

Compliment

Today was a milestone for me-- I received my first ever compliment on my Chinese. Well, technically I've gotten compliments before. Whenever you go shopping in China, the shopkeepers will try to butter you up by complimenting your Chinese, but they're gonna compliment you no matter what. They are the Paula Abdul of spoken Chinese evaluation. No, today was big. I was in one-on-one session with Mr. Pan, the head teacher, when he told me:

"The first day you were a very poor speaker of Chinese, but today you are doing much better."

Ok so it was a bit of a backhanded compliment, and ok, I proceeded to blow the rest of the lesson, on account of getting nervous at ruining his compliment. Probably the worst thing was, I didn't even understand the compliment at first. He had to repeat it about four times. But, it was a compliment, and you can't take that away from me.

I decided yesterday that I was going to beat this language. It can be a brutal foe. Today class was a pounding swell of 1o ft. waves, and my teacher refused to toss me a lifejacket. I was starting to get pretty frustrated, so I decided to give some "creative" answers to her questions. She asked me what my strangest habit was, and I told her eating beef. She said that wasn't too strange, and I told her that in America it was considered to be terribly strange. She has never been to America, so she had to believe me! Then, I was looking through my backpack for a pencil and I found a little toy frog, to which you can open and close the mouth. I used the frog to talk for me, but after about 10 seconds of this, even I was too embarassed to go on.

Ok, so I was reading Lost Fan Fiction the other day. Uhhhh. Yeah. So, anyways, I got to the comments section on one of the forums, and a fan had posted something along the lines of "your post was so beautiful, I was crying for such a long time." I could not believe me eyes. Someone was actually crying about a fan fiction post, which, by the way, was just god-awful.

Speaking of play counts, I am currently in the middle of "Operation Dumbo Drop". It's an unfortunate title, because it does nothing to describe the nature of the operation, but what can I say--blame the beauracracy! Anyway, the point of operation dumbo drop is to listen to every last song in my iTunes library. As some of you may know, I have about 6,000 songs right now, and have only listened to about 2/3 of them. So, I programmed my iPod to autoupdate to a smart playlist which contains every unlistened song. Now, whenever I'm listending to the iGod (that's my nickname for it, because it's so great) I have no choice but to hear unheard songs. Right now, I have 8.5 days of music left to listen to. I'll keep all my reader's posted on my progress, because I'm sure you would like to know!

Guitar

Today was a marked improvement over yesterday, which really wouldn't take much, but I went on and got myself a guitar. The store was originally asking 110 for the guitar which is some Chinese brand, but I got them down to 40 with a case, two extra sets of strings a strap and some picks. I probably could have got it for a little cheaper, but I still haven't mastered the art of the deal here. Anyway, I brought it home at around 6 pm and began to play when I noticed that it sounded absolutely terrible. I would completely tune it up, but then the second I would play a chord, it would detune and sound absolutely awful. This perplexed me, but not for long, when I looked down and noticed that the stock strings were so poor that each strum was actually bending them into a new shape. I added the fender strings that were a part of the deal and it sounds absolutely great. The problem is, I've been playing for the last three hours. You see, I really like playing guitar, I really dislike studying Chinese. This has created somewhat of a problem, but I came up with a solution. Whenver I need to stop playing guitar, I'm going to play the song "After Hours" by the Velvet Underground, after that I can't play until I've studied for a really long time. Back home, Chris and I have something like this, where we will play some songs and always end on the White Stripes' "Let's Build a Home". So far, my little plan has worked out, except that instead of starting to study, I've started to blog. Oh well. Hey look at that the action my guitar is looking a little high, maybe I can fix that...

Oh Me Oh My

Yesterday I had a truly disgusting experience. I had been to this noodle restaurant before, called Malan Noodles, and had a pretty good expereince, so I decided to go back yesterday. Right away things started to go wrong, when the lady reached to get me a bottled water she knocked over a coke and it went off like a bomb spewing coke everywhere for, I'm not kidding, at least 30 seconds before it finally ran out of steam. I think that she might have blamed me for her misfortune, because 20 minutes later, after seemingly every person that had ordered after me had received their food, I was still waiting for them to start making mine. When I finally got it, I took about three bites before I noticed a fairly large dead bug in their. I really can't write about this, it is absolutely to vile. The lady at the coutner gave me back my money, but 1.50 American was simply not enough to erase the horror from my mind.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail

Let me give a shout-out to my fellow bloggers: Mr. Clemmons, Chris Knight, and Roland Allen, you can find links for all these blogs on www.rolandallen.com. I especially recommend Mr. Clemmon's post on Nordstrom's. It will make you laugh out loud!

Ok, peep this. First, I wanted to mention the great Chinese expression we learned today, which is supposed to mean "when in rome...", though their expression is literally "enter border follow custom". This one really puts the idio(cy) in idiom.

Just a couple of things that popped into my mind during class. First of all mechanical pencils. I'm tired of all the mechanical pencil companies (I'm looking at you bic) cheating us out of that last centimeter of lead. You know what I'm talking about, you work your way through the little piece of lead and then when you get to the end that last little bit won't write. Now I've been using mechanical pencils exclusively since college, so these little piece have been adding up, probably for a total of about 1 kilometer of wasted led. You're telling me we can't put a man on the moon, but we cant make the last little centimeter of led useable. Come on, now scientists, let's get to work on this.

Ok, another thing that's been on my mind is how when we were kids, video games kinda sucked and I didnt even have any video games. I didn't mind playing board games, but I have a serious problem the board game Sorry, or should I say bored game. This game was absolutely the worst. It was basically just roll a die and and see if you get around a board. Then the designers must have realized that their prototype was absolutely the lamest game ever so they added a little dice popper and a rule that if you landed on someone else you said sorry and moved their piece back. I have a theory that the name "Sorry" has actually nothing to do with the game, and is an actual apology from manufacturer to customer, in a feeble attempt to atone for their failure of a creation. I had a real eureka moment when I was looking at the video game store in Singapore airport and saw Sorry: The Video Game. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

Ok post cards. Postcards are such a waste of time. Here is a sentence that the English language will never allow: "Geeze Louise, I am so happy that I got this post card!" Whoevers bright idea it was to add four lines for an address on the back of a picture and charge 75 cents was an absolute mastermind. Whoever's idea it was that they will brighten their friends/lover's day with a post card doesnt deserve to use up my air.

In class today, we were practicing our gramatical structures and the teacher asked me a question: "I think Chinese and America are the same, because they are both free countries. What do you think?" she said. The second I responded "I think that Chinese and America are different, because..." I know I had walked into a trap. I stopped myself and she asked "why? why are they different" thankfully I managed to fake a seizure just in time.

I wrote my uncles and aunts a note, and I got this back from one of them:

Tom,
> 
> Thanks for the note.  I saw the webshot photos of your new haircut and
> you are now as good looking as your dad.  Congratulations!  The
> Chinese will be intimidated by American business savvy and style. 
> That should
> keep them off balance long enough to get the trade imbalance under
> control. 
> 
> Those were interesting shots on the Great Wall.  I noticed the muscle
> shirt you were wearing didn't come with any muscles.  I believe a stew
> of mushrooms grown on yak dung, tiger testicles and curry of elephant
> placenta can address that issue.  Check at your local Cantonese
> deli for a bowl that can be microwaved.  Eat half of it before slathering the
> balance on your seminude body----- a Kung Fu(tm) jock strap is
> sufficient--- then do a 20 minute headstand in an inverted Lotus
> position.  You'll soon be known as the InTomidator. 
> 
> Enjoy the rest of your trip.  When next we meet, I'll show you my
> patented Kung Fu grip and Pouncing Lion knee buster.
> 
> Your favorite uncle,
> Kevin

As I mentioned I bought some glasses at a Chinese Market, and then I hopefully figured out how to use photos on my blog. This is a deadly combination if it works. However, in China you can only post to blogs, not view them (the government's crack squad of 50,000 internet watch dogs makes sure of that), so I have no idea if this is working or not. Let me know and keep checking back for more updates!

Food Poisoning, The Night Market, and Beijing Opera

While jogging through the streets of Beijing the other day, I noticed what I looked like an interesting restaurant. On my first trip to China, I had eaten at a hot pot restaurant, which is, for you idiots out there where they bring out some boiling water to your table, along with a bunch of raw meat that you cook in the water. I had very fond memories of this restaurant and was excited by my discovery, which was similar, except that each table had a little grill instead of boiling water. When a group of us were trying to decide where to eat dinner tonight, it came instantly to mind.

Now suggesting a restaurant to a large group is always risky business. Anyone who disagrees with that has never been on a MUN trip with Mr. Parker. "Affordable and delicious?" I can remember him asking many a student post-meal. The sarcastic nod that followed cut deeper than any unclean steak knife at that restaurant could have. But, I took the plunge, and off we went.

The menu handed to us offered a myriad of exoctic meats alongside the more commonplace. Dog meat, which is surprisingly rare in China (usually medium rare actually, ba dum chhh) was available, and I joked that we should try the ram testis. The waiter who was presiding over all this tom foolery began to scrible in her notepad, at which point I frantically explained that we didn't actually want that, and I was only joking. She motioned to erase the writing, but the rest of us were a little wary of what we were eating from this point on.

We settled on a massive platter of beef, potatoes, and some nice slabs of bacon, which were quickly brought to our table. This is where the food poisoning bit comes in. Because all told we had five pairs of chopsticks and a grill space no larger than a sheet of notebook paper, there was massive cross contamination. At one point a young man was heard to utter:

"This potato tastes like beef"
"McDonald's French Fry" came the reply.

Personally, I found the whole experience to be rather enjoyable, although there was some muffled complaining amongst the group. In one clear incident, I berated a companion for not eating a large majority of the bacon on his plate, to which he replied "it's all fat". You see, this poor misled soul had never learned that bacon fat is the best part of bacon. The look of horror on his face when I ate all his fat, matched the look of horror on my face when I learned that the "artichoke" I thought I had been eating was actually cow's tongue.

Earlier today, I went to the store to buy some index cards and ended up walking out with a Chinese Chess board and a ping-pong paddle. The storekeepers really looked like they thought they were getting away with something, but the joke was on them, because everything combined cost about 13 american dollars.

Speaking of ridiculously cheap things, I went to the night market with my roommate last night to peruse various and sundry junk that I might want to buy. We went to a place right outside of Tianamen square, that was everything you expect from a Chinese market: dirty, cramped and items that would be overpriced if they were free. But I found some hilarious glasses that I bought, and plan to wear to class everyday, claiming that I was diagnosed with cataracts by the nearby Chinese eye clinic. Hopefully I will get some pictures up shortly of these bad boys, because they are hilarious. I also continue to buy dvd's which cost all of 1 dollar here. If anyone has any requests, I can probably bring you back some dvd's. Did I say one dollar? I meant five.

Speaking of dvd's I spent a large part of this weeking finishing up "Lost" which I am now convinced is one of the greatest TV shows of all time (better than 24?) The only thing that upset me is how they answered almost none of the big questions and are making us wait until the next season. And just now I realized that Chris and Joey are the only ones who even care about this.

On Friday was the Beijing opera, which has about as much in common with real opera as something that has nothing in common with it's name (I tried to think of a joke here, I really did). I was really skeptical at first, as it seems that every theatrical venture in China has the production values of a fifth grade Christmas pagent. Surprisingly the night proved somewhat enjoyable, as we were provided with snacks during the performance.

The actual production went something like this. A weird guy wearing make-up would prance out onto the stage, and every time he took a step or moved, the "orchestra" would make a calamitous sound, which the program identified as "music". To get a better understanding of what this sounded like you should know that the orchestra consisted entirely of percussion and string instruments with one string. In fact this one string instrument is quite prevalent in China, which might explain why the West has produced Mozart and the Beatles, and the East has produced Mandopop.

Though the story lines for the two plays were uncomfortably similar (scrappy underdog fights massive army and triumps), the provided english translations laughably poor (the second play was entitled "stealing the filthy pelf"), and the dramatic arcs of the two acts left much to be desired (at the end of the first act, the two main foes who have been viciously "battling" for the better part of 45 minutes suddenly decide to stop and [and I quote] "have a chat besides the old barn"), I found myself not despising the whole experience, which was much more than I could have hoped for coming into it.

Alright, during class, I've made a bunch of notes about other things that I should write about. For example, every day, EVERY DAY, the electricity in our classrooms short circuits and we lose lighting and air conditioning for about 15 minutes. They then turn on the power, go around and turn all the air conditioners and lights, and then act surprised when the power shorts again. This cycle repeats intself about 4 times each day. One day, they came by to turn on the air conditioning and the lights again, though in an act of pure strategical genius left one of the lights off. The worst part is, this actually solved the crisis! For about three days there were no power shortages. For some reason they abandoned this strategy though, and we now get to enjoy warm, dark classrooms again.

Two things completely unrelated to China, but that have been on my mind. First is the saddest radio call-in I've ever heard, which is saying a lot, because I listen to a lot of talk radio. Anyway, at the turn of the century, Einstein was named man of the century, and they were discussing it on KFI. They went to the phones and the first guy said that he thought the Einstein's importance lay in the theory of relativity. The host seemed thrilled that someone had called to discuss this and probed further.

"Yeah, for example," the caller continued "I'm sitting out here on my fishing boat, drinking a beer, and all of life's problem's seem to go away. It's all relative."

The caller was dead serious, and the host was speechless.

The other thing is that in 7th grade, I had to take this class which was kind of like shop with you computers. We used AUTOCAD software to run a lathe for example, which sounds cool, until you learn that our biggest accomplishment of the year was taking a large block of plastic and making it slighty smaller. Anyway, my lab partner for one of these projects was an absolutely ugly girl, probably the most disgusting girl I've ever met. I introduced myself as Tom, and then she told that I should call her "boys over books, because her sisters think that she spent all her time talking with boys on the phone instead of studying". My time with boys over books will haunt me for the rest of my life.

And the blog just keeps on going. Three last things. First of all if I had a time machine (speaking of the theory of relativity), I finally decided what I would use it for. I would go back to the creation of the Chinese language, and I would teach them the joys of phonetic spelling. "You mean we don't have to create a unique combination of little tiny pictures for every single item on the planet?" they would ask.

"No, you idiots, no."

And while we're talking about Chinese characters, I must say that I am a little miffed that my college Chinese teachers decided to teach me a type of characters that hasn't been used since 1947. They claimed that it was so we could read "ancient texts" which on my list of why I'm taking Chinese ranks about 1043rd, right below "Being able to negotiate for cheaper soap at various Chinatowns across the United States", but right above "being able to watch Chinese Soap operas". So, now I've had to relearn a whole bunch of characters, completely ruining a number of pnemonic devices that I had crafted for the old characters. Thankfully though, I've been able to salvage a few. You see, to help myself memorize the characters, I create little stories for each one. For example for the word "dean", I imagined that the character was Howard Dean in front of audience with a microphone to his left. Now, appropriately, in the simplified version, the microphone has been taken away.

Ok, something I was thinking about was that if I was teaching English to a bunch of bratty Chinese kids, I think I might intentionally slip in a few "mistakes" into their vocabulary. This is why I'm always a little afraid to speak Chinese. That, and I'm terrible at it.

As time wears on, I've been attempting to craft the perfect metaphor to describe what Chinese Class here is like. Right now I'm stuck on baseball, with the teacher as all time pitcher, and the students as somewhat unwilling batters. What happens is that the teacher will throw a random pitch to a student, and the student will attempt a respond, doing so well (homerun) or terribly (strike out). The difficulty of the questions often varies, allowing for the fastball/curveball/etc... metaphor. The one problem with this metaphor is that it fails to capture the truly devistating nature of an all out student wipe-out. Whereas a strike-out in baseball is commmonplace, and hardly shameful, I've seen many students be reduced to stammering idiots on questions they probably knew the answer to. But once you get going down the wrong road, things can get ugly. I tend to call these the "Train Wrecks".

Why is it that when you have the most to do, you have the most to blog about? This is a great mystery of the 21st century, that some great thinker must tackle. Though not me, the night is young and much homework awaits me. Farewell brave readers, if you've made it this far. And if not continue reading, because there's alot of hilarious jokes in this one.