Phil and Red's Excellent Adventure

Well, i woke up early to get my bedsheets washed and on the clothesline to dry out. They take the longest. I did so early so I could beat everyone to the washing machine. I was walking to the machine and I see Amy going to it first. So I was like, "I called dibs first!" I needed to get those sheets washed. She seems to wash clothes everyday. Its weird. And she just used it all yesterday morning too. So, I got on it first and it was good. Today is Saturday, but I have my Thursday schedual to teach because of the way Chinese do their holidays. so I didn't have to go in until 1020AM which was great for laundry and chatting with my parents online. They just got back home to Michigan friday nite....Michigan time. I also folded clothes and packed clothes for Shanghai. All that is complete. just the other stuff now.
So, I headed off to class at got to school. On the way to class, Lucy said, give me some time at the end of class so I can pass back these tests. Sure thing, I mean, usually when she says this, it means, "Give me 5 minutes." Boy, was this class a friggin' joke. I taught for about 20 minutes and then Lucy said ok, I will pass back the tests and go over them. "...Um...I just started teaching. What do you want me to do?"
"Oh, just go down to the teacher's office."
Whatever, i took off.
The actual class was "eh". Basically the 3rd graders were a little wild, not too bad. I was doing the same lessons as yesterday using the kids as models for the words and stuff. I got them to laugh in a focused manner and have a good time with English, its the only way to keep their attention. If I don't get them to giggle at least a bit, then they won't pay any attention. Anywho, as I was doing the skirt bit with one of the boys, flipping the skirt up into a jacket and whatever, and then the little fat kid that isn't all there in the head, pulled his pants down and waddle across the front of the class as fast as he could.
Luckily he was wearing boxers. You would think that would stun me....well, it didn't. Its China. No, just kidding. I was stunned.
Well, after that eventful class was over, I was gonna go to Bond to get paid, but a funny story has arisen out of this. Very pathetic and very chinese...of all the days...the day before everyone leaves for their trips. Apparently, yesterday, and this morning, there was no money in the Bond Bank Account for the Xiaolan Office to pay its teachers. Great! Last week, the office sent out an email telling everyone to pick up their money on Saturday the 30th because May holiday is the following week. Now, for those teachers that needed their money before 430 for their trip...they are screwed. This is gonna piss off lots of teachers. The tell us to be on time, yet they aren't. Thats so chinese. Well, I guess I should be happy, since we are getting paid. I mean, I have heard stories of other teachers in other schools in parts of china that don't get paid at all sometimes. I first found out about this this morning when I heard Robert answer the telephone then laugh his ass off. Amy went to go pick up Moses' pay because she is his slave and she called back and said the money won't be ready until 430pm. Thats so pathetic. Thanks alot Bond. You just keep shooting yourselves in the foot. Your karma will return to haunt you when my contract is over. SUCKAZ!
I went to afternoon classes. Before classes started, I was in the office and I noticed that all the teachers got a little gift. The other teachers got more than me, i don't really care. It was a jug of Corn Oil, some lame ass cookies, and some canned fish. Other teachers got pretzels and chips as well. I noticed a bag sitting at May's seat. It was a "Revenge of the Sith" shopping bag with Bolen's written down the side. SWEET! I was like, "Where did you get this?" She was like, "at Bolen's, fool." i can see that from the bag thank you very much. "Where is Bolen's?" She was all up in it and threw, "at the mall." Radical. I want one. Classes started and they were jokes just like the morning class. Basically i taught for about 25 minutes and then Ivy went over the homework assignment to be done over the holiday. I was like, "What!? You are giving them homework on a vacation time!? You are cruel!"
-Ivy responded with good cheer, "Yes!"
After the two classes. I headed home and prepared for Kindergarten.I got to kindergarten and I talked with Wing before class, which started 10 minutes late. I asked why the money wasn't going to be given out until 430pm, and technically, this may not have been Bond's fault at all. Apparently, the China Construction Bank had no money to give out. !!!!!!! So they had to get a refill or something. It wasn't lack of money in the Bond account, its the fact that the bank couldn't give out any money cause it didn't have any. I am sure this is possible, especially in China. But, in truth, I think everything that goes wrong here is Bond's fault, no matter what. For example, the Taiwan Issue (which I must mention later), the Japanese Issue, chinese people yelling at me...Its all Bonds fault.
Kindergarten was ok. Sang songs n stuff. They are getting good at, "My name is...". Before class starts with these 2-4 year olds, I usually spend about 5 minutes meeting with and waving and slapping high fives with about 30 other little 2-4 year olds from other classes that I run into during the class change overs. I love doing it. The kids are soooooo cute. Then they grow up. Anywho, they love it. They get all excited and run around in circles. One girl today, who is my class, was excited to see me outside the class that she was running up to me, slapping my knee, then running away. It was just the sight of me that made her excited, I wasn't doing anything... Man, if only I could do that to women my own age.... Anyway. She was running up to me and I continued to close the distance since I was walking to the classroom and she did a last run. She came up to me, slapped my knee, and turned around an went into a lunge to run. She went head first into a giant pillar holding the roof up. IT WAS HILARIOUS! I quickly picked her up off the ground to check for any damage. She was fine, she had this huge grin on her face and then she slapped me on the head.
I have learned from seeing all these kindergarteners that Chinese people don't teach their little children to brush their teeth since they will just fall out. Its obvious because almost all the little kids have rotted and discolored teeth. Whenever they smile at me, I cringe inside. There is this one boy that I give high fives too during the class switch-up that has a face only a mother could love. All his teeth are so rotted and black that they are like little sharp black daggers. It reminds me of Christopher Walken as the Hessian Horseman in "Sleepy Hollow". Those gruesome knife like teeth.
After the class, I headed home and did some more preparing for Shanghai. Yumi came over and had Amy translate a few things that I had written down into Chinese...for safe measure. Yumi and I are gonna bust that place up like a highschool kegger. For some reason I was in a bad mood this evening. And I was very tired. Yumi and I headed out to get some money out of the bank for the trip, then to the bus station to get a ticket to Shenzhen at 4pm tomorrow. We then grabbed dinner. Good food. I never liked Eggplant until I came to China. Go figure.
Something that is interesting: Hair Salon's are much more high-tech and meticulous than dentist offices. As I walked passed a dentist's office on the way home, I saw a dentist or assistant putting together the mold used for making molds of teeth. A few feet away I saw a repair man using the same type of tools to fix the wall.
I was in a real bad mood. I just wanted to yell at and start a fight with the people who were staring at me, especially when Yumi and I walked down the street. I don't know why it still bothers me.

Posted by Phil at 01:08 PM | Permalink

When there is no more room in Hell, the Dead will walk the Earth.

Classes today were interesting. I will give you the skinnies, the facts, the low down, the down low....no doubt. I had three classes this morning. I had Coco's 4th Grade class and it went really well. Kids were well behaved and everything. Then I had Lucy's 3rd Grade and she was absent from class due to her sitting in on Ivy's open lesson. The kids were terrible. They were just not paying attention. I did the whole lesson, but I think maybe 30% of the class was following along and actually participating. My throat was sore by the end of the class. I then had another one of Coco's 4th grade classes after that. This went surprisingly well. Coco was going to be absent from class due to the Open Class by Ivy and she accompanied me to the beginning of class to warn the kids. The kid that I literally dragged to the Headmaster's Office last week was in this class and she wanted to warn him to be on his best behavior. I told her to tell him, "If you get out of your seat once, Phil will take you to the headmaster." I added, "Don't make me destroy you." It worked. The kid payed attention throughout class and was very well behaved. Awesome. Those 3rd graders were the worst of today. Punks.
During lunch period i took care of some things like laundry. I needed to do laundry!
During the afternoon classes, I just had two more 3rd grade classes and these went pretty well. The teacher, Mavis, who was out for a couple months because she gave birth is back and the first 3rd grade class is hers, so she accompanied me this time instead of Anna. I thought that meant Mavis would attend the second 3rd grade class. So, I asked Anna if she will miss me. It took me about 6 minutes to explain what I was asking her. She finally understood and laughed a little. Nothing kills a joke quicker than Chinese people. She then told me that its just the first class that Mavis will go to. Anna has the other one. Oh, ok. So you won't miss me.
As I said, these two classes went well. Mavis had never seen me teach, and the students in her class today were the best I have had in weeks. I was very surprised. They did everything I told them and got them today. In the 3rd grades I have been going over Jacket, Pants, Socks, and Skirt along with In, Out, Under, Between. So I have been doing little presentations with the kids. I have the kids stand on the table and I point to the article of clothing. Most of the time, none of the kids are wearing skirts, so I take a boy and grab a jacket and tie it around to make a skirt. The kids go nuts over this and they laugh so hard. It really gets them involved and interested. The second class I had with Anna, went pretty good as well. I got a boy up there with a skirt and then gave him one of those chinese fans. It was so hilarious.
Afterwards I headed out to the house to take care of some laundry before kindergarten. Its been really sunny and warm all day. Very gorgeous. I then got to Kindergarten and it was pretty nice. The 12 kids were loud as usual. I got them saying, "Where are you from? - I'm from China." "Where do you live? - I live in Xiaolan". Its kool. Then I also went over the seasons again. To help them remember i made hand motions for each season and played a contest. Its working.
After that I headed home. I canceled my chinese lesson cause it was a beautiful day and I really didn't feel like going to the lesson. So I stayed at home doing some things. I then went to practice.
Practice tonite was awesome! There was a larger group of people there practicing. Before practicing form work after my warmups, I fooled around with one kid trying to do handstands. So we were using the Pedestal ground pads to do running flips and handsprings. it ruled!
Then i worked on some Hong Quan with Old Sifu. After that, the kid I was doing flips and hand springs with grabbed a couple staffs and Old Sifu started showing us one of the staff forms he knows. It was great. I worked hard and learned alot. This is what I want everyday at practice, but I rarely ever get it. It took me about 10 minutes to get the name of the form out of them and it required about 5 people too. Basically the chinese name is "lop deem boon goon"/"liu dian ban gwen" which exactly translates to "6 Hour Half Staff. 6:30 Staff. ..................... Let me get this correct. The name for the form is 6:30 Staff?? what the hell is that? 6:30 staff? 6 hour 1/2 staff? Maybe Hexagonal Staff?
"No, 6:30 Staff"
.......whatever.
I totally rocked the form. Sifu kept shouting at me from across the studio to look forward at the target. I was all like, "I obviously can't do that if I have to watch to see what Old Sifu is doing next. Duh!"
I rode home very happy and very satisfied. Got to practice tomorrow.

Posted by Phil at 11:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This morning started out interesting. First, I woke up to a fone call from Coco saying my morning class was canceled due to exams. That meant I had no classes at all in the morning since today is my easy day. But then, it poured rain for about 10 minutes. Then it turned to a sprinkle, then after awhile, around 1030, the sun popped out and its bright and sunny now. Very nice. Also, my computer finished downloading the Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith Soundtrack. It sounds pretty good. I read a couple articles online yesterday that said that Kevin Smith had seen the movie and that it was "...as good as Empire." Which is definitely a positive review and could be the only saving grace for the prequels at all. However, I have a couple reservations on that because Jason Mewes is the one that was mentioning this news and Kevin Smith is in league with Lucasfilm now about making a Star Wars TV Series. I wonder if he had to say it was good. Who knows. I guess I will have to wait for it to come out. Depending on how things go, I may go to Hong Kong for a weekend and while I am there, go see the movie. That would rock. I don't know if it will be in Theatre in China. Maybe it might. Lord of the Rings was.
I went to 1+1 for lunch and ran into Robert. We chatted about things. It was enjoyable. More complaing of the teaching issues. He said that before he got here, he thought he wanted to stay for about 2 years to see the children progress. After a couple weeks, he was all like, "Aaaah, HELL NO!" He said he tried to do a project where kids would research other countries and give a small presentation. Stuff like Population, History, etc. Afterwards, his teacher said that the kids don't know what this stuff is. "Duh, that's the whole point of the project!" The whole system is against us here in China. If you haven't been able to figure that out already.
Time for afternoon classes with good 5th graders. The first class went well. The chinese love to play Paper Rock Scissors so I tried to incorporate that into an English game. I don't think I heard anyone speaking english. ugh.
Anywho, during this first class there was a rainstorm. Lets see...It poured this morning. Then it cleared up late morning and was absolutely gorgeous. I am sure there was a rainbow behind all the pollution in the sky. I rode my bike to school and it was still gorgeous. When class started, it was nice. Then about 2 minutes later, the sky got darker and continuously got darker until it was realy dark. The wind had picked up big time and was blowing the doors shut. I could hear all the doors in the school slamming one right after another. So the kids shut the windows and its a good thing too, because right after they shut the windows, it started storming hard. I haven't seen it rain this hard in China yet. It was like God was drinking barrels and barrels of the finest Heavenly Brewed beer and then running to the metaphorical toilet that is the Earth and letting it flow. Thats how hard it was. Kids who were outside for the span of a few seconds were completely drenched. The windows were shaking from the wind and it started lighting and thundering. As class ended, I headed to the office. All the way to the office I heard kids shrieking from the Lightning and thunder. When I got to the office I asked May and Anna, "Do you get tornadoes at all in this area of Guangdong?" They didn't understand "Tornadoes", they kept thought I was saying "tomatoes". So i went online and showed them pictures of tornadoes. They said, oh, "Typhoon", I was all like, "Sucka, don't you know a water storm from a land storm. Fool. Typhoons happen over the water and disipate dramatically once they hit land. Tornadoes form on the land." They then realized their folly and understood what I was talking about. "No, we do not get those in this area of Guangdong. Very rare. But in Xiamen, they get alot do." I think something like that. Very interesting.
The second period I had was special. Ivy had to prepare for an open class tomorrow morning where other teachers from other schools will come to watch. So she took about 15 kids... all the good kids. I was left with the ones who don't like doing anything. Great. Ivy said I could punish them in anyway if I needed too. She left and I thought we could have a fun class. Guess what. These kids started fooling around, not paying attention, and running around the room, throwing stuff and other things. So, i tried to get their attention by playing some games. One of the games I tried playing was "Telephone". It took me about 5 minutes just to get them to make a circle in the room. They knew how to pass the words down right away. And of course, no one was getting simple words that they just learned at all. And some tried to be comedians by shouting out the words or not being quite. After i told them to be quiet many times, those that broke the quiet rule and shouted the word out had to sit on the floor in front of me on their knees. As in Japanese "Seiza". I had a total of 4 kids doing it. 3 boys and 1 girl. When that game fell apart, I tried other things. I was doing all I could to make it a fun class, but these kids wanted to just rather spit in my face and tell me to screw off, so I was like, thats it. I went down to the office to see if the headmaster would accompany me back to the class, but instead I was given the head homeroom teacher of that class. Good enough. I brought him back and the kids were all over the place. As he walked in they scrambled for their seats as he was yelling at them. They were like cockroaches when the lights go on. I tried to make it a fun class but you would rather disrespect me so now I am bringing down the hammer. You brought this on yourself. Suckaz.
By the end of this class, the sun had come back out and it was shinning. I am sure there was a rainbow, except for the pollution covering it up. I headed home and got my stuff together for Kindergarten.
Kindergarten was good. Just went over the emotions I have been teaching them. I also introduced some new things like, "Push, Pull". Next week, I will do more with those and quickly review the emotions. I am still spending about the 1st half of the class doing greetings. Most of them got "My name is...." Down. Prolly about 80%. I will try to increase it next week then move on and just review that stuff every lesson.
Afterwards, I scored some Tomato and Eggs at Wooden Chair. After that I ran to my place and grabbed my computer and chinese stuff to take to chinese lessons and show the software to Lisa. she was excited and wanted to copy the CDs. Good luck. She felt they were good. I am still working on the first one. Its wierd. To go from disc 1 to disc 2, it feels like there should be a Disc 1.5 because on the 2nd Disc, there is lots of pinyin and complex explanations in Chinese. I'm clueless on it. As for the chinese lessons. I don't think they are very good. I am not learning much, especially for the amount of time I am putting in. I can't remember anything and the stuff goes in one ear and out the other. Irritating me. Nothing I learn in that class have I really needed to use or been able to use with Megan or Amy. Ugh.
After lessons were over, I am also continuously tired by these lessons. Very boring. I had about 40 minutes to relax before I ran to the KFC at 8pm to watch a performance. That girl from Lion Dance that was chatting with me on Tuesday has a dance recital and asked me to come. So I went. I was there for prolly 40 minutes waiting to see thier show, but they didn't go on. About 820pm, a breakdancing group took the stage. They started out and I just laughed my ass off. I said it once and I will say it again. The only thing funnier and more pathetic than a white man trying to act like a hip black man (which make me laugh as well) is an asian man trying to act like a black man. Don't get me wrong, breakdancing can be done by anyone, and the head of the troop that came on halfway thru had some talent. Most of the kids were just ok, I mean, I have only had 4 lessons, and my body rock and 6-step are much cleaner than theirs, but they got some of the hand stands down that I just can't get. But man, were they sloppy and when they weren't breakin' they were trying to act all street/ghetto, and there is nothing you can do but laugh. I do have to say, the head of the group, who was acting the worse, was the best in abilities at breakin'. But he still looked like a total tool. Ha ha. I luckily was able to get my video camera out right before he came on stage. I left after the break dancing bit because I had to meet everyone at 830pm for saying Goodbye to Lynn and Toby. Of course, I was the first one there, then Nick and Megan, then the rest of the Big House showed up. That was around 845pm. No one else showed until after 9pm. Thats what I get for being punctual.
We got some beers and some eats and we had ourselves a good ol time. There were lots of people there. Most of the foregin teachers in Xiaolan and Guzhen were there. I got to meet a bunch of the new teachers in Guzhen. Shevon from Ireland, Glen from Britain, Debbie from Wales, and Betty from New Zealand. They all seemed pretty fun. I chatted a bit with Debbie and she mentioned, "I just can't believe given all the facts, the majority of the American people could have still voted for Bush. Why would they do that." Great....we finally get rid of Toby and his Anti-American rhetoric, and now we get another one. I actually lost a bit of respect for her when she mentioned that.
Around 945pm, Yumi called me after her class was over and I told her to come over and she did. So that was nice. There were prolly 25-30 people around the table, because a bunch of the chinese staff were there too since it was Lynn's goodbye gathering as well.
As for Toby leaving, really, if he stayed it wouldn't have bothered me, becuase I haven't gone out with him in the past couple months since John left. So, he hasn't bothered me. And he didn't get drunk enough for me to record him saying stuff about America and I just didn't want to push it either. he was very well behaved tonite.
As for Lynn leaving. Its odd. Last semester I would have been happy to get rid of her, but now, with me avoiding Bond and only really dealing with her outside of the office, things were much better. Its like losing your Arch-Nemesis. The both of you are out to get each other while you are around. And you spend your whole life/time seeking the destruction of each other, when one of them leaves, you have all this time on your hands and you eventually miss them. I think thats how its gonna be with Lynn. The night was really good. I had lots of fun. I hadn't gone out drinkin like that in a while. It was good. The pain in my knee disappeared. I think it was from the acohol. It does a body good.
Goodnite.

Posted by Phil at 01:34 PM | Permalink

I sent an email to Gary, my Shorinji Kempo Sensei, asking about information on the International Taikai this October. When I woke up he had responded. And there was a lot of information. After my first 5th grade class, I looked it over and replied. It looks as though its going to be an expensive trip in Japan. Its very expensive to do anything in that country apparently. I am gonna have to figure out my game plan for what I will do there and where to go. It looks as though we would be flying in on October 6th and the first 1.5 weeks would be spent doing Shorinji Kempo stuff and a bit of sightseeing with the group. After that, I will pretty much be on my own. I will use that time to travel around, visiting other Shorinji Kempo Dojos and Jeff and Mitch. I will make my way into Saitama, by Tokyo and Yokohama and meet up with Rumi since she lives over that way. Then I plan to fly out back to the USA about November 2nd. Be home in time for my brother's birthday.
After my two uneventful 5th Grade classes I spent time doing things of no real consequence. After the lunch period, I had those two 6th Grade classes that I despise. They were fine today. No problems. I then had kindergarten with a new assitant, Wing. She is the girl I mentioned before, Toby's Stalker. She is kinda young, from Harbin, and her english is good, but hard to understand a bit, the reason for that is she doesn't speak loud enuff. So, I couldn't understant anything she said while I was dealing with the 12 class of 6-7 year olds. I was trying to teach them Seasons, its hard to do when you don't have much material. I don't know how to make a game out of it either.
Chinese lessons were canceled because Lisa was taking Daisy and her grandmother to the train station to see them off. They are heading out to Shanghai/Suzhou today. Yesterday, Lisa gave me their contact info in Shanghai/Suzhou. That would be cool if we could meet up with them out there.
I went to Gong Fu practice today and I just practiced on my own as the others just played the instruments. They are practicing for something. This is the most activity i have seen of them since the Chinese New Year's celebration. I was working hard and I was watching out for my knee as well. Sifu just did some corrections of my forms. He didn't show me anything new yet. I mentioned that there was a little 7-8 year old girl that started coming and has for the past couple weeks. I was watching Sifu teach her stuff. Little kids doing gong fu rules! They got great energy and they rock out. The best kids I have seen practicing were at the Shaolin School in Las Vegas. There were about 20-30 kids out on that mat just busting out. So cool.
After practice I headed home. Chatted with my bro a bit. He picked up the DVDs yesterday. Everything was there. Awesome. Hopefully they are shipped out soon. Got a response from Gary. i am tired. Hard work out. Sleep well suckaz.
Its been raining for the past couple daze, on and off.

Posted by Phil at 01:12 PM | Permalink

I don't know what it is, but all day long I have been really tired. I dont know why.
Today I had class with those two insane 4th graders. Apparently, I should have taken that kid down to the Headmaster's Office a long time ago. He spent most of the class in his seat and didn't really bother anyone. He was talking to the girl behind him, but nothing really worse. The fat psycho kid was not a problem either. I was very surprised. The past 2 weeks they have been really in control.
My knee is still hurting, so I didnt go to the gym.
Afternoon 6th grade classes went as they usually do on Tuesdays. Not bad, not good. After those were over, I ran over to 1 + 1 to grab some healthy food and Listerine. Hopefully, this added meal of good food will help wake me up.
I had kindergarten with the 2-4 year olds today. This is Lynn's last day. I am sad to see her go at this point because I have had no troubles with her in the past 1.5 months or so and when she doesn't make me hate her, she is a really nice person. If she had left during last semester, I would have cheered, though.
The class was good. I felt much better dealing with these little tykes that seem to love. They try to give me hugs n stuff. How could you not be in a good mood after that. One kid loves me so much that he ran up to me in the middle of class and punched me in the balls. They got nothing but love.
I then went to teach Daisy after that. She didn't want to learn. Since I was tired after her lesson, I was able to cancel my chinese lesson. I needed to save some strength to go to practice tonite. I needed to go at least and I was very careful. No full extension.
On the way to practice I yelled at a person running a red light because he almost hit me. I screamed at him to "SEE", while pointing to the walk sign. He was mumbling something to me.
Its strange, when and if I feel pain, its from walking, and very randomly while I am riding the bike. When I do horse stance and a few other things, dont get me wrong, I was being really careful and not pushing it, it doesn't hurt. I can't find the exact place of the pain either, its weird. This better heal up before Shanghai. Since barely anyone was at practice I started chatting with this girl. She's the one that works at McDonald's. She has two english names, Frankie and Summer. Her english sounds really good, she just doesn't have much vocabulary. So we were trying to make due. She said her boyfriend is 22. She is 16. So I was like, "You are one of "those" girls." She asked if I had a girlfriend and I was like yes. She was like, "How old?" while she was twirling her hair. "23". Then she asked if she was Chinese and I said, "Japanese" And she got all excited and jumping around. "I want to make friends with her!" Why are you so excited? "Because, I love Japan. The people are so nice and its such a beautiful country." I was like, all chinese people hate Japan, all these protests and the current situation prove that the Chinese Gov wants you to hate the Japanese, why do you love it so? After a while of her trying to express herself it came up that it was because all that happened was in the past. I have chatted with many people and it seems that those under 20 have no ill will towards Japan. Its all those over 20. But then, that is also the age where it seems people are more aware of the past and what it effects in the future...or so I think. I was able to practice, I just went thru the forms and stuff and did the stances. Sifu wasn't there so no one to teach me new stuff.
On my ride home, I went by the hairshop below us. A bunch of them were outside just doing nothing, like most chinese people do, and I couldn't help but laugh. The hairstyles were just totally straight out of the 70s and 80s. Its impossible not to laugh! I just can't explain it. you have to see it.
The weather sucked today. Overcast and sometimes rainy.
Goodnite all.

Posted by Phil at 05:03 PM | Permalink

Got up and headed to the gym for some long needed exercise and wouldn't you know it, i torqued something in my knee while stretching. I was at the gym for about 20 minutes. I am irritated. Its not bad, I didn't feel it until i started some jogging, so I quickly stopped and i came home and i am resting it up and taking care of it. If its not one thing its another. So frustrating.
I have also been looking at this china news website www.china.org.cn and comparing it with www.japantoday.com. Apparently 1000 Asian Americans protested Japan in LA today. That wasn't on the US news webs. Its just really interesting to read these two opposing view points over this issue. Its mindblowing. These governments are both acting like spoiled children. Its wierd, I find myself taking the Japanese side a bit but also see where China is coming from. Its odd how over the span of 60 years, your worst enemy has become your best friend and your best friend has become your worst enemy n stuff. Its freaky.
I spent alot of time working on studying Chinese today. Fried my brain a couple times. About 2pm, Megan started helping me with some stuff and Ben showed up so he joined us. We all worked together on some things and fried our brains for the first time. Afterwards I practiced guitar a bit then headed out for dinner.
I was planning on going to practice tonite but at 745pm it started storming and went on until about 9pm. It was thunderstorming and lightning. I haven't seen that here yet. I have seen it rain, but not thunderstorms. It was kool. Since I couldn't go to practice in the rain, Megan helped me again with some more chinese and this fried my brain for the second time. I had Amy call Guo Sifu to ask him some stuff. I had her mention to him that I really have only 3 full months of practice with him left, May, June, and July, and I would like to use that time to learn more of things like Long Quan, Chan Quan, and Lion Dancing. He said sure. Lets see how that goes. I have to think of something real nice to give him as a thank you gift. I am open to ideas, since I am horrible with thinking of ideas. I would like to have something shipped from the USA, but I may pick something up nice in HK or Shanghai that expresses my thanks and give it to him. I wonder if I could get him to teach me how to break the spear with your throat. That would rule. Ha ha ha. The reason I have full 3 months left is that I am gonna try and pull a month stay of August at the Shaolin Temple in Henan. That would totally rock hard. Learn drunken style and a bunch of other stuff. Giggle. tee hee.
Speaking of which, when I first got here in Xiaolan I bought this DVD called "Drunken Monkey" and the last DVD Player it would freeze up. But when Peter left, he took it with him, then we bought another DVD Player. So I thought maybe this one would work. And I popped it in and went to the chapters where it started freezing and what do you know, it worked! Ok, I got one thing to ask everyone...if anyone reads this or knows or whatever... Whenever I watch movies about Drunken Gong Fu, whenever the characters drink wine, they always pour out an entire jar of chinese wine onto their face/bodies and maybe only get a couple mouthfuls. Why do they do this!?!?!?! That is such a waste of chinese wine! (even if its just really water) I just don't understand why they just don't chug a bottle or something, its much more economical. They either smash the jar or something. Aiya. If anyone can answer me this...don't hesitate to email me.
Well, today has been filled with lots of stuff, oddly enuff. I am tired. Goodnite all.

Posted by Phil at 01:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today, what did I do, oh yeah. I had lunch with Yumi at this really great Yunnan Province Styled resturant. Its from the place I visited during New Years break. The food was really really really good. If my folks and brother ever come to this country, they will love the food. Thats for sure. So many good places here. However, I think my mom wouldn't be able to deal with all the spicy stuff. Oh, and the MSG will cause problems maybe. I just need to remember how to say, "Don't use MSG."
After lunch, I came back here and spent alot of time on Chinese practice. Peter showed up with Nick. Nick just got back from meeting his dad in Hong Kong. He brought back a bunch of junk. Included were some footballs that Peter and Nick were showing people at English Corner. We started chatting. The topic of Koizumi's apology came up and I said that its a good thing just in general. Then Peter said, "Not when the chinese government censors it." Um...what? Apparently, the chinese have censored the entire apology. I just looked on the China news website...no mention of the apology at all. Mother... How can they censor it. It was at an international forum......AAARGGH!
This led us onto the topic that, "Does the truth really matter?" Apparently, Peter was chatting with a Foreign English Teacher online today or yesterday and he said that one of his classes he talked to his students about the Japanese Textbooks and how they gloss over the truth of wartime atrocities and he asked his students, "Does the Truth really matter?" And all the students said, "Hands down! It matters." So, the teacher showed them footage of the Tiannamen Square Massacre. The kids just sat there. "So...does the truth matter when you know nothing about it?"
People my age in China have no recollection of this event. Amy has heard of it, but thats it. Freaky. Nick mentioned that when he was teaching in Inner Mongolia, he tried doing a project, Design Your Own Country. Most of you computer geeks out there are aware of this website. You can choose your country's name, type of government, population, size, and many other things as well. I created one a while ago. I think it was a Totalitarian regime or something. It was quite humorous. But anywho, his students loved this project. Most of them really got into it. Then his supervisor told him, "You can't do that type of lesson here." Why not? The kids love it. Apparently, since it was a private school he was at, no problems arose, but the people said that if he had down that at a Public/Government Run School, the poop would have hit the fan. Craziness.
Oh, I just check the China website again, a new article has been posted. "A Look Back: The Anti-Japanese War 1937-1945". Great! I thought they were supposed to be trying to make positive turns to the stressing of Japan-China ties, not sabotaging them. I guess the government will continue to do this kinda shit until Japan doesn't get a seat on the UN council.
Something that has been busting my balls have been the fact that for some reason some people in this house leave lights on all over the place and leave the TV and DVD player on when not in use. I just shut the two applicances off. And I think they have been on for the past couple hours with no one using them. And the house people wonder why our electricity bill is so damn high.
Oh, good news, the DVDs are at the Lincoln Park Post Office right now. My bro has to go pick them up.
The rest of today I spent just studying and hanging out. Good nite all. Sleep well.

Posted by Phil at 11:16 PM | Permalink

I woke up to somewhat good news today after another bizarre dream. The good news is that it turns out that Prime Minister of Japan, Koizumi, apologized to China and all Asian countries at an international forum. Thats great. And I guess that Koizumi is meeting with Hu tonite or something like that to discuss more things. The article said that the government was going to take the steps to disuade people from any boycott of Japanese goods and to not organize anymore protests for this weekend, but that there may be a couple, very small though. How quickly public opinion sways in this country... This is good news for our Shanghai trip. Hopefully things continue on a positive turn. But more may be in store for us.
As for my dream. It was really interesting. It has to deal with the Simpsons:
Setting: Springfield - in back of the Nuclear Power Plant
Time period: present. I guess.
Plot: Mr. Burns, in a sneaky plot to help make his ailing plant more money, he creates a new setup to create energy by burning children's fat.
How it goes: He had small capsules created that imprison young children from Springfield against their will and create energy by burning the fat off their bodies. Like, steam rooms or something. At one point, as Martin (the brainiack) was being forced into a capsule, he ran into Moe (Moe said it was his side job). As Moe was filling up Martin's capsule with some sort of liquid, with Martin in it, Martin popped his head out and said something that Martin would say, and Moe gave a quick retort and shoved the lid on his head. Now, Bart and Milhouse had avoided capture and were sneaking around the area. Until they came to a big car that seemed to be designed to run of the energy of the fat burning. So they hopped in to check it out. In doing so, they turned on the car. It turns out this wasn't a scheme to supply power to the city, but to supply power to Mr. Burns' personal rollercoaster. Bart and Milhouse were in for a ride. The car itself was in the shape of Krusty or something with his tongue as the ignition/foot pedal. After the ride was over, Bart and Milhouse decided they needed to stop this. So, from the attached warehouse, they jumped onto the top of a trailer connected to a Semi. And guess what, I was there with them at this point. We drove down the parking lot to where the real brains of the operation was. They were stocking the trailers up with some sort of boxes directly related to the energy burns. The three of us jump off the trailer and said, "The jig is up!" And it turns out that this thing was being run by the Smurfs, and Papa Smurf was the one in charge...obviously. So, we got into a battle royale with the Smurf contingent. They were about half my size and the same size as Bart and Milhouse. I singled out Papa Smurf and wailed out big time on him. I laid into him, threw him against the trailer, and pounded him into oblivion. All the while I was laughing as I was destroying him...
I woke myself up because I was giggling outloud. very strange dream.
I was taking a taxi ride home from an errand and I saw a construction site. It was about 1pm as i drove by. In the site, there slept a chinese worker. Just laying among all the bolts, nails, and wood. Damn. That is really odd. To me I mean. Chinese people do that all the time around here, sleeping at their place of work during the lunch period.
It was a gorgeous day today. Warm, sunny, and breezy. Slightly humid. I had class with Daisy, Violet, and Jack today. I was at the office about 10 minutes before class started and I was talking with Owen when a tall white woman walked passed us towards the office. And I found myself staring like I was chinese. "WHOLLY CRAP!!! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME!!!!" I haven't seen a tall white woman that I don't know in a while. Its not so much she's a foreigner, but a teacher that I haven't met yet. I was trying to see who she was. I felt bad and I was upset that I may have made her feel uncomfortable. I asked Owen who she was. "She's a foreign teacher and she's in Guzhen."
What's her name? "Her name is Xi Huan." Um.....what? She is white, whats she doing with a Chinese name. "No, Xi Huan." Spell it out for me. "S. H. E. V. O. N." OOOOOOOOH, Shevon. Not Xi Huan. You need to work on your "V"s.
Where is she from? "She is from Southern Island country."
um......ok......where is that Owen? "Southern Island."
What country? "UK" oh,...Ireland? "YES YES!"
Gotcha.
The class went well. Reviewed the emotions with them and taught them The Seasons. And of course, I go to Bond hoping to get access to some material on the Seasons and all they have is a flash card on Winter. They constantly tell me that they have any subjected material at my disposal at their office, yet, when I need something, they don't got it. Its always like that. Not just in China. The class was overall well. Jack still has trouble remember my and Owen's name. They seemed to enjoy the class. Violet didnt cry this time, which is good. And she was on time...2 minutes early. Last week she was 35 minutes late. Afterwards, I was gonna go to the gym, but I came back to the house and worked a bit on some Chinese homework and guitar stuff. Printed up a bunch of word sheets and went thru the software I have.
Yumi invited me to meet her for dinner at the Hunan Resturant for her co-workers birthday. All the teachers there were younger than me...I was surprised. The b-day boy was 24 years old. He was one of their school's English teachers. He called me handsome and corrected his girlfriend's incorrect English grammar with more incorrect grammar. It was quite humorous. His girlfriend is a Japanese teacher and from what I could tell, her Japanese was quite good. They were on my left, and two art teachers were on my right. One teachers at Xiaolan Middle and the other at Yumi's school. The two are dating. Then there was another couple. One was a math teacher and his girlfriend, i never caught it. Then there were two other male teachers. One was a math teacher and I don't know the other. Mayu and her husband showed up a little late. Almost about the time I had to go because I had to leave for Lion Dance practice.
The dinner was great. Food was fantastic. I didn't eat alot because I wasn't that hungry. The birthday boy was insinuating that I wasn't a man because I wouldn't drink much. I told them that I had gong fu and they said, "Likely excuse." I then said, "If it were Drunken Boxing that I was going to practice, then sure, I would drink up." He was just joking about it though. Yumi was drinking alot. She was into it. For some reason, the bday boy and his girlfriend thought it would be funny to take pictures of all the couples drinking their beverages in the intertwined position....where you lock your arms up and drink. Well, we did that one and then the hug around the neck and a drink. Yumi spilled her beer on my shirt. So riske. The bday boy kept wanting me to drink he kept toasting everyone and I was just taking sips. It finally came time for me to leave and I said goodbye's and left.
Lion dance practice was interesting. Sifu didn't show me anything. While practicing, I wasn't in the best of shape because of the dinner and beer. Hunan food is spicy, but its not like Sichuan spicy that just burns your mouth. Hunan food is like a timebomb. After its in you for about an hour, it explodes. Aiya! So, I did my formwork and practice some stuff. I was screwing around with a couple of the wunderkinden and practiced some Lion Dance moves and positions, much too Sifu's surprise and pleasure. He better start showing me it now. I also was pretend sparring with one of the wunderkinden. Just fooling around. I then tried to teach Victor and the best wunderkind (one I was goofing off with) some toi-shou (push hands). Victor caught on after I worked on it with him for 5 minutes. Its hard to teach this stuff when you can't speak. As for the wunderkind, his body alignment was really really hard and wouldn't soften up where Victor could a little. This aided me where I could win easily. I kept trying to show him the movements and he kept saying, "msec." I can't. I am like, yes you can! Since he wasn't into that, I showed him a bunch of Hong Gar arm conditioning exercises that he liked, even though they hurt your arms...slightly. They just make them sore for a bit.
Also, something else that was kool was this new 8-10 year old fat kid who was doing some form work, Chan Quan. He seemed pretty good. He was very fast and needed some fine tuning, but he rocked. I tried to talk to him, but he just stared at me with a blank stare. ugh. My chinese was fine too. I am gonna see if Sifu will show me Chan Quan and Long Quan in addition to Lion Dance on Monday. I need this stuff, as much as I can get!
I headed home and called Yumi. She got sick, so I went to take care of her for awhile. Then headed on home. Its like 3AM right now. Good nite all.

Posted by Phil at 02:32 PM | Permalink

Today was interesting so far. I woke up after having a real bizarre dream. From what I can remember, it starts out like this:
Setting: China
Time Period: Start of and during the Cultural Revolution
Plot: I am a naive idealist chinese-english interpreter/translator for the Chinese Government infatuated with the possibilities that theoretical communism has to offer. But its only theory and soon I am caught up on the negative side of the Cultural Revolution..(well, there was no real positive side to it)...i was being made an example of and people were out to get me.
What I remember: I was a young naive english interpretter for the government and I really liked communism and I was really into the Cultural Revolution and the change it was bringing for a better world. I was speaking with a fellow foreign interpretter about the positive aspects of what we were doing and apart of, yet, I expressed that if the Chinese government could live up to communism in theory, things would be perfect. This is where my trouble began. The fellow co-worker asks me if I really believe that, and I said yeah, and then he said, "Well, you should have no problem with me letting the Mao listen to the tape I just recorded you with." I realized at that moment what he was gonna try and do. He was gonna try and turn me into an enemy of the state by saying the chinese were doing the right thing. So, I immediately went for the tape and in doing so I accidently punched a chinese woman in the face and that escalated into an angry mob of Chinese people upset and trying to mess me up. The rest of the dream was me hiding out in safehouses and trying to avoid authorities. I then woke up when my alarm went off. Strange stuff.
Today was my super busy day. 5 De Xing classes, 1 kindergarten, then Chinese lesson, and Gong Fu. I was on my way to class when Coco called me at 830AM, 10 minutes before first class. She said that the students will have an examination today so I don't have to come for Class 1 or 2. I just have Class 3. Ok. Well, thats good. I can run some errands that I needed to take care of ASAP. I had to wait till 900AM before I could go anywhere though. I needed to go to the Bank to transfer some money for a deposit to the Hotel in Shanghai since I will be getting in super late on May 1st.
I asked Amy if she could accompany me but she said she was busy at the time I needed to go. She said that I could take it myself. Just give them the money and point to the paper faxed to me by the hotel. Its pretty obvious apparently. She said there should be no problem. When is there never a problem ? So I decided to try it. The first bank I went to, Industrial and Commercial Bank, there was a problem. I needed to have an account. She was all like, "msec". So I was all like, "well, gai wo wode (pointing to my stuff)" She had an embarrassed laugh and gave me my things." I left.
I then headed over to "Bank of China". And they would do the transfer for a 5RMB service charge. One lady that wasn't behind all the windows filled out the forms for me and stuff and then I went over to a window where she filled out more forms and sent it out. I got the receipts and headed home. I then had to run to class. My time was eaten up at the banks.
This class was ugh. First of all, I get to school and there were visiting english teachers viewing Ivy's class. So Coco had to attend this viewing and meeting. Great, I will be alone. It doesn't bother me being alone but it gives the kids the idea they can get away with not paying attention. Very frustrating. Coco did a check up about half way thru. Whenever a teacher approaches the class on days like these, the kids all shut up and I give the crap. "OH MY GOD! The teacher shows up and you all close your mouths and sit pretty!" Its as much as a scolding to the kids as it is a dropping of hints to the chinese teacher, but the teachers don't catch it. When the teacher leaves, they go back to their shenanigans. Irritating. Well, today a few were going wild. The usual ones in this class. There was about 4 kids missing from the classroom and whenever a couple kids are missing, it shows. It makes the room look empty. Anywho, this kid kept doing stupid stuff. Most of the boys were being bad and a 3 girls were brought to tears. I sent to kids to the doors and had their backs facing the class. One of these was the real bad kid of the class. I did this around the first 15 minutes. After about 10 minutes in the doors I sat them back down. Later on in the class he was screwing around again. For example, running around the back of the class like a monkey and jumping around, crawling from his desk to the door and back just because he thought he could. This was disrupting class and pissing me off so I made stand in front of the class and hold a stool with his arms stretched out. He bagan to make a game out of it. Class ended 5 minutes later. And I decided to take him down to the headmaster. I am sick of this. If kids upset me anymore, they go straight to the headmaster. I started leading him out of the room and he started screaming, "NO!!! I'M SORRY!!" over and over again. He was doing all he could to not be moved by me. I tried to Fireman carry him but he sat on the ground, so I lifted him up and he was sliding across the floor and then he grabbed the door so as not to be led out the room. This whole time mind you, all the students had gathered around laughing at him and staring. GET YOUR RUBBER NECKS OUTTA HERE!
Finally, he relented and I took him down nice and quietly. Of couse, I said something to him that made him come with me. I don't remember what it was. And when I say he came down nice and quietly, I mean, he was wimpering, crying, and saying "I know. I'm sorry." You had your chance to learn ,but you wanted to test my wrath. Don't make me destroy. Thats what I love about no one understanding you, you can say stuff and they have no idea. "Don't make me destroy you!" It ruelz.
I led him around the offices looking for the headmasters but I couldn't find any and Coco was in a meeting. A couple teachers were pointing at him. One teacher started to scold him until Coco came out. I didn't let him leave my site, I took him to Coco and she said some things to him. A bunch of his classmates had followed us down to watch and I shooed them away. I had to shoo them away a couple times. Crazy kids. Coco took him to the headmaster's office and as I was leaving, he was walking up the steps. The last kid I sent to the Headmaster was very well behaved the next time I had him in class.
I went to the Bond office to send out the fax of the Receipt to the Hotel. I got good news while I was there. Toby is leaving for good April 28th!!!! YES!!!! WHOO HOO!!! No more drunken, anti-American bashing rants spouted out by this drip who has no idea what he's talking about.
I then went shopping for a mouse for Daisy, but only came up with a Stuffed Animal Minnie Mouse. Oh well. I tried. On my way home I ran into Robert walking home the same way. I helped him carry some heavy stuff back. We chatted about our friend Damon, who is teaching him Chinese, and who is a party member. Its odd to have a friend who's a communist. But truth be told, its one of the only ways to get ahead in this country and Damon is ambitious. Since, we were on the subject, I told him of my real wierd dream. And he did nothing but giggle at it. When I told him what it was about, me being an english interpretter in China during the cultural revolution and infatuated with idealistic ideas behind theoretical communism, he laughed out loud.
Afternoon classes went ok. I had two 3rd grades. No problems. A bunch of kids had chinese fans out. Kindergarten was good to. I tried teaching them "Where do you live?" "Where are you from?". It was tough. There is this one kid in the class, one of the boys, who has an interesting thing going on with his ears. I never noticed this until I turned around from the chalkboard and I see Lynn playing with his ears again. I was like, "uhhh?" She was all excited. "LOOK AT THESE! THEY ARE SO COOL!" Basically, this kid's earlobes are like 2x the normal size. They remind me of Buddha. They are either naturrally like that or they are that long from his parents pulling on his ears whenever he is bad. They are flappy and velvety smooth. Its really interesting. Freaky cool. Now that I think about it, I have seen Lynn touching his ears before, but I thought it was because he was doing something bad and she was yanking on them. Awesome.
After kindy, I headed home to wrap up Daisy`s present. As I was leaving for class, I came out into the living room where Robert was watching "The Prince of Egypt". Moses was out in the room and I heard some conversation going on. As I walked out, I was all like, "What you two fighting about now?" Nothing. Just teasing each other. I mentioned to Moses that a few years ago they had found proof that, given enough wind power, a very shallow path in the Red Sea could be uncovered. There were also some claims of people looking for equipment and weapons n stuff. Moses was like, "I heard that." Then he asked me, all upset like, "Have you ever heard of anyone attacking the Koran or other religious scriptures. They only seem to attack the Bible." "Well, if American scientists attack the Koran or anything else they are labeled racists. As far as the muslim world goes, its the back bone of their entire culture. So, no one attacks it." Why does he always ask me these stupid questions. I ain't all knowing. He's supposed to be the wise one. After that, I rode over to Daisy's place and Yumi said she would meet up with us at the resturant. We were heading to the Household Chinese Resturant. That huge place that I went to when I first got to China. Food was sooooo good. Dinner was really good. However, Daisy and her cousin kept running around and shrieking. The parents hardly doing anything. WHat a shame.
FOOD COMA!

Posted by Phil at 01:12 PM | Permalink

Today was my easy day again. I got everyone in the house to fill out that stupid information sheet. 3rd Grade this morning was pretty good. I threw one kid out for giving me the finger and I had another kid stand in front of the class because he gave me the pinky finger...which is the chinese equivalent. And yes, most these kids know that they are both the same. During lunch I went to the gym as I should. I got all stretched out and ready to run for 1 hour when the place experienced one of those Random Chinese power losses. The school gets them all the time. This place always loses power...I mean Xiaolan always experiences these random power outs. Sometimes whole blocks will lose power. Lack of proper organizing and inefficiency.
So I headed home.
After, the 5th grades went ok. These are some of the best classes. They participate well. Ivy has them trained well. I kicked another kid out for the finger from the first class. During the break between classes I was chatting with the art teacher as we were walking down the stairs and I witnessed one of the teachers cane a 4th grader. I so wanted to do the Arnold Schwarzeneggar on him....from Kindergarten Cop. But the kid didn't seem effected by it at all. The whole class laughed at it...I am thinking it may have been a play wack. Not intended to punish him. I don't know. I just briefly caught it. Strange.
After that I came home to prepare for Kindergarten. I had the 2-4 year olds today. I taught them Happy, Excited, Sad, Angry, Love, Tired again. Its great cause I can get them to act them out and sing a song with them. They like it. Most of them have, "My name is...." down. I still got a couple stragglers. Some of them are so damn cute though.
I then went to teach Daisy for an hour. That went ok. I couldn't stay for Chinese lessons because I promised Coco I would come over for dinner. Her nephew and Mother were in town for the week and her Mom apparently makes good bau-tze. Coco had written directions for me to give to a motorbike guy. She called me about 10 minutes before I left Daisy's house to ask me when I was coming over. This proved to be very difficult because I tried to explain it to her at two different times today. She said, "What time will you come over?" I said, "Between 630pm and 700pm." She took this to mean that I will only be able to stay at her house for 30 minutes. I spent at least 5 minutes each time trying to explain it to her and it was the same over the fone, but she just couldn't understand. Very frustrating. I even drew a diagram. She told me to wait by the gas station.
So i pull up at about 645pm underneath her apartment complex. There is a car dealership that carries Mitsubishi, Honda, and BMW. I was looking for a Z4, but didn't find any. Phooey. I want to sit in one. I called Coco. No answer. 20 minutes and 10 fone calls and 1 text message later, she picks up the fone. "Where are you?"
I am outside.
"Why?"
Because you haven't let me in. I have been standing out her for 20 minutes trying to call you.
"Hold on................................................................................................................What?"
AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!! I am out by the gas station waiting for you!
"Ok."
I had to wait forever for her to come down. So, I called her again and she was waiting at the gate. UGH! I am across the street from the gas station. I saw her walk out from the corner down the block, then I watched her walk across the street to the gas station and I was like FRIGGIN' A! I yelled her name out and she saw me. Kevin was with her and he ran towards me and jumped on me. Wow. He was excited to see me. He wouldn't let go of my hand. Adorable. He is 4. He is super light so I put him in the fireman's carry and tickled him to death as we were walking down the street.
Getting to her apartment from the street took about 10 minutes. Had to walk up a ramp, thru some cars, then down a hall, then up stairs.
I met her mom, her brother, and her dog, "Morry". Michelle was still at school. She wouldn't be back until 930pm when Coco would go pick her up. Chinese people go to school too much. So we ate dinner together. They were feeding Morry from the table. Giving him table scraps and stuff. It was just funny. Kevin was hyper at the dinner table. He is a single child too. He likes to yell as well. Dinner was quite good. I had a snack at Daisy's place before coming over, but I had some of her mom's bau-tze. It was alright. The breading was much more dense and the meat inside had bone. I was like, ouch. The dinner was good. Coco's mom asked me, "Why are you so big, yet you eat so little?" I was all like, "the real question is why are you so small, yet you eat so damn much. Answer me that! I have never seen anyone eat more food than Chinese people." They all lauged. Damn asian-gene. After wards I ate fruit while I watched a video on Crazy Li Yang. He is this chinese guy who is famous for creating Crazy English. A method of teaching English to Chinese People that make them speak. The way he does it is to make students shout..amongst other things. He does lectures and everyone in the audience participates. You know, I do this exact same thing, there is nothing new to this method, its just htat my studnets don't partcipate or try. They are too young to care. Oh well.
We were having fruit and I was treated to a tropical fruit. We call in Stinky Fruit in English because it smells like Ass. Most peoepl I have talked to dont like it. However, this was my first time. Its about the size of a round watermelon. Its got spikes all over it. You take a butcher's knife and hack it down the center. You crack it open and there is the seed encased in a the fruit part that you eat. its got this funky texture. Its like a firm stringy pudding. You can't eat it with hands or with a spoon. Very interesting. I like it. However, your breath stinks afterwards. But the strange thing is, the actual part you eat doesnt stink. Its odd.
After that, Kevin was given a bath by the brother and I played with Morry for awhile, then after Kevin it was Morry's turn so I played with Kevin. Then, Coco took me home around 930 when she went to go get her daughter. I went out to search for a present for Daisy's bday dinner tomorrow. She has kept buggin me for Minnie Mouse that Yumi gave me the idea of buying a pet mouse and naming it Minnie and giving it to her. However, the pet store that I know of doesn't sell mice. I searched for a VCD, but couldn't find any that wasn't a mix of Disney and a few other cartoons. I got that VCD set and then I also plan to get her a Minnie Mouse doll.
After I headed home I got a haircut. They cut it real short. Megan just looked at it and said my face looks very long. "Thanks for calling me a horse. Way to make me feel bad. Do you want to take this outside. You wanna go?"
Time for bed. Later.

Posted by Phil at 05:07 PM | Permalink

The first half of the day was pretty crappy. Didn't feel good at all. Then half way thru the chinese lesson, the day was really good.
Morning 5th grade classes went well. No problems. However, I kicked a kid out for giving me double barrels. He was sitting right in front of me and I told the class to stand up and as the rest of them stood up, he just leaned back and thrusted them into the air. So, I threw him out of the room.
Then it was the lunch period. I came home because I wanted to call the hotel in Shanghai to make sure everything is cool and to ask about any issues with coming in on the red-eye. Amy called them for me and they said if I come in later than 6pm, they need a deposit to make sure I am coming in. So they told Amy they would send me a fax explaining how to make the deposit. So I continued the rest of the lunch period searching for things online and in Nick's Lonely Planet Guidebook about places to go see and do in Shanghai and Hangzhou. We may even decide to go to Suzhou on one day. Hangzhou and Suzhou are within 2 hours bus ride or something.
After lunch I went back to class and my two sixth grade classes were terrible. I wanted to set off a tactical nuclear bomb in the classroom only taking out those that are bad and leaving the few remaining good kids completely safe, well except for some radiation exposure and some cellular damage. Well, anything that helps them be less Chinese is a good thing. ;-)
After class I had Kindergarten with the older kids. I introduced The Seasons and an English Domino game. A few kids kept losing interest in the game so as punishment I ate their brains. It was quite tasty. One of the little girls, one of the newer girls (this semester), while playing Duck Duck Goose, she got on the floor and started humping the floor like in the Vanilla Ice "Ice Ice Baby" music video. It was pretty funny. Lynn gave me some papers to give to the teachers at the Big House. The local government wanted information from us. The thing is, Bond already has all this info on us, and it seems like I have given the same info to the government about 20x already. The one difference on this was "Religious Affiliation". Hmmm....I sense a ruse. Now that they know this, they want to make sure we don't force our religious beliefs on the students. If anyone of us here would do that, the first would be Moses, I bet. Nothing against him or anything. Every once in a while he just asks me these religious questions out of the blue. Yesterday, he printed something out and showed it to me and asked me to take a look. It was an arguement/conspiracy theory about scientists negating the world flood from the Noah's Ark story. "Why do scientists totally disagree and negate the possibility that there could have been a global flood on Earth when they totally believe that, in fact, they have found evidence that shows this happened on Mars. If it happened on Mars, why not here. A global flood is possible and it proves that the Bible is correct." If scientists disagree with that possibility, I have no clue. Never heard anything about it until now. I think most scientists believe its possible and that it did happen during the last ice age. I mean, when the icecaps met, the water disapates all over the world, drowning lots of things, and since the water is so cold or whatever, it cools eveyrthing down and thats how the ice age starts. Global warming is followed by global cooling. But whatever.
He has also given me things on Evolution vs Creationism. During a viewing of The Passion of the Christ he asked me how I thought it was and I said I felt that it followed the Gospels fairly accurately except for the artistic license taken and the presentation that Pontious Pilate. The movie presented him as a panzy which is totally inaccurate with historical facts. He was all like, "Well, which do you believe, The Bible or historical fact.".... I paused shortly taking that question in for a moment. Lets see...I'm a scientists by training... But anywho. That and another Christian Blues album he's putting together.
Sorry about the rant.
After that Kindergarten class was over, I went to Chinese lessons. Its started out slow and I was bored. This stuff is hard to make interesting. Half way thru it started getting fun because Daisy brought down her language toy that talks to you and stuff and it does help with simple nouns and verbs. Very simple stuff. So, I played with that for awhile. I have some software for my computer to do practice with, however, for some stupid reason, on my macs, the audio files get clipped so you can't get the whole word and therefore you can't practice properly. Always something. I emailed the company and no response. Punkasses. Their website claims they design their software on macs...LOL! Eat me. If they designed it for Macs, it would work properly.
After I left I had Gong Fu practice. Practice went well, I was the only one sweating as usual. About a couple weeks ago, this mother started bringing in her 8 year old daughter for pracitce. I have tried to talk to her but she doesn't like me or something. All the other people talk to me. Even the 2 year old that came in with his grandfather. He was shaking my hand and being all professional like...It was pretty funny. I just worked on the 3 forms. On Monday, after the rest of this weeks practice, I will ask Sifu if he is ready to start showing me some Lion Dancing because I need to learn it as soon as possible and as much as possible.
Well, I just took a shower and my face is still beat red from practice. Sleep well all.

Posted by Phil at 04:48 PM | Permalink

I had mentioned to Coco today about how we were planning to go to Shanghai, but because of the recent protests, it may not be a good idea to go because it was dangerous. Coco just laughed. And many others laughed at that as well. Coco said there should be no problem at all. She even called her cousin going to school in Shanghai and he said there was nothing to worry about. So, we both reveiwed the situation after looking at our other options, which are pretty much the same anywhere we go. There are protests in every major city in this country, at least, the visiting hotspots. And it was Yumi's decision to want to go. So we are. All the worrying for nothing I guess. I will look for hotels this evening. However, I am gonna search for one away from People's Square where the protests have been held in the past. On May 4th apparently there is one scheduled because in 1919 there was a massive demonstration there and so for many years they celebrate the anniversary. Or something. Yumi doesn't want to be able to see the square. So we can go elsewhere. We also plan to go to Huangzhou that day in the early morning.
I yelled at a group of chinese today at the hospital. I was standing there trying to give my meal ticket to the cooks and people kept cutting in front of me and the cook would take their ticket first. So after about the 3rd time that happened, i was all like, "WTF! Do you not see me standing right here!" That got my ticket taken right away. Giggle. What a shame.
Spent all evening trying to find a hotel in Shanghai. I think I found one. Seems to be pretty good location for a pretty cheap price. Great.
I will let you know how it goes.

Posted by Phil at 05:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"frictions and problems of various kinds ... can only be settled in an orderly manner by abiding by the law and with a sober mind."
No mention of the protests.
Today was laundry day! I also cleaned up my pigsty of a room. You know, I should sue the chinese advertisement company that made the add for this Lonon handheld vacuum cleaner. There is a giant billboard down by the Bus Station of Eric Tsang, hilarious chubby hong kong actor, holding up 4 10lb bowling balls with a pitchforked vacuum hose using the model I have. DAMNIT! This thing won't even pick up the small chips of wall that fall on the floor when I punch the Air Conditioner to stop making noise. What a hunk of crap.
I went out to buy a pair of new shoes today. I wore the soles out on the pair that I brought to China. There were holes in the soles and I seems that I have a tendency to be walking on the outsides of my feet, so most of the wear is on the outside part of the shoe. And the past few days the muscles in my left leg have been quite sore because of wearing these shoes, too small slippers, and then running long distances afterward. Hopefully the new shoes and lack of slippers helps clear it up tomorrow.
They are a nice pair of shoes. Casual yet nice. Not sneakers or sport shoes. They are kinda like my old ones, but not as big and clunky. i was really hoping to get a pair of Velcro shoes though. They have a bunch here. They got 3 straps. Totally rad. Only problem was that they hurt my feet while I tried them on. Icky. They were really cheap though...its a shame. I had also found a kickin' pair of two tones. They look like sadle shoes, only the black and whites are reversed. I totally need to get those. Very nice and shiny and pantenty leather. I will go back and pick them up later sometime.
As I was walking home from getting a Sundae at McDonald's, I walked by a hilarious T-Shirt. "HEAVY METAL Guitar Hero". YES!!! TOTALLY NEED IT! TOTALLY BOUGHT IT! Its light green with white letters. And its kinda thin and it looks as though the hood was cut off, but it still has the hoody pulls on it. Super funny. Totally rocking.
One thing that really did upset me today was this. Yumi and I purchased tickets to go to Shanghai yesterday. And I have been asking her many times, "Do you think Shanghai will be fine considering all that has been going on?" I wanted to make sure she was ok with going to Shanghai. She always said "Yes, I want to go to Shanghai." So, I said ok. I still felt that the protests will be over by then. This morning she Instant Messages me and says she just spoke with her Japanese Language superior about her trip to Shanghai and the teacher told her that "Shanghai is the most dangerous place to visit for you right now." So now, she is all worried and wants to change tickets to go somewhere else. !!!!!!!! Why didn't you talk to them before we bought the tickets. You knew what our plan was and you knew the issues facing us. I was so irritated. She then said that on a Japanese news website they have a protest planned in Shanghai on May 4th. How the japanese news site got this information, I have no clue. There are prolly tons of warnings aimed at the japanese from their news organizations and government. It looks as though these things won't be dying down anytime soon.
So, now, we are discussing where else we can go. I am thinking most likely Wu-dang Shan, by Wuhan. The mountain is famous for the Taoist monks who built places into the sides of the moutnain. And they are also famous for Wu-dang Gong Fu. Most Americans know the term "Wu-Tang". Old movies and a real crappy rap group carry that name.
Yumi came over this evening to help brainstorm places to go and we didn't get anywhere cause she could offer no suggestions. I was searching all around for information on getting to the Wudangshan, but I only found hints at travel options. Basically you have to fly into Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, and then either take a 7 hour bus ride or a 12 hour train ride. I can only find one hotel online for the city of Wudangshan and the main city 50 minutes away, Shiyan. Great! It looks like I can't really plan for this trip. But I guess that is the adventure of travelling thru China. Like the Lonely Planet Website said, "China isn't just a different country, its a whole different world." Yumi had class at 8pm and I was so frustrated with the trip planning, lack of useful info, and sore leg that I didn;t go to practice, so I vegged out the rest of the nite and looked up some more info before I went to bed. I informed Yumi about our options in Wudangshan and other things. Hopefully we can take care of this business tomorrow. sleep well.

Posted by Phil at 01:25 PM | Permalink

I was out and about this morning riding my bike. I thought about the possibilites of anything negative happening here in this small town regarding the Japanese protests. So far it has been contained to only major cities. Nothing massive here yet. I don't believe it will last much longer. Maybe another week. The chinese have short attention spans. ;-) Just kidding. If it happens much longer I think the government will take it as a sign of things going a little out of control and they will crackdown and stop it...that is, if they aren't organizing it. Who knows. I had a little conversation with my Taiwanese-Canadian friend, who is into diplomatic relations and what not. I thought it would be interesting to post online. It gives some interesting thoughts and worries that are out there. And of course, not all chinese hate the japanese. I think the smart people in this country know whats going on. But there are so many that are brainwashed here, a small fraction in this country is still a large number of people. Its nuts. Here it is:

S8: how are you?
ME: a little worried about these protests in major cities in China.
ME: i am not worried so much for myself as I am for my girlfriend, who is japanese, and for the protestors...I believe its entirely possible that another Tiannamen could happen.
S8: oh oh....it's not reported here
S8: they down play the situation
ME: whats not reported?
ME: read CNN.com
ME: thats where I am getting most of the news, and Google.
S8: I follow Canadian News...don't reall like CNN
ME: but I know from the Japanese and what has been said.
S8: is your gf teaching in China as well?
ME: yes. teaching Japanese.
ME: she was warned by her school last week to be careful.
ME: A japanese boss head, here in Xiaolan...who is really kool talked to us yesterday and he said he asked the Xiaolan government for protection.
S8: what was the response?
ME: the response...the government said "Yes." but I have come to not trust anything the chinese say.
ME: I haven't heard of any protests or seen any in this city. but there have been some in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Also, Yumi's school, they have access to the school emails system and one of the chinese teachers who is nice to Yumi and the other Mayu, sent out a really negative email in support of the protesting and the hating of the japanese. Now, the headmaster has suspended use of the school email to Yumi and Mayu so they don't see the bad emails that are still being sent around.
irmenudo@yahoo.com: the protests in all the big cities that have been going on are obviously backed by the government, if not directly organized by it.
S8: how does she feel about it?
ME: she is slightly worried but not really at all.
S8: Then, she should fly back to Japan to be with her family
ME: she feels safe that Hirano-san said that the governemtn will protect her. But i asked her last nite, does she really believe that?
S8: I wouldn't trust the Chinese either
S8: doubt it
S8: it's CHINA
S8: they don't honour anything
S8: people disappear without a trace in China *
ME: Well, so far...only 2 japanese people were slightly injured. I don't believe that it wil get to the scale of straight out violence to people.
S8: I'm not living there, so I don't know what the situation is like. But if she fears for her safety, then she should definitely leave. It's not worth it. China is a communist regime. Can't trust anything they tell you.
ME: i am waiting for the protests to turn against China with people protesting corruption and social reforms...then the government will go ape shit. and do something.
ME: well, she feels safe. and I feel safe in Xiaolan as well...surprisingly. I have talked to her about it, but it isn't that widespread. And for right now, there is no immediate danger.
S8: doubt it...happened years ago...look where it got China
ME: I think by next week or the next, it will be calmed down.
ME: well, the new generation could do it, and the chinese don't learn very easily.
S8: don't think the US will interfere, George has other plans. Besides, the US would not do anything to harm business relations
S8: Not all of them are like that..it's the entire system. Starting from the newspaper...to the text books...everything gets filtered
ME: The US could, I mean, if it has the ability to damage both ties (Japan and China) then I think we could do something to help but nothing more than holding conferences on improving relations n stuff like that.
ME: I am aware of what its like over here.  So much is held from them...
S8: I am Taiwanese-Canadian
S8: people in Taiwan tease me and tell me I don't fit in
ME: LOL!
ME: canadian...giggle.
S8: what? CANADIANS are neutral...peace loving people

Yumi and I went for lunch again and then we walked around People's Park for a bit. We came back to the house and picked up Amy who went to the travel agency with us. First we went to a small place to see about tickets to Shanghai and hotels, but the small place doesn't do hotels. Great. The only other choice was to go to the China Travel Agency. That vile nest of vipers that screwed me over on my Beijing trip, they better not this trip. I really didn't want to go there. Luckily, we did no business with the actual travel agency. In it there was a seperate place that dealt with plane tickets. Unfortunately, the don't work with hotels on Sunday. Go figure. I could have dealt with the small place. Instead I came here only not to be able to book a hotel. I will do so online. That will be interesting. I got the plane tickets to Shanghai. We will take a 945pm flight on Sunday May 1st from Shenzhen and get to Shanghai at 1145pm. Then we will head to the Hotel. most likely the YMCA in Shanghai that I found while searching online later in the evening. We will leave Shanghai to Guangzhou at 230pm on Saturday May 7th. So we get some good time spent in Shanghai. If any of you out there know of places to visit and things to do in Shanghai, let me know! I know a few things from John and Daisy's Grandpa. It should be a fun time.
While walking back I talked to Coco on the fone and she wants me to come visit her place tomorrow because her nephew, Kevin, who I met in Foshan, will be visiting. I could prolly stop by for a little bit before practice.
Well, time for bed. Later.

Posted by Phil at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Chinese Protestors Turn Violent ugh.

It rained most of the day. When it wasn't raining it was very cloudy, dark, and wet. The moisture just hung in the air. I went out to lunch with Yumi this afternoon to a real nice western style resturant at the bottom of her apartment complex. It was pretty much over-priced western style food. The waiter was really annoying. He just stood at our table and kept on asking what we wanted and saying stuff while we were trying to decide. Hold your horses, garson (sp?). I had spaghetti, which wasn't very good. Yumi had a small pizza with lots of cheese. I think I have started to become lactose intolerant from the lack of dairy products here. I haven't been drinking much milk and eating much cheese, so when I get alot, I feel all bloated or whatever. Its a bummer cause I love cheese. I had also ordered a Ceasar Salad for the both of us...oh wait...i'm sorry...a Caeser Salad. The waiter brought it to us and right away I was all like, "Zhe shi shen ma?" (what's this) The guy was like, "Caeser Salad". Someone must tell them and instruct them on how to make Caeser Salads here. I will describe it. First off, there was no lettuce in the salad at all. Secondly, there were apples and pear chunks in it. Thirdly, there were 1cm^3 fried bread chunks in it. Fourthly, there was no grated cheese or Caesar dressing or vegetables. It was a very bizarre salad. Can anyone tell me what this was because it wasn't a Caesar Salad. While we were there, a chinese guy showed up that Yumi knew. He is one Hirano-san's underlyings. If you don't remember Hirano-san, he is the Japanese head boss of a local company that I met on my Beijing Trip when I met Yumi and Rumi. I have seen him randomly since and he is always very nice. I always tell Yumi to say hello for me because some of her students are taking internships at the company so she sees him weekly. But anyway, Yumi said this underlying reminded her of a Yakuza member (Japanese Mafia gangster). I said, "Why don't you go say 'Hello'?" She giggled a bit and said, "No". She looked at him and realized he was sitting at the table with Hirano-san. So we waved and bowed our heads slightly. We continued on with our meal. Near the end of it, Hirano-san got up to go to el bano and on his return he walked up to me and politely asked permission, "Do you mind if I talk to Yumi for a few moments in Japanese about some important things." I was all like, "Of course." Compelely surprised he asked for permission. Being polite I guess. He crouched down to chat with her. He said a bunch of stuff in Tokyo-Talk and I was like, ok. Basically after he finished, he thanked me and went back to his talbe, this is what he said...
-Something about her students
-He spoke with the Xiaolan Local Government and asked for their protection of Japanese workers staying in the area. Including Yumi and Mayu. The government agreed...(personally I don't give that much weight. One thing you learn is not to believe what anyone says in this country)
-He said that he was just called back into work today and is worried because he had a little too much too drink for lunch. (His face was a little red).
After lunch we all headed out.
I had class with Jack, Daisy, and Violet. Violet was 30 minutes late. She has been coming very late the past couple weeks. I taught them emotions today and a few things to say when you greet people. Violet picked it up right away, thankfully. After class I chatted with Catherine about Vacation days for May Holiday. Turns out it will be May 1-7. But of course what the chinese do is move a day over to Saturday, so I will have a full day on Sat April 30th and then work straight thru the returning weekend of May 13th. Oh well.
I headed out to the gym where I ran for 30 minutes and did some weights. Chinese muscle-heads are just like American muscle-heads, however, they are not as fat and big as American muscle-heads...which is much easier on the eyes and ears. And they don't like to wear shirts which can be just as irritating. "Homer, make sure you wipe your sweat from the machines. Last week I got a nasty rash." -Reinier Wolfcastle
I went back to Yumi's and spent some time with her. She loves Disney movies so I borrowed a couple from Peter and we watched 2 of them. It was a good day to stay in because of the rain.
After watching the movies I checked the internet to see how China fared today with these Japanese protests. See the above link. The riots turned violent. I have no problem with the chinese protesting the Japanese school books, because I think they should protest against them. I agree with the upset attitude over the deletion of history, eventhough I think it should be watered down a bit for children, they shouldn't remove it. So, I agree with that. What irritates me is when protestors start to harass people, preach hatred, and cause damage. "Be Vicious Towards Japanese Devils" and "Japanese Pigs Get Out" Great slogans people. Can they possilbly imagine what would happen if the Japanese actually left? Oh, and, of course, let's discuss the whole thing behind riots and how they only hurt the people causing them and other innocent bystanders...just like the Rodney King riots...the chinese rioters smashed up Japan-style business and other things selling Japanese products, nevermind that the owners were Chinese and local neighborhood owned shops. You are only hurting yourselves, your commmunity, and innocent people. Ignorance. Only hurting themselves. This kind of thing disgusts me.
These protests also reek of government organization. The posting of "march routes" and that the protestors are protesting against the bid for Japanese on the UN Security Council...I don't know of any chinese person not in the Party (i only know a couple party members) that pays attention to politics in any way. There is so much that is held from these people they have no idea whats going on. The only foreign countries most of those I encounter really even know about are America, England and Australia. They know the names of others, but to point them out on a map is impossible. The government is taking advantage of the effectiveness of mob rule and focusing it on Japan. (mind you I still believe they should protest the books, and Japan should take care of this, Yumi feels the same way, but they shouldn't be losing control over it)
The only good that can come out of these protests is if the chinese people stop protesting their misfocused anger and hatred on Japan and start protesting one of the real major reasons for their problems. As the article says, some officials fear that the protestors will start targeting the government on corruption and social/political reforms. I just hope this doesn't lead to another Tiannamen Square. Hey, its possible, I mean, 2 weeks ago if someone told me there would be 20000 chinese protestors egging and throwing stuff at the Japanese embassies and consulates...I would have said, "no way." I have known about this for a while before coming to China, but living in China really hits it home to ya, the Chinese are brought up to hate the Japanese. Its like Peter said, "Chinese people don't grow up, they are cultivated."
Pray for this country.
Headed home. Time for bed.

Posted by Phil at 01:12 AM | Permalink

Really long day today. Had lunch at that noodle shop. The guy was playing with my bike like he has never seen one and sat down next to me at the table staring at me and then he started playing with my fone. Then New John showed up and we chatted for awhile before I had to leave for class.
Classes went well, just long.
A little boy in 3rd grade class was wearing a T-shirt that had the british flag that encompassed the whole shirt. Across one of the bars was writing in big white letters, "DIVA". Couldn't help but giggle.
I was so tired from classes and the gym that I had to cut Chinese Lessons short today. I was just too tired and couldn't think. So i apologized and left half way thru. They invited me to Daisy's bday dinner next Friday. That was nice. They invited me in Chinese. It took me a few moments to figure it out.
I took a nap for 1 hour and then headed out to Lion Dance where I worked hard.
Tiring.
Good nite all.

Posted by Phil at 05:00 PM | Permalink

School went OK. Went to the gym, ran for 45 minutes. Had lunch at a noodle shop that I think just went up. Its by those same group of people that run a couple others around town. Very good stuff.
Had a 15 minute conversation with the cook while I ate. He was nice, however, he just starred at me the whole time. It was very awkward. So I struck up a conversation with him to lighten my mood. But when he had nothing to say or me...he just stared. Very creepy.
Had class with Daisy. It was good.
Came home really tired and watched "Meet the Fokkers". Pretty good.

Posted by Phil at 05:05 PM | Permalink

China May Block Japanese UN Security Council Bid
China is a 'Scary' Country - You ain't just whistling Dixie, Sister!
I want to know how China got on the council if they are putting up a fight about respecting history and Wen is using this as his main point, "Only a country that respects history, takes responsibility for history and wins over the trust of peoples in Asia and the world at large can take greater responsibilities in the international community."
This coming from a country that constantly, even today, destroys its own history and recreates it to support the Communist Ideal. I don't know how many Chinese I have talked to that think Shaolin is the greatest and first ever martial art in the world. And that it is still real. Its like talking to a wall.
Its the same as those Biblical arguements..."God put all the fossils that date back millions of years to test our faith. The Earth is only 4 thousand years old." (or whatever age they say it is)
Ancient cities and art is being destroyed so that they become Modern. They don't even know about thier own history dating 50 years ago. What a shame. Whenever I start to talk about WWII era stuff, they glaze over.

As for this....
WHO CARES!!!!

This Chinese "One-Child Policy" is turning this next generation of kids into super spoiled brats...more so than the previous generations. I see it in Daisy and her cousin. Her cousin is really bad. I just got back from my chinese lesson and I couldn't hear half of it because he was screaming about every other minute about stuff. His grandfather and aunt would show a slight bit of displeasure but not do anything about it. They just let him get away with throwing his toy on the floor or not doing his math exercises. It was wierd...and very irritating. So I totally punched his two front teeth out. No, I am just kidding. He lost his two front teeth naturally when they fell out after I took my foot out of his mouth. No, just kidding about that. They just fell out naturally.......
Daisy isn't as abusive as her brother is. She just sits on the table and stuff and does things, and when she does things that upset her parents, they give that quick stern look and she stops doing what she's doing for a bit with a giggle. Like she knows its worng, but she is gonna do it anyway, until she is told to get off the table again. For as long as I have known her, I have only seen her really cry once.
Just wait till the current and past generations start controlling the government and businesses. You may think the proverbial fecal matter has hit the fan now...just wait, brother...just wait.

I went to the gym today. It was good. Afterwards, my two 6th grades were put back to back instead of seperated. The first 6th grade class is the real bad one usually, never following my directions. I kicked 14 kids out of my class at once. It was 2 rows of kids I had go up to do some things, and no one was doing it, so I told them to leave. The rest of the class sure did participate after that. May proceeded to scold them outside and when they came back, they participated.
The second class went ok. There were a few trouble makers, but at least nothing horrendous.
Kindergarten went pretty well. They were really loud and I shut the lights out to keep them quite once.

I went to practice tonite as well. I think its sad when people are walking past the studio and take a look in on practice and all they see is 5 highschool students playing Leap Frog. Pathetic. I would be super pissed if I were Guo Sifu. I would totally bust some heads and break some legs.
Good nite all.

Posted by Phil at 02:46 PM | Permalink

Today was interesting. Quite.
1st class went well with the 4th graders. The 2nd class was a whole different story and Lucy had to sit in on another teacher's class today so I was all by my lonesome. This is the 4th grade class with the two really naughty kids. One of them I think has some mental issues and I think the other one just has ADD or something. Anywho, I was getting sick of trying to punish them by having them stand in the front of the class because it wasn't working and Lucy is always yelling at them. Most kids, once is enuff. These kids make games out of it it seems like. They get up there, goof around, get some laughs. Last time I made him hold chair with his arms outstretched in the doorway. That seemed to work for about 5 minutes until he started running up and down the halls. I made the decision to just ignore them and see if that helped. However, after about 5 minutes of that, I learned that that wasn't gonna work. The fat mental kid wasn't much bothersome today for some reason, but at one point he took his shoes off in the back of the class and started picking his toes with his pen. I didn't even bother doing anything. He is quiet, thats good enuff. The other kid though, the ADD spaz, man. The first 5 minutes of class, he was up and rolling around in the window shades, harassing a girl, walking up and down the rows grabbing people's books, and disrupting the class. That's it, this kid has issues. He is not doing it for attention. I was really irritated and I could not teach. I took him by the hand to the office. Very calmly he went. Like it was an everyday occurance. I took him down once. I took him to the English area and May was the only one there. Oh...this is great. Like May is gonna be able to do anything. So i left him there. I got back to class and 5 minutes later, there was again peeping his head over the window and running back and forth between the doors. So, I took him down to the office again, as I walked to the English area, there were no teachers there, one of the Gym teacher's (the former police officer) saw me escorting this kid, and he snickered..."He's back..." I put him in Lucy's seat this time. I went back to class.
The cat came back, he just wouldn't stay away. 5 minutes later, again, he was at the windown and peeping his head round the door. I can just imagine that May scolded him and then let him go. Like that is doing anything. So I took him down to the office. As I walk thru there again, I was checking to see if any other english teacher was there and i saw the gym teacher again giggle as I brought this kid in. I couldn't find an english teacher so i was like, i got an idea. I took him to the headmasters' office. In there sat the Uber-Headmaster, the Vice-Headmaster, and the English Headmaster. I stood there in the doorway with the kid and i said, "Wo bu yao." (i don't want.) The three headmasters just nodded their heads at the same time.
I went back to class and taught for about 5 minutes and the rest of the kids were not behaving so I gave them the silent treatment for about 10 minutes before they all started talking to me in English, which was great, the rest of the class time was very good. Wretched little swine they are.
For lunch, I was told to meet the English teachers at the Flower Hotel for Dim Sum, so I did. On my way out as I walked down the hall, I saw, just outside of the Headmasters' office, the little boy that I don't want, talking and crying to one of the headmasters and another woman who could only be his mother. Busted.
Lunch was funny because Coco brought her daughter Michelle and made her sit next to me so she could speak english. It was funny. I first ran into her and Coco as I was coming out of the bathroom from washing my hands. Michelle saw me, got all excited and stood at attention as she gave me a big smile and said, "HI PHIR!" Well, actually, her english is pretty good since she has been practicing alot. So during lunch I was teasing her and her mother all in good fun and they did it back to me. It was enjoyable. Finally I don't feel left out of these lunches. Usually I am with all the English teachers and all they do is speak Guangdonghua and occasionaly ask me about some random english word like, "Bedroom". Thats what I got today. "How do you say it?" Bedroom. "Ok. Thank you." Strange...
After the funny exchange of languages between Michelle and I, I headed over to the hospital because Yumi was on the drip there. She has a mild infection that requires her to be ripped off and spend 2.5 hours of her day for multiple days getting a bacterial drip thru an I.V. I swear, the chinese are sooo incompetent at things dealing with medical practice. There are better ways of doing this. I have learned that there are no OBGYNs and a friend of mine and I had a discussion about the lack of sexual/puberty education these people get.
Here is an example:

N/A: I wonder if they even know what an OB-GYN is. There is probably some assinine chinese solution for a woman's period..."eat the roasted ovaries of a platypus that has basked in the full moon's light for 3 hours. Chase them down with a warm cup of tea mixed with mercury. After this, stick some needles in your lower back and call your mother. . .she'll know what to do."
Boy. . .Sometimes when I talk to women here, I often am reminded of how glad I am that I wasn't born Chinese.
irmenudo: yeah. lol. true that....and the fact that you can't leave the country
N/A: Yeah. . .I mean, can you imagine having a personal problem that you needed to take care of, but couldn't talk about it because of "shame". I mean, in the US, women are always talking about their nether-regions.
That, and the sheer lack of sex-ed if frightening. Yeah, my friend was telling me about how he went to a hotel with his girlfriend, and had taken a bath. He let the water out of the bath, and suggested that she take one.
She refused.
"Come on," he said. "It's very relaxing, you'll enjoy it."
She absolutely refused. Why????? She was absolutely convinced that she would become pregnant if she used the bath after he did. Even with new water, she refused.
N/A: And the crazy period rules my friend gave me, which I'm going to remember forever.
irmenudo: period rules?
N/A:
1. you can't eat Ice Cream when Aunty Flo comes to town. Do this, and it's headache time next month.
2. Same for sitting on the floor or anywhere cold.
3. Same for WASHING YOUR HAIR.
irmenudo: what? she can't eat icecream? thats insane!
N/A: yup. We went to McD's one night, got ice cream got outside, and she tells me in all earnestness that she "forgot. . .can't eat this."
irmenudo: LOL!

All that seriously happened. Seriously. I can't make this stuff up people.

Anywho, I showed up at the hospital to keep her company and then she came back to my place to rest before class. I hate spending time in that Drip Room. Its so depressing. People laid up in these padded airplane seats with tubes sticking into their arms as they stare off into space. Always 2-3 babies crying...always. Even if there are no babies in the vacinity, the hospital staff has a recording that they loop, I am sure of that. When babies are there, they either have bloodied bandages on their bodies, the same with the grownups. But the thing that gets me sometimes is seeing a baby with an IV jammed into their forehead. It really messes with you when you see the mother carrying the baby across the parking lot in her little baby wrap. Chinese women have this wrap/cloth they wrap their baby up in and sling their child on their back or front. Its pretty efficient way of carrying a child, but it doesn't provide head or neck support. I don't know how many babies I have seen that I thought were dead because of the way their head just hung out of the wrap when they were really just sleeping. Anywho, I see these women carrying their little kids in warp, with an IV jammed in their forehead, and the mother is carrying a long metal pole above her head that contains the drip medication for the child. Its a sight to see. Next time I will try and take a foto.
2pm came around and I headed to class where I headed back to deal with the 6th graders. The first class was ok. This is the one with a bunch of male trouble makers. It turns out these are the only ones willing to perform in any activities unless i force girls to do it. They have a tendency when I tell them what to do, 2 of them do it, the other 4 stand around pretending not to understand for fear of making fools of themselves (which in essence they are doing by not participating - go figure), and the other two start to wrestle. I have given up trying to control it because at least this way the rest of the class enjoys it and they are easier to get to do the lesson.
The 2nd 6th grade class went really well. It was a blast.
between 6th grade and Kindergarten, I went to a shop to get a bunch of stickers cause I was running low. I got some really cheezy ones, they rule.
Kindergarten went pretty well. I got the 2-4 year olds to all say "My name is....". Well, all except about 3-4 out of 25. Lynn was my assistant today. So i didn't have Gary scaring the kids like last time.
Afterwards I had to go to teach Daisy.
She learns so quickly. I plan a lesson that should take an hour and wiht her its over in like 20 minutes. Afterwards, it was my lesson. I was just practicing stuff with Lisa and Daisy. At one point Daisy had to go to the bathroom apparently. I didn't realize this until I looked up and asked, "Where's Daisy run off too?" Her mom looked off in her directions and then I heard her.... At the bottom of the stairs...in a possible potty trainer or can...or something. I DON'T KNOW! I was like, "Ooooh man!" I was trying to block the thought that Daisy participated in disgusting chinese bowel movements. Totally ruined now. I was totally saddend. All I could see of her was her red stockinged knees and feet. As I groaned in agony, Lisa told me that Daisy asked her not to tell me what she was doing. But i found out and then Daisy peered out behind her mom's scooter and my bicycle, her face on her knees with this huge adorable smile and giggle as I heard a "ploop". GOD WHY!? I then told her that it better not be smelly. Daisy's grandma then came out of the kitchen and turned the corner almost stepping on Daisy and yelped. LOL! Then her grandfather came home and went to go to the stairs to get something and was taken aback and laughed and said something. I just hung my head and shook it. Lisa was laughing. Crazy.
The rest of the night was pretty much nothing special. I got dinner at the noodle shop. I came home and the people were all watching that Taxi movie with Queen Latifa and Jimmy Fallon. Any movie with Queen Latifa as the lead...ugh....
Goodnite.

Posted by Phil at 09:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

To write about today.

Posted by Phil at 09:47 PM | Permalink

KKK Auction

Way to make a Michigander in China proud! I come from a state in which there is a KKK Auction and Recruitment flyers. YES!

Posted by Phil at 10:57 PM | Permalink

See you in October. Rumi left today. I came over to the apartment to see her off and console Yumi. I showed up around 830AM. Rumi was gone, she had taken her cat, Nan (cat in japanese), to a students house. Rumi`s not able to take him back with her, unfortunately, so she is giving him to one of her studnets. A cute cat too. He likes to play but can be a little rough. Apparently, he was crying all last nite. Yumi said she couldn`t sleep at all.
Yumi then got a phone call expressing to her from her school supervisors that it would be best if she not accompany Rumi to the airport in Guangzhou. I asked why?. After about 10 minutes of confusion, this is what I got out of it. THe Japanese prime minister, Koizumi, visits the Yasukuni Shrine to honor the Japanese soldiers who died during WWII sometime in August and during the New Year of every year. Apparently, just the other day, a Japanese Alcohol Company Boss said that its Koizumi`s duty to do this. Apparently, that made the chinese snap and caused a bunch of protests. I was all like, its illegal for the chinese to gather and demonstrate. But apparently its not illegal when they are protesting against an enemy. Anyway to unite and distract the chinese people from their true enemy, I guess. So, there were huge protests in Beijing and Guangzhou at the consulates. People were throwing rocks and bottles at the consulates. Yumi said that the supervisor said that some japanese folks and organizations were attacked. There is not a clear understanding if anyone has lost their life in the attacks. The supervisor was not sure of that. Its possible that its a rumor. However, the company/school in Shenzhen where Noriko, one of Yumi`s friends, works was attacked. Because of this happening, the Headmaster thinks it a good idea to play it safe and not have Yumi go with Rumi to the airport, just in case.
And of course, after reading CNN this evening, I got more information.
Japan protection call over protests
Basically, according to this, the chinese are upset that the Japanese want to enter the UN Security council and still haven`t attoned for their wartime massacres. I plan to go to Shanghai soon, and John told me to go to Nanjing and visit the Rape of Nanjing museum. He said its amazing. I don`t know if its a good thing to take Yumi there...
Also, the chinese are upset that recent Japanese History Schoolbooks gloss over all the atrocities they committed.
Hmmm....well, lets see here, you don`t teach little children of any country that their forefathers/fathers raped an entire city, forced people to rape each other and decapitate others while your forefathers stand by laughing at it all. You just don`t do it. Kids can`t handle that. I mean, I never knew that Christopher Columbus was a horrible man until I got into highschool. Up until then, he was painted as a noble and honorable man who was prosecuted because he believed the world was round. (all sailors knew that back then) No one in elementary school told us that our forefathers massacred the Native Americans, shot and killed women and children doing it. All we got was that our forefathers stole the land. And of course, the chinese children aren`t taught much about the Cultural Revolution, The Gang of Four, and the crap that went on after Mao kicked the bucket. Or are given Orwell`s 1984 to read.
As for being upset about the Japan being added to the UN Security Council? Like it matters. Its totally inefficient. I have only heard of one positive thing that the UN Peacekeepers have done. When has it diverted and international disaster? Oh, they are good at writing letters telling of their disapproval. That helps.
Well, back to today.
Rumi came back and finished packing up all her stuff. Then Mayu and her husband came over to say goodbye. I went to the CRC to get some morning snacks for everyone. I got back and we chatted a bit. One of Rumi`s students showed up as well. At 1045AM, one of the school people/government people showed up in an Audi to take her to the airport. Afterwards, Rumi`s student left. Then the remainging for of us went for some Yamcha...or dim sum. It was good. It was nice.
Yumi was quite upset today. She was very very sad.
That was pretty much my day.
Goodnight all.

Posted by Phil at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well, I promised you fotos of the two guitars I bought, so here they are:

Leopard Randy Rhodes
Classy Les Paul

enjoy.

Posted by Phil at 06:53 PM | Permalink

Today was a nice saturday so far. Spent most of my morning learning more about Garage Band and how to use it. Talked with John via IM for a bit. Discussed plans to go to Shanghai for the May holiday. Its the first week in May. I also had spoken to Daisy's grandpa about this because his wife is from Shanghai and Lisa, his daughter, Daisy's mom, grew up there and can speak Shanghai-hua. The shanghai dialect. He gave me some ideas of places to go. Great.
I had class at 3pm, but I had to go in at around 230pm because some woman from Shiqi or ShanXiang wanted to interview me for the newspaper. Apparently, she saw me in the Lantern Festival and wanted to do a story on the only gweilo doing Gong Fu in Zhongshan. Apparenlty, a white person doing gong fu is news in China. Strange. So I show up and she uses Jeanne and Mountain as interpreters. She asked a few questions and I answered. She asked me how I have improved since I have been in China, and i was like, I haven't improved, if anything I have lost abilities here in China. I haven't been practicing as much, since its hard to practice on your own and when know one is around to push you, its even harder. She told me that Guo Sifu said that I was the best at their center that I was a genious of some sort, which made me blush, but I don't believe he could really feel that that is true. He he thought so, I think he would have shown me how to do the actual lion instead of still working on the same Hong Quan forms. Frustrating at times. I only got like 4.5 months left and 1 month of that has to be spent at the Shaolin Temple, so, he better start get cracking.
I told her some other things as well:
Chinese people think that because they think of their culture to be so complex that its hard for foreigners to learn gong fu and understand it. What a load of B.S. It just takes practice.
Chinese people do have a headstart on it though, since they are brought up watching martial arts on TV so they can do it instinctively almost. But they just don't practice.
I dont' feel like I am progressing much because whenever I go to practice, barely any others are practicing, and Sifu is always busy and no one else can instruct me on the forms. And the other students just sit around and smoke cigarettes. She laughed at this and said she feels that the chinese are lazy too. LoL! awesome.
I then asked, "Can you garuntee me that Donnie Yen will read this interview me and put me in his next movie?" I showed them his website because they have no idea who I am talking about when I say Donnie Yen and I constantly forget his Chinese name. She giggled at that. I also brought in some material from Shorinji Kempo, the Shaolin Monk I met in Las Vegas, and I talkeda bout all that and Gabriel Chin. Told them a bunch of stuff. Mentioned that Gabriel just recently passed away. What a shame.
She wanted to take some fotos of me in some stances outside so I was like, whatever. I wonder which ones they will use. She also sat in on my class with Daisy, Jack, and Violet and took some fotos of me using gong fu with the kids like I usually do in my classes.
Afterwards I headed home. I told her I would send her some fotos of my fotos on my computer of me doing Gong Fu and stuff. I sent a few Shorinji Kempo fotos, me in the New Years shows, and me with Shaolin Monk Shi Xingwei. I hope she can see them and maybe use a couple.
Afterwards, there was the option to go to Practice or go to Badmitten. I chose Practice. I got there and no teachers were around and no one was practicing. There were a few folks from the other troop there...but only one was banging the drum. The others were sitting around. So, after 10 minutes of nothing changing, I headed out to play some badmitten. It was enjoyable. We lacked birdies and rackets and someone had brought two tennis rackets and a broken ball. Robert and I played as best we could on the Badmitten courts. IS THAT COURT REGULATION SIZE OR WHAT!?
Afterwards, I headed home. Everyone was not up for anything since it was late and they had to teach the following morning. Wimps. Well, goodnite.

Posted by Phil at 06:27 PM | Permalink

Well, today I woke up at 630 AM to call Coco and Catherine to let them know whether I could make it to class this morning. I tried Coco, no answer - "power off". I called Catherine and told her I couldn't make the morning classes. I felt pretty bad and that I couldn't really get outta bed, however, since I didn't feel as bad as I did the last time I had this, I may be able to make afternoon classes if I rest. I told her I would call her at 11 to let her know. So, I spent the rest of the morning resting and trying to heal. Around 11 I got up and walked around. I was pretty fine, still sore and my tummy ached a bit, but I could function. I called Catherine up and told her I would be able to make class.
During the lunch period I was able to finish all the DVD burning for the USA package. I really had no desire to eat because my stomach was still hurting, but I eventually ordered some eggs and tomatos because I figured that would be good for me. Nothing bad happened. It went ok. I then headed out to class.
On the way there, as I was riding by the hospital, I saw a chinese guy running out of the entrance way at top speed, across the street thru traffic. Then I saw a security guy running and yelling after him while holding his beret on his head then another security guy came running out as well. Hmm, I wonder what happened? It could think of many things. Strange thing is, I didn't seem surprised by this event. I got to school. I felt icky and I stayed reserved while teaching the 3rd graders, but I got them to enjoy class. Same with Kindergarten today. I taught a few more movements of Hong Quan to the kids. I got 14 movements now. About half the kids are paying attention. They all seem to do it for 20 seconds and then they lose interest. Its funny.
I felt to icky to really go to Daisy's place for CHinese lessons so I called and told them I couldn't make it. I wanted to rest before the bye party. So, I picked up the Ultra-Man cake after class, picked up a picture frame, and the picture from the shop and wrote out some Goodbye Wishes from John and I on the shirt. I then took an hour rest.
I totally needed it. I fell right asleep.
Got up about 8pm and prepared everything for the party. I headed out to Si Ji (Four Seasons), the nice beer gardens over by Longshan Park. Not the normal beer gardens by Normata. There was about 18 people there when everyone showed up. Rumi and Yumi were late because their school had a goodbye dinner for Rumi and it went long, as usual. Unfortunately, Mayu couldn't come becuase her taxi back home left at 10pm. Phooey. While we waited for them, I had almost everyone sign the shirt and look at the shirt and picture. Amy gave Rumi a picture of her, Rumi, and Yumi together at Halloween. Rumi seemed surprised at my shirt and the picture. So that is good.
What sucked was that because Toby is so brain dead, he invited his stalker to the festivities. There is this chinese girl named Wendy or something who is from Harbin, she came to Xiaolan about 4 years ago, she speaks a little english, she is around 17-19 and she is completely infatuated with Toby. Apparently she used to call all the time and she left notes on their door. So, finally, acouple weeks ago, Toby was like, what the hell, I will meet with her. Totally not caring about how it might make Rumi feel. And he did so a couple times. The guy is completely mental. And he invites her to Rumi's going away party. It just makes you wonder how many drugs he has really taken.
My stomach all throughout the gathering was still a bit sore so I didn't drink much or eat much. I had Rumi cut the cake and everyone seemed to like the cake. It tastes like all the other chinese cake I have had. Despite the colors, flair, and looks of all the chinese cakes, they sure taste alot alike. its weird. But she got a kick out of the Ultra-Man. Word. Respect to Ultra-Man. I took off around midnite because I was really tired. Rumi stayed on with Toby, Ben, Miguel, New John, and Ash. It was a good nite. I passed out when I got home.

Posted by Phil at 05:58 PM | Permalink

Today was a pretty decent day. I only had one class in the morning which was good because I stayed up real late last nite doing some work. I got the kids in my 5th grade class to act some stuff out today and that got alot of reaction. The kids were laughing at each other in a good way.
After those classes I had kindergarten and Gary was my assistant. I am trying to get them to say, "My name is...." And that is tuff. I can get them to say My name is, Whats your name, (their name), but I can't get them to say it properly in order. Its funny. A couple got it, and I used them as an example, but that didn't help much. It was super cute though. That one girl with the pig tails that waddled out of the bathroom the other day did it again today, however, this time she waddle out while she was still pulling up her undies. Ugh. oh well.
I tried to get them to play Duck Duck Goose and it was hard for them to understand. The just ran around in circles and didn't try and tag each other. I had to help alot. And the circle kept getting smaller and smaller until they were all playing footsie in the the center of the play floor. So I got them to do the hokey pokey. And some other things and about 5 minutes to 530pm, after none of the kids were paying attention and running around, I ended the class. Then Gary said, we still have 10 minutes. What do you mean, don't you see the clock? There is about 3 minutes left the kids are brain dead.
Gary said, "The clock is fast by ten minutes." Actually its only 5 minutes.
THen have the clock fixed. i get here on time and I leave after the class is over, that may be a little early, but its hard to teach kids when they aren't paying attention.
"But the class is for 1 hour..."
"Gary, did you see me playing games with them and did you see how many were actually paying attention?"
"Well, i will help them pay attention."
This coming from a guy who would get in the kid's face and scare them.

Afterwards I went to Daisy's. We played this English Domino game. Pretty good.
I had some Skippy Peanut butter with Red Bean paste as a snack over there. Daisy got it all over her face along with her cousin. It was pretty yummy.
I went to buy a cake. Which was a task all in itself. I tried to buy the cake this afternoon, but the one I wanted would have cost a crapload. And they kept changing the story on me so I had to call Amy about 5 times before I got an idea of what was going on. I decided later on that the cake was fine, it was special and i could get others to chip in. However, I went back and tried to get it and the people said their computer was broken so they couldn't place the order. Great. So I went elsewhere where I got a 3 pound 2-layer cake that has got Ultra-Man on it. Bad ass. This is gonna ruel.
After I headed home, some folks were having pizza while watching the Passion of the Christ. So I watched it with them. I had a couple slices. And wouldn't you know it, something clogged me up, I think it was the peanut butter, because I hadn't much to eat today and my stomach felt like it was gonna explode. And around 10 pm it did. Projectile like.
It felt exactly what I had around the New Years time, the food poisoning. Same symptoms. I just hope it doesn't last as long, I got Rumi's bye party tomorrow. So, I called Coco and Bond people to let them know I may not be able to make it to class tomorrow as I was sick.
I will call them tomorrow morning for an update.
goodnite. ugh.

Posted by Phil at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I came back from 1st period after Lily was giving me attitude, "Don't waste time explaining vacation, just teach the words!" I need to set up the context, Psycho!
I walk to my desk and Anna is sitting there singing in her chair. I was like, "What is that?"
-A song for my 3rd grade class.
"That doesn't sound like English."
-Ha ha. I know, its chinese. It translates, "I will stay with the Mommy Land...Motherland."
I snickered when she said that...I was like, You don't have a choice in the matter. More evidence of brainwashing.

Posted by Phil at 10:48 AM | Permalink

Its a day of respecting the dead by cleaning all the crap and soot that has piled up on their loved ones graves because no one knows how to keep anything clean in this country.
I showed Amy the tank scene from Tiannamen Square Massacre. She had never seen or heard about it. Robert was dumbfounded. Its strange, everyday he says he finds more out about what the Communists edit from the masses. "Its disgusting!"
You didnt know that before coming here? Wow.

Posted by Phil at 10:46 AM | Permalink

Today I woke up late cause I was up late doing stuff. Just went to the gym, worked on computer related stuff. went to chinese lesson...which sucked, and then went to practice...which sucked.
I went to the gym today. Its funny when you see a guy on the treadmill smoking a cigarette. I took my bike into the gym this time. A couple people tried to tell me to leave it at the bottom of the stairs and I totally ignored them. "Then you pay for it when it gets stolen." Its great sometimes when you don't understand the language and you deal with Chinese people. You can do things that no one else does, things that are not allowed, and get away with it because they are too afraid of being embarassed and trying to speak english. Its great sometimes. Most of the time, though, it sucks.
Chinese lessons were lame today. Lets see, Catherine was 30 minutes late. When we got there she was like, "I will teach you about chinese family relations. What to call each other." Ben was all like, "I don't even know how to say 'Hello' or 'How are you?' or 'Waiter, I want chicken.' How is this gonna help me? I don't even know the basics of the language." And I was all like, "Ditto!" I asked her if we could have class at 7pm instead and she said she could and told me she would just eat dinner at 9pm and I was like, "NO! I ain't gonna force you to change when you eat dinner. I will just come for 45minutes, which means I got 15 minutes left." After that I told her that she needs to prepare lessons for us, and give us homework because all the stuff that Lynn and Doris taught us was in no context and no way for us to remember anything.Thanks for wasting 45 minutes of time. I am off to practice.
What a waste, I was the only practicing. There were other Yongning people there that were sitting around screwing around. The news story I was on said, "Everynight, there are hundreds of students practicing along with the son and daughter while the Sifu and his wife are teaching others." Nothing is further from the truth. What a load of bullshit. I don't know how many times Sifu hasn't even been there and I have never seen hundreds of people there. The most I have seen is maybe 100. And they aren't even all Yongning folks, they are with the others too. Headed home. goodnite.

Posted by Phil at 12:24 AM | Permalink

Well, save for the Happy Ending. I went to this place over by the gym with Yumi today. Apparently its been there for a long time. The massage wasn't the best. What they did on the upper body didn't really do anything for me. But once they got to the legs and stuff, I passed out. After leaving there we headed back here where I continued computer and DVD work.
We went to dinner and then she headed home. I went back and watched a movie while stuff was burning. I watched Once Upon a Time in China and America. Which is the 4th movie in the Once Upon a Time in China series. There are a total of 5 and Jet Li is only in the first 4. I have the 5th, but there is no English on it. The America/English actors they got to play the cowboys were downright wretched. There were some funny and kool bits to it, but I felt overall it was a pretty lame attempt.
Not much happened today. Off to bed folks.
Sleep well.

Posted by Phil at 03:45 PM | Permalink

If yesterday was a terrible day, today was wonderful. It was bright and sunny. Perfect weather. Not hot, not cold, comfortable. A nice breeze. I re-built the files for the DVD and the burn worked. Good. Spent the day burning discs, teaching a class for Violet, Daisy, and Jack, checking out a print shop and badmitten.
I have about 21 copies of the DVD to send to America, since its a double disc set...thats 42 discs to burn. And thats not including the people in New Zealand. I need a replicating pod. The kind that replicate your DNA and take over while you're asleep....with their coughing.
Class with the kids was good. I tried teaching them 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th. Violet picked it up right away. Daisy still confuses 1st with 3rd and Jack was picking up on it, but not as quickly as the others. I tried to play a game where all of us sat down and had one person tell us to stand up and move to the 1st/2nd/etc Chair. I did it first then had Violet come up to do it. She was a little nervous at first, and then something happened, I seriously can't remember what, I don't know if Violet did something by accident, but something made Owen, me, Daisy, and Jack giggle for a split second. This caused Violet's water works to start. She began to cry a bit so I quickly sat her down and took care of her. She is very sensitive. Wow. I then got Daisy up there and she did the game. Violet figured it out and then tried it out later. She got into to it.
After class I headed to a print shop to inquire about some things. Then I headed back to the house and took care of DVD stuff. After doing stuff at home there was a meeting of us to play Badmitten at the #1 Middle School. It was fun. We weren't competeing like last time, because Badmitten isn't supposed to be played like that. Badmitten: The Gay Version of Tennis. Thats saying alot. giggle. We spent a couple hours just smacking that shuttlecock around. It was enjoyable.
Ash let me ride his scooterbike. So I was driving around in circles on the driveway of the middle school when someone said, "Take it on the track." So, I did. Not completely thinking that I shouldn't. Whoops. i know better. A temporary lapse. I took it on the track and opened it up. AWESOME! I want one.
Afterwards we all went to the Beer Gardens, not the usual one though. There is another one on the other side of town by Dragon Mountain Park. So we went there. Its much nicer and we hung out for awhile. We called it a night right before the chinese people started to come over and harass us and make us drink.
Thank God.
Goodnite all.
ps. I am aware of the correct spelling for Badminton.

Posted by Phil at 03:20 PM | Permalink

Today started out really really crappy.
I woke up and got ready for school. Checked my email and learned that Gabriel Chin, the man that taught me old school Yang Shi Taiji Quan & Qi Gong and helped guide me to a path that I have religiously followed for the past 4 years and plan to continue on, passed away of a heartattack yesterday. I chatted with Matt briefly before class and he mentioned that the woman, Terry Schivazo, the woman on life support past away the same day and that the Pope was on his way. Happens in 3's i guess. One thing I started to worry about was how last nite, i was cleaning up my harddrive and I deleted a bunch of duplicate fotos of Gabriel. One had a corruption in it that was causing my harddrive to act really weird. Then when I deleted those files, it freed up 15 gigabytes of space. Then this morning I get this information. I sure hope its just a coincidence.
At first I was like, "Crap, I am gonna miss that crazy chinese dude." The fact that he is really gone didn't start to hit when I was sitting in the office in between classes. So, teaching wasn't really a super concern eventhough I tried to use it to get thru. But, I haven't been feeling good. The kids were relatively ok. Coco and Lucy were both gone today for a seminar so I was alone and I was able to get the kids involved enuff that they didn't go nuts, but a couple did and I had to deal with that. Didn't help me to feel better. :D It also doesn't help that I had to ride my bike home in the rain. While I was out, the sky decided to dump buckets. So, I was getting drenched and then my bike chain popped off. ARGH! This morning has sucked!
I spent lunchtime moping and stuff. Chatted with John and a couple others. I started this journal entry during lunch. I got two more 3rd grades and 1 kindergarten class and then a chinese instruction with Daisy's folks. I just started talking with Chad online, my friend and coach who was very close to Gabriel. This is how the convo went:

Me: was it a heartattack?
C: Well
C: Hard to say
C: It was what sent him to the hospitol
C: It was just time I guess
Me: oooh.
Me: yeah.
Me: maybe another stroke.
C: no
C: He just gave out from what I hear
Me: this isn't an April Fool's Joke from him is it?
C: Funeral is week from sat
C: Heh
C: I wouldn't put it past him
C: :-) 
Me: damnit, now there is no way I can avenge him.
C: Heh
C: We can spread his style all over
Me: yeah.
C: And beat the **** out of (incompetent teachers)
Me: giggle.
C: Show them the error of their ways
Me: GREETINGS FROM THE OTHERWORLD, BIOTCH!
C: DO NOT MOCK THE CHINSTER!
C: Our kung fu is strong with him
C: Now that he is dead he is more powerful than you can imagine
Me: is that birthyear correct?
Me: i figure it is.
C: It gonna take some gettin used to
C: Well best guess
C: That's official immigration
C: Bd
C: I wanna get them to show your photo presentation at the funeral
C: An I am writing a uelogy
Me: good. i was curious if they would use that.
C: It really good and would be a cool thing to show
C: I got a cool mail from jess too abt it
Me: yeah. It would be wonderful. i am gonna watch the thing today
C: I just fwd it to ya
C: Check yr mail
Me: ok.
Me: thanks
C: Needless to say I have been thinking abt reagan a lot today **
Me: LOL!
C: It does help!
C: Lol

** when Jess interviewed Gabriel for his book, Gabe started talking about his younger brother who passed away 2-3 years earlier. He started to cry and then he started to giggle and smile. He said, "Whenever I talk about my little brother, I start to cry. When I start to cry, I think about Ronald Reagan. That man looks so funny you can do nothing but laugh. It always makes me feel better."

Here is the other email from Jess, the man that interviewed Gabe and wrote about him for the book that he had published:

I am very sorry to hear this news. I regret that I only got to meet your teacher once. He was a unique
man, and I treasure that meeting. I learned a lot that day about Tai Ji, life, old age, and what it
means to be oneself. To me he seemed like a much younger man in an old man's body. He was like any of us, just smarter, better educated and vastly more experienced. Yet his love of martial arts and all the stuff we also love was never diminished. I suddenly saw myself 50 years from now. I wonder if I will still have a fraction of the zest for life and continuing inquiry that he had at that age. I won't
forget him, ever.

Much respect to Master Gabriel Chin. They sure as hell don't make 'em like they used to.

Thanks for being there for him and catching as much as you could. I think the seeds he planted in you will grow. Perhaps in ways neither of you forsaw. Please keep your practice alive and in that way Gabriel Chin will never be gone.

Sincerely,
Jess

So those were the emails. My afternoon classes went ok. I guess I was pretty obvious in my upsettedness. Lily asked what was wrong and I told them that my Taiji Sifu passed away. So, they all knew now. I played hangman with my kids in 3rd grade as part of the lesson. I have two big irritations with the way they play the game....well, the shouting over each other is just expected with kids, but some of them, when they say a letter they will add a Guangdonghua "aaaah" to the end of it. The "aaaah" usually means its a question. But its also used to accent stuff. So they would say, "C-aah, B-aah, O-aah, K-aah!" And I have started to ignore them when they do this or I yell at them if they don't stop it. Another thing they do is say the letter twice very fast. So when they say, "T" they say, "TT". This bursts my bubble as well and I treat it like the "-aah" addition. And for some reason chinese people pronounce the English "L" without using their tongue so they make it sound like "O" or sometimes "R". I don't understand this either because chinese has an "L" sound and they use their tongue to pronounce it. Go figure. They also constantly confuse N and M.
During my class I also have students go to the front and point out the words that the kids need to practice to help get everyone involved and enjoyable. So, I then took the kid's seat and caused trouble at certain times like they do to me. I would also say the words with the "-aah" on there. That got the gets more involved cause they were having fun.
After class, I was heading out and saw Coco so I asked her about how to say, "passed away." She said,
die = si. Afterwards she told me a nicer way to say it, "chu la". Then I went to the Bond office to get paid. They asked how I was and I tried to say, "wo de taiji sifu chu la"(my taiji teacher passed away) and they gave me confused looks. I SAID IT RIGHT! Bie ding zhe wo kann! (don't stare at me). They then gave me many other ways to say it. You know, you are doing nothing but confusing me.
After kindergarten which I wasn't in a great mood to teach, I ate some dinner and met up with Daisy's folks to practice some Putonghua. I told them when I got there "wo de taiji sifu chu la" and the grandfather just stared at me confused. UGH! I am saying it right. And I know because Daisy's mom understood me when she showed up.
Afterwards I came home and watched the DVD of Gabe's fotos that I put together. I really like thiis version better than the one I gave to the family. I put Mozart on their copy because Gabe loved Mozart. On this one I had the endtitles to Bubba Ho-Tep becuase the soundtrack of that movie was very beautiful and that song is very emotional. I think.
I am also putting a little something in front of the DVDs now. A little shout out for, as Ali G always says, "Respect". The rest of the night sucked. After I put on a little memorial thing for Gabe in front of the other DVD material, when I was trying to burn a disc, "HARDWARE ERROR!" The disc only got halfway thru. ARGH!
I shut down, rebooted, did some things and burnt again and it burnt the whole way. Good. I popped it into the DVD Player, it got as far as the menu screen and when I hit play it died. NO! WTF!
I was so angry and upset. I checked the DVD on the computer, same issues. Ugh. All that hardwork. THis day has seriously sucked.
Good night all and God bless.

Posted by Phil at 01:03 PM | Permalink