Phil and Red's Excellent Adventure

Today was interesting. Class at De Xing Primary went fine. For my 6th grade classes I was teaching musical instruments, so i brought in my Les Paul guitar and erhu. As expected, I got stares and "whaaas" as I rode my bike to school, and I got many when I walked into my classes. Its sooo amazing!
During the classes I took them out n stuff. I asked the students if any of them knew how to play guitar, erhu, or any of the other instruments in the book. Of course, no hands were raised as the kids looked around nervously to see if anyone else was raising their hand. It was a class of 50 chinese kids... At least one had to have known how to play piano! If you are chinese, its like you are required to learn either piano or violin....or ping pong. I asked if any of them knew how to play the erhu and no one pipped up. I was ashamed of them. They are disrespecting their own culture. :D
They all cheered whenever I was able to seduce a kid up to play the guitar.
Well, those classes were good.
Kindergarten sucked royally. I am still trying to work with these 2-4 year olds the body parts. Its been the same lesson pretty much. I am just trying different things and games to get them to learn the words. I tried to do a super simple game with them today, each kid would shout out a body part different from the kid sitting next to him or her, if it was the same, they stand up. Very simple. My directions were short and clear. The initial start of the game, it went fine, about 10 kids did it properly and then one kid said the same thing. The chinese teachers went nuts. They re-explained the directions to them. And it seemed to take about 10 minutes to explain the game to the children in Putonghua and Guangdonghua. And after that, the kids were speechless. And I got frustrated because I know these kids could do it. Wing said it was too hard for them. I was like, "Duh, when you take like 20 minutes to explain a simple game to them in both Putonghua and Guangdonghua, I would expect them to get lost. I would." And of course, the chinese lady that overseas is constantly being a hardcore enforcer. She has been really pissing me off lately because she keeps on singleling out and punishing this little girl, Yang Shen-Yu (i think) and having her sit alone. Today she drew a circle with chalk on the floor in the front of the class and put a chair in it and sat the girl there. I got fed up with this and I was like, "Wing, WTF? The teacher keeps punishing this little girl and I never see her do anything really bad." I said other things along this topic and the teacher was like, "Shen ma?" to Wing. Wing said something, and the teacher took Yang Shen-Yu back to her regular chair then switch up some of the other kids. (btw, this is the little girl that sometimes has had the tendency to walk out of the bathroom with her pants still around her ankles, she also has 4 pigtails, a little chubby, very cute kid) I mean, the most I have seen her do is talk or sit in her chair backwards during the class. I have seen boys punch girls in the face and not be disciplined by this teacher, I have had to enforce it. And other girls have done things to, but she just picks on this little girl.
If I were a little kid, I would fear this woman like the plague. She is so coarse, mean, and forceful towards the kids. Among all the teachers that deal with these young kids classes though, I think she is one of the nicer ones. ...and she's friggin' clueless to what her shirt says or means. This is the second time I have seen her wear this shirt, I need to start bringing my camera along with me again. She has this faded yellow shirt with this written on it across her boobies, "Yummy 69"
My eyes popped out of my head when I saw this shirt. I turned around and laughed a good laugh. The kids saw me laughing and they started giggling. Wing asked me what I was laughing at and I told her the teacher's shirt. She didn't understand.
But anywho, there are so many pieces of work here its disgusting. Maybe you can imagine.
i went to class with Daisy and the class was hard. She was distracted by the lucious sweet tasting watermelon. I did the best I could given the circumstances. Needless to say, my chinese lessons were pointless and useless. I wasn't there in the head and the material I was given was no good. ...if it was needless to say, why did I say it....think about that....
good nite.

Posted by Phil at 08:42 PM | Permalink

Happy Memorial Day folks! I hope you had a good one. I watched a movie called "Downfall". Its about Hitler's last 12 days. Its quite interesting and stirred quite the controversy in Germany.
If I were at home during this memorial day weekend, well, not home, but I mean, the US, I would have been out at the Shorinji Kempo Cornell Camp. A fun filled weekend of punching and kicking. I hope it went well.
Me, I spent most of the day with a sore throat today. Its that season of using the AC alot and getting AC related colds.
I went to the post office to mail out my packages. One was 14kgs and the other was 21kg. I had to chose the longest and cheapest option and it still cost me about $81.24US. It will take at most 2 months via cruise ship to get to the US. If I wanted the 1 month option, via plane, it would have been more than twice that. And the first option which was 2 weeks was more than 2x the second option. Wow. I sure hope it gets there.
That was mostly it today.

Posted by Phil at 05:09 PM | Permalink

Had lunch with Yumi. We ate a lot.
We went to Longshan park, walked around, and spent an hour on the big pond in a paddle boat. It was nice.
We walked to CRC, shopped a bit. Went back to her place and played ping pong.
goodnite.

Posted by Phil at 12:12 PM | Permalink

I packed up two large boxes full of clothes I no longer need and objects I know longer need and other things I don't need and plan to send them home on Monday. It sure opened up a lot of space in my room.
Did some video transfer for Peter.
One of my Ext FIREWIRE Hard Drives blew out. Not working anymore. OSX can't read it.
Ran some errands after class. Class went well.
Video chatted with my mom and dad for about 1 hour. Yumi got to meet them for about 20 minutes.
It was cool.
goodnite.

Posted by Phil at 12:03 PM | Permalink

Humidity: The degree of moisture in the atmosphere.
You`d think that after 4000 years, the chinese would have been able to understand this concept. I had to show the English teachers the definition in their dictionary. They were complaining about how hot it was, and I was like, "what? this is warm. THe only reason it feels hot is because of the humidity." All I got was blank stares. Hence the education lesson. But they were still like...its hot. I am like, you live in Guangdong...if you are complaining now about the weather I will hate to hear all the complaining when July and August role around. This is still spring. Here`s a quarter, buy a clue.
Anywho, there was a lot of it today. I think the most recently. I dont even think the regular temperature was over mid-80s at all.
Today was a great day, considering how tired I was. All my classes went really well. I pulled that "speak chinese or you`re out" stuff in my 4th grade classes today. It ruled. Coco loved it. I booted a couple out right away and it got the kids talking in English. I don`t leave them in the hall long. I only do so for 1 minute. Just long enuff to make an example out of them. I do it in a playful manner, but I have noticed Coco and Ivy taking an Totalitarian approach to it by scolding them a bit. Not bad, but a little. I sent a boy out 3 times in the span of 10 minutes. Very funny, he would also let something slip out when I was right there or looking at him.
About 3 boys were playing with themselves in my Kindergarten class of 12 kids. And they were trying to rip the shorts off of the girl sitting next to them. Prepubescent rapers....is it a crime, will they get put on a sex offenders list? I had no assistant and the older kids class director sitting in today. A bunch of school people have been watching this class the past 2 weeks, i dont get it.
I went to go to Lion practice tonite. I got there and no one was there and all the pedestal equipment was gone. Crap. So, I called up Yumi and we hung out for awhile. She has to go to Shiqi tomorrow for some injection for her school to protect her from all the germ factories she is teaching. She is afraid, because the chinese are known not to be very clean with their medical equipment...at times. Well, I have not seen this personally, but at one time they were...wait? what was that? Oh, yeah, that is right, during a Communist Government Money for Blood Program intended to help the multitudes of poor in Henan Province, the government/medical staff wanted to save money and they re-used HIV laden needles and infected thousands of its own people, and then tried to cover it up.
Mayu is afraid and is gonna get it done some other way. But Yumi is gonna brave it. Really, in this day and age in modern Chinese cities there`s really no worry. Unless you are really slumming it.
I still think its bizarre that their hair salons are more sanitary than the hospitals that I have seen. I see they got their priorities straight.
Yumi has the chinese MTV on right now, and they are playing a video of Japanese Super Boy Group "WINDS". A 3 member crap J-pop group. So retched. JUst as bad as Backstreet boys n stuff. And they are all dressed up like early 1990s rappers and break dancing, and throwing gangsigns. So sad. really.
Sometimes I wish the Samurai class were back to exact their authority on this mailbox heads.

Posted by Phil at 09:41 PM | Permalink

I finally figured out the way to get these kids to speak english and not chinese!!! I was teaching my 5th graders today on the future tense. Ivy had this cool setup on the computer and I used the video screen to show them rooms that may or may not be in their new house. My favourite was the bathroom. They would ask me, "Will there be a bathroom in my new house?" I was all like, Of course. Then I said, What will you do in the bathroom. THen they would answer, however, they would never choose the most obvious. What was great was that all these pictures of the rooms were of some of the most luxurious ones in America so all the kids were all like, WHAAAAAA!
In the bathroom, I pointed out to the fact that it contained a sit down toilet, so I showed them, NONE OF THIS (while i squatted) or sat on a bench and squatted (to get across that you shouldnt squat on the toilet seat). I then showed them how to sit on a real toilet and read the newspaper while doing it to.
What got them to speak english, I swear, this is the most english I heard them speak ever. I threatened to throw them out of class if they didn`t speak english. Ivy got a chuckle out of that threat. At first, none of the kids thought I would do it until I threw out a group of four. Then, all of a sudden, i couldn`t hear myself think. The amount of chatter increase so much. It was great. My favourite move was going in stealth and sneaking up behind kids just hoping to catch them speaking cantonese. I got a few that way. There were a couple kids where I was standing in plain sight of their group and I asked them to speak to each other in the context of the assignment and they would speak to each other in Cantonese and I was like, "DUDE! I`m right here!" It rocked.
I confiscated a couple more notes today. I have noticed i have been doing　that alot lately. Todays was one asking another student if they could borrow 2RMB. He couldn`t but he could lend her 1RMB.
Before Kindergarten, I called Jolene and asked her to ask the metal shop dude about the sword since we heard nothing and he said that he could do it and the cost would be 85RMB, but Jolene got him down to 80. Big whoop. He said it would be done monday or so. I have my doubts since, this is china. He said he would call us if he could do it, and we haven:t heard anything until we called. He could be saving face. However, this type of thing happens in the states too. So. whatever.
Kindergarten today was hard. I am trying to teach the 2-4 year olds body parts. They can understand what I say when I say HEAD SHOULDERS KNEES AND TOES, and that stuff because they point them out, but they can`t say it or do the game properly themselves. Its hard trying to teach body parts for 40 minutes. There is only so much you can do. Then during the bathroom break, a couple boys walked out with their pants around their ankles.
Will someone please tell me why chinese kids don`t wear underwear when they wear short shorts?
I went gong fu practice tonite. Only the main group people were there. It started pouring rain on my way there and I got drenched. Once at practice, the rain was pouring so hard on the metal roof that it hurt my ears. Very loud. I was then taught more of the cymball for the lion dance cadence and I then was snagged into doing it while they guys did the pedestals. I had to fake it. It wasn`t too bad.
Afterwards, Sifu taught me Chan Quan #1. Its quite simple, but you repeat it 4 times. Its got some classic moves in it though.
I then rode my bike home in the rain.

Posted by Phil at 10:08 PM | Permalink

5th grade was fine. 6th grade was a pain. However, I didnt have the 2nd 6th grade class because they were busy with a Science lecture. HURRAY!
My dark side came out great today as I confiscated a love note from one of my 5th grade boys. He had a full page of chinese written out. He was taking great care with this during my teaching time. BUSTED! I knew it was a love note because the first three words on the page were in English. LOVE!!! LOVE!!! LOVE!!! and there was a big heart on it. Giggle. It felt so good to confiscate. I wanted to read it out loud for the class, but that would have been too cruel...plus, I can`t read chinese. So I gave it to Lily. She took it and looked it over.
During lunch I went DVD shopping. They took me into the garage in the alleyway and i picked up a bunch of Stephen Chow movies. They had a couple US ones I was interested in, but they were bad copies. So, I was like, nope.
I went to practice tonite and it was crowded. Practiced hard. I asked sifu to teach me Chan Quan, he said ok.

Posted by Phil at 10:43 PM | Permalink

Today wasn't all that bad. I was just in a sourpuss mood brought on by my 2nd 4th grade class who didn't pay any attention to me. Lucy, again, was gone, and didn't bother to tell me that she would be busy or have someone tell me about it. It was completely brought on by them either. I started to feel it during the break between classes when i had nothing to do. I feel like I am trapped in this place at times and there is nothing to pass the time. My 1st 6th grade class in the afternoon pissed me off as well. The 2nd 6th grade class was ok.
Kindergarten was ok I guess. I caught 1 boy and 2 girls in the bathroom having a little game of "I'll show you mine if you show me yours". PUT THOSE THINGS AWAY! A couple girls in the class were wearing dresses and kept pulling them over their heads. aiya.Later on, while I was standing and doing Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, one of the boys grabbed my groin. So, I put him in the corner and he started bawling his eyes out. My booty and manhood are off limits.
Class with Daisy was eh. Chinese lessons were boring as usual. More info that is just gonna slip thru my mind. so frustrating. And on top of that, Daisy's mom made me a sandwich and now my tummy feels like crap. And she didn't use Red Bean paste peanut butter. It was spam and an egg.
I am too junky to go to practice. I hope I dont get sick again.

Posted by Phil at 09:00 PM | Permalink

Got up today and did some laundry. I then sat down to watch Revenge of the Sith on my computer that Peter downloaded and gave to me the other day. Watching it in English made it soooo much better. Most of my issues that I had mentioned before the nite I went to see it have changed. His transition into Darth Vader is much more believable and all the more tragic. I was quite surprised by the acting. There were still some pretty bad parts, but for the most part, I was quite pleased. The worse was, I think you can all agree with me, during the emotional climatic part on Mustafar when Padme confronted Anakin. I was like, damnit, but it was a small price to pay for a movie that actually provided you with an emotional response that doesn't result with fans demanding the head of George Lucas. Order 66 seemed more powerful than in Chinese and also the duel at the end.
As for the cuts that I thought were done by the chinese, there was only one and that was the amount of footage they showed of Anakin getting charred up. All the other cuts that I thought were done by the chinese were in the actual version, which shows just how bad some of those cuts really were.
i will have to watch it again all the way thru because I kept on getting interrupted as I watched it. It wasn't a problem, but I was removing my focus from being engulfed in the film. I sure hope it lasts 1 month in Hong Kong, because I will go see it in English on the big screen when I go to see Batman Begins. ROCK! I am a total nerd.
Jolene showed up for lunch with Amy and Moses and was going to go with me at 2pm to find a engraving shop that could do my sword. Also, Yumi came over with Mayu about 1245pm to let me copy some of the fotos that she took from yesterday and to have lunch. It was an enjoyable lunch. Yumi and Mayu had to leave at 120pm.
Jolene and I headed out at 2pm to this shop that was recommended to her by her contact in the Xiaolan Travel Agency. We got to the agency and she asked if I wanted to go in and I was like, I will wait out here, i don't like to enter that building or give them business since they screwed up my Beijing trip and refused to refund me anything. Punks.
The girl came out and tooks us down the street. It was a small shop and right away the guy was like, "I can't do it." So the girl said she will contact another place to find out about it. So Jolene and I went to chill in McD's and have an ice cream to wait. About 15 minutes later the girl came and got us and tooks us by bike to the place she recommended. It was near the Bond office. This place looks quite professional actually. This may be the place to do it. I dont know how much they charge yet though. The guy will go over it and see about the programming of the machine that will use a laser to engrave it. He will then give us the price. I am thinking it will be over 100RMB. I hope it aint to expensive. At this point, if its over 150, I will do it. I am sick of having to try and find places. It wastes time and doing business with Chinese people is like having root canals...not that I have had root canals done, but from what I hear its not pleasant.
So, i left and headed back to McD's becacuse there was a Baleno store selling some REvenge of the Sith shirts i wanted. They were pretty cheap so I got 3 for what amounts to $12US. They seemed pretty nice. I headed home to write up some journal entries.
The sky was getting dark so I took down my already dry clothes and then it started storming with thunder and everything. Now, its gorgeous outside. Its 550pm.
Now, for the reason why its so hard to find someone to engrave the sword. I think some of it has to do with the fact that they don't want to make a mistake on the blade and therefore replace it. If it was their own material, they could make as many mistakes as they can without having to really worry about anything. The reason that they give me is: "The blade is not level and can't be balanced so the machine won't work well with it." I kinda understand where they are coming from, but come on....its metal work - trying to engrave a hunk of metal, not rocket science or nuclear fusion! All you need to allow this to be level is get a couple of vices and position them in a way to hold the sword level for the machine and pad the vices so they don't scratch the blade or anything. They just don't want to think. Ugh.
It was very nice for the girl of the Xiaolan Travel Agency to help us out as much as she did. I appreciate it greatly. She didn't have to do so. Just some of the very nice things done for me that were totally unexpected.
Yumi came over to crash at my place around dinner time before she had a nite class at 730pm. I ordered a small spicy pizza. It was pretty good. When Yumi left, my dad finally loaded up SKYPE on his brand new iMac G5. I am jealous. 250GB Harddrive. My mom, dad, and I spoke with each other for free for 1hour and 17minutes on a connection that sounded like they were next to me. Awesome. Aint technology amazing sometimes...when it doesn't piss you off.

Posted by Phil at 06:33 PM | Permalink

Well, both of us made it to the bus station with about 5 minutes to spare. The ride took about 2 hours. When we finally got to Zhuhai, we had some breakfast at this foreign place. Yumi said, "I want something besides chinese food. If i want chinese, I can eat in Xiaolan." i was like, "Cool beans." I had the best baked spaghetti ever in China. Maybe its becausee they are so close to Macau they can get real cheese easily and the sauce was real good too.
After that, we headed into the lines for passport checks. I don't know why it was so busy and what was going on to cause it, but there were the longest lines I have seen at the Macau border. Never seen it this busy. We stood in line for about 30 minutes. Luckily, we had gotten in line behind the family with a 3 year old and a 6 month old and we were able to enjoy ourselves for most of the time. It was a cute family. A Chinese guy and a Swiss woman and two hybrid kids - an older boy and a younger girl. Their passports were Swiss and the Chinese guy spoke Guangdonghua, so I am guessing he married her and became a citizen so he could get out of China....for love....of course. The mother was wearing this blue level on her waist so her baby could sit on it while she held her. Nifty little invention. The boy was quite loud and very energetic. His mom had to scold him in swiss a couple times. Sounds like German, but not. It sounded funny and all the rubber necks in the surrounding vacinity would turn to watch where this strange shouting language was coming from. The boy accidently ran into Yumi a couple times and then stared at the two of us in fear. After he did that, he went on to suck on his sisters feet behind his mother. He did this and my eyes bugged out. I was like...interesting. He kept doing it and the baby wasn't doing anything to complain. The mother started casing him around in a circle like a dog chasing his tail. Quite humorous, but the boy went a little too far and then tripped and fell a couple times. She scolded him and then he went to play with papa.
The baby, who has started teething and has a couple, then started to take notice of us and her huge eyes in her tiny little head was so cute. She was staring at us and reaching for us. Yumi gave her her index finger and the baby grabbed a hold of it. As soon as he had grabbed her finger, he threw it into her mouth and started nibbling it and drooling everywhere. The mother was giggling and Yumi was laughing. Then the brother saw this and got pissed. He ran over to Yumi and started pushing her and punching her and yelling. The mother made him stop. Apparently he is very protective of his little sister. He won't let the leader of their playgroup hold her. She said that its better he is protective than apathetic. The little girl then moved onto Yumi's fist and drooling over that as well as herself and everything.
We finally made it to the desks and the mother put the baby in the baby cart and the girl started crying. And of course, just as Yumi and I were going up, it was time to change the passport checkers. More time we had to wait. The guy scoured Yumi's passport to make sure it wasn't fake. With mine, he didn't look at my picture, just sent me thru. After that we headed to the second checkpoint.
This was quicker, about 10 minutes.
We hit up McD's just to look at the map and make a plan of attack. We headed to Senado square, the famous walking street and walked around looking for shopping opportunities. It was nice. The weather was quite warm today, very hot, but not too bad on the humidty front, which helped loads. It was very sunny. Thank God Yumi lent me her sunscreen which is this japanese stuff that is 50 SPF. It worked loads. I was in the sun the whole day and I don't have any burn what so ever, even with all the sweating. I wonder how many health hazards it contains. Yumi has this dire desire of not to be blackened by the sun. Almost paranoia...like most of the chinese, and japanese. They all want to be white. Yumi's skin is already naturally very white, so I don' t know why she bothers with buying stuff that will help make her whiter. Its a culture thing I guess. Kinda like the Romans, only, the Japanese and Chinese aren't drinking lead tainted water to do it.
We walked all around in and out of shops. We then headed to the ruins of a catholic church. A very famous church/sightseeing site in Macau. One wall still stands of the ruins and its the front fact of the church. Behind it are tombs of the people that worked there and also some art that was in the church. During the trip thru the small museum, I had to give Yumi a crash course in the history of the Catholic church since the first split. I aslo had to give a quick explanation on why Christ was killed. The best way i was able to do it was thru a political point of view, "He was a revolutionary who threatened those in power and he was killed because of it." I tried to explain more, but it was too hard to explain. There was also a painting hanging in the gallery which showed the crucifixtion of 26 Christians in Nagasaki, Japan. Actually, it was 32, the other 6 martyrs were Jesuits which were omitted from the picture because of political reasons at the time. This was around 1640 and all christians were kicked out of Japan at this time. Yumi said she remember learning about this in her history classes. The Japanese authorities would lay down a painting of Christ on the crucifix and have people suspected of being Christians walk on it. Those who wouldn't were taken into custody and killed.
After that, we took some pictures there and I got yelled at for apparently walking somewhere that I shouldn't have been, but there were no signs saying not too. We headed next door to the Macau fortress for some more sightseeing. It was very pretty. We then hit up the museum there and there was some interesting stuff.
Afterwards we headed back to Senado square and it was getting around 415pm so we found a taxi and got to the barrier gate around 430pm and it took us about another 45 minutes to get thru the checkpoints. We wanted to do some shopping n stuff, so we went into the Gongbei Shopping mall to have some dinner and have an hour of shopping. We got a pizza pie, but it turned out to be 6 inches wide with four slices, but luckily neither of us were too hungry. After that, we split up to go shopping.
I tried to buy things, i really did, but nothing caught my eye. Its all the same junk. Crappy clothes that I don't need or junky jewelry. The only thing that I could possibly want was DVDs, and they were all pretty much crap. I did find 3 though. I picked up a Japanese movie, the new Zatoichi, a Korean mideval war flick called Sword in the Moon, and a movie about the last 12 days of Hitler at the end of WWII. THe first two I found in an actual store, the Hitler flick was found among the tons of obvious bootlegs. I found a bunch of films I wanted, including Revenge of the Sith, The Aquatic Life of Steve Zasou, and The Woodsman. However, I wanted to see them on a TV and view them before I unknowingly purchased any crap. Of course, most were rip offs or the wrong films. Woodsman didn;t look right. The Aquatic Life had "Propery of ...." watermarked on the video, and ROTS was Attack of the Clones in disguise. I don't understand why the police don't crack down on these people, if they just followed the leads, they could help take out Piracy in action. Boggles my mind.
I refused to buy any of them except the Hitler flick, because that looked resonable. My decision to just take the one really pissed off the guy trying to sell them to me. He made it obvious by slamming the DVDs on the table and being all huffy. I was like like, "So what, I am insulting you by not buying them. You tried to insult me first by trying to sell me crap." After that, he was like, 8rmb. I was like f that, its 6 jackhole. He laughed at was like, "You got me, you got me." He's still selling me crap, but its crap thats 6 rmb cheaper than buying the crap at the DVD shop in Xiaolan.
I was on the lookout for some boxsets, but didnt find any.
At 7pm, Yumi and I met outside the KFC and headed out to the bus and headed home at 730pm. We got back in town at 9pm and took a box taxi to the Yunna resturant were we had a snack and went our seperate ways. She doesn't have school till 930 tomorrow so she will get a well needed rest. I headed home and passed out from all the walking. That sunscreen rules. No burns and no red nose.

Posted by Phil at 05:20 PM | Permalink

Today, met up with Yumi after she cooked some food. Yummy stuff. Had lunch then hit up the foot massage place for 1 hour for a killer foot massage. I passed out. Then I had class at 3pm. Class with Daisy, Jack, and Violet sucked today. I was going over some stuff I taught them last time and they were totally disinterested and i tried to teach them some new things like the names of the months and it went totally over their heads. Great.
Right before class, Owen asked, "Why didn't you go to the beer gardens last nite. About everyone was there." Well, its hard to go when no one calls your ass and forgets about you, isn't it. So after class, I called Jolene to ask about the lack of information and also about sword engraving. She called me back in like 5 minutes saying she found a place that could do it. I would really like to see that happen. She will be here on Monday for a lunch date with Amy and Moses then she will go with me to the shop. Koolio. Maybe this one will actually happen.
Peter downloaded a copy of Revenge of the Sith that was posted on BitTorrent last week or sometime. He brought it over and put it on Nick's computer when he came to borrow my video camera for one of his student's recitals tonite.
I met Yumi at 630pm at the bus station to get tix to go to Macau tomorrow and then we went to the noodle shop she loves by her school. There is this little girl that spends her daze there while her parents work that she finds really adorable. It was about 7pm when we got there, so she had already gone home. The food was good, as usual. We then walked back to the house.
James, the new guy, is a soccer hooligan from London. The first thing he did when he got here was find a bar that had a big screen that would play the play off games that are going on right now. Tonite was the game between Manchester United and Arsenal and lots of people were gonna head there at 9pm. Yumi and I showed up and some peopel were already there. Ben, a gril, New John, chinese guy, Miguel, Glenn, and James. James was for MU and Glenn was for Arsenal. So they were shouting at each other during the game. I just laughed and hoped that they would get into a drunken brawl, which unfortunately didn't happen. More people showed up. Jolene, Damon, Nick and Megan. And a couple other chinese folk. I chatted with Miguel. He wasn't rooting for either side, he was just there to enjoy the festivities. He thinks soccer is a ladyman's sport. He played Rugby for 10 years. We had discussions on the brutalness of Soccer/American Football/Rugby.
About this time, MU scored a goal (which later on was disqualified) and James jumped up cheering and then he grabbed and hugged Miguel from behind while he kissed him on his bald clown head. I am just waiting for him to start a riot.
It was fun just hanging out.
Well, I am off to bed. Yumi and I will meet at the bus stop tomorrow at 810am. later

Posted by Phil at 05:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ok, so, going to bed last nite at 3AM really made me tired today. I had my longest day today and it was ok. I had my first two classes. The 4th grade went really well and the 3rd grade was fine. The second 4th grade was canceled so i was able to leave early. I went home and took a nap. Slept for about 2.5 hours and woke up just in time to go to class at 2pm. The two 3rd grade classes this afternoon were long and boring. Sounds and Words is so hard to make an interesting class out of. I was able to keep their attention and entertain them and teach them, but it just dragged on and on. To add to that, my bike lock that I purchased not more than 2 weeks ago is already broken, the key can't turn. I came up and the school guard/attendant was like, "lock your bike", i was all like, "haui le" (broken), and he took it and when I came back from my first 3rd grade class, he had chained it up with his own chain. After my second class I came back to leave and he had just oiled it up and it was working fine again. Great. Thanks buddy.
I headed out to 1+1 for some well needed food. All I had today was an apple and some water. Got some food in me and ran into a guy that attended one of our parties, Owen. Not the one that works for Bond. Some random chinese guy that worked at Viasystems as an interpreter/translator.
I then headed back to the house to pick up my Star Wars DVD and headed to kindergarten. I got the kids practicing the words Jedi and Sith, they still say "Sif", its so adorable. I then described each as "Good" and "Evil". Wing translated that and the kids jumped up and pointed at her "JEDI!" then pointed at me "SITH!"....
uh oh.
So i popped the DVD into the computer set up they had there which was quite impressive for a kindergarten. Too bad you couldn't hear anything but muffled noise coming from the audio system. But the kids loved the Clone War cartoons. They got really into it and were shouting and laughing and cheering. It was really cool. Then I played the duel in Empire Strikes Back, all the girls got scared of Darth Vader...deservedly so. It ruled! I was like, "YES!" the kids reallly enjoyed it. That makes me happy.
Afterwards I headed home. Yumi then came over and we headed over to Happy Time for some dinner. She had Honey Juice Chicken, which was ok and I had "Hawaiian Ham" which really was just two slices of SPAM dropped on top of some peppers and onions. Magnific!
I called around to see what people were up to and Jolene said they planned ot go out after the Friday Guzhen English Corner, she would call me back. Nick said he was gonna go to Peter's for poker since Echo was spending the nite in Guzhen for some reason.
Sounds interesting. I will be waiting for calls.
None came.
Time for bed.

Posted by Phil at 06:51 PM | Permalink

I spent most of this morning throwing together some video clips of star wars and stuff to put on a DVD to show my kindergarteners on Friday in Celebration of the movie. Hopefully they already know about it or they will be interested in it. They are in the prime age range...6 and 7. They should. If not, they are stupid and don't deserve to be my students. I know when I was that age I used to watch Return of the Jedi with my best friend at the time, John Shaw. I used to watch that all the time along with The Dark Crystal every day after I came home from school. ROCKED! I just read recently that they will make a sequel to Dark Crystal. Killer.
Well, today I was in a good mood. I guess it was because I am planning to go see Revenge of the Sith tonite at 1150pm at the theatre here in Xiaolan. So excited. I mentioned that we should get drunk before going to see it...maybe the alcohol will help me to miss the bad acting and bad dialogue that I am sure Lucas has screw up again on. Ugh. Oh well.
My 3rd grade class was, "eh". Not that great. I was waiting for it to be over. Just loud and no attention paying. I think all these problems are attributing to the weather. The hotter it gets the more energy they have. WHen it was cold they were much more docile. They are just like gas in the Thermodynamic sense. Man, did I suck in Thermo at college. I am sure I could have aced it at UM Dearborn though.
What else. 5th grade was a blast today. My good mood, Ivy's presence, and the stormy weather gave the students enuff to not be uninterested and slightly ready to participate. I took a lame ass lesson on the letter "b" and turned it into a 40 minute laugh fest including me playing baseball with a boy's head, buying a kid, and acting like a woman. It was great.
I had kindergarten class at 430pm and I taught body parts.
I then had class with Daisy and then my Chinese lesson.
I skipped my chinese lesson to do some stuff preparing for lessons tomorrow.
We went to go see Revenge of the Sith tonite. At first, we were the only ones there and we thought maybe we would be the only ones, but alas, no. *SPOILERS COMING UP* It was good, for the most part. I had a few issues with it, but I need to see it again. Why must I see it again? .....because....the chinese attendant selling us tix SAVED FACE and lied about the fact that the movie was in English with Chinese subtitles. The movie was in Chinese. Entirely. No subtitles. But you know what....i think it saved the dialogue. I think it may sound better in Chinese than in English. If I don't like the movie in English, I may just gonna have to watch it in Chinese with english subtitles on the DVD. THe acting actually seemed better in this one. Maybe it had to do with more effort put into it by Lucas or that there was no English soundtrack and all their bad voice acting was gone.
I need to see it in English before I make definite opinions about the film. But for right now, I think its a far better film in Chinese than the first two buckets of crap that we were served. Things I can definitely say that I was irritated about: General Grievous goes out like a bitch - such good potential wasted. Dooku whoops Obi-Wan super quickly and then Dooku gets whooped super fast. The lack of emotion shown by Obi-wan after Padme gets forcechoked.
Things that i may find better after watching in English: the transition from Anakin to Darth Vader. It just seemed force and didn't feel like he really did.
Another thing that upset me was all of the stuff cut out of the film. I have been visiting the spoilers boards and stuff, like a geek, and I have seen stills of stuff that was not in what I saw. Along with people's descriptions of scenes and shots from previewing showings in the US and Europe.
As far as understanding it, I caught about 10% of the chinese. Luckily, since I had read all of the spoilers, I knew what was going on in each scene, pretty much.
Things that ruled:
I cheered out loud when Mace Windu got killed off. IT RULED! Take that Sam, get out of this franchise now! Order 66 - the order to exterminate all the Jedi was powerful. The senate fight between Yoda and the Emporer. Parts of the duel between Obi and Anakin. What rules?.... Yoda speaking chinese. Its like.....the quintesential old gong fu master. i thought of Sam Seed and all the old classic gong fu movies. The opening space battle looked amazing, rivalling the Jedi space battle. There was other stuff I really liked too.
One thing that was irritating to the whole theatre was the fact that the audio, at random times would cut out for some reason or another. Even the chinese got pissed at that. Half the group we came with took off when they found out it was in Chinese and we got our money back. However, the lady was like, if you stay, you have to pay, and so this led Megan to go all hardcore and demand a discount. She got them to do half off. So, that was good. The price of the film to see was originally 30RMB, but she got it down to 15. Nothing drastic, but still, our team won somewhat.
And yes, the chinese still talk on their cellfones during movies. I actually told a couple people to shut up. I RULE! Well, its late. I need to find out where I can see this in English in a theatre. I may still need to hit up Hong Kong.
Good nite all, my longest day is tomorrow. It was worth the experience I think. I enjoyed myself.

Posted by Phil at 05:05 PM | Permalink

I was flashed by four kids today in my kindergarten class. Three girls were wearing skirts, one was dressed up in a red sailor moon type outfit and they kept pulling their skirts up. One girl just sat in her chair with her legs spread as wide as she could get them. I was like....ZOINKS!
Then Tommy, one of the smart boys, had a small hole in his shorts and was playing with himself thru it! I was like, PUT THAT THING AWAY! He had it pulled thru and he was plucking it like a banjo. It was....ugh....the experience left me shattered and distraught.
We also played Duck Duck Goose, but instead of using those words, to passify a teacher that said, "You should use different words" I was like...ok... "Jedi Jedi Sith!" That shows you how much of a Star Wars geek I am. It gave me an idea because I was trying to get them to say Jedi and Sith, so I will bring in various clips of the Star Wars movies and Clone War Cartoons to show them a Jedi and a Sith. It was funny because the kids can't say Sith at all because of the "th" and most of them are missing their two front teeth, so it was even funnier. While I was trying to practice the words with the kids, Wing sat there searching and scouring her dictionary. I was like, it ain't in there, Sister.

I just killed two baby cockroaches trekking across my window. A little spider took care of the third. I was like, "Go Spider! It's your birthday! Go Spider, Go Spider, Go Spider!" What sort of service do cockroaches do other than creep me out when I see them?

Posted by Phil at 08:08 PM | Permalink

I don't know why I try anymore in this country to try and be nice and to try to make my classes enjoyable and filled with learning goodness. My classes all today ended either in disaster or kids not paying attention because the class whip (teacher) left early. I have great ideas for lessons and Alex and Gerald can tell you that I am pretty decent at making learning seem fun if not just a bit interesting. The fourth graders were just being unruly - short attention spans on hot, humid, beautiful looking daze. The second class which has the two psychitzoids, was no better, but no worse than the first class. The two spazzes remained somewhat in control. Sending that one kid to the Headmaster two weeks in a row really helped.
The 6th graders were just...well, they were 6th graders. It really wasn't too bad today, but the first class, they were off in their own little world and Anna didn't really do anything to keep them in line. The second class participated more and were more into the lesson, but this is the 6th grade class with the highest concentration of smart/good kids.
I don't mind kids undermining authority and not paying attention - I think its important, but I think I have made it abundantly clear that I am different from the older generation that exists in schools just there to beat kids down and make them submit to their will while brainwashing the kids.
Before 6th grade I asked Coco if it was alright to use Taiwan in my lesson. After about 5 minutes of me trying to explain "Taiwan" to her, she understood and said it was ok. Basically, I drew out a ruff map on the board of the world with just China, Taiwan, HK, Japan, Korea, USA, and Canada. All are in the upper hemisphere. I have always noticed that almost all the news that Americans see or read or pay attention to just revolves around in the upper hemisphere, barely anything about down under. Does the lower hemisphere matter anymore? As for the chinese and what they know about the world...its pretty much China, Japan, maybe taiwan, and USA. Nothing else.
So today was interesting as well because more random power outages occured. Its really hot and so we had all the fans in the rooms on and I could feel and hear the distant hum of the machine like in the utopian story "The Machine"... All of a sudden I heard the machine go silent and I realized the power was cut. About five kids' heads exploded.
This country has more random power outages than Iraq. Not that I would really know how many Iraq has, but I am just making a comic comparison. Iraq has really nothing to do with this journal entry...or does it. I just wonder how much longer it will take the Chinese government to start blaming all their power outages on the USA and Japan since they seem to blame everything else on those two countries.
What else happened, Oh, I realized its impossible to try and go to the gym during the lunch break because of the heat. Its too much of a pain. The only time I could get over there would be in the evenings when it has cooled down a bit and I don't have to worry about sweat pouring down the crack of my ass like Niagra in class. Give it up.
I tried to teach my kindergarteners Dodgeball today. That was a nuclear disaster. First of all, none of the chinese teachers knew about the game, so I explained the basics to Wing and she told it to the kids then one of the teachers told them in cantonese. Thats gotta be confusing, three different languages in one class. I can understand why the kids had no idea what was going on when it came time to play. I had set up two teams and a line in the center of the play floor. Its a nice hardwood floor. Very good construction.
When I brought out the ball, I demostrated with Wing by pelting her in the face! I was like, YEAH! Take that for all your stalking of Toby and pissing off Rumi. The kids watched and laughed, and when I prepared to start the game, I wound up my throwing arm, and all the kids on the opposing team stood up, planted themselves firmly in the ground and held their arms out waiting to catch the ball. I was like, "NOOOOO!" I was like, "Did you explain to them that they do not want to get hit by the ball, so they shouldn't just stand there." The teachers told the kids, but still nothing. I was like, "OK. suit yourself." Instead of going for the head like I usually do to avoid permanent damage, I went for the legs. I started the game out and for about 2 minutes the kids kinda caught on, but soon it fell apart. There were kids jumping back and forth over the line, kids running around in circles, kids climbing into the cubby holes, and what not. It was pathetic. I felt so beaten down. Nothing ever works. So, that took most of the class time. I couldn't understand why they didnt' like it. When I was their age, I loved this game.
Another thing I should mention about these kindergarten classes are the sheer evilness of the kindergarten teachers. They are so mean. There is this one teacher that just grabs kids and manhandles them around the room. Its terrible and she gets all mean over the simplest things. "WTF is wrong with you lady?" Sometimes I just want to slap her, "You'll give the kids a complex! And he'll have enuff of those just from the fact that he is growing up in China, don't give him more." Last week I asked an older lady that works here to leave fans on and to raise them up a bit, and she got all chinesey with me and yelled at me in Cantonese because they would blow the things hanging from the ceiling down (which they totally won't cause I have done it before). So I bit back at her and she left quite quickly. What the hell is wrong with people here?
And the last horrible thing that happened today...I knew in the back of my head when the metal works shop said that my sword wouldn't be finished on Sunday like they said, but would be done on Monday. I had this thing in the back of my head knowing that it was bullshit, but I with all the reassurance I got from Wing and the constant updates by the girl working there that it was true. Wing had called a couple times and the girl said on Sunday, "Oh, its been started by we are being careful so its taking longer. It will be ready on Monday." On Monday, she called. "Oh, we have the right side done and we are starting on the left side soon. It will be finished tomorrow on Tuesday." Now that I have posted this stuff side by side, it reeks of bullshit. We called them up after kindergarten and said we were coming to pick it up. The girl didn't answer and so we were just given, "OK". We showed up and entered the offie and immediately the girl got this worried look on her face.
After a bunch of discussion, fone calls, and them trying to find out where my sword was, the truth came out that the engraving machine was broken and that the sword hasn't been touched. !!!!! shall I repeat that for effect? The engraving machine was broken and the sword has not been touched. She told us straight up lies for four days straight just to save face! To be truthful, I wasn't surprised at all by this, but its still friggin' frustrating. Wing was mad and she rose her voice to the workers in the office. I was like, "Why are you upset? This is your culture, you should be used to this?" She laughed at that saying, "Yes. It is isn't it. I am just mad because they told us lies for four days and you want this to get done for your teacher." Wing knows alot of english and can understand very well, but her pronunciation on lots of things is way off. But she can understand what I say better than some others.
So we got the sword back and the company offered that we can wait till the machine is fixed or they can engrave it another way, and I was like, "What other way. How else do you engrave it." Basically, I was fed up with them, so I don't want to give them any business. Punks.
So, I walked bcak to the office with Wing but called up Yumi and we met up by the CRC, KFC side, and headed to get some dinner. I was really hungery.
That was it pretty much for my day. Sleep well.

Posted by Phil at 10:22 AM | Permalink

It just continuously amazes me at how much business some of these chinese will give up just because I am white. I mean, money is money, right? No matter where it comes from. Maybe it was because I was raised properly and I just don't really understand why people can be that racist. For example, the often practice of me trying to get a motorcycle taxi. There is this route I usually travel that costs 3RMB. I consistently get taxi drivers that try to get me for 4 or 5RMB and I am like, "Dude, its 3." In my mind I am like, "I ain't retarded, Jerkface." After I say 3RMB they either argue about it and speed off, speed off when I don't take ride, or they just say "No" and I walk away. If I was a taxi driver here in China, I would do my best to get all the fares I could. A little goes a long way in this country. Well, at least in non-tourist areas.
I spent most of my day doing geeky computer stuff and editing my Shanghai footage. It was another warm/hot day. It was beautiful. A positive to this weather is the fact that my clothes dry in like 2 hours after I hang them up. Chatted with Megan for a bit online. She can't write more english than she can speak, it seems like. She just needs practice. I am quite surprised with the speed at which she is learning.
I was supposed to meet up with Wing at 5pm to go pick up my sword, but she called around 430pm and she said she called the shop. They still aren't finished. They may be done tomorrow. So far they only have only gotten one side of it done. I guess its good that they are taking a long time, hopefully it shows that they are being really careful.
So I headed over to 1+1 to do some shopping.
Came back and chilled a bit before I had gong fu tonite. Practice was ok. Worked hard. Didn't learn anything new, just did the forms and fooled around a bit. Guo Sifu corrected some of my staff work. Nothing spectacular today. My Hong Quan forms are getting much faster and cleaner. I can see that. I broke my bamboo staff that I bought for 1RMB back at Halloween time. Snap the top 1/4 of it off practicing. I'm that hardcore. :D
Well, rode my bike home and now I am drinking some Guiness "Foreign Extra Stout" that i bought at Jusco yesterday. Its ok. I miss real Guiness. And going to the "Nine Fine Irishmen" Bar in New York, New York casino in Las Vegas. That place rules. Most irish you can get in the states, outside Boston. Not that I have ever been to Boston, but I am guessing. Its such a fun place. I am just thinkin now about Irish Car Bombs. Chugging a pint of Guinness after dropping a shot of Bailey's Irish Creme in there. Its sooooo awesome and it tastes like ice cream. When I get back from japan, I am totally gonna go visit Fred in Las Vegas!
Well, time for bed. Good nite.

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

Today was another nice, yet hot day. I just go out side and stand or something and i start sweating. My room is airconditioned, but the house is not because some people in the house believe its ok to keep the windows open and the glass sliding door open to allow giant flying cockroaches to enter the house and have free range. No, the real problem is that the house is really big and there is no airconditioner. AC units are expensive here, well, for a free standing one which we would get. It would be nice to have. I walk out of my room into the hallway to head out and right when I open the door, I am slammed with a wall of heat that feels like it has come from an oven. Another problem with the house is lack of insulation. Not just this house, but all of China. No insulation. The moment you turn off the AC, the cold air is sucked away. China is like a giant sink hole for AC air.
Yumi and I headed to the Bond office so I could get paid before we went out for lunch. We got to the office and it was packed full of people. Mark Lee, Nick & Megan, Peter, Ben, Shevon, Gary, Mountain, Owen, Jolene and Wing. I was surprised. Mark was chatting with Peter and Nick about something he was told to do. Apparently a travel agency has put together an english educational tour to Canada and England. They wanted Bond to do some recruiting for this. The price for the trip is 2500RMB. So, they can only really ask those who are rich, and Mark Lee teaches at the school where the richest people send their kids. The travel agency gave him the tourist DVDs for both locations. His school cancelled all his classes for this week and Bond just told him that he had this to do this week. So, all he will do is pop the DVDs in during the class, tell the kids about it and ask, "Who wants to go?" There is not much more he can do in such short notice. The chinese are their own worst enemy. Just like APPLE. The iPod could be the perfect mp3 player, however, they shot themselves in the foot with the lack of battery power and the ability to remove and replace just the battery.
So, while we were there i mentioned to everyone that we were going to the upstairs of the CRC for lunch, the place I had my cellfone stolen in september. Megan and Nick were the only takers. So we headed out. We had some dim sum and a couple other things. I saw a couple cool t-shirts. There was a family of 3 that walked out of the small japanese resturant that is located there and all three family members had matching "Revenge of the Sith" t-shirts on. I WAS LIKE SWEET! The boy was prolly about 8. So i mentioned to them, "Wo xihuan nimen de t-shirts." They smiled and said thank you. Then, a few minutes later, another little girl, no more than 8 years old, walked by wearing a t-shirt with this written on it.... "Queen of the Bitch". I laughed my ass off and so did Nick. Yumi and Megan were clueless. It was the emblem of the Queen's crown in gold on a white shirt with the words written in black. It ruled.
Then about 5 minutes later, Peter called me. He was in Guzhen at the moment with Echo purchasing a motorbike. He said the local movie theatre here has a bunch of Revenge of the Sith posters. Apparently, Star Wars will be playing in Guzhen on May 20th. "The official 'Star Wars' website has put up the full list of worldwide release dates for 'Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith'. Some countries such as China are missing from the list currently due to strict censorship laws." Peter just laughed at what I said. He was like, "Dude, its China. If it will make money, they will do it." Seems as though someone smuggled it over from Hong Kong or something. Thats good for me then. I get to see it without having to go to HK. I might end up beating the crap out of all the chinese people in the theatre though...apparently, in movie theatres, none of the chinese turn off their cellfones. And they live and die by their cellfones here. Nick saw Lord of the Rings here last year, and said it was super annoying.
After lunch was over, we split up and were planning to meet at the bus station about 155pm to head down to Shiqi to go sightseeing. There are some sights that are really kool that you gots to see. So, I made it to the bus station at 155pm and Yumi wasn't there. Before buying tix I called her up to see where she was. She had just left her place. Great. THe bus leaves at 2pm and she told me to buy tix. So, I did and there I sat at the entrance to the bus waiting for her and the driver was looking at me and I was like, "Dude, I am waiting for a woman." He was like, "Ahh, yes, I understand." Yumi showed up right at 2pm, we got on, and they kicked us off the bus. There was no room left on the bus. We just bought tix for a 2pm ride. Look, "Seat 45". And they were like, no seats. WTF! I was like, "Look, 2pm, this is our bus ride." They kicked us off. Mutha...
They have all this stuff computerized, it would help if it actually worked and had things synched up. But, nope. Its just a waste of time to do anything properly.
So we waited for 30 minutes for the next bus, got on that, and it filled up. The guy checking tix said something to us because it said 2pm, and I was like, "I ain't getting off, sucka!" And Yumi couldn't understand cause he was speaking Guangdonghua.
So, we got to Shiqi and asked a hotel to see their map briefly, since mine was only in Chinese. The place we wanted to go was another 30 minutes out of the way, so we went to this other park in town, Zhimaling Park, that was quite large. Its got a bird sanctuary or more like a bird prison. We took a taxi and he didn't try to screw us, which is always refreshing. We walked around it alot for a couple hours. The bird prison had a bunch of doves/pigeons, cranes, peacock's, pheasants, and a few other things. They also had a cage with 3 asian black bears that I wanted to pet. They were so cute. Next too it they had about 4 monkeys enclosed. Everytime I go to a zoo now, I think of "Planet of the Apes". They look so depressed, I want to set them free. The park was gorgeous. It was alot of fun to walk around. There were a bunch of little kids playing and swimming in the fountain in just their underwear. It was cute, but I was like, GET OUT OF THE DIRTY WATER! Don't drink it!
After that we hopped a taxi to Jusco, the big international supermarket. We went to the sushi shop, Sushi Oh. Super good! Fantastic sushi. I want to go again. Expensive, but soooooo good. I splashed soy sauce all over my shirt. Yumi said, "Just like a child. :-)"
We then grabbed a taxi back to the bus station and grabbed a ticket for the 7pm bus back to Xiaolan. It was 630, so I figured we could go for a walk down walking street then come back. When we got back, the bus to Xiaolan was leaving. It was 655pm, so I tried to get it to stop. It never leaves before 7pm, which made me think this was the 630 bus, but I wasn't taking any chances. I chased it down and the passengers were just staring at me smiling and pointing. I was telling them to have the driver stop and they did nothing but stare and point. I was like, YOU FUCKERS! STOP THE DAMN BUS, they drove off so I threw up a single barrel and they laughed and were happy i swore at them.
We talked to the ticket counter and started giving them shit. And they had no idea what we were talking about. The were like, "i don't know where the buses are." Theoretically, you computerize a system so you know where everything is at the moment, and you have ways to find out where the buses are by CB radio, or other type things. So, finally, after minutes of trying to figure it out, they were like, lets call. Takes a genious to do that initially i guess. They said the bus was broken down and not coming. I was like, "You should have told us that when we bought the tickets." She was like, "I didn't know." I was like, "Why is your system computerized and shouldn't your bus driver contact you immediately if he wasn't coming?"
Aiya.
So we tried to get a taxi, but all the taxis wanted 60 RMB, and i am like, screw you. We shouldn't pay more than 40RMB. But of course, since I am white, we have to pay more. I didn't really want to take the 4RMB bus, but we ended up doing so. This is the bus taht stops every 200 meters. Its not a bad ride, it gets you there within 45min - 1 hour. The problem is that it is overcrowded, loud, smelly, most of the time its super hot, and people are always throwing up on them because chinese people have week stomachs on buses. So we took the #38.
On the way back to Xiaolan I called Gary and Wing trying to find out about my sword for Guo Sifu. I got a call back and it was said that it wasn't ready. Ok, even though they said today. Wing said we would go tomorrow at 5pm or something.
We got to the Xiaolan bus station and then we needed to get motorcycle taxis. I was heading to my place. I knew the price should be about 3 or 4, but some of these punks wanted 6 and I lauged at them. No one would give it to me for 4, so I was like, screw it, I am sick of you people, i took it for 5 and this jerkface took me all over the city. I yelled at him a couple times in chinese because he was going the wrong way. And when he dropped me off I scolded him some more. Racist, arrogant, Turd Ferguson.
So, needless to say, at the end of a relatively great day, I am in a very pissy mood.

Posted by Phil at 09:21 PM | Permalink

Didn't do much today. Just went out with Yumi to lunch at this cafe next door to the Cowboy Bar. They had these sofas to sit on while you eat, and they were too low so I had to raise my shoulders to eat and because of that, my shoulder muscles are all sore now. After lunch, I headed over to have class with Violet, Jack, and Daisy. Daisy wasn't back yet apparently and Violet showed up 30 minutes late. Thanks for being on time. I am going thru a review of the book since the Cambridge course is finishing up end of May. The class went ok. Their minds lost some info during the vacation.
After class, I wanted to go to the gym, but it was so friggin' hot that I didnt feel like it. It blows. The weather was so cold that I didnt' want to go, now its super hot and I don't want to go. Aiya. So, i headed home and started taking care of this sword engraving thing. Basically, I threw a little poem/well wish to Guo Sifu and had Amy translate it for me.
"May your life be long, your Qi & gong fu be strong, your children bring you honor, and your love for lion and dragon dancing last forever. Thanks for everything. -Fei Long"
Amy translated it, not directly, because there are some chinese sayings that are like that, but not exactly, so she used those. But then she said, I should prolly do it in English, because Sifu wants to be proud of this and having it in Chinese is just like nay other gift. I understood this, but I want something on the blade, and I wouldn't be able to have the english written on the blade and have it look good, so I have planned to have a plate attached to the scabbard with the english version of it.
I took it to the Bond office around 530pm where I met up with Wing and she took me around the corner to some shops. We found one that claimed they could do it. I worked with them closely on getting the translation adn written exactly the way I wanted. They wanted to do it one on to make it symetrical, and I wanted anything but symettrical, because i felt it would look good otherwise. I found the writing style and everything that I wanted and they said sure. I told them that they had to be careful and not make any mistakes because there is no redo on this. In my mind, I am like, I have another sword, but I don't want any of them wasted. They said, 100RMB and it would be done tomorrow. Wing got them to 80RMB and done tomorrow. I was initially surprised at that esitmate of one day. I dont believe it. It better be perfect. When I pick it up, if its good, I will comission them to make a plate with english. I need to be there to write it or else they will turn it into chinglish.
After spending about 1.5 hours doing this, I called up Yumi and a few others to fin out what everyone was doing. They were at teh pool hall.
I went to Yumi's to pick her up around 830pm. She had made some pancakes because I mentioned we should have some for lunch, then she got all excited and made some. She wanted to make some Osaka style pancakes "okunamegyaku" which are like a cross between omlettes and pancakes.
We headed to the pool hall and it was me, Yumi, New John, Miguel, Ash, and a new guy James that has been here for 2 weeks. He is a nice guy. He's irish but a North Londoner. He is a big soccer fan...duh. My favourite thing about the British Iles are soccer hooligans. Initially, he reminded me of the old guy from "Traispotting", the unstable guy that started fights all the time.
I called Nick and Jolene. So, later on, Peter, Nick, Jolene, and Wing showed up. Nick had gone to the pool by Longshan Park today with Megan, Amy, and Moses. He was teaching Megan how to swim. He said she kneed him in the face while he was holding her up in the water. We started realizing that teaching someone something that seems to come natural is really tuff. Since we have known how to swim since we were little, how do explain it?
I told him to look it up online.
well, its late. Goodnite all.

Posted by Phil at 09:30 PM | Permalink

It was a hot one today. My classes went fairly well today. No problems that come to my mind. One of my favourite memories today was of a kid in my 3rd grade class during a chat activity. Most of the lessons are accompanied by either songs or chats. Most of the time they are lame and boring. Every once in awhile they are really catchy and get into your head. Well, this was one of them. The kids were bouncing in their chairs and singing along. There were a couple kids playing the air guitar and drums. However, there was this one kid who was shaking his body like Dan Akroyd and Steve Martin in the old SNL sketch "Two wild and crazy guys". It was friggin' hilarious. I got him in the front of the class to do it and the whole class was laffing outloud including Lucy. It ruled. The best part of the day, I would have to say.
I went to practice tonite and most of the gang was out on a performance. I was curious why I havne't been asked to perform anymore. Curious. I practiced on my own as usual. I was also fooling around with a couple of the guys with handsprings and flips. I did so many flips that I felt like the stuff in my stomach was gonna fly out. So, after that, it was near the end of practice and I headed home.
Happy Friday the 13th people.

Posted by Phil at 09:35 PM | Permalink

I had class today. The 3rd graders were a little loud today. During lunch, I went to the gym to run. My knee wasn't hurting as I ran, which is good.
The 5th graders today, which are pretty good usually, were terrible today. No one was listening and it was really irritating. Ivy wanted me to review what I did last time because she said the kids couldnt read the story properly and speak it properly. So I tried to go over it and they seemed to follow along, but then I had them read this stuff in their own in groups to prepare to perform in front of the class. While they were reading in groups, a couple kids were like, whats this? I was like, "weather." No, no, no...this sentence...."I can tell you about the weather."
I was like, you guys don't know how to say "I can tell you". So I talked to Ivy briefly about why bother teaching this stuff to them when they can't even read or understand basic words. What have they been learning?
This made Ivy think that I was mad at them and she proceeded to just yell at them and make examples of individual students. "What has Phil just taught you." Only a couple kids said anything. Mostly they stayed quiet to save face. She forced all the kids to apologize to me and I am like sitting in the back totally in my head going, "ARGH! This is not the way to do things! This is not how to make them learn! This is so frustration." Its amazing how much they speak when Ivy talks to them, and how less they do when I speak to them. Maybe its lack of respect, or more so...fear.
Not much happened the rest of the day. Goodnite.

Posted by Phil at 04:52 PM | Permalink

Nothing special today. Read up online about a bunch of recent Chinese history of the Party and what not. Learned some new things and what not. School was "bleh". I had no issues mostly except for none of the 6th graders in the first class wanting to do anything and throwing junk, it was just boring today. My second 6th grade class was more fun, a little. I got a couple kids to dance with the chant song and that got people interested a bit. But not really.
I guess I am just here to entertain the kids and not teach them.
I went to Lion Dance practice today. It was fun. Learned the rest of that staff form and kept doing it. I brought my own staff that I got on Halloween when John went as the monkey king. It was killer.
But, anywho. Its late, I am tired. Off to bed.
good nite.

Posted by Phil at 11:01 PM | Permalink

I have had no desire to teach at all today. I didn't have any either on Sunday. Maybe its because I am really realizing how much of a joke this job is. I like the opportunities it has given, but its getting really boring and I am losing interest. The lack of kid's interest isn't helping much either. In one class today, I threw 3 kids out of class for giving me the double barrels. At different times too. Its all the bad kids. They don't do it out of sheer desire to cause harm, I doubt the really truly understand what it means. But whatever.

Later on this evening, in the span of 3 days, I watched all 13 episodes of the 2nd season of 6 Feet Under. I really enjoyed it. It kinda got a little unrealistic, well, in my reality, at the end, but I guess its possible. Its surprising how much you come to care for the characters, especially when you watch it back to back. I never cared this much for the characters since I cried when Optimus Prime died in teh Transformer's Movie. I cry everytime he dies.

Posted by Phil at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I literally spent my entire morning from when I woke up to about 1pm choosing fotos and preparing them for and uploading them to the website. So all the fotos that I chose to put on the website are there. There are some left over. Pictures that aren't really that great or are doubles n stuff.
I got the panoramas as best I could.
I realy got frutsration because I feel alot of the pictures look slightly tilted and are off a bit. I think its because alot of times I held the camera up high to get some better shots over people. poop. Well, I did my best, I hope you enjoy.
The rest of the day i worked on updating these journal entries and stuff. I fried my eyes and brain a bit I think.
I veged out on "6 Feet Under", that HBO drama series. I think its over now, but Robert bought the 2nd season and I got really addicted to the 1st series.
Well, time for bed, got class tomorrow.

Posted by Phil at 08:14 PM | Permalink

I got to teach my longest class schedual. It wasn't bad. I was quite bored with it though. It came raining on and off. Maybe it was the fact that it was actually a Sunday had something to do with it. I went to kindergarten afterwards like I am supposed to. Bond decided not to let me know that I had no kindergarten class today. They always seem to tell you when you have class at the last minute, but when you don't have any class schedualed or it has been cancelled, they don't tell you. Ask Robert or any others about that.
In the evening, Yumi came over after class and then we went to get dinner at the Yunnan resturant. SOOO GOOD! The food is great. The company was great. It was great. All except for the taxi dudes, that drives a motorcycle version of a richshaw, tried ripping us off. The common price for where we wanted to go was 5 RMB, but since I was white, and Yumi did all the talking, they figured they could get more money. One guy said 8. Then the guy we eventually got it from said 10 to start with, then after us walking away a couple times, he dropped it down to 5RMB. But he started going in the wrong direction. We told him the proper way, and he was like, not for 5RMB. We kept saying we don't want it, and he just kept going, I was preparing to grab Yumi and jump out when he was like, "Ok." These guys are punks. It may sound that I am complaining about all this culture shock n stuff. But, I ain't culture shocking anymore. I have come to expect this stuff and deal with it. However, the chinese still do it constantly, because I am one white guy in a sea of thousands of chinese, they are not the ones learning, i am.
Goodnite all.

Posted by Phil at 04:51 PM | Permalink

Today, we woke up and packed everything real good. We checked out of the hotel around 930AM and thats when Wen showed up with his friend Wang Ying who wanted to meet us. She was a classmate from highschool that went to a different college in Shanghai. They see each other alot, but they aren't dating. Oh well. I asked front desk if they had any tape or rope to tie my sword boxes together, but they had none. We checked our baggage so they hotel would watch over it. Wen had given us some pre-made jiao-zi. I love that stuff. We put that in the fridge and I would need to cook it up tonite or else it would spoil. After we took care of all that, we headed out.
We headed for the subway stop to hit up the Pearl Tower. On the way there we would check little convenience stores. No one had it. We finally found some wide pink plastic string that fruit vendors and stuff tie things up with. I bought a bunch of strands and I packed it away for use later when we got back to the hotel. We grabbed food at that little fast food place across from the Subway station that we hit up last nite. Yumi and I just ate quickly because Wen and Ying already ate. It was ok. We headed to the subway and got to the Pearl Tower and bought the 50 RMB tix. They had like, 5 or 6 options. You could just go into the center at the bottom, or take the 50RMB option which is where you go up to the upper ball. Another option took you up to the big ball, then up to the Space ball. And another took you to the Space ball and allowed you to dine. And another option was just straight up to the space ball.
The prices got to be real expensive, so we went with the 2nd cheapest. It was a great view. Really pretty. We took lots of fotos up at the top. We posed a few and what not. It was very enjoyable. Yumi was acting like a kid in a candy store, very excited. Things were going a billion times better than yesterday. We did the views upstairs and then went down to the lower level where the exit elevator was as well as a walk outside. Unfotunately they way they had it fenced off was really hard to take any pictures without getting the fence lining in the shot. We then headed down the main floor where we debated what to do. Yumi had mentioned that if we had time she would like to check out Xintiandi quickly for some shopping for her mother, but we didnt have the time. So we debated on whether going to Nanjing lu for some last minute shopping or go into the Wax Museum at this center floor. I heard some good things about it. The concensus was to go to Nanjing Lu. No problem. Before I left, I took this killer picture of an elevator shaft that looked exactly like the inside of the weapon control room on the Death Star that fires the laser. So, I took a foto.
We headed out to Nanjing Lu and thats where Wang Ying seperated from us, she was heading back to her school. So we said goodbye and thanks and everything and split up. Wen came with us shopping and we found some things. We headed back to the hotel and got our stuff and I tied my boxes together for the trip. We then got a taxi to the Hong Qiao airport. I was very surprised that Wen came along. He didnt have to do that at all. They said it takes about 45 minutes to get to the airport, we got there quicker than that and they said the price was 50, but we got the fare for like, 43. Kool.
We then went to check in. They had a packaging service that had a machine that tied things down with plastic straps. So, I had them do it 3x on my swords. Great. Just in case. I checked it as luggage. Right away the scanner went off and they pulled it aside and started asking questions about it. "What are they? Where did you get them? Why?" Luckily they didn't open it so i didnt have to deal with replacing the straps. I am sure they would have in America just to piss me off. The image of them on the x-ray scanner was cool. Things are all lit up in different colors on those things. Very neon looking against a white background. The computer itself identifies issue things and circles it on the computer.
After doing that, we got our tickets and headed to the gate. Wen waited in line with us until the security check point and we said goodbye and thanked him for all his help. We then headed to sit down. We didn't wait too long because they started boarding almost when we got there. We got on the plane and got ready.
The plane ride home was fine. I noticed some yellow duct tape on the exit door across the cabin from me and I felt so much more secure. GREAT! They are reinforcing the exit door with duct tape. Its shouldn't fall apart now.......
They had too baggage areas for the flight from Shanghai for some reason. We went to the first and it there was nothing left after about 15 bags were taken off. I was like, THEY BETTER NOT HAVE LOST OUR STUFF!
But it was at the second claim thingy. Right away we found our bags and headed out. We had 3 options to get home. 1. Take a taxi all the way back 2. take taxi to bus station, get bus back. 3. take bus back to bus station and take a bus back to xiaolan.
Of course, spending so much money in Shanghai, taking the taxi all the way didn't seem too bad. We wanted it for 200RMB, and I figured we could pull that. Plus it would get us home quickest and I didn't want to spend so much time on a bus like last time. We asked around the taxi people and they were saying like, "500 RMB". We were like, Hellz NO! The guys wouldn't go below 300 because it was May Holiday and I was white. We said, 250 was fine and still no takers. One guy was like, yeah sure! So we snagged him, and we followed him and he took us away from the taxi line. Oh crap, this better be a licensed taxi. They claimed he was. They took us to this guy in a black sedan. He was a driver.
He reminded me of Jason Stratham in "The Transporter". I didn't have any bad feelings about it until after he asked Yumi her name and Yumi refused to tell him. I was like, OH CRAP! What did we get into. We were both nervous about the whole thing, and for about the first hour, we were quiet and stuff just trying to get a feel for the situation. I had my fone on speed dail for someone if anything happened like he attempted to abduct us. But, I started to notice landmarks that I have for going to Guangzhou, or Foshan. The major one is the giant Buddhist monastery on top of a hill. Very pretty.
So, once we got to the develpoing area that I recognized from the drive to Shenzhen, Yumi and I started feeling much better about it. And Yumi felt that she needed to apologize. So she did, and then we used the opportunity for me to practice some chinese with the driver. It was quite good. He was very nice and spoke with us. He helped me out alot and said my pronunciation was good. He said if Chinese would speak slower, I could understand much more. Which is very true. He was from Sichuan and has been living in Guangdong for 15 years. He is an independent taxi is what he said. He doesn't work for a company, so I am guess the income he makes is his. I guess thats good. The car was really nice and looked as if it was well taken care of and you could tell it had been in use for awhile. The beads on the seats, some scuffs, etc. The many CDs in the visor and a bunch of other things.
We got stuck behind a broken truck in Shunde and he would move around it because he wasn't paying attention because he was jabbering on his cellfone. I think that we couldn't have gotten back about 20 minutes sooner had he paid attention. We got back to Xiaolan around 745pm. He dropped us off at Yumi's place and i grabbed a covered taxi back to my place so Yumi could take care of some stuff and then head over for dinner, we had to eat all that Jiao-zi.
The food was ok. I have had better, but still good.
Well, time for bed. Sleep well.

Posted by Phil at 02:01 PM | Permalink

Today felt the worst of all days by far. Cause it was. First of all, i had replaced the battery in my fone with a recharged one around 11pm last nite. When I reset the time, i totally forgot to do it in Army time, because this fone only does that. What a tard i was. So, my alarm didnt go off at 615 like it was supposed to. We were woken up at 7AM by two chinese kids running and shouting down the hallway. Damn. So, we got ready in 30 minutes and headed out at 730AM and got to the subway station. I timed it, once we entered the subway station, it took us about 28 minutes to get to our destination. We had about 5 minutes to spare before we got onto the bus at the station. Thankfully. Hopefully today goes well.
The drive to Suzhou took much longer than it should because of traffic. We called Daisy's grandma a couple times trying to tell her when we would get there. It started raining outside. We got close to Suzhou and once we were in town heading to the bus station, Daisy's grandma called us and I chalk up the rest of the crap that went on during the day to that fone call. Bascially, she didnt listen to our directions that we would be arriving at the bus station in Suzhou, so she was waiting at the train station on the north side of the city. It was funny at first until we tried to get in touch with her and meet her. For some reason, we thought she was gonna come over from the train station to meet us. So, after we got off the bus we were waiting and looking around for her.
We got tix back to Shanghai, but they were to a different bus station than we came from. If we went to the same, we had to leave at 520pm, if we took the other we could leave at 720. Yumi didn't know where the other station in Shanghai was, and I said, if we get to Shanghai, it doesn't matter, we can find our way home. This pissed her off and she was like, "Well, I don't know where it is." I then took the tix to the info booth along with our map and asked the lady where the Shanghai bus station we would arrive at is located. She showed us and it was quite simple. Located right by Yufo Si. So, we will be able to get back easily. I think the fact that I did this really pissed Yumi off because at this point I noticed she started walking away from me and not talking to me.
On top of that it was raining a bit and all the taxi people were pestering us to go with them somewhere and we were all like SCREW OFF! On top of that, Daisy's grandma wasn't answering her fone! WTF! Answer the damn fone! We looked around a bit and then Yumi headed off and walked across the street without telling me why or anything. I figured she was going to see if someone was over there. I kept looking. She then called me ten minutes later with one sentence, "I am taking a bus to the train station." Then hung up. I was pissed. So, I thought she had left. Great. Leave me all alone. I walked around some more having no clue what to do and then Daisy Grandma called me and i had no idea of anything she was saying. I kept telling here that I didn't understand, but she ketp talking. This was terrible.
Then after that Yumi called asking why I wasn't waiting with her. So, I basically got really angry with her because she left me and didn't tell me anything.I had thought she was on the bus when she called. So I headed over there and she wouldn't speak to me. We got on the bus and headed down the main road, Ren Ming Lu (People's St). On the bus I got a fone call of someone speaking english and kept saying that Daisy's grandma was at the Lay-away Station. And I was like, wtf is he talking about? What's the Lay Away Station. Then after about 5 minutes I realized that he was saying, Railway Station. PRONOUNCE YOUR FRIGGIN' "R"s!!!!! So I told him we were on his way.
Once we got to the train station, we had already wasted about and hour or more. And we walked along the train station looking for them at the exit, but couldn't find them. Plus, she kept on not picking up her fone. ANSWER! When she finally did, she cut Yumi off because Yumi was speaking to her. (even writing about this is reminding me of how frustrating this was)
We finally met them and there were a couple relatives. Daisy's grandma's nephew said "My aunt has been waiting a long time at the train station for you." And I totally wanted to say, "Well, if she listened to our fuckin directions, and met us at the bus station like we said, this wouldn't have happened." But I kept quiet.
He was taking us over to Tiger Hill which is Suzhou's most favourite tourist attraction. It was quite beautiful. The sun had come out by this time. But Yumi stopped talking to me almost entirely. The only things she said to me was "so-so".
Women out there...the silent treatment is the worst way to let someone know you are mad at them because all it does is piss the other person off and doesn't solve anything. Give it up.
Tiger hill was really pretty. Since my dig cam was all filled, I was taking lots of video. There was this giant stupa that was tilted a bit like the Leaning Tower of Piza. Very nice. Lots of flowers, interesting rock shapings, and gardens. Very nice.
After we took a donkey pulled ride around the place we left thru the north exit. We sat in a city bus getting ready to go. I tried to patch things up and ask her what was wrong, but no response. So very irritating. We drove around and got off the bus and we went to lunch. What was really irritating about the whole experience was that Yumi was not talking to me, but talking to Daisy and her grandma like nothing was wrong. AAArggh. She said we would talk about things later. So I gave up trying to repair things.
The actual city of Suzhou is quite beautiful. Its how you think modern China should be. Modern stuff, but with older chinese style and architecture. Of all the modern cities I have been too, this was one of my favourites...from a very visual view. We walked to the walking streets and looked around for silk stuff. I couldn't find anything. It was pretty though.
Then we went to another called Lion Grove Garden and on the way there i spotted a kodak shop where I could transfer my fotos. This was the worse one I have been too. I basically got super frustrated with his lack of ability to do anything that I shoved him out of the way and did it myself. And I could have completed it myself had there been a keyboard present instead of just a mouse. He also had the monitor placed facing up out of a desk and reflected off a mirror, so the desktop was backwards. WTF is wrong with you people!!!!!!
That took forever and mad me so angry. Got the fotos copied. I wanted to eat the crap out of the guy. After that place, we went to Lion Grove Garden which had a bunch of stone mazes. This was kool, but easily to get lost. When we tried to leave, we couldn't find the exit.
As we were leaving the place, a beggar came by with a monkey on a leash. So I gave him 1 kwai for a foto with the monkey, thinking thats what he wanted. After he allowed me to take a foto and got angry and yelled at us for more money. And we were like, "We already gave you some." He started tapping our arms with his bowl and we had to push him away and yell. there were a couple of chinese people yelling at him to like, "Get away. Get a job." etc.
We then walked to the street. It was about 630 and Daisy's grandma got us a taxi to the bus station. Um...ok. We have like an hour. So, we got to the bus station and then walked around and tried to shop, but there was really nothing around. So we just walked aways and went to a little park next to the highway that was really pretty.
We took the bus home and on the bus we started talking about some things. And we got back to the hotel and discussed alot more. It was terrible, but we sorted things out, and its much better now. I wont' divulge much. Ok, time for bed, we are tired. Goodnite.

Posted by Phil at 02:33 PM | Permalink

This morning, we slept in because we were so tired. So we took our time getting ready to go out. We walked to a resturant on the corner to grab breakfast/lunch. Some really good pork was there. Yummy. Chinese do pork better than anyone on the planet. I payed the check and they skipped out on 1RMB of change. Its not that big a deal, chinese people like to round things off. At first, I didn't think they may have been trying to keep an extra buck, because if they do that to everyone, they can make some extra money. It wasn't till later on in the evening that i realized more places do this.
Afterwards we walked up to the Nanjing Lu subway station and headed out to go to Yufo Si (Yufo Temple). Oh man, was this place neat. Very pretty. It was great to see a difference finally. Actually, the only real difference in this temple was the color, it was Yellow instead of red, which, I have to say, does a lot. There was also alot to look at and it was very pretty. In addition, this temple contains an all jade buddha. Unfortunately they would not allow pictures or video to be taken so I whipped out a pen and some paper adn started making a brief sketch of everything. It was very beautiful. Lets see.
Across a rectangular room, whose floored was covered in a yellow/gold rug, a semicircle add on was added. In this stood a ornate wood and glass case. Inside was a jade Buddha siting in the lotus position with one hand touching the ground and the other in a hand pose. He was a greenish white color. Apparently it was carved from one chunk of jade. It was very pretty.
The room had 8 pillars holding up the roof, as corners of a square centering in the center of the room. There was a sunroof in the very center and on the sides of the molding on the whole place there were a total of 668 tiny Buddhas all facing the center of the room. Painted on the ceiling were lotus blossoms. On the walls hung wood carvings of famous scenes from Buddhist literature and history. It was very kool.
After that room, we walked around and took fotos. One of the rooms had these 3 giant sitting Buddhas. Another room had a buddha standing while other people/creatures were coming to see him. Very neat. At one point, I walked into one of the areas and I saw a monk/guard sitting there doing something on his cellfone. Very funny to see. I thought the whole point of buddhism was to free yourself of the trappings of this world...like cellfones! There were alot of white people at this place and most of them were German. I found myself tagging along on a tour group for a couple minutes and I seemed to understand the gist of what the chinese dude, who's German was very good, was saying. I was impressed and so were the few German people that I talked to briefly. I was wondering if he was gonna point it out, and he finally did. He pointed out the swastika on the buddha's chest. Basically said, "You should recognize this...." And went on to say that this is a very old symbol. And that "Der Furher" took the opposite of this and turned it on its edge. "I didn't know Buddhists were Nazis!?!?!"
We took fotos in those circular doorways. I put my feet on the walls and stood up. This got a couple monks sitting down somewhere, they started giggling. SWEET! I hope I just broke some monks vow of silence! That would be soooo kool.
We took off and grabbed a taxi back to the subway station where we headed over to the Pearl Tower. It was super crowded and I was looking for a foto shop because my camera was spent. I couldn't find one. The view was great. WE didnt' go up in the tower (which would later come up and bite my ass. Yumi wanted to go but she didn't tell me and I told her that i heard from two people the view wasn't all that good, read entry of May 7th). We ended up walking down by the river and taking fotos of things. We got some Hagen Daas and I got yelled at to wait in line for a seat when all I wanted to do was take out. I was like, "Dude! know the details before you yell!" As we walked around later, I had a person trying to sell stuff poke me. I yelled at her. DON"T POKE ME and that stoppped their pestering real quickly. I found a foto shop to do fotos at but they wanted 80RMB for what i wanted. I laughed in their face. We just walked around the rest of the day.
We went shopping on Nanjing Lu again and Yumi bought a bunch of stuff. I was looking for things, but couldn't find anything useful. We went and grabbed some food off the strip and this was where all the chinese resturants are...in the alleyway. The service sucked and the menu translation was really bad. I ordered what it said was Pig and WonTons, but what I got was Lima Beans and Pig's Feet. I HATE EATING THE FEET OF ANY ANIMAL! THERE IS NO MEAT! Yumi said its because of the cartilage or collogen there that help make your skin look good. But I don't like it. So, i just had the vegetables and garlic. And beer. Which made me feel much better. We weren't all that hungry. On the check, they tried to rip me off by about 5 RMB. So pathetic. You think I am that stupid not to be able to read prices of what we ordered. And yes, they were trying to rip us off, it wasn't a mistake that they made either. We walked around the city a bunch more. Tried to find more Nanjing Lu, but we couldn't so we walked down to Haui Hai Lu and went to shops n stuff. It was ok.
When all the shops started closing we headed back to XinTianDi to check out the nitelife. Boy was it lame. Prices were super high for crappy drinks, so we left after looking in a couple bars. And it had started raining. So we took a taxi back to the hotel and went to the hotel resturant for some drinks. That was nice. We had a real good time.
Time for bed, we need to get up for Suzhou tomorrow, which should be fun. We are going to meet Daisy and her grandmother and buy some silk.

Posted by Phil at 01:31 PM | Permalink

Today turned out to be one terrible day. I was so disappointed with it. We woke up and got to the bus station with about 30-20 minutes to spare. That was a relief. The bus station was packed! Wow. Crazy busy. We got on our bus at 8am and the bus ride was no problem. There was construction on the rode, but no traffic jams. We got to Hangzhou around 10-1015AM. Once we got off, we were like, ok, need to buy tix back so we searchd all over for the ticket booth. We waited in line for about 15 minutes before we could get them. The ticket area was swamped with many lines of many people. It was quite amazing to see all these people in order. The latest ticket we could get back was 620pm. Damn, that means we only have a little bit of time. But we can get alot done in 7-8 hours. HA HA HA HA! Thats when the day took a turn for the worse.
We couldn't find any public transportation and the streets were jammed packed with people. We tried to get a taxi, but realized that there were no free ones, so we had to go back a block or so to stand in line at the taxi port. It didn't help since I had no clue where anything was and Yumi kept asking me questions and going off on her own to find things without telling me. I was starting to get very irritated with the lack of communication. And Yumi started getting more emotionally closed off. Great..just what we needed.
We stood in line for the taxis and it was crowded. There was a lady and a big fat blind guy begging for money on the side of the stand and then i noticed a little lady going thru the line begging for money. And of course, seeing the white guy, they all descend upon me and begged. And stuff. Its funny how they seem so desperate and seem so interested in you and then when they figure out that you are not gonna do anything, they completely change and go to the next person. Its really a site to see.
We continue to stand in line and Yumi and I were getting closer to the end and we were both silent...and it sucked. Ugh. Then about 4 chinese people had busted their way thru the line and were cutting big time up to the front. I saw this and did something. The wife got thru, but I was able to stop the husband and the mother. It was completely astonishing to them. They couldn't believe it. They said some stuff to me and I was just like, "I don't understand." So, for them to avoid losing face, they did raise too much of a stink until the wife kept getting closer and I wasn't letting them thru. She told them to come up, but I wouldn't let them. I had my hand across their path holding on to the railing not letting them thru. I could sort of see the rage building up in Yumi. The husband then asked me very politely, softly, in slightly broken english "could you please move your arm?" ...I was like, "No, not until you learn your lesson. You dont' cut inline, you wait." It was at this point the grandma said something to Yumi, and I was completely surprised by her response. I have so much more respect for her now after I saw her spar with an old chinese lady and win. IT RULED! She laid into them telling them to wait in line like everyone else. I was so cool to see. It went back and forth for a short time and Yumi obviously won. The husband and mother shut up. Then a couple other chinese people in line piped up and said that they should wait like everyone else and they told them what I felt. I felt justified after that. When it came time for the wife to get a taxi she called them and they asked me to let them thru. By this time I had lowered my arm and I was like, "Go. For all I care. I just hope you feel terrible and learned a lesson." They didn't understand this and thought I was still holding them back. It ruled. Yumi was really upset over this, not so much by this, but by the chinese. She yelled in English, "Its the chinese people, the chinese culture, they are crazy!" Whoa. She was mad. We got in our taxi and that was the end of that.
But is was the start of something else entirely. We told the driver and showed her on a map that we wanted to go to the walking street area for shopping and what not because it was right next West Lake, the big attraction. First of all, it took us nearly 10 minutes to get onto the road. And then she took us all over town trying to rip us off. I realized after a bit that she was taking us in the wrong direction. I looked at the map and found where we were and she was going way out of the way and pissing me off. So during a stop light, I showed her the map and asked why were here when we wanted to go here. I told her to go to a closer stop now that we were too far from the walking street. We headed to the Shangri La hotel which is right by the north tip of west lake. And of course, she got stuck in a traffic jam, and then it started pouring rain, hard. Terrible. We were in that taxi for 1 hour before we got to our destination and it cost us a bunch. I told Yumi I wasn't paying more than 20 since she was ripping us off, but when we finally got there, Yumi paid the full amount thinking I made a mistake. Nope, I didnt'. I was very angry with the drivers thougths of ripping me off. I wanted to make her head explode.
We got out and tried to get our bearings. It was still raining so we walked around a bit trying to figure out where to go, then I noticed a shop selling swords that they were selling in Shanghai. This were much cheaper. One sword in Shanghai was 2300RMB, here, it cost 600RMB. Sweet. So I was looking at them and thinking about which one i should get. I wanted the most expensive one cause it was big and heavy. But 600 is alot. Then, a chinese guy bought a sword about 575RMB for 200RMB. Yumi told me this, so I grabbed the 600 one and laid it down and said, 250. They lady gave me this, "Are you serious look?" And I laughed at her, pointed at the guy who had left, and said, he got this thing for over 375 off. Fuck you, you cheat." She tried to explain that this one was more expensive. I was like, they are practically the same price!!! Hows is this more expensive. She tried for 300, but we started to walk and she said, OK. I was just like great. Afterwards, I was like, i could have gotten it for 200. Oh well. Since it was such a good deal, I was like...hmmm.....Give me two. So I picked up two really nice swords in Hangzhou for 500RMB. These swords in America would have costed well over 200 US, if you could ever find them. You would have to have them shipped from china. I got them for about 30US. Awesome.
I got one black, for myself, and I got a brown one for Guo Sifu as a gift. I plan to have a little metal plate attached to the scabbard thanking him for his time and teaching as well as try and get someone to engrave the blade of it. I think that would be really nice. I hope he likes it. The problem with getting them now was that I had to carry them with me the whole time we were in Hangzhou. And these things were heavy.
We were hungry and wanted to get out of the rain, so we ducted into a resturant for lunch. It was some good food. There was this little girl at a table next to us that couldn't stand to look at either of Yumi or I, so whenever we looked in her direction, she was look away very dramatically. There was also this time this little boy was running around and ran up to me and stopped and stood next to me at the table. I was like, "Hey, what's up?" Then he jumped in surprised. I guess he was trying to look for something else and didn't intend for that. After that, he backed away from me. Almost as if in fear. I ran up to the bathroom and left my stuff at the table with Yumi. When i got back, the table next to us that had a bunch of older chinese men and women eating had all left. I sat back down and Yumi looked upset a bit. I was like, "What's the matter?"
She said, "When you were in the bathroom, that group got up to leave, and one of the old ladies tried to steal your umbrella sitting on your chair."
Are you serious?
"Yes! I was so mad, I just stared at her when she went for it, and then she realized I was staring, she looked back and her friend shook her head like it was no good. Like she was her look out."
That blew my mind. Even and old woman, who is most likely a mother, and has enuff money to help pay for a feast of food, which they ate, is trying to steal my stuff and not buy her own 15RMB umbrella. Disgusting! Here is a woman that should be teaching right and wrong to people and she is doing wrong things. Ugh! It messes with your mind. We got up to leave.
The rain let up but the sun couldn't come out of the clouds, and there was a mist over the lake. It was sorta pretty. I think if the sun was poking thru more, it would have been great. Almost immediately I noticed Yumi closing in on herself and she was quiet most of the trip around the West Lake. What am I supposed to do, I try to get communication going, but none happens. I don't know what to do. We walked around the lake and we took pictures. All the while carrying those swords.
After walking around we tried to figure out what to do next. Where to go. We only had a couple hours left and no where near the time we needed to see all the things we wanted and traffic was horrible so taxis would just get stuck. After a lot of indecision on both parts, we decided on General Yue Fei's Tomb. The place was big with lots of stuff, pretty much the same temple layout as every other chinese temple in existence. While we were there it had started to rain, then it stopped, then it started again. And Yumi was more and more closed in making me feel terrible not knowing what's the matter.
After the tomb, it was like 330pm. We spent about 30 minutes trying to find a taxi or a bus, but we couldn't read the signs of where the buses were going. It was such a waste and it was raining so much and we were both upset.
Taxis that were empty were just going by and most taxis were filled. So we walked up to the Shangri La to ask about bus lines and taxi things, and the chinese guy was like, "You have to wait in line like everyone else." I am like, "I am not asking you if I could get a ride now, I am asking where, Jerkface! Give me information and understand me before you scold me." I was pissed. We ended up just waiting on the steps to the Shangri La and grabbed a taxi. We told him the bus station. And he was like, sure. This guy was insane. For more than half the trip he was driving on the wrong side of the rode doing well over 2x the speed limit while passing police cars and them not doing anything. Wow. Almost had a couple head on collisions. We made it to the bus stop in about 20 minutes and the fare was 20RMB, less than half of what the cheater tried to get off us. The bus station was not far at all, it just proved to us more that that woman was trying to rip us off and I was even more angry.
We spent about 1.5 hours waiting at the bus station for our ride. We were so pissed off with this trip. I don't know why it went haywire. I swear I don't. It just sucked. I hate Hangzhou. Well, I hated the experience, the city itself has potential, it was just too rainy and foggy to see anything.
The bus station was a whole other experience. The place was uber crowded and there were people sitting on the floors on newspapers and stuff. I also had a woman and her son kneel at my feet and beg me for money while the son tugged at my pants. UGH! Get away! You have the time and ability to have a child! How could you do that to your son! They obviously have chosen not to look for work or better themselves in some way. Even if they have been born into this. Its really shitty to see. And it messes with you, especially when you want to help people, but if you give these beggers money, it won't help them, they will just continue to do it tomorrow and the next day. I have in my mind that WWJD thing that was going around during College. I think about it sometimes. Nowhere in the bible do we see Jesus pestered with beggers constantly. Its hard to deal with. All the rhetoric in America about helping each other doesn't really apply to people that have no desire to be helped. I don't know. I am not thinking hard enuff to focus this and make any grand statement. I just felt like junk not being able to help these people because I know they just want money and they can actually make a living off of this. Aubri and I had a discussion about this in Beijing.
Somewhere in the bus station after I found us some seats, things started to get better between Yumi and me. Its friggin' wierd. I don';t know whats going on. The ride back to Shanghai was ok with no real problems. Well, we be tired. Off to bed.

Posted by Phil at 10:38 AM | Permalink

Woke up about 745AM this morning. Got prepared because Wen said he would be there about 900AM to go out with us. He was late in getting there. He texted me that he would be late by a couple minutes. It was around 915AM that I called him to see about his location and length of time. Right as the fone rang, he walked thru the door. Kool. We were gonna head out and have breakfast, but Wen said he already ate, so Yumi and I said, ok, we can hold over for awhile. Neither of us was too hungry. Today was the day we were going to museums.
First we went to the Natural History Museum which had a few a dinosaur bones and a mastadon. It also had a couple chinese mummies and a bunch of stuffed animals. It was actually quite lame. A friend said that it was UNBELIEVABLE, but he mistook it for the Shanghai History/Art Museum. We were there for awhile, which I guess was good. The amazing thing about this place is that the inside of this building looked just as old as the fossils inside. The place was falling apart. View the pictures to understand what I am talking about. There was a thick layer of dust covering the dinosaur bones. It was disgusting. And the placement of some of the bones for the displays were out of order. (For years I wanted to be a palientologist and i took scientific illustration classes in college...so I know about dinosaurs and museum stuff) The way they had them displayed was if they had done so about 20 years ago and never updated them with new evidence. It was obvious they didnt care from the way they treated the building and the things inside. Disgusting.
Afterwards, we searched for the subway station because we wanted to head over to XinTianDi. First of all, we were on the main West to East road of the city, YanAn Lu. We had to walk about 4-5 blocks north to Nanjing Lu before we found the subway entrance. Right away I realized that I disliked this subway. And continuously throughout the week, it kept reaffirming itself. Don't believe the hype. The Shanghai Subway system is very inconvenient. All the station stops are far off from anything that you want to see, except for People's Square and the Pearl Tower. But those stops are so packed its a crap shoot to grab a train. It was thru my experience on the subway in Shanghai in which I just couldn't let go of the chinese way of doing things and tried to explain courtesy. I tried. I tried my hardest. I basically told them and used motions to explain to the people that you let people off first and then come in on the sides. You don't run head on into them all at once like a battle.
Subways that a fantastic: Toronto and Hong Kong. Bad subways: Shanghai....and, well, I can't really remember San Fran's subway system well, or France's, or even Washington DC's, but i do remember the stop, "Foggy Bottom".
Crossing the street on Nanjing Lu, and anywhere of importance in Shanghai, on a beautiful sunny afternoon during holiday season is like the battle scenes from Bravehart, without all the killing and weapons. A mass of people charging headlong into another opposing mass of people and not carrying what type of infliction they cause. Its profound. Really. Nowhere have I seen this before...i mean, not out of China.
We got to XinTianDi and again, I was very disappointed. It was just a bunch of highscale shops that sold overpriced junk. The bars and eateries there were all severly overpriced foreign styled with no Chinese eateries in site. I am in friggin' Shanghai and I can't find Chinese food! AAAARGGGH!!! A bottle of beer that I can get in Xiaolan for 5 RMB costs 60+RMB. !!!!!!!!! We walked around and left quickly and we checked out this block of buildings that surrounded the area. Apparently it has a style of architecture only found in Shanghai. We ate a small bite at one of the cafes there. It was ok. The bread was good. That was it.
We then hit up the Site of the First Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). I went out of curiosity. "Know your enemy". I wonder how much of the information and history located in this place has been whitewashed and changed. It was also interesting reading about the Koumingtang since this is during the same time as the Taiwanese KMT Head is visiting the Mainland. First major meetings in 60 years. I felt gross watching that stuff on TV. I can bet you any money, if Gabriel was still alive and strong enuff, he would put his hand thru the TV. He must be rolling over in his grave. If you dont know, Gabe was in Cheng Kai-Shek's KMT army during the fight against the CCP. I was reading all this stuff about treachery among members of the CCP and the KMT in regards to the Chinese people. Really interesting.
Afterwards we headed over to Haui Hai Lu to checked out this walking street. It was ok. Not like Nanjing Lu. Not as expensive either. It was pretty. We walked down the street and then walked over to the Shanghai Museum. We got to the museum and, to let you know, I love museums. Toronto's is great, Ann Arbor's, and many others that I have been too have been great. I could go to them a bunch of times. I think they are great. The Shanghai Museum has sooooo much potential, but frankly, I was bored with alot of it. I don't really care to go back. I mean, I hate to say it, but all I saw was pots made out of clay, porcelian, and metal. They paintings they had on display weren't all that good and they weren't preserved very well. The look of the place was great, but the material was the same thing over and over. It got to the point where I was like, "Oh, look, another pot. fantastic." totally sarcastic. I took pictures of interesting things that I found. Thats what you will see. There is not much else I found very interseting there. The most interseting room was the Ethnic Minority room. That was kool.
Afterwards, we walked out onto People's Square. It was big and sunny and blue in the sky. The sun shone off all the silver and glass buildings surrounding the square. Very nice. It had picked up wind and people were flying kites all over the place. So, I took some fotos and video. A couple kites collided and fell to the ground and got their strings tied all up. Awesome. While I was shooting some video, a girl came over to me looking all him and was like, "Hey, you want Rolex?" And said it a couple times and showed it to me and I just looked at her briefly like, "Whats wrong with you?" and went back to doing my stuff. She was about to continue but some cops walked by so she just pretended to sit pretty. Then she just watched me.
After this, we went to the Subway stop. Its really funny when I know where to go when the person living in Shanghai doesn't. It makes me feel powerful for some reason. ;-) Just kidding. Wen took us down a wrong turn. And since it was construction season during the holiday season, it was a long detour. We took the subway to the Hong Qiao bus station. Well, the stop closest to the station. It was during this subway time that I yelled at some chinese people because they didn't know how to get on the subway. But I yelled at them in Chinese, which surprised the hell out of them. THe great thing was...it worked!!! They waited for those too get off and then we got on. It ruled! Once we got to the stop, we had to walk about 6 blocks to get to the station. We bought our tickets for Hangzhou tomorrow for 8AM. We tried for 7, but they were all sold out. I hope its nice. Hopefully all the people will come to Shanghai for Chinese May Day.
This area of Shanghai, right as we emerged from the subway station, I realized that I liked this part of Shanghai. This part was really China. Like all of Hong Kong feels HongKong/China and not so much western. Just like Beijing too. Beijing felt like China. THe part of Shanghai we spent most of our time in felt like America or something wiht chinese writing. The building that the subway was under was holding the 48th Ping Pong Championships. They really made it look ornate.
On the way back to the mall next to the station, we stopped for some Dim Sum dinner. OH MAN, WAS IT GOOD! I loved it! This area was kool and so was the food. Too bad we aint in this area. The KFC was a killer though. We chatted alot during this dinner and I got to speak a lot of chinese with the waiters n stuff. It was fun. Still not great, but getting better. If I could just remember everything I have been taught.
We went into the mall and there was nothing that i needed. The sony store had stuff I wanted, but it was expensive and I didn't need it. A DVD shop had the entire boxset of The Transformers, but I was reluctant to purchase it because the lady wouldn't let me check it to see if it was legit. Damn you! Yumi had seperated from us to look at stuff so we went off on our own. We then met up later and we spent about 6 minutes watching this little baby girl dressed in a Tigger outfit play and bounce on the dirty floor. Oh man. So cute, but so sad to see her playing in the filth. Well, we headed out after that and went to the subway and headed back to the hotel.
Yumi and I got foot massages and they were really good. I had my contacts off and there was this little girl, the head lady's daughter, but the kid was short, chubby, with a short boy bowl cut and wearing a black and white shirt. She was really shy and the lady said she is afraid of foreigners. So i told her in Chinese while she was hiding behind the bar, "I'm a nice foreigner!" Throughout the massage we had about a 3 minute game of peek-a-boo going. She then just stared at me and when I called her over, I still thought that she was a boy so I called her "Xiao Di" little brother. And her mom was like, no......xiao mei (little sister). But I thought she said Xiao Bei so I was confused, then I realized 10 minutes later when I saw the frills on her shirt that she said xiao mei and that this boy was a girl. Don't I feel like a jackass. Well, I am mush right now. Good nite.

Posted by Phil at 01:40 AM | Permalink

in this country and city. I woke up to Liu Ci-Wen's text messages. "Are you up yet? When do want to meet?" We be up now, Fool! We were both hungry and it was 945AM. I thought we would sleep until 11 but no! it looks gorgeous outside. The sun is shining bright and hopefully it stays. I wonder what website Yumi looked at for the weather.
While gettin ready, I clogged the toilet which proceeded to clog the pipes or something and the water from the tub couldn't drain properly after I showered. Thankfully, Yumi went first and we were out of this room in about 20 minutes. By the time we were ready to do anything it was 1130am. Ci-wen was at lunch and then he said he was gonna be on his way here. We went down to the front desk to change our room and pay for the rest of the week. Its really funny when a businesses own practices confuse them. They lady dealing with us was unaware of why we put a deposit down. It took them awhile to figure it out and then they did. The room they finally gave us was the room right next door to the one we were in last nite. Pretty funny. Its not nearly as big or nice. Just one room with a bathroom.
We then went down to find some lunch/breakfast. We went across the alleyway, thru an additional hotel, thru another hotel section that had the white paint falling off the black walls. Then we walked thru another marble area where a security guard sat and then thru glass doors to the resturant. It felt like the scene in "Goodfellas" where the guys were walking all through the kitchen. The resturant was very pretty and the food wasn't really expensive, and on top of that, it was really good.
Almost immediately I was spotted by a little boy and his mother on the second floor balcony which is the way towards the private rooms. So I waved and he got all excited and pointeed at me much more. Yumi and I were in the process of ordering food when I noticed he was still looking and his mom was encouraging him to stare, then I noticed the father was videotaping me. Geez! Its like you've never seen a white person before. About 5 minutes later the boy wanted to come down to meet me. He came down with his mom and his videotaping father. I asked him some questions and he couldn't answer them. He was all shy and stuff. His mom was trying to help him a little, but it wasn't really working. So spoke to him in some chinese. "What's your name?" He got all excited and stood on one leg and held his hands in a superhero pose and shouted, "I am Ultraman!" It was SOOOOOO FRIGGGIN CUTE!!!! I wish I had video of it. He did it like three times and he got even more excited with each time. I got a foto taken with him and I taught him the High-5. He went back upstairs for a birthday lunch or something.
After our wonderful and tasty lunch, I went up to say goodbye to the little kid. I took my video cam to maybe get some video of him saying that he is Ultraman, but when I got there, they were all busy with their family and meal. I just waved to the kid and he waved back and said "Bye Bye". It was so wonderful. What a great way to start the day. You may think I find this annoying. I don't bother being stared at my curious kids, because its in their nature. Now, if it were grown ups doing this, I would think otherwise.
All during lunch I was texting Wen to find out where he was. He was coming to the hotel so we waited for him in the lobby. While waiting, I asked the staff just milling around for help on locating places in Shanghai. This map I bought last nite at the front desk doesn't really tell you where everything is very well. You have to ask someone to find specific places that it mentions on the side of the map. It took three guys to help find some things. Its really funny and sometimes frustrating when people who live in a tourist town don't know where the sites are. Wen showed up around 1pm and we went to our room to make a plan of things to do today.
1st: Take a taxi to Yu Yuan Gardens.
2nd: Walk up to Nanjing Lu for shopping and then walk along the Bund at nite.
More or less thats what we did today. We hailed a taxi and hopped in. I said, Yu Yuan Gong Yuan and the driver didnt understand it. Wen said it, and the driver didn't understand it. He then said it agian and then a whole conversation endured and fingerpointing was involved. Then once we finally moved off, after he turned left, he got stuck in traffic. There were tons of people. "Ren tai duo" - too many people.
I said we should just get out and walk and Wen said no. Then about 5 minutes later and only 100 meters covered, the driver said that we should get out and walk. He maneuvered around some cars and almost hit a few people on his way to the sidewalk. It would have taken about 30 minutes to get there on foot, and we prolly travelled the distance of 10 walking minutes by being stuck in traffic for 15 minutes. Do you understand that. On my way out of the taxi, I smashed my sore knee in the door. That hurt. The walk there was nice and I took lots of fotos. Before the actual place, there was this little shopping mall that we walked thru. On the way to the entrance there was alot of old school architecture and it was very pretty and very crowded. When we got to the entrance of Yu Yuan, there was more shopping areas and much more people. You couldn't walk with out smashing into them. I don't know if this is better or worse than the tour groups in the Forbidden City. You couldn't move without bumping into someone. Of course, the chinese add insult to injury...literally by smashing into people and not saying excuse me or being polite. We were all very careful about our personal property as well. I swear I felt my butt pockets we being violated more than 1- times. Thugs, thieves, and chinese. It was like moving around in a mosh pit at a concert. So many people pushing and shoving. I sear I thought I would see someone body surfing by with long hair, no shirt, tongue hanging out, devil horns blazing, while shouting REO Speedwagon Friggin' Rules!!!
Throughout the whole trip to Yu Yuan, I visited about four sword shops. There were some gorgeous high quality specimens. I wanted them all. No spring steel or flexible metal here. Heavy metal blades that lack sharp edges. I wanted them all! They were so gorgeous, hte scabbards and all. Before I leave I may come back to purchase one as a gift for Sifu. I picked one up that was 150000RMB!!! The guy immediately said I couldn't afford it. I think Wen misplaced a zero, but still,thats expensive. Why he even bothered to let folks touch it or try to sell it is beyond me. At other shops I found some nice ones but they wanted like 2300RMB for a nice one. I couldn't believe the prices. Thats way too much. I hope I can find a better deal.
There was a kool wishing tree in the center of the shopping area. I like the one in the Foshan Zu Miao better. They also had some Puppet shows going on. Also as we walked by shops, people would come up and ask me to see art exhibits. Its prolly the only English they know. We got to the temple and I just wanted to take fotos. Didn't want to go in since it was uber crowded. It was still a gorgeous day. We walked around alot and ran into alot of people.
We went to this other area which has a bridge over a nice green pond. This bridge was packed with people, I saw no movement. This bridge led to the actual garden area. Yumi and I were like, lets not even bother. We will come back sometime. So we headed out. Hagen Daas is all over this city.
We walked out of there after trying to get back and we then went over to Guchen Park. They had a bamboo forest that they were trying to control its growth here. They also had little pools for kids to catch goldfish in. There was also a gorgeous view of the Pearl Tower and surrounding buildings. From there we decided to walk over to the Bund and towards Nanjing Gonglu. We got to the southern Bund area and started heading norht to Nanjing Lu. There were lots of people and i took lots of fotos. I at times stood on railings to get above the crowd to get better shots.
We then walked along Yan An street away from the Bund to right by our hotel and then we took Sichuan Zhong lu up to Nanjing Lu. I was kinda wondering why we just didn't go up the Bund to Nanjing Lu, but then we were able to get a view of the area surrounding the hotel. Which was good. We finally got to Nanjing Lu and boy was it lame. Overcrowded, overrated, overpriced, and devoid of anything chinese. It was all foreign shops n stuff. It actually disgusted me. If I wanted this, then I would go back home. then I realized that, most chinese come here because its western and they want a taste of it. Which is good and all, but i just didn't like it. It was hella crowded and there was a McDonald's, KFC, Subway, and Pizzahut almost every 200 meters. There was no chinese resturants at all. We ended up at Subway. Ugh. Subway was in the basement and the bathroom was on the 4th floor.
Nanjing Lu is a very long street. We went to this place called Itokin, an overpriced Japanese shop that offers clothes that Yumi loves. She doesn't like Chinese clothes so she gets her hands on all the MK Klien she can get.
Ci Wen helped me plan for tomorrow and Hangzhou and Suzhou.
As we left Itokin, it had gotten dark. And Nanjing Lu's beauty comes out at nite. The lites were wonderful. All over the place. We walked along the street and got Hagen Daas. As you walk along Nanjing Lu, you get asked all these were questions, "Do you want some shoes?" "Do you want some rolex?" etc. I would constantly have people coming up to me with broken english trying to ask me stuff. At one point i spoke to the guy in Chinese and said, "I don't speak English." Wen started laffing and so did Yumi as the guy started speaking to me in Chinese and I had no idea what he said. It was great. There was this one guy that I swear I heard say "Butt Naked" as he was pointing to Yumi. It was wierd.
After that, around 9pm, Wen took off to go home and left us alone. So Yumi and I walked to the North part of the Bund and took beautiful nite shots. It was gorgeous. Superly overcrowded hurting the experience a little. I ran into a couple where the father could speak a bit of english. He wanted to take a foto of his son with me.
On the way back to the hotel, I found a foto shop that was able to transfer my pictures to a CD-R. 130 Fotos. It took the guy like 25 minutes. He was like a turtle. I so wanted to punch him and do it myself. I don't understand why it seems like the guys that run these shops don't know how to use their own technology. I could get this done in less than five minutes. We walked to the hotel and we were super tired. Goodnite.

Posted by Phil at 06:14 PM | Permalink

This morning I spent most of my time putting together the odds and ends for going to Shanghai this afternoon. Our bus leaves at 350pm, so we will have to get to the bus stop at 330pm. Then once we get to Shenzhen Bus Station after a theoretical 2 hours, we have to hop another bus to the airport which will take another hour. Its May 1st/May Day today, which is a holiday, Labour Day in China. Anywho, i was running an errand thru the downtown area by the KFC. The place was packed. People spilling onto the street more so than usual. I haven't seen it really crowded in this city since the Xiaolan Chrysanthemum Festival. However, the place wasn't no where near packed as the Chrysanthemum Fest.
After running my errand, I continued getting everything ready. Clothes are all packed and so are all my nick nacks and stuff. I chatted with my Dad a bit about stuff and then he said the DVD was good. They liked it. Of course, they have to say that, they are my parents. Yumi then IM-ed me and said that its to rain all week in Shanghai. CRAP! There go some good outdoor shots. Who knows, pray that the weather report is wrong. I had to go to 1+1 for some travel toothpaste and eyesolution, and an umbrella, as well as lunch. So, I hopped on the bike and started out. On my way thru the back ways, which is a shortcut, I was riding around the corner when I spotted an old chinese man in a Latino Wife-Beater and wearing a pair of poke-a-dot boxers standing over the sewer drain. In one hand he was holding a dead duck by the neck and bleeding it over the sewer while holding a butcher's knife in his other hand. What a great image. I finally came out from the backstreets onto the main drag where the 1+1 was. Man, this place was jammed packed. There were lines outside 1+1 out onto the street. Oh man, this is gonna suck. I parked my bike and went to lock it. Now, I haven't mentioned this before, but the last couple weeks I have been having trouble removing my key from the bike lock. It gets stuck in there. Why does everything not work in China like it should? I spent about 5 minutes trying to remvoving it, but nothing worked. Luckily, the lock wasn't stuck as well. I was able to open it and everything, i just couldn't remove the key. So I was like, "Crap, I can't leave the bike here with the key cause some punk will steal it." I rode home dropped the bike off and walked backed.
It was really crowded on the sidewalks and chinese people walk really slow, so I had to skip by them on the street.
I got into the shop and why those people were standing out in front of the store, I have no clue. Maybe they were waiting to steal people's wallets and bags as they came out of the store. The lines were surprisingly short because they had all the registers open. There were lines up all over the store...not for registers but to get the next egg or the next box of tea, fish, meat, etc. Whatever. I went up stairs and grabbed some toothpaste and eye solution. I then went searching for an umbrella. I went to the 3rd floor and asked a lady, "Ni you mei you yi ge san?" In almost perfect chinese. She got all worried, so I said it a couple more times thinking that I said something wrong, but I didn't. I showed her the motion of opening an umbrella and putting it over your shoulder, and she was like, "Ahhh....san." THATS WHAT I FRIGGIN SAID, YOU HALF WIT!!!!
She didn't know the answer so she walked around and asked someone and it was down on the 2nd floor. She wrote out something in chinese on a little scrap paper to give it to someone to direct me. And I am like, "Bitch, I don't need this. What's wrong with you?" So I went, asked someone, and found it. That's right. How's that for a middle finger.
I went down to the register and bought my stuff and walked out of there. I was actually quite suprised at the ease of going to this supermarket at this time of day with this many people. I think i spent no more than 20 minutes finding everything and paying for it. Of course, the people in the store were walking like turtles so I had to maneuver around them.
I headed back to my place. "Its such a nice warm and gorgeous day", I thought as I was walking home. "Why does it have to be ruined by these middle and old-aged chinese men with no muscle tone and nasty potbellies not wearing any shirts and if they do wear shirts, why are they pulled up to their armpits to expose their disturbing appearance. And why are they rubbing their tummies and slapping them like George C. Scott in "Dr. Strangelove" when he learns that the bombers have been sent to Russia (well, this is what we're gonna do...*slap*)?" GOD!!!! SMITE THEM, PLEASE!
Its strange. Chinese people are small and are really skinny, so once their body starts to store excess energy in the form of fat on their bodies, it really shows. And of course they present it to the whole world to see. Like those friggin' sorority girls at UofM in the Chemistry Science Learning Center wearing midriff exposing shirts that let their guts hangout over their ass tight jeans with stretched out sun tatooes around their bellybuttons with belly button rings that have cause inflammation. And then when they bend over to pick something off the floor, their strategically placed stripper tatoo in the small over their back is exposed along with their thong underwear when their ass tight jeans slide down just a bit. How many times did I want to throw up in the chemistry building (and it wasn't because of the chemical stench I was dealing with) I do not know.
Well, enuff of my rambling. Its getting late, I need to shower before I pack the last of little things and be on my way. I may not have access to a computer in Shanghai to write journal entries, but I will take notes and then post entries when I get back. Like I did for Beijing and Kunming. I will also post any fotos I took. Take care all. Have a wonderful weekend.

Leaving the house:
After finishing up packing, showering, and sending out an update, I took premptive measures to make it harder and more of a pain in the ass for a thief to break into the house...well, more like my room and steal anything from me. I hid my guitars under the bed along with my computer. However, I chained the computer to the window and concealed the chain behind the window shades and mosquito netting. I put my harddrives in the closet and placed all my cords in drawers. I then locked the door as I left. If a theif does get in, I want to make it hard for him/her. Too bad I forgot to take the battery out of the computer or something.
I headed out. The streets were packed and all the chinese were staring at the gweilo with two bags and mirrored sunglasses. It took about 10 minutes to get to the bus station when it usually takes 2 minutes. So crowded. But still a gorgeous day. Yumi called me while I was on the bike. She was on time for once. :D I got there 5 minutes before the bus showed up. Of course the bus was late to leave. We had to wait for a hotel shuttle bus to drop people off. They came at 4pm when the bus was to leave at 350pm. We drove off finally around 405pm. Not a big deal. But maybe considering the roads may be crowded all the way to Shenzhen.
After leaving the station, we had to deal with pedestrian crowded streets. We almost hit a couple people and literally the driver turned head on into a car. They both stopped in time. The road we turned on was underconstruction its normal 2lanes on either side was now 1 lane on either side with no signs or directions. There were people driving all over the place. Totally DWA. We finally got to the big Xiaolan Bus Station and after about 10 minutes of waiting for people to board, the driver got back on and started yelling at everyone standing to sit down or get off. Apparently there was another bus heading to Shenzhen that was late at arriving to the station. So, we had all these people on the bus checking their tickets with other passengers that were sitting in their seats thinking that it was overbooked. This was causing problems. The bus driver began shouting and shoving as well as the other passengers yelling and shoving. You may think that stragne, but its common in China. Yumi was like, "I don't know why chinese are like this?" I understood a bit of what the driver was shouting, so Yumi was giving me the "Play by Play" and she was giggling. The bus driver said that we were already late by 20 minutes and so he was yelling to get the people off the bus.
Much to my surprise the drive to Shenzhen was fine. There were no hold ups whatsoever. There was about 5 minutes where the driver stopped the bus at a gast station in the middle of nowhere for a passanger urination break, but only one fella got off. The bus driver had gotten off after and went to check something...i know, he was really going to smoke crack out behind the bus. He got back onto the bus not realizing that the man who took the urination break had gotten back on. So, he sat there for about 2 minutes laying on the horn. It was great. No one bothered to tell him that the guy had gotten on the bus. I thought it was really funny so I just enjoyed it.
We got to the bus station around 620pm. We had past the highway exit for the airport around 550pm. There is no direct bus from Xiaolan to that airport. We had to backtrack with a shuttle bus from the Shenzhen bus station. Trying to find the shuttle bus was a pain. No one could give us definite directions. "Oh, its across the street." So, we went across the street via the overpass. On our way to the overpass, i felt horrible. I saw a woman sitting on the sidewalk crosslegged holding her baby as she was picking rice out of a trash can she had tilted over. I was just completely struck by it. It was freaky. She was wearing nice clean clothes which made it look even odder. We found the shuttle bus after traversing about 5 broken/out of service escalators and asking about 5 people where it was. We found it hidden around the corner in the huge train terminal shopping area. I don't even know what it was. It was a train terminal and bus station. The bus station for all the city buses was there, along with a mall. And a white guy talking on the fone. He didnt' know where he was.
Driving thru Shenzhen felt like being back in the USA. Nice highways and tall buildings. It reminded me how much I like large cities. I was reminded of Toronto at first. Then it started to feel like the highways in Florida and Las Vegas because of the palm trees, I just had to ignore all the chinese writing, obviously.
We got to the airport and went to check in. We were in Terminal A, we needed to be in Terminal B, so we walked thru the tunnel. I felt like I was in Logan's Run. There is that tunnel that has car in it all incased in glass. Or something. Anywho, this tunnel didn't have a car. It was 730pm and the check in wouldn't be ready until 815pm. So we went to have dinner. It was some very good food, but pricey since it was the airport. The couple next to us made Yumi laugh because the lady was complaining to the waitress. "There are peanuts in this, I don't want peanuts. Take it back." -"There is no charge for the peanuts." -"I don't care, take it back." That was the basis of the arguement, but it kept going on for about two minutes. Yumi said, "the chinese are so arguing..." -"umm...argumentative. Yeah, but its mostly the women, not the men." Which is almost 95% true. Most of the argueing you see is done by women. Well, most of the arguing you witness is done over prices of things and chinese women are the ones who deal with the money. The men run the shop, but when it comes to cost, the talons come out. I mentioned to Yumi that she may be allergic to peanuts. i tried to explain that to her.
Then we checked in and sat at the gate people/kid watching. I was excited because of all the white people. I think there was a pack of 6 russians sitting behind us. Time came to board and we stood in line for a few minutes before they opened the door. When they did open the door, a bunch of chinese people just crowded around the door and cut in line. I wanted to beat the tar out of them and Yumi got pissed too, "They're so rude." I proceeded to stare at and make one woman who cut in front of us very uncomfortable. It ruled.
Our seat was in the very back. 38 of 41 rows. Not bad actually. They had something cool on the monitor. They had a video camera set up on the belly of the plane so you could watch the take off. It ruled. Too bad it was at nite then we could see the city. It was cloudy and the airport is far from the city lights. Then, while the plane was in the air, they were showing some commercial or a cartoon short. It was really odd. It was in South Park style, i have come to notice many commercials done this way, and it had Chairman Mao doing something wierd with animals and it was for some wreid Chinese news station or something.
Once we landed, we had a little trouble finding a shuttle bus. We just asked around, a taxi pimp, an army security guard, and a bus schedualer, and then we found it. The taxi pimp told us Gate 8, but the army dude told us gate 6, and then we got it. It was crowded and it was 1210AM before we left. We had to stand up 95% of the way into the city and it took about 40 minutes to get to our location. We were told the drop off point 3 times by the driver and the ticket taker. We just could never remember it. The Shanghai accent is tufff. The ticket girl said the price was 38RMB for a ticket and I have still have no idea what she said. And I can pick out 38 when someone says it. While standing the whole way there, I noticed a couple sitting down next to me. It was a man and his mistress, as best as I could guess. The reason I think that is because she was around 28-35, attractive, and wearing clothes a young girly-girl in China would wear. He was at least 50 years old, wearing a suit, and he was quite unattractive with two large mole-warts. One on his right eyelid and the other right on his chin between the bottom lip and bottom of the chin. They were all giggling and flirting and she had her hand on the inside of his thigh. I quivered where I stood. I felt like Bartleby and Loki from "Dogma", "He's comitting adultry, no man kisses his wife like that."
We eventually got off at the right stop but we had no idea which way to go along Yan An Donglu. No problem, so we grabbed a taxi. It was tuff to find. Turns out its in an alleyway. Great. We walked down the alley and checked in.
Immediately a problem popped up. It seemed that when I booked online, they had also booked a same room with someone else. Just for the first day. So, here I was thinking they were gonna screw us and then they said, "We are upgrading you to a 600RMB room at no extra charge." Sweet! That's like being bumped up to first class on an airplane. Man, a 600RMB room is alot bigger and nicer than a 280RMB room. I want to stay here. Unfortunately, we couldn't for more than tonite. Its got a living room and a bedroom. It has two TVs, a mini-fridge, a black leather couch, and lots of space. Luxury. I could see a family would want this.
I turned my cellfone on and had 3 text messages waiting for me from Liu Ci Wen, Coco's cousin. They were all quite funny. He seemed very excited. I replied and told him where we were. Time for bed. We are both real tired.

Posted by Phil at 01:31 PM | Permalink