New on the Wubi Wiki: Shanghai Favorites.
和谐社会???喝血社会!!!
New on the Wubi Wiki: Shanghai Favorites.
Favorite Chinese Songs: The first, I heard today on the bus back from Haimen, and the second I have heard several times, the last while eating a bowl of freshly-pulled curry ramen at midnight at the booth across the street from my apartment.
After a few weeks' hiatus, the Oriental Pearl Tower webcam of the German School of Shanghai is updating live again. Tonight there is the usual dazzling light show on the Bund:
The co-habitation rate around must be sky-high. A girl in my office got married recently and peple are finding out slowly. The general reaction is a surprised look and a shrug. The attitude seems to be summed up in this quote by one girl today:
哎呀,现在人结不结婚没什么事吧!
Aw come on, these days it doesn't really matter if people are married or not!
John always smirks when I mention that I'm going to some expat function or another. But I think that's OK, I can appreciate both sides of the coin: on the one hand, it's nice to hang out with people from the Western world because it's easier to communicate with them effectively, both in terms of language and a common cultural literacy, and also because they share a more balanced view of China due to their outsider status; on the other hand, it's also a bit lazy and ignores the wealth of new experiences that a person can be introduced to in Shanghai by a local, or Chinese national; and I get tired pretty quick when the conversation descends into complaining about "China" and the frustrations of living here. Anyway, that's the way I've always liked to be, understanding both perspectives. Like I told my sister over vacation, my ideal is not to below to any particular group, but to be able to move back and forth fluidly between them.
Not that I do this well.
In cany case, I had fun tonight at the February Shanghai Webloggers Meetup. Group organizer Fons was not able to make it tonight, but I got to hear the eloquent Wang Jianshuo and his lovely wife talk about their cats, and dined on pizza and Russian salad courtesy of the Trombly family. Afterwards, some of the guys went out together to Madame Zung's for Drum & Bass/Jungle night. (There were, 4 people on the dance floor? And maybe another 4 at the bar. Perhaps we were early. Great music.) Afterwards, we moved on to a a pretty cozy dive bar called something like "C's Bar" somewhere on Dingxi Lu (定西路865号? 685号, and they're listed on SmartShanghai), from which I said goodbye, traded contact info and headed home.
Things I should have brought up at the weblogger meeting:
nanarb01.mi.comcast.net
's and dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net
's in the server logs, I'll keep writing.Good night.
The second most important reason I was looking forward to having a computer at home was to be able to upload pictures easily. In that spirit, I took some pictures of my apartment today, and I've put them online. Here's a little metadata for each one:
As I'm typing this entry, I'm listening to Queen's Greatest Hits CD.
I picked up these DVDs today:
Agba Mangalabou, who arrived from Togo in 2002, recalls his surprise when he moved here from Europe. "In Germany, everyone knew I was African," he said. "Here, nobody knows if I'm African or American."
From the New York Times, More Africans Enter U.S. Than in Days of Slavery (a better article than the title intimates). Is is really that hard to appreciate this phenomenon before one moves to the USA? This is one of my favorite things about the States.
My home is so much more homey now. The computer is set up with plenty of music, and the capability to play DVDs. There are three blankets on the bed, and a set of sweatsuit-pajamas under the pillow. The kitchen is fully stocked with square, round, and cupcake pans, and vanilla flavoring, and measuring cups and spoons. The set of books on the on the low hutch has grown by two or three times. When I find a rug and coffee table, it will finally be livable.
Book list:
I'm having second thoughts about keeping so many books, but I'm also comforted by the fact that many of them are reference books. Should I give the rest away? Or keep them, and start a Bookworm in Shanghai?
Today was a nice day. I slept in because I was jetlagged, spent a while on the computer listening to music, took a nice long shower, caught the tail end of the church service on Hengshan Road, had dinner at a noodle shop on Shimen No 1 Road, attended a theater performance at the Majestic, and got online for the first time in my home with a 96550 internet calling card. Lesson learned for the day: don't expect to stay awake when jet-lagged, and sitting in a dark, relatively quiet, plush-seated theater.
I picked up a copy of McSweeney's (or McSwy's, as it is is abbreviated therein) and spent most of my reading time on the plane with my nose buried in it. Great writing from contemporary authors: a morbid, chronically ill child navigates the hospital; a young Roman lives on Hadrian's wall; 1984/A Brave New World is re-appropriated by The Man... I just wish the author biographies were more extensive.
Quietly, Blogger recodes the Dashboard to be friendly to Lynx users. Now the "Edit" button is not a Javascript link, but an actual selectable link to a URL. Hooray.
The family...
...went out to 小肥羊 in Hacienda Heights on Saturday for a hotpot lunch:
The extraneous guy is my sister's boyfriend.
That night I came back from an outing with Andy to find them playing board games:
At Sunday lunch I took a series of photos, each one sharing exactly one subject with the last:
Behold the magical power of GSM cellphone networks! Today I walked into the Cingular office at Imperial and Randolph, plopped down USD 25, popped a brand new SIM card into my phone, and now have a US number. Call me at 714-277-6800 714-277-8600. Or I'll call you.
And when I fly back home, I can just replace it with my old China Mobile SIM card and be right back where I started.
I also picked up a power cord at Fry's. It's good to be back on a Linux box.
Here I go spreading disinformation. The correct phone number has been edited above.I'm back in California. To the folks who I didn't meet up with, sorry! It was a combination of running out of time packing, and certain responsibilities that came up and had to be dealt with.
I can't find the power cord to my computer; otherwise, it's all set up and ready to fire. In the meantime, I've gotten out my CDs and am listening to some older stuff, mostly hip hop: Lampeye (Japanese) and The Movementality (Asian American).
I've had this running joke with my family about how spending time inside Walmart magically expands people's waistlines. Today my mother informed me that you can now order McDonalds at the register as you check out, and pick it up at the in-store McD's as you walk out the door. Who needs magic?
It's so hard to know what's best for the other person when the "best" may mean making them cry, and the second-best (or worse) may mean seeing them smile.
But oh, what a smile.
The Economist is running an unsigned review of David Herlihy's Bicycle: The History in their Feb 5th-11th issue. Regarding the late 19th century, which saw an explosion in bicycle technology and popularity, they say:
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.
Fantastic sentence.
I made it to snowy Ann Arbor. It's a good thing I'm wearing three pairs of pants.
I'm still able to log into my UMich account, although my home directory has been erased (hooray for backups). This means I can use the computer lab in Angell Hall.
From the UMich ITD Linux Survey:
I view Linux as:
- an environment crucial to any modern university's public labs.
- a reasonable alternative to the other systems provided by Campus Computing Sites.
- a fad. Where's my Solaris machine?
- a waste of time.
- Linux?
I would love to be able to choose option 3, but I'm a little too honest (I put 2).
Hello from the Narita Airport! I'm in a little Yahoo net access point where they have a bunch of Dell PCs and laptops set up in a room with large glass windows directly overlooking the tarmac, where airplanes are taxiing in and parking in front of the terminals. Just below me is the yellow monorail tram that shuttles passengers back and forth between the two terminal buildings. Before I discovered the net place, I was weighing the pros and cons of trading USD 20 for JPY and picking up some snacks to bring home to people... what do you say? Better weight in with an e-mail in the next half-hour or so!
Like all trips involving me, the eternal optimist and scatter-brain, this one didn't go without incident—albeit a small one. I got to the airport in plenty of time, but I had forgotten that I was trying to make it to the US without checked-in baggage. So my Swiss Army knife didn't have any luggage to be checked-in inside. Nevertheless, like Asa said last night, there's always a way. I told the security people that I didn't have a checked-in bag and gave them a sad-puppy face, so they pulled out a yellow envelope and had the knife checked in by itself, travelling along with the crew. Here in Tokyo, I even managed to accidentally intercept the lead stewardess for the LA leg of the flight (same plane, I think) and she got the knife routed onto the right plane. I've even got a baggage-check number for it!
Interesting things about the Narita airport:
The signs to the smoking area call it the "Smoking Corner". How cute.
Most signs are in four languages:
I haven't noticed a lot of Chinese tourists, but that's probably because the Chinese New Year is more of a time to visit family and less of a time to travel.
I know I stayed up way too late last night/morning on the computer, but it was satisfying to sleep 12 out of the 19 hours that we spent on the train yesterday.
Things that were different about Shiyan:
Vivien:
Luna:
I'll be jumping onto the plane tomorrow morning at 8:55 AM.
I saw a commercial on TV the other day that speaks to me right now, as I sit in a net cafe way too late at night. I only caught the tail end; this is what I remember:
The scene: hard to say, the screen zoomed in on the bust of a high school aged girl. Curtains behind her, it's hard to say if she's at home or in a net cafe. Her head is lit on one side by what we assume is a computer screen. She is wearing headphones, likely for chatting.
A male voice: "You know, it's about time you got to bed."
The girl turns to face the camera: "Yeah, just a few more minutes."
The same male voice: "Don't you have to go to school tomorrow morning?"
The girl protests again. The screen fades to black. These words appear:
网络:并非生活的全部
The Internet: It's Not Your Whole Life
I was in the Hailida Preschool office a few weeks ago and some of the office staff were trying out tongue twisters in Chinese that they had found on the internet. Then the PE coach started to read them in the Shanghai dialect. Then piano teacher read them in Cantonese. They were still tongue twistery, but not as much.
Right now I'm on a business trip to Shiyan (十堰), a major minor city in Hubei province in central China.
Here are some interesting language notes. Interesting to me, at least:
I want to read Hannah Arendt's book. She's the one who wrote about the trials of the Nazi war criminals, coming to the conclusion that we are all a step away from becoming monsters. I'm probably vastly over-simplifying. I think it will help foster more discussion with Chris, where we talk about what motivates people to do evil things (it's fear of death; not being afraid of death has radical implications).
I'm still looking for souveniers to take back to the US as gifts for people. I've been thinking of New Year decorations. What I've got so far are DVDs to watch and then hand off, and some snacks from Hubei.
I'm staying up very late tonight because I will be taking a twenty-six hour train ride back to Shanghai tomorrow. The bad news is that I finished Panda Sex over french fries at McDonald's last night. The good thing is that this time we will have DVDs to watch on the laptop. Here in Shiyan, I found: Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Fog of War, Blind Shaft, Elephant (directed by Gus Van Sant), and a DVD of the Ibiza sunset set to club remixes of trance hits.