Fool In the Rain

It's raining.

Even the rain here feels different to me. That could be because my shoulders are quite sunburned (I was so tired when I got up to go the beach this weekend that I got everywhere but my shoulders) but I think it's more the intensity.

The other day a rainstorm rolled in at about 10 AM. The sky turned black and nobody could see anything. We all just watched in awe as a wall of darkness and water rushed across the city like an angry deity rushing off to exact revenge on some poor town that demands a flooding. The teachers were unimpressed and tried to bring us back to the lesson, but were unsuccessful until the clouds rolled out a few minutes later.

Right now, the thunder rocks the building sporadically. It sounds like artillery in sharp cracks and bangs. I have no idea how I'm supposed to get across campus to the meeting I have in half an hour without getting entirely drenched.

My roommate is also currently unimpressed by the downpour. He's 杭州人 (hang zhou ren) or a person who has grown up in Hangzhou. I feel like having lived here, this is probably normal. And they say the first typhoon hasn't even rolled in yet. I wonder what that will be like. Will I even be able to walk to class?

So I've seen a little more of China after visiting more of Zhejiang Province. What they say about poverty in part of China is totally true. On the train to Ningpo I saw houses with 3 walls and workers who seemed to live in their vans which were at least 10 years old. The apartments in Zhoushan were tiny and I doubt many had sufficient plumbing. I'm still in culture shock I think. Except for the food that is. I've eaten things that I didn't think I could eat before (fish cheeks and duck feet anyone?) but I seem to like it all. If I've learned anything besides language from this trip, I've learned that I can eat some very unusual things and look disgusting but taste fantastic.

By the way, the key to prepping your stomach is the local yogurt. A yogurt drink every morning for breakfast has served me very well.

Time Delay

Sorry about the lack of posts lately, but this first week of class was killer. At least I think the homework will ease up from here on in.

Starting from last Saturday, I have battled the landscape, the food, and the language of China, but I find that I love every minute of it. As flustered as I get at my inability to communicate on several occasions daily, I still come away feeling that I accomplished something, even if that is remembering the word for "chicken" or "textbook".

Going back the first sentence of the last paragraph, I wish I could show you the pictures of the hike we took into the hills (really mountains) overlooking Hangzhou, but that requires use of the "preview" function which conveniently does not work in the slightest. Nor does posting pictures because that would require an internet connection that doesn't move like a baby with bricks tied to its legs. And by that I mean slowly.

My roommate and I are getting along very well; he helps me study and I tell him about things in the USA that I like such as music and movies. I found yesterday that premise of The Big Lebowski does not easily translate into Chinese. Very upsetting.

Food and other things are mindnumbingly inexpensive here. I can get any meal for less than a dollar, but I think I spend at most $6 a day on food . Beat that Rachel Ray. Try to buy any good meal, and I mean damn fine meals, anywhere for 3RMB (approx. 30something cents).

The most unintentional fun I've had here since the "fun" of trying to locate my lost luggage was definitely going to a restaurant called "Houcaller Beefsteak" here in Hangzhou. It is, get this, a fast-food style chain of steakhouses. Fast-food steakhouses.

The atmosphere is distinctly reminiscent of an Applebee's on acid with a salad bar that has no lettuce (or vegetables at all really) and fruit flavored salad dressings. By that I mean where the dressings should have been were things like apple, pomegranate, and watermelon flavored yogurt next to a bowl of Thousand Island dressing and some very tasty crutons.

Zhang Fan, my roommate, and I both ordered the NYC T-Bone platter. I told the waitress I was French so I wouldn't have to speak in English (we aren't allowed to speak English due to our language pledge) and attempted to order my steak medium. When the food arrived we had an egg sunny-side up, a very well done steak, and a small pile of what I think was Chef Boyardee pasta all in one skilled and covered in a cracked black pepper gravy. Strangely, it was damn good. Nevertheless, having to explain that I disliked all things American and could they please stop speaking English was very strange.

First post?

Hey, everyone! First post from Hangzhou!

I don't have the internet yet, so I'm posting from my roommate's friend's computer. He's the only one here who has figured out how to connect so far but we should all have regualr access in the next few days.

It's incredibly hot here, easily over 100 every day. And so far, aside from causing a great deal of confusion with my broken Chinese and making a few friends so far, all I've done is taken a walk by the West Lake, which is amazing, and lost a bag.

The bag will get here soon I've been told. Singapore Airlines knows where it is, I jsut have no idea where it is. C'est la vie.

I'll post the pictures I've been taking (mostly of signs I think are especially funny) in the next few days or whenever I get the internet working. Just so everyone knows, I'm here safe and sound and so far having an incredible time. I'll post again soon.

史乃聪

I am now within 12 hours of leaving the United States. It's a weird feeling to know that for the next 6 weeks I won't be able to easily reach any of you except by e-mail and the occasional Skype call.

Within the next few posts I'll have pics of the trip I promise, although I doubt I'll be able to take very many pictures inside airports and such.

I'll drop a line later "today", although for some of you that could easily end up being sometime tomorrow night around 2 AM. My day is probably going to feel like it's 48 hours long.

Panic!

As of today, the real work of packing and final preparations for my trip to China begins. I have my visa, my vaccinations, all the medications, and supplies. Now the task of putting all those things into one bag that I can't afford to lose begins.

Considering that, this post, and others like it, will be fairly short until I get settled in my dorm room at Zhejiang University of Technology (ZUT) in Hangzhou. I have more than plenty of things to do and about 4 days, 2 of them non-business days. Before Monday morning, I have plenty of work to do.

I also have to cross my fingers that the cheap palm pilot I got on eBay gets here before then so I can download plecoDict to it and have my own little pocket translation tool. That would be incredibly useful.

Being There

I've realized intermittently that I'm not so great at this.

If anyone reads this blog regularly, I apologize to you. I'm new at this.

In other news, I've determined that this space DOES in fact have a purpose. At least for a determined period of time.

From July 3rd until August 19th of this year I will be studying Chinese in Hangzhou, China. It's a beautiful city about 3 hours SW of Shanghai. This space will be my way of letting everyone else know what's up and how I'm faring and what I'm seeing. If necessary, I'll also post links to photos, videos, or anything else that I couldn't otherwise share easily through words.

I'll have something interesting soon.

A Whole New World

I've never been to California until now.

I've never seen such an incredible sight as the endless lights of Los Angeles and the surrounding suburbs stretching out to the horizon at midnight.

I've never thought how comfortable I could be at 72 degrees all year round.

I've never woken up at 4 AM to catch a flight and see the sunrise from an overcrowded terminal.

I've never waited 5 1/2 hours in an ER waiting room so my friend could see a doctor who essentially told him to remove his post-surgery suturing himself.

And with that last thought, I've never realized how poor the state of American healthcare is right now. We sat in that room for hours because it was the closest hospital to LAX that would take my friend's insurance. Meanwhile, the rest of us in VoiceMale were trying desperately not to stand out in a room where we were the absolute minority. It was so strange to us, driving around in our yacht of a van that we would have to wait for so long to have a simple operation like suture removal done. I know that this single experience is no way to judge an entire system, but watching that people in that crowded and unclean ER waiting room made me wonder how they viewed what their taxes were getting them. Or what their time was be wasted for.
I only saw an ambulance come in with emergency patients twice. That isn't a condemnation or praise, but it seemed strange to me how much it set everything back. It seemed strange that our friend had to fill out forms, go to triage, fill out forms again, then see a totally uncaring and apparently incompetent doctor and between each step, wait an hour to an hour and a half.

Mooninites

Unbeknownst to me, much of Boston was apparently in a tizzy over what appeared to be bombs on bridges, buildings, and other public fixtures yesterday. Two men were arrested and then, released today. Essentially with no charges pressed.

The "bombs" in question were LED signs advertising the Adult Swim cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force and officials here in Massachusetts are talking about pressing charges and calling the thing a "terror hoax".

Now I don't know about you, but I would think a bomb would look, well, dangerous. Not like this (Yes, I'm linking to a blog. Yes, I'm essentially violating unspoken laws of blogiquette. Deal.) I also think that it's funny that nobody noticed them for what I understand to be 2 weeks before the entire state went into an uproar and people like Boston Mayor Thomas Menino began demanding hat the FCC revoke the broadcast lisence for Cartoon Network parent company Turner Broadcasting. That's just absurd to me.

How paranoid are we going to get? Is every little thing going to set us off and is this really the appropriate response? Who's to say that this is really the appropriate response as well? Sure, the devices were under bridges and in subway stations and that's not really appropriate in the post-9/11 world considering that the devices could, possibly, in the right light look something almost but not quite a bomb. Maybe. And I'm suspending a lot of disbelief here.

I'm personally surprised at the threats being leveled at the two men who put up the devices. In terms of a viral marketing scheme, it's great. These little, ubiquitous, shiny things that "flip you off" as you walk by are exactly the kind of irreverent humor that Adult Swim propagates, when they aren't playing anime, and of which I think we could all use more in our lives.

In the pursuit of humor, it seems that the funny are losing more and more.

P.s. No, I do not count myself as funny. I try too hard.

P.P.s. Narf.

In and Around the Lake...

..marlins come out of the sky, and they stand theeeeeere!

I think those are the lyrics to Roundabout. I think. I can't really understand what those guys are saying but I like what I have because that damn well SHOULD be the lyrics.

This is why I'm not a musical superstar.

Jimmy Carter spoke at Brandeis last night. I know that this invites flames but I think the man has a point. Sort of.

Despite being raised in a Jewish household, I do not particularly identify with the religion. I don't really identify with ANY religion at this point to be totally honest. Buddhism and Taoism I like, but I don't really practice anything. So when people ask me what I think about the Israel-Palestine issue, I tend to say things most people don't either like to or want to hear.

I think that the actions of both side at this point are nothing short of abominable. The Israeli settlers have set up a system in the West Bank that is exclusionary and discriminatory towards the Palestinians, although I also tend to refer to them as Arabs to be a tad general, and the Palestinian government is affiliated with terrorist groups that spout nothing short of hatred while they claim to espouse peace.

The region is very different from the West. Islam is a religion of peace, and so is nearly every other religion I have heard of. The problem that I have seen in religion is that it inspires people to commit heinous acts in the name of Allah, Adonai, Jesus Christ, Amaterasu, and countless other gods or names for a One True God.

Who are we to say to anyone else that their religion is baseless and blasphemous? We are just as blasphemous to them at times. The Christians have persecuted the Muslims who waged war on the Hindus and the Buddhists who fought the Shinto. The Jews fought the pagans in Canaan and Egypt and fight Muslims today. I didn't mean to put Islam in there twice, I just had to tie it back to the present.

In the end what are we to believe more than any other? That the world was made from mud dripping off a sword according to Shinto? That God spoke to Moses and the Jews through a burning bush? That Jesus Christ proved his to divinity to millions of unborn Christians by resurrection after lying dead for three days? That the supreme force of creativity is a flying spaghetti monster?

It's personal in the end. We have no right to tell others how to live their lives. As for me... in and around a lake some marlins fell out of the sky and then just stood there. It makes just as much sense as anything else.

The Line

My stay in and around New York comes to an end today. Not I have that far to travel but it marks my return to that slightly less crowded city that I also love, Boston.

The country, as a whole, seems to have mixed feelings about Boston, Mass. On the one hand, everyone who passed Fourth grade knows that Boston was the heart of the Revolution and played a key role in defining America as the country we all know and love today. But then you have the rivalries. There are the sports teams that you either love or hate; the drivers who either confound you or provide, in your eyes, a "challenge"; and there are the political entities who either disturb you to your core or represent to you the new wave of American culture.

Not my best segue, but it'll have to do.

The huffington post reported recently that bipartisanship is reappearing on Capitol Hill. Republicans are starting to vote for Democratically sponsored bills. That was their definition of bipartisanship. Don't get me wrong, I think that's fantastic and nothing short of a wonderful start, but there needs to be more than that. Recently the Democratic leadership in the house said that they were going to table some of the Republican bills in the first 100 hours of this new House. That isn't bipartisanship. I do understand that the Dems were being treated the same way in many cases over the last 12 years and I do also realize that it streamlined the agenda by simply removing bills that would have taken time to only be voted down by the majority anyway, but limiting discussion of ideas is not bipartisanship.

I see bipartisanship as two ideologies working together to develop something wholly new and unique. Imagine the GOP and Dems working together and creating a comprehensive healthcare plan that not only satisfied the some of the socialist leanings of the most left-wing Democrats but also managed to satisfy some of the fundamentalist Christian members of the Republican Party. It would be historic, no doubt about it.

I left my cellphone charger in New York. I've gone for extended periods without a cellphone before, it's just annoying more than anything. It always strikes me as alien, not being able to be reached at any time. Sometimes, it's kinda nice.

Any of you who read this and know me, if you want to leave some suggestions on new songs to learn for solo acoustic guitar (I'm already set on learning the rendition of "My Overkill" that was on Scrubs) drop a comment. Actually... drop a comment if you like what you read or any thought strikes your mind. It's nice to know that somebody else is out there.

Epaulet

I'm currently sitting at a desk in downtown New York City. This is the jumping-off point for the current weekend retreat for the a cappella group I'm in at school. There's a lamp, that does not work, in my face; the apartment is piled high with, well, stuff; and I'm slowly remembering what it was that I disliked or otherwise was bemused to the point of annoyance by other members of the group.

But I digress.

One member of our group, who shall remain nameless, has, what I refer to as an hairpaulet. Do not confuse this with an hairy back as that is not what we are speaking of here. His one shoulder is covered in hair. Just one. An hairpaulet. He was just walking back to his sleeping area (there's 8 of us in an apartment for 3, maybe 4) and I saw it in all its glory. It really is an incredible display of genetics gone haywire.

On an unrelated note, I also just read an article that disturbed me more than the sight of the aforementioned hairpaulet. It was an ABC News Online publication that described the pamphlets that the State Department is now distributing in an attempt to defuse negative stereotypes of American tourists. What saddened me was the discussion thread that followed the article. There was a post that said, in a more ridiculous and enraged tone, that people who lived close to the United States, and by this I believe he meant the rest of the world, should do all they could to accommodate us because we are the only remaining superpower in the world and because of that, everyone should bend to our will.

I nearly got sick.

Who can still think that we are the last superpower left on the planet? We are entering an age where the Davids will begin to topple the Goliaths very quickly. China is fast approaching superpower status in terms of economy, or will when they finally admit to themselves that they are no longer the stronghold of Maoist Socialism. Any country with a well-trained and dedicated military, imagine a fundamentalist nation that honors martyrdom, and access to nuclear weaponry is a threat. We are so absorbed in the power we held over the world 30-40 years ago that we can't see that we don't have it anymore. The world is not an oyster for us to pull the pearl from.

I look at my friends bustling around the apartment and wonder where we're all going to be in this rapidly mutating geopolitical scenario. I hope that we aren't under the same delusion when we finally get into the world, otherwise things are going to look as bad as a patch of mangy hair on your shoulder. Shave your hairpaulets and get out there. Just be nice about it.

Bedache

It happens to me far too often. I'm lying in bed, doing everything in my power to recover that dream where I'm helping Scarlett Johansson get out of her dirty clothes after the attack of the Redi-Whip Monsters , and suddenly I find that I have contracted bedache. That dull pain in your shoulder, neck, or back that comes from lying in bed for just a little too long.

I like sleeping late. There's something oddly satisfying in watching the world out the window from bed, especially when I'm up at school as that window into the quad courtyard gives me a very nice view of some foliage. I usually just lie there, wondering what I'm going to do for the day or whether or not reading that chapter on the syllabus that was labeled "suggested reading" is really required.

I wonder if in some places, laziness is next to godliness rather than cleanliness.

Either way, I'm not on either end of the spectrum. I tend to freak out if I don't get stuff done when I say I'm going to and there are always piles of things on my floor. It IS the most convenient storage space sometimes.

But there are always times when I wish it was just me, my bed, and that tree. And no damn bedaches.

Is this thing on?

Welcome, me.

This is the internet.

What? This is it?

That tends to run through my mind more often than not now as I'm wasting time by staring at my laptop screen. Not everything is a waste of time here. There's the news, and ZeFrank, and e-mail, and on rare occasions actual coursework. Yet most of the time I find myself staring at someone who thought it would be funny to pour gasoline into a hollowed out watermelon, light it on fire, and then hit it with a baseball bat.

Actually... that one was kinda funny.

I wonder how I'm going to describe the infancy of the internet to my future grandchildren on occasion. Should I have grandchildren, that is. Will I describe it as a place of wonder where you could learn about anything and everything because it has degraded into a cyber-Sodom where all pages are meaningless collections of flash cartoons with a bad taste in humor or will I describe it as the latter because it has become the former?

That was a horrible sentence, but I have no inclination to fix it.

This blog is a test for me. I want to see that this doesn't degrade into my last flailing attempt at blogging. Maybe I can make something meaningful out of this. Maybe I can take the vast and incredible opportunities that now lay before me and create something wonderful.

I'll do that later. Right now? I'm gonna go watch one of those awful flash cartoons.

What? Sometimes, rarely, they're just what you want.