bad habits die hard

breakfast: coffee with milk


mid-morning meal: honey nut cheerios


lunch at 3 pm: about four tablespoons of black beans, a rice bowl of honey nut cheerios


dinner: hopefully a proper meal




being busy for the past two weeks has meant that our pantry (also known as the single shelf in our miserably small kitchen) has dwindled down to opened snack food packages that i refuse to throw away, 1.5 bags of dried pearl barley, some old rice noodles and a can of tomato soup i'm saving for a real food emergency. alright, alright, we also have a small tetra-pak of coconut cream, granulated honey, a package of japanese-style curry sauce, and about a teaspoon of oatmeal in a re-sealable that i also refuse to throw away. not sure why.


i even went grocery shopping yesterday, expanding our vittles by a 2.5-kilo bag of brown rice, a can each of sardines and anchovies, dried black beans, a bottle of sesame oil and some vegetables. oh, and a small foil pack of cheddar-cheese flavored snyder's pretzel pieces that i ate out of my bike basket while waiting for a light to change on my way home. (they were out of honey mustard.) oh, and obviously, a box of cheerios.


when grocery shopping consists of me and my two feet or my two bike pedals approaching either a local chinese supermarket whose inventory strangely appears to be composed of 35 percent snack food items, OR an extremely overpriced expat imported food market that may or may not have certain staples you saw there last time, you tend to shop light. there's also a wet market two blocks away, where i can find pretty much any chinese vegetable or fungi and an assortment of live fowl in addition to nosefuls of extreme stink and filthy puddles all dimly lit in some weird, dark concrete compound. some days i just give up and eat a fried egg over rice. sometimes i get really ambitious and hit up no less than FIVE fucking markets to find a chicken breast. it all depends on how much i want a damn chicken breast (not that much, but chicken thighs are mysteriously absent in the chinese local food economy) and what my blood sugar levels are like and how much cash i stole from t's wallet that morning. so if i find some sort of employment soon, it'll be interesting to see what kind of meals we end up eating on a daily basis. 


we americans (soapbox alert) have no friggin idea how much our country is a goddamned BOUNTY of food. we have food inventory until the sun comes down. remember the last time you had to visit TWO safeways to find what you wanted? or safeway and trader joe's? remember how irritating that was? remember climbing into your car to pursue that food item?


[sidenote: if i could import one american business to china, it would be trader joe's faster than you can down a small paper cup's-worth of their latest frozen roasted-vegetable-over-quinoa entree. i miss quinoa. i miss frozen green chile and cheese tamales. i miss peanut butter without hydrogenated oil.]


ok, so i inadvertently turned this into a bitchfest, but what i really thought, initially, as i looked down at my rice bowl half-full of chinese "cheerios" that are so sugary they appear to be shellacked, was, damn. i'm so glad i bought these cheerios yesterday. i've had two servings! i feel rich!

mi casa es su casa

this fine, fine thriving garden of mold was my latest discovery, found just yesterday morning. that is our bed, that bit of laminate gorgeousness to the left. so we've been sleeping just inches away from an abundant patch of biological wondrousness. i was kind of relieved in the background of being completely freaked out, because i've been obsessed about the musty-ass smell that dominates one corner of the bedroom. i've washed the bedding repeatedly and i air out the room all day long despite rather cool temperatures outside. at one point i found scant amounts of mold under the windows in the same room, but it didn't seem to warrant such a strong stench. so now i know.


not sure if this normally happens, but when i set about cleaning this mold up, the stucco plaster that textures the wall was wiping away. kind of dissolving. so our wall, while it looks better now and seems a good deal less moldy, is sort of covered in a bizarre paste of plaster, mold and laundry detergent solution.


we are locked into this apartment until next october, but T is pretty wigged out by my mold discovery (in addition to our leaky sink, a broken toilet, and a bathroom ceiling that is determined to collapse in on us) and wants to ditch our deposit (about $900 USD) and get a new place. oh yes, and our rat visitor, who has since been murdered, can't forget him. 


i'm not sure what to think. i'm feeling a little better now that i've located the nasty ass mold patch and can keep an eye on if should it choose to rebound. apartment prices are sky-high now, post-Expo, so a new place is going to cost at least $1500 USD/month. at LEAST. that's what one of our friends is paying now, after months of looking. rents in shanghai are not what they used to be. we're in a good location, just a block away from the subway line 9, which T uses to go to work. BUT, we could be doing better, as he likes to phrase it. he's worried about my lungs, as he should be, and i guess i should be concerned about that, too. and mold spores... well, they aren't any good for anyone.

change is afoot. not a foot.

i was walking around the streets last week with two friends when i realized that shanghai had subtly, nearly unnoticeably, gotten quieter.


don't get me wrong, there are still blaring horns, screeching brakes, shouting, big trucks and buses rumbling by, but the additional layer of noise that blankets the streets - blaring loudspeakers, street-sweeping trucks that blast some unsettlingly cheerful and juvenile tune, men that ride their bike-carts with loudspeakers advertising their ability to haul away household appliances - THAT had lessened considerably. it was odd. you still go deaf on the streets, that hasn't changed, but now you aren't about to assault any one person for making you deaf AND annoyed. 


big difference.


i was on the subway yesterday for the first time in years, and normally the female voice that announces the upcoming station and which way the door will open and don't forget your belongings is so indescribably loud that you can feel your ear drum reverberating in your head. now? now she's just normal-loud, like on the red line on the chicago el. 


i saw a water-shooting truck cleaning the street yesterday - well really, it was just wetting the street - and it was playing an annoying little jingle, but i've seen many more street-sweeping trucks lately that just kind of roar along and sweep, without the added dimension of nerve-jangling hello kitty-esque sing-songiness. so i guess my point is that the noise has lessened, not halted, but that itself is so strange for china. such a subtle shifting down a gear instead of getting jammed abruptly to a stop, the extremity of which i have come to expect from this country. 


i hope more nice realizations like this are to come.

man man lai...

there are two men in my bathroom, snaking the drain. or rather, snaking the SHIT out of the drain. it's halfway to china nashville by now. the super has visited a total of three times to handle this leaky pipe, which somehow lead to the building maintenance guy coming by and now it's a regular drain party up in there.


so as of today i've been in shanghai a full week. last week was an alzheimer's-like haze of trying to remember street names and bar names and feeling very befuddled when i tried to recall my chinese, which was crappy to begin with.


my good friend is here, staying with us, and she had four friends in tow visiting from SF for a week. they've since gone, so my life is settling in to what i assume will be its regular schedule for a while - wake up with trev, make coffee, absorb as much news as possible without obsessing, study chinese for an hour or so, try to find work.


while our social lives here are definitely more lively than they were in other cities, for shanghai it's definitely scaled back. that may have to do with trevor and i being on a serious budget. two expensive graduate school educations + 1 salary = oh damn. we ain't gots no money.


i'm trying to network, but short of the point where i feel like i'm putting too much pressure on myself to "get out there," something that from me requires lots of effort, but for other people is just second nature. i'm slowly acclimating and sending out feelers. trying not to hold myself up against other people's methods and abilities, but it's hard. trev gets on me to not push myself so much, which is kind of funny ironic if you think about it.


tonight i'm having a girls' dinner at our friend marc's restaurant, fulton place, which is one of the nicer places in town. i'm very much looking forward to it. up until now, a lot of socializing has been in big, somewhat raucous groups, sometimes jameson-fueled. it's the first time i've been to his place since it opened while i was in absentia, so i'm really looking forward to seeing the space and sampling some tasty eats!

heads ablaze

sherry and i got ear candled at the spa on saturday.

countdown week

my food schedule for the remaining time, sent out last sunday:


monday: yaki closet
tuesday: marc's cooking
wednesday: issimo or tian jia
thursday: dingtaifeng or hotpot
friday: my ayi's house (anyone who wants to come is welcome... she ruvs people, but her place is the size of a coffee table)
saturday: par-tay! we are thinking spicy sichuan
sunday: jean georges bar menu


optional swaps or lunch dates:
jia jia tang bao
yang's sheng jian bao
southern barbarian
pane e vino
azul brunch



marc made us an amazing meal last night. we limped home holding our swollen stomachs. it was too good! we weren't worthy. we even started off with an appetizer, which was in addition to the award-winning cheeses and cured meats smuggled from home. when have you actually had a true appetizer not in a restaurant? one that included a seared scallop?

tonight is issimo. my first time; i'm quite excited. all of the cooler kids have been to issimo multiple times, but i am uninitiated. seriously, tho, it was dumb to kick off this week of eating with yang's sheng jian bao. six of them. they are no joke, and sherry went and bought chicken wings to top that off. and then i went to southern barbarian with the boys after muay thai that night, to get down on some yunnan fried goat cheese and more chicken wings. yes, because i am unabashed. that's how i roll, as jason would say.

i told jill last night that maybe i'd just order salad tonight, and she was like, yeah right. and i had to agree.

olympic fever!

our favorite pic of the year!

now i don't feel so guilty

photo by dan washburn

for rolling in at 10:30 due to some serious storming. this was taken this morning not far from my old apartment (ha! i can say that now).

china's guy

this is cool:


http://tinyurl.com/3erplk


the cynic in me says that you can't piss off a consumer market of (potentially) upwards of 1 billion people, but i'm going to pretend nike / pingan et. al is feeling for him and the sentiment of his fans. yeah, i know, hearts and flowers shit is going to my head.

i have left the building

and i'm all moved into jill's place. the last installation in project goin'-back-to-cali.

pretty happy with my digs here. my own room (i'm surrounded on all sides by a ridiculous amount of my shit - remind me to get rid of some) and my own bathroom. sweet! and even a proper shower that doesn't leak.

one more week of work and one week of play and i'm out!

amazing amazingness

it's been one of those weekends where i don't even know where to begin. sherry and i flew up to beijing to meet steph- who has been up there for the past 10-ish days for work - marc, her bf who flew up a day earlier to meet her, and our friend viv who is up in beijing to see her mom and catch some olympics.

it was somewhat of a small miracle i ended up going, what with the budget constraints and then a late-arriving and fairly debilitating flu that hit me friday morning. at any rate, come 4 pm, sherry came and picked me up in a cab, we made our way to beijing with only a 2 hour delay on our flight. directly from the airport we went to mao live, one of the live music venues in beijing, where steph's work was throwing this fucking amazing show/party featuring seven awesome local punk bands (more on that below) and z trip out of new york. he spun a fat show. i danced my flu away:










v for vachina








i finally left everyone at about 2:30 am outside of a bar in a hutong district nearby because my extra-strength tylenol wore off and my fever was back with a vengeance. so much fun. i must have scared the shit out of my flu, because the next day i woke up chipper and ready to roll to our FIRST olympic event - athletics qualifying rounds. thanks to sherry and her superior planning skills, we procured these tix the day before for about half what the other scalpers were charging:




women's 400 meter



the torch



herzog & de meuron's bird nest, sherry admiring in foreground







after at least an hour of post-olympic giddy times,




steph in purple, marc in red


we headed to the legation quarter, which is a project that my company did some work for to see maison boulud, daniel boulud's newest restaurant. not only did we get to hang out with chef boulud himself, who toured us around the restaurant,








the red room, ready for al roker!








that's chef daniel boulud to marc's left


thanks to marc's contacts - marc is an amazing chef also - we also got to see the kitchen, chat with the chef de cuisine, brian reimer, and managed to invite ourselves back for drinks that night. stoked! we are all intense foodies, so this was an incredible honor as well as being just an incredible experience. i mean, look at that kitchen! it's spotless. there are glass tiles on the walls for god's sake. the building restorations are really mind blowing, and i work for two exceedingly talented and famous architects, so that's saying something.

and on... we then went to boxing (light and midweights):



prelims

which were cool, but after a while, suffice to say the crowd got bored enough to start singing 'the star spangled banner' during a match when neither opponent was american. our favorite fight was india vs. thai, because we were able to stretch the curry vs. curry joke the entire night.


we went to pick steph up from mao live again, and caught the most fucking amazing beijing band, queen sea big shark. steph has been insisting on their greatness for months now, but only last night did i realize how stupid i was being in not immediately dropping everything i am doing and following them around everywhere. they are an incredible show. i now insist you visit their myspace page and listen to their stuff. 'man on the moon' was what got me, being a girl and it being a ballad and all. in fact, it's constantly looping as i write this.






after that, we made our very late way back to maison boulud, where we caught the chef at the bar drinking a beer, the restaurant completely empty. the extremely kind man that he is to us so very imposing group of people, he had his bartender make us delectable martinis from lychee / raspberry / rose-infused vodka, then disappeared behind closed doors to reappear with plates and plates of food that he had chef brian reimer prepare. i'm talking foie gras, country pate, three types of bread, and a impromptu terrine made from the leftover suckling pig from al roker's birthday celebration held there earlier that evening. i wish i was kidding (no, i don't), but it was that intense of a day. we were beside ourselves with joy. it was about 1:30 am at that point and i hadn't eaten dinner, so i was especially grateful and ecstatic.



my martini, with a formed ice cube encapsulating a rose petal. awwwww





what a weekend.

3 showers a day. cold.

i'm feeling slightly disgusted with the media hype about the 5-ring circus. there are hella foreigners here! who the hell was talking shit about all the denied visas? wait, that was me. well, i should know better than to listen to the hype. although i guess trevor had a nightmare of a time getting his visa extended to a pathetic july 15. they must've kicked out all the dj types scraping by on F visas in between visits to hong kong every 30 days and replaced them with a shitload of smiling faces and happy families, because that's all i'm seeing on the street. i barely see chinese people. in a city of 17 million, that's saying something.

i finally watched american psycho. i never really wanted to see the movie, mostly because i'm a culture snob and prefer to read the book over seeing the movie while sticking my nose in the air, but also because christian bale weirds me out. i'll have to get over that when i go home and see batman, but meanwhile... i don't know if it was the msg-laden (leaving in a month! gotta bone up on msg before i leave!) dumplings we had for dinner, but that movie was making me feel dizzy and ill. and it wasn't nearly as nasty as the book.

who knows.

it's thundering like a mother outside and i hope the weather clears up for tomorrow's brunch 'n pool session. we've grabbed about 8 friends, rented a van, and are heading to le meridien on the outskirts of shanghai for the all-you-can eat brunch and pool usage.

i should start a new section for the shit i'm about to dive into (pun intended).

here we go.

ahem.


pools in china (where the fuck is the underline function?)

are either dirty or have about 100000000000000000000000000000 people in them. i am not fucking kidding you. see pic below of madhouse fake beach pool thing called dino beach in shanghai (totally ripped the photo from the sh municipal government page, sorry), aka hell on earth. therefore it stands to reason that any decent pool in shanghai is closely guarded by strict-ass, borderline ridonkulous regulations for entry. normally sherry and i circumvent the workout aspect of pool access by going to jill's place, which has a clean 50 m pool, usually fairly empty. still, we had to promise our first born children to gain access. but for the summer, all of us americans want that vegas pool party, strawberry daiquiri, my-flag-is-up, hawaiian tropics kind of pool thing. and we are sadly deprived.





so we hatched a plan, resourceful vitamin d-hungry alcoholic girls that we are. tomorrow we are going to le meridien, boondocks version (vs. the one centrally located), and will plunk down rmb 318 for free flow beer and wine (including sparkling, you know that got my ass on board) and all you can eat, which in shanghai usually includes beijing duck, foie gras, dim sum, and sashimi. plus you get all day access to an actual outdoor pool. i am not sure how the mosquito thing will work out, but i'm bringing my 7% deet. i suspect it will be super crowded and less than clean, but shit, don't know till you try, right?

*end rant*

jesus, my place is being blown to pieces. and now its pouring rain. this shit better clear up before we leave tomorrow.

i'm normally happy about getting a little bit of color, but i'm kinda eh about getting darker in my old age. is it the whitening products endlessly marketed in asia finally getting to me? doubtful. i went and became one of those people that burns a lot after my teenage years. it's the weirdest thing. the minute you go and stop swimming outdoors year round, you turn into a differently-complected person. my dad was kind enough to point out that i was 'really pale!' when he came a-visiting. thanks, dad. i would have felt strangely insulted about that in my younger day, but now it's kinda like, meh. i work inside all day. it happens.

lucky day triple 8!

see ruby's:

http://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/shanghai/dining/dessert.htm

so today is the commencement of the summer games! the whole city (country, i dare to extend) is buzzing with excitement. most companies have given their employees half days off. true to the nature of my business, my company did not. hence i am writing this.

anyway, this is short one because i am sneaking out soon to run around the bund and sniff out the good parties for later tonight with sherry, but we had cake to celebrate the olympics (cheaper than letting your employees leave at 1 pm?) and it was the shit.

you have to be a fan of the chinese cake variety - super soft cake, cream, and either fruit or chestnut filling - ruby is your girl. i don't like cake, but chinese cakes remind me of birthdays when the only cake i would entertain would be chestnut-filled cakes topped with those ubiquitous but somehow tantalizing mandarin oranges. i love those.

anyways, i'm off to rage.

for lack of thai oil...

at saadiq's suggestion about thai oil for my purple, lumpy, swollen legs, i remembered these little bottles that came free with my economy-sized white flower oil that i love so much: hoe hin strain relief!

it doesn't smell 'horrid,' as i guess thai oil should, i hope that isn't indicative of its weaker healing powers. when chinese medicine is concerned, if it doesn't stink to high heaven, it's somewhat suspect in its effectiveness. it's making my leg tingle and feel warm, which i guess is better than nothing. it smells cinnamon-y.

i can also douse myself as i see fit since i'm not at the office and vulnerable to 'you smell like an old person' comments.

switzerland

trev sent around this short piece in response to western media outlets covering china for the olympics. he was crafting a mass email masterpiece to precede the head-nodding goodness of the piece itself, but decided that it spoke for itself and needed no introduction.




“Reporter Guidelines for Covering the Beijing Olympics. 1) On arrival, set the scene by saying a few nice things about the infrastructure—the high rises and the multilane highways, the interchanges. Developmenty sort of stuff. 2) Make an amusing, self-deprecating comment about your inability to speak or read the funny language they have in China. Play down the fact that you are dependent on a translator for quotes and newspaper reading. Never admit in print to getting story ideas or borrowing quotes from the China Daily. 3) Get story ideas and borrow quotes from the China Daily. Make sure you do this discreetly. For background only. 4) Now for reportage. After saying the nice things about the new buildings, get your translator to find a Beijing yam seller whose slum was knocked down to make way for the Olympic badminton hall. Do a few paras on him, and how all the money thrown at the Games is not helping the poor, and how terrible the huge income gap is. Make sure you write at least three times as much about the yam seller whose slum was pulled down as you do about all the new apartments, new metro lines, the growth in car ownership, the expanding health insurance and all the other good news about China that nobody in the west really wants to know about. 5) Say how horrible the air in Beijing is, even if it isn’t on the days you are there. Everybody says Beijing air is horrible, so play along. 6) The political bit. Interview a token party member, but reword him subtly to make it sound like he is just spouting the party line. Bend the translator’s words to fit—it’ll be rubbish English anyway. (Ditto in all quote treatment). Then find a good Chinese, one who is fluent in English, has lived in America or Britain, and is prodemocracy. Give them lots of space, let them sing. Martin Lee types, but preferably younger and female, for the mugshot. If you can get an interview with the Olympic artist, Ai-whatsisname, who is an anti-Commie quote machine, give him full throttle. Hopefully, he hasn’t been arrested yet.
Lastly, please remember: Chinese who love their country are called “nationalists.” Never use this word for Americans, French, Tibetans and other civilized peoples who love their country or territory. When demonstrators protest over Tibet they are acting in a heartfelt, spontaneous way, waving pretty flags you would be happy to see woven into your granny’s bedspread. When Chinese counter-demonstrate, they are always “bussed in,” the mood is “ugly”, and they are draped in intimidating red flags that can be made to look a bit Hitler Jugend-ish with the right kind of photo. (They probably did arrive in buses as this is the cheapest way of moving numbers of not-very-well-off people around, but you don’t need to prove the insinuation that the regime laid on the vehicles). Beijing is always a “regime,” by the way, and is not to be confused with western “governments.” (But: Hong Kong is an exception. Because it was under benign, enlightened British dictatorship for a long time, it cannot be a “regime.” “Regime” only applies to dictatorships in rubbish countries).That’s about it. Don’t be deceived by all that friendly smiling and optimism, that’s just a front. It’s your job, with your long days of experience of the Far East and your fluency in a language spoken by nearly 0.005% of the locals, to get under the radar and ferret out the truth. Did I mention how bad the air in Beijing is?”

http://time-blog.com/china_blog/2008/07/a_reporters_guide_to_covering.html?xid=rss-china


unfortunately, the author is unnamed, but it's pretty much A: what i'm seeing in the major papers i read online, and B: true from the perspective of us living here. i do realize that there is a back story behind my dvd store griping and other spoiled-expat behaviors. while there is undoubtedly a great deal of people who have been ousted from major cities or are being pressured from the government to take their small businesses elsewhere, it was a good reality check for me because we've also been seeing some good stuff go down. these include traffic guards at most intersections, lowering the likelihood that you will be mowed down either by a scooter, bicycle, or a car; government reinforcement of the haphazard air flight departure times on all airlines (it's common to sit on the tarmac for 3-4 hours); the awesome transportation changes that have gone down nearly overnight (beijing's T3 airport building, the high speed trains to neighboring cities, the underwhelming but convenient longest-bridge-in-the-world from shanghai to ningbo, and the upcoming bullet train between shanghai and beijing, the overall impressive list of buildings that have been erected in beijing like the CCTV tower and the egg / nest / water cube) and etc. some of these achievements cannot be attributed to the olympics alone, but almost certainly to the 1-2 punch of the olympics and the 2010 world expo in shanghai.


anyways, thanks trev for finding that.


p.s. pre-olympics we've also been able to view blogspot urls without any problems, too.

some amusing tidbits

from one of my favorite shanghai news blogs, the shanghaiist:


August 1, 2008
Whatever you do in Beijing, DO NOT wear white socks with black shoes

The Wall Street Journal reports that 4.3 million copies of "an etiquette book outlining rules on good manners and foreign customs, including rules about what not to wear" have been distributed to Beijing residents for use during the Olympics. A snippet: "No matter what, never wear too many colors...especially during formal occasions. When you wear [formal shoes], be sure to wear socks in good condition...socks should be a dark color -- never match black leather shoes with white socks. Older women should choose shoes with heels that aren't too high." Let that be a warning to you.




here's the link to the WSJ article. i found most amusing the guidelines of wearing 3 or less colors at one time. they need to add a sub-topic: only one detail per outfit. you can have ruching, tassels, paint splatter, acid wash, sequins, or drawstrings, but only ONE detail per outfit.

prickly like a cactus

this is the market street up the block from me. it's about a heartbeat away from my friend steph's place, too.

i was walking home from the bus one night when i stopped by to pick up some fruit from one of the stalls that actually stays open late, and noticed the joint was swarming with gray-uniformed officials. i mean, swarming. there were groups of 8-10 all over the place. then i noticed that not only were a disproportionate amount of stalls closed, quite a few had were boards nailed across them with some sort of official notices plastered across. a few of the stalls were being bricked over as i watched. it was some sort of freaky scene from a movie. poof! and things disappear here overnight.

so i wandered by last week and the market is a ghost town. there is one guy selling pork, another stall with seafood, and about 3 stalls with produce of some kind. this used to be the liveliest place in my hood (which is saying a lot - it's a congested area). and i'm not even the biggest wet market fan. i generally think they stink and are unhygienic, and people try to ride over your feet or your entire person with their scooters and bikes, making you want to beat them with the pig leg hanging in that unrefrigerated stall next to you, covered in flies. the occasional car is stupid enough to try and drive down the street, too. but i would be amiss if i didn't also point out that these marketplaces are the sole livelihood of a lot of people, not to mention where the neighborhood does its shopping. if it's not captivating, clean, and beautiful, it's at least functional and i'm sure more than a few people were dependent on its existence.

there's no doubt it's because of the 5-ring circus going down in the capital in august. facades are being erected over storefronts overnight, places are getting spiffed up or spit out or just plain closed the hell down. people are getting rolled on - with a quickness. at my friend jill's apartment complex (a nice one with lots of foreigners) the other morning as she was leaving for work, cops set up a checkpoint at her complex gates and were stopping all the visibly non-asian people from leaving and asking for their residence permits. this pink slip of tissue-like paper is the key to your existence here, apparently. mine is buried somewhere in my tv cabinet, i think (luckily i 'pass' and don't normally get harassed.) 48 hours after moving into a new residence, foreigners are required to register at their nearest police station, like child molesters. military state, this place. anyway, jill saw one foreign girl detained because she didn't have her paper on her since she'd crashed at her boyfriend's place. the police wouldn't let her go, saying that she has to register at the police station even for an overnight.

it's just silly is what it is.

lots of things are changing now. the dvd places aren't worth a damn (ok fine, i get it, but it's annoying), the regulations on mail are ludicrous, and the air in beijing is still filthy and making international headlines.

in other news... steph's company is throwing some big bash (or someone they know is throwing a big bash, or there's just a big bash in general) and will have her own apartment in beijing for a weekend during the olympics, so the girls are all planning on flying up there and joining the madness. i've been scared of being in beijing during the games, but i guess at this point i just do like the romans, grab my stupid pink paper, and join the throngs.

england amorous feeling

that's the name of a shop i just passed on my way home. clever, no? better than ordinary shop names like 'liv tyler' or 'only' or 'belville.' my favorite shop name is 'big toe,' which is a shoe store. logically, you would think, but such logic rarely applies here.

many things have happened since i last checked in. well, not really. trevor left for the states, that's been the biggest news. we're suffering from not being able to text every 7.89 minutes, so consequently we've worked out a semi-schedule that consists of both of us constantly being on the computer no matter what time it is so we can chat. skype has been a rare beast, because mostly he's at his mom's house, which features no less than 2 or 3 people swarming around him at all times. the one time we did skype, his baby sister was at home and later his mom came in and teased him about how 'a certain someone was having an internet conference with a special someone.' trevor, despite his actual age, eventually ended up being flustered about having a skype conversation with me that wasn't a secret to begin with. either way, i log into gmail about 50 times a day to see if he's online. he does the same, often very patiently waiting hours for me to log in. i tell ya, there's got to be another way.

in other news... there really isn't any. yesterday i went to linhai for a factory visit. it is a 3-4 hour drive each way. of course, i slept most of the way in the car. luckily my colleague is shanghainese, so he could at least chop it up with the driver there and back. i cannot stay awake in a vehicle for anything, i'm not sure why. i am the worst road trip companion known to man. except for cynthia. we're tied for last place. once i woke up, however, i was pretty happy, since linhai is situated at the base of the mountains in zhejiang province and is really beautiful and green. much more beautiful than the flat swampland that is shanghai proper.

we met for a total of one hour with the factory execs, did a quick factory tour (15 minutes), then jumped back in the car for another 4 hour drive. this time we had with us the young president of the factory, whose english was excellent. turns out she grew up in linhai but has lived in shanghai the past 16 years, so we gave her a lift back to shanghai for the weekend. i thought for sure i'd stay awake, since there was someone in the car i didn't know too well, plus we had just signed a contract to do work with them, plus she speaks great english, but we managed to chat politely for about 10 minutes before i completely passed out again for 3 hours. i'm shameless, i tell you.

i got home, made myself some dinner, then chatted with trevor (aka helped him with his resume) for a few hours. sherry organized a trip to xitang today and even booked a driver, but i pulled a lame one and decided to stay home. i slept for 10 solid hours last night (despite the 6-odd hours i got in the car) and could not be convinced that touring a water town in 100-degree weather with 65% humidity was a good idea. water to me means mosquitoes, and i get enough of them here. we are looking to try and take more weekend trips before i leave (and just in general), and i applaud sherry for always being the inspired one on excursions.

today i happily spent chatting with trevor, who sent me about 100 pics of chicago and of his dad and brother, then finally getting my shit together to run errands and get my daily exercise. daily exercise is a piece of shit in the summer. my knee is questionable, so i am taking a break from yoga and 'walking' at trevor's urging. one of the first things he learned about me (besides my general dope-ness) is that my mom is diabetic (2) and that i am likely on her heels to be the same. it scares him to death, much more so than it scares me, so he has commenced operation harass-the-shit-out-of-me about exercising every day. the upside about operation-pain-in-the-ass (covert name) is that walking around for 30-40 minutes actually qualifies as exercise, so i am able to do it most days.

i feel a couple of different ways about it. one, i find it ironic and a bit sad that trevor believes it necessary to actually ride my ass about exercise. it means that i've become this inactive person in his eyes, someone that sits on her ass and eat chips. (mmmmm...) ok, sometimes i do that. but generally i'm healthy and active (note that generally = when i don't live in china). here the pollution is terrible, my asthma is terrible, and i've paid about a billion yuan for a yoga membership that doesn't include a stairmaster. it means that as long as trevor has known me, i've been relatively sedentary, which is sad to me for some reason.

two (did i lose ya?), i am a bit concerned myself about my potential for developing this disease, and incredulous that this is actually happening to me. my mom tested my blood sugar when she was here and it was really high. i can't swear that it was after a full 8-hour fast, but regardless is was high enough to be considered pre-diabetic and i am not about to end up like my mom. so i decided that my reasoning (aka excuses, see above) for not exercising outside are paltry and lame and that i just need to do it. so far it's been going ok. i joined the boys at their muay thai class last sunday (note: not easy on my knee but fun as hell and i'm going again), and i've been walking or running. i haven't done it every day, but 3 out of 6 and it will be 4 out of 7 tomorrow. it's better than 0 out of 7.

so that's whats been up over here. not a lot.

fido and spot in the wok

http://tinyurl.com/5wdpx7

not for long! sorry, poor, disillusioned, naive PETA lady.




would like to point out that eating dog is deeply rooted in chinese (and filipino, and anywhere else where there are lots of peoples and they hungry) culture. that poor PETA woman needs a reality check. it ain't going away. it's just for show. people love to eat dog here. even the foreigners (above, trev and his best buddy) chow on dog ribs, paws, whatever. it's considered a special treat. trevor gets all FOB on me sometimes and will point out the best type of dog for eating if we happen upon one trotting down the street. only my mom does that, normally.

lots of people here don't eat tofu because it's good for them, more like it fits the budget or tastes good with pork, or stretches that nodule of ground pork for 5 people into a whole dish.

i ain't condoning shit. i eat meat - not dog, but i'm sure i've unwittingly eaten cat or some shit at some hole in the wall here that was billed as 'beef' or 'lamb' - but i draw the line at dog. i've eaten horse sashimi in japan. and ostrich, too, if i'm not mistaken. have also eaten raw chicken in japan. i ain't picky, but the thought of eating dog is pretty nasty and i can't get over the cultural taboo that kinda, you know, forbids the consumption of your pets. but i've also always had plenty of food in my lifetime, so i'm not judging. i'm a proponent of 'nose-to-tail' eating because it both reduces waste and, well, i grew up eating pig feet and fish cheeks, what can i say.

it's your own decision. i'm just saying it sure ain't disappearing from china's horizon any time soon.

being a big girl

...means learning how to pull myself out of a funk. i'm envious of sherry who is on jet air on her way back to civilization for 2 weeks, with all-you-can-drink bloody marys to help her along the way. i'm jealous of trev who is heading back next week. i can't put my finger on why i care so much since i'm heading back more or less permanently in a few weeks myself, but it may have to do with the massive mosquito buffet i've become, making me hate heat and humidity as my limbs swell with little knobby additions that will turn bright purple and make me look like i'm sprouting oddly-colored nipples all over my legs and feet.

i still have the scars from last summer and the summer before. i hate mosquitoes.

i don't venture out of the house or office without a generous dousing in DEET, insuring that my future offspring be born with three eyes or some shit. i can't survive without blasting the a/c. i am so dependent on chemicals and cooling machinery i can't understand how most of the world's population lives like this.

ok. that was little girl time. big girl time means i button it, pop a valium, and say nighty night.