catty catty catty

the cat was good today. even with multiple sources of overstimulation in the form of visiting relatives waving her cat dancer and green ribbons in front of her, and petting her the wrong way, and placing tempting feet with wiggling toes in her path, she didn't take a swipe at anyone. she hid under the sheet of red cellophane that housed my aunt's bright-orange gap jacket, she gamely lunged out after the dancer or prudently ignored it, she adored my aunt's gift box by rubbing against it but refrained from chewing, she even let me cut her nails after everyone was gone and only nibbled me once on the thumb. i think she's maturing. this is a good sign.

finally got skype to work - this time on my laptop - and trev and i have been talking. it's nice to talk without one eye on the timer, stressing about how much its costing him or my sister's international calling account. skype is a good, good thing. looking forward to going back if only to see my favorite face for a few days before it heads back to bj.

three and a half more days of clean air...

blogging

the funny thing about me blogging is that i actually kinda hate reading blogs.

passing the days

relax time for me is a mix of actual relaxation, plus an undercurrent of high-strung guiltiness about work. not working makes it hard for me to relax, but working is working. and aren't holidays all about not working? whatever. i never did deal well with stress and i think i'm just getting worse at it as i get older. terrible at drawing boundaries.

yesterday was the outlets and today was 4th street in berkeley. neither are major shopping destinations for the holidays, but tell that to the crowds we beat off. all i do is walk around and mentally compare the US with china. i marvel every five minutes as how lucky americans are. still, i think more and more that i'll be glad to leave china. i know living in the states is insular and we're ungrateful and wasteful and wealthy and use too many plastic water bottles, but being in china is wearing thin. it's been less than 18 months, too. sure didn't last very long, eh? here at home i've gone running in the woods and walking around the neighborhood with my sister, there's clear sunlight and industry, it's all building up to the consensus that china is dirty and i don't want to go back. there's opportunity there, and i'm grateful for the experience, but right now i think about china and the only thing i do is feel irritated.

being an expat is a weird place to occupy. you have your criticisms about the society in which you were raised, and the one that you have temporarily adopted. you watch the american SUVs zoom by, see the kids drinking starbucks and carrying cell phones, buying piles of crap at target and claire's and using words like 'need' when discussing a seventh gray sweatshirt or new nikes. you sit in heated leather car seats and drive your dad's german-engineered car, revel in your boxes and boxes of 800-gram weight towels and frette bedding and the stacks of sweaters and belts and handbags and candles you blew your paychecks on. you think about these things and wonder where you fit in now with these luxury items and a newly minted conscience. where would you be if you hadn't spent so much money on things that just take up space now, that didn't enrich your life or those around you but sure made you happy when you wore new outfits to work for 4 days in a row. you spend 45 minutes in calvin klein, trying everything you can but walking out with nothing thanks to your new china size and your new china frugality. am i really going to be one of those women that drive around in a minivan with an armchair-sized ass encased in terrycloth sweatpants? and when i am, will i look at myself and care? will i just write all this shit down on some free blog service and forget about it once i'm back in a place where i can drink tap water and buy designer bath products for my dog?

i really don't know. all of these thoughts - i'm not exactly fraught with them but i am aware - dance around and i wonder where it'll all settle out. what will be the end-product of it all. i'm ok with it going absolutely nowhere, i understand that stepping outside of consumerism - even just mentally - makes me a weirdo here. mostly i think i'll just have flashes of conscience like i do now, will likely write them down, then turn back to my peets cup with my organically-shampooed dog snoring beside me, wonder what to eat for dinner, and move on.

i read in the chronicle today that front-page article about yusef bey and his followers. i think about chauncey bailey and the obvious implication that the death of the journalist and the bey party are linked. i think about what it would be like to be walking around downtown oakland in broad daylight, maybe thinking about lunch or that stupid email you got from a colleague or your kid's shoes for god's sake, and getting killed with that unimportant thought still in your head. maybe food still in your teeth or that stain on your tie. it makes me feel so aware of how important life is, but unable to act out how to demonstrate that. appreciate every moment? hug your mom? recycle and reuse? spend holidays in soup kitchens or donate more money? go to museums? become vegan? demonstrate at rallies? lose that weight?

homey loo

finally getting a handle on this jetlag. arrived home last week, and have conducted a rather extensive food tour of my favorite spots since the plane touched down. tartine, immediately after the airport. (a big shopping break at jeremy's - armani jacket and gucci sweater, 3 pairs of shoes.) pho for lunch at ao sen on e12th. dins with the village, korean bbq. since then, we've conquered more vietnamese, da bi no at my pah pah's house, tonight is burritos. me and grandma. it's on. right now she's getting her grub on with the almond chocolate pocky we bought her yesterday.

besides my tummy, the doggie has been benefiting rather nicely from my return. walks twice a day, nighttime runs. she seems to appreciate it. the cat, another story. her fat ass is so plumpy for the generous hand my mom has with her food. she's only getting one scoop a day from me, and she's not happy about it. she's wearing so much fat under her fur, she looks like a plushy snow leopard. without the fast and agile part.

saturday was lively. met up for dinner with former work peeps and their extended friends. drinks at casanova - $19 for a guinness, a pbr, a shot of jim beam, a sapphire tonic, and a belvedere cran? we're going back! - went for a couple hours, bumped into another few coworkers, then off to some lame joint in the marina. i promptly got rejected for my lack of ID (damn it. driver's license no longer lives in the wallet! no need for it in china) so jenn and erik and i sought out irish coffees at perry's. heavy on the irish, my friends. very very heavy. we almost couldn't finish them. jenn swears the guy used one shot of espresso for the three of us.

after perry's we headed late-night to the aquarium. running around at 4 am in the aquarium? petting the sea turtle. having giant sea bass swim up to us. the touchpool with starfish and abalone and anemone! sticky tentacles.

btw - i love berkeley bowl. about $100-worth of love.

hot orange soda

just saw a relatively narsty 'comment.' may have to start screening my peeps. none of this porno shit.

so last night was long, an office night, but always tempered by the presence of others. the whole of the graphics team, no less. at around 8:30 one of the kids developed a hankering for macdonald's and called for delivery. (for those stateside, macdonald's delivers all over the damn place in asia.) they refused, however, to deliver to my office, so christine, out of desperation, took a cab to nanjing and picked the order up herself.

spicy chicken sandwiches never tasted so good. the funny and notable 'i-live-in-asia' moment arrived with the drinks. kenny had placed the phone order ahead of time, and i asked for a coke, but what arrived were what looked like coffee cups, each in their own plastic bag. hot drinks. i sniffed several and they all smelled citrusy. i'm thinking, hot orange soda. great. but it actually turned out to be pretty good. not soda, more like tea with pomelo juice. there were actual pieces of pomelo pulp on the bottom (not to be confused with grapefruit, because, in the words of frank but altering the meaning, pomelos are IMMENSE).

so anyway, i'm going home tomorrow. HOME HOME HOME. land of the good food and somewhat clean air and all dat shit. i can't wait. i'm bringing home 4 coats - courtesy of my sister and cousin - and hella work shit and a smidge of clothes for myself. i spent the evening packing and now i'm considering meeting the girls out at some event on moganshan. some artsy fartsy business.

why am i craving macdonald's? that's just wrong.

silver bells

man it took me a long time to gain access to blogger tonight. good thing i have work to distract me from the long load times :)

i got some 'comment' from what looks like a german website. may i ask why fools spam your ass in a different language than that which you speak (or in this case, write?). not only are they ignored because they're rude enough to send spam, but they're double ignored because they send german spam. probably latched onto the one german word or phrase i have on here and decided it was worth the risk.

what's new... not too much. decided that i need to learn to stay my ass at home. sherry and i are way too used to calling each other up at the end of the day, or sending 'what time you off???' messages to each other, our secret code language for, 'let's get our eat on!' which ensures both of us spending money we don't need to spend, plus me staying out hella late when i should be jumping my ass on the bus around 8:45 (i rolled in at 10:45 this morning. for the love of god what is wrong with me) in the morning, meaning that i should be asleep right about now. and also it tends to drive this habit of eating really late at night, which is no good for the digestion or the waistline. and though i struggled so much with this last year around xmas, i really AM looking forward to going home next week and hiking with the doggy or running by the ocean. the likelihood is higher this time, esp since my cousin and sister are all gung-ho walkers now. around the lake, in the hills, whatever. i'm going to make them make me do it. i can still fall asleep on the floor in front of the fireplace with my dad and the dog, but this time it needs to be after a long stroll or run. capice?


i am super babbling.

went to a trial mandarin class today. i will start early jan, but i wanted to make sure i liked the institution and the system before committing. survey says... i'm relatively impressed. the lessons ain't cheap, but it is quite professional, and the class i sat in on (only one student) was quite good. the teacher included me in the convo as much as the student, and made me talk a lot. that's good. i need an ass-kicker type to motivate me, or i run all over your ass. additional bonus - it's always a relief to hear a non-shanghainese person speak mandarin. shanghainese-tinged mandarin is a mushmouth, oddly-accented, very confusing sound for the beginning mandarin speaker. i do not lie.


time for bed.

sunday nights

heroes, season 2 marathon.

one soma for my muscle twinge. floating around for a while, but now i think i'm back down to earth.
what else is going on... work work work. today i had a wonderful day off and we spent it eating rou si mian and tang bao next door, and running around looking for handmade shoes places (mr. billy still looks the best), and buying tangerines, and walking in the cold air. thank god for weekends. yesterday i took the afternoon off and we watched the pie-eating contest at kommune then decompressed with some serious shopping. uniqlo is the bomb, but you have to go to the 'dong where the big one is. happily sporting new pseudo fair isle sweater and there's a bagful of other stuff waiting to be worn this week.

aaahhh. retail therapy is the BEST.

cleanin up the mess you made

taco night again. overstimulation.

sometimes, despite how much you love someone, there can be too much of that one person. i don't know why i work the way i do, but i function so much better when i have space to breathe. i am a better person for it, avoiding people and noise and social interaction when i'm just too tired to function under the weight of it. it's not an issue of physical fatigue - it's the emotional burden of shouldering simple social dynamics, even with people i am friends with and enjoy being around. when i feel like i've reached the end of my rope - however that happens, in whatever capacity - i really just don't have a good time when i'm around people, no matter how beloved. there's just too much going on, too much noise, too many undercurrents, too many careless comments that sting just a little or are just a tad inappropriate. i feel tired from catching and reacting to all of these little things, feeling uncomfortable for that person or trying to rescue that conversation from heading down that path. it's just exacerbated when people are drunk and i'm not. it's not my responsibility to save anything, but i think when you're the type that's wired to notice everything, you can't help but feel like you should.

in moods like that i just need to be at home, alone or with someone who knows how to be silent, writing or reading perez or doing anything but having to think about my behavior within the confines of society and how to act and what's right and what's wrong. at the end of some weeks, it's just too much. it's too hard. i am listening to john mayer and pretending that i'm on an island with my laptop and a mysterious outlet that's popped out of the sand. because we all know vaios have shit for battery life.

25 hours of shooting later...

chris taking a break from styling



that photographer was the most bend-y little dude


wearing the requisite feet shower caps to keep from footprinting the white set



this was the most interesting thing of all - the building we were in was being renovated, and all of the migrant construction workers just live on-site. this is their living area - you can see their makeshift beds against the wall - in the parking-garage area of the building, ground floor. the not-so-great thing about it was that there was no running water in the studio, and we had to share the Nastiest Bathroom in the World with the workers, which made us all self-dehydrate in hopes of avoiding usage of it.

my couch is my friend

back from an all-day stint at the photo studio. i have another one tomorrow and an in-store the day after. glug. i never knew that a person could be so anal retentive about photography, but our guy was. i was at the studio for 10 hours and i swear to god we only got through 40% of our product list. probably less, i may just be saying that to make myself feel better.

anyhoo, enough shop talk. i don't want to think about it anymore.

the right side of my body (facing the heater) is nice and warm. my left side keeps getting hit with gusts (my very non-airtight windows facilitate this) of cold-ass air. trev was kind enough to warn me last night on his way to the train station that SH would be getting cold tonight. good thing i paid attention, because all day in the studio it was pretty chilly. studios aren't known for their good heating systems.

well my thanksgiving dinners went off without a hitch! or maybe there were so many hitches no single one stood out. the office loved the turkey and stuffing and sucked down gravy like there was no tomorrow. i was a bit alarmed. saturday i was up at 7 making the stock and chopping veggies, making more cornbread. turkey went in at 11 am and was ready at 2:30, stuffing went in after, then i made a quick pie crust - with trev's right-hand forefinger crimping the crust, it was classic - and we threw together a little quiche that came out nicely. in between all of this was the repairman for the washing machine (needs to be taken in), the repairman for the dryer (fixed in less than 5 minutes), and the stovetop repairman (replaced my gas hose which had been leaking and was dangerous. he also removed the oven from its little cubbyhole space while the turkey was still cooking!). i can't believe a decent thanksgiving turned out as a result of the chaos.

kate's gift to our dinner was caesars - the canadian take on the bloody mary, made with clamato and rimmed in salt and black pepper. delicious discovery! a little too delicious. pretty much everyone at the dinner - and there were a ton of us, at least 15? - ended up hammered. sherry, trev, and i took a couple of tokes out on the balcony, and, in jason's words, sherry and i 'staggered in, downed a huge plate of cake, and then crawled into the guest room and passed out.' i woke up probably 30 minutes later, feeling a lot better. naps are the bomb! went back out into the living room and the party was still going. gotta love nights like that.

kate wins the award for the most adventurous night. she's madly embarrassed about her evening - which she doesn't recall, i think thanks partly to those caesars - but let's just say when you're down on your luck, and your shoes and pants have gone missing, head to your nearest guard shack. they pepper shanghai - every housing community has a couple - and the guards are quite kind. they'll put you up in their shack, and even cover you with a blanket for the night. tee hee!

alright, i'm starving after a day spent fixating on the reflections given from the lighting boxes against lacquer finishes. time to eat and then it's bedtime for me.

xoxo.

g & ts

argh. i don't even think i drank that many last night, maybe 2 or 3 when all was said and done. but i guess when you drop those drinks down to a tummy that only holds a bowl of jook... it's twice as effective!

kate came by last night with a backpack full of booze + mixers and we settled in a for a long dish session while i made a quick cornbread batch for tomorrow and packed up the staled bread - unchewed by any little rat teeth, thank you. stupid asshole shitface dumbass rat.

this very fine hungover morning i'm trading going into the office for washing out the large styrofoam cooler (ayi delightedly showed me yesterday that she'd found the perfect place to store my boots!) and bleaching the shit out of it. i'm going to make this brine in a minute, after my coffee soaks in. i had 2 pieces of semi-ok toast from city super. china = bland ass bread, in case you're wondering. at least it wasn't made of complete air. i went through and molested all the bread in the bakery, hefting them all to see which loaf had some weight to it. sherry and i were sadly disappointed by the multigrain raisin 'bread' we bought the other week. it seemed as if the raisins were suspended in mid air.

cyn arrives around 4 pm today, but sadly i have to head into the office for some dog and pony show at 3 pm that apparently my boss signed me up for (note: i am the show). even from europe she's managing to facilitate guanxi. anyway.

our xmas plans are well under way. next week should be insane! looking forward to it. i'm going to take pics of our store holiday concept. it's going to be crazy. i can't wait.

vermin

sitting on the sofa, typing. half talking to trev and half playing freecell. over the top of my laptop screen, i see movement in the kitchen. a medium-sized rat strolls his ass - not scurries, not runs, STROLLS - through my kitchen.

he sniffs thoughtfully. stops. raises himself on his hind legs to take a deeper sniff. spies me moving - sitting up in shock and incredulity at the cojones on this motherfucker - in the corner of his eye and u-turns, then jogs away, deep in thought.

it's tough, being a rat. you have to live from the trappings of others, are viewed worldwide (except for that crazyass temple in india) as vermin, are in constant fear for your life. people see you and try to stomp on you. trap you with peanut butter and cheese (or banana bread, in steph's case) and hope that your spine snaps when you're ensnared.

i heard that fucking bitch tap-dancing on the smashed cardboard box i left in the living room last night. it was so loud i actually woke up, which, as trevor pointed out, is impressive. i think he also knocked my fucking mosquito lamp down, which means this bitch thinks this is his home, all crawling all over my shit. i thought it was the trucks rumbling by, which make my floor shake, but that's never knocked it down before.

i bet my crazyass neighbors hand-fed him under the generous crack in my door. it's probably their nastyasses that drew him here in the first place. bitches.

vermin! i live in a house filled with vermin.

business plans

i think that i have essentially been signed up to construct a business plan for my company for the next 5 years, which sounds to me like a big deal, but doesn't seem to be a big deal to anyone else. it's like, very offhand. "oh, you know that business proposal you wrote a while back? about our goals for the next decade? go ahead and flesh that out, build out all the personnel and budgeting we're going to need for that, all of the actionable items and who should do them, you know. that sort of stuff."

oh. ok. well why didn't you just say so?

so i made a discovery last night - sherry had some free massage coupons so we headed late-night to the dragonfly on donghu. normally i'm not a big fan of the element fresh-esque mass market massage joints, but a free massage is a free massage. i was going to opt for the regular chinese massage (which, i'm slowly developing a theory regarding, is an oxymoron because chinese people don't have an additional mental dimension for customer service and the pleasing of another person, in my opinion, doesn't exist here. but i digress), but sherry was going for shiatsu and so i decided to give it a whirl.

2 conclusions:

#1: i will, from now on, request a male masseuse. my theory is that they tend to have larger hands and therefore broader fingerpads and the 'pokey' phenomenon that small chinese female fingers seem to have is therefore dispelled. and,

#2: shiatsu, when done correctly, actually functions a lot more effectively for people who want to get knots out of their muscles then the general, crowd-pleasing 'swedish' style or the afore-mentioned, not very enjoyable, 'chinese massage.'

i'm very happy for taking the shiatsu plunge, and more than a little surprised that i got a good massage at dragonfly.

sherry didn't have as great of a time and halfway through the massage stopped her girl and sent her in for a new one. then we were both happy.

i'm running off in a little bit to this new kitchen and baking supply store near me called, 'pantry magic.' according to chris st. cavish, pantry magic (sounds like a product you would hawk on an infomercial) buys from factories that make all-clad, calphalon, and the like to provide people like me a place to burn hard-earned cash. i really need measuring cups of the 'cup' and '1/2 cup' variety - enough with this stupid 100 ML bullshit - and a pastry blender and some pie pans for thanksgiving. i reluctantly bought a rolling pin last night at ikea. i will need one to roll out pie crust but i'm very stingy with my kitchen space. namely, because i have none, and rolling pins are not easy to store.

anyhoos. after a 4 am bathroom flooding involving my washing machine and it's tendency to 'walk' when spinning dry my very heavy bath rug, and a nice long skype session with trev after getting up this morning (we can 'hang out' on saturday mornings even when we're in different cities! thank you video cam), i will meander down to pantry magic, then probably nap and go get a manicure with sherry, and then we have a dessert extravaganza waiting for us courtesy of steph at jade. not bad for a saturday.

for the record, i do try and blog more often (like this past wednesday) but am often unable to log on to blogger, tor or no tor. i think the internet activity is just so high on weekdays at 11 pm that its next to impossible sometimes. so sorry for not being very regular these days.

i'm going to be back in the bay dec 14. fasten those chin straps, you're going to need a helmet!

chippy chap

when my cousin emails me, instead of using 'chit chat,' she says 'chippy chap.' i think it's the cutest thing. it reminds me of little birds twittering or something.

left work and met sherry at the xintiandi tian jia, but i just wasn't feelin it. we ended up ordering and eating nearly rmb 600 worth of food and booze, but jason sms'd me midway through the meal about burgers and beer and honestly i could've knocked out a cheeseburger no problem. oh wells. toro is better for my arteries. and sake is better for... something. we then went to city super to do some pre-shopping for the dual-thanksgiving extravaganza i'm about to embark on and i dropped another chunk of change there. damn. damn. damn. all my hard work taking the bus and eating crappy lunches gone to the wayside! although i have to admit that i love taking the bus and would choose to do so over a taxi any day anyways.

so now i need to get my ass in bed so i can get up and actually roll into work before 10 am. i need to review 1000 things with JJ and get our new gift assortment in ASAP! i need to pull together the photo shoot. i need to pull together the last-minute ad i want to place in a certain publication. i need to pack all my yoga stuff for my class. i need to do so many goddamned things... and least of all (but still important to me), my work wardrobe is killing me. not wearing jeans is a huge problem for yours truly when the weather gets cold. i don't want to go and start shopping but i can only rotate one pair of wool pants and one pair of cords so many times. sneaking jeans in when i know my boss won't be around. it's a dirty shame, i tell you.

oh, trev and i saw the new ang lee movie last weekend. halfway through i was thinking, 'i don't like this movie,' but then afterwards i couldn't stop thinking about it, so i changed my mind. plus tony leung is kinda hot in this odd, intense way. the gratuitous ess-ee-ex scenes were dutifully deleted (already my coworkers are hinting that they want me to bring back the full version from the states) but i hear they're pretty full-on. as my dad would say, hotcha, hotcha!

oh, and i totally forgot my mom's birthday. it was saturday. i'm terrible! in my defense, however, we were never really sure when her birthday was because she was born in china where calendars weren't used (something like, the fourth day of the second week of the eleventh lunar cycle) so she kept changing her birthday around. for most of my childhood it was nov 8, then she abruptly decided it was the 10th. who knows.

i'm uninspired

back from beijing tonight. flew into pvg which i think i'll do again when coming in on sunday nights, because there was absolutely no taxi line and the flight was cheaper. noice. even considering the difference in cab fare between flying into hongqiao vs. flying into pudong.

so we all suspected that my old house apartment would be pretty freezing in the winter - old houses in SH tend to have poor plumbing, be cold, and have bad windows - but so far i'd doing ok. i come home and turn on the radiator in my room, and let it warm up the room while i putz around. it works pretty well so far; my room's always warm despite the 20-foot ceilings, plus there's the nice radiator smell, which always makes me feel warmer even if i'm not. i bet most people hate the smell of a heater warming up, but i've always liked it. i also like the smell of gasoline, for whatever that's worth. as a kid i used to stick my head out of the window when we pulled into a gas station and deeply inhale, and it drove my mom nuts. she'd be like, stop smelling that stuff! it's going to give you brain damage! she may have a point.

well, off to bed, i guess. i'm actually on bed right now. i can't wait to get a new bed. this one is nice to look at but is so broken i'm afraid to move too much. it shakes if i take a deep breath. lame.

back to the grind! yuck.

post-yoga glow

if someone tries to steal my towel again when i'm showering at the yoga studio, leaving me to dry off with paper towels and the fucking blowdryer, i'm going to grab her by the fucking hair and knock her goddamned teeth in.

namaste.

damn i'm tired

so yawning and exhausted, post-burrito, waiting to hear back from kate. i'm so tired i'm hoping she's having too much fun to notice that i'm not there, but i suspect this is denial, not just a river in egypt, having received a desperate sms about 40 minutes ago to get my ass to volar for a rescue mission. sherry just left (back from tokyo!) and i'm suffering the effects of our carnitas super burritos plus beer plus the nutty bar chocolates cyn left behind, following the first hot class i've taken in months. omg.

cyn left this morning, piling an impressive amount of our old household into her dad's minivan (just like college! only over a decade later and with locals buzzing by us on electric bicycles) and hit the road for zhuhai, complete with michael the driver, amy the random, and kodi. a new chapter begins, one that begins with me signing up for mandarin classes. i have to defeat being mired in silence and monolinguality, even if it results in fewer games of charades with ayi (the ironing board is broken! leave it here and i'll tell the landlord so they don't charge you! the phone doesn't work and the roof leaks! they're coming to fix it next week!). i know cynthia gets a kick out of watching us attempt to communicate, but its not so fun being on the receiving end of it. either of them.

last night we went to xindalu with jason and dan and mormon, cyn's dad always in pursuit of a nice meal. true to rumors, the 'beijing duck operation' that they brought down from the capital is really outstanding. the meal overall was excellent, and we staggered home (ok, rolled home comfortably in the minivan) after fried goose liver with green onion pancakes, beggar's chicken wrapped in leaves and baked in clay, garlic ribs with a thick layer of fat, and of course, the duck and many smaller dishes. potstickers. green beans with pork. beef tendon. and a nice red from new zealand.

is it poor form to flake on a friend twice in a week? i know it is, i know. and what can i blame? nothing, no one. fatigue from the week, overly large dinners that are gastric piledrivers, myself. not being one of those naturally high-energy people that can work and then go out just as hard. i've never been able to do both.

here's a pic that i stole from my sister off facebook. she is supposed to be emailing me the bali pics, since i took most of the pics from the trip on her camera, but slowly these things happen. we're on the dive boat the first day of diving, at nusa penida. if i look grim its because i'm struggling to stay awake, anti-emetics having that drowsy effect on me. we were popping dramamine every few hours to keep the seasickness at bay.







this one's also from the dive boat, obviously. the dive master in the buddy holly glasses is named igor.

being home is a massage

supposed to head to a massage place with kayi for a tuesday night beddy-bye nightcap of sorts, but i had to move another massive load from the 'dong, and she went to grab some food and we ended up too tired. it's all good tho, being home is good enough. not struggling with cab drivers who are pissed that your boxes are getting their polyester, hole-filled seat covers dirty, not parked on someone else's sofa wishing it was yours and that your teeth were already flossed and brushed. you know what i'm saying. got home and my house was clean, having recovered from my three-boy weekend (not as nasty as it sounds) with some elbow grease donated by ayi.

sigh.

entourage season four is on. and i'm turning in. nighty night.

draggin the wagon

it is only recently that halloween night has been equated to insane nights of partying your ass off. i thought it was about candy! yeah right. anyway, this year, sherilyn manson used her super-organizational skills and put together a pub crawl to be envied with party bus and pre-arranged venue happy hour pricing for us. insanity.




we girls were the kill bill entourage - elle, gogo, sophie, and o-ren ishii. some genius put the event up on facebook as an event, and we filled up a full-length bus instead of the 20-or so peeps that we thought we would be accommodating. i was a little "uh" about that part, but it turned out fine. after a vicious bout of food poisoning all friday night, i spent saturday with sherry and jason driving around looking for costumes, going to metro and loading up and cases of booze and mixers. trev and i were the only relatively sober ones on the bus, thanks to my unstable tummy.

trev brought down a couple peeps from his program. this is what SH does to a person:



shanghai later ate ted's viking hat and atm card, and he rolled back home at 7 am, having not remembered the previous 4 hours. wut..!

and, of course, my favorite pic of all time -





my second favorite photos of all time -



sherry's gettin down on a hot dog. they were pretty good.

now i'm off to sleep for about 10 hours. night!

a love letter

from my sibling yesterday -


"OMG. O-M-G. your f$cking dumb ass cat got herself stuck on the roof last night. I didn't hear her until I woke up and heard all this meowing on the roof when I was calling her to come to the balcony/front porch to eat (trying this new thing where she eats out there). So I go outside and she is on the frickin' roof and can't get down. stupid ass. It is a little after 6 am, totally dark and I am in my pjs trying not to wake gma or the neighbors. I call dad to find out if I can remove their a/c unit from their bedroom window. Nope, so I have to haul out the ladder and set it up right next to the overhang over the side door. I climb all the way up and she refuses to come to me. She won't let me get her. So finally I grab her and drag her off the roof, she's got her claws all out and is trying to dig into the roof tiles. I grab her and then she sinks all her claws into some part of my clothing or body. She punctured me pretty bad behind my neck, it hella hurts, still stinging!! I think the entire length of the claw sunk into my skin. f*cking cat. I truly truly hate her. I used to like cats but now I don't ever want one."


my furry monster is quickly ensuring that her ass is going to be stuck at the SPCA if i don't come home and bring her with me to china.

in other news, my grandmother is leading a new fashion trend - she's taken to sporting only her upper undergarment (3-letter word, often decorated with lace) and a zip-up fleece jacket. my sister discovered this one night as was getting her ready for a shower. grandma apparently then told her, "so that's why i couldn't take my jacket off today!" apparently there's a heat wave in the bay area right now.

the g-woman (as my cousin calls her) has also come up with a new rule - she only needs to use toothpaste at night. i don't know how my sister is hurdling that one; if you put toothpaste on her toothbrush in advance to encourage its usage, she starts hiding her toothbrush (usually in the closet), then forgetting where she puts it, then accusing my sister of stealing it. apparently my sister is also fond of thieving her hairbrush, her glasses, my dad's glasses, and a diamond ring. i'm going to get an earful about ducking my duties as a grandchild when i go back for xmas.

at work, under a deadline. optimal time to be blogging! i couldn't help it, re-reading that email and giggling. not about the cat claw, of course, about the grandma. if i'm anything, i am indeed a procrastinator. 14 letters, one who delays.

off the paces... going to yoga soon, then home for more work and maybe some oatmeal. yes, i know, its ridiculous but i still haven't purchased any food for my house. not home enough. oatmeal is the shit, tho! why would you need anything else? ayi has brought me 3 quarts of milk - i must resemble a calf in some way - and about 3 dozen eggs. i can make custard, i suppose. i do have an oven.

i can't find my mailbox. the landloard said he installed one for me, and i even have the key, but i really can't find it. maybe trev will help me engage in a hunting expedition this weekend.

eyeliner is a good thing

idly watching 'v for vendetta,' which is a weird fucking movie, but i have to say that natalie portman is a remarkable actress. she's so talented.

getting ready now to meet up with the girls and blow off some steam.

the ayi phenomenon

you have to read this blurb from kiran desai's second novel, the inheritance of loss. if you live in china (or india, apparently), you know absolutely what she's talking about:

"biju smelled again, the distinctive smell of a floor being disinfected with phenyl by a sweeper woman both destitute and with a talent for being exceedingly irritating. eyes lowered and swatting bare feet with a filthy rag, she introduced some visitors for the first time to that potent mixture of intense sympathy and intense annoyance." pp 325

i read that and almost stood up and cheered. i've felt, all this time, unable to articulate how i feel about the ayis of china because i hold a huge amount of middle-class guilt for thinking bad things about a person who lives off of what i spent on dinner... but why the fuck can't she stop taking me out with her fucking filthy-ass mop?!?! wtf. damn. there's always about 40 square feet of floor that's completely unoccupied... and yet she keeps knocking my ass over with her infection-on-a-stick. the only difference i can identify with this passage regarding the calcutta airport and china is... at least fools be using disinfectant in india! shit... here ayis will wipe down your goddamned toilet and use the same rag to clean your dishes. i have a theory (yes, i have many, and i may have even mentioned this here before) that ayis are leverage for the lower socioeconomic classes, evening the score by ensuring that you're eating traces of feces and urine and polishing your shoes with your ralph lauren towels. take THAT!

anyways.

i've been meaning to write a piece on ayis for sherry's bad cat blog, but i want to accompany it by a ayi photo with said mop, which i haven't taken yet. so here we are, 6 months later, piece unwritten.

so i went to an nba game last night. wha? yes, you read me right. cavaliers vs. orlando, some pre-season game series in china. sherry got tix and we went with adam (and his driver, god bless him) and sherry's friend, maury, aka prince charming. square jaw, wavy hair, cleft chin, the works. i don't know why i went with the anticipation that they would be selling hot dogs there. what a dope. there was element fresh and a single macdonald's outlet, which was mobbed and didn't even serve fries. fuck that. we drank beers instead. jet li and his family were there, and - get this - kenny g. when you think life can't get any more random, kenny m-f'ing g shows up at an nba exhibition game in the middle of china. i told my bosses today during my performance review that i was at the game last night and saw kenny g, and they told me that they were not only there, also, but sitting next to jet li AND saw kenny g walking on the bund the other day. lol. if anything, life in shanghai keeps your ass entertained.

i can't wait for the weekend to start. i haven't yet spent a weekend in my apartment, plus i am in serious need of some sleep, having been rolling into work especially late this week for unknown reasons, and i need to run about 500 errands for the house. need to hit up ikea and muji and the electronics market and carrefour. all the top-crowd-gathering spots in one friggin weekend. looking forward to losing it and beating someone who hits me for the umpteenth time with a shopping cart!

not really. more like just seriously considering it and remembering that prison in china is no walk in the park, and shaking it off.

sherry and i went to ben jia tonight in gubei and had a korean food feast. i immediately had to hit the shower as soon as i walked in the door - they have this rather neato ventilation system, but you still walk out of there smelling like you're wearing your dinner, and i can't sleep with dirty, food-smelling hair. as sherry says, i'm one of those.

here's a photo from bali - not the beach-bound blue ocean scenes you'd expect. this is ubud, known to be the cultural hub of modern balinese art (and a whole lotta tourists), and the most famous suckling pig restaurant on the island. we spent our first day here, walking around, looking into shops. my sister wanted to buy a painting, but ended up buying some expensive soap. i went expecting to see a lot of galleries and bought... lunch. we also spent the later part of the afternoon at bodyworks, getting beaten to a pulp by the balinese wielders of torture, aka massage therapists. we had to recover the next day (on the dive boat, baby) from our massages.

i want to do a live aboard some day. have you done? i hear they're expensive, but you get to do night dives and cool shit like that. one day i'm going back to krabi and diving the caves there. you WILL be mine...

either this chamomile is really working or i'm tired like a motha... night night.

herro!

So sorry. And I guess in apologizing I’m really not speaking to anyone but myself, but after my sister getting here and diving in Bali for 5 days and spending time in Singapore and then spending more time with my sister in the SH (when it ISN’T fucking typhoon-like weather) and then moving into my apartment and then shooting off to Beijing for the weekend, it’s been a bit hectic. I’ve missed you, though. Now I’m blogging from the safety of my own living room with the chug of my washing machine in the background and enjoying every minute of it. Not that my year in Pudong wasn't one for the books - oh, it was - but it's also nice to be just around the corner from a bus that takes me to work and being able to walk to the hut to see dan spin on thursdays and be an 8-minute cab ride from sherry's place, blabbity blab...

the internet connection at the new pad is somewhat suspect... i'd post photos from bali, but A: i haven't uploaded them yet, and B: i'm afraid that in the time it would take to upload, the connection would be lost and i'd waste yet another evening trying to get on blogger. sigh.

bali was the shit, for anyone who hasn't gone yet. went diving around nusa penida, and on my first dive saw 4-5 manta rays, each spanning at least 7 feet across. those mothas are HUGE. they also flap their odd, wing-like fins to swim, not unlike a large, fleshy, underwater bat. we also saw a school of dolphins and a garden eel. i didn't get to dive tulamben due to a LAME dive shop misunderstanding, so no giant clams this time around, but i'm going back soon.

haven't quite kicked the cold that's lasted 11-ish days... altho much better than i have been. hacking and feeling like i'm choking was faded nicely into only the occasional uncontrollable hacking fit. i'm all about the cough suppressant lozenge. i favor robitussin honey lemon.

what's new with everyone. did the china-bound enjoy their holiday? did the US peeps do anything cool? my sister brought me a suitcase-load of various costco and trader joe treasures - bags of almonds and melatonin and acidopholus and the blaqk audio cd, which i listen to obsessively. we did the SH rounds and had dinner at 1221 and had coats made at the fabric market and strolled around taikang lu and had a really impressive meal at franck's. good stuff. i can't wait to go back for xmas.

alright, the browser is sending ominous signals threatening to close down. send a girl some love.

multi-currency account

only in this city do you get lured out after finishing yoga at 10 pm to laris with the promise of a free dinner, only for it to turn into multiple 'tokyo schoolgirls' at the vault on an empty stomach save for a handful of cashews and some stale cheese crisps with two executives of a shoe conglomerate and your two friends - one of whom is wearing the other's dress held up with a safety pin and her too-small sandals - after which you unknowingly wade through puddles of pink-tinged urine at arguably one of the nicest marble-lined restrooms in the city while wringing your hands in an OCD epileptic seizure over the lack of hand soap, then find yourself on the nanpu bridge at 2 am, almost crashing into a construction truck reversing into oncoming traffic after which you look over and see your taxi pass a motorized scooter (not a motorcycle) carrying a very blithely riding young couple holding their groceries in pink plastic bags on a major traffic artery.

only here do you accomplish that in one night.

do not miss the chance to blow

it shows up a bit dark, so i guess just have a listen

cindy decided on friday that saturday was karaoke night. DOPE. it may take a song or three to warm up, but everyone, and i mean everyone, warms up eventually when we go. last night was classic in that we ventured into new territory - rapping - thanks to both a competition between ben and kate for best emcee, and sherry taking over the song programmng.

who knew that shouting 'california love' could be such a bonding experience? sherry even found 'back to the hotel' by N2Deep, which of course the two bay area girls had to sing. i had that single on tape when i was in like, 5th grade. too fuggin funny. put the pedal to the metal back to the liquor store.

there were, of course, the slow jams being crooned to by the dozen, but we all agreed that it was the hip hop, not the power ballad, that drew everyone in and ensured we all had fun.

t, having declared himself a non-singer earlier in the night, was won over by 'creep' by radiohead (i saw him fall...) and he was soon shouting the lyrics just like the rest of us. some of us, of course, are far more emboldened than others by whiskey green tea and screwdrivers, so air supply and bette midler and TLC was a result of that. we were there until 5 in the morning. good times.

abbey road this morning for brunch. i was trying to avoid a typical carolyn by not ordering a super gimungous meal, and ended up disappointed. just do #79 - it's worth it. i put together my own breakfast with a la carte french toast (so sugary that it actually crunched between my teeth, *shudder*), one fried egg, and a basket of fries. abbey road has some fabulous french fries, even if their french toast sucks, so i couldn't resist, but next time i think i'll just go conventional.

t called the landlord today and we're still on for the 26th! still haven't been swindled yet, apparently. miracle, i think. i'm nervous and excited. my sister's going to help me move when we get back from bali (6 days and counting... whoot whoot!) but i'm still a bit apprehensive. like a baby bird venturing out on her own! my sister's arriving on thursday night - iso fun. already started thinking about which restaurants to go to and what to show her. i have to arrange my holiday time off, too. argh.

discontent

not sure why tho. left work at 7:30 after NO typhoon showed up all day - i was imagining the windows being blown open and the building shaking - and went to yogs. my favorite teacher of all time was teaching, had a great class, came home and there was a PUPPY waiting for me, ate salami and noodles (not together), and now i'm in bed feeling like today was shit.

maybe it was a salami overdose?

the store's starting to come together. most of the display setup will happen tomorrow night. i sure hope the peeps on friday like paper, because they're about to get a shit load! remind me to bring my camera.

i need to get a haircut, so i'm going to try and sneak out either during the day or after work so i don't drag around this sorry mess i've been sporting. sad! bedraggly!

sleep now.

more gems

from my cousin: "CK and I went to Costco this weekend and got your stuff. We had this one arm cashier who was just throwing shit around as he was scanning our stuff. It was pretty wild as if he needed to prove something to us."

lmao. what? that's just random.

typhoon widget or wikipedia or whatever the hell is hitting tomorrow. some naysayers have loftily informed us that it will only be a category 1 by the time it hits shanghai, but work sent an email around saying that we can choose to take tomorrow off and come in on saturday because of it. now that's legit, right?!

bailed on yogs tonight in favor of kimchi ramen in front of the tv. tired and actually rather concerned that if i didn't catch a cab at 8, i'd never be able to get one at 10:30 after yoga. tired... it was a 3 double-espresso day instead of the normal 2. i'd like to blame jetlag (italy's 6 hours behind) for it being so hard to get up in the morning, but really, it's always hard for me to get up in the morning.

may be a work-at-home day despite needing to be in the office for meetings (with colleagues and a boss who might not be there) and store setup for friday. you're coming, right?!?!?!

god i'm tired. smell ya later.

would you LOOK at that...

...the fund transfer went through already. for the uninitiated, still so much takes place in china in the form of cash, meaning that i'll be needing to hand over a friggin brick of bills to the landlord when i get the keys. again, i'll qualify that statement by saying, provided i don't get swindled. i'm excited but still halfway expecting that he's going to give the apartment to someone else despite signed contract in hand because they agreed to pay 150% of what i agreed on. in fact, let's just assume that's going to happen so i'll be pleasantly surprised if it doesn't.

now i only need to make about 8 trips to the atm over 8 days to get the money out. annoying.

back to work for the first time in nearly 2 weeks. i brought in the chocolate and yes, they were gone so quickly that i didn't have the chance to try one. a-ok, actually. ayi also came 'round with cut-up pieces of moon cake for us to have, which was nice. i wonder who thinks up all of these niceties for the office. the medicines in the cupboard, the cracker cabinet, the cut-up fruit in the afternoons. the pitcher she empties milk into (and constant refills because we're like fucking calves in a meadow we drink so much milk) for coffee.

i wrote my cousin an email about italy because she told me before i left, "I think it's so cool that you get to travel for the job. So you don't get to eat pasta or shop at Prada, you are in Milan. I love Italians!!! ... maybe you will have a hot weekend love affair with a HOT Italian stallion." lmao. what? if i had a dollar for every person that brought up an italian stallion when i told them i was going to italy, i'd have... maybe 4 bucks. still funny. i had to let her know that after my first 2 days in italy, i was really not loving the native peoples. after moving to a nicer hotel and finishing the gift show it was a lot better, but really. i mean, i wasn't expecting people to fall over themselves to serve me, but i certainly wasn't expecting china, italian-style. i actually get fewer looks here in china, which is saying something because my people fuggin love to stare. and they can smell a foreigner a mile away. and vice versa. (drum roll.)

not too much interesting to say today because i'm purposely avoiding talking about work. work is work, and i've lived through office politics for a long fucking time so i know how to navigate, more or less. but that doesn't neutralize the.... the only word i can think to use at this point is, fatigue. i'm fucking tired of it. it wore me out at w-s and i don't want it to make me start hating my job here. after a while it all smushes together and i can't differentiate between people who bother me and those who don't, and the only thing i think about in the morning on my way in to work is that i'd rather be doing anything else than going in. i don't want to be there again.

anyways.

my sister sent my this from her phone - scarlett sleeping on the leg of my parent's rottweiler-mix, lola. scarlett, whom my sister frequently refers to as 'fucking whore' or 'goddamn bitch,' apparently attacked lola's leg after the photo was taken in true scarlett style. i never made claims that she was nice.... and my sister isn't really one with cats. no one in my family took to scarlett after i abandoned her at my mom's house. she's combative and mean and kicks everyone's ass, which, i admit, is hard to love. i like a little personality, myself, over crappy obedient-but-dumb animals, but sometimes you have to kick her ass in order to avoid killing her. she's a fucking pain. i know it. my dad's first question when i told him about the apartment was, 'do they allow cats?'

things change so fast

got back friday morning... whew! just about 24 hours of traveling to get home, but made it in one piece. t came down from beijing on the overnight train and it was a fabulous weekend for all. went out for a few quick drinks at cotton's with everyone friday night, then hit the wall around 11:30 and came home and crashed.

saturday i was 40 minutes late to meet my realtor, which turned out to be fine because we ended up waiting another 20 minutes for the landlord of this apartment to show up. i had half a mind to leave, but good thing i didn't because i loved the place and signed a contract that day, after emergency phone calls to trev who ended up coming down and negotiating the whole thing anyway. it's really nice - i'm geeked. moving very very soon... just 2 days before my sister gets here! ooch. cutting it close. i can't believe it happened so fast - but after getting shafted on the last one, i knew i wanted it as soon as i saw it and there we go. provided i don't get swindled or whatever, i guess i'll be in a new place before the holiday...! a bit of anxiety there...


pretty, huh?

then we had a gang over for taco night - jase, kate, kate's friends ashley and hillary, of course t, and sherry eventually made it after huaihai was shut down for a parade and had to take the metro. i didn't eat myself sick this time, thank god. we had tons of beer and wine and then sherry showed up with vodka and blue cheese-stuffed olives and made martinis. i can't hang - martinis are vomitous and blue cheese ain't improvin anything in my book. but the blue cheese fans were swooning... kate and party brought over wine and beard papas. yummy.






i like kodi's pose the best

today was spent at a rib cookoff at the naked cow... rmb 100 got you 5 beers and all you can eat ribs. i thought there would be a catch, but no. an honest-to-god good deal in china that isn't fake and benefits charity? weird that it worked out. outside fun all afternoon and i have no mosquito bites to show for it. strange, no? i haven't gotten bitten since i've been back, which is really strange to me.

back to the grind tomorrow. must remember to bring the shit i bought for the office (yes, chocolate) plus the pounds of catalogs. a bit apprehensive for the windfall that i'm expecting.

nighty night.

you're my lover, not my rivaaaaaaaal

i've had karma chameleon stuck in my head all day, thanks to david from last night. today was successful. and by that i mean i blew enough cash to feel guilty (sure sign i've done the right amount of shopping) and have purchased gifts for the important people. i hope the airport sells chocolates or some shit that i can bring back for the office. chocolates in my office, i think like any and every office in the world, are wholly consumed in under 30 minutes of being left in the kitchen. the one thing my office-mates don't suck down in that amount of time is chocolate-covered espresso beans, which took nearly 2 hours to disappear. i agree - i love coffee more than most things, but i don't need to ingest the bean. nope nope nope.

i bought two pairs of very saucy shoes today. i'm sure people will think i'm nuts, but i love them and patent is so in for fall anyway.

the suit arrived, and it's all tailored and looks great. i'm happy. i may not be the best saver in the world, but at least i enjoy life, right? right.

just got back from another swim and another cooking session in the steam bath. i discovered the cold water shower head, which really makes a difference in the cooker. the towels were all used up though, so i had to walk out to the spa reception, dripping wet and probably red as a lobster, wearing my swim suit, to get one. the spa receptionist is the same one from monday night, and i think she must think i'm really a special person. and by that i don't mean really gifted. monday night i walked out what i thought was the exit and she had to chase after me, because it was really the door to the pool, which i had just come from so i'm sure she was baffled as to why i thought it led to an exit. er...

i think i'm going trail mix again for dinner. it's 10:30 here so there's no chance i'm wandering my ass out to find food. i need to pack and sleep anyway. have to be at the airport at 7:30 tomorrow morning. oh yay.

kisses.

lights out

...charlie brown. yesterday was a me day and today was definitely a company day. i spent the morning at a vendor's showroom in the fashion quarter, learning about their brand, image, design concept, etc. and then at lunch we drove to the brianza region to visit the headquarters and the factories. wearing 3-inch heels was necessary but not pleasant. it was bad enough that i wasn't in a suit, but i think everyone got over that.

just got back from a lovely dinner and lots of wine with the vendor, and a long ride back to milan. well, not that long. the driver was obsessed with 70s disco and 80s music, so he blasted culture club and ABBA and sang for me 'just an illusion' by imagination, all the while lecturing me on how music now doesn't exist and that everything is just a re-make of disco. i managed a wan smile and nod before completely losing consciousness, owing to complete exhaustion from the day and a bottle of locally-produced wine.

tomorrow i get another me day before heading back to the pollution that is shanghai. unbelievably, my eyes have been incredibly irritated this whole time in europe, which is inarguably much less polluted than china, but i have a theory that my eyes are so used to the airborne crap in china that clean air is actually resulting in the said irritation. wouldn't that be fucked up?!

i have a huge headache - likely from the wine - and have developed a theory (another one, i'm full of them) that italians are severely dehydrated. the whole day and only at 5 pm did someone think to offer some water. that mentality coupled with the espresso intake and the sun exposure... i can only imagine italian insides that are parched and desperate for hydration. i have taken to carrying around this enormous bottle of water with me, but left it behind today believing that italians - like the dutch - would be offering me beverages every 5 minutes. not so. fend for yourself in this country!

tomorrow, the duomo and some gift-buying. per usual, i have worshipped at the church of prada and the temple of armani, but even i feel pangs of guilt over having not seen something old and steeped in history. plus, i can't come back from italy without gifts, although the euro is mean to us RMB-ers. very very mean.

off to bed in my high threadcount sheets on my king-sized bed. yes, i am unapologetically materialistic. wouldn't be doing what i am doing if i wasn't.

going to bed

three happy things today:

moved to hotel chedi.
http://www.hotel-milano-the-chedi.com/

purchased one very expensive suit. dark gray.

purchased one very expensive perfume, hindu grass.
http://www.nasomatto.com/

i swam some laps after getting mad at air france and showered in the spa, then steamed myself in the turkish bath (fancy talk for steam room). wrapped in a big bathrobe and still mad at air france, but tired enough to not care and smelling like my new perfume which smells so unlike me i can't believe i bought it, but i can't stop sniffing myself so i guess that's a good thing - normally i'm of the very clean-scent persuasion. what the hell is hindu grass anyway? whatever. when you smell me and you're all bowled over and shit... you'll understand.

off to bed i go. so many things left undone - fedex package on its way to my old hotel, ticket still for friday not thursday, pants not ironed. ugh. i just want to go to sleep and hide. for dinner i had a lovely version of trail mix that i handily put together from the little market in the metro near my old hotel. i'm too tired to seek out dinner. my suit will deliver to the hotel wednesday morning, hopefully all tailored to fit. i really hope it fits and the pants are long enough.

*sigh*

pleasantries

being all by myself, all my free time (usually spent consuming food or beverage) is spent people watching. in the grand tradition of mankind, i'm starting to draw broad generalizations about our italian brothers and sisters. none of them mean anything in the slightest, of course.

1. italian women do not embrace their natural hair color. i believe that i have not yet seen an adult female with her own hair color. it's either jet-ass black, streaked with some otherwordly shade, burgundy, or platinum blonde.
2. italian men have lots of style, but i've drawn up a derivative of the style formula: extremely slick sunglasses, to be worn at all times of the day or night in any social configuration; very nice leather or suede shoes; an adventurous sense of pattern on dress shirts; either closely shorn hair or longer, windblown-looking hair; fearlessness in wearing white jeans and plenty of accessories; a very nice bag in either briefcase or messenger style.
3. everyone has a tan. not just sprayed with tanner at the salon kind of tan. a deeply bronze tan that makes me think i'm in india. there will be hell to pay when they get older.
4. italian women, much like brazilian women, are not any better-looking or more nicely-shaped than american women. they are simply much more prone to dressing younger, wearing heels 24-7, showing skin (even if it's baked and sagging from years of sun exposure - see #3 above), and wearing lots of perfume.
5. italians may be weirder than americans. and this comes from a girl who lived in san francisco, a city where i was stopped at a light once, looked over, and saw a woman on one of those small, superfast japanese motorcycles, wearing a helmet that she'd decorated with furry cat ears and a tail. yesterday i was sitting and people-watching towards the end of the day, and a group of people walked down the breezeway of the exhibition. one woman was dressed like she worked at the gap and was sporting an enormous neck brace. another woman was wearing an evening gown (i kid you not) and sparkly high heels, and carrying a chihuahua. keep in mind we were all at a trade show.
6. everyone smokes. everyone. i swear to god i saw a pregnant woman taking a drag on a cigarette yesterday. in the US - especially in the pretentious bay area - you'd get yelled at by total strangers.
7. italians are down with the swine. during lunch at the 'buyers club' that i'm allowed access to, nearly every dish involved a smoked or preserved pork product. it was like heaven - essentially prosciutto or speck or guanciale in any and every form. and americans are the fat ones? mind boggling. italians also find booze to be an important part of lunch. i concur.

thank god i got out of apparel at an early age and suckered into home furnishings. out of boredom yesterday, i wandered into the pavilions that housed the 'costume jewelry and fashion accessories' vendors. first thing i discovered was that this is where all the asians in the joint were hiding. find me a tacky accessories show and i'll find you my people. second thing i realized was that tastelessness sees no cultural or ethnic boundaries. after a few aisles, i realized that people were staring at me because i kept walking by booths and snorting out loud. after that, i kept my snorts to myself, but really, thank god i don't need to track trends in the apparel world. home furnishing contains some tacky shit, but somehow its less personally offensive when it's for the home, not meant to be worn on the body. if i had to sift through the metric tons of total shit just to find that one cool thing for a living... i mean, really. crocheted 'tibetan' backless clubbing tops?

italians also don't give a shit about you. not that i expected to be embraced by total strangers walking down the street, but really. i mean, even people you ask for help essentially tell you to fuck off. and then they laugh in your face. what? if i wasn't so tired all of the time from scouring their stupid show for cool shit, i'd care. i slept for 11 hours last night and woke up feeling like... i could sleep for 11 more. i want to see the duomo and go to corso como tomorrow, but i have half a mind to order room service and pass out. not really, no. if there's shopping to be done, i'll do it. but damn. i never thought my first trip to italy would be so lacking in ethusiasm. on my part.

sleepy and sleepless

in milan. amsterdam was a whirlwind of walking to appointments avoiding bikes and trams in the cool air (yay), having meetings with creative people and pretending to know what i'm talking about, and piercing sunlight. the sun is much brighter when the air is clean.

i had a lunch meeting with a brazilian woman who manages a very famous designer's work (names remaining nameles thanks to the miracles of google). we had lunch to discuss future partnership, but it seemed she was already set to agree with what we wanted (just by me showing up? i don't know. she'd been so cautious over email) and eager to talk about other things in life. i don't know if she took a liking to me or if she liked to talk (i think the latter, but we did get along well), but we had a really fascinating conversation about the dutch and their calvinistic viewpoint on life, on what she wants to do in her career, on the state of china, on where we imagined raising families... it was interesting and odd and we sat out on the terrace of this cafe overlooking a canal. after lunch she showed me a hidden convent sanctuary in the middle of central amsterdam, and then she walked me back to my hotel.

KLM food is so much better than China Eastern, or United, for that matter. On my way over we had some meal that was catered by South Beauty, and I think it was the best airplane meal I've ever had. I'd even slept through the meal service, but the guy saw that I was awake and served me up a tray. And yes, I'm preaching about the goodness of airline food, I think mostly because that's what I've lived off of in the past 36 hours.

Up at 5:30 this morning thinking about stuff. I still am not sure if I'll be here a week or just through the weekend. The next three days are about to be killer, walking a show 8 - 9 hours a day and hustling people for info in the evenings. If you saw the list of covert objectives I was given, you'd call me double-0... 0. That would make me triple 0. Work can be so political at times. And space cadet is here to execute? It makes you wonder about the state of things.

Anyway, I'm starving and I have to up in 30 minutes. Why am I wasting time blogging? Because that's what I do.

'so you gonna marry her?' 'yeah, probably.'

crazy.

working home right now. i have a deadline and i can't do shit at the office. too noisy and people keep bugging me.

leaving for amsterdam tomorrow. 2 days, then 5 days in milan. oh how the winds have shifted. hopefully my stupid wireless card on my stupid thinkpad won't act up. me with no company credit card, no international calling ability, and a half-broken laptop. i think finance actually expects me to carry around a wad of euro to make it through the week. lol. crackheads.

need to finish this. big squeeze and kisses.

WHAT a long day

whew! and we're back... well, i'm back. cindy's still in zhuhai, hanging with pops.

flew in this morning with alvin. wow. remind me never to do that again. fly home in the morning, i mean. it was fine, i rolled in around 1 pm and worked a full day so it was productive enough, went to all my meetings, made it through my inbox, etc. etc. fine. but god i'm tired.

may be heading to milan on friday for a home acc show. my first time in italy, so i'm not complaining, but i won't be strolling in a piazza, eating with mario batali, and buying armfuls of prada and missoni. more likely i'll be walking the show for a day and a half and spending the rest of the time in meetings. yay! but hey, like i said, i'm not complaining. if work keeps you interested, than it's a good thing. take it from the burnout baby.

hk was good, just way too short. landed friday night, met jen and cindy out for drinks, then back to allen's place for a shower and some work. cindy and i stayed up till 3-ish, and i passed out on the couch and dragged my ass up the next morning to meet biann and alvin in mongkok. we wanted to look at phones; alvin's pretty much decided on the prada phone, and i fell in love with the blackberry pearl, but after an enlightening convo with a salesguy about smartphone coverage on the mainland, that quickly fell to the wayside. still not sure what's going to happen, but i have 4 more weeks and then i can land an international phone account and i guess maybe reconvene at that point. with myself, i mean. there will be no hiding from work calls when that comes down the pipe, tho. i will be unhideable. not that i hide... from... my boss...

i did get to have lunch at tsui wah (oh heaven of heavens) and alvin and cindy and i all met my family out for a good canto dinner later. i trolled for shoes the whole day, but didn't see anything that struck my practical side and my whimsical side. cannot walk to work in heels, as much as i try. managed to hit up most of causeway bay for what i needed and squeezed in a little IFC after dinner, just to check out lane crawford's personal care and gifting area. didn't find any new brands for us, tho, but they do have a brilliant visual merch team in that IFC store. love.

what else... went to jen's new pad for a second dinner/bbq. june showed up, visiting from seoul, with bf and friend in tow.all good fun. i just met june but i really enjoy how strong her personality is. she's just... herself. it's kind of offensive at times, and really blunt, but i appreciate honesty far more than diplomacy so it's just pure entertainment. jen has this fuggin amazing deck that just about doubles her square footage and was genius enough to buy these rocking chairs with nice soft cushions to sink into. several glasses of wine and champagne later and i rocked myself unconscious, carefully coated in mosquito repellent and exhausted. shopping can be killer.

zhuhai is interesting. driving along a highway parallel to the water i could squint my eyes and almost pretend i was in waikiki driving from the airport. the water is dirty as hell, but there are interesting rock formations along the beach and really lush hillsides. quite nice. we spent far too little time there, saw the house - all 4 stories of it - and spent the later afternoon playing in the pool like otters. awesome! it's one of the nicest backyard pools in that its long enough to do actual laps, and leaves enough room in the yard for plenty of landscape. i had a ball. the fun really began when we all went to take showers, as no window coverings were up yet and all the showers are essentially against walls of windows. i showered in the dark (it's actually pretty fun, try it sometime), but i'm sure the neighbors enjoyed the show regardless. we thought it was pretty hilarious. cindy's dad got home around 8-ish and took us to an amazing dabino dinner. gotta love the hotpot! we ate ourselves sick, and cindy's dad broke out his johnnie walker blue label and we had beers and it was jolly.

a nice weekend. i'm pooped.

work was fun today - my projects are starting to come together and we got our samples back for the gifts we'll be giving out at the anniversary party and they came out really nicely. i'm happy with them. i really have to say, there's a satisfaction that comes with identifying with the positioning of your brand. it's nice to know that your work and your eye and taste count for something other than a cute wardrobe (can i even say i have one of those any more?), even if it's just small things. touches, really. all i need now is to get into a decent apartment and i'll be feeling - as the oracle says - right as rain.

sigh. nighty night. i'm glad to be home, even if shanghai is the ghetto country dirty weak-imitation version of hong kong.

xoxo.

hitting stride

got cancelled on to see the apartment i've been dying to see for the past 48 hours. how cruel. so instead met up with kayi, followed her around to a number of classical-music cd stores (i'm taking my dad to these places when they come visit, fuxing and fenyang, remember that), then we finally stuffed down some food and thought about what to do. i really just wanted to come home, throw some things in a bag and fall asleep, but we went to pecha kucha instead where we saw practically everyone we know in the city. who knew that artsy fartsy events were such a draw? kayi was sugarmommying me the whole night, so she kept the wine supply going whilst the 13 speakers they had lined up did their thing.

the pecha kucha thing was held at the sculpture space. surprisingly good outdoor space, given the crapity crap location. it almost actually felt like a real museum. we decided we need to hold a hide-and-seek or musical chairs event there.

today was much cooler than it has been. i don't know if i'm finally adjusting to the heat or what, but i remember thinking it was absolutely stifling until well into november last year. is that possible? i wore a sleeveless shirt to work and spent the entire day wrapped in my pashmina.

off to hk tomorrow. how excited are we?!

stranger danger!

watching 'blades of glory' with jase and cyn. we had taco night tonight, what a great thing! we can't believe we hadn't thought of this before. it's about to be on like donkey kong. just you wait.

two bottles of pinot later and we're all good... well i am, at least. yawning my way through stupid powerpoint for friday and some gifting ideas for later.

tomorrow i'm looking at apartments after work..! i'm excited, although i probably shouldn't be considering my past two excursions. also need to pack for the weekend. i have mad shit to do so laptop should go with, but really really don't want to do anything vaguely productive. just want to hang out and eat and see the fams and think about nothing. so we shall see. i'm a work bitch but i'm not a total sellout. maybe. hopefully.

still yawning.

i got to pick the wines for our events lined up this fall. isn't that hilarious?! no, really, i'm not that bad, but we have a white wine-only policy because (obviously) of the furniture, and that i know a lot less about. not that i know anything. ever.

i wonder what it is about booze that makes you want to make out with people. i mean, getting sleepy, yeah, i get it, inhibiting reflexes, ok, yeah, kinda goes with the sleepy thing. but making out?! grabbing ass? where does that come from? the grape? the must? the skin? the seeds? is there a chemical makeup that induces this?

boys

this almost isn't for me. entirely. it's just kinda for my girls, the girls, all girls... and me.

i like to refer cryptically to shit like, 'life hits you with shit when you're least expecting it,' whatever. most of the time these comments - duh - refer to what's going on with the boys, in my life, in my friends' lives. i think that i think about it more here in stinkytown vs. back at home because everything - especially the boys - move so much faster. rapid-fire. can't ever claim that fools here waste time.

with the thoughts of one semi-brokenhearted friend haunting me today, i've been spending a lot of time thinking about this particular subject, in between meetings and proposals and stupid work shit. i won't say that i don't get boys, because i do. sometimes. (hint: they're generally bigger and dumber than girls.... and smellier.) i don't honestly think i'm that different, or that any girl is, although there are definitely some commonalities, generalizations one can draw across gender lines. sure. socially-designated, whatever you want to attribute it to (yes, i know that was a fragment). i think anyone with a logical head on her shoulders and half a brain can reason through why people do what they do. it's difficult to fathom, to digest, to accept, and therefore to understand why someone doesn't call you back, or why he's spacing out seeing you with staying at home picking his ass (or so he says), or why he talks daily to his ex. boys do all sort of stupid shit - girls do it, too. we've all cheated and been cheated on and had overlap and got dumped and dumped and were with someone for way too long and in love with the wrong person. we've all done this. why don't we pick up on our own behaviors when we were the ones cheating or lying or making excuses and apply it to the one we're in now? why not just skip all the pining and the heartache and the emotion? it fucking sucks and then it's all over and you feel like an idiot. it ranges from mild annoyance to the world is crashing down around you and you feel like your skin is on fire and that you might vomit.

i like to use logic to avoid emotion, personally.

cyn always has to remind me that people don't work that way. most don't, anyway. they're not robots. emotions make you super stupid. you feel giddy and that warm, weird, nervous excitement builds up when you're pulling into the driveway of his apartment and suddenly you're willing to do the most ridiculous things. there's someone out there for you that you absolutely will fall in love with, a person that you think about so much that you can't wait for the end of the work day until you can see him, someone who loves you more than life, a person you can see yourself with for a long time. we have to know this. but you can't proceed on that plank if you don't let reason and logic go, even if it's just a little bit at a time. sometimes you just have to have faith in risk and love and that this person is going to treat you like you want to treat him. and most times, you're so fucking wrong, but sometimes you're right and everything falls into place and his face appears in your head when you're outlining fourth quarter strategies to a room full of people.

it's the oddest thing.

so, to crystalize (oh... corporate lingo. we're back) my stupid rambling (how many times have i written 'stupid' in this entry?), i don't want anyone to be sad about the incongruencies of your life versus some dumbass guy you really like. as much as you want to hate him, he's probably a good person - he better be or you have issues - and something just isn't in the cards right now for you two. timing, as we all know, is a bitch. and unfortunately it's one of the biggest driving factors in relationships. so maybe the timing was off, maybe that's a far-too-universal explanation for him being an asshole, maybe you're the asshole, maybe the timing was great but he's annoying and smells bad, maybe he doesn't speak nicely to you, maybe he's in love with you but you coulda had a V-8. who knows. life is incredibly messy and for those of us that have happily married parents, we know this better than anyone. (tangent: to have a marriage that lasts longer than you are old, people have to become freakish co-dependents and they have to grow together like a tree graft until one can't survive without the other. that's a bad metaphor, but let it go.)

something and someone else will happen, and this will pass. you have us and we loves you.

*snore*

shout out to our katie pie heading back to canuckistan (as jason puts it) tomorrow. we'll miss you while you're gone... vaseline and pepto or no.

met katie pie and cyn and jason out for dinner at element fresh, ready to fall on my face. actually, ready to fall on my face the whole day. not sure why, probably having to do with no exercise, drinking, and overeating several days in a row.

talking to trev in beijing now... bed soon. night!

falling victim

....to so many things. lapsing on my writing shouldn't be one of them.

the past two weeks have been a study in social saturation, gearing up for sending trevor off to beijing, trying to find that life-work balance, trying to understand how things are working in my head. shit hits you when you're least expecting it - that i have learned in these 29 years.

trev dropped me off at the shangri la on the way to the airport, where steph, marc, albert, drew, scott, and sherry were for brunch. i was going to skip - deadlines loom for my article, there's sleep to be had all over the place, and another day of food insanity wasn't what i needed after a week of failed attempts to go to yoga - but i decided to be social over being productive and showed up. i'd seen scott the night before at constellation so i got called out for wearing the same clothes he'd seen me in last night - oops - and still lugging around the laptop and the stuff i bought at h & m with sherry yesterday... but coffee arrived and we went prancing around and assembled the most finely-curated buffet meal ever!

ok, i'm exaggerating, but it was good and the shangri la has a chocolate fountain extravaganza where we went buck wild with the fruit and profiteroles and nougat-on-a-stick and crazy gummi candy bar that you can raid and stuff the fruit of your labors home in small orange boxes they provide. cool, huh? besides a dark chocolate fountain there's a milk chocolate fountain, a white chocolate fountain, and this weird green-tea (chocolate?) fountain to dip everything into. we went a little ape shit.

last night, as we left constellation at around 3 am, as we walked to the end of the road to find taxis and this woman dressed in a bizarre housecoat and sunglasses is striding past us and glaring. she stands in the middle of the intersection with her arms crossed, facing us, completely glaring. we were all expecting a kung foo hustle-esque superpowered lung expulsion to send us flying backwards, but instead she started scolding us, accusatory - 'you're learning bad things!' trevor answered her and she looked at him, 'i'm not talking to you. i'm talking to them' - indicating sherry, cyn, and me. 'they're bad eggs!'

i guess it was a pro-chinese thing because we were three chinese girls with three white guys who all happened to be our friends, but to the ignorant i guess it could seem that we'd landed us some foreigners to buy us out of our miserable existence or something. it was so crazy tho. in our cab a couple of minutes later we passed her, still stomping angrily down the street. at 3 am.

my day yesterday started off with sherry and a whole tableful of dim sum at crystal jade. we ate until we were ill and then ordered xiao long bao to top it all off. h & m visits are never fun after a huge meal, but i found stuff to buy anyway. feeling guilty about not spending trevor's last dinner with him, i went instead to thai house, which lives up to its reputation of excellent food and is even worth walking past the Most Rank Garbage Pile in Shanghai. experienced the slightly-fermented north east thai sausage, which was fascinating but greatly improved by the addition of thinly sliced raw garlic and sauce rolled up into a lettuce leaf. met up with trev and boys at the spot, where every foreigner in the city appeared to be gathered for a complete lack of air conditioning and some random soccer game. we later switched to the mansion and sat out on the terrace - outstanding - and then wandered over to constellation at around 1 am.

and now i sleep.

kickin like chicken

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/15/DD2QRFBK1.DTL&hw=ways

sound like me? sorta does, actually. never realized how chatty i am with... myself.

good balance day. lots of busy stuff at work, left at a decent hour to meet up with sherry and the boys at TBB, then back home by 9 for more worky stuff and i'm in bed by 11:19, blogging. the only thing missing was my yoga goal but i'll handle that tomorrow.

i think i pissed the pseudo-singaporean off today by calling his ass out in a meeting in front of our boss. i didn't even do anything off-color; just clearly delineated my stance and his (not necessarily in opposition in my eyes, but he saw differently) and guess who won. thank you. it wasn't even a competition, and i don't even roll like that, but start trying to back my ass into a corner and make me look stupid eventually leads to confrontation. i suppose. i don't like to start shit at work and i like to think i'm generally cooperative, but damn. this fool's tried some really classic power-trip chain-yanking on me, just like the movies. it's funny. as in ha ha. whatever.

so our friend gregor's assistant at the bar is this chick with some bodacious ta tas, i think i've brought her name up before. she's got some striking cheekbones and long hair and these boobs pushed up to her throat, plus she usually sports really plunging necklines and tight-ass clothes. i don't blame all the dudes for staring; in fact, i'm probably worse than they are because i know what actually goes into pushing the girls up day in and day out (ouch). i think it's gotten to the point where i just say hi and have a brief conversation with her boobs. i clearly bade them goodbye tonight. wtf? i'm being such a pervert; but really, they're unstoppable. you can't NOT stare. and i see them probably 3 times a week! jason and trev's friend scott swung through for happy hour and when she walked by not only did the whole table get whiplash (most of whom see her with me about three times a week) but i think scott nearly fell out of his chair. she's that type of girl.

sherry and i split a burrito tonight and i have to say it wasn't half bad. the "carnitas" were significantly better than the boiled meat at nyc deli, altho i ain't talkin shit because they make me happy usually twice a week. i'm just sayin...

last night was interesting. i should actually be drafting an article right now, some restaurant review i got pulled to write, ostensibly because i'd either write a favorable review, a well-written review, or i'm just known in the city as willing to give good reviews for free food and free cocktails all night long. but god, i'm tired. the food last night was actually some of the best japanese i've had in the city. the best, i would say, having not yet tried a couple of major destinations. we had some really good fish, tho. and the other courses (6 en totale) were pretty damn good. then we proceeded to the dessert parlor and had 5 desserts. literally. and a few desserty cocktails. i was not complaining.

anyways. i'm passing out. love love love. and for you bitches out there trekking in patagonia while i'm breathing toxic fumes and eating shite - free will notwithstanding - just know that i wish i was you right now. tired as hell.