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.