update:

it smells and tastes like a sweet potato hyped up on sugar. i think i may use the smaller sugar rocks for tomorrow's brew.

the cure

at dinner over at my ayi's house over the holiday weekend, she prescribed this for my asthma:





one pear (she prefers organic) cut up into pieces, one lump of rock sugar, and a piece of some herb that looks like an albino bamboo stalk. located at 11:00 in the photo. i'm boiling it right now, and i have to make it every night and drink one cup.

eat your heart out, glaxo smith kline! advair 500/5o ain't got shit on bamboo and pears!

i'm not making fun, tho. chinese herb medicine does work some crazy wonders. my uncle swears by this tonic that my pah pah makes from baby mice marinated in liquor. i am not joking.

those of you interested in beijing

part of an email from t-money yesterday morning:

"So [it's] storming, little bit of thunder [and] lightning. But the crazy part is at 10 am it is twice as dark as it was at any point last night. I'm serious, I've never seen anything like it. The last two days it has been gray with this heavy smog that blocks vision past 10 feet."

coming for the games? i recommend buying a totobobo, altho sherry prefers the look of a respro.

gimme salami

i didn't know chinese people made prosciutto. especially on street signs at busy intersections.

day 7

...and almost there.

oddly, my cravings today (if i can call them that, i've been feeling alright today) center around fish, not meat. i might go for some sashimi tomorrow to celebrate, instead of plunging full-force back into meatism. might be a better, less extreme, way to ease back into things. as some of you know, i'm not good at easing into anything.

speaking of which, we've been coached by that damn book to avoid exercise or anything besides rest. i took a hot core yoga class last week, and i decided to take a full-length hot class yesterday because i was feeling antsy. considering my absence from full-length hot classes of late, i did pretty well, although the last 20 minutes of the 90-minute class i spent laying on my back. a little too ambitious in my weakened state? a victim of the mental game? who knows. anyway, it sucked.

this weekend (starting tomorrow, thursday, through saturday) is the labor day holiday. we have to go back to work on sunday to make up for the days we get off. (lame.) people keep asking if i'm heading up to beijing, but t has his thesis due soon so we think not. i'm going to let other people (his friends and program-mates) absorb the shock of his crankiness and cabin fever (hehe). there are a ton of yoga workshops going on, and most of my friends are in town (where you going to go with 1 extra day off in a country of 1.4 billion?), so i thought i'd make it an active-slash-relaxing weekend with no running around to airports.

sounds good, right? plus the parents are coming into town in 2 weeks and the only thing my mom asked me when i called the other day was, 'what are you planning for us?' not high-maintenance or anything. i could use some strategy time when it comes to my mom. no telling what's going to bother her about my apartment or lifestyle or food choices the most. i should place bets.

alright, i'm hearing that shorter is sweeter when it comes to my textual gripes about life. so here i go.

day 5

this morning was difficult. i wanted to hunt down a cheeseburger, spear it, and devour it while still standing, then chase after some seared foie gras and then maybe a roasted chicken. lunch hit and my stupid brown rice and sweet potato was for the birds. i ate it but i felt like throwing it across the room at the unsuspecting contract sales team. i was too tired after 3-full scale kitchen cleanings yesterday (vegan cooking is a bitch for cleanup, you have to make like 13 dishes to be full) to cook up the rest of the tofu for protein, so i had a very carb-intensive lunch.

meh.

been a bit homesick today, not sure why. and, even more inexplicably, i decided to peruse bay area dog rescue websites to quell the feeling. it didn't help the homesickness, but it did entertain me while at work, when i have 100 other things to do. i am feeling unfocused, clearly.

i've been wanting to go home and see my family and have a bbq in the backyard. i want to pet the dog and harass my cat and listen to my aunts talking smack to one another. i want to walk around grungy-ass lake merritt with my sister and my cousin, and go to brunch with them on the weekends.

not sure what's causing the sudden surge of nostalgia; i had a lovely weekend with great weather. lots of bike riding and produce-buying and sitting in sunny courtyards eating rabbit food. no swim in jill's pool yet (hehe), but we have a short week with the may holiday starting on thursday (when the cleanse is over, YES). i've already signed up for 2 yoga classes this week with 2 good teachers, i should be feeling content and even somewhat sanctamonious about my willpower and veggie-containing insides.

mysteriously, i'm not.

day 4

see? i wasn't lying.

so, day 4 of the cleanse. days 2 and 3 were projected to be the toughest, but i have to say we're doing pretty well. except for the chu toro and otoro lapse that was mainly due to ignorance (we thought we could eat fish, but i guess that was decided before we focused on one approach, and turns out according to mr. reid, we can't). anyway, yesterday was saturday and i woke up and had oatmeal with some banana cut in (no milk, no sugar, kinda dry) and one cup of black coffee. my caffeine 'wean' hasn't been too bad in terms of resisting temptation (not so tempting if it's just straight up without milk), but the physical dependency has proven wicked, with piercing headaches starting in late afternoon/early evening and lasting all night. friday night i woke up out of a sound sleep because i swear my head throbbing was making the bed tremble. but, yesterday the headache didn't start until late night, and it might've even been because of the 7 back-to-back episodes of 'the wire' watching, not because of the caffeine. who knows.

i met the girls (sherry, jill, sarah) on the terrace of the element fresh joint nearest us around 2 pm yesterday after watching parts of 'in pursuit of happyness' and eating oatmeal. it's been so pretty outside lately! nice. since i'd eaten i had an all-fruit smoothie and some crudite from sherry's plate. we then biked/strolled (jill was without bike) to pantry magic, one of the biggest williams-sonoma ripoffs i've ever seen. you literally feel like you're inside a w-s. it's expensive and ridiculous, but nice to know it's there in case you get a hankering for a silicone cake mold shaped like the sydney opera house. steph and shawn met up with us there, and while they shopped sherry was showing jill how to ride my bike up and down the sidewalk.

we went then to some german beer garden, where i had some item vaguely resembling orange juice, and a lot of water. i'd gotten hungry by this point so sherry's bag of produce she was carrying around in prep for dinner-making that night proved useful. with a steaming basket of cross-cut seasoned french fries in front of me, i managed to not touch a single one and ate cherry tomatoes instead. that took willpower, fuck.

sherry came over after and we made a vegan feast. she made a great pot of soup, and i roasted more of our yams and a pan of baby potatoes with whole garlic cloves and parsley. we had a vat of leftover brown rice, so i pan fried some extra-firm tofu until crispy, then sauteed shallots and garlic, and threw in the leftover brown rice for our vegan version of fried rice. added some frozen peas, and chopped the tofu into smaller squares and threw that in as our protein. it came out quite well, despite the lack of soy sauce (not allowed unless its preservative-free, and i'm too cheap/lazy to buy an additional bottle of soy sauce, which has to be of the imported - aka japanese - variety for me to believe its actually, authentically free of preservatives).

we then vegged to 'the wire' until 1:30 am.

during the cleanse we're supposed to be resting. since we have jobs, we're not resting all that much, but this weekend we aren't supposed to be super active (although we're trying to work out passes to jill's pool! wouldn't that be nice). either sherry or this reid guy came up with the analogy of an engine whose system is being cleaned - during the 'servicing,' the engine should be off, but once all the fluids are changed out (or cleaned), back up to normal with a super-clean system.

i'm not really buying into the toxin shit, but i do think this is a good exercise in perspective. it's easier - if your tax bracket allows - to be healthy in the states (especially california), but china is different. it's difficult and expensive to avoid msg in food and eat 'whole' versus processed when you need to cover all of your nutritional needs, and the average local person doesn't understand the nutritional concept. they can't afford to, either, from what i'm seeing. also, we're not sure how 'organic' we're actually eating when purchasing organic foods grown locally. as i understand it, china does currently have guidelines for what is organic and not, but there is no enforcing of these guidelines and its really up to the integrity of the farm you're buying from. on the flip side of the cultural examination, i suspect the chinese diet consists of a lot more vegetables and fruit than the average american's. there is always at least one plate of all-vegetable on the table, most meat dishes are small pieces of meat cooked with vegetables, and everyone has access to fruit, and enjoys fruit immensely. that's definitely a difference i see here. it's not unusual to see fruit eaten on the bus, on the street, in the office, just as much as you will see processed snacks. one of our office receptionists eats a huge mango a day, it's her treat to herself.

another thing i'm noticing - because we're not seeing as much flavor through the usual channels in our food, i've been appreciating naturally sweet and fatty things so much more. oddly enough, i'm craving sweets... and i'm no sweet tooth. give me a steak over chocolate cake any day. it's weird. eating peanut butter this morning tasted damn luxurious. i had a piece of yam for 'dessert' last night since it was the sweetest thing i could eat (and i'm so sick of cherry tomatoes). sarah was asking why we aren't gorging on avocados day and night... which i considered, but they're RMB 18 a pop (about $2.5 each).

gotta hop in the shower... sherry's coming over and we're biking down to the wet market to poke around at the vegetables.

post-post

a couple of pics from the wedding. trevor and i are always too stupid to take pics together for some reason, unless we're in a taxi and stuck in traffic. for the record, chinese weddings are rarely this western. i've never seen an actual western-style ceremony at a chinese wedding before (and i didn't see this one, either, because we showed up 10 minutes late and it was OVAH).

considering i've only been here 1.5 years, i've been to a record 4 weddings. that's a lot for me, who holds the record as girl-with-the-most-single-friends for some reason. and i'll go to a wedding, believe me. i like to eat and ogle.









trevor and our friend jason (in the seersucker and bowtie. don't hate, he's southern) with the newlyweds

cleanse

sherry asked me tuesday night if i wanted to go on a detox diet with her. having already bitched very publicly about my gut on multiple occasions, and feeling like this two-week cold is lingering just a wee bit too long, i said alright. the schemata was no preservatives, no additives, lots of fruits and veggies. sounds harmless but very unlike me, you say? the girl who's only purchased fruit twice since moving to shanghai?

i'm on day 1, having been caught unprepared on the actual day 1 and eating everything in sight. (i had to get mentally ready.) what we didn't know about the detox thing (because we weren't adhering to a specific diet, just kinda reading shit online and deciding whether it sounded right, yes we are retarded) is that dairy and meats are pretty much no-nos (this was a consistency in my online trolling of weird hippie-dippy websites and insane people's testimonials about the lemon/cayenne pepper 'master cleanse' business). so here i am, committed to a week of essential veganism. one of sherry's coworkers (no doubt alarmed at the randomness of our 'detox plan') handed her a book on detox, something like the tao of detox although i could honestly be making that title up completely. and we are essentially adhering to that book's rules, which bans refined starches, meat and dairy, and processed shit. ('processed,' by the way, is a mighty wide definition. olive oil is apparently ok but whole wheat flour is processed. aren't they just squished versions of the original item? feel free to set me straight.)

anyone that knows me well will laugh when they read this. i put the prime in prime rib. i put the rib in, too, for that matter. i can eat more red meat than any woman and most men i know. i like vegetables and fruit, but i'm chronically lazy and chronically busy, and produce is perishable. so i stick to things with long shelf lives, like ramen (i buy the good ramen imported from japan, ok? lay off), and, uh, eggs (i eat them way past expiration dates), and... hm. rice? frozen peas. freezer-burnt chicken if i'm lucky. and tasty things that they serve in restaurants.

anyway, today is my first day so i will list for you what my diet has consisted of thus far (oh, and i got a nice delivery of organic produce today in preparation for my fas- sorry, cleanse. whatever. just read.)

• banana and natural peanut butter
• steamed asparagus and cherry tomatoes
• hummus (i'm pretending hummus is ok but it's probably not, although this hummus was inarguably just blended white beans and no tahini) and tabbouleh which smelled + tasted like feet so i threw it out.
• more hummus
• another banana
• raw almonds
• dinner was kale cooked with shallots and white beans. and a piece of sweet potato.

wtf? i can't eat tofu for some reason (maybe i made that up, i've noticed the only side effect i've been suffering from is acute memory loss), so i'm really up a creek on protein. i'm going to be a beanatarian for 7 days.

i'm including below the rather impressive and happy delivery i received this morning at 7:30 from american gardens, this great little organic produce farm near SH. see? i'm eating both locally (earth day) and i'm being healthier. sorry about the fact that you can really only see bag and not produce, but it was 7:30 am.





apparently days 2 and 3 are the hardest. i'm pretty energetic today but sherry is on day 2 and looks like she was flattened by a large and angry person, and she has a raging headache. apparently tomorrow and saturday i should feel like shit and be one of the bitchiest people on the planet (done and done). i dare to say it's not the toxins causing this, but the pervasive sense of COMPLETE AND TOTAL DEPRIVATION.

i can't believe i ate beans and friggin kale for dinner.

still sick

koff koff koff. that’s all i do these days.

t-money was in town this weekend, and like the gentleman he is, gamely indulged his girl when she decided she needed to hit up ikea this weekend (sorry, kate!). ikea on weekends in china is far far worse than at home, if you can even fathom it. however, we get through the maze in about an hour, checked out, downed hotdogs as is the routine for any ikea visit, and got in the taxi line. it looked to be about an hour long, as it was raining outside and causing a taxi shortage. one of those illegal drivers came by and wanted 60 kuai for our 20 kuai ride. t got him down to 40, which he considers money well spent for saving an hour. i didn’t mind waiting, but once we got home i decided that was a good idea. the guy was nice enough.

my burning desire to hit up ikea was for the purpose of finding a bath stool in preparation for my parents’ upcoming visit (may 17… ya heard?). i shower in what t refers to as the ‘crying game shower,’ essentially an old-fashioned claw foot tub rigged with a shower that manages to completely flood that corner of the bathroom every time a person showers, unless said person holds the stupid showerhead in her hand and sits down in the tub to bathe, japanese style, only without japan and its good design. this is not a fun daily ritual, and trevor, at 6’1”, hates it far more than i. rightly so. at any rate, the tub sits high off the floor, and successfully vaulting out of the tub soaking wet is tough enough on someone my height. my mom is about 5 inches shorter with bum knees… i could just picture her falling out of the tub onto the original art deco tile floor with a broken appendage. so i bought a sturdy little rubber stool/bench item which i hope will alleviate this little challenge during their stay. i’ll report back with results.

i was also in need of some mugs because my ghetto ass insisted on buying only two when i moved in, one of which i have since broken. oh, and a small expandable breakfast table, also for my parents’ impending visit, because i know my mother will heartily object to eating her morning toast on the couch like normal people.

yesterday late afternoon we went to t’s former coworker’s wedding, which was held at a small hotel not far from my place. i even spent 20 minutes blow-drying my mop of hair (have i ever ranted about the fact that women are slaves to their blow dryers?). i’ll get to that at some point, i’m sure. i can’t believe people do that on a daily basis. anyway, the wedding was fun and good practice for what will likely be a lifetime of law firm dinners and polite chit chat since all the folk we hung out with were firm people or firm spouses. the firm girls didn’t know what to make of me – i gather i was an interesting subject because t’s chinese language skills made him one of the gang and they were wildly curious about who the hell his girl is – until one of the partners asked about my surname and i explained the whole korean thing. this explanation was met with a chorus of, ‘so you’re korean!’ as if i was all figured out or something.

on the food note, i must be used to cantonese-style weddings, where the food is the highlight of my attendance so all i do is eat the whole time. the table was packed with food, but most of it was in gloppy sauce and relatively tasteless. prawns, crab, goose, ribs, shark fin soup, pork shoulder… how can you manage to get them all wrong? anyway, we ended up at cotton’s after the wedding, having stolen and finished off amongst the three firm tables all of the wine from the other tables. jason – a non seafood eater – starved through the 2-hour meal and ordered rounds of fries, chicken fingers, and onion rings once we landed at cotton’s. if i hadn’t of insisted on trying every dish at the banquet, i would’ve partaken in a cheeseburger, as that’s been on the craving list lately.

friday's list

when my godbrother and his mom, nancy, visited shanghai about a month ago, passing through after a few days' trip to beijing, she remarked after dinner banter with a few of our friends that we seemed very cynical about our lives in china. i'm the worst offender of the group, i'm sure, so i thought i'd take a few moments to appreciate some good things about living here, and why there are so many of us lao wai in this town, anyway.

my why-i-love-china list

1. chinese folk are unapologetic about eating. Slurping, spilling, speedily spooning, it’s all fine and good at the Chinese table. Nothing dainty here, it’s about efficiency: I’m hungry and I’m not ashamed to show it. I love this, because I’m the same way. If there’s food on the table, chances are I’m silent and stuffing my face. If I’m talking, I’m secretly irritated that social graces demand that I speak to you when there’s perfectly good food getting cold in front of me. Eating immediately after food lands in front of you and downing food rapidly are two of life’s great pleasures. My life, anyway.
2. China is kinda wild… and it can be fun. It’s true. You can drink booze on the street, in a moving vehicle, if you like. You can cruise onto the metro, a bus, or into a cab with a plastic cup full of fish balls on a skewer and a beard papa cream puff. You can bring your own popcorn to the movies. You can pair your new marigold-orange suit with your new burgundy hairdo and ride down the street on your bicycle without a single stare. You can sing at the top of your lungs at noon on a crowded sidewalk and no one will even blink (unless you’re not singing in Chinese). You can throw an entire bucket of dirty water on a passer-by and only elicit a mild protest (it was dark and rainy, I was screaming curses at the offender… but in China, volume bears no relation to rage level and she just laughed heartily and went back to what she was doing).
3. Napping at work is no big thing. Seriously. It’s even normal. After lunch I peek my head over my cubicle wall and see about three people (on average), heads down on desks, taking a little snooze. After 20 minutes or so they pop back up and it’s business as usual. Makes you wonder why the same thing can get you fired at home.
4. Men raise children and clean house. Especially in Shanghai, where men are famous for being responsible for all housework, including cooking the meals, I see dads and grandpas on the bus cuddling babies, carrying bags of vegetables and mian bao and dofu, hanging the wash out on balconies overlooking the street. It’s not a novelty, it’s normal.
5. It’s a grassroots experience. And by this I mean industry. There are factories and huge manufacturers galore, but it’s just as easy to find a person parked in a random lane with a sewing machine and a selection of replacement shoe heels, waiting for business. There are fruit stands on every block. You can stumble around a random corner and find the trimming street, where store after store carries only buttons, ribbons, crocheted collars, leather for belts. One street near my office houses all of the color pigment vendors, where you can buy bags of loose pigment powders to use in god knows what.
6. It’s humane… and I’m not being ironic. Go past the di-ethylene glycol and fucked-up blood plasma and pet food horror stories and take a look at the people. I don’t feel like I’m in the rat race, and I live in a city renowned for the fiscal trickery of its people – blink too long and suddenly your taxi driver is taking you ‘round the block once more – I feel like I’m being understood as human if I call in sick, or announce that I can’t focus until I’ve eaten dinner, or can’t meet a deadline due to a hectic week. Heads don’t roll if I show that I’m human. It’s not as efficient or cost-effective as applying undue pressure and unrealistic expectations, but it’s life and I don’t feel guilty for living it.
7. You don’t take your wealth for granted. I’m well off here. I afford my own 80 square meters of luxury living including an oven, a clothes dryer, satellite TV, and about 5 different facial cleansers. I pay $10 USD for my Lavazzo espresso beans, have a yoga studio membership, and own about 45 pairs of shoes. I ride my bike for fun. I don’t share my kitchen or my bathroom and my plumbing is indoors. I have an ayi who cleans my house twice a week, cooks for me, pays my bills, arranges my water delivery, and cusses out the landlord when he needs to be cussed out. I’m incredibly lucky, and every day I realize this. I realize it when I line up at the convenience store and see the reconstituted paper soles on the shoes of the old man next to me, or when the company driver drops me off at home in the A6 next to the neighbor who cooks outdoors year-round on a single burner. I don’t bitch about the bald spot on my velvet ballet flats because my ayi is still rocking the shoes she wore to her wedding… and her son is 17 years old.
8. Everything is recycled. And this isn’t eco-chic I'm taking about, its survival. The old people digging in trash cans with pointed sticks isn’t a phenomenon exclusive to San Francisco Chinatown. The Mainland takes it a step further, where landfill warlords employ scores of people to scour through mountains of trash for anything recyclable. Not just cans and bottles, but cardboard and building materials, old computer monitors, used refrigerators, steel and aluminum, wood scraps, nails. All of the demolition sites around the city are sifted through for anything reusable. ‘Sustainability’ in the western media is a tag word, but those men bicycling used scrap metal through the streets don’t have the luxury to learn the concept. For them it's about making a few bucks and surviving. It’s a simple and very direct reminder of that I am a product of marketing drives and consumerism. I didn’t know you could re-use a goddamn nail because I never thought about people who needed to do that.

olympics... and outta here

cyn and i joked all the time about how we were going to be as far away from bj as humanly possible when the olympics came. we made jokes about how the government was going to paint the grass green and 'relocate' millions of factory workers by shutting down all the industry in the vicinity to clear the air for the lao wai. can't look bad in front of foreigners. of course, we joked with an air of cynicism, halfway serious.

after a long weekend in bj, where i experienced the dust and grit from the construction sites on every block or so, i am officially concerned. trev and i frequently discuss that shanghai is much better organized as a city - the airport, the way you pay your bills, the traffic, whatever. the metro in beijing alone is cause for alarm. you pay only by walking up to the booth and fighting your way to the front of the crowd, and then correctly shouting the name of the stop you want to go to. they don't speak shit for english, so good luck with that strong northern errrrrrrrrrrrr accent. you have to know where you want to go in terms of metro stop, and you have to say it legibly to the metro worker, who is not a linguist and doesn't give a fuck about you. to enter the metro paid area, you hand your little ticket to the girl standing there. there is usually only one girl. no turnstiles. one person at a time. and they plan to support 2+ million foreigners? i don't know about this.

taxis will be another problem. the city government has started early and hands out pamphlets as you head towards your taxi at the airport taxi line. i haven't read the pamphlet, but i assume it will be relatively useless against taxi drivers who are renowned in the country for being crooked, and who don't speak english, aren't linguists, and don't give a fuck about you. there's also a huge shortage of taxis during rush hour, and bj is a city much like LA: spread out and impossible to navigate without a car. see above if you plan to travel by metro.

lastly, the government is 'cracking down' (and thats no joke in a country like this) on foreigners without visas, and trev warned me that maybe i should start carrying my passport with me while in bj. the police will be randomly stopping foreigners and demanding to see their entry visas. i made some comment about sewing the star of david to my clothes, which of course was a whiner-lame comment for obvious reasons, but i feel a little scared about the liberties with which police can take. if i was white, i would be less worried, but looking asian and not being local presents a lot of issue here. on one hand, if i were alone i probably just wouldn't get stopped for obvious reasons. but with trevor, i might. 100% of chinese believe that i'm being some snotty local who refuses to speak chinese because i have a lao wai boy at my side. they are more baffled when trevor speaks chinese to them and then translates to me in english. you would need to see how white foreigners get treated here vs. local chinese to fully grasp what i'm talking about. once, after checking in at the airport counter in guangzhou, cyn and i headed towards security. a man stopped us and put our bags on a scale, and told us we were carrying overly heavy bags and to go back and check them in. meanwhile (as we're arguing), about 37 lao wai businessmen with huge carry on suitcases go rolling by us, very clearly over the 10 kilo limit. we then go back and check our shit in, and witness the same man who told us there were no earlier flights to ho chi minh (our layover was 6 hours), allow a white couple on a flight to ho chi minh that was leaving in an hour.

this shit is typical.

i'm not just china-bashing (which i do a fair share of, i know). i know greece isn't exactly a model for municipal organization, and athens went off fine. i know bringing their cities up to par is forcing china to engage in a value system that, while considered a figment of the current western paradigm, is largely believed to be the right direction (hello, environmental controls). it is bringing a huge injection of significant architecture to the capital city. (speaking of which, i just flew out of the new wing of the bj airport. very cool. it's totally a copy of hong kong's airport, much like SFO's new international building is a copy of narita, but it's very nice. hk has such an amazing airport, copying it wasn't a bad idea. i insisted on going to the burger king, so trev and i shared a whopper tao can and walked around admiring everything.) it's a boon for the image of the nation and playing a part in driving the skyrocketing economy. but being here, living here, knowing how already difficult and poorly planned so many aspects of the actual day-to-day logistics are, and knowing that china holds that additional complication of a censored media and corrupt government and a lack of infrastructure... i'm just saying that maybe you want to bring your respro, load a crash mandarin course on your ipod, and be very patient.

beijing

hollering from bj. sitting in a cafe with t money. he's working on his thesis. i just spent the last hour troubleshooting my wireless. finally fixed it and reading perez.

yeah yeah yeah. i ain't apologizing for reading trash. i re-worked my 2008 unit projections first, so there.

in a bit we'll head out and head to the gym. my first gym in china experience! should be interesting. if i have space on the bb, i'll take some pics.

the week was hectic, but lots of things got done. la honcha will be in milan for the furniture show the week after next, so it should be chill for a while. we shall see.

long weekend today due to qing ming jie - aka tomb-sweeping day (today). i find it ironic that in the states, i go to the gravesites for qing ming with the fams religiously. now in china, there are no graves to visit, so i shoot up to bj for the bf.

i also find it funny that most of the ABC families in the states do the same thing, treat it all seriously and shit, be respectful of the traditions. here, half the people use it like a vacation day off and head for the hills! my tix to bj reflects that trend, damn. i had to pay about 2000 rmb to cart my ass up here, and it took 6.5 hours of traveling due to delays and traffic and shit. flights were delayed all over the place. my flight wasn't delayed, but we sat on the tarmac for an hour. isn't that the same as delayed?!?! bastards. i rolled in to trev's at around 2 am.

ps - you can't carry on any liquids at all on airplanes now here in the see-en so you have to check everything. rumors are flying about why; the one i heard was that a woman carried on an amount of gasoline in a coca cola can (which she shouldn't have been able to bring on the flight anyway, according to the new flight regulations that were put into place in july, but i carried water bottles on all the damn time), and once the plane was in the air, she went into the bathroom and doused herself in it. allegedly she crew smelled it on her and caught her, so she wasn't able to light herself on fire. and, of course (the censored cherry on top), it is said that she is tibetan. i'm sure there's a similar rumor circulating where the woman is falun gong.

anyways. we're abouts to head out.

kiss kiss.

pillowfight shanghai!

some vids from last week:

cushion team vs. purple team

frosh

i've been reading celebrity blogs way too damn much. my brain is mush.

its friday night and i couldn't be any happier with my grandma blanket bunched around me on the sofa. fuck that party girl shit. i'm too damn tired.

went to yoga at 7:45 tonight and had a mildly bizarre experience. i say mildly bizarre because after 1.5 years here, it takes some serious weirdness to be rated really bizarre. the teacher was some lanky white dude who spoke his shitty chinese fearlessly, and proved that really large flexible people are just odd. it looks strange, too much going on, too much muscle and flesh and skin all warping matrix-like in front of your face. also, instead of your standard-issue triple ommmmm chant, this motherfucker made us chant the vowels of the alphabet. i'm not kidding. i kept expecting someone to jump out from behind a door and tell us we're on that british show, 'just for laughs' (and damn do i roll when i watch it on the plane).

he was like, 'everyone say ah.'

'ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...'

(i felt like i was at the doctor getting a physical.)

'everyone say eee.'

'eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...'

'now oh.'

'ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...'

i'm glad he actually stopped after u. i was halfway expecting some 'and sometimes y' bullshit. after he later made some crack about how his job was so easy, he just says stuff and we do it, i knew he was just jacking around, using us for his own petty satisfaction (he also informed us that this was his last class because he got canned). i knew it!

weirdos abound.

what's been going on... not much. work has been getting busy - i spent most of the day running around like some fool trying to hustle sales for a company i don't own.

speaking of weirdos:



this broad had the nerve to sit in front of me on the bus yesterday. excuse moi? this is just furthering my disbelief about the chinese nationals and their love-hate-disregard for their hair. (i will at some point rant about how an entire nation can be cool with running around in public all damn day long with some of the worst bedhead you've ever seen in your life. it's compounded by the fact that chinese folk really do not find hair-washing a priority. oily hair is somewhat 'glued' into place by sebaceous secretions, making for a fine sculpting medium for extreme bedhead. hair hygiene seems to be a curse or crime to be avoided, something that is detrimental to your life, health, and the health of your long and otherwise robust line of descendants. i don't know any other culture in this world that has traditions and folklore supporting hair-washing abstinence.)

i'm effin' geeked about finally having a camera on my phone. i haven't even turned off the loud, faux-shutter click because china is one of those places where you can both run around with a hairstyle like the above and not garner a single stare, and very obviously take multiple pictures of a complete stranger without anyone giving a phuck.

oh so cheez

as willie says, we're so disgusting barf barf barf -





what i like about this pic is that you can totally see the dude in the car behind us. i do not like so much that the sunlight highlights the pimple on my chin. gross.

saturday

http://www.badcatpros.com/main.php

that's where i'll be this afternoon. worldwide pillowfight, shanghai chapter. other participating cities include london, beijing, budapest, chicago, copenhagen, melbourne, nyc, paris, vancouver, DC, and more.

not exactly hayward and lijiang. not hating on either, tho. i need to find a pillow that i can get dirty.

sherry is the organizer for the shanghai event. i left her and steph at the diesel-adidas party at 1933 last night, sipping (ok, chugging) free-flow perrier-jouët and shrieking with laughter at the amy winehouse lookalike, and other china hipster-gone-wrong individuals. i couldn't deal. working gal who started with three cocktails after work and tops that off with the slider burgers on jean georges' bar menu only has the capacity of two glasses of bubbly before securing a cab and passing out in it. oops.

i was so tired i decided to put off sleeping by reading, and vaguely remember sitting up, shocked to find the lights still on and discombobulated, and then i suppose turning it off at some point. i just know i woke up this morning after crazy dreams about my mom's burgundy volvo station wagon from high school and trevor in a ranchero hat and a long ponytail, and the lights were off. the neighbor decided that 9:30 am was the perfect time to bump daft punk, so i'm retaliating with the hip hop, pop, and latin smörgåsbord that is my ipod. i think they particularly like nas. i know i do. jerks.

from friday night

from my flight to beijing on friday night. i was so perturbed and actually nauseated by the time i got into my cab, i had to record my thoughts on the blackberry.


my flight tonight was the worst one i've had in a while. not because anything was wrong with the flight itself - that was fine - but because i was surrounded by a full bouquet of the most vile odors a body can produce.

it started off innocently enough, i sat window and a guy sat aisle. we split the middle seat reasonably between his coat and my bag. then a third shuttle-load of people started boarding and a man sat between us. fine. and then he began to breathe.

every body odor offense that could be committed, he committed. i was O.O., olfactorily offended. he even dug vigorously in his nose when the hot towels came around - wiping the fruits of his labor on the provided towel. i hoped fervently, having just finished using mine to wipe my face, that they don't re-use them on the airlines. but you know that they do.

i could smell the oiliness of his hair (a bit of a feat since he didn't have much) and the rot in his gums. it smelled like a swamp thing shat in his mouth, then wiggled in and died in its murky depths. after our snack was served, i was treated to a string of roiling farts. at this point, i had the napkin from our meal box jammed up my nose. a sour foot scent came wafting about in waves. i looked down at his feet, but he was wearing shoes. someone else near us had decided to add the cherry on this rank sundae.


other than my fragrant flight and hellish time getting back (hello? no liquids of any kind allowed in hand carried bags on any flights... imagine what that does to the security line in this country), the weekend was wonderful and happy. we spent trev's bday night at med, where the environment is a puzzling hybrid of slick japanese eatery-slash-club and the warm homey environment of a mediterranean restaurant..? but the food was commendable. trev started with a cocktail and i started with bubbly, then we graduated to a pinot noir for the mains, and we had the most startling service. the main waiters for our table - there were two who seemingly worked in competition - would pop out from nowhere whenever a dish was placed on the table, or a new drink was introduced, and ask, 'how is your FOOD? [or wine, or whatever]' and when we answered positively, each waiter would beam at us and say, 'THANK you!' you'd of thought they made it themselves. after a bottle of wine, our opinion of the service went from slightly disturbed to downright hilarious, and we giggled our way through dessert.

too short, the weekend.

i came down with some bizarre flu-like thing yesterday (oh, and it was heaven fighting with security at beijing airport while sweating with a fever) but i got in bed pretty much as soon as i got home last night and slept the 9 hours till morning. i woke up around midnight to my neighbor shouting at his family, but i was groggy enough to observe the shouting and presume he was drunk, then gamely fall asleep again. the flu is going around - everyone in the office is dropping like flies. i think i got off rather lightly.

my chest is ragged from coughing - it feels like i swallowed a microplane like a sword-eater, then grated it up and down my windpipe (a fine microplane... like the one used for hard cheese and chocolate). i opted out of yoga tonight in favor of leaving the office before 7 pm, doing a jiu guang run, and then coming home to eat and get in bed before 11. i am allowed days off, right?

right.

hump day

my day today:

8 am - finally roll my ass out of bed and into the shower
9:54 am - bleep into work using the fingerprint machine
11 am - go to china mobile office with my assistant to pay the bills they never sent to me
12 pm - start reviewing all of the mock-up boxes the graphic team made for our packaging review meeting with the founders
1:30 pm - get hungry and go eat
3 pm - start packaging review meeting
5 pm - take christine up on her offer to go down to the cart guy on the corner for some pork-stuffed fried dough goodness (1.4 rmb each)
6:30 pm - leave office for yoga
9:30 pm - leave yoga studio and head for ramen joint with sherry, hip flexors in recovery mode.
11 pm - call trev to say goodnight

today was cush but busy. the rolling into work at 10 thing was an accident - having a head cold and a big meeting today basically meant that i had to be at work, but really just wanted to sleep all day. luckily i keep busy and work is pretty fun, so i can forget about the sore throat and sinus pressure and play with boxes and foam sheets for a few hours.

i was trying to download some pics from the blackberry that i took today but my head is stuffy and the stupid bluetooth thing is eluding me. the manual is in the other room, pretty much meaning that this post will be picture-less. maybe tomorrow?

canto luuuuuuv

this is what i was doing this weekend...






this little number came before the food, mind you. biann and i hadn't eaten in something like 8 hours by this point, so i was feeling close to suicidal when the lights dimmed and i realized what was going to happen. after a few notes i realized the amazingness and mustered enough energy to record it for what would no doubt be lots of enjoyment later...