england amorous feeling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

fido and spot in the wok

http://tinyurl.com/5wdpx7

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




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

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

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

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

being a big girl

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

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

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

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

we're obsessed with

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8AVebYQNV10&feature=related

this ridiculousness.

we keep sending each other different vids.

yes, we are 11 years old.

sleeplessness

there's a sense that things are drawing to a close, even though i'm going to be around for another couple of months. i don't really feel like i'm going to be here for another 60-odd days. trev is already getting his stuff together to ship off into the neverneverland of china post, and he's gone as of next week. i still have a bit of time, however i choose to think about it.

basically rounding up the rest of my task list before i leave work (and jesus is it LONG) and trying to do survivalist things like find a job in where i'm going to be relocating, and thinking about what household shit trevor and i are going to need (read: everything). oh yeah, and wresting my belongings from my family members, who have been both secretly and openly appropriating shit from my boxes in the garage. i guess that's what happens when you're too broke / cheap to rent a storage space.

weeks are booking solid in terms of extracurricular activities. have to work to squeeze in the odd yoga class or stay-at-home-and-watch-the-wire nights. at the rate that my apartment appears to retain heat these days, there's not much incentive to be home anyway. i am going to weigh about 300 pounds by the time i leave here. every evening is an opportunity to try this or that place either for the first time or one last time before i leave.

must. reign. in. appetite.

the more or less chronic GI tract issues that i have in the summers in asia seem to have little to no impact on my actual appetite. i like to think it actually makes my body MORE efficient at calorie absorption, therefore accounting for the beer belly i'm cultivating on my frame. and, for the first time in my life, i can actually attribute beer consumption (and dinners no earlier than 9 pm every day) for this unwelcome addition to my physique. if i wasn't so busy all of the time, it would rather suck.


waiting for the melatonin to work...

gu rei hai

chatting with t-money - who believes himself to be one of the more healthy-like-a-healthnut individuals in china, except for his LIVER, mr. smartypants - i realized that it had been weeks since i'd eaten a fruit that wasn't in a cocktail.

what?

i've had a busy past 4-6 weeks, ok? shit. i'm also only eating meals that come either from a delivery person or a package. ramen diet. at least i'm eating plenty of EGGS, the protein everyone here seems to subsist off of. besides pork, of course.

hee hee. show me a chinese person with a vitamin E deficiency and i'll show you a north korean escapee.

get out of town.

no way: http://www.fldsdress.com/

you may recall me going off about this in a previous post. gives the term, 'throwback,' a whole new meaning.

thanks sarah!

congraduation

wish i had some photos of graduation to post, but, er, sadly i was the least devoted significant other at the ceremony (i think there were 4 or 5 non-participants in the audience) and left my stupid camera charging at trevor's apartment. hey man, the ceremony was at 9:30 AM the morning after finals. everyone was out getting smashed the night before; my plane touched down after midnight and i had to roll my suitcase into a bar to meet t.

thank you. we hid my suitcase behind a large plant and ordered me a drink.

oh wait, thank god for f*cebook. one of the students uploaded her graduation album. that was nice of her. don't mind if i do...





pic doesn't tell ya much, does it?

after the ceremony broke we all boarded a nice little bus and went to this restaurant whose theme is based on the foods served to chinese royalty in ancient times. the staff wears reproductions of period clothing and it's in the gardens of what used to be the royal prince's palace. don't ask what dynasty, i didn't get that much detail. but it was a trip, pretty cool. we ate a salad made of flowers, to make you more beautiful, and goose liver, the goose itself, duck, and tons of other rich food. i did manage to take a couple of phone-camera photos of the waitstaff, but i just spent an hour trying to reinstall my bluetooth application and for some reason it's not working, so fuck it. MMS also not sending from my dumbass mobile device that i am mad at right now. i illogically blame it all on china mobile.

the rest of the time was essentially drinking, eating, or recovering from both. i feel somewhat guilty having such a carefree weekend when this upcoming week of the brand launch is going to be hellish, but i guess i just chalk it up there for 'why do i give a fuck since i just resigned.'

i wish i could be so callous. i dream of being so callous.

anyways, yeah, all of the non-participants except for moi were running around with high-powered lens cameras and snapping away. i snoozed until trevor's speech and clapped a lot to make up for how lame i was in the recording-significant-moments arena. i mean, people were taking hundreds of photos during a ceremony that lasted less than 90 minutes. i wanted to make a big foam finger to wave during the ceremony, but after seeing how small the room and actual graduating class was, i'm glad i was too busy at work to actually do it.

bah. i have a lot of thinking to do and so i will now give my brain a 7-hour rest.

afternoon headaches

up late-night. stressing over some triflin bullshit that won't matter to me in about three years. stress headaches are back but the only thing that gives me some peace is typing, and typing must be done on a computer.

the general mandate of humanity deems compassion to be a good thing, a worthy thing, something to be valued. damned if it doesn't just make your ass the weakest link in the world of business. in this whole mess of resigning and leaving the country and following the hearts-and-flowers path instead of the stress-and-paycheck option, i vacillate between wanting to hide from the real world of dog-eat-dog and pretend all i see are rainbows and angels... and wanting to crush those angels and then sell them some expensive furniture. free delivery.

right now the latter is not appealing to me. i went this weekend and did what i used to do when struck with a dilemma: jumped into a pool and tried to swim myself into submission and my mind into focus, but i forget how much leaner i used to be when the physical aspect of the repentance would last as long as needed in order to bring around the mental . i barely cleared 1000 meters before the physical part of me went kaput and the mind was still in turmoil. and the physical wanted thai delivery.

plus there were no pull buoys or a time clock or flags at the pool and it was really throwing me off. you can only placidly breaststroke for so long in 1.2 meters depth without thinking about pad see ew.

called trevor, who was oh so unfortunately stranded at a bar, but receiving half-sober bar analysis failed to lull me to sleep. you're on your own, sister.

to continue with my griping, sometimes i feel that i was granted half-talents. there is no one thing so keenly developed in my brain, nor so deeply entertaining that i'll throw all of my energy into honing the skill, and so i feel that i fall between kinda wanting to do this but knowing it'll eventually be annoying, to maybe falling back on that bullshit i used to do way back when. what was it again? oh yeah, buying sheets for people or something.

clearly, having a path of some sort matters to me - why else write about it to a cheering crowd of about 4.3 people - but i'm not convinced that the junctions i've visited have involved an interstate of deeply compelling potential goals. i'm in a minivan and it corners like a horse cart.

anyways... enough complaining. there's enough of the middle-class or middle-management or gen X malaise to thickly spread every bagel in the factory, and the truth of the matter is i need to be somewhat alert tomorrow so i can negotiate my way into what will likely be a big fat shaft in the quadriceps. mine, of course. the good thing is that my quads are so under-utilized lately that the shaft will just slide in, easy as butter.

muggy

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/magazine/15parenting-t.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087&em&en=04b9e97c4ed5ef60&ex=1213502400

just finished this article in the ny times magazine. been interested in the media coverage on gay and lesbian marriage dynamics since the very very recent ruling on gay marriage in killa-cali. experts believe that same-sex marriages make good role models for hetero marriages (mixed-sex marriages?) whose members are concerned with equal roles in the house. this particular article is about equally shared parenting. have a read, it's worth it.

guess this has been top of mind because i'm coming up on a move-in with the bf in a few months. i know from past roommate experiences that i'm super partics about things, and trev is, well, trev. he thinks water coolers are great for hanging your coat on, and doesn't bother to check which toothbrush he happens to be using. a toothbrush is a toothbrush, and it's located near him, so he'll use that shit. when we first started dating, he tried sitting on my bed with his jeans on. uh uh. he learned about that one real quick.

most people reading this who know the extent of my OCD about cleanliness and hygiene are shaking their heads. no way, girl, you trippin if you think this relationship is going to last through co-habitation. but in imagining my future apartment strewn with law books and coffee cups and holey socks, feel like things might be alright. trevor, being a big picture kind of guy, is pretty concerned about how i like things done. he learned the no-outside-clothes-in-bed rule with a rapidness that impressed even my mom (who's been struggling with that one for over 35 years). we've had successful tutelages on his weekend shaving kit - aka plastic grocery bag - and where his items go on the bathroom counter once the trevor tornado hits the placid peaceful calm of carolynville. trevor is much less stubborn than me and my kind. it's a good thing - a somewhat foreign thing - but good nonetheless. we thinks we might be able to work with this material.

fresh water well

children get up early. we have 6 new folks downstairs in my neighbor's 'apartment,' as it were, relatives of the sichuanese wife who lost their home in the earthquake. two of them are kids - two boys around 9 and 11 - nice kids so far but weekends sleeping in are bye-bye. they roller blade in the courtyard, play swords running up and down the stairs, you know, kid stuff. noisy, thumping kid stuff.

life after the quake is simmering down. the two flat-screen tvs on every bus has stopped playing new daily slideshows of photo footage set against sad music. my company - as most companies - has gathered donations from employees, matched the total, and sent them to the red cross. the three minute moment of silence, which was not silent at all but filled with screaming air-raid sirens - has come and gone, the three days of remembrance is over.

clinton lost. i wonder if, when running for president, someone on staff is responsible for counseling the candidate about the possibility of a loss and how to manage. i wonder if preparing for losing is part of the game; or if the candidate is treated much like a coddled athlete and shielded from anything that might affect the mental state needed for wins.

sherry and i scoffed when we heard clinton and obama were in a runoff. america would elect a black man before a woman, and although i wasn't totally convinced, damn it if we weren't right. i am sure that sexism played a part in it, just as i'm sure that the clinton name was an enormous hurdle - we californians love the clintons, it took me a while to understand that just as we love them, many many other people loathe them - and her confrontational stance, her tenacity that translated negatively in the press. i do not personally support girl-power rhetoric, i find it to support negative generalization and to not be representative of my views, but as a girl, i am positive that it would have been enlightening to have a woman in office. gender matters, even if we like to believe it doesn't. in this race, there were many aspects to her personality, and obama's, that led to the results as we know them today. his ability to appear transcendent, just as she appeared to be rutting around in the bi-partisan dirt, was as legitimate a factor in the race as her faultlessly impressive preparation. i wanted to support the practical - her strong foundation of experience and provision - over his idealism, but in the end it was the practical interpretation of that practicality vs. his optimism that forced my hand. his platform of transcendence, as gossamer as it sounded, translated into leadership, and that is what will matter in the bi-partisan election. facing off a rottweiler with a pittbull isn't a guarantee. maybe a unicorn will work better?

i can't say that i ever would have believed that before. so i suppose we will see.

subvert

watching 'the wire' makes me feel like a future of my horn-dog husband strutting around town and nailing everything that walks while i wait at home with 3 kids and some tired-ass hair is inevitable.

i mean, i know, i watch chris rock. a man is as faithful as his options. but it's sad to think that some people believe that once you have kids and/or are married for more than a decade, you need to put a tracking device on his ass just to make sure he keeps his pants on.

the 'we miss pho' club

so my mom, in a mom-like quest, decided to bring pho soup spices with her to china because she'd heard through my sister my many laments about a lack of vietnamese food in shanghai. don't get any bay area kid started on how shitty vietnamese food is here - and we aren't even vietnamese - so addicted are we northern californians to our weekly pho lunches. and dinners. and saturday brunch. the only way to roll my ass out of bed on a saturday morning is with the promise of food, and good pho i will rise for. i will even shower.

we couldn't actually track down any beef bones for the broth until the last day of their visit, when my mom happened to wander into a hair salon for a wash 'n set that was owned by a fellow cantonese. they got to talking and he tipped her off to both an excellent nearby guangdong restaurant and a local butcher who sells beef.

when we finally located this 'butcher' i was a bit doubtful... he was completely passed out on his butcher block with one lone leg bone hanging on a meat hook behind him, and several empty seafood buckets in front of his shack. who sells beef AND seafood? as it turns out, cantos never lead other cantos astray, and he quickly whipped out an assortment of bones appropriate for soup, multiple strands of tendon, and several hunks of beef. despite lacking any proper tools (who says you can't beat a leg bone with a hammer?), we quickly made the guy's day by dropping over $10 USD on a ton of cow parts. beef in china is not cheap. and it's actually more like veal.

we spent part of their last day cheerfully lamenting the size of my soup pot (the bone stuck way out of the pot in some grisly jeffrey daumer way) and debating the wisdom of my mom's pho talents, browning the onion and ginger in my toaster oven, and taking turns sticking our faces into the pot.

today it was ready and i invited the girls over for dinner. one conference call, a huge thunderstorm, and a last-minute project later and it was just me and viv inhaling that distinctive anise-cinnamon-clove-meat broth smell that only fellow pho addicts understand as delicious. the approximations of the other ingredients were rough - the basil missing, the onions sliced too thickly, the bean sprouts overly mature - but the broth was there and right now i'm appreciating my mom and dad's thoughtfulness in lugging such a finely curated assortment of expat goodies for their kid.

thanks mom and dad.

ain't trying to hate

"Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints members left the courthouse on Thursday after a ruling in their favor in San Angelo, Tex." (unabashedly ripped from the ny times, both image and copy.)

...but i mean, damn. if any sect told my ass that i would have to sport THOSE outfits and that HAIR, i would immediately tell them to get lost. pound sand. stop freebasing. get real.

sometimes i wonder if general guidelines for life can't be at least somewhat based on the rules of fashion? like, when crazy people dressed like this tell you that you are going to be the 4th wife of some old fat fart and your 12-year old daughter is going to be married off to some beer belly crazyman, you take one look at the getups they're sporting and the warning signals go off.

right?

moms and dad

going to hangzhou tomorrow. no work for 2 days!

photos to follow.

half man half amazing

i dreamt (dreamed? my spell check gave me the thumbs down) that my sister and i had a well-swaddled baby in our trunk, and it was a really hot day. my sister wouldn't let me take her out of her many layers of clothes and blankets, but i unwrapped the baby and was showing my sister how sweaty she was. we were in a parking lot somewhere, and the baby was a newborn little girl.

it was the weirdest thing.

9:12 am and i'm leaving in an hour to pick up my parents at the airport. i hope my mom survived the flight ok.

the silence that follows

just got back from our friend viv's birthday dinner. everyone else headed to shelter to see cut chemist, but i bowed out. i love being around my folks, plus a few others that were visiting, but damn. it's really like jumping off a bullet train into the hush of being underwater. i was so hyper stimulated i had to come up with something to do (apply face mask and sit in a chair) to switch from 11 people talking all at once to me in my quiet apartment.

i wonder sometimes how mental illness isn't something more widespread. the swing from just the two environments had me off kilter for a minute. someone with more social anxiety would be in a bad place. i can't say that i'd ever notice something like this except for the fact that i live in the extreme right now - my social life here is like the bay area super-mellow scene x 1000. and my apartment that faces the garden courtyard is so quiet. i hear some noise from the street, like the rumble of trucks going by every so often, but silence in shanghai is hard to come by and this is damn close.

i'm stuffed. we ate at el willy's, one of the newer places that's opened up recently, a spanish tapas joint that features an actual spanish chef. it was delicious, but so rich. plus i fortified with some bloody marys and topped everything off with a slice of chocolate mousse cake. sleep actually feels like it may be an exercise in corralling the unwieldy.

chewing tea leaves

people in this country don't use tea bags or strainers. they just pour directly in the cup and top off with water. i don't understand how they are able to do this without eating a salad of tea leaves constrantly, which is pretty much what i do. its awkward, too; sometimes i take a swig while a coworker is around and try to talk around the branch hanging out of my mouth. so slick, this one.

speaking of eating, i just ate about a pound of eggs with chinese sausage (lap cheung for you cantos) and cha siu (also for your cantos). in mandarin they are something like la chang and cha shao. whatever. at any rate, it was delivery for dinner at the office and about 10000 calories but i don't care. i'm tired and my eyes ache and that makes me a big baby, which therefore entitles me to eat like a ravenous wolf.

i should shut up and finish my project and go home. bok bok.

abc bbd bbc

i get my info on the earthquake just like you - i watch my pirated philippines satellite channels - bbc and cnn - and read the times. the english-language local papers are fluff and useless.

it happened during work yesterday morning and i didn't feel a thing. some media folk who came into the office for a meeting said they felt it quite strongly, and they are in high rises. our office is in a heritage art deco building and on the fifth floor. i feel somewhat better - which may be completely unfounded - that our buildings are old, and i feel, more solidly built than a lot of this new construction. it goes up so quickly sometimes, you wonder what it's made of. when there's a new construction site, the first thing that gets done is a solid brick wall is erected around the whole thing, and then plastered over. usually - can't tell if this is just from a lack of foresight - no door appears to have been planned into the blueprints of this wall, so the next day or so after that lovely wall goes up and is plastered over, you see a big smashed-in part so the construction workers can actually access the site. trev and i usually have a good laugh over that one.

been watching the footage of the rescue efforts for those kids down in sichuan. sad stuff.

i won't say amen

"Whenever I conduct workshops with any group, I ask people how free they feel and to rate themselves on a scale of 0 to 100. The responses are usually about the same whether I am talking to people in a correctional facility or at a workplace."

- alison link
"why leisure matters in a busy world;" marci alboher; May 5, 2008; the new york times

...but i think the point miz link is making in this article is essentially what i learned on my own since i quit my job in 2006 and came to asia to 'unwind.' as most people observed, asia is hardly relaxing, but it was just what i needed for a switch in gears. and sometimes asia is very relaxing. i learned to be human again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/business/smallbusiness/05shift.html?em&ex=1210478400&en=113569eae516e8a2&ei=5087%0A

this zen minute was brought to you by FRIDAY after a 6-day week, a pending weekend trip to visit cyn and puppies in zhuhai, and the hope of wakeboarding or other relaxing 'leisure activity' that is open, as has just been reinforced, to each person's interpretation. i find getting my ass beat in the water to be relaxing.