Hangzhou Lovin’

50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2002

Wow, this really surprises me. Gore is not going to run for reelection. I guess all the media he has been getting lately has just been for kicks. Maybe he actually did want to sell some books. This leaves the democratic side wide open. My moneys on Kerry, but I have n idea what govenors are running. Who knew who bill Clinton was before 1992? I sure hope liberman dosn’t get the nomination, I don’t trust that guy.

Anybody know how I can convince my “leaders” (for some reason in CHina you call your boss your leader), to give me more money? I thought that they already raised my salary (a measely 1000 rmb, yes I realsie I was stupid to accpet a salary this low and sign a contract fo r a whole year), but instead they just gave me the pay for two monthes. I tried to convince them to give me a raise next semester if I sign a contract for one more year. But I don’t think my leader, understood me very well. He just kept saying, “we already have a contract.” Damn I need more money if I want to keep living the life of a hua hua gong zi.

Oh yeah, what does it mean if a chinese girl calls you a wooden man? I think it has something to do with me not paying very good attention to people. Because when I said I wasn’t a wooden man, they asked me if I remembered their names. Of course I didn’t, so they just laughed at me and kept called me wood man.

Um, I am not in a blogging* mood but I feel that many things happened to me to day that are worthy of being blogged. First today I played twenty questions and pictionary with my class. Twenty questions went over all right, except that the fuckers didn’t want to participate. It’s a good thing I’m a american and I think it is funny when Chinese students lose face in front of the class. Then for the second half of class i tried to teach them how to play pictionary.

They understood the concept but diodn’t get the spirit of the game. Sinced my class was very big today I just picked out two students and had them face off while the rest of the class tried to geuss what they were drawing. The problem was that they tried to draw everything to pretty. They would draw a face but then erase it because the proportions weren’t just right, or spending most of the time they where up their trying to get Jackie Chan’s hair just right. This was allright and everbody seemed to enojoy it, even if there was too much Chinese and not enough english being spoken. But even after I tried to show them how to just draw rough caricatures of people, (I was able to draw pictures in about 15 seconds, while my students took 5 minutes, and the students were able to decipher mine more easily). I’m sure there is some subtle cultural difference here but I am to tired to figure it out.

The second thing I felt like blogging about was this conversation I had with john over at sinosplice. One thing we talked about was how a lot of people laowai in china run into are users. After we talked I got to thinking about the point more and I realised that I am at least as big a user as most chinese people I know. My best Chinese friend is probably my chinese teacher. She teaches Chinese to me two times a week during her freetime for free, and in the past has rescheduled her work just so she can take the day off to deal with my problems. What does she get in return? When we talk in english I tell her when she is wrong, and I make fun of her a lot. I don’t see this as a good deal on her part, but like I said she is probably one of my best friends over here.

And I am going to Beijing for newyears (western, not chinese), where I will meet a friend of my father’s grilfriend’s friend’s daughter. (got that?) Her father is supposedly Jiang Zeminn’s** heart doctor. So I will go to biejing and use this very weak connection to this girl to make her lead me around the city and if she’s hot I’ll probabaly end up hitting on her too. On top of that one of the main reason’s I want to meet her is so i can get good gaunxi*** with her family in case I ever want a job in Beijing. Goddamn I’m a fucker.

At least Al Gore has a giant package (via mary)

*Since elfuzz already told me how lame I am since I used a smily face in a comment , I feel that I have fallen far enough to start using the word “blog” as a verb.

**I’m not gonna spell his name correctly to throw the censors off my trail…

***i.e. connections

Watched a movie today. it was about group of people from a baozi restuarent that take on a team of internaional students in a soccer match. Fucking wierd.

If you want to buy me a Christman present. This is my suggestion

Oh henry, power is the ultimate aphrodisiac..

I’m feeling tried today for no good reason, I’ve had a chronic sore throat the past week and maybe I am getting sick again, I hope not. I got to learn to say no more, to many random meals with random chinese people. The weather here right now is really strange. It’s 33 degrees out and there is this thick mist, (or dust or smog or whatever it is), covvering the area. Visability is about 10 yards, and I was a little scared coming home, but it was cool too. Oh yeah I got to remeber not to let my students eat apples and use my computer at the same time because they spit the peal all over my desk….

Ok edify yourself: A civil war in Iran is quite likely (told ya). I’m not sure how I feel about this one. It would be great if the Ayatollahs were driven out of power, but a civil war there would likely be bloody with no gaurentee of a quick victory. With a huge american military presence in gulf at the moment, it will be interesting to see what happens.

Well as it seems we are slipping close to war, (because Iraq decided to say that they don’t have any weapons), I figure I’ll put out a more nuanced take on the position, just so no one can say I was wrong. My main stance against a military action against Iraq is against a full scale invasion and bombing of Bahgdad. These two things would be very likely to cause massive loss of life. Beyond that I am actually not that opposed to military action against Iraq. I think we should be trying to slowly cut off Saddam from the rest of the country and try to make the transition as painless as possible. Now it is entirely possiible that this is what the bishies planned all along and that I will be wrong about my predictions of massive fallout from the iraqi campain.

However even if our preemptive strike is succesful, Bush has already fucked american policy for decades to come. First of all, this whole episode seriously underminded the power of the united nations. As everybody knows the UN is a tool of the US, so it hurts us when we treat our own tools like crap. Secondly, we all ready see countries like China and Russia use the “preemptive” excuse to do whatever the fuck they want. I got more to say but I got more important things to do.

Man, I had one random Chinese night tonight. I didn’t really know what I was going to tonight, I thought I waqs going to go out with these peasent irls I met at the bar, but they said they were busy. So I ended up going out with julianna instead (1) She is in her late 30’s and is married to a taiwaness guy and is a pretty cool chick. Though I find it rather strange that one of my better friends in China is a midlle aged women, and that I went out on saturday night with her. She is married so I don’t think she has any romantic intentions for me, because she is married and so much older than me, but you never know. It’s already strange enough it wopulf be to wierd if she made a pass at me.(2)

First I got a call from her that she needed to drop off a book. Then she invites me out to dinner, since I don’t have anything else to do, I cheerfully accept her offer. We go to eat with this random girl who I think julianna is going to give a job but I never really figured out why she was there. So we had a nice dinner and i had a few beers and then we went to vist Howie’s(3) house but that shit was boring (4).

Earlier Julianna was telling me that she likes to stay out late and drink beers but her husbanmd says it is bad. After we left Howies I asked her if she wanted to go to sleep or go somewhere else, and she was down with going out. So first we were going to go to the most happening bar in town “Boys and girls”(5). But then she convinces me to go to the kareokee joint. We get there and there is no one there. “Umm we should go” I try to tell Julianna, but she wants to stay and sing a few songs. Since I can’t say no to females, she convinces me to go up there and sing “adleweiss” (6)with her. I get up in front of the room and sing the song with her, even though I don’t really know the words, belting it out in my best 40s croner voice. The four other people in the bar love it and come up to me to congradulate me. One guy calls me Da Shan (7) and gets me to dance with his wife. So I actaully ended up enjoying the Kareokee (8) and got to sing “yesterday, once again,” the most popular english song in China that no one in america gives a fuck about (9) All in all a good night. (10).

1. I am going to start writing footnotes to my posts to make them more intelligable. Julianna is the owner of the Cofe (cafe) where I teach a few extra english classes each weak t oearn some extra money and meet new people. She is in her late 30’s and is married to a taiwaness guy and is a pretty cool chick. Though I find it rather strange that one of my better friends in China is a midlle aged women, and that I went out on saturday with her.

2. though she does look good for her age.

3. Howie is this old american dude who also teaches at julianna’s, I kinda think he bullshits a lot but if everything he says is true he has had an amazing life.

4. One of the things that make Howir’s house nice is that it’s usaully filled with chinese girls. He is one dirty old bastard and is always making sexual comments towards the girls, It’s pretty disturbing and the girls are always hapy to see me, a foriegner who dosn’t make creepy passes at them.

5. The first place I got drunk in China.

6. you know the song from the sound of music. by the way I watched the sound of music with my class the other day, some dude brought it in and asked if we could watch it. “is it in english?” i asked, yeah he said, so we watched. Damn that movie really sucks, I was definitly rooting for the nazis, but watching the reactions from my students was fairly entertaining.

7. Big Mountain the name of a famous canadian actor, wel at least he is famous in China.

8. Though in an ironic hip fashion, of course i didn’t sincerly like it.

9. I think it is by the caprenters or something and the churos goes like “they sang sha la la la la, and wo o wo o”

10. Do you realsis what i just said? I sang in front of people! I never sing. If only you could have been a fly on the wall.