Zhanga: August 2005
Entries have their own pages now. Click the date to see the entry by itself with its comments.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005 (1 comment)
Well, I got out of Chinese, so no need to fool with 古文. I took computer science instead, and the dumb site didn't say that there was a required lab attached to the class. Great. So of course, the lab conflicted with math and econ, both of which I wasn't about to drop.
Luckily, I found out that all the math classes aren't completely full, so I moved my times for calculus.
Then I realized that I was taking four courses, all math. Stat, calc, econ, CS (not Counterstrike, Tech people). Oh well, at least I sort of like math.
These posts get more and more pointless. I have nothing to say. I'll add in useless filler.
My mom called me and said a car looking exactly like Charles's Acura got completely totaled on Lower Roswell/Wileo/Timber Ridge. I thought Tricia died trying to go to Davita's house. Luckily, not.
In stat today, the professor put an overhead on the projector showing the rate of kidney cancer for counties in the US. (All of his examples were of dead people.) Most of the dark areas were along the Rockies, and mostly in the north. He asked for possible explanations, and some kid said "proximity to Canada." That class is going to be great. I think it's going to be my favorite.
Sadly, the class I liked the most, Chinese, is the one I had to drop =( The lady was really nice and it was only 12 kids. I just keep getting screwed... this place makes me angry.
12:25AM
Sunday, August 28, 2005 (8 comments)
How worthless. I write something about a girl's name and the only comments I get are "so is she hott" and "is she do-able"? (When I wrote that, there were only two comments.)
The third one is worthless, too.
Ok, time to complain some more about this place.
There are 17 Chinese courses that I can see from the registration program. I signed up for Chinese 35, which is the second one from the top (generally, top = easy). Then I took the placement test. There was an essay at the end which said minimum 200 words... at the end, I wrote in Chinese, "sorry, but my Chinese sucks and I can't fill up 200 words."
They put me in Chinese 183S, which is #15/17. A sophomore told me that it's a Chinese university level Chinese course, and that his roommate, who is an international student from China, has trouble with it. The curriculum includes 古文 (ancient texts). Wtf, mate?
I am NOT taking Chinese for God.
I looked at every Chinese class between 35 and 183S, because I realize now that I'm probably not going to find 35 very challenging. Turns out that one of three things are true for every single Chinese class between 35 and 183:
- It's full.
- It conflicts with Econ 1D, which I can't change because all 20 classes of Econ 1D are full. I can't drop my major...
- It's a study abroad course.
I am screwed. I emailed my advisor and left him a voicemail, but I haven't gotten any response yet. This blows.
As I was scanning through this again, I encountered the words "screwed" and "blows" in the lines above. This reminded me... they gave us condom cases and condoms. I have never seen or heard of condom cases in my life before. Anyways, since I'm not going to be doing anything else with the condoms, I'll probably open them and spread them all over the room when various parents come to visit.
On another note, I've had a lot of surprises lately... but here's a big one:
"You are such prep. I just hope you're not into the popped collar thing."
10:25PM
Saturday, August 27, 2005 (5 comments)
I really only have one thing to say today.
There is this cool Thai girl whose name is Arm. Now, granted, the name isn't quite as cool as "Ai," since Ai = I = eye = 爱, but that's still a freaking awesome name. Why does my name have to suck and be so generic? At least I'm not David Wang. There are three of them in the Class of 2009...
So, Arm took Chinese for a year before and is now taking a higher Chinese class than me? If this isn't losing face, I don't know what is. Well... an American-born Chinese killed me in ping pong =( That's pretty bad, too.
I hope you high school suckers are having fun. HA! Actually, we'll see who's laughing at the end of the semester...
1:39AM
Friday, August 26, 2005 (6 comments)
I'm here, and my dorm sucks. It does have two walk-in closets, but it was a double and is being used as a triple. Our neighbor is reclusive. I haven't seen him yet, and my roommates haven't been able to get him to talk. Rigged.
Soo... there's no AC. The meal plan is (no other choice) $2275, or close to it, per semester for 12 meals a week. I chose $610 extra (there's 3 choices; that's the middle one) on top of that for meals whenever I need them, since 12 obviously isn't enough. Charles tells me the Tech unlimited meals plan is $1200 or $1400. WTF. Gay.
Uh, so my dorm building sucks too. There's a pool table that's extremely tilted and basically unusable. There's a TV with a DVD player in the commons... but DVD player has no cables.
Other dorms have 60" plasma screens, ping pong tables, air hockey... etc. The places are nicer, too. Lame.
I got screwed so hard! Ahhh.
Hey, the library is called Lilly. I mention that only because it's amusing when someone asks where you were, and then you answer with something like "behind Lilly" or "inside Lilly." By the way, I want to pinch your cheeks =)
We were given the option of going to a Durham Bulls (AAA, I think) baseball game, and my roommates and I went. It was a really boring game... I fell asleep. I mean, I like baseball, but this was bad.
There were about as many errors as hits. There was a routine ground ball hit ten feet to the left of the second baseman, who picked it up without trouble. Then he slowly tossed the ball to the first baseman... except the ball only came within ten feet of the first baseman's glove at its closest approach. How did that happen??? Most of Duke left after five innings. Here is me, and the guy closest to the camera is one of my roommates.
College life!
1:29AM
Wednesday, August 24, 2005 (2 comments)
Bye-bye, all. I'm leaving for Duke in two hours. I'll miss one or two of you. I don't care about everyone else. One of the ones I care about is Bill, and I haven't decided if there is another person yet. So, dear reader, you're more than likely one of the ones that don't matter to me.
I'll probably forget most of your names by October. Maybe I'll not have forgotten Yujing by WAC time, especially if I come back for that.
Hey! I just remembered something. That lamer Shabnam has my stupid pogo stick. I went to try to get it before I went to China, but her dad just took my number and said they'd call, which never happened. That was such an ownage pogo stick, too! Argh.
Allon has my floppy drive.
Tricia has my... uh.
I bet if I sat here and kept thinking, I'd come up with a pretty big list of random things that I need to get back. Though I might not be able to get all of them back.
I clicked on an ad at some Xanga a few minutes ago (I don't know why), and came across one of those bogus "fill out this form and receive a free [computer/iPod/phone/other expensive stuff]" things.
Scams are dumb. Check this out. This one asks for a zip code so it can verify whether the "promotion" is available in my area:
They must have some fairly recent database of zip codes, because I never knew "penis" was a valid zip code. On top of that, since when did penises start giving away free electronics?
Geez, when am I ever going to grow up...
2:20AM
Sunday, August 21, 2005 (3 comments)
Today, I went through a pile of mail that my mom made for me while I was in South Carolina. Most of it was Duke stuff, some was random, and one was even from Walton. But how this ever made it into the pile, I'm not sure:
What was my mom thinking? I hope it was just stuck between two other pieces of mail, or inside one of the Discover magazines. I'm going to die if she actually thought it was for me. (I know this is a pretty crappy picture, but I'm too lazy to go all the way downstairs and use my scanner.)
Going to peoples' dorms at Tech makes me kind of regret not choosing it. There's free (well, no extra cost) cable TV with 120 channels, whereas Duke TV is $32 and probably doesn't have that many channels. I have to buy a loft if I want one, and Tech provides them with those. And they have air conditioning. Why is Tech so awesome?
I've narrowed down the advantages that Duke has over Tech to just one: there are girls at Duke. But then again, James and Gene had already gotten some girls into their dorm by the time I got there. Soooo... basically, I suck for not going there.
To make myself feel better, I'm now attempting to teach my sister how to play ping pong (not sure how this has anything to do with making myself feel better). It's going pretty well, besides the fact that I'm going to be gone in three days. She's learning a little too quickly, though. After just three days, she can make me lose points that aren't just me screwing up. At this rate, she'll be able to beat me in a game in maybe three months. Now that'd be embarrassing.... "What's up?" "Uhh, my eight-year-old sister beat me in ping pong... wah wah?"
Ahh, that'd be almost as bad as Ronjon skunking me. Ahhhhh!
Harold & Kumar 2 (damnit, I just typed "Hard & Jumar") better come out soon. Actually, it better happen. If it doesn't get made, I'm going to flip and give whoever's in charge of that a huge ass pounding, super sized. Unless it's the cop. He seems to enjoy that sort of thing.
One last thing before I sleep. I was Xanga-stalking just now, and I was reading the comments on one of the Retarded Asian Xangas. There was a pretty funny comment from some girl that read:
this summer i learned that people automatically assume i have some kind of ed
Immediately following it was a comment from the same dumb girl saying this:
ed = eating disorder
That made me smile.
5:00AM
Wednesday, August 17, 2005 (5 comments)
I've been at Mary's house for a while trying to set up her new laptop. Why does it own mine so much?
Anyways, there is some guy on the phone. Some random guy.. don't know who it is. I can hear half of the conversation, but that's all I need to hear for it to be fun. Here's Mary:
Oh. You got into an accident? [pause] Is your car OK?
That's just one of the better ones. I am cracking up right now.
So now the laundry list... I went to Dutter's room during class and dropped off some stuff, went to Morgan's, then went to Dutter's for the science club meeting. Which consisted of... nothing. Dutter gave me an amazing picture of myself, though. I'll post it after I get home and scan it.
Oh, here's a good one.
I don't know. I think it'd be awkward. Because you're drunk, and I'm... not. I just don't know what we'd do.
Here's where I made a circle with my thumb and index finger, and thrusted in and out repeatedly with the index finger of my other hand.
Back to laundry list. Dutter gave me the coolest birthday present (I know, it's a little late) EVER. Take a guess.
50 lb Watermelon? No.
A year's worth of pork (any way you wish to interpret that)? No.
Lifetime supply of Coke? No.
A Levitron! Isn't that just so fitting? Especially for Dutter to give to me?
Ok, I'm going to get back to annoying Mary now.
1:01AM
Monday, August 15, 2005 (5 comments)
Let's get this straight. That outline wasn't meant to be taken seriously. The only part that resembles truth is the part about tests being a great time for napping. Because they really are. See, when I took physics tests, usually one of two things happened: either I was done a few minutes before the bell, in which case I slept, or I wasn't done, in which case I also slept. Dutter had a knack for putting ridiculously impossible questions on tests, so there was really no point losing sleep trying to do them.
I really will be in class on Tuesday, though. I guess I'll have to come up with something else to talk about. Maybe I'll just recruit for science bowl, since this year's one-man team might be a little short of stellar.
It's late at night, and I'm not sleepy. Again. I was jetlagged in the wrong direction after going to China (sleeping at 8 PM), and now I'm again jetlagged in the wrong direction after coming back. I should be sleeping. (Note: This was written at 3 AM.)
I had originally put one of those survey things here and I was working on it, but there were several problems:
- It asked such questions as "Have you ever... broken the law?" and "God?" (under "Beliefs"). Under the current regime, I may be beaten and jailed for my answers to these and other similar questions. It's that damned Bush Patrol again.
- I had done half of it, yet there were still 1,401 items remaining to be filled out. That was massive like Ms. Bryan.
- It made me feel like such a sag. I think that survey was worse than even watching an episode of Meteor Garden.
On Saturday, I went with my mom to the mall to buy a fridge, some random things I'll need for school, and T-Mobile service. Durham is supposedly in their coverage area but it's roaming. Our house here in EC, of course, is still in a dead zone. I think Sprint's signal is actually a little better here, which is pretty sad...
On the way to the mall, my mom was telling me to do my summer reading, to do work around the house, etc. Normal mom stuff. Then out of the blue, she pops in a line about how she thinks Han Di is ugly. Don't you hate it when you're in a situation where any answer you give is the wrong answer? I wasn't about to agree with my mom, but, keeping in mind who my mother is, disagreeing was even worse. So I picked the worst option possible, which was to not talk and try to change the subject. So my mom kept messing with me for a while. I can't believe my mom is cruel enough to do that... I thought her job was to keep me from going out, to make me do homework, and to make sure I don't smoke. Since when was she supposed to be evil?
4:41PM
Saturday, August 13, 2005 (7 comments)
I'll continue writing stuff about people now.
But first, this:
i want a pounding like tim's wish
but sexier
cici on Saturday, August 13, 2005 at 15:21
i want one TOO!!
Yujing on Saturday, August 13, 2005 at 15:55
Yujing, as much as I love you, please don't ever say that again. EVER. I hope I am loud and clear.
Mary
- Gene said something useful for once. Hurry up and come out of the closet already so poor guys like me don't waste time chasing you.
- 童话! Duh.
- The fact that you're my evil sister is good, in a way. I think Walton would have been a whole lot less fun had you not been around to torment me =)
- Lesbian. Incredibly lesbian. The next word I thought of was 'hot,' and you can put an intensifier of your choice in front of that.
- That China trip was pretty fun. I'd have to say that the Charles note in 8th grade was a memorable memory, too, though maybe not a very good one. I know I know, you hate me. =(
- You need to say my name right, mei mei.
- Floorfilla - Sex Is Danger. The one that I played in my car the other day.
- You're really happy when you're drunk. It reminds me of how you were three years ago, when you were always happy =(
- Squeaky...?
- Recently, there haven't been many. Maybe Charles's or Shayan's parties. But long ago, there have been so many... like all those times at Pat's house, or (lol) math tournaments!
Yujing
- You do everything right and are too perfect. It makes the rest of us look really bad.
- Joan Osborne - One of Us
Groove Coverage - God Is a Girl - See #1. I wish I were you.
- Perfect.
- One of the science bowl trips. I think the DC trip was better. As of right now, I'm wondering how your jokes degraded so much between May and August. Oh no. It must have been those stupid GHP girls. I am going to get them for this.
Lilly
- You are so lame.
- The Who - Pictures of Lily, duh. Or any other song about masturbation.
- YOU ARE SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO CUTE *cheek pinch*
- Cute... wasn't that obvious?
- I don't remember. You are so lame that I have erased all my memories with you. I will say that getting owned by my mom during majiang that night was quite some memory, though. Mostly because someone (my mom) was actually lamer than you, for once.
Tiffany
- You make me feel incredibly gay. No one else even comes close to this ability of yours, except maybe Lilly. But she's not quite as good as you.
- Most of the songs that you sent me remind me of you, just because you sent them to me and so I associate them with you. But if I had to pick one, it'd be No Secrets - I'll Remember You. I think it was the first one you sent me, too.
- You're addictive. I think that should explain itself.
- Foxy =)
- Bill's soffes incident was pretty good. But the most memorable would be the 6000 hours of lost sleep and other time wastage. Good thing there's this thing called night minutes, right? But if I were to relive that part of my life, I'd do it all over again.
---
I got T-Mobile today. It's a family plan, so my mom is going to eat all the minutes. Nights start at 9 PM, which blows hardcore. I have the same number.
I don't know if I have anything else to write. If I do, I'm not going to write it because I don't have any time now.
10:22PM
Ok, since people actually took me up on my offer and put some names down...
Yufei
- Well, I don't really know you. That's something about you.
- Since I don't know you, there isn't a song that reminds me of you...
- You're straightforward with things, and I like that. But then again, I guess it's mostly a girl thing to draw so many circles that I feel like I'm inside an electromagnet.
- You know, this is too hard. How am I supposed to do this when I don't know you?
- At least this one is easy. There's not a whole lot of memories, eh? So I'd have to say that the most memorable one is that one in June.
Bill
- Tiffany and I got you good that time =)
- The Tai Mai Shu Chinese rap song.
- You're very persistent. I think you could be the most persistent person I know. I guess that can be a good thing.
- Owned.
- Umm, I think this would have to be the soffes incident. To be more specific, I think the one thing that stands out in my mind is when we were on the senior deck and Tiffany handed you your paper of defeat. I think I still have it.
Tim
You know, I'd write something for you, but you just told me that you'd love to take a pounding from me. I'm either too busy drooling over this prospect or too busy vomiting all over my desk. You get to pick. Either way, I'm occupied and can't write anything for you. I have to admit that seeing you rolling around on the lawn throwing up was pretty cool, though.
Will
- Your fart smells like those permanent Chinese garbage piles + rotten eggs + six year old Taco Bell burritos + Chinese train station bathrooms. I have no idea how I'm not melted yet.
- This sucks. Everything I listen to is really gay, so anything I put here would be completely gay. I mean... look through my playlist. If any song in there reminds me of you, that would take me out of the closet. Which, by the way, I'm not ready to do.
On a completely unrelated subject, I saw Fleenor today. He put on a cheerful and happy air as usual, but I don't think he was too enthusiastic about seeing me. He also expressed some disappointment at my 3 on the exam. Now back to Will.
- I bet you don't have pest control problems since you have a 100% natural (uh, I guess it's not normal but it's sorta natural at least) solution to deal with this.
- This word is not 'ownage.' At first I was thinking radioactive, but then I came up with a far better alterative. n00b. Actually, I should probably label myself as n00b because I didn't think of it sooner.
- How about when I was supposed to be staying at Rosanna's house but I was always at yours instead... or that time in something grade (5th?) when we got mad at each other over something and then didn't talk for the rest of the day or hour or something... and hey, were you in my FOCUS class when that bee went up Ms. Johnson's dress? That may have been the funniest moment of elementary school, except that I was too scared to laugh. You know, I haven't heard/spoken/read/written "Rosanna" for what, eight years? Ah! There was a Jackson, too! I forgot everyone else's name, though.
Ronjon
- You beat me in ping pong, you whore. I will get you back for that. Just wait... we'll have a curry-eating contest or something. Or I'll get my sister to show you how ping pong is really played. That'll teach you.
- SWEETEST SIN! Also, Mandy Moore - Candy and Darude - Music also remind me of you.
- You never lie ;-)
- Uh, Indian? That would definitely be the first word I think of...
- There's too many of these. I think the first DC trip may have been the best one, but there's been so many good memories. Those quotes never get old =) And I think 7th or 8th or something grade was pretty good, with those 5 classes together. Was it 8th? I remember having homeroom together that year.
You know, some other people need to put their names down. Such a waste to not put down the Bitch song for one of my pals =) There's also some other pretty good ones, like 童话!/tong2 hua4, Pictures of Lily, Dragostea Din Tei, and Barbie Girl. (Barbie Girl is Charles, in case you somehow had trouble with that one. The rest should be even more obvious.)
---
On Friday, I woke up at around 8:25. CiCi told me the day before that she wanted to go to Walton. Basically, after 44 calls to her cell + a similar number to her home + 30 minutes of doorbell ringing, she was still not responding. Of course, later I found out that she wasn't home. Anyways, I went to pick her up like 4 hours late and we went to school.
We ran into Lilly and Tiffany, who both reported that some graduated person went to Dutter's class and gave an intimidating speech. My first two guesses were DingTing and Kraus (I don't know where I got Kraus from), but it turns out that this mystery kid was Paul Millard. He told them he got a 22 on the first test, and Dutter said she's afraid there'll be no one left in class on Monday.
I will be in class Tuesday to talk about how easy the class was, to provide an opposing viewpoint. Here is the rough outline:
- Sleeping
- Instructional time
- Don't snore/soft snoring
- Avoid distracting others
- Make sure you can hear her -- she doesn't repeat
- The textbook
- Excellent pillow
- Keep in good shape
- By never opening it
- Don't snore/soft snoring
- Homework
- Sleep on homework
- Learn through osmosis
- Drooling increases osmosis rate
- The no-homework plan
- Don't do homework = no square root
- No square root = higher test grades
- Square root drops grades >100
- Any person/monkey with 1/3 of a brain will score >100 on tests
- Any person/monkey with 1/3 of a brain should not do homework
- Sleep on homework
- Quizzes/tests
- Quizzes
- Worthless
- Great nap time
- Tests
- Incredibly easy
- Great nap time
- Warning: no extra time given later for falling asleep
- Corollary: tests are so easy that you can begin when the class change bell wakes you up and finish before it's done ringing
- Quizzes
- Instructional time
I'll make some minor refinements, but I don't think I'll change this very much. I already feel sorry for anyone who might believe me. I can just imagine them trying the plan outlined above and getting totally torched by Dutter.
I'm also going to be at the science club officer meeting that afternoon, and while I'm at it, might as well go to emag. And since this is all in Dutter's room, I might as well just camp in her room the whole day. I am such a loser. Ok, forget the emag idea.
I can't figure out whether I have jetlag or whether I am screwed up because of the South Carolina trip. I fell asleep at 6:30 in the evening and woke up at 12:30. I guess I'll go back to sleep now.
5:46AM
Friday, August 12, 2005 (9 comments)
Don't you hate it when you try to stick it in backwards? Twice? Just now, I tried to plug my laptop into a surge protector but tried to stick in the three-prong plug in backwards twice. It took me three full tries to figure out what was going on and then get it straight. At least I didn't strike out.
Looking back upon this summer, I'd have to say that this has been the best one I've ever had. The alligator hunting, among other things, was just incredible. Who knew that science bowl would actually bring us non-hardcore-geek fun? I mean, I loved the 35 hour practice that went straight through prom, as well as the short 8 hour ones, and I also enjoyed learning stupid terms that I'll never see again in my life... but for some reason, (imagine that!) that just wasn't as fun as kayaking and then later almost drowning in the ocean. By the way, seawater in the air pipes and lungs feels awful. Don't try it.
You know, I kind of want to do one of these (this one stolen from Mary),
Write your name and:
- I will write something about you
- I'll tell you what song(s) remind(s) me of you
- I'll tell you something good about you
- I'll try to give a word that best describes you
- I'll tell you the most memorable memory I had with you
but I'll just end up writing unflowing, unflowery bullshit about how great people are. Especially #3. Let's say [name removed, but I'm sure you can guess who goes here] puts down his/her name. How am I ever supposed to come up with something good?? On the other hand, let's say Yujing wants me to write something. My brain will overflow, crash, and burn.
But feel free to put your name down anyways if you don't mind me giving you a pounding. This goes especially for Ronjon, because that whore skunked me in ping pong. Most embarrassing moment of my life. (Well, almost.)
I bet not many people know my site is up right now. And I bet even fewer actually go here, so I'm just going to stop writing for now. But I won't pull a Gene and claim to never post again, because we all know that's not going to happen.
3:35AM
Wednesday, August 10, 2005 (3 comments)
On Monday, we went to tour a lot of stuff at the Savannah River Site. Apparently it's some sort of nuclear weapons production site, which now also includes some sort of nuclear materials disposal plant. We were taken on a tour of the facility that fills canisters of nuclear waste. I've never seen so many pipes and valves in my life...
Cameras weren't allowed in here so I didn't get any pictures. What I did get... nine pellets of mock radioactive waste. From what I understand, the pellets are chemically identical to the actual waste, and the only difference is that they're not radioactive. Cool.
We were also shown some security stuff. There's 900-some-odd employees in the security force there, including a team that's basically SWAT. They have boats, two helicopters, machine guns with an effective range of 3675 meters, sniper rifles... everything. We got to hold an [unloaded] M4 and look through the ultra-cool scope. I don't even know how to describe it. It's like a clear screen with a red circle and dot on it that you align with a marker on the barrel, and it seems to move around on the screen if you move the gun around relative to your eyes. 1337!
Even better, on Tuesday afternoon, we went out on the Savannah River and looked for snakes. Gene caught one and Yujing failed to catch one.
Later at night, we went to find alligators out in the wild. There were some high-powered lights (we had a pair of 1 million candle power flashlights) that we used, and since alligator eyes are highly reflective, we could see them from waaay far away. I caught one, Yujing failed to catch one (these were only 2-3 feet long), and I heard Gene also had a near miss with one.
Alligator hunting could possibly have been the coolest four hours of my life.
Here are some pictures:
Gene almost getting owned. The turtle is snapping for his finger, and he barely got it away in time.
See this sign? "UNCLEARED FOREIGN NATIONAL VISITORS IN AREA"? Well, they put up big signs like this all over doors and interiors of buildings that we went into. Even a trailer that we entered for the sole purpose of peeing was covered in these signs. Why? Because Dragos is an uncleared foreign national. Security at this place was insane. No cell phones (even though there were no towers in the 310 square mile place), no cameras, and basically no electronics were allowed.
Here's Yujing attempting to catch a snake. He failed. He also later failed to catch an alligator, but at least he was close to getting the alligator.
Alligator in a cage owning a large piece of chicken. This one is about 12 feet long, and could snap me in half with one bite. Ouch. The ones we caught in the river were only a few feet long.
12:59AM
Sunday, August 7, 2005 (2 comments)
My traffic thing from the last post wasn't meant to be taken seriously. I was just bored and felt like writing something dumb. But hey, if someone agrees, I don't mind =)
So I'm in Charleston now. Like Gene said, we got $191.50 to do whatever with. Pretty nice.
Now I'll tell you some stories. We got breakfast in bed at 8:30 yesterday, and room service called at 8:30. I woke up after a couple of rings, and woke up to see Yujing holding something up to his big ear (I thought it was his phone) and saying, "Hello? Hello? Hello?" I got kind of confused, because the ringing was coming from my left and Yujing was ten feet to my right. So I picked up the phone and answered it.
After I told Yujing this story, he said he didn't remember this at all. Also, his phone was pretty far from him, and he couldn't have picked it up earlier. So that means he was holding nothing in his hands and trying to answer a phone.
Then we kayaked for an hour and a half out to some barrier island. We walked out to jump into the waves, and went out a little farther than expected. Later, after I got to shore, it looked like a quarter of a mile. So basically we went a little too far out, and Gene and I had to get dragged back in because the waves got a little too rough. Whoops... thanks, Ronjon and Yujing, for pulling me out?
I'll probably have some really stupid quotes to post later.
1:35AM
Tuesday, August 2, 2005 (6 comments)
I'm on the plane from Shanghai to San Francisco right now. I think there's three or four hours left, so I'll summarize my trip.
I arrived in Shanghai with Mary and her mom on June 16. They went to see family, and I left with my dad for a two-hour drive to Hangzhou (杭州), where he lives and works. I stayed there for ten days before leaving for Beijing by train on the 25th, to arrive the next morning. Those ten days were hell. I basically just got online a lot and did a lot of nothing. I bought some CDs, and I got a ping-pong paddle that says Blue Devils in English and Chinese on it, but that's about it. There was nothing around my dad's place besides residences and more residences. There was, however, an entire street and sections of several other streets devoted entirely to selling things like toilets, sinks, flooring, steel beams... etc. Not really my kind of place.
In Beijing, I stayed with Mary and her mom for a week or so before I got more or less kicked out. They had people coming over and there wasn't enough room for me, so I went to live with some kind of 姑姑. (My dad has no sisters.) She was really nice, but you know how it is if you're Chinese. You feel bad because people are so nice and do stuff for you. Perhaps the most interesting find in my 姑姑's house was an old TV... the same TV that I watched when I was 3, in Wuhan, a city 12 hours away. Somehow, it got moved here.
Before I left on the 6th, I managed to do stuff with Gene, Charles, Lilly, and some of the Beijing kids that came to Walton near the end of January. I think the most 1337 things I bought all had images of Mao somewhere on them. Mao watch, Mao man-bag, Mao alarm clock...
I went to my old home, Wuhan, on the 6th and noticed that my 80 year old grandpa looks a little older than he did 15 years ago when I lived there. Anyways, it was nice to see him again and know that nothing has changed. He still uses the same kind soap that he's always used (a kind that I've never seen anywhere else), the same comb that he's had for years, the same computer he's had for most of a decade (you can tell he got a new CD drive because it's white -- the rest of the computer has turned from white into the color of scrambled eggs)... and get this, when I asked him for a cup for brushing my teeth, he told me to go to the kitchen. The cup and toothbrush I used three years ago was on a shelf next to his own cup and stuff. It was where I had left it three years ago, untouched.
Next to the back door, there was a basket of clothespins. That basket had been there for as long as I can remember. It was there, in that exact location, at least since I was two or three. My guess it that it's been there for at least 30 years. Funny thing is, the clothespins are turning black because they are so old, but they're still being used every day to hang clothes up to dry..
I love the way things just don't change at home. I just don't see this kind of thing happening in East Cobb.
I saw my cousins and some other relatives. Both my cousins are younger and taller than me. Why do I suck at life? They're probably also better than me at everything you can possibly imagine, except maybe eating watermelon. And then there's Mary's 13-year-old cousin-or-something who is about a foot taller than me... but that's for later.
Ok, so I stayed in Wuhan until the 18th, and I flew back to Hangzhou because my lame mother wanted family time. Turns out my dad just went to work every day, my mom went shopping a lot, and I just sat around again, the same way I spent my first ten days in China. Those twenty days in Hangzhou were such a waste. I could have spent that time so much better in other places. My parents are so lame.
At least the second time in Hangzhou, something happened. Han Di and her parents came to visit, and we all went to the nearby city of Shaoxing (绍兴) to see... stuff? It had a lot to do with history so I didn't really know what was going on. I did see some cool stuff, though. Signs like "Noticing Security" (注意安全) never fail to amuse me.
A few days before I left, on July 28, I met up with Mary again, this time in Beilun (北仑), a suburb of Ningbo (宁波). This is where I met Mary's 13-year-old cousin-or-something who is about a foot taller than me. Mary tells me there's a lot of prostitutes there, and she seems pretty "in" with the business. She also seems to have gotten around quite well with the men here. You'll have to ask her about it though, because she acts like a little angel when I'm around and denies the truth.
=P
I'm just kidding, Mary.
Now, here's a few pictures. As usual, you'll probably have to do some coaxing for these pictures to work because my server sucks. These pictures are in chronological order. Captions are below each picture.
There are a lot of Green Men in Beijing. They're not police, I think, just some sort of security people. I don't know. Anyways, Mary really, really likes them for some reason, and I have a lot of pictures where she's around them and she's really really really really happy. This is one of them. Her knees are bent and she's still a lot taller than this one.
Mary took this (she's to my right) while we were sitting near a McDonald's at 王府井. Gene told me to use this as my Facebook picture so that I'll be sure to get lots of play from men at Duke.
Gene and I were supposed to meet up with Lilly one morning. Here we have Lilly and [I think] her cousin, um, posing for me as I walk out of the spot I was waiting at. SOMEBODY was *ahem* 15 minutes late.
This was at the dinner celebrating my grandpa being 80. The guy in yellow is my cousin 弛弛, and the old guy sitting down is his other grandpa.
My sister came into my room one morning while I was still asleep, and she took this picture. I have never seen a picture better represent me than this one. There is only one thing missing from this picture to make it complete.
You should know what it is by now.
Look at the picture. There is a laptop on the bed next to me. There is a pair of ping pong paddles and some balls on the back of my bed. The little red thing on the floor is my Mao alarm clock. What's missing? Obviously half a watermelon + spoon.
I'm not exactly sure where this place is, but I think it's called 沈园. Anyways, it was in 绍兴 somewhere, and it's some sort of tourist spot. That's my sister, Han Di, and me sitting on some rocks. I'm not sure whether those are famous rocks or what, but there is a stream that flows by this rock which is famous.
Some emperor (I think) gathered a bunch of poets to sit by this place, and he floated cups of wine down the stream. When a cup floated near one of the poets, he would have to drink it and write a poem. I was told that this collection of poems is one of the greatest Chinese works ever. (Don't quote me on that. It's very possible I heard wrong.)
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Here is an entry that I wrote earlier while on a train, but was unable to post. China blocks HTTP access to no-ip.com domains. In other words, it was not possible for me to post to my site from China with my current setup.
Saturday, June 25 - 10 PM
Well, this is interesting. My train left this evening at 6:03 PM from Hangzhou to arrive at 7:33 AM at Beijing. I walked what seemed like half a mile to get to the very, very end of the train. The temperature and humidity weren't exactly pleasant, either.
I walked into the train and almost fell over. The aisle is barely wide enough to accommodate me, and I'm not exactly oversized. I mean, I've been in crappy Chinese trains before, and this was a 软卧, so it's supposed to be better than the 硬卧 I usually ride. But jeez, that aisle was ridiculous.
When I got to my compartment, which is slightly wider but slightly shorter than the little bathroom in my basement, I found there were six people in it. Obviously I couldn't fit in there, and my dad and sister were still with me at this point. A few minutes later, shouts were going up and down the aisle about double-booking. Turns out these idiots read car #11 on their ticket as car #01, which is why everyone was crowded in here. Just imagine the pileup in the aisle during all this, with me, my dad, my sister, and several pieces of luggage blocking the way.
So I went in and put my stuff on the bottom bunk, where I was staying for the trip. Some woman, maybe 27 years old, was sitting at the end of my bed. She stayed there for three hours, and was asleep for the last of the three. Come on woman, there is a bed above me for a reason -- so you don't take up space in mine! (Obviously, she wasn't hot.)
Speaking of hot... well, it's quite lacking... sort of. God decided to replace hot women with excess infrared radiation and humidity, which is simply unacceptable. I walked up and down streets for hours and hours trying to find something to entertain myself with (well, not like that), but all I found was a CD/VCD place and a mall with a bookstore and another CD/VCD shop as the only interesting stores (the next most interesting store was for women's clothing and shoes). I bought 12 VCDs of Tom & Jerry for $7, not pirated (or so I think). I love that show.
Oh, back to the subject. Anyways, the first time I went out, I walked three and a half hours, with not many stops because there was basically nowhere to stop. Even the mall trip lasted only about 30 minutes because it sucked. So that was at least a good five miles. I saw two hot girls out of like 10,000 females. There were even fewer hot girls the second time.
Mary's going to boost the count by 50%. But I think she said there are hot girls in Beijing, and we have the same taste in girls, so... mmmm... wait, is that normal? Wait, I definitely recall her telling me that her cousin is hot...
Back to the train. The other bunk was taken by a late-middle-aged couple. The wife liked talking a freaking lot before she wore herself out like a hyperactive little puppy and fell asleep at 7:30. By 8, all three of my companions were asleep. The stupid lady in my bed woke up around 9, climbed up, and started making obnoxious cell phone noises for 15 minutes. Then I put on headphones and made my laptop play some music to drown it out.
China sucks. I kept my laptop on during a 30-minute trip to Will's house in Lawrenceville, and I picked up signals from 193 wi-fi hotspots. Keep in mind that most of the trip was on interstates, where there are few signals (the one-minute drive through Will's neighborhood resulted in finding 26 hotspots). More than 100 of these hotspots were unencrypted, meaning I could stop by the side of the road and steal Internet access. In contrast, my laptop has been on for the last 30 minutes of train-riding and I have gotten zero signals.
My dad's place in Hangzhou (the place I left a couple of hours ago) is on the 16th floor of an apartment building. It towers over all other buildings in the immediate area except for its twin, and everything around it is residential. In other words, it's located at the prime spot for picking up stray wireless network signals. In an equivalent US suburban setting, based on the above results, I estimate 150-400 hotspots, with half of them usable. Unfortunately, I picked up 3 hotspots with none usable.
My dad has a cell phone PCMCIA card, though. Stick it in a laptop, and the laptop becomes an expensive cell phone. And you know what phones can do: dial-up! It's basically a way to connect to the Internet from anywhere in the country. It's pretty cool, except it's slower than normal dialup and lags 20-100 times more than DSL. (I'm talking 4-digit pings.)
In other news, I believe I have broken new ground. The traffic and driving in China is crazy. You know this if you've ever taken even a glance at a Chinese street. But you always thought that the reason behind the craziness was that Chinese people don't observe right-of-way, because they want to get places as quickly as possible without regard for traffic laws, and because Chinese streets are, by tradition, a free-for all, a place where each man fends for himself in the struggle to not get smeared into the ground.
Wrong.
The answer has always been there. It's glaring and obvious. There is no question about it. The high level of chaos on Chinese streets is clearly cause by one and only one phenomenon: Asian women behind the wheel. For some reason, there seems to be a lot of Asian women in China, and a lot of them find themselves driving a car. Everyone knows that this is disaster.
I have seen absurd numbers of Asian women driving in China. In America, five Asian women on a one-mile stretch of a road like Roswell is guaranteed chaos. At least by American standards. Now... take those Asian mom minivans and convert them to tiny compact cars ten feet long. Pack 120 of these into our one-mile stretch, along with maybe 200 male drivers and their vehicles. Next, throw between 300 and 500 Chinese women (and a similar number of men) on bike and motorbike into the mix. Don't forget at least 2000 pedestrians, both male and female.
With this many Asian, vehicle-controlling women, it's no wonder China has traffic problems.
Actually, it's been a while since a Chinese woman has driven me around in China. Though it's true I'd be piss scared to, it's also because almost all taxi drivers are men. And they're really good. They do maneuvers ten times as tightly as I'd ever be able to do back in the States (or anywhere else). On my first taxi ride this trip, the driver drove parallel to a truck for about 300 feet. What was interesting was that the truck was so close to us that part of the taxi (since it's narrower at the top) was actually under the truck bed. I could have opened the window and licked the truck without sticking my head out.
11:20AM
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