Zhanga: July 2006

Entries have their own pages now. Click the date to see the entry by itself with its comments.

Monday, July 31, 2006 (6 comments)

I just finished watching one of those Communist movies about the resistance and 八路军 and killing Japanese Demons. It was good because it involved killing Japs. -50 points for another white guy + Chinese girl thing. What's he doing in a Communist movie anyways?

My favorite part of the movie occurred near the peak of the love story (not long before she died, unsurprisingly). The setting is one of those classic romantic scenes: They're at the top of a tall hill during a beautiful sunset against an almost-empty sky with just a couple of strategically placed clouds. The top of the hill, of course, is home to the only tree in a 5-mile radius. She's looking into the sunset facing away from him, while he is under the tree doing his usual "I love you, I want to be with you forever, I want to make babies with you" thing. Then a bit of dramatic silence.

Then he says (in Chinese with a strong white accent), " You know, there's something I've always wanted to ask you." Another pause. What's he going to say next? Something romantic? Something that will win her heart forever? No. "Why do you always have that grenade strapped to your waist?"

Ahhh, Chinese movies.

On a completely unrelated note, two (three?) nights ago I had a dream about Bill. Yes, Bill. Somehow this did not involve Tiffany's butt, but I digress. I thought it was pretty interesting. Bill drank half a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and I guess it was to prove how manly he is. Apparently not manly enough, or at least that's what my unconscious chemistry calculations told me.

9:53AM

Thursday, July 27, 2006 (6 comments)

Deja vu! I'm sure everybody remembers this one...

Maylene: what's a douchbag?
Maylene: i like that word
Me: it's a bag for douches
Maylene: whats that?
Me: it's a woman thing...
Maylene: what?
Maylene: whats a douche?

Ahhh! One Eva that acts like Eva is enough for this world! Ahh!! Brain meltdown!

10:14PM

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 (1 comment)

The flight here was fun. For some reason, my flight to Chicago was delayed a good half hour, so when I got to O'Hare I had 9 minutes to figure out where to go to get on the Shanghai flight. At least it worked out. The Shanghai flight was stupid. We flew from Chicago in a path headed for Xian, or maybe the eastern tip of India, which is completely stupid because Shanghai is on the eastern coast of China. On the Mongolian border we made an 80 or 85 degree left turn, which put us on course for Korea. After that, we just kept making seemingly random turns all over the place until we got to Shanghai almost 15 hours after departure.

Of course the first thing I do after getting here is walk around looking for wifi. Unfortunately the only access point I could find requires me to sit at a windowsill, and I'm still dropping packets like water-filled bags out a 12th story hotel window. It takes me a good 2 or 3 seconds before I can see what I'm typing right now. Sometimes it lags and it takes 30 seconds before it does anything.

Charles, what did you mean in your comment? I didn't quite get it.

9:02AM

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 (3 comments)

I leave for China in five hours. I doubt I'm going to be posting here because I doubt I'm going to be able to find a program (an ssh client) on the Internet cafe machines that will let me connect to my server. I don't think I'll be able to steal wireless with my laptop, either. Sorry, until August 5th, you will have nothing to do with your lives. Try to keep withdrawl under control.

I saw a certain friend of mine today. She's very open-minded and... not racist or anything like that. What I mean by that...

Unnamed One: Is he homeless?
Me: No, I'm pretty sure he works here... he's got a unif--
Unnamed One: BUT HE'S BLACK!!!

I thought this one in the parking lot was particularly funny, though. Don't kill the messenger (me), please.

Unnamed One (in Chinese): She must be straight from Africa. Look how dark she is.
Unnamed One (in the car): Run her over, she'd blend in perfectly! (with the asphalt)
Me: Shut up you crazy bitch.

Ok, so that's not actually what I said. I forgot what I said, but that's what I was thinking. By the way I'm only admitting my true thoughts because I'm leaving soon and she won't be able to try to kick me in the nuts for at least another eleven days.

By the way, Yufei, a clearly delusional moron, had this to say:

Yufei: she's nice

Forget squinty eyes. Apparently some Asians have squinty brains.

2:18AM

Saturday, July 22, 2006 (2 comments)

I was driving to McDonald's this afternoon because I was hungry, and of course I was listening to the awesome Communist song that goes, "我们都有一个家，名字叫中国..." really loudly with the windows down. While I was waiting for the Johnson Ferry/Lower Roswell light, I looked to the right, where I found two really hot girls looking my way and giggling. I just thought I'd share that with you.

Apparently listening to Communist songs really loudly in East Cobb is funny? Or something? Silly Americans.

Speaking of Communist, I'm leaving on Tuesday morning for China. Does anyone want anything? I heard Tiffany went to a place called Condom World and bought ownage stuff like lollipop condoms (hmm.), but I don't think I'll be going anywhere that cool so I can't get you any of those.

10:22PM

Friday, July 21, 2006 (3 comments)

After 19 years of existing, I feel like I should at least have an idea of the kinds of things that exist in life. But it seems like every other day, I'm still being surprised and thinking, "Whoa, this actually happens to people?" or "What, that actually exists in this universe?" For a good read on an absolutely (vocabulary is too limited to insert word here) topic, read this article on "bug chasers."

Not that I needed any convincing, but I think whichever sags are still trying to turn me gay should just give up now.

11:50AM

Wednesday, July 19, 2006 (0 comments)

Edit...

Gene would make an "amazing hot couple" with half of Weggy. And with the other half. And the third half... because two halves are not nearly enough to fit the whole.

2:29AM

Tuesday, July 18, 2006 (3 comments)

Breaking news! Gene just implicitly admitted to being an "amazing hot couple" with Weggy! Read yesterday's comments.

1:02PM

Monday, July 17, 2006 (3 comments)

The "Face It - Taiwan IS NOT Part of China" group realized a few days ago that the last line of their group description said "Taiwan is part of China." They added a "not" in there =(

So I took my screenshot of how it used to be, drew a big red circle around the "Taiwan is part of China," and posted it as a group image. That last sentence, of course, was tagged as "you're an idiot." It was the only group picture for a while until they deleted it. =(

And in case you were wondering, the pictures from the last post aren't doctored! They're 100% real. Witnesses have seen this insanity in action. By the way, I've figured out what happened. I'm pretty sure it's caused by God hating me. He's just messing with my mind. I guess He has a (slightly twisted) sense of humor too.

I've transcribed the recordings from the second Science Bowl trip. I have sound files of some adlibbed poems by Ronjon and Gene, but before I post them they need to pass through some censoring. Here is one uncensored one:

Sometimes I really want to ejaculate
But usually I do it just a little too late
I want to put my wang in Yujing's eyes
But sometimes instead it ends up in Ai's
David has a really small peter
that cannot be measured on a meter
Ronjon's johnson smells like curry
it really makes me want to hurry
Dragos has two gigantic balls
and when they're cold they just want to fall

Obviously this one is by Gene. The words are funny, but listening to it is a lot more entertaining. A LOT more. By the way, I think Yujing gets the award for being mentioned the most amount of times in these, none of them in any good way.

Last Thursday Yufei came here and left Sunday morning. We did a lot of Asian and/or stupid stuff like play majiang and get lost downtown (though we did pass Chicken & Waffles 30 times). I believe the highlight was when Eva stabbed him with a switchblade. Yes, you read that right. She got Yufei with it, oddly enough. You figure if Eva were to stab anybody with that thing, it would be me, and probably near my nuts. I guess it was late at night or something and she was confused. I don't know. Or maybe she really wants dat c00kie.

Alright, I've spent the past 5 hours trying to figure out something interesting to write here, but I doubt Little Miss Demanding aka Fox will be satisfied no matter what I do. So just to fill up space, I'm going to steal the next part from her Xanga.

List 15 people in random order:

  1. Ronjon
  2. Gene
  3. Charles
  4. Roger
  5. James
  6. Pat
  7. Dragos
  8. Will
  9. Fox
  10. Lilly
  11. Eva
  12. Yujing
  13. Mary
  14. Ai
  15. Tricia

5:35AM

Wednesday, July 12, 2006 (5 comments)

This is really, really, really weird. I don't have words for this and I'm still collecting my jaw from the ground.

Ok, so first a brief lesson for those of you who aren't fobs. To enter Chinese into a computer, you enter the pinyin which is a phonetic representation based on the Latin alphabet. (There are other ways to type Chinese, but for most of us this is the easiest.) So to get "hello," you would type "ni hao" and choose the correct one from the choices that the computer gives you (lots of Chinese words and phrases sound the same):

ni hao

(The correct choice here is the first one, which is already highlighted. The computer tries to sort the choices so the best, most frequent, etc ones are first.)

Now, I was trying to type in 我们的爱 (wo men de ai), which means "our love" and happens to be the name of my favorite song. I found a pretty good techno remix of it a few days ago, but it just randomly cut off in the middle. So I was looking for another one. Well, to type in "wo men de ai" I of course have to type in "wo men" first. Look what happened:

wo men = 台湾

The first choice is 台湾. That, by the way, is spelled "tai wan" and unsurprisingly means Taiwan. Why did that show up as a choice when I typed in "wo men"? I have no idea. Interestingly though, 我们 means "us." "Us" = "Taiwan"?

Then I typed the last two words in pinyin:

wo men de ai = 一个中国

And wtf? The first choice does not say "our love." Well, it sort of does, but not literally. It says "One China," or more specifically, it refers to a unified China/Taiwan. It is written as "yi ge zhong guo" in pinyin. Nothing at all like "wo men de ai" which is what I typed in. Why did it show up as a choice!?

This has really weirded me out. Typing 我们的爱 has always worked fine on this machine, even about three days ago when I found that techno remix. The past three days are significant, though: all the arguing on those "Face It - Taiwan is [NOT] part of China" groups must have fried my computer's brain?

This can't be coincidence. This is just so weird.

12:24AM

Tuesday, July 11, 2006 (2 comments)

Pat:
congrats david and gene! You're on the same side as Bill the retard.

=(

8:11PM

Sunday, July 9, 2006 (6 comments)

There is now a Facebook group called Face It - Taiwan IS NOT Part of China. This group shows that the Taiwanese are clearly inferior.

Here is the text of the description (emphasis mine):

Taiwan is not part of China. Period.

This group is a response to the "Face It - Taiwan Is Part of China" group that is out there.

Here are facts that anyone is welcomed to challenge:
1). People's Republic of China (aka. China) never rules Taiwan for a single day. PRC flag has never flown on the land of Taiwan.
3). Taiwan IS independent; Taiwan has its own popular elected president, currency, military, intelligency forces, foreign ministry, and control of its territories free of any foreign influences (including PRC).
3). States like Canada, Germany, Japan, Korea and United States mainted close relationship with Taiwan under the disguise of "civil" institutions like "American Institute in Taiwan", which served as a de facto American embassy to Taipei.
4). UN is not democratic; UN's denial of Taiwan's membership is only an result of PRC's deplomatic blockades.
5). Republic of China (not PRC) has a continuous rule over Taiwan.
6). How close is Taiwan and China historically? The Taiwan had been a Dutch colony for 40 years, Spanish colony for 30 years and Japense colony for 52 years.
7). Are all Taiwanese all Chinese? Not exactly. Study had shown that 70% of today's Taiwanese has root in Taiwanese aborigines, groups that are closely related to Malay and Polynesian.

Taiwan is part of China.

I would like to comment on a few of these.

First, please note that Taiwanese are inferior at counting up to 3. The numbering here goes 1, 3, 3. Regular people count like this when they are sober (and drunk): 1, 2, 3.

Next, if you have to "disguise" your relationship to an entity in order to serve as a "de facto" embassy, then there is something wrong. Aka the entity is part of a larger entity. Also please note the eloquent use of the word "mainted."

As for #6... I guess this person is admitting that Taiwan just takes it up the ass whenever a foreign power tells it to bend over. Why has Taiwan been colonized by all these other nations, but not by China? Because you don't colonize parts of your own country, duh.

#7 is admitting that 70% of Taiwanese people come from an inferior gene pool. Ah, so they are different! =) By the way, that has nothing to do with being part of a country or not. By that logic, America would be 600 sovereign nations.

And the last line is... awesome. That's all I have to say about it.

1:49AM

Wednesday, July 5, 2006 (3 comments)

We left for Lenox Square at around 5:40 PM, and because I'm dumb we got off MARTA at Buckhead instead of Lenox. Oh well. You're all fat and need exercise anyways.

So we sat around for three or four hours until it began to thunder pretty close to us. I guess it was around 8:30 or so by then. We got a slight drizzle not much later, and by 9 everybody wanted to leave except Charles and me. But we had the keys to the two cars that took us to the MARTA station, so too bad for everybody else. Fireworks were supposed to start at 9:40, but at 9:39 we heard that it was postponed until 10:15. Later we found out it was because they were afraid the wind was too strong and safety might be a concern (you don't want one of those artillery rounds landing on your head).

People kept whining and whining... but why? We waited for 4 hours in the hot, sweaty weather. Why not wait another half hour in a tiny drizzle? The water didn't even reach my undershirt after standing in the rain for over an hour. I thought it felt nice, actually, especially because of the breeze that came with it.

Anyways, the fireworks started at about 10:18, and it was spectatular. I don't think it was quite as good as when I went in 2004, but nevertheless it was quite literally breathtaking at moments. The really loud ones were so strong they'd shake the air inside you. The finale... incredible. Good thing I have squinty eyes, or I think I might have gone blind from all those lights going off at the same time. I think just about everyone changed their minds about the wait being worth it, and if you didn't, then I apologize for dragging you into the rain and making your night miserable.

I snapped loads of pictures through the whole thing, ending up with 94 photos of the fireworks. Just before the finale, I reduced the exposure settings to the minimum possible, and some of the pictures turned out all white anyways because of the intensity of the show. But some of them turned out pretty good.

Unfortunately, Stephen and Tiffany were standing right in front of the cooler where I put my tripod, so they are in most of my pictures. The only ones they're not in are the ones where I held the camera in my hands, but those were crappy pictures because of unsteady hands and long shutter times. Oh well. Take a look:

The colors of America:

American colors

Here's some random shot of a nice blue firework... and Stephen's head (Tiffany is there too... but the top of her head is about 30 pixels below the bottom of the image):

Blue firework and Stephen

I figured if I'm going to have 80 pictures of Tiffany and Stephen (this is, sadly, not an exaggeration), I might as well at least find one that I think is cute. I like this one, though my artistic sense is not exactly refined. I guess it would be better if Tiffany didn't look like a loaf of bread:

Stephen and Tiffany

By the way, yes, that is a real lens flare. I've never actually had one, and I find it odd that the first one I get is at night rather than in the sun where they are supposed to happen.

Knowing Photoshop would be nice too, because with even a little bit of retouching on these, I'm sure they'd look a lot better.

3:02AM

Saturday, July 1, 2006 (1 comment)

A couple of days ago I drove to Tiffany's new house in Lilburn. That was one of the worst (best?) driving experiences I've ever had. First, we were driving from Fairfield down Roswell towards Johnson Ferry. I called Tiffany to go over the basic rules of having somebody follow your car, where rule #1 is stopping at every yellow light so you don't strand the person behind you. I flipped open my phone to call, and as I opened my phone there was an incoming call from her.

So I said hey, and before I could tell her to stop at yellow lights I looked up and saw her running through a red light. The funny part, and I didn't think about this until later, is that the light she ran was Red Fox Trail. Red Fox... Fox running a red light... that can't just be coincidence.

Then on 285 East, she asked how to get onto 285 South and I told her that 285 is just a loop and if you follow it it will turn into 285 South magically. I guess she didn't believe me, because she took the 85 South exit at Spaghetti Junction and got lost. I guess this is excusable, because as Gene wold say, 85 is approximately equal to 285.

So July 4th... who all is coming to Lenox?

4:56PM

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