Zhanga: May 2007

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

Thursday, May 31, 2007 (6 comments)

I moved my site to this Linux server in March last year. The first month, which was before most bots found this site, I got ~3,500 hits, and I'm guessing about half of those were legit. This is kind of off-topic from what I'm trying to get at, but in the month of May I got over 90,000 hits, and definitely not because more people are coming to my site. Spam bots really piss me off. So far my comment filters catch almost all spammers, but I'm waiting for the day when my comment filters fail and all of a sudden I get 5,000 comments on a Zhanga post. As a comparison, the total number of legit comments is less than 3,000.

Ok, anyways, I threw out that 3,500/month number at the beginning because I wanted you to have a frame of reference when considering this number: since last March, I have gotten 1,039 page views to the page that contains charleshugepenis.jpg, with referrer fields from Google Images. This doesn't include people who just looked at the picture and didn't load the page!

Charles, I don't know what to say.

6:10AM

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 (0 comments)

A few nights ago, I killed seven mosquitoes. I took no damage (i.e. they were too n00b to bite me) until the fifth one. That one attacked me after I turned off the lights to go to sleep. It also happens to be my 1337est mosquito kill yet... I killed it in the dark.

Two hours after I went to bed, I had like ten bites all over me. I was pretty pissed off, so I got out of bed, turned on the lights, and walked around the room trying to get the remaining ones out of hiding. I think they're still stuck on the wall right now. Stupid buggers.

I read the funniest Slashdot thread ever today. At the Indy 500, there was a Linux-sponsored car with Tux the Linux penguin painted on it. The Slashdot article: Linux (Car) Crashes At Indy 500.

The article summary is funny enough by itself:

...the Linux-sponsored Indy 500 car had a rough day at the track this weekend: it was the first car to crash on the track and finished dead last.

Comments or parts of comments that I found absolutely hilarious:

Chances are, if you're not Pat, you found exactly zero of these funny. Oh well. They cracked me up. You can always come back and read these again after Linux achieves world domination, and then you'll find them funny.

(Crash, driver, race condition, loop, Windows, and WINE are all more or less obviously computer-related terms. The last one is the only one that isn't punny.)

I found another route to work. The one I've been taking requires a 10 minute walk to the bus stop, a 25 minute bus trip, and a 20 minute walk to the office building, for 30 minutes of walking and 55 minutes total. This route requires a 10 minute walk to the bus stop, a 40 minute bus ride, a 5 minute transfer to the subway line, a 10 minute subway ride, and a 5 minute walk to the office building, for 20 minutes of walking and 70 minutes total. Usually when I arrive at work I'm sweating like a punctured dam and for the first hour and a half I'm trying to ventilate my sweat in the 85-degree office. By cutting down on walking time, especially right before arriving, I can avoid that. But then I have to get up earlier... I hate where I live.

5:26AM

Saturday, May 26, 2007 (4 comments)

I've been on a pretty long stupid stories streak, so here's the one for today:

I went fishing with my dad and my sister. I was bored of catching nothing, so I decided to use the net to catch some dragonflies. There were two of them flying around each other flirting for a couple of minutes, and then I guess they got tired of that and one of them mounted the other and they started having aerial sex.

If I ever grow wings, that will be #1 on my to-do list. Seriously, that just seems so cool.

I told this story to Maylene, who then questioned me about why I would ever interrupt them, blah blah blah. Then she goes, "How do you know they were having sex anyways? Maybe one of them was just getting a ride!"

In the end, I swung my net at them and got one, but I didn't realize I had it in the net and then it got away =(

Now I'd like to rant a little bit about Windows. Just skip the rest of this post, as it's pretty worthless.

At work, I have to read a bunch of documents, write a note into a log, and then file these documents into folders on a network server in Hong Kong. The connection lags (ping-wise) more than dialup, and usually the bandwidth is around 30-50 KB/s, which is not that great either (~10x slower than cable/DSL).

Ok, here's what I want to complain about. To create a folder in Windows, you open Explorer, navigate to the parent folder where you want to create the folder, then in the right pane you right click, choose new, then choose folder. Intuitive and logical, right? Well, yeah, until you factor in super lag.

Here's the problem. After navigating to the parent folder, I have to wait for the right pane (the one that lists all the files in the folder) to show all the files in this parent folder. This takes about 5 seconds. Then I have to right click in the right pane, choose new, then choose folder. For some reason, I have to wait 5 seconds as Windows tells the server to create a new folder. Its name will usually be highlighted (in rename mode) and I can start typing to give it a name more descriptive than "New Folder". But sometimes it's not highlighted, and I have to push F2 (rename) and wait another 5 seconds as Windows tells the server that it wants to rename a file. After typing the name, I push Enter, and 5 more seconds pass before I can proceed because Windows has to tell the server the folder's new name.

Ok, so let's see what Konqueror, the default file manager on my Linux laptop, does. You navigate to the parent folder just like in Windows, but instead of having to wait for the right pane to load, you can right click the folder in the left (the tree view) and click new folder. Then a dialog box immediately pops up asking you what you want the folder to be named, so you type it in and push ok. Now you have to wait 5 seconds for the folder to be made. So I only have to wait 5 seconds once instead of three or four times.

So I save 10 or 15 seconds, big deal, right? Not really. Say I want to make 10 folders, which happens frequently. Using Windows Explorer, this will take me around 3 minutes, and in that time I have to give it input every 5 seconds so I can't be doing something else while I wait. Using Konqueror, I can make a folder, and another, and another, without waiting for the previous folders to be made. My total waiting aimlessly time is reduced from several minutes to... zero. The only slow part is the very beginning when I'm navigating to the parent folder, which takes the same amount of time as in Windows.

(If that last paragraph didn't make sense, it's like this. Say I have folder A, and I want to create folders B, C, and D, in that order, directly inside of A. In Windows, you can't create C until B is done, and you can't create D until C is done, because Explorer's interface freezes completely when it's doing anything. On the other hand, Konqueror creates B, then immediately lets you create C because C isn't inside B or otherwise dependent on B. Then I can create D. It'll take 5 seconds for D to show up, but I don't have to wait those 5 seconds because by this time B is done being created and I can work on it first.)

Conclusion: Konqueror lets me do this part of my job at least 10x faster. I won't even get started on shell scripting. Unfortunately, I don't think I can connect to the company network using my laptop.

By the way, I actually tried using the Windows command line because it should be faster than Explorer. But I found out that the Windows command line doesn't support network paths. Is that sad or what?

I have to make 2-10 directories and copy 5-30 files to the server every day. The server dies every 2 hours because the IT staff really suck, so this results in a lot of wasted time, which in turn results in me writing this post to complain. In effect, the annoyances of Windows have not only wasted my time, but also yours by means of this worthless post.

By the way, one last note. Putting two spaces between sentences died when typewriters died. If you two-space your sentences, then you're a fag and I hate you.

4:46AM

Wednesday, May 23, 2007 (3 comments)

Everybody here knows what Linux is. It's great. The guy whose apartment I live in, he didn't know the difference between a web browser and an operating system, but he knew that Linux is the analog of Windows. Speaking of that guy, I haven't seen him since Tuesday or Wednesday night last week. I have no idea where he went for this long...

Anyways, yesterday the secretary here asked me how to resize a bunch of images at once, and I told her there's some program you can download to do it but I don't know specifics because I don't use Windows. She asked me if I use Linux. This is a secretary at an investment firm... wtf?

In other news, my connection in the apartment has been disconnected. I don't have a number I can call, so I can't find out why or how I can get it back. I guess I've been going to too many censored websites or something. So now, to get online after work, I have to sit my laptop on a windowsill. China sucks. Guess I should be glad I can steal wireless at all.

A very funny possibility was brought to my attention regarding the phone conversation in the previous post, where the guy's looking for his daughter and yelled at me. Maybe he thought I was some guy she was seeing, and got really pissed off because she's not supposed to be doing that? By the way, he called me again yesterday while I was at work, but he hung up quickly, before I could reach over and answer.

I don't really mind these random wrong-number calls. They are amusing to me, and receiving calls doesn't cost me anything. In addition, every minute they argue with me is an extra minute they're paying for.

I don't think I've said anything about my phone plan yet. Ok, so basically I went to a street corner and found some magazine seller who also sold cell phone SIM cards. Pretty much standard procedure. I paid 60 RMB for my SIM card, which came with 50 RMB talk time. The plan is mostly a prepaid plan, with a small monthly fee + additional fees for additional services.

So I pay 16 RMB/month (deducted daily) as a base fee + 1 RMB/month for domestic long distance + 1 more for international long distance. I think the international long distance fee might be 5 RMB from next month onwards, so that's 22 RMB/month ($2.86). Next, it costs me 0.13/min for local calls, 0.20/min for domestic long distance, and 0.83/min to call the US (1.7, 2.6, and 10.8 cents). Roaming is rape, something like 0.73/min, + 0.20/min or whatever it costs for the call itself. Calling cell phones on non-Shanghai networks is considered long distance (this bit sucks). Text messages are 0.10 RMB apiece, 1 RMB to send to US phones. Apparently, I also pay some sort of caller ID fee (I think that's what it says) but I never saw this on the agreement that came with the SIM card. So far in the past two weeks I've been charged 2.80 RMB, which is like 36 cents, so I'm not losing sleep over it yet. I'm not sure if it's for calling or receiving or both or neither or what.

For the past two weeks, my total usage charges not including the monthly fees has only been about 10 RMB...... if you don't include international long distance. I've spent about 100 RMB on calls to the US. Guess who the culprit here is.

Now let's compare to US prices. Cingular has a $59.99 plan for 900 minutes. I'm guessing that's closest to the number of minutes I'll use in a month. After adding all those little fees, the actual price is going to be at least $5-10 higher, so let's just say $65. That makes the price 7.2 cents/min = 0.56 RMB/min. I'm not sure where I'm going with this analysis since Cingular has free domestic long distance, unlimited mobile-to-mobile, free roaming, and free nights and weekends, so this really is getting nowhere. However, calling China on a Cingular phone costs over $3/min. I know, because they charged me with it once. Very ugly.

One thing that I should point out is the cost of text messages. Cingular charges me 15 cents each for that. Text messages here cost 1.3 cents or 13 cents for international. How stupid is that?

By the way, I really hate how much text messages cost. It's pretty much highway robbery. SMS messages are a maximum of 160 bytes, plus a little bit of extra info like who sent it and where it's going etc. Let's be generous and give it 300 bytes total. This here webpage is over 100 times that size. Maybe it should cost you $15 to read this? Wtf.

Something I've noticed here is that everyone has really cool phones. By everyone, I really mean everyone. You can be walking down the street and see someone peddling some fruit sending a text message on some super advanced looking phone. I've seen street sweepers (public janitors? I dunno) with phones 5x as nice as the one I used in the States. You'll see this really crappy, dust/grime-covered gray uniform on someone who looks like she hasn't showered for a month pull a shiny colorful phone out of her pocket. It's seriously messed up. Everybody in the US has such dinky little stupid so not-cool-looking phones in comparison. Oh yeah, and you generally don't get tied into stupid cell phone contracts because there are SIM card vendors on every street corner. (As opposed to buying the plan with the phone and having the two locked together, as is standard in the US.)

Wow. What a pointless post. I'll come up with something better for tomorrow.

4:06AM

Friday, May 18, 2007 (4 comments)

You know, I hate it when people/companies say "blah blah OVER 50%!!!!" when it's 50.002%, or "blah blah over 25 essential nutrients" when it's actually 5 vitamins and 19 minerals, plus fat and water. Even worse is when you have "blah blah SUPER PACKAGE WORTH OVER $274!!!!!" when it's really a toothbrush that they claim is worth $67, a bottle of super-duper toothpaste "worth" $150, and a roll of toilet paper "worth" $57. (That adds up to $274.) Then if you're lucky (one of the first 3 customers, last name begins with Qzc, ...), you are eligible to receive a FREE!!!! disposable razor, valued at over $12!!! (Thus justifying the over part of the "over $x," since the average "value" is more than $x.)

Anyways, I don't know why I typed all that, because all I'm trying to do here is make fun of poor English. This misuse of "over" here is getting out of hand:

...each of our six executives has over many years of experience in various fields.

Wow, what an anticlimactic half page I just wrote. Sorry to disappoint.

Ok so the next thing I want to say is that it's really hot here. Too bad I can't leave the room to cool myself off (aren't I hilarious?). Yesterday afternoon, I looked at the weather and it was 90 degrees in Shanghai. The Atlanta high was 72. Ahhh!

I ate a lot of food last night. I went around looking for a restaurant, and walked past a lot of places because they looked too expensive. Then I went into a semi-crappy-looking shopping center/mall type place, and walked towards the inside. It's well-known that you can get better prices on items from stores towards the inside of a shopping place because they see less customers and pay less rent, so I figured restaurants would work like this too.

Well, apparently the same doesn't hold for restaurants, because I paid 127 RMB for the meal. I will admit that it was very filling and highly satisfying, though. Besides the price, there is one other thing I'm a little upset about. They asked me what I wanted to drink, and I said I wanted 水, which in the past I had always thought was water. Well, it turns out I was wrong. Apparently, it means corn juice. Yes, corn juice. I'm not sure how much it cost me, but I think it was somewhere around 15 RMB. Could have gotten an entire bowl of noodles + soup on the street for that price. Argh. Needless to say, it didn't taste very good either.

My mom called me later that night and happened to ask me what I ate. She actually sounded pretty happy that I indulged myself and ate there. I guess she's getting tired of her own cheapness showing up in me.

By the way, even though banks will exchange your money at around 7.7 RMB = 1 USD, that's not really how much it's worth. Wikipedia says that the World Bank estimates that in purchasing power parity terms, 1.8 RMB = 1 USD. This basically means that stuff that you can buy for 1 USD in the States will go for 1.8 RMB here (obviously this applies to a basket of goods, not every particular good on the market). Shanghai's PPP value is something like 2.5 RMB = 1 USD, so stuff here is a bit more expensive than most of China. Using those numbers, my opportunity cost for that meal was >$50. Ouch. Not to mention that I have to work over 12 hours to make 127 RMB...

I can't decide if this is amusing to me, but I've been getting a lot of phone calls looking for people who aren't me. This happened a lot when I first got my cell in the States too, but the difference is that when people mistakenly dialed my 678 number, they would say sorry and hang up. That doesn't happen in China...

The second night I had my phone, I got a call from number A. I picked up and I said wei wei wei wei wei a lot and didn't get a response. Then number B called. This was some lady looking for her friend. The first thing she said to me was, "Who are you?" Of course, I replied, "What? Why are you asking me that? Who are YOU?" Obviously, that got nowhere. After a while, she asked me if I knew her friend. Of course not, I told her, I'm American. She told this to some guy in the background, and he got mad and told me that American phone numbers don't have numbers like the one I have (duh). I explained to her that I arrived in Shanghai just a few days ago, and she kept asking me where in Shanghai I was. What a creep. It would have been funny to tell her "im in ur fone, stealing ur numberz" but I'm not sure how to translate that into Chinese and still preserve the effect. (Every sag who reads this is now going, wtf? Try a Google image search on "cats in ur" -- it's an Internet meme thing.)

I couldn't manuver her off the phone, but I guess that eventually God got tired of the insanity and made some sort of electromagnetic disturbance, disconnecting our call.

Then number A called again. I heard some guys talking in the background, but no response to my repeated wei wei wei wei'ing.

Then number B called again. This didn't really get anywhere. She asked me if I had registered my number (it's a process that associates your name/ID with a cell number), and I told her yes, I did. Then she said she'd go check the info on my number and see if it's actually mine or if I was lying to her. Then she said something about "If it's not actually your number..." but I didn't really understand the second half of that sentence because my Chinese sucks. She also told me that her friend has always used this number, so she couldn't possibly have dialed the wrong number and this couldn't possibly be legitimately my number. Whatever, woman.

By the way, those four calls all came within the same 20-minute span. I was actually a bit creeped out.

A week passed, and I only got maybe one or two random calls. Then yesterday, I got a random call while I was at work. Whoever it was hung up less than one second after it rang, before I got to pick up. Later at night, while I was at the hot pot place, the number called again. The following ensued:

Me: 喂？
Guy: 喂 [some useless stuff]
Me: 你是找谁？
Guy: 我找我的女儿。
Me: 我不是你找的人。
Guy: 你是什么时候买这个号码的？
Me: 上个星期。
(Guy hears this as "下个星期"。)
Guy: 少废话！
Me: 上个星期。
Guy: 我一直在用这个号码！
Me: 对不起，你打错号码了。
Guy: 我打错号码你的妈！你--

In English:

Me: Wei？
Guy: Wei [some useless stuff]
Me: You are looking for whom?
Guy: I'm looking for my daughter.
Me: I'm not the person you want.
Guy: When did you buy this cell number?
Me: Last week.
(Guy hears this as "next week.")
Guy: Bullshit/Cut the crap (literally "less useless words")!
Me: Last week.
Guy: I've always been using this number!
Me: I'm sorry, you dialed the wrong number.
Guy: I dialed the wrong number your mom! You--

I hung up at the end. When people hang up on me, my cell doesn't automatically terminate the call, so maybe it's a limitation of the Chinese cell phone system. If his cell has the same problem, then he probably continued to yell into his phone for the next couple of minutes, not realizing I hung up. In any case, it's been a day and he hasn't called back yet.

One last thing. There's a guy in the investment firm whose name somehow sounds like a woman's name. I had just assumed from the name that the person was female, and I was surprised to find out that he isn't. Apparently, this gets other people too. I'm always amused by potential clients who email him and greet him as "小姐" (literally "little older sister," basically a term used to refer to a young woman).

And one more tangentially related thing. I was out eating with this guy whose apartment I'm living in, and he called for a waitress by using the standard waitress call, "小姐." (Does the period go inside the quotes, as in English, or outside, as in Chinese? I'm confused.) Anyways, the targeted waitress as well as a nearby waiter turned around. The guy with me pointed at the waitress and said in a kind of embarrassed, unsure way, "Uhhhh, I meant you..."

Ok, that last one probably wasn't funny or interesting. Oh well. At least this was a long post, so maybe I'll take a break for a while.

12:12PM

Wednesday, May 16, 2007 (5 comments)

I moved out of the hotel and into some guy's apartment-thing (is that what they're called?) on Monday. Living here isn't working out.

When I lived at the hotel, I had 油条／豆浆 breakfast every day for 3 RMB, and great, satisfying dinner for 8-15 RMB, and I was a really happy kid. I walked to and from work 20 minutes in each direction, and it was great. Unfortunately, I had to pay 219 RMB a day to live there.

For saving those 219 RMB (7.7 RMB = 1 USD exchange rate), I get a nicer place to live, a washing machine and fridge I can use... and a lot of bad things. Today I tried to go out to eat dinner. I went to a not particularly great restaurant and ordered one bowl of stir-fried noodles. It cost 18 RMB, so I figured it was plenty to fill myself up with. Just to make sure, I asked the waitress, and she said it'd be enough without hesitation. As a comparison, last week an 8 or 9 RMB bowl of noodles would fill me up and when I went for a 15 RMB meal I didn't completely finish it because it was too much. And I went to a different place every meal.

Ok, so get this. I waited 22 minutes for the meal to get to me, and I finished eating in 6 minutes. If you're thinking "so what, I can eat a meal in 6 minutes too," you probably don't know how slowly I eat...

Anyways, I was a little upset to say the least, so I left and went to another place. Paid another 22 RMB for food under the "pork" section of the menu... I got about 3 crumbs of ground pork in my mainly tofu dish. Pretty disappointed with that, too. However, the tofu was good.

Conclusion: I ate two dinners, paid 4x what I should have, filled up my stomach, but didn't get the feeling of satisfaction that I enjoy so much in eating good food.

The other thing that sucks about this place is how far away it is from work. I took a taxi the first morning, and when I got to work I asked my coworkers how I can get there without paying 45% of my paycheck (yes, that's the actual figure) on taxis. Turns out this place sucks because there's a bus to sorta get back in the evening, but you can't take that one in the morning because the route isn't the same in both directions. The best I can do is transfer to a subway, so my average travel time in the morning would be around 65 minutes, and in the afternoon around 50 minutes. Even so, transportation still eats 7% of my salary. Ahh. Oh yeah, I would be able to take the subway and get to/from work in around 25 minutes, and for less cost (I think)... but the station here is freaking under construction.

At work, at least 80% of my time is spent looking up words in a dictionary. I spent 20 minutes on the first page of one business plan two days ago, only to realize that I had just spent 20 minutes looking up words in a notice of confidentiality. Basically it just says you agree to keep secret the pages that follow... those pages contain the actual information.

20 minutes on a useless legal babble page... wish I knew Chinese.

In other news, my mom picked up my camera (Canon Rebel XT; Communist Wikipedia censors, lick my balls), and I'm very very excited. Wish I was home so I could play with it now.

11:09AM

Sunday, May 13, 2007 (5 comments)

Gene, 油条 doesn't mean oil tail, it's more like oil strip.

Yesterday some relative of mine took me someplace far away to meet two friends of his. They were this 30ish guy and his really hot wife. So anyways, we were sitting around at one point and the lady asked my relative-guy what exactly the relation between him and me is. It turns out that neither of us knew (my parents don't know either). I thought this was pretty funny:

Lady: 你叫他爸爸叫什么？
Relative-guy: 叫他哥哥。
Lady: 那他妈妈呢？
Relative-guy: 姐姐？哎呀！短路啦！

In English:

Lady: What do you call his dad?
Relative-guy: Older brother.
Lady: What about his mom?
Relative-guy: Older sister? Ai ya! Short circuit!

Dangit, why is it that whenever I try telling something funny like this, it turns out not funny? By the time I realize its unfunniness I've already spent ten minutes typing it up. Oh well, pretend it's funny. It was funny at the time.

On the subway, they were talking about some dating game where there's a guy and five girls. The host asked the guy where he would take a girl for their first date, and his answer was the 数码广场. Now, I'm not sure how to translate this because we don't really have these in the States, but literally it means "digital square," as in a large square or plaza with lots of high-tech items. Next question was what he would do if his date got tired of walking around. He said he'd take her to a coffee place and have a drink. Seems like he's doing a little better now, right?

Well, no. The kicker was the question following the coffee one. What would they do after they were done with coffee? He would take her back to the 数码广场.

Unfortunately, this kind of reminds me of myself.

I bought a webcam today for 50 yuan, which is $6.50. It didn't work. As much as I hate to admit it, Linux sucks. (The webcam does actually work in Windows.) But here's the thing. I went back to the store, and they gave me my money back. They didn't even put up a fight. What happened to the China I used to know?

Haha, I didn't even realize I just shifted from making fun of nerds to... being a total nerd. Oops.

Anyways, I was eating lunch at this restaurant/cafeteria type place, and the lady who brought out food looked at me and called out the name of the dish in what sounded like Shanghainese. I couldn't understand her at all. So I looked at her and did a "huh?" and she repeated herself, in what sounded like a cross between Shanghainese and Mandarin. Still couldn't understand. The third time she repeated herself, it was Mandarin with a thick accent, and that was definitely what I had ordered. She gave me one of the dirtiest "what are you, some kind of mentally deficient monkey?" looks ever.

Ok, you don't have to read this last part unless you're Hanif, because it won't make sense. So last night as I was returning home, I stopped by another bootleg CD shop. I thought, hey this song sounds familiar! Thirty seconds later, I recognized the song and followed it until the end, which was at least two minutes later. You won't believe this. It was the "let me receive" song.... in Chinese!

5:46AM

Saturday, May 12, 2007 (5 comments)

I'm living in a hotel temporarily, in room number 419. You won't believe the number of dead Nigerian uncles who show up at my door, wanting to give me 10% of their $25 million oil fortunes if only I'd give their heirs $1000 for bank fees.

Alright, that's my incredibly witty remark for today.

I didn't have any change for a taxi driver so I had to pay him with two green US bills. He laughed at me for being a silly kid.

I wish I didn't suck so badly at Chinese. I don't know what to order when I'm out eating, because I can't read 85% of the menu. Then they ask me how I want my eggs cooked, but I don't know the terms for those (scrambled, fried... turns out I don't know many of these in English either...).

When I was at work yesterday I actually had a lot of things to say, but by now I've forgotten them all. Whoops.

Wait, I made a note of one thing I wanted to write here. Ok so there's this business plan I was reading, and I think it had to do with some medical company. Quote from the section about the corporate executives: "...has been awarded more than 15 patients..."

2:00AM

Thursday, May 10, 2007 (4 comments)

Ronjon... I noticed that you posted your last comment using Linux. Then I noticed you're viewing my site in pink. Does Linux turn people gay?

Ahh, look what Microsoft has done to me already!

Anyways, I feel like complaining, because so far my tasks at work (at Orchid Asia) include reading business plan documents. I went through six of these this afternoon, and they're usually 5-30 pages in length. Half of these are in Chinese... and not only that, but they include a lot of special technical terms, so it's impossible for me to read. It took me about two hours to get through the first 6 pages of a 21-page document. My head exploded.

I had 油条／豆浆 this morning and was very, very happy.

You know, I always think it's kind of sad that tourist-people (white people) never eat at those really cheap, dirty food places by the side of the street. I mean, I guess I can see why they wouldn't want to, but it's just such a part of China that you can't really experience the country or its food without eating at those places.

I ate at a high-class crappy roadside food place today (it had a door and a roof) and it was annoying. The lady who brought the cooked food out called out the dishes in Shanghainese. It's hard enough for me to figure out what I ordered in Mandarin... this definitely didn't help me get my food any quicker. The tomato/egg soup is apparently called "fei ge die tang" which sounds like flying pigeon disc soup.

Hey Hanif, I have good news for you. I bought a set of two music CDs. On the cover are some cute Chinese girls, and the title on the box basically says "sappy love songs." Your favorite Chinese girl, other than Sabrina, is on here. You are going to love these.

9:35AM

Wednesday, May 9, 2007 (0 comments)

I know Maylene's going crazy over the possibility that some hot girl sat next to me on the plane for 15 hours, but somehow the only empty seat on the plane (that I saw, anyways) was the one next to me. Being small has its advantages. I laid down on the two seats and had a nice nap for like 10 hours, and besides the neck pain it was a pretty good flight.

Now I'm in a hotel and I'm about to fall asleep because of jetlag.

I keep having these problems, where I'll ask somebody (so far, it's mostly been customer service reps for my cell phone company) something, and they'll reply, and I'll be like huh because I don't understand the Chinese, and they'll just repeat what I didn't understand. After three or four iterations, they just give me a sigh of exasperation. It's highly embarrassing.

I don't think I can stay awake any longer, so I'm going to sleep.

8:29AM

Friday, May 4, 2007 (4 comments)

I got home ~3 AM last night. I'm pretty sick of interstate driving at this point, especially since I was doing that for 12 hours last weekend...

Anyways, I'm done with finals now, but I don't really get to rest. I'm leaving for China on Tuesday morning, and I only have a one-day break when I return on June 15 before I fly out to Seattle. From there, I come back in August and have half a day to rest before departing for Durham.

I know you're dying to hear about my finals... they weren't ridiculously difficult or anything. In fact, my econometrics exam was surprisingly easy.

But on Tuesday night, I went through an experience that could only be described as a grueling ordeal. My macroeconomics final was 7-10 that night. I'm not entirely sure how to describe this, but let's compare to a common denominator.

If you thought the SAT (back when we took it) was bad, this was ten times worse. The most exhausting (note: exhausting != difficult) part of the SAT was trying to take a five or ten minute nap at the end of each section while making sure to wake up for the next part. The most exhausting part of AP exams was trying to stay asleep/find something to relieve boredom for the two hours that you have after you've done with the exam and you've looked over all of your answers 4 times already.

This beast was 2 pages of multiple-choice and 14 (15?) sheets of free response. No, not fill-in-the-blank free response, not one-sentence free response, and not AP-style free response where they guide you through the problem. It was basically a short essay plus a diagram or two for each of the 12 questions.

I was in that room for 2 hours and 50 minutes. My pencil was writing nonstop for the first 2:15, resulting in a very sore index finger. Combined with the hot, humid atmosphere created by the other 300 students taking the exam... ahhhhhhhhhh

Anyways, who wants to play ping pong Sunday?

3:36PM

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