Wait a Minute, I Am Legend?

A few posts ago (Part 1, Back in Jiaxing, to be exact), I went on a rambling parenthetical about writing a Nic Cage movie where he plays me, a person immune to H1N1.  Big race against time, immunity, antidote, etc.. And then I watched I Am Legend with Will Smith.  Sonofa….!

Well, congratulations Will.  I had a half-assed plan of becoming rich when I get out of China, and then you had to go and basically make my picture. Two years ago.  And much, much better then mine certainly would’ve been.  I mean, at this point, no one would believe that I came up with my idea first (which I didn’t, but still, that’s beside the point).  Oh well, back to the drawing board for me.

On a completely unrelated note, this past Tuesday there was a solar eclipse over Asia.  Lucky me, I’m in Asia.  Well, Tuesday was right in the middle of me possibly coming down with the swine flu (I didn’t), but I dragged myself out of bed at the crack of 8am anyways to go meet up with Kel and Tex to watch the eclipse.  As I was riding over to Kel’s I was looking around, trying to find the sun.

And it’s nowhere to be found.

Admittedly, it was overcast that morning, but the biggest thing blocking the sun from view? That’s right, the air.  The pollution was drowning out the sun.

And so as I am on my scooter, passing dozens of Chinese in their cars or scooters, pulled over looking for the eclipse (an hour ahead of schedule), I’m thinking to myself, “How will we even see this eclipse?”

Well, it turns out that even if you can’t see the sun go behind the moon (which we couldn’t, and we had our special eclipse-viewing glasses and everything!), it does get dark for about 3-5 minutes.  Like really dark.  Like nighttime, really dark.  It was actually pretty cool, sitting outside at 9:30am and having it be pitch black.  Reminiscent of Black Out Mondays at Comiskey (or at Nolan’s too I guess).  And then the sun came back.  And still, the Chinese stared at the sky, the older ones who can actually remember what the sun looked like before the pollution came and the young ones, who only have the pictures that they saw in science class as a reference, all struggling to catch a glimpse.  But it simply wasn’t there.  God didn’t want the sun to shine that day, and no matter if they kept looking for 2 hours after the eclipse had passed (they did), they still wouldn’t see it.  I just had to laugh.

Tex and Kel at the height of the Black Out.

9:34 AM

That dog only settled down for the 4 minutes of the eclipse.

ramblings 2

…Almost all of the bread here is sweet. Not like cinnamon roll-type sweet, but just really sugary. A lot of it even has some sort of glaze on top of it. It took me almost three weeks to find a loaf of bread that I would call even somewhat close to resembling Wonder Bread (I don’t think there’s any chance at all of getting 14 Grain or whole wheat at all). The funny thing about this is that most of their baked desserts, like cakes and cupcakes, taste like just barely sweeter versions of this bread with maybe some fruit inside and whipped cream on top. Nothing like brownies or rich cupcakes at all.

… So it turns out that most Koreans hate China, they think it’s dirty, smelly, and that the people are rude and inconsiderate. Of course, the majority of Koreans that I have talked to are kids who are here because their fathers have to work here, so they probably miss back home a lot, but I still think it’s funny that they feel so strongly about it. Not a one of them wants to stay here longer than they absolutely have to. I wonder, is Korea some sort of utopian paradise and I just don’t know about it yet?

… GINGER ALERT!!!. Last week’s South Park episode about the Somalian pirates was outstanding. And then they topped it all off with “Gingers can’t be pirates! They don’t have souls.”

… GINGER ALERT #2!!!. I saw one. I finally spotted one. A ginger. Here. That’s right. A Chinese ginger, a real one, from China.

… Some of you may remember me mentioning the reverse gauntlet idea that we joke about here where we get 3 lao wei (foreigners) together and whisper “chinese chinese chinese” anytime one comes past us (DONT worry, we aren’t actually going to ever do this.). Anyways, that got us to wondering, is there a saying in Mandarin for “there goes the neighborhood”? I’ll bet there is, and I’ll bet they say it anytime they see a new one of us walking down the street.

… Tried to teach my kids how to ask questions. They know quite a few, like “How are you?” and “What is your name?” but I wanted to teachh them ones for specific situations, like asking for directions, or in a restaurant or a store. This lesson bombed miserably, and then I realized that most of them didn’t know what I meant when I said the word questions. Wow. I am starting to realize how screwed I may really be.

… I hate Jake Peavy.

Random Ramblings #1

There are a lot of strange and new things that happen over here in a given day, or couple of days. A lot of times they aren’t really worth making a whole new post about, but I kind of feel like sharing them. Because of this, I’ve decided to rip off Bill Simmons from ESPN and start a ramblings section. They typically won’t be fully thought out paragraphs, more just thoughts off the top of my head. Most of them will pertain to China and life over here and whatnot, but some of them will just be things I have found on the ‘net and thought were funny. Some of these will eventually be made into full posts if I can come up with something interesting enough to write at least a paragraph or two about them, or if someone asks me to elaborate on anything in particular. So without wasting anymore time, here we go:

Played basketball with some students yesterday after school. It’s been about 4 years since I’ve done anything even close to picking up a basketball, so it was definitely an experience. I think most of them were disappointed that I wasn’t Jordan, because they seem to think that’s the only way to play, like all they’ve ever seen was a highlight reel of dunks and lucky shots. No sense of defense, passing, picks, or boxing out. Not that we were going too hard (after all, they’re only like 13-14 years old), but it was like a live And1 Mixtape show, not really the type of game to display any negligible basketball skills I might have…

Kiel and I have been working out a bit at my school. No real equipment to speak of, just dip and pullup bars out on the playground. Unbelievable how many students are mezmerized by the sight of 2 foreigners working out. At one point, I could see at least 10 students crowding around the windows in a minimum of 7 different classrooms. This was how they decided to spend their time in between class…

Finally used my first chinese “toilet”. Not as bad as camping in Quetico, but still not the most fun. At least they had TP…

Why does a police station need to have security guards on duty who are not cops?…

Chinese BBQ? A rickety table with a hole in the middle. The waitress puts hot coals in, and then places a metal lid on top. They bring out small plates of sliced meats and veggies and you grill it up yourself on the lid. It’s like Alexander’s without having to leave your table. And it’s DELICIOUS! This is the restaurant I want to open in America, if only we could, but someone would burn themselves in the first hour and sue. Oh yeah, and you can order a mini-keg for your table, they think of everything…

My students don’t know too much about Americans, mostly just NBA players (and all just one name: Kobe, Mcgrady, Jordan, James, etc.), Michael Jackson, and maybe a singer or two if they’re lucky. But when I showed them pics from the road trip? They knew George Washington’s face from Mount Rushmore instantly. They really love revolution here…

Went to a new bar last night. It had a shuffle board table, but no salt or sand for it. We would’ve stayed longer, but one of the girls in our group doesn’t like beer, and the bar had NO mixers for hard alcohol. They did play some good music. I got a lil excited when a dance version of an Eminem song came on, but you have never seen me soo happy as when R. Kelly came on. Sure, it was “I Believe I Can Fly” (my least favorite of any of his hits), but still, R. KELLY IS IN CHINA!!! Just absolutely floored me…

I saw the other day that Paulie Southside and J.D. went back-to-back for each of their 300th home runs. I’m pretty sure teammates have never hit that milestone in the same game before, let alone back-to-back. And it had to happen this year. For my team. Where I couldn’t see it. Worse yet, I wasn’t around to rub it in Nolan’s face, talk about an opportunity lost…

Speaking of Nolan, I watched last week’s episode of Scrubs the other day. And it turns out that Elliot hates gingers, it’s a running joke throughout the entire episode. Now that really was a missed opportunity for me, I could’ve really had some fun…

One advantage of my students not knowing English? One kid kept screwing around, but not enough for me to get really upset at him and punish him. But I started to lose it a little, yet somehow managed to compose myself, smile, and laugh. As soon as I the smile was off my face, not more than 60 seconds later, he was at it again. I looked him right in the eye, with what I would call 40% anger in my eyes, and said “I can already tell you and I are gonna have some fun.” And he just smiled back at me ignorantly. He’ll figure it out soon enough…

Turns out the 40 kwai spent for the live chicken was about twice what we should have. Not to mention that since we are wasteful Americans, we ended up not using the head or feet or any other “garbage” pieces that the chinese use that adds to the weight we paid for. Oh well, it was fun…

More to come as they pop in my head…