I'm still rocking the little two bedroom behind Jing An temple, but my digital self has moved to sunnier shores:
GOOD RIDDANCE TO BAD NEWS (at tumblr)
Blogspot was good to me (as was wordpress at woggles), but being behind the Great Firewall of China< stretches the limits of my technology-addled brain. Setting up shop at the paint-by-numbers of blogging lets me access ye olde blog from home and also spares me the pain of learning even the slightest bit of html. The future is terrifying.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
snaps of new bruce album
dazzle! this is mostly just for me to listen to while I am work. But what is a blog if not a new platform on which to be selfish?
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Admission
Things you are not willing to admit, and other fictional truths:
+ You pay more in rent than you ought. But you stay home more than you should.
+ You do not know exactly where the French Concession- that nebulous maple lined fat profit margined real estate region- begins and ends. If so, its borders are likely names of streets you cannot read or pronounce.
+ You know the city only as pinpricks of cafes, bars, and clothing shops. You orbit around lousy bar planets, satellite-pinned to an unsuitable lifestyle.
+ You left a nation of public healthcare only to land in a country where you wake up with worry about your outsides, your insides, your pelvis/throat/cervix/ovaries/ unhappy swollen lymph nodes.
+ You pay more in rent than you ought. But you stay home more than you should.
+ You do not know exactly where the French Concession- that nebulous maple lined fat profit margined real estate region- begins and ends. If so, its borders are likely names of streets you cannot read or pronounce.
+ You know the city only as pinpricks of cafes, bars, and clothing shops. You orbit around lousy bar planets, satellite-pinned to an unsuitable lifestyle.
+ You left a nation of public healthcare only to land in a country where you wake up with worry about your outsides, your insides, your pelvis/throat/cervix/ovaries/ unhappy swollen lymph nodes.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
and eating and eating and eating and eating
Shanghai is heavy with party mythology. It bears the weight of expectations of wine drenched nights, scantily clad femmes and cheap booze that nightlife hungry expats expect and then reinforce. Certainly, it's rich (or poor, in some opinions) with those attributes, but not every night is a lazy boat ride down streams of debauchery.
When my uncle came to visit last winter, he introduced me to some distant relatives of mine, who in turn introduced me to more and more branches of the family tree. And though I'm a bit of a lone shaky leaf on a gnarled foreign twig, they have embraced me and call me regularly to invite me over or out.
Sunday night, I was invited to eat dinner with 2 couples of distantly related 'Aunts and Uncles'. In a culture where it's suitable to call pretty much everybody 'Aunt/Uncle', including assorted family friends, business associates of parents, garbagemen, I am apparently in some way affiliated with them by blood. And blood is thicker than water. And blood is also thicker than my courage to decline their invitation, and so I found myself hauling imported bottles of Canadian Ice Wine into a cab and chugging slowly towards their apartment.
Even though I usually hem and haw and grumble my way towards these family obligations (avoidance of family obligations being one of the main reasons I left home in the first place), I always end up having a good time making the family rounds.
That doesn't mean it's not stressful. Then again, stress and family gatherings have historically been known to go hand in hand. I'm sure our prehistoric forefathers shuffled around nervously on the front steps of host caves and fidgeted with their loincloths and wondered whether their gourd of grog was an appropriate gift.
Given my current middling level of Chinese and their heavily Shanghainese accented Mandarin (which often slips completely into Shanghainese), I have learned to grin foolishly through conversations that I do not understand and comment often and enthusiastically about how great the food is, regardless of what they ask me (often incomprehensible to me), which generally makes conversation very erratic and non-sequitar driven.
SCENE ONE:
Well Meaning Relative: "What... mumble mumble...October Holiday.... your job... home".
Me: [giant smile, teeth as large as picket fences] "This beef is delicious" [enthusiastically shovels food into mouth. tumbleweed lists by]
END SCENE
I have also learned how to eat fast enough to show my appreciation for the food, but slow enough not to clear my plate. The minute my plate is clean, a relative usually piles it high again before I have a chance to say I'm full. Chinese family eating is a Sisyphean challenge that usually leaves me groaning and half sick with overeating.
Sunday night ended in a strangely comforting way. A dinner of assorted cold Shanghainese dishes and hairy crab, choking down vile cough syrup-like beverage, watching slideshows of their assorted trips abroad, making awkward conversation and avoiding answering their invasive (yet culturally appropriate) questions ("How much money to do you make? How much do you pay in rent?"), capped off with an hour on the couch eating grapes and watching the Chinese version of Figure Skating with the Stars (which, irony-free, was AWESOME).
Nothing says 'spending time with family' quite like going through with something you never thought would be fun and then strangely having a great time. This theory also explains why nausea-riddled insomniac road trips to obscure U.S monuments become vague footholds of childhood that you become nostalgic for. Family is the nexus of the universe, the underside of logic, the big fat crazy I long for.
(Even though following my enthused homecoming at Pearson Airport in Toronto, my pop and I were already bickering before we reached the airport parking garage. But I love them. I aspire to be as intelligent and lovely and infuriating as my parents when I grow up.)
In other news, I am stockpiling passport sized photo pics of myself taken in streetside photo booths since the government is really into accompanying all forms with photographic evidence of my existence. Monday, glistening with a hot morning's worth of face sweat and mind-boggled following a particularly tough Chinese class, I stumbled into a booth and hurridly took three test photos. Given the choice of the three miserable photos I took, I chose Option Number Two, in which I am basically a shiny sphere of a face with an enthused and blank look in my eyes perched atop a giant open smile. Benign. Wide-eyed. I am sure the government will process my work permit application in a jiffy. How could they not love the eager mugshot of a small asian girl who looks like Steve Carrell on the poster for 40 year old Virgin?
When my uncle came to visit last winter, he introduced me to some distant relatives of mine, who in turn introduced me to more and more branches of the family tree. And though I'm a bit of a lone shaky leaf on a gnarled foreign twig, they have embraced me and call me regularly to invite me over or out.
Sunday night, I was invited to eat dinner with 2 couples of distantly related 'Aunts and Uncles'. In a culture where it's suitable to call pretty much everybody 'Aunt/Uncle', including assorted family friends, business associates of parents, garbagemen, I am apparently in some way affiliated with them by blood. And blood is thicker than water. And blood is also thicker than my courage to decline their invitation, and so I found myself hauling imported bottles of Canadian Ice Wine into a cab and chugging slowly towards their apartment.
Even though I usually hem and haw and grumble my way towards these family obligations (avoidance of family obligations being one of the main reasons I left home in the first place), I always end up having a good time making the family rounds.
That doesn't mean it's not stressful. Then again, stress and family gatherings have historically been known to go hand in hand. I'm sure our prehistoric forefathers shuffled around nervously on the front steps of host caves and fidgeted with their loincloths and wondered whether their gourd of grog was an appropriate gift.
Given my current middling level of Chinese and their heavily Shanghainese accented Mandarin (which often slips completely into Shanghainese), I have learned to grin foolishly through conversations that I do not understand and comment often and enthusiastically about how great the food is, regardless of what they ask me (often incomprehensible to me), which generally makes conversation very erratic and non-sequitar driven.
SCENE ONE:
Well Meaning Relative: "What... mumble mumble...October Holiday.... your job... home".
Me: [giant smile, teeth as large as picket fences] "This beef is delicious" [enthusiastically shovels food into mouth. tumbleweed lists by]
END SCENE
I have also learned how to eat fast enough to show my appreciation for the food, but slow enough not to clear my plate. The minute my plate is clean, a relative usually piles it high again before I have a chance to say I'm full. Chinese family eating is a Sisyphean challenge that usually leaves me groaning and half sick with overeating.
Sunday night ended in a strangely comforting way. A dinner of assorted cold Shanghainese dishes and hairy crab, choking down vile cough syrup-like beverage, watching slideshows of their assorted trips abroad, making awkward conversation and avoiding answering their invasive (yet culturally appropriate) questions ("How much money to do you make? How much do you pay in rent?"), capped off with an hour on the couch eating grapes and watching the Chinese version of Figure Skating with the Stars (which, irony-free, was AWESOME).
Nothing says 'spending time with family' quite like going through with something you never thought would be fun and then strangely having a great time. This theory also explains why nausea-riddled insomniac road trips to obscure U.S monuments become vague footholds of childhood that you become nostalgic for. Family is the nexus of the universe, the underside of logic, the big fat crazy I long for.
(Even though following my enthused homecoming at Pearson Airport in Toronto, my pop and I were already bickering before we reached the airport parking garage. But I love them. I aspire to be as intelligent and lovely and infuriating as my parents when I grow up.)
In other news, I am stockpiling passport sized photo pics of myself taken in streetside photo booths since the government is really into accompanying all forms with photographic evidence of my existence. Monday, glistening with a hot morning's worth of face sweat and mind-boggled following a particularly tough Chinese class, I stumbled into a booth and hurridly took three test photos. Given the choice of the three miserable photos I took, I chose Option Number Two, in which I am basically a shiny sphere of a face with an enthused and blank look in my eyes perched atop a giant open smile. Benign. Wide-eyed. I am sure the government will process my work permit application in a jiffy. How could they not love the eager mugshot of a small asian girl who looks like Steve Carrell on the poster for 40 year old Virgin?
proposed chinesepod topic
"Hey, how do you say 'hipster' in Chinese?"
Carowen, at the fabric market, staring at rows upon rows of 60's inspired jackets and houndstooth.
And then, a coffee infused lunch with a hint of sunlight.
Carowen, at the fabric market, staring at rows upon rows of 60's inspired jackets and houndstooth.
And then, a coffee infused lunch with a hint of sunlight.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
take a ride on the whaaa-mbulance
Aside from news of an impending typhoon and my own personal catastrophic typhoon of an immune system, which has apparently taken a mini-vacay since I returned to this lovely germ-filled city, there's not much to report from the rainy shores of Shanghai.
After spending the entire weekend lying on the couch watching DVD's with a ziplocked chunk of frozen chicken clasped to my forehead, I am finally gathering up the nerve (and RMB) to see a doctor. There's a part in Douglas Coupland's 'Life after God' where a peripheral character mentions he refuses to see fortune tellers, but proceeds to go see one after the fortune teller puts up a sign saying 'will not tell you you're gonna die'. Wish there was some kind of assurance when seeing physicians. No fuss, I will glumly hand over 100CAD for either piece of mind or rather expensive confirmation of worst fears.
After spending the entire weekend lying on the couch watching DVD's with a ziplocked chunk of frozen chicken clasped to my forehead, I am finally gathering up the nerve (and RMB) to see a doctor. There's a part in Douglas Coupland's 'Life after God' where a peripheral character mentions he refuses to see fortune tellers, but proceeds to go see one after the fortune teller puts up a sign saying 'will not tell you you're gonna die'. Wish there was some kind of assurance when seeing physicians. No fuss, I will glumly hand over 100CAD for either piece of mind or rather expensive confirmation of worst fears.
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