that’s whacked

completely random thoughts

Thursday, Oct 14. 2004  –  Category: ChinaBlog

i’m about 30 minutes into a 5 hour layover in Narita (Tokyo). it’s such a long layover, the departure board doesn’t even go up to 17:55 for our departure flight. warning: i’m a man stuck in an airport with nothing to do….the rest of this blog entry is going to be the bane of the web: product of a bored man, with web access.

i’ve been sent on a mission for duty free items and Japanese snacks by wendy. except duty free sucks. witness Creme De La Mer, which sells at Saks for $195. factor in local sales tax of 8.25% and we can pick it up in Cali for $211. but here, at duty free, WITHOUT tax (!!!) we can get it for the low low price of…. $247. as Jon Stewart would say (and I really can’t mimic it over a blog)… “WHA!!?!?!?”

on the plus side, there is a Yahoo! Cafe with free Internet. on the down side, the Japanese keyboard is killing me. i memorise my passwords as “actions” rather than the actual characters. this lets me type my password on my crazy keyboard at work. on the downside, when the actual keyboard map is different, this screws me up considerably. the Roman alphabet characters are the same, but all the punctuation marks and special symbols are different. also, Yahoo has managed to find quite possibly the world’s smallest mousepad. the length of the pad is such that there is about 3cm above or below the mouse. whine whine whine. bitch bitch bitch. i’m starting to sound like poorna (kidding dude)

i wish i’d bought my token card in my carryon. i could be productive and actually doing stuff rather than rambling in a blog with four and a half hours left to kill.

one thing i immediately notice upon landing in Tokyo. dental hygiene. [huge generalisation on] the Japanese brush their teeth. the Chinese don’t. [huge generalisation off]. i know this is a clear sign i hang around with dentists too often, but i still can’t help wondering what a graph of a nation’s average oral hygiene condition would look like overlaid on top of a nation’s economic status. at what point in a country/culture’s economic economic development do they start to brush their teeth? maybe this is my western-egocentric view, but do they start brushing their teeth in order to emulate the western world? clearly looking after one’s oral hygiene is important, but i wonder when it started to become important….. a long time ago being fat was considered beautiful. i wonder if brown teeth and bloody gums was ever considered beautiful. probably not…but still, a bored man with 4 hours left to kill wonders.

in Mandarin Chinese, Japan is called “ri ben” in pingying (Romanisation of the Chinese language). the very first time i saw this in college, my immediate thought was “i wonder if Japanese people drink Ribena.” and now everytime i hear someone say Japan or describe something as Japanese in Chinese, that thought flashes in my head. on our Japan Airlines flight from Beijing to Tokyo, when they kept saying everything in Japanese, then English, and lastly Chinese… i would tune out the Japanese, listen to the English, and then try to listen to the Chinese as i thought about random things Ribena related like “when was the last time i had a Ribena?” and remembering fond first memories like my first Ribena and Vodka.

i suppose i should file this as random ramblings and retire the “China Experiences” category i made to blog my thoughts while in China…but i think this is still an extension of my China Experiences. in order to make it more related, i’ll mention how Poorna and I had fun trying to leave the apartment this morning. we needed to come to the airport early so Poorna could pick up his tickets at the ticket counter (he’d made a change a few weeks ago in his flight). so the driver picked us up at 5:30… but the security guards wouldn’t let us leave. at first, Poorna and I couldn’t figure out what the hell they were saying. they kept pointing at our luggage, and all i could pick up was “tai duo” as in ‘too much’. this confused me to no end… are they saying we have too much luggage? what problem is it of theirs if i’ve got a lot of luggage. it turns out they thought we were moving out (which we obviously were), and that we were running out without paying this month’s rent (which we weren’t). thankfully the driver understood what was going on and kept saying the apartment belongs to the company, and that it’s all taken care of. they kept us detained for a little while still though while they tried to figure out what to do with us. we ended up not leaving for about 20 minutes.

okay, that’s all i can think of to write at this moment. i’m going to see if i can find some japanese snacks to eat, fluff my (free!) japanese Yahoooooo! pillow, push my tiny little japanese baggage cart around, find a (hopefully not tiny) japanese chair to park my english-american-chinese ass on, and try to finish my epic chinese novel/poem (on the third and last volume of Journey to the West!)

exit(0)

Thursday, Oct 14. 2004  –  Category: ChinaBlog

Ahhh….down to my last 14 hours in China. The past few days have been rushed with last-minute shopping, and trying to finish up stuff at work so we don’t leave too much stuff hanging.

We never did get to see the Summer Palace.

What did we do in this final week…hrm… well, we played with the door to our floor, which if you leave it open for a while, says a sing-songy rhythmic “[da da da da da da] please close the door”. We can’t figure out what it’s saying in the front, but we like to think it’s saying “Poornaprajna Udupi – Please close the door”.

Or in the event Poorna starts singing along with his music (there’s something really cool about playing mp3s streamed from my laptop to his SunRay w/ XMMS) out loud without realising it, we like to think it says “Poornaprajna Udupi – please shut the fuck up.”

On a complete whim last night, I bought a Japanese CD from a local CD shop. It’s by a group called ‘J’, and the CD is called ‘Red Room”, it’s basically Japanese hard rock. Pretty good stuff…and a welcome change from all the Chinese pop we’ve been listening to. Yes, thank you Poorna, you can stop singing “Superstar” by S.H.E now.

I’ve got to admit, I had a blast here, and part of me wants to spend more time here working with our Beijing group (they’ve been a great group to work with, btw) – but the other part of me is definitely missing home. I don’t know that I could do a full 3 month rotation, I think I am too attached to the Bay Area, what with Wendy, my family, and my house being all there.

Things I’ll miss about China? The ridiculously cheap shopping. The fun bargaining (”special price my ass!”) experiences. The public fights. The great food (well, I know I’ll miss it…not so sure about Poorna). The insanely cheap food. Beer from a bag. Yong He and their 75 cent breakfast of Shaolong Bao & soy milk. The feeling of living on the edge and near-death that you only get by riding shotgun in a Beijing taxi when he runs a red light making a left turn into oncoming traffic and mis-shifts his gears. Among many many others…

WR (workplace resources) finally gave me my nameplate for my cubicle…. 2 days before I leave Beijing…

Zai jian!

zhu wo sheng ri kuai le

Monday, Oct 11. 2004  –  Category: ChinaBlog

First off, thanks to Geoff for sending this my way: Torturing Sims.

Hilarious.

How did I spend my birthday? Poorna and I went to “Nameless Highland Bar” (a distinct lack of bagpipes makes me assume it has nothing to do with the Scottish Highlands), where we drank a few beers, and passed time away until midnight officially came, and the singer brought me on stage to serenade me with Happy Birthday. the whole bar joined in, and everyone was singing along to wish the retarded Chinese boy who can’t speak Chinese happy birthday…. in Chinese. fortunately, our Chinese teacher back at MPK had taught us that one song, so Poorna and I knew it.

It was touching. It was a sweet gesture. and the whole time I was laughing because, quite frankly, the singer was awful. I was half laughing, half cringing.

I laugh to hide the pain.

playing catchup

Saturday, Oct 9. 2004  –  Category: ChinaBlog

Sun China (SCERI) had the past week off for the national holiday. poorna and i were, of course, heartbroken that we couldn’t work and were forced to have to go on a week-long vacation, so our good friend Canada came over from the states to console us. and what better place to go to drown your sorrows than Shanghai?

we left for Shanghai on Sunday the 3rd with nothing more than our plane tickets. this was, of course, stupid. had we thought about it some more, we might have put some consideration into other things like… which airport are we flying into (Shanghai has two)? how do we get from the airport to the city centre? where IS the city centre for that matter? and more importantly: where are we going to stay?

on the plane, i was sitting next to a girl who couldn’t seem to grasp that yes, we were stupid and decided to go to Shanghai over the national holiday week and not book a hotel. really, it’s not that hard…. there are people that moronic in this world. some of us even get jobs at good companies. go figure.

anyway, after landing, and determining that we had landed at Hong Qiao airport (we asked someone, despite Poorna’s claims that he was sure this was HongQiao airport because he saw a restaurant named HongJing or something). after getting swarmed by calls of “cheap hotel!”, “you need place to stay?” “taxi! 150 RMB!”, we did something that actually made sense: we got on a bus. it was even heading towards the city centre….bonus.

the bus conductor collected our fares, and then asked where we wanted to go.

good question. when we figure that out, we’ll let you know. we tried to tell her the Bund, or People’s Square, but she kept asking where we were going, what hotel, which part of the city. more frustratingly, she kept asking ME and completely ignored Poorna and Canada. i understand most people will try asking me first, after all, i look (and am) Chinese. what i don’t understand is why they PERSIST in asking me after it’s become obtusely clear (to me anyway) that i don’t understand Chinese. she started getting agitated and kept talking louder and faster.

yeah. that’s helpful. i don’t speak your language, but if you talk louder, and faster, well sure, that’ll help. it’s like SMACK, well DUH…of COURSE i understand you now that you’re shouting at me.

i call this education through intimidation.

it doesn’t exist. anyway, so after about 20 minutes of having her constantly mutter (something about retarded ABC’s who can’t speak Chinese i’m sure), someone finally got on the bus who spoke English and helped us out. we ended up getting off at a hotel, and taking a metro to People’s Square we were proceeded to sit on the curb like a the three (homeless) stooges, crouched over a Lonely Planet guide to Shanghai, a map, peen, and paper calling all the hostels/hotels we could find trying to get a room in the middle of a holiday week at 6pm in the evening.

we ended up getting a room at a local university in the foreign student’s dorm (bonus: it even came with pet roaches….mmm…dinner…), and headed out for a stroll on the major street Nanjing Dong Lu, and dinner (we had KFC, and Poorna had Pizza Hut).

the next day we followed Lonely Planet’s guide for a walking tour of the French Concession. overall impression? neat, a good tour for people watching, but where the heck was all the intriguing architecture and historical sites? while the First Meeting Site of the CCP was cool, the rest was nought more than just some cool people watching. we did, however, see a big construction site for a new apartment complex called Rich Gate. Obnoxious sounding, no? It looked so f-ing pompous, and arrogant it just annoyed me. It made me feel better to see their huge banners proclaiming “WISDOM CREATS WEALTH”. aye…wealth it may creat, spelling…well…that’s up to your own hard work.

along the way, we had lunch at a random hole in the wall restaurant. Canada and I ordered nu rou mien (beef noodle soup), while poorna ordered a random tofu dish. it would have been fine if the random tofu dish hadn’t happened to be stinky tofu. he ate one piece, and nearly gagged. Canada was brave and tried two. i ended up eating the whole plate.

we wandered around Nanjing Donglu to kill some time again, where we had dinner (guess what… Pizza Hut…again), and Poorna got a new jacket.and then headed over to the Shanghai Circus World to watch an acrobatic show. these guys are amazing… i saw a different show a few years ago, so some of the stuff was the same – but it still awes me to see the strength and balance these acrobats have.

the next day we woke up with the intent of catching the train to Hangzhou, a city renowned for its beauty (both landscape and girls), its silk, and its tea. it’s a 2 hour express train ride away from Shanghai, so we planned a day trip. evidently, so did everyone else in Shanghai. the train was packed! we ended up sitting on the floor for the whole ride, meeting Benny, and his mum, and keeping the rest of the guys around us amused with our hideous attempts to speak Chinese, and Poorna’s occasional breakout into song .

we finally arrived in Hangzhou. we took a bus to the east shore of the West Lake (the centrepiece of the city, really). we then followed the lake around, trying to find a place to rent bikes from. we kept asking people “wo yao zu zixingche” (we want to rent bicycles), and they kept pointing us in random directions leading us walking around the lake. we finally found a place to rent the bikes we wanted, short stubby foldable bright yellow bikes with a rear shock. apparently you can buy these for < $40 US here. i want to buy one so bad...they're awesome. they're such fun little things... 3 gears, a rear shock, and a bell. okay, well, in Canada's broken bike's case: 1 gear, no bell, and sometimes you don't get to steer either. we took our sweet time peddling around the lake, taking lots of photos, and seeing the sights.

at one point, we had parked our bikes to walk along an area off-limit to bikes, and buy some drinks and snacks. Canada and I were getting back on our bikes when he made some remark about how he always liked girls in uniform. I said something like “be careful, you may get your wish”, and then lo and behold…the 3 girls he was commenting on started walking over to us. Apparently, they just wanted to chat and see what country we were from. I’m still not sure what exactly they’re supposed to be…. security guards? tour guides? information officers of the communist party? who knows… they wore badges saying “English Service”, but they could barely speak a word of English. In any case, Canada was smitten…but alas, we had less than half a day left, so we went on our way.

We rode on, coming to a series of causeways, and a park in the middle. The park was really neat…people had basically just pitched tents on the grass, and were spending the day lazying about. We sat down, had some skewers (mmmm….meat on a stick, does it get any better than that?), and just people watched for a while listening to covers of 70s and 80s pop music.

After getting back on our way, we kept riding as dusk drew closer. We came to the Six Harmonies Pagoda, and decided to try and race up the stairs to get there in time for the sunset. And wow…what an amazing sunset it was. Absolutely stunning… I watched the sunset for a good 20 minutes I think. On the way back down, we took our time and read the amazing wood carving stories that were inside the temple. These are, by far, the most intricate wood carvings I’ve ever seen…. the depth of detail in these 3d carvings is insane.

After that, we realised we had to book it in order to get everything done we wanted to get done. We had to buy silk gifts, tea, and then get our asses back to the train station in time. So we hopped on our bikes and took off, racing through the traffic. This was a blast….we ignored people, ignored cars, and just wove in and out of all the traffic…. everything was going well until I smashed into a taxi going full speed. I was riding on the wrong side of the road (whoops), and a taxi pulled over so I tried to squeeze in between the curb and taxi, and the backseat passenger opened the door on me. I smashed into it with the front of the bike, popped up, the reflector broke off, the door slammed shut on her, and I decided to keep peddling on since I was okay.

Anyway, after that excitement, we just went to a silk market, and I got both my tea and silk before heading to the train station to grab some dinner (mmm….stinky tofu from a street vendor!), and head back to Shanghai after a full tiring day.

On our last day in Shanghai, we decided to head to the YuYuan Garden area, and just walk around the Old Town market area. We took the subway, and saw a really cool fight. (this was the 3rd fight we’d seen in China…the ‘fish-fight’ from Qingdao being the first, and the plunger fight being the second. We dubbed this one the ‘mobile melee’ since it happened at a cell phone store). Anyway, the fight was between the cell phone vendor (a younger guy), and a customer (an older gentleman). We have no idea what it was about, but all we saw the old guy going for the young guy’s throat and pinning him against the wall. They had a lot of angry yelling and shouting, and then things started to calm down so we turned around to leave. All of a sudden we hear a roar from the crowd, and the old guy has literally picked up the young guy and carried him out of the stall. They fall to the ground and are punching each other in the gut, and then the young guy’s girlfriend joins in the fight and promptly gets flipped over and punched by the old guy. Anyway, security eventually came and did nothing as other people/rubberneckers pulled the two apart. Pointless, and a useless fight, but fun to watch.

After arriving at the Nanjing Donglu station, we realised we had lost Canada’s Shanghai Lonely Planet. Doh. This was a slight problem, since we now had no idea how to follow the “Old Town Walking Tour” we had planned to do. Our best guess is that Poorna left it on the subway somewhere. Oh well…whoever has it now, enjoy the book.

We ended up buying a map from a bookstore (and another cheap guidebook), and finding our way to the Old Town area. Since we didn’t have the broken down list of the Lonely Planet walking tour, we decided to just bum around the area and browse. Poorna and I bought a big Chinese flag to hang on our wall in between our offices in MPK, and I spent the whole afternoon buying random food from street vendors (including the best custard tarts I’ve had in a while). After a lazy day of just walking around town and not doing a whole lot except eating and people watching, we headed back to the Hongqiao airport (this time by taxi! we had had enough of misguided bus adventures), and caught our flight back to Beijing.

Phew… okay, that was ridiculously long, and took me 5 days to write – but it’s finally done. Maybe I’ll fill in more details if I recall them….anyway, just go look at the photos.

And if you actually read all the way down here, leave a comment…. cause damn, that’s an achievement to read this whole damn thing.

disconnected in a connected world

Wednesday, Sep 29. 2004  –  Category: ChinaBlog

I’ve had a lot of friends go into consulting & investment banking*, and always thought, hey it’d be kind of cool to travel all the time to different and exotic places.

Having seen one of my friends get posted to such “exotic” places as Maryland/DC, and St. Louis, I changed my mind on that part.

This morning over breakfast, I asked Poorna if he missed the states yet, and he said somewhat, and that he felt a little “disconnected”, which I think is the perfect word. Being in China for even a short time like 3 weeks, I already have started to feel somewhat disconnected… and I’ve got a good friend here working with me too. I guess I’m not the kind of person who can travel around the world for over a year and a half, or even just do a 3 month rotation here.

I’m having a great time here, and everyone has been really friendly, but there’s something to be said for being near family and friends. Even in this connected world of email, IM, and phone (heck, I think I talk to Wendy twice a day on average), it still isn’t the same. Well, that was an important lesson to learn, and while it was probably an obvious one, it’s also a personal lesson that I suppose each person needs to learn in their own time.

• sigh. I heard from one of my friends today that he had decided to go into investment banking. I’d had premonitions of this since he decided to go to business school, but it’s still sad nonetheless. The world has lost a great engineer (there’s no way I would have gotten into grad school if it weren’t for him… he kept me studying and working at the lab more or less diligently). Sendur, I know you’re reading this: it’s never too late to turn back to the light…. fight the dark side.

Random ramblings…

Tuesday, Sep 28. 2004  –  Category: ChinaBlog, Food, Football, Musings

Poorna and I got a late night soymilk at our favourite breakfast joint which happens to be open 24h a couple of days ago, when we worked till 2am (concalls with MPK can be a bitch from Beijing). It was really nice walking home, as for once, the streets were empty and deserted. We saw a couple making out, a bunch of taxi drivers standing around shooting the breeze, and had a nice hot glass of soy milk.

At the restaurant, while waiting for the soy milk we saw a pretty average couple sitting down waiting for their own order. The waitress brought out a Budweiser and a soy milk. Poorna and I both assumed the Bud was for the guy, and the soy milk for the girl. Boy, we were wrong. Just goes to show… don’t have preconceived notions when going to a different culture.

Poorna and I went for Sichuan hot pot a couple of nights ago with my dad. This was actually our first substantial meal after coming back from Qufu, and it was great. Coming from a whole weekend of eating relatively bland repetitive food, it was awesome to just start a fire in my mouth with some crazy hot Sichuan food. We did the half-half veggie/bone stock, and just dumped in tons of veggies and meat. My dad probably went overboard in ordering food, but hey, we loved it and ate almost all of it.

(and yes, I think my digestive system is still feeling it)

It’s a trippy feeling when, after having stuffed really spicy food in your mouth for about an hour, your mouth starts to get numb, and really cool (as in temperature cool). It’s almost like an anesthetic…. it’s very soothing. Until you think about it, and realise you’ve probably destroyed a lot of the tastebuds/nerve endings on your tongue.

I went for Korean BBQ last night with my dad (since Poorna wasn’t around, we went all out meat crazy). It was amazing….really great food. This was by far the largest Korean BBQ restaurant I’ve ever been to… with the really hot charcoal grills instead of gas, which in my opinion, really does lend itself to a better flavour. Oh yeah, and we went shopping at Hong Qiao again, where I bought a ridiculous amount of stuff ($10 for a pair of trekking poles, woohoo!)

Someone who will remain nameless (and no, it’s not Poorna this time, and no, it’s not me) got diarrhea last night….. from a mooncake….. on the Mid-Autumn “Moon” Festival. I find this hilarious…

and last but not least, how can I not mention Rooney in his spectacular debut for ManU. a hat trick in an unbelievable 6-2 win over Fenerbahce. this kid is amazing!

and while we’re on football, my condolences to my SEED mentor whose team lost to Olympiakos.

Choochoo from Qufu

Monday, Sep 27. 2004  –  Category: ChinaBlog

Yeah. Lame title, but it has nice alliteration when you pronounce Qufu in Chinese (ChooFoo). Of course, the alliteration requires you to mix English and Chinese in the same sentence.

Anyway, Poorna and I were invited to accompany a couple of other Sun employees (including Li Gong, the GM/managing director of SCERI) to Qufu for what, ostensibly, was an ‘International Confucius Celebration!’ sponsored by the Tsinghua Science Park (the campus where Sun’s SCERI offices are located). I guess maybe it was made painfully clear in Chinese or something, but Poorna and I didn’t get the fact that this was half sight-seeing/half business.

The city of Qufu has aspirations of becoming an industrial and commercial hub (in actuality, they are a rather small city…. like I said… aspirations ), and so are trying to both capitalise off the fact that they are the birthplace of Confucius, and attract a lot of domestic and foreign investment. They sponsored this ‘Chinese and Foreign Famous Major Enterprise Gathering and Economic Trade Fair’ which was basically just a meet-and-greet of big name companies/investors. Everyone there was Chinese, and either the head of this, or director of that, etc. etc. Poorna and I (or should I say “Pooma and Stephe” as they misspelled our names) were listed as ‘foreign experts’. At first I misunderstood when someone was trying to tell us our title and for a little while I was confused as to why we were listed as ‘foreign exports’. Though, I guess that’s also true.

Anyway, trade show and annoying business crap aside….the weekend was…. well, pretty much almost a waste of a weekend. Poorna and I hoped to learn a lot about Confucius’ teachings, his wisdom, etc. Instead we were given a first class example of capitalism at work. The city government tried very hard to make us VIPs (including giving us VIP badges, and having drivers drive us around, with a police escort and everything). It was the little things though like having a shower filled with mysterious wood shavings, and no shower door, a hotel room with dead flys/mosquitoes everywhere (which somehow managed to survive the daily “cleaning service”), eating at the same restaurant for every single meal, said restaurant smelling like rotting meat on Sunday, and oh yeah, the cockroach I found crawling by my bed. Yummy.

It would be an understatement to say I was underwhelmed by the hotel and its accompanying restaurant. I felt even worse for Poorna…. every meal was pretty much the same for him (being vegetarian): eggs, rice, and bean sprouts. Needless to say, when we got back to Beijing, we ran to the first “Chinese Burger Home” fast food restaurant and got burgers, fries, and onion rings.

What was worse though about the whole weekend experience was just seeing how the whole damn city was capitalising off of Confucius’ name. It was really kind of disappointing. You could buy Confucius hard liquor, Confucius wine, Confucius cigarettes, etc. etc. We went to the Confucius Amusement Park for god’s sake (we rode the Confucius train, and walked by the Confucius nightclub/bar). Somewhere in the Confucius Family Cemetary which we went to on Sunday (and you can too for only 30 yuan!), Confucius is rolling in his grave. Actually, the cemetary was the coolest part of the weekend. All 4000+ of Confucius’ descendents are buried here (well, the dead ones, anyway, one would hope the live ones aren’t), which made for a really cool visit. The thing I love with Chinese cemetaries is how in tune with nature they are. It’s a virtual forest which you can see from the photos, with really elaborate tombstones, and memorials erected in the middle of groves of trees, etc. They are also really really really spread out (to the point that you need a tram to get around.

We also visited a Confucius “Research” Centre/Institute (what exactly do they research?) and random temples which seemed to have mainly contrived significance. We also went to the “International Confucius Celebration” which was really just a pop concert with Chinese, Taiwanese, and Korean pop stars…. yeah, go figure, I couldn’t figure out that one either.

In fact, for all it’s worth, the Confucius Temple Poorna and I visited in Beijing for 3 yuan a piece is way better, and a helluva lot more convenient.

Best quote of the weekend: Poorna, upon seeing a girl at the Confucius Family Cemetary, asking me, “so what would you say to try and pick up a girl here?”, and my reply of “So…. you come here often?”

(and if you’ve read up to this point, we took the train back home early, hence the Choochoo from Qufu title)

pick one or the other, but not both

Sunday, Sep 26. 2004  –  Category: ChinaBlog

a) Taxi b) Personal safety

You may have one, or the other, but not both. Which would you choose?

Chinese taxis are always a fun experience. You feel like you’re in an arcade game, swerving, dodging, honking the horn, and coming within inches of other cars/people/bikes/large immobile objects.

What I love are the seatbelts. Chinese law requires the front passengers to wear seatbelts. I’ve seen many a taxi driver pull the shoulder belt down and fold it over and leave it draped over their lap, so it looks as if it’s buckled to a policeman that would happen to glance through the window, but in reality it’s not even buckled. If they’re gonna go to the trouble of all that, why not just buckle the damn thing?

Last time I was here (~3 years ago), I had taxi drivers tell me I didn’t need to buckle up when I reached for the belt. That cracked me up. Everytime I reach for the seatbelt in a Chinese taxi, I think of that memory….. until this trip, where the other day, I reached back for the seatbelt and felt…. nothing. The guy had actually gone to the whole trouble actually removing the rear seatbelts on his car.

I don’t even know what to say about that…. I mean, it’s one thing to say “oh, you don’t need to wear it”, it’s another to actually go about and actively prevent me from using something that should be saving my life (and I’ve seen Chinese car accidents with people going through the windshield, and it ain’t pretty).

The only thing I can think of is that they actually think it’s better to be thrown through, instead of being restrained in the event of an accident. Go figure.

How do you say “I don’t want to die” in Chinese? “Wo bu yao si”?

a Chinese lunch vs. an MPK lunch

Thursday, Sep 23. 2004  –  Category: ChinaBlog

My dad arrived back in Beijing today from the US (he works here most of the year), and we had lunch at the CyberTower building where he works, which happens to be the tallest building in Beijing (at the moment).

We had lunch on the 36th floor (the very top floor) at this fancy ritzy Chinese restaurant that apparently is renowned for its abalone. This is probably some of the priciest real estate to operate a restaurant from in Beijing. We had a delicious 7 course lunch, for an exorbitant cost of…. 130 yuan. That’s $16 US. $8 a person.

Hell, I’ve spent more than $8 on lunch at the Sun Menlo Park cafeteria.

I love China…

happy 2555th confucious!

Tuesday, Sep 21. 2004  –  Category: ChinaBlog

Poorna and I are going to some sort of Chinese Confucious Festival to celebrate his 2555th birthday this weekend in Qufu. Looks like it’ll be a lot of fun… we’ll get to meet the mayor and even eat dinner in Confucious’ mansion.

I wonder if they’ll give us fortune cookies after dinner?