Eric Ing

The Final Moments

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:51:00 -0500

Here I am. After five years of dreaming about finally finishing the journey, here I am sitting with five hours until my portal back to my normal life in Toronto. It feels like I'm dreaming. Everything is totally surreal. I feel almost euphoric. I've been waiting and fighting for this moment forever, and in a few hours I'll have it.

The Ruthless Chinaman Mainlander Quiz - How Chinese are you?

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 04:28:00 -0500

I took this off facebook because Jasmine tagged me in one of those "how AZN are you?" quizzes, I'm pretty much a superfob now with parents who don't beat me. I wrote my own version for anybody who hasn't already seen it, how mainlander are you? Most kids in Toronto score 0 for most of these.

This applies mainly for anybody who's ever lived in the mainland, or (even better) specifically lived in Beijing. I've added some extras at the bottom. Please keep score of how many you haven't done.

I've done 100% of these. Ruthless.

Global group for anyone who has done ANY or ALL of the following:

You've (not) gotten sick eating Yangrou Chuanr- tasty street meat so cheap you can't afford NOT to eat it.

You've drunk beer from a plastic bag. With or without the straw.

You've munched on scorpion on a stick.

You've known the torment of a Language Pledge.

You've drunk a bottle of Er Guo Tou in the middle of the day, and NOT thrown up.

You know the difference between 1. Propaganda, and 2. propaganda.

You've received a death threat from a Chinese gangster.

You've climbed the Great Wall.
a. more than once.
b. more than five times.
c. so many times the vendors don't even bother yelling at you to buy Great Wall T-Shirts or fluffy hats anymore, or to ride their camel.

You've gotten your censored news from the legendary Tom Santoro.

You've had to chase away those guys that stick business cards of prostitutes in the doors of every apartment.

You've danced on the speakers at Vic's.

You have taken a piss, received a back rub, and ashed your cigarette on the ash tray conveniently placed on top of the urinal -- all at the same time.

You've had your bicycle stolen. Twice. And you bought back the same bike both times from the same bike shop. Hm...

You've defended one of those little girls that sell flowers on the streets at night from a pack of drunken foreigners.

You've hooked up with (at least) one of your conversation partners.

You've noticed that the beggars in Wudaokou all carry around the same begging bowl, and actually live in the same apartment compound as you.

You've had to pay your full semester's rent in a very thick wad of $12.50 bills because the Bank of China doesn't print currency in higher amounts.

You've been in a cab that hopped the curb, drove up on the sidewalk, and ran a cyclist off the sidewalk just to avoid waiting at a red light.

You add "R"s to the end of words indiscriminately and do not move your jaw when you speak.

You've seen the guy at the BLCU gym who works out without his shirt on.

You have tried with great difficulty to explain to your friends about how awesome chocolate waffle fishes are.

You've drunk any of the following epic concoctions:
a. Green Tea and Whiskey
b. Green Grape Juice and Vodka
c. Qoo and Korean Soju (when you were in Wudaokou)
d. Sprite and Red Wine (when you were tricked into karaoke with old ladies).

You get nostalgic about some version of Sanlitunr that doesn't exist anymore.

You’ve bargained with an old Chinese lady at Xiushui or Hongqiao:
a. while the foreigner next to you bargained in English and ended up buying the same item for five times the price.
b. until the lady told you, "You make me want to kill myself." And you responded NO, she makes YOU want to kill YOURSELF. This continued back and forth until you reached the standard 1/5 original price, at which point you both laughed, completed the exchange, and she waved and invited you to come back soon. And you did the same thing at the next six stalls.
c. until she bought YOUR fake North Face jacket.

You’ve managed to actually find Li Qun Duck House.

You've started watching entire seasons of shows you never liked, because you now own them on DVD.

Upon leaving China, you persist in bargaining at inappropriate places in your home country (Train station, haircut, Chipotle Mexican Grill).

You think ass-less pants are cute.

Eric's questions

You don't need to use tissue anymore.

You've showered, taken a piss, smoked, while wearing NO sandals all simultaneously.

You've eaten a boiled cow's head with gloves on.

You don't eat rice anymore. In fact when you eat rice you feel like a broke ass.

You can drink a 1.5 litre beer in 4 glasses.

You know how to play dice and do all the sick ass tricks.

You can sing KTV without looking at the screen.

You think Pizza Pizza is some highclass table cloth establishment.

You've slept at Mcdonalds.

You know what face and pride is. In fact that shit almost killed you, and saved your life right after.

You think Edison Chen is the shit lol.

You know who 张震岳 is.

You know who 张震岳 is and you have a lanyard from his concert.

You think Jay Chou is really ugly, in fact you probably think you're better looking than him. But it doesn't matter because your girlfriend would bang him over you anyday.

You like eating 麻辣烫 off cracked out street vendors at 2-3AM, and paying 5mao a stick.

You NEVER take off your longjohns in the winter.

You've walked to the store and back in your pajamas and bought shit, and didn't give a fuck what anybody thought.

You get drunk in shitty, local owned restaurants and get into fights.

You like to talk to random cab drivers.

You like to talk to random cab drivers regardless of their horrid accents that are impossible to understand.

You think Rainie Chen is hotter than Stephany Ly.

You know who Show Luo is, in fact you think he's some ugly ass kid who made it big. But he used to be this ugly ass nobody so you don't really believe his hype.

You know who the "Partyboys" are.

Shopkeepers fucking hate you because of your ruthless negotiation skills.

You've taken a shit on squatter on an overnight train and almost got mirked when the train stopped.

You prefer using the squatter.

Western toilets feel WEIRD.

A KTV girl has gotten you blind drunk and throwing up once because she mirked you at dice.

You're like 6'2 and weigh about 120 pounds, and wear size 30 jeans and a medium sized tshirt.

You never wash your hair, you just blow dry the hell out of it. It still looks really good though.

You know the words to "Take Me To Your Heart".

You probably just sang it for a second if you know the lyrics.

Your cellphone number has at least three 8's in it, or it goes like 101010101.

Your car license plate has at least three 8's in it.

You hate the ticket lady on public buses. And you sometimes wonder why it's always a woman doing that job, why can't a guy do it?

You've seen random Asian couples fucking eachother on campus or public parks after 9PM.

You've had a drink out of a 6 litre baijiu jug.

You hate Cantonese people lol. (I've heard this comment from a couple of Northern people, lol. My friend didn't get married because of it!)

You eat dumplings with the vinegar and soysauce and spicy chilli sauce

Your soymilk comes hot in a glass with no sugar. It's like drinknig soy tea almost. Then you have to add sugar yourself.

You've seen somebody jump off a building and kill themself

You've tried line dancing with the grannies up the block with no lights on at 2AM

You like to talk to random old people who chill in the park

You have been offered hookers while walking down the street on a Tuesday afternoon

You know the "best way" to get something when you have to line up for it

You like eating stinky tofu

You pronounce fruit "shuiguor"

In fact, if the character is correct you add in er's into other people's names (ma hong zhir)

You really like eating 西红柿鸡蛋

Okay that's enough for now, I could go on all day.

Selwyn's Awful Stories

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:02:00 -0500

Root Seeking Trip

When Selwyn was 15 he went on a rootseeking trip with a bunch of Australian New Zealand people. On the trip he was acting like a cocky asshole and talking shit to everybody like he does now. They were buying beer and cigarettes and getting smashed everyday. Hey, you're 15, got way too much cash, and in China, why the hell not?

They bought a whole shopping cart full of beer and brought it back to the crib. This Australia kid named Desmond came and they all decided to go out drinking together. At first they couldn't get into the club so they argued like crazy with the bouncer, then got arrested trying to climb the fence behind it.

When they finally got inside with the teacher, Desmond explained he was drinking with some 40 year old guys from 14K. Desmond thought 14K was a boyband. That was the first year they organized the trip, now they are VERY STRICT on the rules.

Toe Infection

Selwyn had a severe toe infection, but due to FACE AND PRIDE still went out to Mix while jacked up on IV's with a hole and bandage on his foot. I'm talking borderline amputate your toe style infection. For being late they made him drink a tall ass glass of Chinese rice liquor. Most of Selwyn's friends have expeirenced liver failure (I'm not joking), and Selwyn almost went into a coma that evening. Face and pride bitch! Nah man that's just being a dumbass.

Parking Lot

At Yufei's school some first year was giving them cut eye. When they approached him, he told the girls to run and stayed to fight. Them all being drunk and stuff rushed the dude. When security came, they told them to leave them alone or they'll get their asses whooped next. The security actually didn't try to arrest them. Security dudes here can't fight, everybody knows that. One of the dudes friends was just standing on the side yelling at them telling them to stop beating the dude up. Selwyn told the dude to stand there and watch his friend get his ass whooped, just for being such a pussy and not wanting to jump in.

Afterwards, while puking in the bushes, some Chinese guy came over and told them to stop doing that, then they ended up kicking his ass too. After this Selwyn stopped saying my friends were stupid for getting into fights.

Matt Visits Beijing, the 36 hour day

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:11:00 -0500

About Matt Chan. Jackson Tran sent me a red flag about this cool Asian dude who digs heavy metal music and hates religion and discusses interesting things. We ended up chatting often on facebook and MSN for the last three months. We figured since we're both going to UTSG in the fall and want to kind of break out of our networks a bit, we'd be likely partners in crime. Matt studied in France for three months, and speaks French fluently. Although Matt is also from Toronto, our networks are really different because he's from deep Markham. Matt enjoys fantasizing about scene girls, listening to heavy metal music, debating the existence of god and other philosophical entities, dressing like a skater and painting his nails black, and long walks on the beach.

When I brought Matt through Beijing, my main goal was to have him understand a bit more about me and the influences in my life and the things I've been exposed to. I talk to A LOT of people in Toronto about how Beijing is, but it's another thing to come here and experience it for yourself. So I'm glad I've had the privilege of sharing such an personally-influential city with somebody from Toronto. We spent quite a great deal of time discussing our future lives at UTSG chilling with eachother and hitting up parties and stuff. It was cool to finally meet Matt in person and discuss all these things face to face.

When I discovered Matt would be in Beijing in June, I planned him the following things.

Clubbing, drinking, massages, shopping, cocky photoshoot, inspirational tours and conversations, meeting Selwyn and Jimmy, and all that BS. So this is how it went down.

Tuesday June 9th 2009:

So I go back into zhongguancun on my AWESOME BICYCLE to pick up my laptop. I park at the balling bike parking place because I'm a serious baller. Regulra is 20 cents, I pay a solid $1 to park because I do not care enough to walk my bike into the basement and park it. Some dude next to me heard the price and just said screw it I'm walking my bike into the basement. That made me feel so awesome I can afford to park my bike on the street. Man this country is so sad sometimes.

I went inside, I bought a stack of DVDs, I bought a new cable for my hard drive, I bought a new DVD marker. Always buy a quality DVD marker, I was using a huge one for like 2 years. You only need one, make your CD labels look pretty. God.

I came up, awesome service! They said come back on Monday or Tuesday and they'll have it done. They even apologized for not having it done on Sunday but they don't work on Saturday. When I heard that, I wanted to shed a tear. Only a Westernized company in China can provide such service. The cellphone repair dudes had my phone for THREE WEEKS and told me everyday for three weeks it would be repaired the next day. I went in 4 times. Assholes!

I took the stairs (11 flights) and biked back to get some exercise. That is how nasty fat I've gotten.

Slept for like 4 hours before Matt gave me a call and told me to go get him. We got totally lost in the cab on the way there, and the driver made me pay for it. Honestly, he doesn't make much so I'm not going to bitch. But any LEGIT cab driver would just turn off the meter. It was nice to finally meet Matt in person. He was waiting in the lobby for an hour wondering if I was gonna come or not, and had gotten up that day at 6:30AM so you can imagine how tired he was.

We went to Selwyn's and sat and drank tea. We asked him if he liked the tea, and he said damn yeah this is pretty good tea. I told him that shit was $2000 a box, so I hope he enjoys it. He almost spat the tea out, it was hilarious. Selwyn started talking to him about Chaopai clothing and ended up giving him a red pattern Clot tee as a gift. Matt was esctatic. Matt told us about how boring and whack Asian clubbing is in Toronto. Selwyn was being really nice to him, offering him a bunch of packs of cigarettes for the road and stuff.

We ended up in Selwyn's study room talking. Selwyn showed him some magic tricks and showed him this paper trick to describe his personality. He dropped the stories about face and pride and all that on Matt. I've heard them before and have seen the ridiculousness before, but this was Matt's first time. Matt was really exciting and enjoying the conversation. Selwyn had made a deep impression on him. Matt said that conversation had completely flipped his perspective on life, and went home and couldn't even sleep afterwards due to how much he was contemplating life.

I cabbed Matt home afterwards around 3AM telling him to get some sleep because the next day would be even crazier. That was just day one.

Wednesday May 10th 2009:

I had to go buy snacks for the day-time class party the following day. I did that with the class rep.

At night I went to go pick up Matt again. We went for a massage first to get the night started. Afterwards, went into Sanlitun to show him the scene. First I walked him through the new Sanlitun Village modern concept shopping area. Then into the bar street. I wanted to show him Chinadoll but it was now completely boarded up and shut down.

I showed him Kikomo (beach inspired bar), took him up to Bar Blu, took him into all the crappy side street bars, into the new Chinadoll which was totally deserted. I just wanted to him give an interesting perspective on the modern Beijing bar scene. How they decorate the bars and the certain art they use and stuff.

We stop next to Shooters and grab a table next to a bunch of serious African dudes who eventually got into a full scale fight and almost smashed us off our table. They threw a bottle at me that almost hit my head. Good show. Matt lived in France for three years so he was kinda used to the environment a bit better lol.

We sat there drinking and stuff and chatting. I'm glad Matt came to Beijing because it's really nice for at least ONE person from the friend network in Toronto to see what I've been exposed to out here for the last two years. It helped him understand me a lot better and stuff.

Afterwards we went to Vics for free to first show him the scene. I pulled him up on stage for a bit but he wasn't feeling it too hard. It was also a sausage fest since it was 3AM. I dragged him around the club a bit on different floors and stuff to show him how the club was and how stupid drunk foreigners get down etc.

Then I dragged him into Mix. They were still charging cover but I managed to talk the dude down a bit. We sat outside for a while just scoping the cars and heavily geared mens walking around. Matt had heard about it and knew about the brands a bit and his mind was just blown away by how ridiculous people looked. He also commented that the mainland girls there were hot. Yes they are.

I took him into all the different rooms and the basement. Matt got to see the 20L bottles of booze on the tables and the skanky girls dancing around and stuff. It was a Wednesday at Mix and nobody in the parking lot was pulling up in Lambos, but none the less Matt got to see a pretty good idea of how ridiculous people club up here.

Afterwards we went back into Vics, chilled on the patio before I sent him home around 4AM.

I stayed up all night and went into class at 8AM to serve drinks and hold our little class party. We wouldn't be having an after class party due to a high number of people flying out the night of lol. Some people just can't wait to get out! So we served some beverages (lol non alcoholic it was 9AM) and took our class photos and wrote eachother those little yearbook style notes.

I got mine written in three different languages, and I wanted to write the following on one of my classmates pages but couldn't bring myself to do it. If my Korean class rep instructed me to jam in English I would have written the following.

"eric write's on korean classmates yearbook in english, "hey girl, you fuckin fine as hell. you got dat serious korean badunkadunk. don't me wrong, i would lud to tap that ass." eric's classmates looks at eric, smiles, thanks him in chinese, says it's so cool to get messages in other languages. eric nods."

It was so jolly and nice and almost sad to say goodbye to everbody. I've grown so accustomed to living out here, and these people in a way were my family out here. We've gone through so much as a team, and they were all wonderful people to get to know. Don't quit yet, I still got exams next week. I took a picture with the teacher who thinks I'm an alcoholic.

After class I went and started donating clothing. Thank god an agency came to US to ask us for our clothes. 11AM-4PM bring us your clothes to donate to the needy children! Clothes, books, toys, anything goes!

You know I was going to fill two suitcases with all my clothes and drag them to this SUPER distant agency. But ever since I read that ad in the bathroom, I've been feeling so much better and relieved.

I started with the first bag. It's the size of a futon rolled up. 50KG's worth of clothes, sweaters, Adam's old stuff, Selwyn's old stuff, my first wardrobe I bought here. They saw it and were so omgwtf'd by it. Then I came up and donated all of my old shoes and Selwyn's old shoes. About 6 pairs. Then all the books Adam left behind. An entire shelf, about 30 books. Then that toy car and water pitcher ontop of the shelf. Then all this old medicine Aunt Jeanne sent me in a medikit, then 20 litres of contact solution Adam left behind. They all these weird toys and statues I had lying around. Then an entire box of old phone chargers and AV cables. Then a bunch of hats and stuff. Then some tennis racquets and stuff.

I came out a total of 6 times with everything you could imagine. The people working there by the 6th time were just totally shocked, and gave me a bracelet to show their appreciation for me. That's the only thing I've ever recieved for donating such an obscene amount in my whole life.

I explained to them I had aobut 4 years worth of stuff accumulated by about 3 people and I'm moving very soon and can't take any of it with me. They just nodded and laughed. I must have looked like a serious packrat. I'm just glad I got rid of all that crap, and it went to a decent place.

Mind you at this point in time I had still not slept or ANYTHING. Selwyn, being the good buddy he is called me and said he's going to go to Matt's hotel, bring him over for lunch (probably so he could continue to brainwash the shit out of the guy), then bring him to our university to find me.

They came around 4PM lol. At that point in time I was so tired ( I WAS DRINKING THE NIGHT BEFORE) I was having microsleep. That's when your brain is so tired it shuts itself off when you're not paying attention. I fell asleep while on messenger with Terra.

So they pull up, we go to Wudaokou market and go shopping. Matt was pretty conservative with his buys, we ALMOST convinced him to get a pair of purple discos lol. He ended up getting the same pair of christos I have, a yellow zoo york tee. We found these two fingercroxx bags that were SO DAMN CHEAP and pretty good quality, even had original price tags on them. The store owner had two in two different colours, so we ended up buying the same bag. Man we're gonna look like a homosexual matching couple in Toronto rocking the same slippers and bags.

Afterwards we came back to the dorm and waited for Jimmy to come back to help us do a photoshoot. That's right, we are extremely narcissistic and geared, and needed to do a photoshoot. This was on the list of things to do for when Matt came to Beijing. He's never had one before. He's proud of his image, he needed one yo.

So we got on the bench and did a bunch of gear shots with Selwyn in the photo. Selwyn was the photographer for our photos. He has a really good eye for the stuff since he understands what constitutes a quality photo.

Afterwards we took Matt to the cafeteria to eat some LOCAL ASS FOOD. He had a plate of what we ALWAYS eat (and have come to love and hate). It's like stewed beef with crappy fried rice and clapped up cucumber. We were just so hungry we didn't really care what we would eat lol. He actually liked it because he was so hungry, and ate two of them. Jesus. The whole time he was here, he was doing bizarre things like asking if he could smoke inside, if he could put his cigarette out on the floor, if he could spit here or not, and always buckling up his seat belt.

I didn't even know Beijing cabs had seatbelts.

Afterwards we stayed in the lobby and drank beers and continued to chat about his experience. Selwyn said if he wasn't grounded we originally planned to take him street racing in a ferrari, take him to mix with like 500 hoes and 500 liters worth of booze, and do other crazy Chinese stuff. We rainchecked it for two years. Originally we were supposed to go to Propaganda so Matt and I could test our skills sarging on the foreign scene, but yo after 30 hours of no sleep I felt like dropping dead, and so did he.

We went back to Selwyn's for a few hours to debrief the whole experience in Beijing. Ate some mangos, joked around. At that point in time if Selwyn and I asked Matt anything, he would automatically assume we're testing him or manipulating him or something, so he was super paranoid about answering. Selwyn and I aren't that bad! We're normal people!

I sent him back to his hotel. We talked about how Toronto is gonna be when we're back. I'll see ya in 12 days Matt. I hope you had a good time here.

I went home, photoshopped the photos we had taken and posted them up. It was 3AM. I was awake for about 36 hours.

Friday June 12th 2009:

I woke up at 5PM! Holy crap. I missed our awards ceremony. There have been over 5-6 of these things at Renda. There wasn't any dancing at this one so I seriously did not care lol. Leo was the MC though. I spent the rest of the day burning off CD's (having your hard drive crash makes you suddenly aware of how important backing up documents is) and doing laundry. So tiring.

Conclusion:

Matt had a pretty big complaint about the way people dress and the common self perception of one's worth in Toronto. By coming to Beijing, it helped him reinforce his opinion of how many Toronto kids have very narrow minded perspectives on life. Through meeting Selwyn and coming through the city, Matt was able to expand his mind and opinions a bit on life and modern Chinese culture and how damn good we have it in Canada. Matt said it was an inspirational, entirely "next level" experience. But we all know it was much more than that.

As I said before, this whole China thing is about way more than just learning the language and living abroad. It's eye opening, life changing, and a breathe of fresh air.

Selwyn's New Apartment, Chatting with Locals, Patrick's Birthday

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:23:00 -0500

Monday May 25th-Wedneday June 23rd 2009:

We had a two day vacation on the 28th-29th then we had class on the 31st which was whack. I am so sick of Chinese classes, some of them are just so pointless. For a lot of this term I just sat in class and did the homework or whatever, most of what the teacher says is just awful. Most of my classmates feel the same. I've been doing the same thing for two straight years now so I have stronger feelings against this style of teaching. I used to actually LIKE going to class. I really miss studying things I give a shit about. My next degree is going to be so interesting.

Julia continued to tutor me. We do about half free talk about our lives and stuff then she went through my book and tries to teach me new grammar and words. I appreciate her work a lot. She just graduated so she's chilling for now on campus. She said most of the stuff in my book is extremely useless. She said I know about 2000-3000 most commonly used words and phrases and that's why we can have a conversation and make each other laugh and stuff now, unlike before. Just don't make me explain how osmosis works in Chinese.

Thursday June 4th 2009:

My laptop shut itself off a few times before producing a blue screen. I was TERRIFIED I was going to lose all my documents. I brought it into Lenovo and it was fixed by Tuesday. Thank god. I managed to completely fry the motherboard. So in China I've broken the fan once, paid for it, broken it a second time, got it free. Then I trashed the motherboard. The guy in the store asked me if I played way too many videogames.

I actually don't, I just surf a lot and never turn this thing off. At first I thought I overheated the hard drive and broke it. LUCKILY nothing was erased. I had to learn those words specifically to go in lol.

I went in to go pick up Selwyn's participation diploma. Selwyn got kicked out of Renmin University and now has a decent apartment in the Chaoyang area and will be attending an international politics univeristy in the fall. He said everybody there looks really trashy or rich, and all the girls are much better looking. In a way I'm happy for the dude because he can live in a decent apartment (nice and clean), and go to a school with hot girls and not have to deal with this Chinese dorm BS.

Then again his parents are taking turns living here with him so he can't dick around anymore. I had a long convo with him about why he just doesn't go back to New Zealand and study there. He can live in his uber minimalist styled mansion and drive Bentley's to school everyday and see all his friends, and live like a normal person! He said he doesn't care where he lives. China is the best place to learn how to do business and meet people. And although his life in New Zealand was so posh and celebrity-esque, he enjoys his new simple life in Beijing. No drama, nobody trying to gangbang you or backstab you. Just an apartment, some buddies, he doesn't really need much else.

Since my laptop was broken and he was having his home welcoming party, I stayed at Selwyn's new apartment for the weekend. I've been living in this jail cell of a dorm a bit too long and getting out REALLY helped. Jimmy and I came over and fried burgers and ate Western food for the first in a LONG time. I forgot how much I like cooking and being a normal person. We drank tea and sat on the PC and watched stuff online.

My laptop was broken so I just stayed there all weekend chilling out.

Friday June 5th 2009:

Selwyn's mom sent a babysitter over to watch over him and make sure he didn't go out. Selwyn this year is 21 years old. We got lunch and ate it together. It was honestly quality Northern style Chinese cooking, which I've actually come to really have a liking for. Selwyn always said one good people skill is to learn to talk to people you either don't like, or find super boring, or have NOTHING in common with. So I sat with this woman just speaking in Chinese for about an hour or two. Consider it a free language exchange. I do this sometimes with random locals when I'm bored.

She told me about some kid who commited suicide in a net cafe over games. He told me about this CBC who got married and had his wife steal all his money and run to China. She's a lawyer so she told me all these bizarre cases she's encountered or worked on. At some points I could barely keep up with her, but for most of it she spoke REALLY proper educated Chinese so she was very easy to understand. This is Beijing, people speak to be understood.

Saturday June 6th 2009:

Patrick's birthday was that day. So we got ready and went. It was at Red House which is a place that serves tiny ass pizza's that are hella expensive and beer for 5RMB a glass. That is stupid cheap. So about 30 people were there from Renda. Everybody was pretty cool. The Japanese girls, all the European people, the German girls, some of the British people, a bunch of Koreans. It was a good mix, and everybody there was above zhong er level Chinese so it was pretty colourful with language. That's one thing I noticed, the foreign students are a lot more willing to mingle once they get above a certain Chinese level. Or else everybody can't speak with eachother lol.

Like me last year!

So I was there with Selwyn and Jimmy. Selwyn mentioned there's this other NZBC girl there. I met her, her name was Angela and she was there with another ABC and some local chick. She was in Gao San and spoke Chinese occasionally at home. She could understand it but couldn't speak too fluently. To me this was actually surprising. She was in China for two months on vacation after laser eye surgery. She was doing a triple major of film, marketing, and sociology in Auckland. We chatted for a bit, she said I'm really crazy and random with the conversation topics.

I met this guy from Israel who told me all about how he goes to the dead sea and sits in the ocean then rubs mud on himself and washes it off and it makes his skin totally awesome. I spoke with the Japanese girls a bit, they digged Selwyn's teeshirt (Japanese gravure models) and said they recognized her. Leo came by for a bit.

It essentially was the entire foreign student network I really haven't bothered to meet this term. Leo says its because if you get too caught up with them you'll never speak Chinese with anybody. I don't know, I did that last year Spring because I was a newb but right now I'm kinda just over the whole "hey we're abroad lets get fucked up!" kinda attitude. They're all really cool people though, but maybe me seeing them once or twice a term is enough.

Leo thought it would be funny if we got drunk on the subway on the way back. So I videotaped parts of just pounding beer and talking extreme amounts of shit on a crowded Beijing subway car heading home. Kinda silly.

Went back to Selwyns that evening, fried up a serious Western style meal (THIS IS HOW DEPRIVED WE ARE). We even make breakfast with beans and toast and eggs. They're all pseudo British so they were digging the hell out of the beans and tomato. It was pretty good, we all got kinda drunk and passed out. I went back to the dorm on Monday after having dinner with his mother.

Last Class Party

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:00:00 -0500

Friday May 29th 2009:

Today I had my class dinner. The other class rep couldn't show up so I met everybody in the lobby for 7PM. That day I had already went to the restaurant and had them explain to me that the tables could be pushed sideways to accomodate such a large crowd.

I got geared then met everybody downstairs. At previous events I had not bothered to take any photos, although the party at the Korean restaurant where everybody was sitting on the floor was a lot more visually stimulating than the Xinjiang local cracked out restaurant.

We all walked there and sat down. Ordered the usual, drank a crapload of beer. We had already eaten Chinese and Korean food so Xinjiang food was a natural choice. Xinjiang food is very communal food so it was really easy for everybody to eat. People start busting out their cameras and taking dumb Korean style photos where you make like 50 gestures while shooting 5 frames a second. I did some with the other class rep, I was the best out of all of them. So Korean.

After we got smashed we left and started walking through campus to go sing KTV. Honestly, only like 10 people showed up that day, I don't even know why I organize these events. Last time we had 24 people. Like these students have anything better to do, we live alone in a foreign country with no upcoming exams. Can you socialize with your classmates a little? We have parties once every 7 weeks.

So on the way back most of the girls bail out until it's just five people that wanna go. The other class rep wanted to leave, and I said that's fine if you're gonna ditch me and be a pussy then just go home, I'll take care of the rest of it. I've had like 4 hours of sleep I'm sure hosting a KTV event will be no problem and very pleasant solo. No I didn't say that to her but when she wanted to bail out on her responsibilities I didn't say shit to her.

So 8 people went to KTV. Mahongzhi is a dangerous KTV singer, he can do all the songs I cannot possibly read fast enough in traditional characters. Russel was also quite good, he had a lot of enthusiasm and sings with great volume, he's been before so he had a good time. The other Korean girls started putting on Hyori Lee videos and goddamn when you're locked in a KTV room and have been locked out in China this long; a Hyori Lee video becomes more mesmerizing than a porno flick.

I sang some songs. I sing completely falsetto but it sounds normal on a microphone because in real life it's not loud enough. So I pretty much figured out how to fake sing lol. My dad always said I had an awful singing voice. I swear I'm a bass clef singer but I sing super high at the KTV.

Made some videos, took some pictures, everybody had a decent time. With foreign students you gotta get them kinda drunk for everybody to start communicating with each other. You guys are gonna think this is kinda weird but all the Italian and Spanish people speak Chinese to me instead of English. Everybody in Europe just speaks English to me but I guess they don't use it a lot back home.

There are a lot of things I like about the foreign student environment. Everybody is just down to meet people and have fun and screw being snotty. You can learn all about different cultures and it's a hilarious way to use Chinese.

But sometimes things can get really socially awkward because everybody has to step out of their circle. Sometimes people won't step out of their comfort zones. And sometimes people just can't agree on things or understand culture differences, like inviting outsiders to class events etc.

Overall pretty cool night, everybody came home around 2AM. That would be our last class party of the year because everybody has exams soon or is going home. Great bunch of kids.

Essay for Writing Class about Transportation Issues

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:00:00 -0500

This is for anybody who reads my blog who can read Chinese. It was more of a writing exercise than me actually trying to argue something. I also tried to use as many as the strange words and proverbs from my books as possible, because I never get chances in real life to use them. It's basically about how public transit is the way of the future, and how most forms of motor transport are unsustainable, using Beijing as an example of overcrowding. If you're a native Chinese speaker don't hate too hard you know I've only been going at this for two years.

交通的作文

每天你起床了. 洗澡, 穿衣服, 吃早饭, 然后去上班. 你上车的时候,你发现没汽油. 因为车没汽油, 你去加油站. 你在加油的时候, 因为你会迟到工作,你感觉很着急.你指手画脚加油站的服务员。你发现今天的汽油价格越来越高. 你对大家很生气。好贵啊! 加油以后你继续去上班。从你的家到公司是一个小时。你开挺快，这样的很危险。突然，有堵车. 所有的开车人很生气。大家磨拳擦掌了. 两个小时以后你到了公司. 不过,在停车场没有空. 太麻烦了! 这是一塌糊涂的情况。

你听说过这个情况吗? 我心中无数大家听说过这个故事. 我们要开车的话,我们要个方便的办法为送自己去上班, 买菜, 看起来很酷的,等等. 我们有堵车, 买越来越贵的汽油, 和没有方便停车的地方, 开车就是适得其反.

我们看电视机和电影的时候, 传媒总是描绘公交很脏. 所有的乘客很蓬头垢面. 有一些乘客有传染病。公共汽车很慢, 地铁太挤，你坐不了. 由于这个描绘, 我们说 “公交”的话，我们肯定马上设想好多如狼似虎的乞丐，很慢的速度，很脏的椅子。所有的人觉得坐公交不是人道。对我来说，在北京我半信半疑。公交就是公用的地方。所有的人，穷的人，富有的人，还怕的人能坐。其实，平时公交很安全。关于人类的未来，所有的人应该换自己的态度。所有的人应该了解公交对我们的未来很重要。我说实在，公交镇的没有狼似虎的乞丐。真的！别害怕其他的乘客。如果个个人坐公交，世界不会有堵车。

首先，公交的速度挺快。尤其地铁的速度。世界的最快的地铁车在一个小时去了300公里。你看过地铁的堵车了没有？你不可能看过了。很多人说，“我不坐地铁因为从我的家没有方便的地铁站。” 这样的不是合适的借口。我要打抱不平。如果每个人要坐地铁，每个城市会建造更多的地铁站。问题解决了！比如说，去年北京的地铁真的不方便。从我的大学我先要坐公共汽车到地铁站，然后转送自己。现在没有这样的。现在在外面我的大学有新的地铁站。地铁车挺新和干净。去年我坐不了地铁。今年我经常坐了。所有的人民大学生能方便去上课。每个公共汽车和地铁车能包含150乘客。这样的很有效率。别开车，坐地铁！

而且，每年在美国开车的撞毁杀4.5 万人和伤害2.1百万人. 每天每辆车散发80个公里的二期化碳. 因而,我们能看: 开车对人类和环境非常危险! 我们别应该开车. 不过,我们没有车的话,我们怎么运输自己? 答案就是公交! 比如说,东京是世界的最未来的城市. 它的技术标准挺高. 在东京很少人开车. 大多数人开公交. 孩子们, 大学生, 大人, 等等. 甚者腰缠万贯的人坐公交. 为什么呢? 公交又方便又快.

因为在未来，大多数城市会很方便。所有的人也能骑自行车去上班。如果你骑自行车的话，你不会胖。由于，在未来大多数人的身体会更健康。不要去贵的健康俱乐部。骑自行车就是免费！我在这个想法有群起而攻之，也有嗤之以鼻。太多人爱用汽车。不过，今天开车很贵。我们先要买辆车，然后买保险，买汽油，付停车费，付修理厂费，等等。如果没有人开车的话，我们都能保存钱。然后我们能买别的东西。这样的更好。一箭双雕！

因此相反，我们的生活还必须汽车。我是通情达理。完全没有车的话，这是不可思议。我展望的是后我觉得政府只应该让紧急事件的车开了。救护车，警察车，重要的政府人，能开了。而且，如果有的人有紧急事件的话，他们能打车。所以，在未来的路，只会有: 救护车，警察车，重要的政府人, 和出租车。可是，如果有一天人类只用出租车，出租车的服务必须进步很多了。比如说，在所有的地方能打车。你在嵝的话你还能打车。我希望有一天，你能告诉你的女朋友你没有汽车，然后他会觉得这样的不是不同凡响。
总而言之，开车对人类和环境很危险。坐公交和骑自行车贯很方便，便宜，和健康。我指望有一天没有人会开车。有一天，你会起床，洗澡，穿衣服，吃早饭，然后走五分钟到了地铁站。在地铁里能读报纸，听音乐，没有堵车，不要买贵的汽油。到了时候，继续走五分钟去了你的公司。你从不来不会迟到了。我希望这个作文豁然开朗你。公交对我们的生活最好

List of Things I'm Going to Do When I get Home

Sat, 30 May 2009 10:33:00 -0500

Okay so I've been writing this list all over my PC but I think it would make the most sense here. A lot of these things involve my parents so I think it would be better if they read them. I'll refer to this list when I get back. Most of them will be done in August when I have more time. When I'm in Toronto for those five days I literally don't have much time to do anything. Knowing my mother I'm probably going to end up in the dentist on the first day then getting fillings the second day. Holy crap I hate dental work so much. Thank god it's done in Canada at least. It just hurts like hell when they're stabbing your teeth with drills, that feeling is just irritating.

Five days I'm back in Toronto: Get off the plane without getting busted by customs, get back to the crib. Give everybody the gifts I brought back for them. Try to unpack all fragile clothing. Try to reinflate down jackets. Unpack fragile items like hats, shoes, blazers, coats and put into storage. Make quick visits on friends. Buy a zune and load with music. Reopen bank account. Go to the doctors. Go to the dentist. Dry clean all clothing.

Moving back in: Turn Adam's room into a room for two people. Buy new computer desks. Add shelving above wardrobe. Buy new bed. Add memoryfoam. Add storage underneath bed. Organize closet. Put all clothes into closet. Steam all clothing back to original condition. Get jewellery and accessory organizers. Put small couch in window alcove. Get rid of crappy white shelf. Donate all old clothes to charity. Get a folding screen. Get some black out shades.

Decoration: Print off photos and hang them in frames. Get blown up photos.   Put hats on display. Put a skateboard deck on display. Get a rug. Shelve all the books. Set up computer desk and decorate.

Purchases: Buy loafers. Buy a Zune. Get headphones fixed. Fix cellphone (motherboard is broken). Buy a full length mirror. Buy a clothing steamer. Buy a teaset. Get collection of 10-15 different coloured booze bottles and display above computer. Reactivate SIM card. Buy a pair of Sb's and a pair of airmaxes to run around in. Buy a new bicycle. Buy a bus pass. Buy lip balm. Buy a day scent cologne. Buy the z5500 speaker set. Buy a new sound card to play use the speakers. Go print photos out. Eventually go get a pair of nudies and APC's.   Go dry clean specific tshirts.

Stuff to do with friends: Do a photoshoot with BBC and get massive blown up photos for walls. See James at the condo. See Colin at his basement. See Noah at his cottage. See everybody else at the club or at the crib.

Eating: Eat at all the restaurants I listed beforehand.

Stuff I need my mothers help with: Inquire on repairing broken jewellery chains. Inquire on replacing crystals that fell off jeans using superglue. Yes, there are crystals all over my jeans that I would like to have re attached using superglue. Inquire on redecorating room and getting new furniture. Inquire on creating photo collages for the walls. Inquire on shelf installation. Inquire on closet reorganization. Inquire on getting some PATIO FURNITURE for the back yard holy crap. Get laser surgery.

Side note: Can we just get some crappy stools and a little wooden tiki table for the back porch or something? Would it kill us? And like a small light out there or something? You know our house isn't that big, it would make a world of difference to have a decent back patio just to chat on and enjoy lemonade on or something. I swear to god you guys would use it. It's not like we gotta install a swimming pool or anything. Just something to sit on and rest your drink on. That should have been done a lot time ago. I wouldn't recommend a massive table installation. But for example, you put an L shaped seat in the corner near the garage wall and neighboring wall. And stick a table in the middle with some stools on the outside. Bam instant backyard sitting area. Is that so difficult?! You can even get crappy little solar powered lights to add some atmosphere.

I think that's everything. I'll get back to this when I'm back in Toronto.

edit june 1st: Go to bombshelter and get a copy of All Out War on DVD. Do a photoshoot with all the girls as well. Actually I think I should just get like 30 people out to a park and make sure everybody is geared and we'll do a bunch of natural photographs. Get a bunch of quality moisturizers and skin products lol. Buy an electric toothbrush.

The Beginning of The End

Mon, 25 May 2009 01:40:00 -0500

I remember Adam posting up one of these blog entries around the same time. The day is May 25th 2009. I am exactly one month away from returning back to Canada. And here's how I feel.

I already packed up most of my stuff and weighed it. In the last three weeks I'm here I'm going to be drowning in exams and HSK stuff so I decided to pack away most of my crap in advance so I wouldn't have to deal with it closer to the end, think ahead!

I'm actually having problems breathing lately, I think this is because all my inhalers have expired, and it's hot in Beijing now with sandstorms. I'm not worrying about it too much because I'll be back in Toronto soon.

I realized today that I only have a month left, which actually isn't a lot of time to do anything big. What's happened in China has happened, and there's nothing I can do except accept the track record I have and get ready for the next challenge.

The Language

In terms of Chinese, this term gave me a lot of new opportunities to actually use and practice my Chinese and be corrected. After two years here trial and erroring every method of learning the language, I came to the conclusion that there is no better way at all to learn to speak it properly than just having to use it every single day. Chinese classes honestly don't work, but they teach you how to read and write that's for sure. Did I mention I met a guy here the other week who spoke perfect Chinese? He's been in China for five years and his job involves speaking everyday. His success just kind of supports my idea, I got a really solid foundation here for Chinese. Then I'm going back to Toronto where I'm probably going to end up forgetting almost everything over the next four years. When I return and am forced once again to use it all the time, the language skills will return and (if I work here for five or so years) the language fluency will actually improve. That's kind of my conclusion on the language.

When Adam wrote about how you just get crazy bored of learning Chinese and totally lose motivation, I understand that. Now I know why he got out of those classes and went to take major courses. After Gao Er I can understand that, it's too bad I went into Gao Er in my fourth semester lol. But hey I went at my own speed and took my time, the classes are great and I feel like I'm learning in a constructive way. Just after this term I feel the only way for me to reach that next level would be for me to either work using the language or at least get out of these language courses where everybody has a horrid accent.

The Trip

It's pretty scary to think about Toronto sometimes. I've spent the last two years preparing for June 25th, where I'll be shot back into my normal life to be tried and tested as an adult and no longer that scared little boy who got on the plane. In terms of going out to China to find myself, improve, and become the person I want to be, I feel I've completely accomplished this. It's honestly been one crazy journey, and I could not have asked for a better way for this to have all taken place. The people I met, things I did, places I went. It was all perfect. It was eye opening, it was everything I could have ever wanted. I had Dennison (who lived in Egypt for a few months) state that kids our age should not travelling. We're honestly spoiled. Kids at this age should not be able to see the world in all it's glory. We should wear our horse-blinds until we're 30 or so. I disagree, seeing the world overall made me a happier, more satisfied person. Seeing the world has answered all the questions I so curious to find out in Toronto. This is going to make my life in Toronto way more interesting.

When I first got here I thought it was all about learning the language. After a while I realized my personal purpose for this trip was just to discover myself and the culture and learn about life and everything. The language was my occupation and day to day challenge. The more I improved, the deeper I could understand this culture and the more I could function within this society. I tried my best to accomplish both. I know it looks like I was always partying or travelling or getting drunk, but we're foreign students? Who doesn't do that? In case any of you are curious, the only semester where I was REALLY partying like a stupid person was actually the second semester. The last two semesters I've been working my ass off in school trying to hand everything in. So don't complain. It's just hard to stay motivated sometimes when there's like 40 proverbs you have to memorize that don't really relate to your life.

Thank You's

Thank you to my parents for supporting me and taking my BS while I tripped and stumbled out here trying to find the way. I got angry a lot and was always looking for somebody to blame instead of just finding ways to take responsibility. I've made a lot of mistakes and tried my best to cover them up or fix them myself. I complained too much about this being a prison instead of a learning opportunity. Hey, even jails can be the best classrooms sometimes.

Thank you to my Grandparents who financially supported my debauchery and overall funded my pursuit of discovery and happiness out here. When I went back to the village, I understood you all a lot better and what you had to go through to come to Canada and struggle to provide me with the life I have today. We've all come a long way from the village.

Thanks to Don Tai for being the crazy guy who inspired my dad to sent his kids out here. If it weren't for you my life right now would be completely different. I'd probably be in Toronto, in second year university wishing I knew what the outside world was like. But now I'm here thanking everybody for opening my eyes for me. I wish you told me this was less about the language and more about the experience. But now I know that. I asked you a lot of questions and bugged you about stuff that only people your age can answer, but my dad wouldn't know about.

I'm not gonna thank any of my friends, they already get tonnes from me and don't read this blog.

At this stage of the trip I don't even care where I am anymore. I feel totally numb almost, the numbing effect is beginning. Adam said when you get off the plane in Toronto you won't even be able to feel your face. That's how intense the shock is. It's like snorting a garbage bag full of blow in one go. I can't wait.

Toronto here I come! Thank you to Beijing for making me a better person.

Leo's Silly Stories

Sun, 24 May 2009 23:37:00 -0500

After the EMF, Leo was in my room just teling me some ridiculous stories. Here they are

Chinese people don't know how to take care of pets

Leo met this guy named Dabao at a wedding ceremony and went to the guys crib to hang out. He was in the bathroom pissing in the dark, when Dabao came and turned the lights on. There was this MASSIVE turtle in the bathtub, it barely had enough room to swim or move around. Dabao said he had raised it from when he was small.

Leo went into the main room and saw a Tortoise in a proper cage with the heat lamps and everything, still not enough room for it to move around. Then Leo went into the bedroom and saw these huge containers full of worms sitting near the window. Dabao explained it was for the iguana, Leo said what iguana. Dabao checked the cage and said in Chinese "Oh fuck I think it escaped!"

Pretending you're a struggling Spanish screenplay writer

During the filming of Lord of the Rings and Narnia in Wellington, Leo had a freind who worked security and told them about this cast party they were having. Everybody there was super snotty, but there would be tonnes of free booze and partying and KTV and everything if they could show up and pretend like they worked in the industry. So they strapped on some dress shirts and went.

People started shaking hands with them, so Leo's friend starts talking in this RIDICULOUS Spanish accent "Oh, I have writers block and I cannot write this script!" And he's using these ridiculus hand gestures and everything to play it up. After like five minutes Leo is about to tell the guy to stop doing that they're not buying it, but instead the audience freaks out and says "Omg that's sounds like such a wonderful story!"

Leo went into the KTV room and they said "hey you over there, why don't you sing us a song?" Leo replied with "Nah I'm sorry man, I only act, I don't sing." The MC just nodded and said very sincerely, "Oh I'm sorry dude, I understand."

Then they went and killed the dancefloor with everybody before leaving. On their way out they got a big applause from everybody. God these guys have balls. lol.

21st Birthday Crashers

Another time they ended up crashing some girl's 21st birthday. In New Zealand the 21st is a big deal and everybody has speeches, it's a big event and stuff. Leo and his friend CRASHED some girls party, they didn't even know her. He got up on stage and started telling everybody this ridiculus made up story about them when they were nine years old having some ridiculous adventure involving eel fishing or something bizarre, he turned it into a really deep and meaningful story. At the end everybody was like "awww you're so sweet" then there was this huge applause. The girl there had no idea who he was but didn't say anythnig, and nobody questioned him. That would just be rude. They helped themselves to the booze and food afterwards lol.

Wedding Crashers

Okay these guys were REALLY ballsy. They put on tuxedos and crashed the wedding of this girl that used to hate their guts in highschool. They were standing at the front steps as she made her ascention, she looked at them and just screamed "What the hell are you guys doing here? Who invited you!?"

...Terrible lol

Leo if you're reading this you're one funny guy lol.

Electronic Music Festival at 798 District

Sun, 24 May 2009 23:26:00 -0500

Saturday May 23rd 2009:

We were supposed to get up around 5PM or so and take the bus to the Electronic Music Festival. Tickets were 110RMB which we paid in advance. Instead of we woke up at 6PM, and got there aroudn 11PM. Sue me, I was tired. You would be too. Everybody is kinda stupid, we had tickets for Saturday but everybody still went out on Friday.

We cabbed down there, it was REALLY far. It was in 798 district, they turned an industrial area into a rave club area. They put cool looking lights on all of the smoke stacks and chemical containers, it looked so cool. There were about 5000 people. We picked Ben up, pounded some energy drinks and walked inside. So many people were leaving.

798 District

By the time we got there they had "cancelled the afterparty". Which means the night concert portion which was from 11PM -4AM was cancelled. I just paid 110RMB to show up and leave. Serious waste of cash. The stage was massive and had huge lights everywhere, and there were people and hot girls all over the place on the grass waiting for the music to turn back on. It was honestly sad. They said they shut it down due to security reasons. Everybdoy was probably just having a good time and the Chinese government saw a bunch of foreigners on drugs ready to riot or something. No, the best way to make foreigners riot is to rip off 5000 of them and leave them in a park together with nothing better to do. There was an army of security guards. At least we foud our classmates who were all completely wasted and had gotten there at 5PM. They said they music was almost too minamalist.

They try to do something new and innovative in China, and this is just evidence that this coutnry just isn't ready for that kind of a revolution. It's things like that that make me wish I was back in Toronto, because when you go to a party at 11PM in Toronto and pay a lot of money: there's usually a party there! God I've been away from home too long.

That's all they're playing nowadays, minimalist house. Then again it was done by Acupuncture records so I would kind of assume that's the music they would be using.

On the way out we walked past this restaurant that was playing music on their patio speakers, and people just came and started raving and stuff. It was totally silly, the party was shut down so foreigners were just running around partying anywhere they could. We tried to catch up a cab, ended up walking around in some dark alleys running into people then walking like 2KM to the nearest Mcdonalds. That night was a real adventure.

Mcdonalds

We got to the Mcdonalds area which was next to a beer garden with chuanr and stuff. We sat down to get some food. Ben took off to go back home, he had a job interview the next day. Jimmy and Leo and I all went to White Rabbit next. That is where all our classmates said we would be going. We paid 50RMB and went inside and this was just a TOTAL minimalist club. Totally bare, three little spot blinking lights, and minimalist house music. Tried some sarging, failed pretty bad, just danced and stuff with the European classmates who showed up. Had an okay night.

Shopping

Headed back afterwards and watched three documentaries. Then I had breakfast. With my last ounce of strength being determined to stay up all night, I got on my bicycle and went to a subway station, then went to Longfusi to pick up some stuff I had seen the week before. I ended up walking around The Longfusi area for a WHILE. I walked all up and down the streets, found some new stores, chatted with some shop keepers. I had to kill like 2 hours until the Longfusi basement store owners opened up. One of them explained they're open from like 2-6PM and just go clubbing every night.

Kinda silly eh? lol

So I bought some really awesome clothes then got back on the subway to go home. Outside the subway station was this malatang place, and I was tired and hungry as hell so I sat down for a snack before getting back to the dorm. At the dorm I had to try to stay awake until 8:30PM when Jack showed up. I totally passed out and he missed me. I woke up the next day completely tired. If I could make this my birthday weekend, I would. I did everything I wanted to do last weekend - this weekend. Clubbing, big music events, shopping etc. Life is pretty crazy sometimes.

Partying with the Fobby Girls

Sun, 24 May 2009 23:06:00 -0500
Since my last birthday weekend was absolute garbage, I think I'll just count this weekend off as my birthday weekend, it was way better anyways. Fuck cake.
Friday May 22nd 2009: Went to class and everything. Selwyn and I went to go get some KFC but we were craving it the way we had it back home. Nobody make any comments about how I'm going to come home soon, I should eat as much Chinese food as I can etc. Yo I've been living out here for two years man, KFC is a luxury to me now.

KFC

So we went and bought squeeze bottle hot sauce and ketchup. Went to KFC and bought a crapload of chicken. Selwyn even bought 9 cups of potato salad. We went back and sat in the classroom to eat this. Selwyn is one nasty fucking guy, he put all the potato salad and gravy into a bowl and mixed it up, then adedd hotsauce and ketchup, then dipped his entire chicken in it. I was like yo you're fucking whack man.

Afterwards I went to go buy fruit and get my haircut. When I got back at 9PM ready to pass out dead tired (I had woken up that day at 4AM) Jimmy comes in screaming saying he wants to go to Propaganda begging me and shit. Fuck. I seriously hate my life sometimes.

Going out

So we're in the cab going there, we get to Pyros and start knocking over beers. Jimmy was supposed to go Tianjin that day to see his Ex because he just got dumped, but couldn't go since the next day he has some surprise schooling. Ben shows up and knocks over some beer with us. Selwyn then shows up bringing in two girls. The two girls were both for Jimmy since Jimmy just got dumped and was complaining about how he doesn't know any chicks. Selwyn is a nice guy for doing this. Considering he sorta despises Mia, she was the only one that night who wasn't at MIX.

Both are okay looking, one is named Mia. She has short hair and kinda squinty eyes, she's in this white short ass skirt dress thing. The other one was named Yifan, she's in like stockings with a huge belt on, she has one of those super fobby faces, it's like squinty eyes, it's a cute face it's just kind of ridiculous looking. She honestly looked like an anime character.

Drinking games

They proceed to start playing stupid Chinese drinking games. This is just how you entertain Chinese girls, Selwyn is a pro, taught me everything I know, for sho. Jimmy went in. It was a four player game so Ben and I just sat watching it for a bit. I ordered another round but had to cancel it since Selwyn and Jimmy ran off with the girls into the club. They usually go to Mix. Backgroud info: These girls are from Renda's notorious HND program which means

1.) they are like +3 points better looking than any girl you see on campus

2.) their parents are rich

Drinks on the house

Anyways, I ended up walking around the bar pouring random people drinks since I wasn't planning to drink 2-3 pitchers by myself. Thank god I cancelled the tequila shots. Everybody in there was foreign and getting down that night so everybody was cheering and thanking me for the free booze. It's nice to be generous.

Ben and I got into the club and found Jimmy dancing with the girls. I spoke to Yifan for a bit, she says usually she goes to Mix and plays dice and just drinks and doesn't dance. She did not have to tell me that, I could look at her and tell that about her. All Chinese girls are the same! Well we we're at shitty Propaganda so I dragged her to the dancefloor to show her how foreigners do it up. Jimmy and I had these girls dancing their asses off for a solid hour since Selwyn left to go see Yufei. Mia was doing great, Yifan was just dying lol. You know for a girl who says she goes clubbing she was an terrible dancer lol.

Selwyn gets back, Jimmy runs off to Mcdonalds to help some Taiwanese dude get home (because he was drunk and couldn't walk. Stupid lightweights).

Fighting

We end up almost getting into a fight because Mia's Ex shows up and starts talking smack. The guy looked like a pussy though, we could have taken him easily. We didn't fight in the end. We ended up out on the street drinking cheap ass beers and squatting with these girls. You know these girls get dressed up and everythnig are all expensive looking, then squat on the street drinking beer smoking lol. China is hilarious. Selwyn said he's god for being able to take these girl's front's down and letting them be themselves around us.

We wandered over to what we thougth was a chuanr stand, but actually it was a hotdog stand run by this American dude who we ended up chatting with for a bit. He was cool, he opened up a month ago and just sells imported hotdogs out on the street for people.

Pool

We end up upstairs at Labamba where I run into Amlan who just came back into Beijing. Lily liked my necklace so much I ended up giving it to her (aren't I so generous and nice). Give things to peopel who will really really appreciate the gesture. Drank with them for a bit, spoke with Pujab about the Electronic Musical Festival the next day. Shot some pool with Selwyn. Labamba is a bar so I spent some time speaking with the girls and joking around and stuff. I realized that in Toronto we couldn't do this, or it'll be totally different. So Selwyn beats me by one ball in pool, althuogh I'm not ashamed of that because we were both playing drunk and he has a pool table at his house in New Zealand.

Battling

So we go downstairs for one last dance and are dancing on stage and shit and just being us ya dig? My German classmate is there and challenges me to dance, talking shit and all that. I got kinda angry and ended up breakdancing battling her, after that she didn't say anything. Then a bunch of black guys came in and started krumping, and then we had this big krump circle. Note to reader, I haven't breakdanced seriously in like two years. In China I do not appear as somebody who is able to do so. The Chinese girls DIGGED it yo, this is something you definitely don't see in Mix. Fuck Mix.

Okay by then we were BEAT (to death) so cabbed back to the univeristy, the girls went back to their dorms and we went back to ours then got Mcdonalds delivery. Then I stayed up until aroud 7:30AM watching documentaries.

Bizarre Stories from Papau New Guinea

Sun, 24 May 2009 22:32:00 -0500

Sunday May 17th 2009: So I was up all night being a crackhead, and I was about to go downstairs and eat breakfast. Outside my door was this Mongolian dude and Angelo drinking. They were just chatting, offered me a beer, apologized for disturbing me. I said they didn't, I was up all night anyways.

The Mongolian guy has been in Beijing for 6 years, he explained he can speak Mongolian, Russian, Chinese, and English. But Chinese was the absolute hardest language he's ever ever ever had to learn. He can speak the rest of them fluently, in fact he's lived in Russia, grew up in Mongolia, did highschool in the states, and Uni in China but Chinese is just death lol.

Angelo busted out his guitar and started playing and singing. He does like RNB stuff, really awesome to listen to. Fucknig Terrance Li should learn how to do that if he wants to become a real muscian. Angelo was awesome, when I heard him play music he took me out of China and back to where he was from, where none of these silly ass clothes and girls and booze bottles matter.

He's from Papau New Guinea, which has the second biggest rainforest on earth with no dangerous animals inside it. He told me the weed that grows there is so strong, they just pick it and sell it to Australians lol who pay a tonne for it. He mentioned his father is a serious governor there and he's pretty much like a prince, so I should come visit him. He said he'd take me around, and we're go into the jungle and party with the monkeys. I told him I've never been to a rainforest in my life and he was like "wtf man, now you definitely come visit!".

Next time I'm in the Pacific I'm dropping by for sure. I never knew he was royalty, but then again who on my floor isn't nowadays? I've lived next door to that guy for years, he kinda hates living in Beijing but at least he likes the big city vibe. Toronto is even more developed so I obviously prefer Toronto.

He made me think, instead of getting all of this education and degrees and stuff, I could just move to PNG, own a Video store, and hang out and chill in the jungle all day long. There's no stress or anything! It's a different walk of life, it's way more chilled out. He said you can walk through the jungle and pretty much eat anything you see, drink anythnig you see. They throw up massive lights and bring in speakers and have these like jungle parties lol. That sounds like something out of a movie to me lol.

Mind you, thoroughout this conversation we managed to slowly drink a whole bottle of whiskey, a bottle of wine, and a whole case of beer. We were in the classroom sitting on the couch I pulled from my room playing music and singing and stuff and overall enjoying life. Then I got sick and ended up throwing up for like 2 hours before passing out until the evening.

That was a funny way to start your day lol.

Monday May 18th - Friday May 22nd 2009: Went to class, handed in a bunch of homework, had some presentations, ate dinner with Selwyn's mom at the Teppanyaki place,

Slow Days in Beijing

Sun, 24 May 2009 22:12:00 -0500

Friday May 1st 2009: Not much, just got up and beat Myst 3.

Saturday May 2nd 2009: Got up, finished reading freakonomics, finished making a goodbye video.

Sunday May 3rd 2009: Went with Selwyn to go eat some head sized burgers at Lush.

Monday May 4th - Sunday May 9th: Not much, working a bit, booked my plane ticket, more boring going to class stuff.

Sunday May 10th 2009: Repacked all my bags trying to calculate my weight limit. I think I'm gonna make it. I definitely gotta mail my books back though lol. I taught Jack that day as well.

Monday May 11th-Thursday May 14th 2009: Again, not much, studying, going to class.

Wednesday May 13th 2009: Simon came by the university and had lunch with us. It was good to see Simon, we chilled out for a bit then went to Xizhimen to go shopping. Simon bought a bunch of stuff, I got some gifts for my friends. Afterwards we went to Wudaokou market to get some more stuff. I bought some more stuff for my friends.

Friday May 15th 2009: That day was my birthday, and I woke up that day at 6PM. I honestly didn't give a fuck. Seeing as we didn't want to spend any money and I've partied enough to fill up a million birthdays, we went to a net cafe and jammed some War Craft for the whole night. Simon came with us, it was mad nerdy, and I haven't done it in like forever but screw it, I'm 20 I can do what I want.

Simon came and slept over afterwards.

Saturday May 16th 2009: Nothing, bumming around with the guys.

Counting the days, being a bum, going to class. Then I kinda went insane so read what happened next.

Eric's opinion on "Why Nightclubs Are Scary Places"

Wed, 06 May 2009 05:15:00 -0500
An article I wrote for facebook about clubbing. I decided it was worth saving on my blog.
So today I was looking at some photos on facebook of everybody at some clubbing event in Toronto. Everybody is all dressed up all pretty etc, dancing, enjoying the evening. It made me stop and think: I look at these photos today and they look totally normal and harmless to me. However, 7-8 years ago when I first hit a club (all ages of course) these photos seemed way cooler and somewhat intimidating, why?

Eric's first time clubbing

The first time I went clubbing I walked into the club and felt as if everything inside was purposely designed to intimidate you, and even perhaps SCARE you. Sounds silly doesn't it? Well, imagine being 13 years old, and lining up in a line with dozens of other kids. This massive 7'2 500 pound bouncer feels you up, almost as if to "approve" your entrance (by feeling you up), then sends you in.

Haunted house

As soon as you walk into the club, the lights dim and you're immediately thrown and submerged in this swimming pool of music. It's like a glass wall you kinda crash into, and once you're in you're soaked with ketchup. It's loud as hell, it makes everything vibrate. It's actually quite uncomfortable at first, but we've all gotten used to that haven't we? And the lights! The lights are spraying in every direction and making the room look very disorienting and confusing. Sounds like something a haunted house would use to create a scary atmosphere doesn't it?

And this is just all ages clubbing, I'll write about 19+ down below.

Young jeezy prison thug look

So with this overwhelmingly loud music pulsating through your body, and all these lights twisting all over the room; people's faces begin to appear somewhat distorted. Suddenly everybody sitting up on a couch or at a booth appears to have this mean grin on their face. Guys, you know what I'm talking about. This really mean ass cocky young jeezy shades on kinda   grin. It yells, "yo kid don't fuck with me, I'm a hard ass motherfucker, that's why I wear my sunglasses in the club, can't see my eyes beetch!" Every guy in the club is trying to look so hard! Stop it!

Cheer leader effect

Now girls of course aren't able to pull off this mean grin. (Well, some do actually without even trying lol). But instead, they communicate the same message through the way they dress and walk. So this other group of girls steps up in the club, and they're dressed like skanks. Titties falling out of their shirts, ass spilling out of their panties (if they're wearing any that is). They spent so much time having their hair done, and picking out the perfect outfit, so they can strut around in 3 inch heels shaking their asses on the stage. What does this communicate? Not much. But ask most guys when they see a huge pack of hot girls get up in the club. Some will use the word "intimidating", sending a flush of insecurity throughout your body.

Shell shocked

You ever leave the club afterwards feeling somewhat shell shocked and disoriented? (No I'm not referring to the booze or the K you sniffed off the toilet seat). Think about what you just put your body through. You stepped up in this club, music blasting your ears and reverberating through your bones, angry ass mens with sunglasses looking like they want to make you their bitch, girls walking around in huge cheerleader sized packs giving off horrid misleading body language. It's an attack on the senses. To anybody going to the club for the first time, it makes the club seem like a really unfriendly, scary, intimidating place.

Girls on the dancefloor

And sometimes (especially if you're inexperienced), girls can have a really snotty attitude when you talk to them. Even the really hideous looking ones you originally thought wouldn't be so mean to you. This can make these beautiful looking girls up in the club seem almost--scary! Clubs can make pretty girls into scary people? What kind of institution is this? And why should I pay to get in?

Get yo drank on

So after the music, angry bitches, crazy lights, hard young jeezy looking mens in the back giving you the evils, you definitely need a drink. Then you realize that a rum and coke here is $12 plus tip. Don't wanna look like a cheapass right? But wait, only chumps drink at the bar. You gotta go get a table man! That'll get you girls right? (Hell no, or it'll get you the wrong kinda girls lol). So you go and book the table, and throw down even more cash, and end up getting way more drunk than expected. If you wanna ball hard and look pimp in the club you better cover that table in booze and finish it all. The club has this uncanny way of intimidating you into buying more booze. I worked at the Docks, believe me it's a designed system. Duh.

Getting branded

Everywhere you look, everything is branded. The music is the latest, hippest song being played on BET and on the radio. They even shout out brand names in the songs! All the booze you're drinking is brand name. The clothes you're wearing are brand named. Everywhere you look everybody is trying to wave their financial penis around in everybody's face. Look at how expensive my shirt is! Look at the booze I'm drinking! Look, I know the lyrics to this song! I got his album on my ipod! Look at my purse, my belt, my watch. Did you see the car I pulled up to the club in? It becomes a contest about showing off. Oh, poor 13 year old Eric. This new fun thing is so confusing!

It's like hollister, walk in, feel horriby uncomfortable, buy something, and GTFO.

Self defense

After this enormous sensory attack, just like how UV lights make us grow more skin, people begin to change after they club a few times. The club has made them feel so inadequate and socially awkward. But they learn!

They head to the club with more cash in their wallet. They learn to have better style, better hair, clothes, and nicer shoes. They learn to drink more and smoke with style. They even learn how to calm down all those crazy angry bitches in the club! And suddenly they're friends with the young jeezy dude in the back who wanted to assfuck them originally.

The club is a pretty hostile environment, and to survive in it we learn to wear these masks. Our new clothes, attitude, manner of speaking. We wish to portray ourselves to the rest of the club as these young jeezy prison hardened motherfuckers. In turn, we're actually putting on these war masks to intimidate each other. Our clothes become our armour, the sick ass car we pull up to the club becomes our steed, our wallets become our swords.

Why are we trying to scare each other for? And to all those angry girls in the club? Why are you so mean for? No wonder all the boys are scared to talk to you :(

Eric at 20

So after all these years of clubbing, being bombarded with advertisements, branded alcohol, hard stares from men, angry bitches throwing shoes at people, the first thing I do when I get up in the club is just: look around you. That young jeezy dude in the back aint so hard, I think he wears sunglasses to hide the fact he's scared of the dude next to him! And all those girls in that huge pack, they may look hot from 10 metres away, but get closer and actually take a good look at every single one of them. You don't have to be afraid of them, strangers are just friends waiting to happen!

You don't gotta buy the booze at the club if you're broke. That's why predrinking was invented. You can wear whatever you want, dressing should be a form of expression, not a financial penis waving exhibition. I'll take the fucking TTC to the club, wear sweatpants and a potato sack, drink water at the bar, and still swoop your girl!

Well Eric, if clubbing is so scary why do you still do it?

Because it makes me feel so young, hedonistic, and alive! When I'm in the club, pretty drunk, dancing on the stage with a bunch of angry looking girls, and a bunch of young jeezy looking men, dressed fly as hell, loving the music with all the subtle advertisements: I feel great. I feel young. I can feel the energy of all the bodies in the room swaying away to the music, radiating energy in every direction. I can feel everybody is in the club tonight just to forget about their problems and feel fresh and sexy and young and new. It feels great just to live for the moment, and share this feeling with all your friends.

Isn't that so awesome?

Nah fuck that yo, I still think clubs are like stepping into a haunted house.

Most Trashy Repair Store, Vacation

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:48:00 -0500

Friday April 24 2009:
No school that day since we were now officially on holiday. Got up, got a laundry card, did some laundry. Burned all my music onto CD's because believe it or not my 500GB hard drive is almost full.

I went with Jimmy down to Carrefour to get his hard drive fixed. We threw it in a suitcase and went into the plaza. First few shops couldn't fix it, when we finally found the place they opened it up and pulled out an entire human scalp worth of dust bunnies. Gross.

I went into Carrefour and bought some vaccuum pack bags to make my clothes fit into my suitcase easier. In terms of storage, it'll also protect my clothes from dust and bugs and shit for the next few months while they sit in my suitcase. I bought a box for my trucker hats which are extremely fragile and made of mesh. I bought some shoe sponges, and a bunch of other stupid crap. I bought a kid's sized toothbrush becuase they work better, and some soap. Jimmy and I snickered like a bunch of stupid girls as we went into the below 5 items line. We gave the asshole look to anybody else in the line who had more than 5 items.

Went back to the spot, and Jimmy's repair guys STILL weren't done.

I went to go buy a CD binder. This took a while, I wandered through about three different malls that all connect to eachother through the second floor. This new DVD binder is pretty cool, it has a handle it's so big.

We ended up spending 4 hours waiting for those guys to repair Jimmy's PC. That was the DIRTIEST repair place in the world. Cigarettes all over the floor, they told me they didn't even have a garbage can. Food and shit all over the floor. Jimmy's repair dude was smoking a cigarette in one hand while putting his PC back together.

It was so trashy. I couldn't believe I was actually seeing that. Guys poured me a cup of Sprite since we were waiting there for so long. He paid the dude out, got Xp installed becuase he hates Vista, got a new graphics card, put the thing back in the suitcase and went back.

At this point in time I was tired as hell and screwing around with my new vaccum pack bags lol. Jimmy had three girls and had to go out and entertain one of them for their birthday. Klaus organized a meeting at Kai bar. I said no, because if there are two guys and three girls they can expect us to pay for their drinks and I was in no mood to be entertaning three whack bitches I didn't know.

Jimmy went out solo, I stayed in. Jimmy came back at 5AM! Holy crap.

Saturday April 25th 2009:

I got up, went to go buy some fruit and drop off some jeans to get hemmed up. I vaccumed packed some more clothes, met Julia for a language exchange. She's the best language exchange partner ever, it's more effective if I meet her less often than more. I met Jack at night to teach.

Sunday April 26th 2009:

Selwyn came in the morning and dropped off some clothes to photograph and put online for him. I said goodbye to him and told him to have a goodtime in Shanghai. Jimmy left that evening as well. After that door shut I WAS ALL ALONE!!

I had to find proper ways of distracting myself throughout the week so I wouldn't go into another bout of depression from isolation. Solution was pretty easy. Write like 20 things to do, and go outside at least once a day to soak up some vitamin D. Depression be gone!

Monday April 27th 2009:

Went to go get my haircut. The guys there are friendly and fun as usual. Everybody here thinks I'm from Hongkong or Guangdong, it's bad enough now that most people I meet think I have that accent. Especially since I really look like a Cantonese person, that doesn't help either!

Got my haircut, for the first time ever I described to him in extreme detail how I wanted my hair to be without stuttering or using my hands too much to describe the shape and stuff. I don't know how it happened, it just came out. I felt great, and it looked awesome! He showed me the Guangdong way of applying wax, which involves clapping the wax over your hair into strands. Looks like somebody skeeted on your hair but it works.

Afterwards I went to the cracked out place for lunch where I got like three meals to go because I'm too lazy to go out again.

Bought some fruit, bougth some bakery goods, came back and watched THE SHIELD! Which was pretty good.

Tuesday April 28th 2009:

Went to the tailors to get my clothes back. I wanted my bag fixed so I got the two guys underneath the awning on stools to do it. One is this old woman who's a shoe cobbler, and the other guy can fix anything that's not clothes or shoes. So I gave him my bag, and this guy did the most GUERILLA WARFARE method of fixing the bag ever. He turned it inside and used this hand powered sewing machine to staple some shit down, and used pliers and everything to rip parts out. When he was done it looked brand new. Amazing. I got 2 of my backpacks fixed. I now have 4, I want 5, and I'm giving Ryan 2. Excessive? Hell yeah.

Wednesday April 29th 2009:

Read about in "Still Got It".

Thursday April 30th 2009:

Woke up at 4PM because I am a crackhead. Microwaved some food and felt like a pathetic bum eating it, alone, in my desolate silent prison cell of a dorm room.   I'm currently reading Freakonomics, a copy I picked up for $2 last week. Really interesting stuff, reminded me why I want an education.

Overall my new approach to being happy is much better. Life and it's trials it's all about attitude. If you think your life is shit, it's gonna be shit.

HSK, Exams, Penis Shaped Coconuts

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:45:00 -0500

Tuesday April 14th 2009: Went into class, did my movie presentation on the movie Hostel because I'm so awesome. Handed in my essay introduction. Kept studying for the HSK.

Wednesday April 15th 2009: Taught Jack. At this point in time we're just reading The Game full time and using it as a discussion tool. It's full of native terms and slangs, every class there's about 100 new words to learn.

Thursday April 16th 2009: Went back to Tsinghua to get my HSK receipt so I can write the exam. I called Sam about it who signed up the next day. Tsinghua is huge I was walking aroudn for a while in there.

I kinda regret this, but afterwards I figured I could walk from Tsinghua to work to tell them I'm coming in on Tuesday to quit. Never walk anywhere in Beijing, it took me like 40 minutes to walk from Tsinghua to my work office which was just up the road. It was seriously like from my house to Eaton centre.

Friday April 17th 2009:

I walked into class in the morning to see everybody's heads down on the desk writing an exam. You know, that morning I was so tired I didn't even want to go into class. But something told me to. The teacher had popped the exam. Why? Because nobody ever shows up for her class because it's the second period on a Friday after a spare. Her form of revenge? Pop the exam. That is so unprofessional, that's the kind of crap you get fired for in any legitimate university. About half of my class didn't even know about it, and because of that there were only 16 other people in my class sitting there writing the exam with me. So unprofessional.

I sat down, the entire first page was full of these ridiculous quotes. The speed reading part was easy as hell. Honestly my reading isn't even that good, I swear the watered down the exams or something. I swear Renda's Chinese program used to be way harder. The final part was a 100 word essay off the top of your head, which nobody including me was warned to prepare for. I filled out the boxes, handed it in, and walked out half an hour early. Cocky much?

Saw Jack again at 8PM.

Mind you this entire week I had been studying for the HSK as much as I could. It kinda screws up your exam prep.

Saturday April 18th 2009:

You know I originally thought the exam was on SUNDAY boy was I wrong! There were two sets of exams at two universities, mine was on Saturday.

I didn't even sleep that night, went to go eat breakfast, then ran into Russel and Miriam. We took a cab there and walked around for like half an hour looking for the place. Went inside, sat down and got writing.

The listening part was easy as hell. Seriously, they're speaking at like a grade 1 level at half the normal speed. You know what the hard part is? The questions, holy crap are so irrelevant. The first two are definitely wrong, and the last two both could be right, but have a very very small difference. It doesn't matter if I understood that text completely or not, was it about the kid or the kid's birthday cake? Jesus.

Grammar part was pretty hard as usual. Speed reading part was way easier than last time. Writing part felt a bit easier but was definitely the hardest part, that part was horrid.

I walked out with Russel and Miriam who needed the score for their universities. They agreed it was pretty screwed up but they tried.

I came back and passed out totally exhausted. I woke up at 8Pm and saw Jack for a class.

Sunday April 19th 2009:

Cleaned up, did laundry and crap. My mind was just melting and I had an entire week of exams ahead.

I met Jack for dinner, we bicycled over to this local hotpot place for dinner. What the hell is wrong with us CBC kids? It surprised me we weren't drinking or smoking during dinner like the rest of the kids I meet do.

Monday April 20th 2009:

Jimmy came back from Seycheilles and showed me pictures. It looked like a totally awesome vacation. The island looks like something out of a movie, white sand, blue waters. Absolutely no tourists in any of the pictures, that was the most impressive part. It had a million islands and all of them were public beaches so you could pretty much go anywhere you want.

There was this coconut exhibit he showed me. They had these deformed coconuts that looked like a woman's ass and the hair and everything! And they were huge, like the size of a small gocart. Did you know male coconuts look like massive hairy penises? They're the size of baseball bats! The entire exhibition was dripping with sexual innuendo.

Jimmy spent most of the time inside chilling with his bros because it's deadly hot during the afternoons. Beach vacations eh.

Tuesday April 21st 2009:

That morning I went into Speaking class thinking I was going to present a discussion topic. I freaked out when I didn't understand the instructions properly and turns out it went like this.

You can choose Tuesday or Thursday, the first half of the class you can either present a movie or a joke. The second half of the class will be a discussion topic. Tuesday's discussion topic will be losing weight, and Thursday's discussion topic will be our environment.

I brought in a presentation in losing weight thinking I could present it then have it discussed. WRONG.

I volunteered to present my movie on Thursday. I still spoke during the presentation on losing weight to get points though. Jesus.

I went into work on the last pay day. If I didn't go check out that day I would have to wait another month. So I went into work, and cashed out. I said goodbye to them, I was sad to say goodbye to all of them because they'd all been really nice to me.

Afterwards I went to Xizhimen to get some clothes and buy some crap. I was shopping really really carefully taking my weight limit into account, and what clothes I still actually needed to build a complete wardrobe. I also bought some gifts for people. Xizhimen is the cheapest of cheap places to buy clothes. My favourite item purchased that afternoon was this oldschool red silk Chinaman jacket with the long sleeves. Sick.

After wandering around there for hours I felt like vomitting. There are so many of these underground shopping centres in Beijing, and they don't have proper ventilation. I always leave feeling like I'm about to barf, seriously. They're crowded, hot, busy, and poorly ventilated and lit. It's like a dungeon down there.

Wednesday April 22nd 2009:

Listening exam! There were 17 students and only 16 pairs of headphones. I gave my pair up and sat in the front since I'm the class rep and I'm so badass. It didn't matter since the tape quality was HORRIBLE along with the volume. The first tape was so bad, the whole class was complaining. After she tried to fix the tape but it didn't do anything, people were just cracking up with the questions came out because nobody knew the answers.

Second part was easier, the tape was better. I could answer the questions with confidence.

Third part was ridiculous. There were about 500 words we studied in the chapters and she had picked ten we would write, this part was just stupid hard, I don't think anybody got that one right. After the words she started giving us these LONGG ass sentences to write down.

The last part was the hardest, but I got it 100% rigth because she spoke slowly. We had to dictate an entire story about some old guy's fortune. The story was easy, the characters were easy. I felt good about that.

I'm honestly trying my best here. If the teacher supplies some horrid quality tape nobody can understand, I'm glad my grades don't count, because if they did I probably would have raised hell over how unprofessional that is. The tape sounded like the dude was talking underwater with the volume at half because one of the speakers was broken. Jesus.

Went home and started studying my ass off because the next day I had a speaking exam AND the reading comprehension exam. I was on my last limbs there.

Thursday April 23rd 2009:

I translated a review for the movie "Big Fish" for my speaking presentation. I was really nervous since I went last, but I spoke it slowly with confidence, trying to get the tones down. Afterwards I participated in the discussion about the environment, arguing that rain in Beijing is a good thing because although it gets the cars and buildings dirty, it pushes down all the dust and pollution giving us cleaner air to breathe.

Afterwards we had the reading comprehension exam which was RIDICULOUS. I spent the whole semester learning all the proverbs and most important words and phrases. What did the teacher do? She gave us an exam on all the most uncommon and least used words and phrases and grammar points in all four chapters. After an hour, mahongzhi, and this Korean girl and I all just handed in our papers and walked out. We did as much as we could then just gave up on the ones we had no idea about. Chinese - you know it or you don't.

Afterwards we walked back to the dorm and I asked them how they felt. Mahongzhi who's an allstar Japanese student said last term he got about 95% of it, this term about 60%, the other Korean girl who's also an awesome student said she felt the same way.

Yo I tried, that shit was ridiculous.

Now that I was off exams I was just tired as hell. I tried my best, put my effort in, handed in all the work.

I started doing all the stupid stuff I put off until after exams to do. I borrowed Andre's scale and weighed my bags. I realized I didn't have as much space as I'd like. Our suitcases weigh 7KGs each jesus. I'm considering not even using one and just using one of those piece of crap plastic bags. Those things weigh nothing!

Still Got It

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:40:00 -0500
last night
Well I'm outta class, I'm off exams, I'm not doing any travelling, and I'm trying to remain productive so I don't fall into another pit of depression. I'll blog about this day first because it's the most interesting day I've had the whole week lol.

Wednesday April 29th 2009:

Woke up at around 11AM or so. My fridge was empty, I couldn't really figure out what to do that day so I just went through my "list of activities to do when bored" and one of them was to go to this market that's REALLY far away to compare prices for the gift shopping I would do closer to June. At this point in time I've realized I want to save most of my books and magazines so I'm going to mail back a box just full of documents. The rest of the clothes I'm bringing back in bags.

So pretending I'm all local and crap, I got all geared up and got on my bike. Instead of eating at the cafeteria (because I hate that place now) I went to the cracked out alleyway behind my university to go eat with the locals in this two bit noodle store. I sat down, was texting on my phone, got my noodles on. A bunch of construction workers covered in dry wall from head to toe walked into the store and sat down next to me. Started ordering beer and drinking hot water etc. I was just looking at these guys realizing that in a parallel universe I could be these guys. We're about the same age.

Paid the bill and bicycled over to the subway station. My bike is a piece of crap and has been repaired about ten times. Five of which involved the pedal randomly falling off while riding. This time the gear shift came off the handle bar. Seriously who designs these bikes?

Got on the subway which was hella crowded for a Wednesday afternoon. Seriously, in Toronto you can get a seat on the subway on a Wednesday afternoon. In fact in Toronto you can get a seat on the TTC anytime that isn't rush hour. And sometimes during rush hour you can still get a seat. Another example of how Beijing is insanely overcrowded even if they install five new subway lines and have trains running at lightspeed.

I don't have any ipod or any musical device in Beijing anymore which sucks. I'm saving up my money to buy one in Toronto when I get back. They're like $80 cheaper in Toronto with warranties so I can't go wrong. I was in transit and had plenty of time to think about my life and time to spent here. Actually, as of late everybody knows I've had way more than enough time to think about my life and what I'm doing here etc.

Longfusi

So I get out of the subway and walk to the mall into the basement. A few stores are closed, a few new opened ones opened up. After about two hours walking around scrounging like an animal in the desert for water, I found my conclusios. Longfusi is only good for buying the higher end stuff like shoes, jeans, bags. Everything else they have is just overpriced and can be bought WAY cheaper or noname brand at Xizhimen. A lot of sexy sale girls working the Wednesday afternoon shift. I'll write more about ruining girls later in this post.

So I left happy with my market research. Yes that's right, I'm so consumer conscious out here I took a one hour subway ride across town just to compare prices on clothes and not buy anything. I'll be back in a week probably.

Getting Out

So Leo is organizing going out for that evening since it's vacation, I say sure.

I get back and go to the cafeteria and double order stuff. That's how lazy I am here and how scarce food becomes sometimes. I order one and eat it, and the other one sits in my fridge until I microwave it later for further consumption. I felt like that old granny I saw in the dimsum restaurant when I was 8, and I asked my dad why she ordered so much food. And he told me old people don't want to cook a lot so they just order a lot in the restaurant and bring it home and eat it later. I found that so sad, she's so old and brittle and living all alone and has to eat microwave food all the time. I'm living all alone, but I'm young and I'm not brittle but it's sad sometimes as well. This won't shock me when I'm 30 I guarantee you.

You know I used to care so much about eating alone and crap all the time since I grew up in such typical middle and highschool environments. I don't even care anymore, it just means I'm finishing my food faster.

Note to my future kids, if any of you ever reduce me to that I will kill myself inside one of your houses.

I got dressed and got ready to go out. I got some new clothes (like always) but I actually allowed myself to wear these ones. So I got all geared up with my fresh new clothes and as soon I as stepped outside it started to drizzle a bit. It never rains in Beijing but I didn't want to bet on anything. This sounds silly but I actually ended up in my room for half an hour calling my friends whether or not it would rain that evening. Sanlitun is an outside patio area so this was important. Ben bet on it, so I changed my shoes into shitty shoes and brought an umbrella. Killed my outfit I swear.

So I took the subway which is a straight line into Sanlitun (isn't that so convenient for us foreign students?) and got off. I have never taken the suwbay to Sanlitun before because although in Toronto people get all geared up on the subway to go clubbing, when you're in a subway full of guys covered in dry wall dust staring at you because you're all freshly dressed, it just feels awkward.

I got lost for a while around the station but luckily I'm pro at asking for directions. I asked an embassy soldier where Sanlitun was and he told me to back off his yellow perimeter line first before asking the question. That's being anal. I ended up walking alongside 20 soldiers marching on duty all the way to the bar street. What a sight to see. Eric walking down the street holding his umbrella all freshly dressed, with 20 army dudes marching in perfect unison, being saluted by crossing soldiers at each station walking next to him.

Smugglers

So that went on for about ten minutes before I found the bar (Smugglers). Leo was inside talking to his friend also named Leo? At first I thought he friend was local Chinese, but his accent wasn't that strong. Turns out his freind is a Spanish Chinese guy, Wow! He doesn't speak any English though, but he can understand it really well. So the conversation was in Chinese. Leo reminded me that you don't have to speak perfect Chinese all the time to be speak with people. Just speak it fluently to the best of your ability and throw in a proverb here and there and you're good. When talking about girls he even threw in 成双成对 I called him a jackass for that one. Good use of the proverb though, we were pissing ourselves laughing.

Leo said my spoken Chinese improved a lot, which means a lot from him because his major is second language education. As Klaus said, the real trick to having good Chinese is just to speak a lot and with confidence. Makes sense.

Ben takes the subway down and shows up in sports gear, telling me he's going shopping tomorrow at this crazy sale. Ben is the only friend I know who doesn't buy at the fake markets in China and prefers shopping retail. I would to, if I could afford half that shit lol.

Bar Blu

So we knock over a few beers and head to Bar Blu where Leo is friends with the owner who's also a Kiwi. It's Wednesday so they're having a Karaoke night, completely in English with a computer based laggy KTV screen. We sit down, Klaus and Smokey arrive. Klaus is moving out soon and wants me to throw my bday party on the rooftop of his new apartment. Rooftop BBQ kinda shit. Sounds cool to me. Smokey mentioned Nana who apparently ran off to Sichuan province. Explains why I haven't heard from her in ages.

This Chinese guy busted this Usher song PERFECTLY I'm talking he knew it better than I did kinda good. I spoke to him afterwards, he said he lived in Detroit for ten years before coming home. English was pretty good, had a bit of an accent. He said Detroit has a serious nigger problem and he's had guns pulled on him enough times to make him want to leave. That made me appreciate Toronto since I've never had a gun pulled on me.

No matter who I hang out with, as long as I am in Asia I can't escape the Hypebeasts. I noticed he was wearing Crush 2's, which are like $2500 jeans. He told me he does international trading or something in China. He's close to 30 I think.

Leo and I sang some songs, Leo being more down to bust songs than I was. Everbody was cheering and having a good time until the POLICE came and fucked our bar night up. Bar Blu has this game where you spin this button and they either give you a free drink or a half price or something depending on what you win.

Butterfly

So we sat with the music down for a while before heading downstairs to another bar. We went to Butterfly which is this bar full of Nigerians souljaboying it on the crappy little dancefloor. I loved the enthusiasm. We grabbed a table upstairs. Some random Chinese girl followed us there. I assumed she was trying to get banged or something since she came alone and was being really nice to them white boys.

I met two English guys. One of them was named Danny. He was in Beijing on a two year contract, went home once. He's going home around the same time as me. Said he had an amazing time in Beijing, way better than England. I asked why? He said Beijing is one hella crazy city if you can just get out all the time and party and have your own nice apartment and everything. You can't live like that back home it's just too expensive, it kills the fun. He said he learned the basics for Chinese but nothing super duper. Some guys can just pick it up but not everybody.

This other guy sat down next to me and FINALLY took that Chinese girl home. That girl really looked like she needed a good banging. Good for him.

The railings at that club were really low on the second floor. We ended up getting pretty drunk at that table. I forgot how cheap beer is supposed to be. Sanlitun is the cheap drinks haven. I sat there for a while with all these crazy foreigners around me, essentially enjoying the best things expat life in Beijing has to offer, friends from all over the world, meeting random people, and a mind full of experience and knowledge being able to read exactly what's going on in the bar.

So we got bored of there and went up to the new Chinadoll to see if it's worth dancing. Old Chinadoll got shut down (sad, I shed a tear for them, that was my favourite bar in Beijing). New Chinadoll is empty, drink list is expensive as hell, music is good, club is expensive looking as hell. Man last year on a Wednesday night I had 500+ people in my party, and these guys can't get more than 50 people in that evening. That sucks.

Vics

I vouch to walk to Vics since it's like 2AM and we can get in for free. We go downstairs and we're on the dancefloor for a bit drunk. Dancing on the stage is like jumping into a pool of water. The faster you're in the more comfortable the water feels. So I threw Leo and Ben into the pool and we're up on stage grooving the music like a bunch of stupid drunk foreigners. Then we run into Patricia and her buddy who I don't know. I'm glad to see her, I've never gone clubbing with her before so I was happy to share a dance with her for a bit. Mind you she' s like a foot taller than me and from Jamaica so she was a pretty good dancer. I pulled them away from some creepy Kazak guys getting their feel on.

We kinda ran out of girls so being Eric Ing I swooped two cute Chinese girls and tried to teach them to dance a bit less awkwardly (as I do with 95% of teh Chinese girls I meet out here). I was dipping and twirling these girls on the dancefloor as I said I would do by the end of the night to Ben and Leo.They whipped out their phones to grab numbers but Ben and Leo have girlfriends, so we politely let them go and ran the hell out of there laughing. We lost the Spanish Leo, Klaus, Smokey, Gary, and Patricia and her friend by the time we got to our final cab.

I went home and went to 711 and waited for the guys to unload the sushi truck to snatch a pack and buy it. I walked home eating sushi out of this plastic package thinking to myself, "I still got it".

Haha, that was a fun day.

Food in Toronto

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:27:00 -0500

I've been reading blogto.com like crazy lately. Why? Because as I've been ranting about in this blog for the last three months, I'm homesick as hell and hungry for a taste of it. I also enjoyed looking at the photos. Some people say Toronto is an ugly city? Toronto is as pretty as any Westernized metropolis can look. There's no unity at all to the buildings or the architecture, but I think that makes it pretty dirty urban ugly beautiful, almost like a really ugly coloured quilt with everybody's crap sewn into it.

Here are some of the things I want to do when I get back, just involving food mainly. I've gotten most of the reviews off blogto.com

Try eating at the Real Jerk. How is it possible I've lived next to it my entire life and I've only gone once, and I think I only had a glass of limeade. What is wrong with me? I REALLY want to try their roti's and curry. Did you know they cater? Minimum ten people, $10-12 a person delivered! What more do you want? That's a steal.

Dangerous Dan's. This is just a massive burger joint I've lived next to but still haven't tried. I don't know why, I've always been skeptical of the restaurants in our area maybe due to the crackhead population. Nowadays our area is looking up, and I'm eager to try out all the stuff I've missed out on. I think Dangerous Dan's would just be good for a huge burger and all that fatty food.

Somebody said Sushi Marche was apparently really good. I'm not balling enough yet to be eating "super good quality sushi" on the regular, but maybe we'll see. It got a really good review, it's pretty pricey considering they only do local pick up.

Gale's snack shack. Yo, don't knock it until you tried it. You can't go wrong. Burgers for $1? Fish and chips for $2.30? I tip 30% just because I feel so bad about how cheap the place is.

Kevin was rating about Popeyes chicken, and All Star chicken wings. I've been to All star's, it's pretty dangerous and filling for a good price. Popeyes, I don't even know what the rage is all about. I'll try it out though.

Indian buffet. Kevin also brought up how when Sam and I left, we threw out going away party at an Indian buffet. If the roti won't cut it, I think a genuine Indian buffet would. It's dirt cheap too, and killer filling.

Crazy sushi buffets on highway 7. Toronto has taken the sushi buffet to the next level. It's usually minimum $25 but you get infinite pop and ice cream and fixings. The sushi quality really varies place to place, but every place I've paid more than $25 at has been pretty good.

Pho and dimsum in Chinatown. Pho is the most magical, romantic, mystical bowl of soup ever. Why? Because you always eat it after a hard night of clubbing and enjoying life with your friends and bumping into random girls. Everytime I eat pho, I always mentally associate those flavours with good times I've shared with friends. Dimsum has become more of a family thing.

Pastrami sandwich on rye. My dad always rated about these growing up, but to truly appreciate the sandwich I think I had to head over to the Annex or wherever the hell that is and sit down in a legit deli and have this massive meaty sandwich put before me. I've never actually tried a decent one before, and everybody on blogto said the one's in Toronto suck compared to the ones in New York. I'll give it a shot. I'm very curious.

Reliable Fish and Chips. This place apparently got a crap review but it's at the top of my street so I can't complain. Woodgreen fish and chips is still the best place ever if they're still around. I can remember my mom taking me there every Thursday after swimming practice when I was a little kid. That place is dangerous good. It also brings back a lot of positive memories about being a kid when I'm eating the pure greasyness out of a newspaper.

Jimmy's best western and KS family restaraunt. Also at the top of my street and full of crackheads. But if China has taught me one thing, if it's packed full of people it's gotta be good! Even if beer is $1.20.

Toronto Globally

You know, when I talk to anybody about how Toronto has all sorts of different kinds of food etc I don't really think they understand me, becuase they always say their city does too. Okay, their city probably does. However, Toronto has a better quality version of it for cheaper, cooked by the people from that country. You can get ALL of the things mentioned above in Beijing, but the quality is made by Chinese locals, it doesn't taste the same, it's way more expensive than eating anything local, and you gotta go out of your way. There's no walking to the top of the street for any of these ones. The nearest fish and chip store to me is a 50rmb taxi ride East and surrounded by bars.

So as I wrote in my MSN name, kid's dont take it for granted! I ate noodles out of a plastic bag the other day while you all get to eat like royalty.

Sweet aint as sweet without the bitter. Oh so bitter.

Learning Patience

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:01:00 -0500

Thursday April 9th 2009 until the following week.

I went with my class rep to go book a restaurant in Wudaokou for our dinner. My class rep is a 21 year old Korean girl who's in China doing a abroad year as part of her university program. She booked the restaurant speaking Korean. We would sit in the middle, on the floors on these little wooden chairs.

The next day I invited Jimmy out to join our class dinner. It was a pretty good turn out of about 20 people or so. It was a nice mix of classmates, plenty of language barriers since some people were just speaking their native language. We got every pretty drunk then went off to KTV.

The KTV in Wudaokou is keyed down about 3-4 times so I could sing just about any song and actually make it sound pretty good. Lots of people came in and out, knocked over some beer. At least this time I didn't lose any cash on the bill even though I watched carefully and a bunch of people just randomly walked out.

Then we ended up at Propaganda where Jimmy and I ran down two Taiwanese girls. I don't take numbers anymore, this is just for score. It was the class rep's first time at a club so I tried to get her on the front stage dancing with girls, but she was a bit too shy. The rest of the class was there, drunk and dancing. I am the best class rep ever, all I do is get everybody drunk and take them partying. No complaints yet.

Anya told me her class rep took them to go eat pizza then to go look at Sakura trees. It apparently sucked balls, but hey if they wanna go do cultural stuff they can get the 2nd class rep to take them around.

Tuesday April 4th 2009

I'm waking up at 7PM, staying up all night studynig or whatever, then eating breakfast at 6:45, then going to class. I managed to watch OZ, the L word, Entourage, Weeds, and a bunch of other stupid series online., I actually got sick of watching things in english, so now I'm watching ToGetHer which is this stupid Taiwanese drama. The accents kinda throw me off a bit but I'm managing.

Anya came into my room today to have a chat probaly because she's homesick as hell like the rest of us. I was just cleaning my room and ended up showing her some of my clothes and stuff that I've been collecting out here. She made the comment that I live like a dog in Beijing, my room is a mess, I look like shit everyday and don't really care what I eat, I sleep whenever I want.

I told her I don't care what I wear because I have nobody to impress. She told me I should dress for myself to feel good, not other people. I showed her some of my clothes and modelled them for a second and she commented that I look so much better when I actually put something on, versus the same kinda crap I wear everyday.

She made the comment that I look as if I really enjoy life and the stupid clothes I buy, but when I stop to contemplate it all I have this really profoundly depressed look on my face. Selwyn didn't end up going back to New Zealand, his mom cancelled the plane ticket. I gotta go apologize just to fix this situation up a bit. If these are our last few months together I can't just leave on a note like that.

Anya is a second year university student from Kazakstan, she speaks Russian, Kazak, Chinese, and English. She's a Chinese major, and her English is pretty damn good considering she's never lived abroad. She's one of the few people I've met who just genuinely enjoy learning languages and expressing herself through different languages. I view language as a useful tool and less of an aesthetic concept. After Chinese I never want to learn another language again, it's just way too tiring and time consuming.

Thoughts on being here

There's no real point in complaining if it won't change anything but this is my blog so I don't care. I'm quite frankly bored as hell and miserable living here. Jimmy left to go on vacation and Selwyn is off doing something bizarre. I wake up alone, eat alone, do everything alone, and all I do is sit on my computer and try to study and go to class and eff around.

I just had some wicked diarrhea, the kind that makes you hate living in a third world country. I had a friend once tell me to appreciate the fact I live in China, most people would kill for this opportunity. That's also coming from the same girl who saw her dorm room and wanted to cry, lives off campus with personal chefs and maids, goes home every three months, and travels every month roughly just to shop.

Fuck living here. I was using the showers today and as usual they are flooded about 20 cm deep with water. I took a cold shower today because the hot water turns off at 1AM, there was hair, dirty water, and cigarette butts floating around at my feet. I swear showers in JAIL aren't this dirty.

Everytime I pulled back into this city on a train or in an airplane, I just wished it would all end. It will all end soon, the last part is always the worst.

I sat in the cafeteria this morning waiting for the waitresses to set up all the food and everything. I was staring at the wall realizing how much I hate my life right now. It honestly feels like jail. There's nothing left to do, nobody new to meet, nowhere worth seeing, no reason to go do any of those things.   Beijing has officially been done and conquered.   I live in this dirty box that's impossible to keep clean due to sandstorms and other people. I go to class and try to participate and get stuff done. Then I come back to the box for meals and sleeping. I've watched six seasons of OZ, it's honestly like living in jail. Anya told me to stop storing all my clothing and just enjoy some of it. I said there's no point lol.

Although the weather is improving and it's almost tshirt and shorts weather, I'm not awake most of the time to enjoy the weather or sunlight. Lack of vitamin D creates depression. I read somewhere that spending all your time hiding out in your room sleeping is a sign of culture shock. It would make sense, leaving this room is so difficult sometimes (even after two years and being able to speak Chinese) that I just don't care anymore and will spend entire days in bed sleeping. I just can't be bothered going outside and doing anything. Anything I do outside gets in the way of studying.

I have really low energy levels in Beijing. I noticed this from the first day I got here. I always feel realy sluggish and drowsy. I've gotten used to it now, and now I just do less stuff everyday.

Vacation

At this point in time, if I had the option of going back to Toronto for a month during the summer I would have taken it. Just having some relief from this kind of environment for a month would make a world of a difference. I actually feel two years out here is not mentally healthy. It's like trying to eat an entire cow at once with no break inbetween. Kids going to university in like Kingston Ontario talk about being homesick? They have no idea what that word means.

All in all if you want to become a stronger person, you must endure bullshit, learn to be patient, suffer etc. With regards to Noah and Ryan, I'm not sure how headstrong they've become throughout highschool; two years in China is an endurance test on it's own. I would not recommend them coming here for two continuous years. I would highly recommend a one month break in the middle just to maintain sanity.

The average foreign student comes out here and goes back at least once a year. When I tell most people I haven't been back yet most of them are like, "holy shit wtf". Yes there are kids here who have been here up to five years continuosly, but to them; China is better than their home country and they don't miss their home country one bit. In China they can party and do whatever they want, this is a vacation to them.

I've had to frequently step out of my comfort zone while living here, adjusting to a new life, learning the language, travelling, changing my behaviour around people. The biggest challenge which I've feared since day one has always just been the long long long ass wait. The amount of time left has become the backroud noise behind everything I do. They say a man should be so busy during the day that he cannot care about small problems, and too tired at night to worry. This is the ultimate lesson of patience.

Taiwanese Style Drama

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:42:00 -0500

I'm in my room. I got an HSK on Sunday, mid term exams the next week, a speaking presentation and an essay due the following morning. It's 12AM, I woke up at 7PM and I'm swamped with work. I haven't started half of this shit, it needs to be done NOW.

Selwyn comes in and tells me his mom bought a ticket for Beijing for the following day, there's a possibility that he's being dragged home for good. She would come to the university, un-enroll him, then put him back on a plane the following day to New Zealand. Our two years of friendship will end abruptly, and the story will end like this.

He came back to the dorm to ask me if I wanted to go sing KTV with him because this is possibly the last day I'm going to see the guy. We'd get back around 3AM or so, probably drunk. He would have called but my phone doesn't have any money in it. I think it was better we spoke in person anyways.

He argues that I should come out. We're buddies and we haven't seen each other in three weeks due to our busy schedules. This is possibly his last day there, and we'll be back around 3AM or so.

I argue that I'm way too swamped to be going out. But he can go out to KTV, I'll add money to my phone in the morning, and I'll call him and if he's leaving Beijing I'll send him to the aiport. This is my best attempt and the only way I can do this all at once. I explained to him how much pressure I have right now, and I can't afford to go out until 4AM on a Tuesday night piss drunk right now. I could do it in the past, but I'm on my last stretch and if I fuck it up now I won't have another chance. I got eight hours to complete all this or it's going to screw up the rest of my week. This is the best I can do.

He calls me an asshole saying I'm prioritizing school over our friendship and storms out. He says if he was on his university finals, and his friend was leaving the next day, he would fail his finals just to see his friend off.

I told him my life isn't so easy, and I can't afford to fail school for anybody. Any of my friends in Toronto would rather not see their friend and pass university, and any real friends would understand that. I told him that was the difference between us.

He tells me not to call him in the morning and says sorry for disturbing me and leaves. He says he understands me, but it hurts and he's offended.

What would you do?

I'm trying my best right now to study as hard as I can and hand in all the work and assignments and get all this HSK stuff down. This is my last chance, I can't afford to blow it. This is how I was in Toronto, school is always prioritized over friends; and everybody understood that. There was no discrepancy whether or not it's worth going out to see your friend one last time. I won't apologize for being from a class of people that have school as a priority. I believe any real friend will understand what I'm going through. If I could, I would love to go out right now and possibly say goodbye.

Fucking Asians and their drama.

March Blogging, Simon Visiting Beijing

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:11:00 -0500
yeah nothing much happened in March so I can blog it all at once
So here's what's going on in March.

Work

I have this 8 year old student named Charlie. He's a really nice kid and everything, but no kid at 8 years old is able to focus their attention for more than two minutes a at time. The mother complained I was a shitty teacher, and now I have no students at that company. My other student Fajing gave up on studying English and went to go play a Tennis tournament in India. So now I have no students at that company. I thought I was supposed to give them a three month quit notice. I gave it in way too early because as soon as they found out I was quitting I haven't heard from them in weeks. I'm going in, cashing out my stickers, and quitting. I worked there part time for a year. The staff and everything are nice but it's honestly kind of a whack company. Hours were good though.

I got a new student called Jack. He's a 25 year old double finance major MBA dude with pretty decent English. He meets me in the classrooms twice a week to practice English. I like working with him because I feel I can really help the guy, and there's no commute time so it's really convenient to teach the guy.    So lately I've been teaching a few hours a week, then comes up the next question of class.

Class

This term has WAY more work. I have about two presentations a week, an essay due, I gotta read newspapers and crap and present newspaper articles. Our character load has gone from 50 to 100, and we go twice as fast. I hand in all the homework and the teacher marks it and gives it back, although no other students bother handing in the homework. Knowing myself, if I won't have it handed into the teacher, I won't bother doingit.

I'm on a really bad schedule of waking up aroud 10PM, studying all night, going to class at 8AM, then gonig back to bed around 1-2PM. This works for me because at least I'm up at 6-7AM eating breakfast, getting ready. I can't focus during the day.    I have too many people harassing people here and there.

I got exams on the 22nd, and I have an HSK on the 19th I'm currently studying for. I'll do the June HSk as well. Overall I'm just trying my best to pound out the last bit of Chinese I can. Everybody's Chinese could use a lot of improvement, but holy shit after 2 years of studying Chinese you go kinda psycho. It feels better than I can watch TV and try to read newspapers now. The level up has posed new challenges for me to overcome.

Social Life

I've cut back tremendously on partying and shopping. I haven't shopped in about 5 weeks or so. Before I would go at least go pick up a tshirt or something every week or so, or at least see what's new in the stores. But lately I've been somewhat forced to stay in my dorm, go to class, teach in my dorm, eat in my dorm, study in my dorm. Never leave, go outside or anything. I'm getting fat as hell. Jimmy and I are going to start jogging again soon.

I have never been this much of a shut-in my entire life. There are no other "cool" foreigners to really hang out with here lol. I'm not being snobby or anything, I talk to everybody in my class and I'm nice to everybody. But I'm leaving soon there's not much of a point of going out of my way to produce new friendships. Klaus is just writing his PhD. Selwyn is still struggling to go to class. Jimmy is thinking about going back to South Africa.

Wanna hear what I did on my weekend? I spent an entire day repacking my clothes into a suitcase and checking weight limits. As I said in my MSN name, it's not really living anymore it's just surviving. I'm not really doing anything but eating and sleeping and going to class. I don't go out anymore, I don't have any new friends or new girls to meet. I don't bother, I'm just counting my days until I go home. Sometimes I watch the TV show Oz and feel as if I'm just stuck in this room serving a prison sentence. Class, cafeteria, dorm room, work in dorm room, study in dorm room, sleep, class repeat.

I want my life back. My life that had all these fun normal people social interactions. Jimmy complained about the same thing. Kids don't know the meaning of being bored.

Simon Visits Beijing

I meet Simon at Suzhojie station. The first thing I noticed is that he speaks Mandarin twice the speed at which he speaks English. We try speaking in Chinese for a bit but seeing as he's been living in Canada for 14 years, there's no point lol. We flip in and off though for fun. He says it's weird as hell to hear me speak because I have this foreigner accent plus the Beijing accent.

So that day I took him for a walk aroudn Zhongguancun to get price quotes on a new cellphone, then introduced him to Jimmy and Selwyn.

Christy had her birthday that Friday so we all went to go sing KTV. Simon also came that day so it was kind of his birthday and her birthday together. It was the best I could do considering most of my friends already left Beijing and I can't get a roaring party packed with hoes in his honour. God, I need to learn new songs. But Christy was impressed I could at least read and attempt to sing (how ridiculously high some of the songs were) now, becasue before I couldn't sing any for beans. Kevin came back from England as I blogged about. I learned how to do all the dice cup tricks, just ask next time you see me. They're actually really easy, but people are really impressed by them. Dice was fun to learn and play for a while but now it's just queer playing. After KTV we went to go eat some malatang on the street.

I took him to go check out the Forbidden city. We managed to walk the whole thing in a solid hour lol. We were just rushing through it, seeing as we've already seen everything, it's honestly not even that big the second time you go. We walked around Tiananmen and walked around the Wangfujing area. He was surprised to see how developed and commercialized everything had become. We stopped at a local restaurant to knock over some noodles and some beer. After that he stayed in Beijing a few more days before heading into Nanjing to do his whole root seeking thing.

Being a study bum

So I just checked my calendar. I went to Propaganda and Friday and pimped some local girls using my shit Chinese lol. Right now I'm just keeping score, there's no point in following up with any of these g's seeing as I'm outta here soon and I don't wanna blow any more cash.

As for that, I got 2 or so presentations a week with written assignments. Work now and then. The rest of the time I'm in my ass in my room bored as hell trying to learn more Chinese. This is probably why at this time last year I was acting up so much and messing around. The weather is a lot better now, it was freezing at one point in time.

Eric on Interior Design

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 06:30:00 -0500
don't read it unless you wanna hear me rant about furniture
This is directed at my parents since I know most random people don't read these sections of my blog.   Ba, please make sure Ma reads this.

Interior Design

As of late I'm winding down, getting my grades in, and preparing to go home. While I was packing away all the stuff I've found out here, decorations, memorobilia etc, I begun to question how I'm going to move back into my house in Toronto. That lead to the next question, since I'll be moving back and probably living at home for a long time, how will I want to redesign my room?

Most people who know me or who have ever been to my house, know that I live in a relatively decent sized house for a downtown home. The only thing that I only don't like is that I have to share a room. But I'd rather save cash and live at home, rather than either go find my own apartment (hell no I was just living in China for the last two years I'm not moving out again until I'm forced to), or live on campus at school (why? I live downtown, and living on campus would probably involve either a closet bedroom or living with a roommate anyways).

So then I figured if I was going to move back into my room, with my 22 year old Engineering student older brother, and somehow use the room functionally; I would have to think of some creative ways to maximize on the space and make it efficient, comfortable, and on my part visually appealing. Haha.

So the last couple of days I have been reading up on interior design and things like that. I know Adam says he "does not care about frivolous things" but yo I don't really care he doesn't have to spend any time decorating. He just has to live in it.

I was on InteriorDesign.com looking at seriously pimped cribs. I noticed the relationship went like, the more pimping and cool looking, the less functional. I realized that I really enjoy looking at interior design and creative ways to make your space look cool, including all the art and all that. You guys just wait until I move out and have cash to decorate my own space, it's going to be the coolest looking place ever. And mad comfortable.

Anyways with respects with my room, I realized some issues I had with the room before that could be really easily fixed cheaply and improve the overall functionality of the room without too much effort. Initially I viewed the room as an empty space, if I could chuck out all the furniture and get totally new furniture that would be totally awesome, but my parents would view that as a frivulous waste. So I had to take that into my design plan.

Beforehand space issues, privacy issues, annoying parts

Adam and I have had to share a room for a long time, and had a tonne of different furniture configurations. We had a massive desk in the middle, with beds and dressers and shelves on both sides. And crappy small school desks.

Then the massive table dissapeared, and the beds made an L shape with all the dressers and stuff on one side of the room.

Then the weirdest configuration I had was putting the dresser mirror facing the closet, then putting the shelf making a box around my closet, then putting a chair inside that box lol.

Then we got desks, it started with my desk being dead smack in the middle of the room with no backing wall. Adam's was against the wall. The end of my bed had a shelf and a little glass table. The middle of the room had this massive pink rocking chair. I can't remember what else.

Then Adam left, I put the beds together against one wall and left the shelves and stuff there. I put the desks together in an l shape, I put two glass tables behind it to make U shaped table, then had the pink chair in there for no reason. Then I had the massive wooden table near the door to hold my stuff. This configuration was the most crowded because I had WAY too much furniture in there, but it was totally fine in the end because I was only one dude.

Then we renovated the house. Two of the beds went on oneside, the middle of the room had nothing in it. And both of the desks and shelves went on the rigth side of the room with some filing cabinets and other crap. This, again, was totally fine for one person.

Conclusion

So after all those crazy configurations you can kind of see what the problem was. Too much furniture, too croweded, bad flow, not space efficient. Not suitable for two people to study and live in effectively.

Room Solution

Basically the first thing I would do is go get these two multi level computer desks I saw at IKEA (hoorah for cheap ass ikea lol, I swear half our house is made of ikea furniture it's kinda silly lol). Since my room is actually decent sized for a downtown house, all we gotta do is maximize on it by using the vertical dimension. My last desk was from grade 7, and doesn't have ANYTHING except a drawer. This new desk I looked at was much more comfortable to use for university students, and will probably make those HUGE LONG HOURS of studying a lot more bearble. It has a crapload of shelves, a white board, a keyboard tray, and just overall provides more comfort and space for books and a university student's necessary material in order to be productive. All the overhead storage for books and stuff makes using it a lot more convenient and comfortable. It's also compacts the desk like crazy in order to make the crowded 2 people room a lot more comfortable to live in.

Second thing was I have a lot of shelves in my roo, most of the stuff off of them would probably go onto the computer desks. Then I could use the shelves either for massive storage of my stupid stuff like books.

I can't throw out the massive dressers. They're solid pieces of furniture, althuogh they clash with everythnig else in the room there's no way I can get rid of them. So I would leave them next to the closets where they belong.

Two people haven't lived in the room in about 4 years so the two beds have been jammed together. If I put the facing horizontal in the room, we would have a space in the middle, but it provides no space for our computer desks facing the Western wall. Another idea was to make the two beds face eachother. I'm not even sure if that would fit, but since our beds don't have head boards we would at least have decent headboards lol. But then nobody can comfortably walk through the middle of the room without bumping into the beds. That's the bad part. I'll have to take measurements when I get back. Ideally I would love to get a bunkbed with a workstation or a couch on the bottom. That would seriously maximize space, but I know you guys hate bunkbeds. And I still think my normal bed is way more comfortable.

In order to deal with light due from being 2 university students cramming in the same room, one option I did in China was actually have those sleep eye covers. I hated those, they're just annoying. I figured the easiest way to create more study privacy and light blockage within the room was just to go buy some Japanese folding door screens and place them behind our desks. Not only does this partially seperate our desks and our beds, but when one guy is trying to sleep, it blocks the light from polluting the rest of the room. It also creates a nice privacy wall while we're trying to sleep. I know Ba is going to say don't creative barriers within your room, you're blocking the chi etc. If we have them on both sides of the window, the chi still flows through the middle pretty good. But at this point, seriously screw chi, I need a room I can use lol.

So that takes are of the sleeping and studying issue, what about just comfort functionality? Well I know my room is too small for a couch (my dorm room has one), it also doesn't have a TV or anything like that but after living in a cube dorm room this long, I don't really care. The bedroom should be for studying, sleeping, getting dressed, and having some privacy. So the screens take care of the privacy (and also can be moved if they get annoying), the computer desk makes studying more efficient and accessible.

And then if we STILL have space (I doubt this is gonna happen) thing I really wanted was one of those cube shelves that's like 6' and maybe 4 blocks across like 8 blocks down. I don't know, it'll be the only cool looking contemporary decorative piece of furniture in my room sadly lol. This could either be used to replace one of the existing shelves (the white shelf in my room is hoenstly falling apart lol), or go underneath the window (although there are already two shelves there that fit somewhat perfectly, but this cube shelf would look way cooler and hold more stuff.) I would fill it with shoes and books and it would look awesome. But I'm gonna have to take measurements when I get back.

Another thing my dad is probably going to disaree with, is getting a huge chunk of wallpaper and making a strip from the door all the way to the window. I saw this in an Interior Design magazine and you probably think that's the stupidest most frivolous cheap decorative tactic you can own. But I think it would look really cool.

Living At Home

I have no problem with living at home. At first I thought it would be really whack because I gotta share a room with Adam, and I haven't had to do that in a super long time. But with these few suggestions to make the room more functional without drawing a line down the middle of it; I think it'll be totally functional.

After living out in China for the last two years; I realized as long as your parents are not strict with you have friends over or girls or going out and coming home drunk, living at home is the best thing ever. Especially since I live on Queen street and can take the TTC everywhere, I don't gotta drive or pay parking or insurance. I can just pocket all the cash, buy cool clothes, club, and overall enjoy the convenience of living downtown. Save money, not work during university. I didn't know how bomb TTC was until I moved to China. I really hope I get back into U of T, I seriously can't deal with living on campus anymore. It's so annoying. But at least you make more "friends". Screw friends, I want a clean shower.

Things that are AWESOME about living at home!

Free food, everyday all day, whenever you want it. Healthy home cooked food (Noah and Ryan you don't know how good you got it man until you're eating shit everyday for a few years). A kitchen with full appliances and fry pans and pots to whip up anythnig you want. A fully stocked fridge. I don't even have the regular ingredients to make a sandwich out here.

Being able to take the TTC everywhere or bike everywhere. I just miss being able to hop on the TTC or like five seconds and be somewhere. I got my G2, I will get my G, I don't even drive and I got a better license than most people lol. I will drive, you gotta do it for girls sometimes or in the winter. But besides that to school everyday, to the clubs when I'm drunk, if I'm going anywhere along the bloor danforth line. TTC it is! I'm buying a monthly pass. It's worth every penny.

Oh and BIKING. Oh my god. Biking is like my therapy. I was realy bummed out when my bike got stolen. But yo I felt mad ninja just hopping on my bike and taking it wherever in bikeable seasons. I would keep it so clean, keep the chain oiled, wipe it down. It was my baby. My next bike will be my baby as well. I could stealthily get anywhere in my area really fast, quitely, and conveniently. I felt safer biking home at night than bussing it, because people get jumped at bus stops lol. On a bike I'm just invincible, it's fast, it's silent. And I don't drive at night, I aint driving home drunk or falling asleep at the wheel and crashing lol.

Just being able to get home at like 4AM, unlock the door to your nice clean house. Go into the kitchen, eat something instead of calling take out or actually going to a restaurant. Being able to take a nice clean shower with clean towels without having to wear slippers in the shower. Then being able to walk around the house barefoot on clean floors and clean carpets. Being able to go back up to a nice clean room nobody has been touching or moving around your shit. Having a nicely set up closet full of clean clothes that aren't stuffed inside bags or boxes to keep the sandstorms out. And when you're looking for a certain accessory or piece of jewellery or anything small; It's there. Nobody has taken it or borrowed it or made it go missing. Because it's in your own house!

Having a totally awesome restful sleep without worrying about ANYTHING, no bedbugs, mosquitoes, dust allergires, cockroaches, huge fat guys snoring next to you, people partying next door playing guitar all night. Waking up to the room that has invested objects in it like a nice quality alarm clock (I would buy these things out in China but since I'm going home soon it's not worth it). Having proper heating in your house, being able to go downstiars and eat and shower at whatever time you want without worrying about places being open or the hot water being activated or not.

It's kinda like the ultimate hotel. I buy most of my stuff out here then package it and leave it somewhere in an ugly box in the room so the sandstorms don't get it. At home I'll have it on display, looking all nice in my closet on or on my shelf making my room feel so much more comfortable and cultured.

When you got all of these nice conveniences in your life, you have more energy, you're healthier, you lose weight, you save money, you're overall in a better mindset everyday. When I was in Toronto I was totally superman because of how convenient I had my home set up to serve me and repair me and rest me. When your maslow's pyramid level one and two (physical needs, clean house, food, water shelter) are totally covered; it's real easy to succeed and blow out 150% every single day. I'm confident if I got my house set up like that, I'm going to be much less stressed out in school, or at least handle the stress way better, and just be able to take on everyday so much better. And be a more efficient, active, energetic person in general.

Okay I'm done, post your thoughts.

Kevin's back from Warwick

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 04:40:00 -0500

So I get a strange phone call today, and on the other end was Kevin. Kevin has spent the last nine months in Warwick, Britain studying the other half of his degree in translation. Since I've been living in his country, and he was just living in a Westernized country for the last year or so, I just wanted to tell you some of his reactions. I was pissing myself for most of them.

- Him and his friends are terrified of going clubbing. Clubs are full of scary black guys and Indian guys who dress really thug and act all aggressive. One time his friend was lying down all drunk and shit, and a black guy came over and teabagged the hell out of him. When he woke up he got into a fight with the guy, and ended up getting beat up by five black guys.

- Britain has an open gay scene, and they all congregate in the gym. Kevin and his Chinese buddies from school needed to go work out or do something, so they decided to join a health club. They discovered it was packed full of gay guys who thought they were really cute, and also gay. So every time he went he was harassed by gay guys touching him, giving him massages, giving him looks.

- Brtain has openly racist people. Since it's a multicultural country currently undergoing some racial animosity, Kevin was subjected to random racism. Including him driving his car, and having black guys roll down their windows mooning him, or trying to speak like whack Chinese, or threatening to rape him etc like in jail. "So this guy pulls up to the stoplight and starts saying "fuck you!!" then told me to get outta the car, but I just said fuck you and drove off."

- Kevin worked in a pub, and in Britain they have this psychotic soccer fanatiscism religion thing.

- In Westernized countries, girls will kiss anybody. They will kiss you but not bang you. Kevin was working at the bar one night when some girl kissed him, and he thought to himself "wow I'm doing pretty good tonight." Then he saw her kiss some random black guy, then maybe 5-6 other guys that night as well. Then he just felt dirty.

- Kevin felt everybody in Britain was so much more offensive and aggressive. He said he spent everyday there kinda nervous and scared all the time that he'd get jumped or something. I don't blame him, especially when you get that many random racist people yelling around.

Overall it sounded as if Kevin had a very interesting cross cultural experience. I don't even notice how weird some of the shit I experience in China is anymore, seeing as I've lived here for almost two years now. It kind of reminded me of how hard Toronto is sometimes. Things like black guys, the fear of getting jump, scary black guys in the club, getting teabagged, people talking shit on the street don't even really bother me anymore. I guess these are the things about the society that I grew up that in that kinda make sense to me and that I've become used to. But for Chinese people abroad, it's the same as being a foreigner lost in China.