• Freedom is better than peace.
• Why is it that when people say “good Catholic,” what they really mean is “conservative Catholic?”  Gross.
• Only a jackass presumes to tell someone what they should or should not feel.
• Insulation works.
• What good is face when everyone despises you?
• I miss my family and friends.  I miss my hometown.
• Sorry, only American citizens get to vote in American elections.  If you want to participate in our government, here’s some info.  You can start by paying some taxes.
• Chopped chicken on the bone is a terrible way to serve chicken.

(no links; editor is weird)

It must suck being Scotty in the engine room. Kirk is up on the bridge; he wants the impossible, and he knows he can push it without consequence…. if the Enterprise gets damaged during warp, he knows that he can take it into spaceport later and after some shore leave, she’ll be good as new. But Scotty, he’s got to watch her break, somehow get her back in to port, and then fix her up again, only to have Kirk nearly fly her apart on another one of his adventures.

I’m just saying it must suck to be Scotty. I mean when does Scotty get shore leave? He’s the one beaming everybody in and out, for goodness sakes, you think the chief engineer would be too busy to be sitting in the windowless transporter room with sandwiches by the communicator, just waiting for Kirk to call with news of another dead ensign in a red shirt….

______

It is a dark and stormy night. I desperately need some groceries, but since rain and lighting are falling all around me, I have decided to order from Sherpa’s, the motorbike delivery service, for the first time. I actually ordered two dinners, so that I’ll have something to eat tomorrow morning, since I don’t have so much as an egg to fry for breakfast tomorrow.

I ran out of rice a while ago… maybe a week ago… yikes!

Here are some stories that are not mine to tell, so I won’t tell them. But I do want to remember them:
Drew the Druid, the Cheeseeater, I Don’t Like Music, UFOs, Marathon is an Olympic Event, Paalam sa Bakerong Manok.

Speaking of the Olympics, I watched the Opening Ceremonies at MJJ’s place; it was cool, as we all saw. Both my barber and Emily the masseuse were so proud of it, and on the English language tv channels here, that’s all they talked about for a couple of days, since they weren’t showing any coverage. This is the first time I have even slightly regretted sending my two giant space eating tvs back to the landlord.

Eyeball situation is steadily improving. Dr. says they’re healing fast; almost too fast… she has me dropping more steroid drops 4 times a day so they don’t scar. I can take normal showers again, and I sleep without the goggles. I’ve bought myself three pairs of sunglasses already; after a lifetime of prescription glasses, I feel like I’m entitled to go crazy with the shades.

Work work work. It’s contract time again, so as is my custom every year, I floated some resumes around a couple weeks ago. To my surprise I got a great offer just from my resume… they didn’t even interview me. I turned it down, but that really brought some stuff into focus for me. It is great having options; I know that the next contract I sign will not be an adventure contract; it will be one that takes my career forward.

I bought tickets home to Seattle yesterday. Yay! I can’t wait to eat Cantonese food, Mexican food, Vietnamese food, Dungeness crabs… I can’t wait to have good, professional, non irritating service in a restaurant. I can’t wait do drive around the city again, even though compared to Shanghai it looks like a ghost town. Most of all, I can’t wait to torment my sister.

I was looking for tickets to Vegas, as well, so I can see the folks. I have to wait a few days at least, before I can be sure that is going to happen. It will probably involve a trip to the bank.

Speaking of banks…

I was dreading my last trip to the bank; I had lost my card, so I had to go down there, pay a 10 kuai fine, and then wait seven days for a replacement. So finally seven days were over, and I cabbed down to the bank and took number 148. They had just called number 130.

I took a seat in the second row, and zoned out.

Then some skinny guy charged the window… which people do all the time in China. It’s part of the reason it takes so damn long to do business at the bank, because the tellers hear out everyone who pushes their way up to the front to wen yi xia. Even if you’ve waited for an hour, when you get to the window, you have to compete for the teller’s attention with the wen yi xia people.

So my man, a stocky bald Chinese man starts yelling at skinny Mr. Wen Yi Xia, and pushing him back. Next thing I know, Mr. Stocky’s fist is coming down onto Mr. WenYiXia’s forehead. The 16 year old guard with eyes on the floor comes to separate them, but all he can do is physically stand between them, as effective as, say, a hotdog in hard hat, eyes on the floor.

Now they’re yelling at each other and pushing to get at each other, and more bank staff comes to separate them.

Ok, we all know how this would have gone down in the US; security would have cleared both of those sorry bastards out of the lobby; the bank manager would have come out to apologize to the other customers; the next time the dudes would see each other again would be months from now, standing in suits before a judge, feeling stupid about even telling the story.

But this is China.

So the bank employees and the wiener security guard have put themselves physically between the two men, but a curious thing happens; they watch them continue to argue and threaten. Stocky and WenYiXia are now screaming at each other, fingers are wagging, and the bank employees are…. watching them. Everyone is expecting them to talk it out, calm down, come to a resolution.

And that’s just what happens. WenYiXia explains that he just went to the teller to ask a simple question; Stocky dude, now calm, says fine, go ahead, go to the teller now and ask your question. So WenYiXia, goes to the teller… I look down at my number 148…. dammit, is it even WenYiXia’s turn? So then Stocky casually walks up next to him, and then PUNCHES HIM IN THE FACE.

Now people are yelling, Stocky’s friend starts getting into the fight, WenYiXia’s friend looses his mind and starts screaming at Stocky, the bank employees can no longer contain it. A lot of people leave… me, I nearly get stepped by Friend of WenYiXia as he is repulsed by Stocky….. I decide to get up and stand in the back, because my eyes had just been lasiked.

So finally, three big dudes in black come out of the VIP room (what were they doing in there for the last ten minutes?) and a couple of cops come in off the street. The arguing parties are whisked into the back so they can continue their shouting match without disrupting the lobby any more. The cops stay and talk to bystanders, and when I say talk, I mean scream at them and get screamed at in return, because when Shanghainese people get agitated, their talking crosses into screaming. I imagine they were just recounting the story to them, and the cop was lecturing them on what they could have done better, as dutiful bystanders, in that situation.

Maybe ’scream’ is the wrong word. It’s more like a ’scream-lecture.”

So the best part: The room is half clear now, and the tellers are starting to call numbers again. 138? no one. 139? no one. 140, 141, 142, no one no one no one. The numbers fall one after another and the next thing I know, they call 148. Sweet.

Best bank experience ever.

It’s been 24 hours since my laser eye surgery.  Right eye is 20/20, left eye is better than 20/20.  I’m wearing chemistry class goggles to bed and on the dusty streets when it’s too dark for sunglasses.  Dropping antibiotics three times a day, a healing steroid every waking hour, and artificial tears when needed (so far not needed).  No swimming or boxing or basketball for the next six months.

Vision should improve over the following days as cornea heals.  Video to follow shortly.

So finally I’m back safely at home after a crazy day.

The team all went to see the Argentinian Navy ship that is docked in Shanghai.  L forbade me from wearing the sombrero that JL brought me from Mexico.  It was too bad, we needed it!  The navy base guards at first didn’t let us walk through their campus, and then afterward they let us, but they took us the long way around, just to be a-holes. When we got their, the Argentinians were really cool; took us down to the officer’s galley and we drank a beer and talked about the state of things.

The ship was groovy, we got good footage and interviews.  I had to leave the team on the boat and go on to my eye appointment on my own.  On the way out, I walked the short way through the naval base, and the guards all smiled at me.  Cabrones.

The first cab I stopped wouldn’t take me back into the city… they have a different fleet out there, different color even.  The next cab wouldn’t take me either, so I said, fine, take me to the subway station… it’s actually an elevated train way out there, which is way cooler than underground.  Anyway, I subwayed all the way to the football stadium, where I got in a cab, which took me to my eye appointment.

The ophthamologist is pinay, and she identified me as pinoy as I entered her office.  We were dowright excited to meet each other!  The nosy nurses… a colony of about fifty of them, led me through test after test, and hovered over me, even during the final consult.  Ah China.  No privacy.

A couple of hours (!) later I was in a cab, locked in stop-and-stop gridlock to get back to the office.  It was maddening, as was the fact that my eyes were dialted.  When I got back to the office, it was hard to read my computer screen, so I answered only the most pressing emails and then went into the dark studio to watch them record a couple of culture shows.

D was so funny, he asked what was wrong with my eyes… I told him the eye doctor dilated my pupils; he was alarmed… “I think that is a big problem!”   Apparently that’s not a common part of the eye exam procedure for him, he had never heard of it.  D, I said, that’s not a problem, it was just a check up!

At quitting time, I got in a cab with L; she went home, I went to Best Buy.  My computer still wasn’t ready, they told me to come back tomorrow.  I said, no way, I want it tonight.  Just change the damn graphics card and I’ll pay you and I’m on my way.  The boss agreed, and said he’d call me when it was finished.  I said, oh yah, they told me on Tuesday that they’d call on Wednesday; no call, so yesterday I came to ask.  Yesterday they said they’d call today, but no call!  I showed him my missed call list on my phone, and he swore to high heaven that he’d call me.  I gave him the ‘BS’ look, and he wrote his name and number down on my work order.

Wow!  I cabbed home, had some dinner, and guess what, he actually called.  Amazing.  When I got in the cab to go back down there, the lady says “Where to?” and I realize I didn’t bring the address.  So I said the neighborhood, Xujiahui, and ‘the sell computer place.” With that little information, she took me straight to Best Buy.  Even though there are huge computer markets across the street from it.  Psychic cab lady!

Now I’m finally home, and grateful to have a working computer again.  Thank you Jesus!

Shout out to Clay…

L and L got to meet President Felipe Calderón last week!

I love he Chad Vader series.  See the rest here, including the vlogs and training videos.

I haven’t gotten a chance to study this document very well yet, but I read here about this Chinese menu item translation site.

Oh yes.  We did.

So yesterday, after a long night of delicious sleep, I met A for cool soba noodles at a tiny Japanese cafe on Changle Lu, on the way to our massage, we stopped at Garden Books for coffee, gelato, and some books.

In the bookstore cafe, I noticed two framed photographs on the wall, one of an elephant’s butt, the other of a naked lady. I said, “hey, there’s butts on the wall!”

Fully ten minutes later, A says “hey, there’s a picture of a bum on the wall.” I reminded her that I had said that ten minutes earlier, and that she had looked up and acknowledged. She said she was surprised that I had said the word “bum,” and I told her, yah, I definitely didn’t say “bum.” I say “butt” or “homeless person” but the word “bum” only passes my lips when I’m talking about words I never use. She remains skeptical.

I bought The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam; an illustrated memoir, which I brought with me to my Eastside housesitting gig. I finished it last night; it’s awesome. There’s a movieas well!

So I read the book and I went to bed early. I got up this morning and made myself a goat cheese omelet, and fried potatoes and onions. And a chipotle pepper.

Not sure what I’m doing for lunch, but afterwards it’s back to the westside to help A with some research for her show: we’re going to fast food restaurants and ordering the stuff that you can only get in the Chinese franchises… and filming each other eating these menu items. Well, taking a bite at least.

I could go to the store and cook something for lunch, but honestly all I want is a piece of fried chicken and some rice. Is that so wrong? Unfortunately, the housesitting gig is in the only neighborhood in Shanghai without a KFC, but that’s ok, because I would have to order an entire bucket anyway (they don’t really sell plates).

Tomorrow in the office we have the Great Meatball Challenge, but I’m sure everyone else will forget. We’ll see.