surprisingly easy

Every now and then, I learn that I should really have more faith in people. Or maybe, just in specific people.

reasons i like my job

in the past few weeks at work, I have:
identified a live caterpillar
tuned a guitar
cut out paper bats
complained. I'm great at this.
Listened to other people complain.
Actually affected positive change as a result of said complaints.
sung "Little Bunny Fufu"

I like work.

this place

Tries in grey, smoggy shades to exist simultaneously in an industrial, digital future, and a slow, deliberate, ornamented past, seemingly hoping as it trudges along in a middle-of-a-dystopian-novel sort of way, to even out to some acceptable version of the present.

minutes seem to drag on for days, while weeks are gone before we've noticed. Time is fickle and headstrong and frivolous at once, like the last wise, petulant elder of an ancient tribe, feigning senility to reclaim an adolescent right to the powerful illusion of control.

kindred spirits

Last night, we met Mitch and Aggy. Even from their names, they just sound awesome. And they are.

He's a former State Dept employee, and now travels around the world doing trainings, so he's in Beijing multiple times a year. She grins broadly, telling us that her children fondly refer to them as "vagabonds." They both comment repeatedly on how we are too young to know all of the lyrics to the Beatles songs on the loudspeaker, as we sing together enthusiastically waving our beers to the beat. Mitch asserts that I must get carded all the time in the US, and his initial astonishment at my being 30 seems possibly feigned until we note the same pleasantly awkward tone to much of his conversation for the rest of the evening. Aggy and my Australian friend start a dancing trend when the band - delightfully titled The Ugly Dumplings - starts a cover of "I will survive." Mitch claims Aggy is "the fun one" but is quirky and intelligent, and provides his own brand of entertainment. They are both delighted to be joining a small group of us for karaoke this evening. This should be quite fun!

good luck with that.

I am making a conscious decision to stop being obnoxious. And to re-start being productive. Riiiiight.

origin of the word arcade?

Life here doesn't seem real. It's sort of like this is a fake existence, with no actual consequences and little actual meaning. As though even at the stressful bits, when the music speeds up and the timer dips below 100, the worst case scenario is that you'll have to start over in the same place the next day, slightly discouraged and maybe a little smaller.

just dao it

Okay, so I recognize that ancient monks practiced shaolin kungfu without the need for language. But I'm neither ancient nor a monk (nor am I really able to do much of anything without talking about it), and I have an unfortunately heavy reliance on words to learn things. Or maybe I just think I do. At any rate, it's kind of challenging to learn even physical skills without being able to ask questions or understand the answers even if I could ask them.

On the other hand, maybe it would do me some good to stop overanalyzing everything and just do as I'm told, make the mistakes, and learn from them that way. It might also dissolve some of my ever-present attitude. "Really? This is called a palm? Because it looks like a knife hand to me."

Also, it's probably a really excellent experience for an educator to have to learn something without being able to communicate effectively. This is like ESL kung fu. Kung Fu as a second martial art. Or third or fourth depending on how you look at it. KFSMA. KFTMA. KFFMA. That doesn't have quite the same ring to it. And actually, it's not a very good metaphor anyway. Mei shi.

counting qi

Recent discovery: No matter how effective acupuncture may be at relieving exhaustion, I can hardly expect it to work if I refuse to sleep.

so I noticed

That my vpn seems to have observed october holiday and prevented me from accessing facebook for that period of time, which somehow coincidentally coincides (that's right, I said it) with my failure to post on this blog. Perhaps my China digital existence insisted on a holiday.

Whew, I'm glad that's done. The holiday. and this post.

Dear Facebook,

Kindly stop tracking my visits to people's profiles and showing me photos that serve to enable my dwelling. Dwelling the gerund, not the noun.

I severely dislike having my ridiculous behavior pointed out to me. It's embarrassing. Only I am allowed to enable my own ridiculousness. Geez.

Digital technology now serves way too many frighteningly human functions. Please advise.

Thanks.

Me.

equally good and bad?

I'm kind of obsessed with jiaozi.

"that's racist" - ag

yeah, a little bit. but it's more a practical understanding of language development to assert that something written in english in a particular incorrect way is probably written by someone whose original language has a structure like Chinese. And is therefore likely to be Asian.

just sayin.

This all in reference to horoscopes, which while fun to revisit, sort of represents a new low either in interest level or originality.

the nonexistent word "patheticity" actually comes to mind. Ha! Glad vacation is almost over. I am bored.

I meant quotation marks, but

I just said "I feel sorry for people who deprive themselves of anything that has to be put in parentheses."

even in the backward land of the other side of the world

October and I are friends.

things I learned from soy sauce and vinegar:

I do not understand the physics of air pressure.