I love living with boys

Day 7,

Everyone in my apartment is sick. First Shobhit got Adam sick, and then Adam got Shobhit sick again, and now he got John sick... so it is a giant cesspool of hacking , coughing, spitting people who are constantly stealing my nyquil. Luckily I am not a girly girl to begin with, but I can slowly fell myself becoming more of a boy every week I am living here. (to be totally fair though, I am not living with meatheads, our DVD collection includes: 27 dresses, made of honor, becoming jane, and my favorite, shanghai kiss) And in some aspects I am way more socially-retarded than they are.

Case in point: Adam was trying to figure out what to get a girl he was going on "dates" with for her birthday, and I told him to get her nothing, then when he said he had to since they were dating (which is completely unnecessary, because hes not going to get into her pants anyway since shes chinese) I told him to get her a badminton racket - I got laughed at. In my opinion badminton rackets are great, very functional, everyone here seems to have one attached to their wrist at all times. I also got laughed at for: hating dates, never having gone on a real date, never having a boyfriend etc.... all the things girls are supposed to be good at. They have stopped asking me for girl advice at this point.

But anyway, if I get sick I will smite my entire apartment; just like I used to do in SimLife, when you could play god and smite the sargum moss that was taking over the world. ( just googled it, Sargum Moss doesn't exist, it is a creation of Simlife)

Today I did not do anything cultural in Beijing, but I did go on a wild goose chase for Tahini, and the Vietnam Airlines ticket office. I employed my prowess of chinese to try and find the airline office once I was inside the glitzy shopping mall it was allegedly in. Due to my awesome skills I got these responses: 1st floor, 4th floor, blank stare. It ended up being across the street in a building I did not know existed. Oh and it was also closed - I'm going back tomorrow, at least I know where it is now.

Unrefrigerated milk and other fine foods

Day 6

Today I bought shelf life milk because I have decided that I never want to set foot in Carefour again.  It is a black hole; I go in to just buy milk and don't come out till an hour later.    Becca actually got lost in a carrefour for 20 minutes, which shows that I am not the only one who finds their labyrinth impossible to navigate.  Also, they have people yelling out advertisements at each section and the first time I went in I thought someone was being massacred in the soy sauce aisle.  

Anyway, there is a nice organic-and-therefore-more-expensive store across the street, but I think I am willing to pay more, and drink shelf life milk, in exchange for my sanity.  

Tonight I went to Guijie food street after work to get out of the apartment and walk around.  The entire street is festooned with luminous red and orange lanterns so the entire area kind of glows.    I had read up in my camera manual a bit about night shooting and so I wanted to go test out my new skills here.  Unfortunately, almost immediately my camera died, but I was able to find new batteries after a couple of attempts at convenience stores (one of which turned out to be a porn store actually...which it took me wayyy to long to figure out. embarrassing).   

I got a few pictures that turned out decent, but I still feel like I can't capture exactly the way things look, even with my new snazzy camera.  Tomorrow I will read the manual more, because as mom says: you can learn everything from the manual;this is why men do not succeed, they throw the manual away. 

I love sundays

Day 5

I did not leave my apartment today.  It was awesome.  In the morning I pretended to myself that I was going to go to the llama temple... but I guess I should have known better.  Instead I sat in bed and made bacon on three separate occasions during the day.  Being a vegetarian really broadens you horizons.   I also talked to jess for a really long time about why all technology, but mostly skype, hates her existence. 

Productive things I have done today without leaving my apartment:

1. Read about crazy frenchmen brandishing swords and how evil cardinal Richelieu was (The Three Musketeers) 

2. Decided to dedicate my life to a culinary odyssey in which I will learn about the cuisine of every country in the world

3. Made a spending limit that I will try to stick to (haha, how many times have I done this?)

4. Decided to open a hostel in thailand with jess 

5. Cured cancer

6. won 9 gold medals

7. world peace

8. Case in point = lots of great things can be accomplished from your bed

Ciao

L

Currently wearing it

Day 4,

Its only the fourth day and I am already a day behind. My goal was to post last night after I got back from clubbing, but that, lets face it, was obviously not going to happen.

Yesterdy I forced myself out of bed at noon and went, along with my hangover, into the city with the intention of going to see the llama temple. (I say intention because things did not work out that way). I also say forced since going anywhere in this city is a huge struggle between you and the evil thing that is the subway / beijing traffic. first you have to walk 2o mins to the nearest ditie (subway stop), then ride the stupid thing until you have forgotten where you were even going in the first place, get off, remember where you were going, then walk around aimlessly for another 20 minutes in the scorching heat until you find it, if you are lucky. To compound this, many places in the city require both a cab AND the subway, so then you get to deal with traffic and drives who try and take you

in giant circles as well.

Anyway...

After this epic struggle against public transportation, I arrived at the llama temple, tired to buy a ticket for 25 Kuai, and realized that I only had 15 due to my monster breakfast from four in the morning the night before. Trying to find a bank in china is about as bad as public transport. By the time I found one I had to go meet Alex at Yashou, a big market where you can buy everything under the sun for a few Kuai. The area around the llama temple was really beautiful

though, and actually had TREES, a rarity for beijing. There were groups of old me sitting under the trees playing majong, and countless stores selling incense and other buddhist wares. It was a really nice change from the modern section of the city.

Went to Yashou and engaged in a battle with the sunglass sellers to get a pair of hot pink Kanye sunglasses which were a big hit at the club later that night. We went to Banana, the dance floor bounces, so it is a little strange, but the sound system was great and they had some interesting entertainment... (cage dancers of both sexes.. it was strange). I ended up talking to an Iranian athlete for a long time about Sharia law, which was really interesting, but then I managed to drop my glass and break it all over him, so he was not happy and that was the end of our convo.

I'm going to go back into the city now and actually try and make it to the llama temple this time.

Ciao

L

Handball is Cool

Day 3,

Last night I finally got to go see the olympic venues! They are at the complete opposite side of the city from our apt so we had to ride the subway for 45 minutes to get near the area. We had no idea where the gymnasium was, but this turned out to not be a problem, there was a herd mentality coming off the subway so we just followed the crowd. It was dusk so light was reflecting off of the Birds Nest, and the lights in the water cube had just come on. They were both much more beautiful than I had expected them to be (if a building can be beautiful).

Our tickets were only 11 dollars, so I was expecting handball to be a bust, but in fact it is an awesome sport! The match was Norway v. France (still prelims) but the crowd was pretty much all Norwegian, all pretty rabid fans, with face pain, cowbells, and viking hats. There was also a tremendous amount of flag waving. I felt a little bad for the four french fans gallantly cheering for their team. I got to try out my new fancy camera, and took some great action shots, but I still haven't mastered it so although they are clear they color is a bit off and they are a little grainy.. I'll have to play around on photoshop with them.

After we went to HouHai:

A really pretty lake rimmed with bars. Not the best place to go out though because all of the bars are the same: a chinese person singing inside and then seats outdoor, its more of a dinner / lounge spot. we only go because there is a little tiny bar we like where they give us free drinks, and there is a really cute chinese kid I play with.

Then we went to Club Bud (budwiser) which they apparently have at every olympics and is free and all you can drink. The crowd was mostly foreign, and I had a great convo with three dutch guys all wearing soulja boy shades about Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates. Love the conversations I get myself into. Left at 3 to go home but ran into the rest of my apt on the way out, and walked to Sanlitun to get breakfast instead at Rickshaw, which is open 24 hours and has awesome american food. I proceeded to consume a disgusting amount of mozzarella sticks, eggs, pancakes, bacon. It reminded me of the epic breakfast Arun and I had in Vegas at 7 in the morning. I still feel sick today - but that could be a hangover, right now I am very thankful for Tyler Bradley-Hewit's prescription ibuprofen, that I somehow ended up with after graduation, thanks teebs.

I hate Fengtai

Day 2

So lets see... today I dragged myself out of bed at 7, sat in a humid cab for 45 minutes to get to the office, intermittently slogged and perused facebook hoping for people to do entertaining things or post incriminating pictures. I also learned of the existence of the snack cupboard and spent a happy ten minutes riffling through "snacks" which all seemed to feature cartoon character, artificial color and an ungodly amount of sugar. I still wonder how chinese people are so skinny with the food they eat. maybe its a biological chemical. If I could find it an sell it to trophy wives for exorbinant sums I would never have to work again. I also traded smiley faces online with my engineer for a decent amount of time, the highlight being one which he found that did the function of all the others in a sort of montage. (I also go lots of work done, but thats boring so I will bypass it)

I found a new favorite dish today to - I can't remember the name (seems like that is a common theme in this country) but it is grilled green beans with garlic and some sort of sichuan topping, I don't think they have it in US chinese food.

I also had a great conversation about my inability to distinguish attractiveness in asians. (also remember names). I can tell when the girls are hot, but all the guys look exactly the same to me. Maybe this will change and i'll end up living in beijing married to chinese dude.. but i'm highly doubting it... I have far too much of a thing for blonds.

Now we're all back home watching olympic badminton instead of the US basketball game, much to Adam's chagrin -apparently the Chinese authorities think badminton is more important. Shobhit is still doing work and cursing his fortune to be stuck with the clients from hell (their VP of engineering is so inept that he took two hours of our time to try and fix a "bug" in the log on system, when really he was entering the incorrect password), and I am going to watch a movie.

Adieu

L

Resolutions

Despite the fact that no one will probably ever read this as I will be too cowardly to show it to anyone, and lets face the facts - my life reeealy isn't that exciting ( a lot of people move abroad and too cooler places like niger), I am still going to attempt to write in this thing everyday for the dual purpose of maybe improving my writing and giving myself a record to read when I am 80 and can't even remember the names of my cats anymore - because I am destined to be a cat lady, more on that later.

Anyway, having committed to transcribing my awesome (irony) life to paper everyday, I'm going to need to go out and do things so that I don't fall asleep while writing about myself. this is actually a fairly hard task, because who really does more than a few interesting things everyday? When you consider your life as a whole it seems pretty sweet, but then when pressed to recount events from a single day or even week which are worth writing about people begin to sputter and grasp for some sort of a response. So i'll have to fix that somehow and become an really interesting person.

OK but enough bitching... now I will really start this blog:

Basically my impression of china thus far is a hot, humid polluted blur, filled with food i'm not too crazy about. My apartment is really nice but lacks the feeling of community you get many other places in the world that have local hangouts and coffeeshops etc. I think it is just the area that I live in and not the city itself, this is what I hope at least since I have meet a few really awesome people at coffee shops, you know who you are. Also you can't drink the water, walk anywhere, or eat anything that is uncooked. sounds like paradise. Other than this its great! really. just very different from the US and every time i go outside i find myself covered in sweat and gasping for breath within five minutes. You also can't even see the sun because it is obscured behind a thick and grayish cover of smog, making everyday look not unlike a gray winter day in seattle... my apartment complex, although being one of the nicest in the city has definite communist lineage and reminds me of the huge boxy complexes in siberia clustered around a sad excuse for a "park" in the middle - some scrubby trees and wiry grass attempting to survive amid concrete - i have been told this was all planed for the olympics.

The city is best enjoyed at night when darkness pierced with multitudes of neon lights transform the city into a completely different place. The pollution becomes invisible, the buildings look more graceful and the temperature cools down to bearable levels. Especially if you have a few beers the city becomes quite poetic.

My best experiences here so far:

mastering the art of riding a bike, talking on a cell phone and dodging the many cabs who I think get points for hitting pedestrians or something... that is all that could explain their driving style

Partying at Hohai, a lake ringed with bars which during the day is a cesspool of pollution but at night with the reflection of the neon signs is beautiful.

Trying to sneak into the tent for the russian athletes with my limited russian phrases and being blatantly laughed at by the woman running security, who I have no doubt, could actually speak russian

Watching the opening ceremonies at the annual Yen party (awesome hardcore techno / rave). And realizing in my alcohol and music fueled state, just how amazing it is that countries who are blatantly killing each other like georgia and russia, manage to make it to the olympics and at least outwardly smile and hold hands. The olympics might possibly be the only really successful diplomatic event we have.

Anyway, that is it for today.. tomorrow i'll start daily posts. good times

Ciao