Got those wedding bell blues
Date: Oct 31st, 2007 8:17:29 pm - Subscribe
Mood: glad
Eh, not really. Just seemed like a fun way to start off this particular entry.
My friend Sam got married last weekend. I was invited to the wedding dinner. Here in China the civil ceremony is not nearly as important as the celebration with friends and family. So we went to the dinner. One of my colleagues and I were the only white people there.
The event was held an a really nice restaurant with these fabulous, intricately carved wood panels. Just beautiful! First thing, the bride and groom brought candy to all the tables, and greeted the guests. Sam was so cute, he looked at his bride like he had caught the brass ring at the fair.
Then beverages came out. Some juice, but mostly beer. Weddings here, as in the US can develop into great, drunken affairs, especially as the tradition is to toast the Couple every time they come to your table, which is every one of the four times the bride changes her clothes.
Then the food starts coming. And coming, and coming. There were all manner of vegetables, and meats. We had Chicken and seafood and tofu and beef and lamb and duck and some stuff I couldn't identify but was spicy, tasty and had lots of bones--might have been eel, might have been snake. Who knows? Dish upon dish, the table was so heavily laden that they began to take dishes away and put them on smaller plates to make room for the next dish!
Conversation was lively, even at my table where our host graciously seated all the English speakers. Most of the guests were either school chums of Sam's, or colleagues. Which was kind of cool because that meant I was in a room full of teachers. The whole evening was long, full of food and laughter, and very enjoyable. By the time we set out for home, we were thoroughly stuffed and nappish. All in all, a very enjoyable evening.
To the happy couple: long life, good health double happiness, and a beautiful child!
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Facebook, MySpace, and other means of keeping up
Date: Oct 23rd, 2007 6:26:13 pm - Subscribe
Mood: philosophical
I have been on My Space for some time. I don't use it all that much. It's kind of dull, and I don't really want to spend the time farting around with it when I could be thinking of things to write that might be clever, informative or at least not embarrassingly stupid.
At the behest of some of my more wired, more technically-minded, and addicted to internet networking friends, I have joined Facebook. Thus far it has proved a bit more interesting than mySpace.
But they also make me sad. I can catch up on what people I love and have lost touch with without actual contact. (yeah, like bloggers dig personal contact). In some ways it is nice because I do care. Deeply. The thing that is hard is that in some cases there has been a rift and I am just not sure how to bridge that gap. Our lives have taken such different turns. When too much time and distance lie between friends, does the friendship end? God, and anyone else who knows me, knows that my affection does not wax and wane. That my friendship and loyalty are fierce things. But what happens when there is little to talk about? When the art of conversation dies and the tension brought on by different choices is too much for one side or the other to bear?
I was looking at the profile of a former roommate on Facebook. My heart hurts when I think about how tense our relationship was as I was preparing to move on to the next phase of my life. We had both had to make some difficult decisions. Decisions that created distance between us. A schism that has become a chasm, that has become the Grand freakin' Canyon. Do I regret the decision to leave that place? No. Does she regret her decision to stay? I have no idea. Will I miss my friend? Till the day I die. Does she miss me? I don't know. I like to think she does.
I have many memories of faces, times and places that cause me sadness. I have many that bring me joy. Often they are the same memories.
I hope my friend's child, whom I have never met, grows to be a happy, healthy, strong man. Like his father and mother. I hope their marriage is happy and blessed, and long.
I may not be a part of their lives anymore, but they will always be a part of mine. And I am grateful.
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Ranting, Sweet and Sour pork, and slow boats on small lakes
Date: Oct 21st, 2007 3:49:23 pm - Subscribe
Mood: cozy
I've a million things to rant about. Traffic, parking, MSG headaches, my cat jumping on my desk where he knows he isn't allowed. I just don't feel like ranting. Ranting makes for good blogging, though. A blog is a place where average Zhou can vent his spleen with minimal negative consequences. But, really, what positive influence, consequence, well....anything can come out of it??
Bloggers spew forth the unexpurgated version of what they see is truth, often in an angry way. Some of it is truly funny. Some of it is merely poison laid out for world consumption.
I don"t want that. This started out as a rant about a variety of things and my heart just isn't in it.
I had a wonderful day. I am a member of the International Fellowship in my city, and I attended today. I heard a really good message. then I went out for lunch with some friends of mine at this small, dingy restaurant that has some AMAZING Sweet and Sour Pork. Then we headed over to the Water Park. Which is HUGE and lovely. It is not a water park in the American sense of the word. It is a park on the water where you can rent small boats and just go for a boat ride. There is an amusement park there, and a zoo, and a whole bunch of flowers. So we rented a boat and went around on the lake for a bit, and then walked around for a bit, and saw some really cool dioramas about Chinese life during the emperors. It was just really pleasant. My roommate was with me and her niece is visiting. My Chinese, as poor as it is, is still better than Roomie's, so having me along was helpful when it came to ordering food and getting around town. And they seemed to enjoy my company as much as I enjoyed theirs. Starbuck's for dessert. Then shoe shopping for Roomie. The woman had no sneakers!!! I simply cannot imagine going through life without sneakers! More to the point, she is going walking around Beijing later in the week and had no shoes appropriate for the amount of walking she is about to do.
By the time we got home we had walked off the enormous lunch we had. We fixed ourselves some food, and watched "The Two Towers". Then I got to see pictures of her family and the Christmas she spent with her brother in India. the went on a Christmas Day Elephant Ride. No, Really, I saw the pictures of her brother with a Santa hat on, sitting on an elephant.
They were there during the tsunami that tore across the Indian Ocean a couple of years ago. On the beach. Twenty miles to either side of where the villages and beaches were wiped out. Where she was, the waves were just a bit higher than usual. The biggest natural disaster to hit south Asia in recent memory, and she had to move her beach chair. Wild, huh?
Destructo-kitty has been sweet today. He gets really sweet when it is cold and he wants help to stay warm. We are still about three weeks away from the heat being turned on. I had to get out my heavy blanket. Tonight I could hear water rattling in the radiator pipes as the building is getting ready for the winter heating season. There are men on the street selling fresh, roasted chestnuts. My city is famous for them. Winter is coming. I cannot wait.
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Blogging is hard!
Date: Oct 18th, 2007 3:08:16 pm - Subscribe
Mood: bleh
Especially when you are not feeling well and not much is going on. Well, not much exciting. We are winding down to mid term at school, which means that since my conversation classes are only ten weeks long, I will be getting new students, and possibly a new schedule. Eh, just business as usual.
I'm also trying to avoid a case of the flu. I stayed home today and drank hot beverages and slept most of the day because I have been achy and dealing with a low grade fever that refuses to blow into a full blown fever, but also refuses to go away. Just barely on the pleasant side of miserable.
Did I ever mention my MSG allergy? MSG is a flavor enhancer that is universally used in China. It really does make food taste wonderful, and it helps you feel full. I can eat it in small doses, once in awhile. But, lately, for some reason, I have been eating in restaurants, or, staying home and eating instant noodles. Either option packs my system with the MSG. The stuff gives me a migraine. One of which I have had for about three days. Fortunately, it was a mild one. Of course if it had been a bad one, it would have been completely debilitating and only lasted about 36 hours. No, the mild ones last forever.
The bad thing about being sick in China is that they treat you in one of two ways, with massive doses of Chinese traditional medicine, (which isn't all herbal, by the way), or with IV antibiotics for several days. Given the fact that I have no faith in, or clue of what's inside traditional medicines, I would really rather not thank you very much. Really, what does snake bile have to do with curing a runny nose? I am also generally opposed to sitting in a hospital with a needle in my arm for six hours surrounded by people with whom I can't speak. Not to mention the fact that I'm not all that keen on antibiotics anyway. Since most colds and flus are viral, and antibiotics don't do much for viruses.
I tend to treat most illnesses with rest and lots of fluids; give the body what it needs to fight it on its own.
Tomorrow, the Korean Headmaster is buying pizza for all the teachers. Promises to be quite an experience. Pizza in China is very different from pizza in the US. Korean Pizza in China is different on a whole new scale. I once had Korean pizza that had potatoes and mayonnaise on it. It was definitely better than the spicy squid pizza. I'm just hoping that there is some pepperoni out there somewhere.
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Here and there
Date: Oct 11th, 2007 4:25:49 am - Subscribe
One of the hard things about being and expatriate is that I still have to deal with things in the USA. Now granted, this has been made infinitely easier thanks to the internet. I can pay my bills on line, send instructions for how I want things done, I can even make phone calls! I can get money out if my American accounts using an ATM. Things that I would rather handle face to face, with a person whose nametag I can read, I have to either have someone else handle or handle electronically. There is a certain loss of....humanity?...personableness?...relationship? Before I became a teacher I spent fifteen years in customer service. I took pride in the fact that I was able to smooth ruffled feathers and that I had regular customers who I looked forward to seeing and who looked forward to seeing me. My last year in customer service was in a call center for an insurance company. I had no regular customers, no familiar faces, and no personal incentive to serve them well. I would never see them or hear from them again. More than that, on the phone (I'm guilty of this myself), there is a tendency to treat people as though they are some kind of obstacle. Either as the client or the server. Though, I have to admit, having a PERSON answer the phone is far preferable to having to run circles through automated answering services with incomprehensible menus. Especially when you are calling from the far side of the planet in the middle of the night.
China has no real 24 hour services. Well except Mc Donald's and hospitals. There is a joke in there somewhere! I miss not having the freedom to go to Wal Mart at 3:00 in the morning as a cure for insomnia. Granted, I seldom went to Wal Mart at 3am, except when I was working second shift. But to know that If I suddenly developed a need for some kind of medicine I didn't have on hand or some other little necessity, that I could go and get it was comforting. Now the only thing I can do is satisfy the craving for an early morning French fry. Bleah.
However, I find that life here, tho' inconvenient, is really quite interesting. Here I am an English teacher, and a barely passable amatuer
musician, and I am teaching one of my Chinese friends how to play guitar (?!?!?!) in exchange for Chinese tutoring. What the heck is that? Tell you what though, It is forcing me to go back and review what I know about music. So, in the long run, it should be good. Destructo-kitty is crying for attention, and my laundry needs folding.
Ahhhhh, the joys of everyday life come crashing into my reverie.
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