Last night was a goodnight. At first I was just going to call it a night and head home after work because of the -15 C weather we are having in Beijing. However, thanks a series of about 20 emails in 30 minutes, I was entertained and felt the need to go to the Bookworm Pub Quiz with our awesome team of Cassie, Jasmine, Michael (the white American one), and Annie. Let me tell you, nothing truly inspires like a full inbox. And what an inspirational night it was!
Oh man was it worth it! Not only was Cassie in rare form which ensured tons of hilarity, but Annie was pumped, Jasmine was as always entertaining on the subway ride, and I just met Michael but he is good people! After perusing the menu and deciding on nothing, we settled in for the game.
So a quick summary: Team Name: Little Miss Bossy (Cassie was wearing hte shirt and being so) Team attitude: Pumped Quiz Master: Shamus Quiz Master Attitude: Mocking of us Most offensive comment of the night: Calling Israel "those fuckers" Most challenging question: What does Sv stand for when measuring Ocean Current? (Sverdrup) Most entertaining team: Numbats, called Numbnuts by the quizmaster and continually heckled and failed to add correctly. if you can't count, you might not win the quiz...
Well, after a slow start we stormed into 3rd place and held battling between 3rd and 4th until the last round. This round was worth double and we were in spitting distance of 1st, but really, top 3 all win booze, so that's all that mattered. After holding strong we pulled out 13 points, and the two teams out in front hit 14, not one else broke 11. Clearly, we had 3rd place, it was exciting.
However, Shamus, the mocking Quiz Master (we had some outspoken Canadians and Americans, so yeah, what do you expect?) failed for the second time tonight (he had asked "why not invade Canada, you know, make it the 52 state?") and couldn't count. He declared at tie for 3rd place, when in fact the two teams he was talking about were neither tied nor in 3rd place. After a brief confusion, we established our rightful place, won some Tsingtao and headed home. Yeah, we rock. There is a victory video to come soon.
As always the ride home with Jasmine was highly entertaining. Sadly there was no talk about dating people with tails :-( but that is a conversation for another blog.
I'm going to go ahead and suggest the Monday night pub quiz at the Bookworm to all you Beijingers. Its a little brainy then most, but the crowd is rowdy and the place doesn't get smoky, a double whammy!
After that night, its right back to work this morning. As always, it starts with seeing what the buzz in the world of web design is. Today there was quite a bit that really irked me. I mean, I understand "optimizing" my website because it is in my job description, but really, I don't think of my job as Search Engine Optimization. Instead I think of it as making the website work. The goal is not to make the website appealing to Googlebot and other spiders, because really they can't buy anything! Instead, make it usable and friendly to the person on the other computer and while doing that, make sure it doesn't suck in a search engine. End User first, Google, Baidu, Yahoo!, Live, or whatever you use second.
For this reason, I found this article to be helpful in explaining what I mean:
It is a good article, and the first section hits it pretty well:
Search Engine Friendly Design
Developing your site to be "search engine friendly" is one aspect of SEO best practices. The idea is to simply design your site so that the visiting robot can read and take notes (or index) all relevant aspects of each page of your site.
If your site is designed poorly or doesn't have links to all of your pages, then the robot will bypass those pages and only report on what it sees. Designing your entire site with Flash or using images in place of text are great ways to be mostly "invisible" to search engines, because the robots can't accurately read Flash content or text embedded in an image (yet).
Its not saying to design your website for the Search Engines, just make sure they can use your site. After that I think it goes down hill quite a bit. I think if you want a better understanding of using the tags you should check out this article which gives a better idea of relative importance:
So with those thoughts in mind I decided to take a look at how I'm titling my blog and what labels I'm tossing on it. Given I don't have access to all the tags like I normally would, so this is just a test to see what happens. Currently I'm going through about 2,000 of these tags and its oh so fun and exciting! (if i seem cranky now you'll know why!)
Moral of the story, ignore the idiots who say design your website for a SERPs. Instead, make a great website and keep on top of what search engines want as you go, so you don't make someone go through and edit them all individually.
This brings me to my next point. Why is the Busby SEO Test asking for first place in Google? As a professional web development team, they would know that getting the user to the site is only half the battle. Wouldn't the Busby SEO Test be better to create a specific conversion task to measure the best SEO? I haven't thought too hard about what I would make the conversion goal because you don't want it to be something the designers can cheat on, but I'm sure you can create an error-proof conversion goal that would making any cheating trackable at least.
Been a while since I posted any good content. So here goes a brief update. First off, its really frigging' cold in Beijing, like -15 C cold. As in going outside is a great way to practice my Chinese cursing cold. Let me tell you I really miss Steve (my Prius) at times like this, when I'm walking outside for 15-30 minutes. But even with the cold, I've been braving the outside world to get stuff done.
First off, as I said, I've got water polo and its great. The team is to my knowledge the only team in Beijing. I am amazingly lucky to be training with them even if it is what it is. For me this means there is no English at practice and I miss most of the good practices. I generally get to the conditioning for about 10 hours a week and play for 4. They are together for 28-30hours a week. They are all pretty jacked and the only group of Chinese guys that I've seen walking around with 6 packs. To get an idea of what its like without giving away any of the Coaches methods, we get to tread water for 300M holding a 20Kg weight on a regular basis and they absolutely love 800's pull with paddles before busting out some swim sets, you know, like 400's fly. Oh and its long course... they are pretty phenomenal athletes.
The only problem with this whole thing is my knee. Normally a knee might look something like this:
the problem is, my knee looks more like this
Basically this isn't stopping me, but it means I spend a lot of time icing and it pain. As Russ so nicely informed me "Some people treat their bodies like a temple, you treat yours like an amusement park." Its true, but I do rather enjoy it.
Outside of water polo, I've been dealing with the revolving door that is Beijing. This means saying goodbye to friends who I've made and trying to make new ones. On a positive note, this can mean parties. We hosted a beer pong party which went rather well. It was a jolly good time with friends as me and the roommate put it together. It also meant getting to buy beer from the cute little girl again (technically her parents, I'm sure she would have cut me a better deal). However, it is fun to watch the network grow and shrink and shift and see how small Beijing really is, even when its so giant. Its a truly grand social experiment.
Recently I also visited 798, the art district, with some friends and saw some truly disturbing stuff and some that was pretty cool like this creepy many legged man
Also been spending some quality time just hanging out with the friends and girl. Christmas shopping a little (sorry for those of you in the states, but its not getting shipped now!) and relaxing. More on life in the next post
Sadly, I've got work most of the time. This has been going well. I've been doing more SEO and SEM related activities and less grunt work. I'm slowly starting to get better Chinese. The SEO work is always very interesting for me because its like a big game and seems somewhat like information awareness, something I studied for PWAD. Current I'm working on 3 of our websites as well as the Busby Web Solutions "World Cup 2" for SEO. What this means is that I'm trying to get a high ranking for the phrase Busby SEO Test. However, instead of just pouring myself into the contest I decided I'd try a different route. Quality content and some interesting materials with regular updates and nothing special. I don't plan on winning, but I think it will give me a better understand of creating novel content for Google from an SEO standpoint.
So to give you all at home an idea of what this means for just typing a blog I'll go over the basics. First, you select the keywords you are aiming for, in this case its chosen for me in the form of "Busby SEO Test." After that you want to create a webpage to utilize that word. Normally this involves creating title tags, meta tags, headers, back-links, and other practices. For the case of the blog it means putting relevant content up and making sure you are focused on your keyword. This is both from a density standpoint of the terms as well as pointing it in relevant places on the page itself in useful positions. If the phrase is sitting alone it won't be valued very well unless it is up in a header or title. It looks like you put it there for no reason other then SEO. You also don't want it too look like you are spamming the word. If I said Busby SEO Test 100 times in a row, the spider crawling for Google (Googlebot) would likely consider it spam.
The other beauty of writing this in blog form is that its writing for an audience. Often when people are designing new websites and trying to rank high in search engine rankings (SERPS) they forget that there is an end user. So I get to write for a person, even if I don't have a conversion goal. I'll give you more information on all this later. Back to other work for me. Oh and because I don't know what will happen as each post eventually moves off the front page, I'm going to post this one more time (its important to play by the rules with search engines)
So since part of my job at my internship is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) I spend every morning reading about what's going on in the world of search engines. This means reading about techniques people use (black hat versus white hat), what's going on in the world of search engines (Google's growing market share, Baidu's lawsuits), and whatever else comes up in my various feeds. An interesting one popped up today, and that was Busby Web Solutions. When I looked onto the site I found out that the web development company is having a contest to see who can become number 1 in Google for their chosen term "Busby SEO Test". This peaked my attention, so I read on and took a look at what they're doing and what other sites are doing. I decided why not toss my blog into the game. It has been set to not appear in search engines until about 30 seconds ago. Why not see what some simple type and good content can do against people who are doing this for resumes, publicity, and money.
Which also means a few other things. 1) If you follow this page because you follow me, this will have updates in it regarding this contest 2) if you follow this blog because its interesting or you're my friend and oyu have your own blog/webpage, toss me a link so other people will take a look 3)I'm going to update a lot more often about my life since I can now type my blog at work as work. Yay for updates! 4) you might learn something about Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) if you follow this.
So I'm going to go ahead and post this and leave fresh content for later today. Keep and eye for some posts and information soon.
As much as I am starting to feel like Beijing is home, this weekend, I was super touristy and it was fun.It was a good two and half days of 老外 (laowai-meaning foreigner) fun.It had all the aspects of a tourist weekend that one could ask for, getting lost, not being able to find the simplest of western things, a western holiday, debauchery, broken Chinese, bootleg DVD’s, beautiful Chinese girls, sight seeing, making it painfully obvious that I am a foreigner by my lack of tact, roommate mockery, a sketchy trip, finding something that makes you miss home, and of course pizza. This post is really long and kind of picture crazy
So I’ll start with the epic journey to get Jell-O.And yes I called it epic, because it was.Given it was only epic because I made it epic, but whatever, I had a friggin blast. So I’m sure you’re asking (all two of you), gee Andy, why did you need Jell-O?I’ll tell you, I had a genuinely stupid idea. 4 words.Baijiu Jell-O shots (for those of you who don’t speak Chinese, that is 4).So baijiu is rice wine, which ranks in both the top 5 worst and greatest things to come out of china.Basically, you can buy a bottle for 6 kuai or about $1 which is roughly 60% alcohol and 500ml.The cheapest drunk you’ll ever get.That being said, it is wretched stuff that smells like a hangover… So of course I’ve decided that I need to find a way to make it drinkable.The conclusion, Jell-O shots.I mean it works with everything else, why not this.Here’s the problem, apparently Jell-O isn’t quite that common in China.No worries though, there’s Wal-mart, right?Pshaw.I checked every aisle at Wal-Mart, twice.Two grocery stores and a Korean quickie mart.Nothing.This takes me to Friday, the day the Jell-O is supposed to be eaten.I’m now sitting with 2 bottles of the crappiest liquor in the world, not knowing what to do with it…And then it happens, someone tells me about a western supermarket where she bought Jell-O!Jackpot.At this stage my roommate is already laughing at me, mocking me, and telling me just to quit.My need for Jell-O is being compared to Harold and Kumar needing white castle.Completely illogical and reckless. But I wanted that Jell-O, no I needed it.I didn’t care that it wouldn’t have time to set or that I didn’t know where the store was or that it was way out of the way.I was going, F the consequences.My roommate agreed to get my costume for me (more on this later) and I was going straight from work, to buy Jell-O, to make Jell-O at the party, no dinner, costume, or anything needed for Halloween, just Jell-O.It only took the aid of 3 locals to locate the store and get there.On the last aisle, it shimmered like gold, my Jell-O!The most expensive Jell-O I’ve ever bought, but hey, that’s not saying much, plus it’s imported.I had my treasure and set off to make it. There were no measuring cups and no small glasses to pour it into, so it was professional Jell-O bowls by Andy.Into the freezer they went, because there wasn’t time for proper setting.We needed Jell-O and we needed it now.
As this time, Annie, her friend Jeff(?) and I left to grab a quick dinner before guests arrived.Ironically, as we sit down to eat at an expat restaurant, she points out that they sell Jell-O… I almost cried.There goes 4 hours of my life.In the end though, the 30 minutes in the freezer, 30 in the fridge alternating made some perfectly set Jell-O bowls in just less than 2 hours.Success… sort of.They smelled like crap, but they did the trick.People gathered around will spoons and commenced the eating.One bowl even got tilted up on the roommate as he chugged Jell-O, or at least tried.It was a success, but not one that should ever be repeated unless your goal is to get hammered beyond belief.The babies pack a punch.
So onwards to the rest of Halloween.First off, the party was a success, props to Josh and Annie for pulling if off (we make a sweet team).We even got in trouble for noise once, I felt at home.Someone’s gonna call the RA, shit shit.A few costumes were done really well including a software pirate, which was quite easy and entertaining, a crash test mummy, a little mermaid, and a devil wearing Prada.It was a jolly time with much booze and merriment, plus nothing in the fancy apartment got broken, even though it was trashed.
We headed out at about midnight, splitting into some smaller groups.I passed on the 100 kuai club with the crazy party, but I heard it was pretty sweet… if you remembered it, which most didn’t.Instead I opted for the classic Sanlitun, the laowai hang out.This was the first half of an interesting clash of living in China.As I climbed into the cab, I realized I was the only one who wasn’t basically fluent in Chinese and fully functional in society.So I got to be the whitey and sit in the back and not talk to the cabbie and got to be the loud English speaker.I can’t complain, because we got where we going and I got to listen to some Chinese with no real work.We got a few funny looks walking the last stretch, Rich drank some glass, and it was effing cold, but we made it.And then it felt like Halloween.People dressed up, girls looking slutty, people with half-assed costume, and of course someone puking in the street.It was like a mini Franklin st, except this one stays open until at least 5am (suckas!).
We stopped through a few bars and didn’t really need more to drink as some of our drink was already in zombie mode (drunk, not the costume) and eventually I ran into some local AIESEC and got split off from the bulk of the group and headed to the dance floor with them.It made for some entertainment as the dance floor was covered in costumes including both the girls wearing practically nothing (some of the Korean girls were basically naked), guys dressed as girls (at least one got hit on), and of course the awkward grinding as people try to maneuver around an obtrusive an oversized costume.Eventually we managed to reunite with Josh and call it a night, since I was crashing at his place.This was kind of shitty because I missed Cassie aka the little mermaid go straight gangsta.Since kanye west is in town, his DJ was performing and had tickets up for grabs, one was just put up there for someone to take and she dominated some inferior woman and called up by the DJ for the “gangsta” shit she just pulled.I guess I should point out she is Canadian and half Chinese, not your normal gangster where I’m from.
your gangster, mermaid dressing, cave climbing Canadian and the drunk host
Fast forward to the morning, walks of shame galore, and it was great.Not only do foreigners stick out to begin with, but in full costume on a Saturday morning… classic.The funniest to me, may be a certain friend who had to attend Spanish class the next morning, still in outfit which just happened to be a very small Brazilian soccer outfit.At lest she was in the spirit of it all, not decked out in some Man U gear.
Anyways, the morning came, and with it brought a huge amount of cleaning, as always. Oh well, it sucked a little, but life went on. After mopping the floor, we figured out the insanely complex washing machine (the files are in the computer?) and then went into a panic looking for a lost wallet, which had been drunkenly tossed onto a window sill.We then proceeded to return the enormous number of beer bottles for their deposit to Beijing’s version of the beer fairy. This fairy was a 3 year old. She of course was not the one who sold us the beer, but she did in fact greet us and say goodbye in better English than her parents and the majority of the natives I meet.The cutest little girl I’ve seen in ages, and she sells beer… I think I might have to steal her before I come back.
Which brings me to the next thought; you can bargain for about anything in China at a street market. Prices aren’t set unless there is a scanning device (and even then…) so you never know what your gonna get. So the thought is what would happen if we tried to buy a child? If you were selling hats or whatever and I came in and bought a hat and then pointed and said how much for that one, pointing at your child, would you bargain? I mean really this is how I see it going down (English since most of my readers don’t speak Chinese, all 2 of you):
Me: How much for that one?
Owner: 50 kuai
Me:No, not that one, the little thing over there
Owner: Oh that hat, 30 kuai
Me: No the child over there
Owner: My kid?
Me: Yeah, how much to buy him?
Owner: You want to buy my child?
Me: Yeah, how much, he goes really well with this hat and outfit.
Owner: Not for sale
Me: 1000 kuai
Owner: what?
Me: 1100 kuai
Owner:um… 3000 kuai
Me: Too much
Owner: but look at this quality, it’s not a fake
Me: 2000 kuai
Owner: 2500
Me: *starts to walk away* too much, I can find cheaper elsewhere
Owner: Can you do 2200?
Me: turns, done!
Crap, now I have a kid, and really he doesn’t match this belt after all…
Well that’s how I see it going down.
Saturday was the day of recovery, full of broken Chinese as I wandered around. However, it did end with a wonderful bootleg version of Heat (1995). I’m going to take this chance to recommend this movie to you all, it’s pretty awesome. I’m not sure how I’d never heard of it before, especially with the cast and plot. It’s a basic cops and robber movie with a lot of twists. The big names include Al Pacino, Robert Dinero, Ashley Judd, Val Kilmer, John Voight, William Fitchner and Natalie Portman among others. But basically what I took away from the movie is that you don’t fuck with Al Pacino, even if he’s not Scarface, cause he’s always going to be crazy. The other morals of the story are “I may be alone, but I’m not lonely” as well as if you fuck over the people you love, you’ll probably get shot, which sucks.Get your priorities straight.Just warning you, it’s a long movie, but great (although some people did manage to fall asleep during it)
Bring on Sunday, well not really because I was not ready at all. I got a know on the door from the roommate,
“You about ready to roll young?”
“WTF! We’re not supposed to meet them ‘til 1 and its like 15 minutes away.”
“Dude, its 12:30”
“Fuck”
Sometimes I feel like I’m living in 4 funerals and a wedding or pulp fiction. I’m just glad our other roommate doesn’t speak English and can’t follow the huge amount of obscenities we hurl around the place.
Anyways, the reason we were meeting a posse to go to 颐和园 which is the summer palace for those of you who don’t know characters. It’s this really sweet place that’s close and scenic.A nice day trip.This brings me back to the point about hte cab on Halloween. When dividing up cars, we try to split up the Chinese speakers. This time however, I was the only one who really spoke Chinese. There was some broken elsewhere, but in case of a situation, it was time to turn to Andy. Its amazing how quickly I go back and forth from being the kid with hte Dunce cap to the linguist in the group. Beijing is different. Anyways, we got there and we wandered around, they snapped pictures, I was just happy about life in general. I realized how good we’ve got it.The place had some of the cooler buildings I’ve seen, a beautiful, calligraphy created by stones placed into the ground.Generally, it was just pretty amazing.However, the highlight was of course, routed in being stupid.
So walking around one of the islands that had big natural stone walls, we stumbled upon a few caves (well not really, they are next to the path around the edge of the island that everyone walks on) that had bars across them.They looked like prisons.However, there was no way in to them, or so it seemed, so we were confused. Surprise.Then we spotted a whole about 6 feet up that seemed to go into the cave, sure enough, tall boy (that’s me!) looks through, and it does.The train of thought went something like this.I bet I can get through there. Man, would it be weird to climb in? I wonder if I could get out. I might be too fat to get through. How much would it suck to get caught in there? If I just throw my keys in, I’m committed, right?
Meanwhile Cassie, the cool Canadian (can you believe it!?!) girl is telling me to do it. She also insists that she will come as well.Basically, we decide it’s a good idea, because frankly we are stupid. So in we went.We got a nice little crowd of Chinese looking at us like we were idiots (they may have been right)but really, I’ve gone somewhere that basically no one else has, so that’s kinda cool. Plus I looked and felt like I was coming out of the womb on the way out, so that was a nice rebirth. Man, we foreigners are stupid.
After that, we started the trek home.As always in China, the simplest tasks can be an adventure. We went out a different exit than we came in, and there weren’t really any taxis. This kinda sucked given that we were a group of 6 and needed 2. Then we got the common offer, someone will drive us for money. It was a nice sketchy ass van, that he informed us could sit 8. We were six and bargained down to a nice price and moved to go home.This van was a true POS, the seats were just seats in the back that he picked up and arranged for us so we could face each other. It was crammed and we were curious how to fit 2 more in if needs be. Oh well, we made it home alive, barely.
Walking home, I ran into Beng, my Filipina friend. She invited me swimming, which I gladly accepted since I haven’t done it since I got here. It was amazing, but I realized how out of shape I am and how much I miss polo. Here is my pre-made rant about missing water polo.
Living in Beijing is great, but something is missing. The worst part is that I know exactly what it is, water polo. Not being able to play is changing me as a person. I don't have the fire and desire that water polo gives me. The lack of polo is making me a calmer and gentler soul, but not always in a good way. Sometimes I hear what I say and can't believe it came out of my mouth. I feel corny. I've tried substitutes in other sports and working out, but nothing replaces water polo. The desire to play runs deep into my core. I still just want to hop in a pool and rip someone’s head off. I need competition like I need air; it gives me reason to move forward. Even from around the world I hear that Dook is going to nationals and I have no desire greater than to hop in the pool with whatever team they are playing and wreak havoc as well as feeling sweet revenge for the scar on my wrist. And for those of you who have never played, water polo is irreplaceable. I've tried other sports and competition and pushed my body to extremes, but it can't do the trick. Everything else just seems weak and silly. Strength of will and force don't work in other sports the way they do in polo. It's like a grain or rice when I'm starving, a little peck of a kiss when I want you so bad, or only getting to giving an angry look when you just want to rail someone... there is no satisfaction. I ache for water polo, the chance to turn straight through a defender even though I feel the double team crashing hard, or to rip the ball out of some poor hole set's hand and then leaving him dead in the water with a kick off his hip...
Took the old coach for a ride and scored on the Fox, oh the memories
After that it was true western style pizza and good times before bed.Thus I made it to the week and alive.However, here are my slight asides about work.
1.I tried to introduce my co-workers to the words gangster and gangsta, I think I failed, because now they think I am gangsta and I have been referred to as “Gangsta Andy” multiple times.
Andy as a Gangsta
2.So for some reason I’ve been talking about superpowers recently, when I asked my coworker, her response after much thought was to be able to turn anything into money… jeez, not that cool. So I asked her about flying, wouldn’t that be sweet? “Why would I want to be able to fly, we have airplanes.” Priceless, I love china.
3.They have the greatest emoticons here; I have one of one penguin slapping another. It’s great.
And if you read all of this, congrats, if you just skipped to the end to get a pat on the back, well, I’ll give you one anyways, because if your self-esteem is in that much trouble, I’m not gonna be the one to push you over the edge.
Recently I think I figured out why I enjoy it here so much. I feel that Beijing lives and breathes in a way so similar to the way I do. Its an odd feeling. I've heard other people say that they felt a city had a pulse, but i've never really felt that in touch with a place before. I always thought people who said that were slightly crazy, now that i'm included in the group, I know they are. Having lived in a number of places and gone to many schools and gotten to various areas, I rarely feel "at home" or "at peace" the way I do here. There is always something around that makes it hard to live or makes me feel a little out of place. However, in Beijing I feel like I've found and equilibrium and a match. In most areas I feel out of place and that everything is moving at a different pace than me and that every so often I miss a beat because I am moving to fast and don't stop to slow down or things are just odd.
After 4 years in Chapel Hill at UNC I felt at peace and happy with the life there, but every so often I just felt out of place. Some of this may have been the presence of Carrboro trying to turn me into a hippie, or just the unavoidable past that comes with living in a place and changing so drastically over my time there. I mean I love Chapel Hill and so many of the people there, but often there were things that I couldn't get away from and other times I just felt a little too conservative, and i felt like i knew how to disappear there just a little too well. On an aside, I really missed Chapel Hill today. I was thinking about hte summer and my pool. Swim Coaching really is the greatest job in the world and I wish it was something that i could happily do for my entire life. Somedays I wish I had 180 screaming kids, some coaches who were being trouble, and parents with unanswerable questions. Those are the best of days. Today if I could have woken up, coached morning practice, played a round of disc golf with Joey and Sean, gotten some $5 footlongs, played some rock band and gone back to the pool for afternoon practice, relaxed, smoked a hookah, and been back in Beijing in a blink, I would have been ecstatic. That life is blissful. If I could have done that then just been back in Beijing, man, life would be perfect. Life doesn't get much better than that. Oh and ending that aside with another aside, I guess this must be my home now since I think about having a vacation. You don't take vacations from a place you are staying, you take one from where you live. Beijing is home. End aside.
Back to the city. Beijing is something different. While living here, it seems as though everything has slowed down and I can move freely through life with little worrying. My life moves slower even with the faster pace of the big city. I can remember every day and thoughts and moments in ways I couldn't in the past. I'm constantly grinning and happy even as I sit at work or walk through the cold. There is a pulse to every place and every town and I've found one that matches mine, just right. So what does that make Beijing to me? It makes it a place of its own, sitting in its own bubble. Beijing does what it wants, when it wants, how it wants, regardless of what is the norm, accepted or should be done. Yet at the same time this city is constantly positioning it self and maintaining an image and outward display to minimize any negative portrayal. Its a wire-act of really not caring what others think, but maintaining enough credibility and passion that you can get away with this attitude.
Even within Beijing the people are the same. They dance in the parks and laugh and smile. Young couples walk hand in hand just to walk and find a nice place to talk, unaware that couples 50 years older are doing the same (the key difference is that I haven't seen any 60-70 year olds making out on a park bench at 9pm). Every so often I look around and see whats happening and wonder what I would have thought if someone told me this was happening in Beijing when I was in the states. Either way though, I feel like the personality of the city reflects my personality and it feels great. Now if only the smog would clear out...
Outside of these thoughts, the last week or so has been great. As I mentioned before, the weekend was amazing, the best i've had in Beijing thus far. To top it off, we've been working out a Halloween party which should be fun, but more importantly keeps me busy and entertained at work as shit hits the fan and planning goes wrong. So basically, last weekend Annie suggested a Halloween party and josh pseudo volunteered his place. From there, we went to actually meaning it, to holy crap this might take some planning, followed by about 50 facebook messages, half of which was about costumes, and finally settling it with a single phone call (facebook can be such a pain in the ass sometimes). Then we got the entertainment of random people wanting to come because the event showed up on facebook and was closed but not private. However, that leaves a phone number visible which we gave in case people get lost. So we got some random texts asking to come to our event. Flattering, but sketch. Oh, and now its the day before Halloween I still don't have a costume (oh well, this is an annual tradition). It should be good though. Plus, I get the feeling it will be the first Halloween celebration for about half a dozen people, which should be rather entertaining. So for every hour i spend at work, i spend about 10 minutes working on this and laughing. Distractions make the day fly by, you should all find one. My other new one is Twitter (http://twitter.com/foolless), yet another way to screw around on the web, but not as bad as facebook if you're at work.
At work itself, I'm waiting for someone to get back to me, because hopefully i'll be moving up in the world and getting to do some serious "SEO" work which i found rather entertaining. But for now, its been more translations and intern work with the occasional entertaining task or hour spent researching. But if I do get to work on this new project, it'll be awesome. I'll get to work with some smart people all around the corporation and use that brain of mine. I'm stoked. Clearly, I still have quite a bit of nerd in me from my mathlete days, but thinking about optimizing a website and playing the game that is using the google algorhythm and still having a useful and content filled site for users is quite appealing. Damn, I'm a nerd, i need some glasses...
Observations: -When I listen to lil wayne I like to stick my tongue out, this isn't the best idea when walking around the town -i'm becoming a rap addict -having lost your innocence doesn't mean you can't act innocent -you can't play moose with 40's taped to your hands (but yes russ, you are still a champion) -work clothes aren't so bad if a) i get to pick them b) there is no tie c)you're taking them off (its a lot more satisfying to take off a dress shirt with 8 buttons than a t-shirt) -i'm really effing tall
Sunday, October 26, 2008
i've had a big stupid grin on all weekend. I don't know exactly why is started, but I know why its still there. Since thursday, I've been having a great time, not much sleep, but a great time. I forgot how much I miss good one-on-one conversations that make you forget what time it is. I had quite a few this weekend with some friends both old (by my standards) and new. Have a couple of drinks and laugh. Also, my roommate was so drunk he didn't recognize me, which was hilarious, so we just ran off. Plus, i got to watch harold and kumar on a big tv at like 3am from a comfy couch, which made me feel like i was sitting stateside. Sadly, i slept til 4pm and missed some ultimate and catching up with some pengyou, but w/e, it was all good. So then there was a trainee (thats me) event with the local chapter. Well, I rushed to get there are on time, ha! I was the only trainee for the first 3 hours. But you know what, that was cool. i got to meet the new @ers and practice some chinese. We kicked some spring thing with feathers around, got some grub and went to Houhai. Its beautiful and unique there, and it has bars. So we settled in on some sofa's and i was responsible for drinking for all the trainees since no one else came. I played some chinese drinking games, introduced circle of death, and got to know some more of the new ones and actually remembered names! it was a blast. about half the party 10 of us continued on to Mix a 3 story club warehouse type place. it was a bit pricey, but lots of fun. It was nice having a big group including chinese and girls so it wasn't tall awkward white boy, per usual. The night ended well and I woke up smiling for another great day.
Being carefree is a blast and I'm loving it here. Best wishes to all of you who are still reading (and those who aren't for that matter). And to my beijingers, hope to see you soon ;-) If i'm rambling too much, sorry.
So I realized that over a third of my classes at UNC were foreign languages.I’m bad at foreign languages, so much that I would say it is my worst subject in school, ever.Oh and now I’m living in China trying to learn a foreign language. What am I thinking?I kill my GPA and take a job based on my weakness, I must be an idiot. Oh well.More generally it made me realize that I have a bad habit of quitting the things in life that I am naturally talented at and sticking with the ones I’m bad at.Swimming, math, my creative writing minor, and generally anything I excel at beyond normal levels.Hell, even in the little things like Freecell vs. Spider Solitaire on my comptur, I ditch the 39 win streak on Freecell to play the latter.And now I play ultimate Frisbee and learn Chinese and am working SEO, something basically brandnew to me.I must be a fool or a masochist.
So this post is a little more about my life and little less about china, since there is way too much to write if I let them combine. The China one with beerfest update, Frisbee, company soccer, work, and that good stuff should be up in a day or so. You can wait if you don’t care about the inner workings of my mind. Personally, I think this is a dangerous thing to read, so much that I won’t proofread, so I apologize. So here is what I’ve been thinking, how I’ve been living, and generally the mind of Andy versus Andy in China.
Basically, I have tons of time to think and just kind of be because I can zone out whenever I want since I can turn off my ability to understand the language like it’s a light switch. This ability in itself has intrigued me. An interesting thing to do is try to listen to a language as just sounds not as words. Depending on your level, you can’t do it. English can’t just be sounds anymore, it’s strange to not be able to break down and ignore focused word. I’m remember learning about this is AP Psych but I never really thought twice about it. However, trying to do it now I realized I really can’t. With Chinese I’m still capable. For a while I believed that thinking in language was the true sign of fluency, but I believe this is a much better demonstration. When one has reached the point where a language is truly a language and no longer sounds being converted slowly by ones language facilities. Yeah, so the human mind is a pretty cool thing, with the triggers and safeguards we’ve got wired in.
Elsewhere in life I’ve done pretty well falling into a few bad habits, primarily making an ass of myself and not knowing when to shut up, oh and being slightly hypocritical at times. Not really any surprise there, but for those of you who know me better than you should, it’s a well known fact that I’m the only one who can get under my own skin. I generally lack shame and really don’t let other people’s judgment bother me. However, if I do something that I feel ashamed of, or feel bad about, I just want to crawl into bed and never come out. Own worst enemy/critic. And for that reason, I’m OCD about apologizing about some things and forget to about others. Either way I’m going to rant about all that good stuff right about now. We’ll start with the general making a fool/ass/moron/idiot/whatever you prefer to call it of myself.
I have a bad habit of generally just acting like a fool and not realizing it. This issue is much greater in China where I stand out being foreign, a giant, and generally much cruder because of my American background (for those of you who haven’t ever left the states, we really aren’t at all PC and are very rude and crude by most standards, much more than expected). So when I’m around certain people (my roommate, certain Australians, and generally white people) I get carried away with western humor and this just builds on itself since it is generally pent up and built up humor that has been held in pretty well and long, so its vulgar even by my standards (yes, that is possible). The issue is not so much the humor, I have a good time, it is moreso getting caught up thinking that no one understands it. I know (this ties into the hypocritical thing) that I should assume that a lot of the Chinese understand English, because I get pissed when they assume I don’t speak any Chinese and am an idiot. So I try to, but sometimes I get caught up. However, evne thinking they understand, I generally assume that they won’t get all the references and humor and slang even if they speak English (this is true) because English language training and even living in the states for a year or so doesn’t really help with this. So in general this is a true and safe bet, I mean half the people in the states think I’m speaking a different language at times (i.e. if I’m talking about working that up-do and how ri-dik-alous tha back of yah head is or referencing Towely getting high). However, about 1 in 100 times someone understands, and frankly that sucks if it is the one time you happen to be talking about people around you. Needless to say this has happened, however ironically she said something to her friend in Chinese saying that we were talking about them thinking I wouldn’t understand, so the conversation quickly ended before anything truly dumb was said. In the end, lesson learned, for now… or just talk in Spanish?
As for not knowing when to shut up, that’s nothing new to me as you all know. Damn… so this is mostly done randomly, but done when drinking I really f*ck up. So yeah, did that again when I said I wouldn’t. Basically this is an apology. You know who you are if I said something stupid and shouldn’t have, so sorry. No details this time.
Random aside- if you say something stupid you shouldn’t, is it still bad if its true? Lets say you tell someone their fat and they get offended, but he/she is standing 5’2” 280lbs? Or what if you tell someone you really don’t like them, and you don’t? What about a situation just sucking and you tell them? The truth hurts I know, but is it better to tell and seem a jerk or to lie and be nice. I know sometimes people need a friend, but normally I feel like the truth is the best route, however lately I’ve wanted to lie, because the truth leaves me feeling like an ass when I wake up in the morning.
Outside of this, I’ve been thinking about life so much as of late. I get lots of opportunities to talk about it since people want to know about my life and past and my views and opinions and my lack of commas in sentences. Also I’ve been re-reading brave new world, revisited edition. I question what happiness is for myself and those around me. Really, what I’ve come down to is that I really am a weirdo. And yes, I know people have been telling me this for years, but it took me a while to accept. I mean I really am way too carefree and rely far more on fate and the ability to scramble then I should. Plus I really have motivation to do most things. I really don’t even know why I came to China. I mean learning Chinese was a plus, but what it comes down to is that I just was like, that seems like a decent idea, and then just ran full speed with it. I really don’t function through the normal motivations of money and promotion or working for a greater good in the sense of a nation or religion at the moment. I believe in a greater good for humanity and the world I can influence, but I’m not currently striving for a bigger picture. Yet I am exceedingly happy and this doesn’t bother me at all. I’m happy to be where I am in life and feel good.
I’m not sure why, but this has led to me giving lots of advice and apparently being good at it. My guess is that I can be pretty objective and really put myself in any shoes and think about the best outcome for the person’s situation, not just themselves. I think it might be the impersonal calculations and the fact that I look at it all like a big math or economics equation. I even assign some values in my head just to hold places. I wonder if others look at this all so mathematically or is emotion always over involved (women i'm talking to you :-p) Now I just have to learn to take my own advice and stop acting a fool.
This has creeped me out to a degree because I reading brave new world again and I feel like I’m the main character Bernard except really happy, or just on Soma all the time. Basically, I’ve the cynical character who can’t accept the conditioned world except I’m drugged up. But hey, at least he has hot Lenina for a while.
Ramblings aside, on a scale of 1-10 of happy, I think my last year has been about an 8.5 and I doubt I’ve dipped below a 5 even at the worst of moments, had you told me this in high school, I would have been disgusted at myself. Yet I can’t even count the number of days that were a 10. Life is good, so smile like you mean it.
And the music of the moment, since music is so vital in my life: Top 3 Albums: Red Album-Weezer, Chronic 2001- Dr Dre, White Teeth-Nine Inch Nails Top 3 (edit-5)random songs: Reedemer-Marlyn Manson, Mr. Carter- Lil Wayne, Damn it feels good to be a gangsta-ghetto boys ,Smile like you mean it-The killers, Runnin’-Tupac and Biggie
I love... -having the best meal of my life for 22rmb ($3.50) over 3 courses -hospitality of people who will be interacting with you long term -sharing culture among co-workers -the smiles from the elderly -offered help from strangers -having strangers ask me for directions even though I clearly don't belong -the weather (pretty in the rain) -hole in the wall restaurants -the unity among expats -beijing ultimate -the stares (i've moved past them and now just feel cool) -walking everywehre -riding the subway like its a surf board -street food -cheap beer -funny drunk chinese girls who just love white boys but can't speak enough english to tell you without writing it down -being in a rhythm -simplicity -learning chinese without trying -being told i'm a good dancer! -the hilarious nature of my new roommate Andrew -there being about a dozen andy/andrew's around... -Faerie (Cheng Chen -程晨) and Summer (Wang Jing王璟)at work laughing -Staring blankly because I have no idea what is going on -Staring blankly but actually knowing what is going on! ;-) -AIESEC events -Feeling bigger than ever before and almost feeling fat -Discussions with Talia about being fat and laughing at it -working out and getting stared at -feeling like I am actually in better shape than I have been in a long time -spicy food -watching this late night nature show that has no talking, just sound effects, greatest show ever -watching old cartoons like DBZ I know so well that I can learn chinese by watching -talking about international relations with people from all over the world -picking out people by accents -watching couples just walk and talk -old people dancing in the park at night -these sweet 2 wheel skateboards all the kids have! -watching 50+ yr. olds do tai chi, knowing half of them could probably beat my ass -Beach Hat Tournaments -Massages and being walked on -Propaganda -Traffic laws and the lack there of -Bimbo baked goods -Bargaining -Buying books for $1 -broken conversations -being laughed at by 8 year olds for my chinese skills -much more
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