Day #48
Funds: Much the same as last time
Location: ditto.
Michael got right into the Christmas spirit!
Argh so ok tons to write about that happened in the last 4 days, fortunately I took lotsa photos this time round ...
So Christmas Eve comes around and we had class as usual. Nothing too exciting there. Then I skipped my tute to practice for the talent show. The fruits of my labour can be viewed here [http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=52132336213&subj=637056881] provided you have facebook. I'll say it went alright, but I could have done a little better. I could have sounded a lot worse though, and reactions from my classmates were overall positive. There's this dude we call Waiguoren (literally, "Foreigner", because he's from Pakenham, loves his bogan accent and makes it his business to stick out as much as possible around here) who just kinda stared at me for 10 seconds before finally saying "you should be busking!" ... that was my favourite comment. It normally doesn't take Waiguoren 10 seconds to think of something to say. I was nervous, as usual, but somehow doing that was easier than my last oral presentation. My theory is I practiced the absolute bejeezus out of the piece I wrote for the talent show, and the oral I'd just finished writing a minute or so before I stood up in front of my class.
When the act was done, I met my tutor from last time! Tutors take us for the last hour of a day, and are generally Linguistics postgrads and such. Mia remembered me from 2 years ago when she saw me playing the flute. I recognised her the instant she came running out of nowhere yelling "MIIIIIIICHAAAAAAAAAAEL!!!" So that was nice. She was like "I teach English at this Uni now!!!" and I was all "Oh. I'm still the same type of student as last time." Hahaha. I never thought I'd see her again. How awesome.
So we bailed on the talent show early. As a result I have no idea if I won anything. I was just SO hungry!!! Miranda came to watch me and had her guitar from something she did earlier in the day, so we brought it with us to the little Muslim restaurant that all the Monash students seem to like eating at so much. Sam bumped into us randomly and had dinner with us. The two of them play left-handed guitar so they had a lot to talk about, the sum of which saw us singing to their music (first a piece Miranda wrote and Sam played "I'm a believer") in said tiny restaurant. The chefs applauded them. =D Having gotten well and truly into the mood, I found some leftover lyric sheets from the carolling night in Miranda's guitar case. From there we paid our bill, and sang carols as we walked back to the guesthouse, and up the elevator. Somebody with a Christmas hat joined in until he got to his floor. Lenny saw us and ran away. He came back shortly with another guitar and joined as for the whole rest of the night! Zara and Adam came out of nowhere as well. Somewhere in the middle of all this I got a text from Monica saying "Christmas time is family time! Come drink with us!!!" but we all reasoned that, going out to not-all-that-exciting clubs with cheap drinks had been done before and hardly appealed to any of us, what we'd got caught up in doing was Christmassy, and had possibly never been done before at SISU ^^
We rode the elevator up and down a few times, getting people in on our act, then we sat around the hall for a half hour or so. Some people joined us, some people filmed us. An American actually thanked us and said it hadn't felt like Christmas til he heard us. Security came around midnight to tell us to calm down and we wished him a Merry Christmas. First time I ever saw a security guard smile here =D
Then we saw Miranda off into a taxi. Now that we were outside we felt like walking and singing again. People in shops smiled at us crazy foreigners and waved back at us. Within 10 minutes 4 random local Chinese girls had jumped out of their taxi and joined us. It seemed like I was the only one of us aware that we'd never seen these people before, the others all assumed one of us knew them xD They feature in photos on facebook also.
So yeah, haha good night that was.
Christmas day, Dylan let me use his computer for Skype, which meant I could talk to NANA and AUNTIES and Mum and DAD and Dude n J'Mak! Hooray! I only got an hours sleep between eve and day so I felt that throughout. We were at an all-you-can-eat buffet place that was built like a crazy elaborate food court. Look at THOSE photos cos seriously, the place had to be seen to be believed. 200RMB (approx $AUS50) to get in and that was all we had to worry about. Well that and exploding. As you all know, I do that sometimes. Awwww my aching Christmas Gut! It was a bit weird eating all that dessert without Uncle Lorry there egging me on though.
The majority of Monash students were there and we all fit comfortably. A girl from my class arranged the whole thing. Good on her! Oh and The Jie Ke (Jack) dressed as Skanky Mrs Claus. He enjoyed it far too much! After we all went back to SISU to try and watch a movie but I fell asleep =[
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Internet's Hasaam and Dandy
Day #44
Funds: $6200ish
Location: ... SISU Guesthouse ... STILL ...
Michael should really get started on the next essay now that the first essay is finished.
Those of you paying attention to my funds track may have become a little confused by some discrepencies. While it is possible to live relatively cheaply in China (Shanghai being one of the pricier zones) my figures so far may have been a tad misleading. Somehow I managed to miscalculate my annual leave, which was a nice surprise since it turns out I UNDERestimated it considerably. I don't think I'm getting any more money from Casey Cardinia though, but still, I'm a couple hundred ahead of where I thought I'd be when I planned this out. I guess, I still haven't bought Christmas presents, and SISU kindly gave us a teeny stipend to cover the rise in cost of accomodation (250RMB each, like $AUS60abouts) of course this didn't cover the huge difference caused by the market crash everyone's over sooking about, so I'm really surprised the money's been sitting this quietly. I've mostly stuck to my 150RMB/day thing pretty strongly, which is easy enough since 20 kuai ("bucks") for a decent meal is about average, and this course has mostly left me a bit too knackered from sheer crappiness.
It's not really an intensive course by design, it's just the year's course at Monash, crammed into days instead of weeks. I have completely lost the ability to sustain interest in certain classes. And the content of our textbook ... ugh. Amanda Chan, if you're still keeping up with these entries, we're doing the exact same texts as you did. I even remember you mentioning an argument with somebody about the silly man who let his woman go to save face.
Mostly, it's the same chapter, over and over. No new grammar, which is what always gets me excited (don't judge me!), even though it's not like we know everything there is to know about Mandarin morphosyntax, just a list of new words. Every (artificial) dialogue in this book centres around the premise that Chinese people are super-awesome, super-polite friendly people who could never directly say anything that could even slightly offend their apparently terribly sensitive friends, and white people are pretty ignorant and come from a fairly empty culture, since all the foreign characters always need basic concepts explained like "the teacher saying your handwriting could be improved means he WANTS you to improve your handwriting!!! He's just too polite to say so!!!" To this, replies the white man in my book, "ohhhh. Shit. I completely ignored that and assumed my essay was awesome. How foolish of me! How wonderfully intricate is this elaborate system of ettiquette!!!"
Have I mentioned I loathe our textbook? The teachers are wonderful though. Our guy is really animated and enjoys making jokes and physically acting out words that he has trouble describing using other Chinese words. My tutor is as adorable as a 12 year old and is really patient with me and all my little oddities. She's more than willing to just sit and have a chat (in Chinese of course) about pretty much anything, so I have brought up absolutely everything I could think of to avoid The Book. Usually I just bring up Chinese culture that I'm at least vaguely familiar with (today we had an argument about whether Qiao Feng or Duan Yu was the best character on Tian Long Ba Bu, Qiao Feng being the manliest mo'fo ever to appear in a Wu Xia drama, Duan Yu being a dumbarse pretty-boy prince who tends to find out an inopportune moments that his current love interest is actually his half-sister). Sometimes I have to go to other extremes, once I found myself singing Qiu Ai Ge (the first song I did at my 21st ==") to prompt her into singing for us and another time played Love For a Thousand Years (very popular Chinese song) on my flute to stall - although to be fair the flute was with me cos I had to go to Miranda's straight after to practise for the Christmas Carols.
Oh the carolling, it was awesome ^^ Photos and locales are together on facebook, it was a good night. Miranda is really good on her guitar considering she's not even been playing a full year yet. Lenny, Sue Kim and Eric came with me, it was Miranda's church group's thing but the four of us Monash kids made up nearly a quarter of the group hehe. Church people are so nice and so much fun around Christmastime ^^
Doing essays with Monica (think Michelle Chew only slightly lighter and classier ... but not by much) is a BAD idea. Combined, we have the attention span of a single caffeinated squirrel. That has A.D.D.. We tend to take several hours to do a couple sentences each here and there. Essays with Lian, however, is a GOOD idea. Her Chinese is really good and she's really good for bouncing ideas back and forth with. Problem is, Monica and my behaviour seems to keep driving her to politely leave us to do her own essay elsewhere =[
So many characters on this trip ... argh I could never do them all justice in a silly little blog. There's something really weird about seeing the same people every moment of every day, it's rare to even get more than a single hour to yourself, even when you sleep there's another guy lying two feet away usually. It's not like people are clinging to eachother or anything, it's more that we just don't want to miss anything. I wish I were capable of doing what Quincy does, which is when he feels like he's sort of had enough, he just ignores everyone and if approached, stares at the floor and says in a vaguely apologetic tone: "I'm not ... socialising" XD
Lots of silly little gossip too. Me and Monica are enjoying the idea that there's rumours going on about us cos we usually hang out and have noticed people noticing. Sunday night we had another failed essay-writing session that saw us in bed at 7am and so we both just gave our essays to Lian to hand up and went to bed ... people did notice and comment on the fact that we both skipped class on the same day, which we find hilarious. (Although the teacher was more focused on the fact that I was probably dying from hypothermia or something, apparently she said something like "Well I hope he puts on a jumper from now on!") I look forward to hearing what certain people are going to make of me when Joy shows up IN A MERE SEVEN DAYS.
Merry Jingly To All! Doubt I'll get another blog in before Christmas, although I'll definitely have more photos put up soon.
Oh and tomorrow's my big night, me n Marcello gonna see what we can do. Starting to feel a bit nervous hehe. Hopefully I'll have that video up for everyone soon too.
Funds: $6200ish
Location: ... SISU Guesthouse ... STILL ...
Michael should really get started on the next essay now that the first essay is finished.
Those of you paying attention to my funds track may have become a little confused by some discrepencies. While it is possible to live relatively cheaply in China (Shanghai being one of the pricier zones) my figures so far may have been a tad misleading. Somehow I managed to miscalculate my annual leave, which was a nice surprise since it turns out I UNDERestimated it considerably. I don't think I'm getting any more money from Casey Cardinia though, but still, I'm a couple hundred ahead of where I thought I'd be when I planned this out. I guess, I still haven't bought Christmas presents, and SISU kindly gave us a teeny stipend to cover the rise in cost of accomodation (250RMB each, like $AUS60abouts) of course this didn't cover the huge difference caused by the market crash everyone's over sooking about, so I'm really surprised the money's been sitting this quietly. I've mostly stuck to my 150RMB/day thing pretty strongly, which is easy enough since 20 kuai ("bucks") for a decent meal is about average, and this course has mostly left me a bit too knackered from sheer crappiness.
It's not really an intensive course by design, it's just the year's course at Monash, crammed into days instead of weeks. I have completely lost the ability to sustain interest in certain classes. And the content of our textbook ... ugh. Amanda Chan, if you're still keeping up with these entries, we're doing the exact same texts as you did. I even remember you mentioning an argument with somebody about the silly man who let his woman go to save face.
Mostly, it's the same chapter, over and over. No new grammar, which is what always gets me excited (don't judge me!), even though it's not like we know everything there is to know about Mandarin morphosyntax, just a list of new words. Every (artificial) dialogue in this book centres around the premise that Chinese people are super-awesome, super-polite friendly people who could never directly say anything that could even slightly offend their apparently terribly sensitive friends, and white people are pretty ignorant and come from a fairly empty culture, since all the foreign characters always need basic concepts explained like "the teacher saying your handwriting could be improved means he WANTS you to improve your handwriting!!! He's just too polite to say so!!!" To this, replies the white man in my book, "ohhhh. Shit. I completely ignored that and assumed my essay was awesome. How foolish of me! How wonderfully intricate is this elaborate system of ettiquette!!!"
Have I mentioned I loathe our textbook? The teachers are wonderful though. Our guy is really animated and enjoys making jokes and physically acting out words that he has trouble describing using other Chinese words. My tutor is as adorable as a 12 year old and is really patient with me and all my little oddities. She's more than willing to just sit and have a chat (in Chinese of course) about pretty much anything, so I have brought up absolutely everything I could think of to avoid The Book. Usually I just bring up Chinese culture that I'm at least vaguely familiar with (today we had an argument about whether Qiao Feng or Duan Yu was the best character on Tian Long Ba Bu, Qiao Feng being the manliest mo'fo ever to appear in a Wu Xia drama, Duan Yu being a dumbarse pretty-boy prince who tends to find out an inopportune moments that his current love interest is actually his half-sister). Sometimes I have to go to other extremes, once I found myself singing Qiu Ai Ge (the first song I did at my 21st ==") to prompt her into singing for us and another time played Love For a Thousand Years (very popular Chinese song) on my flute to stall - although to be fair the flute was with me cos I had to go to Miranda's straight after to practise for the Christmas Carols.
Oh the carolling, it was awesome ^^ Photos and locales are together on facebook, it was a good night. Miranda is really good on her guitar considering she's not even been playing a full year yet. Lenny, Sue Kim and Eric came with me, it was Miranda's church group's thing but the four of us Monash kids made up nearly a quarter of the group hehe. Church people are so nice and so much fun around Christmastime ^^
Doing essays with Monica (think Michelle Chew only slightly lighter and classier ... but not by much) is a BAD idea. Combined, we have the attention span of a single caffeinated squirrel. That has A.D.D.. We tend to take several hours to do a couple sentences each here and there. Essays with Lian, however, is a GOOD idea. Her Chinese is really good and she's really good for bouncing ideas back and forth with. Problem is, Monica and my behaviour seems to keep driving her to politely leave us to do her own essay elsewhere =[
So many characters on this trip ... argh I could never do them all justice in a silly little blog. There's something really weird about seeing the same people every moment of every day, it's rare to even get more than a single hour to yourself, even when you sleep there's another guy lying two feet away usually. It's not like people are clinging to eachother or anything, it's more that we just don't want to miss anything. I wish I were capable of doing what Quincy does, which is when he feels like he's sort of had enough, he just ignores everyone and if approached, stares at the floor and says in a vaguely apologetic tone: "I'm not ... socialising" XD
Lots of silly little gossip too. Me and Monica are enjoying the idea that there's rumours going on about us cos we usually hang out and have noticed people noticing. Sunday night we had another failed essay-writing session that saw us in bed at 7am and so we both just gave our essays to Lian to hand up and went to bed ... people did notice and comment on the fact that we both skipped class on the same day, which we find hilarious. (Although the teacher was more focused on the fact that I was probably dying from hypothermia or something, apparently she said something like "Well I hope he puts on a jumper from now on!") I look forward to hearing what certain people are going to make of me when Joy shows up IN A MERE SEVEN DAYS.
Merry Jingly To All! Doubt I'll get another blog in before Christmas, although I'll definitely have more photos put up soon.
Oh and tomorrow's my big night, me n Marcello gonna see what we can do. Starting to feel a bit nervous hehe. Hopefully I'll have that video up for everyone soon too.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
I Am Eighty-Hasaam =]
Day #39
Funds: $6300ish
Sorry, internet problems. Still got em. Dunno when the next entry'll be. Want my damn net back damnit!!!
Ok! Lu Xun Park! All young white people should go to work out there!
Have I mentioned the public gyms? In parks in Shanghai and HK where we would have playgrounds for kids, they have gyms for old people. Some of these guys are insane. Upon seeing myself (in all my t-shirted and sandal-ed glory), Dylan (fairly standard-looking white guy, no disfiguring scars or the like) and Lenny (part EVERYTHING born in Singapore and sporting a mohawk), we were immediately approached. Lenny is a tank. I believe I have mentioned this before. So anyway I was the first to cop it. People here have decided I'm insane for two reasons:
1. I don't eat meat. Asking "does this have meat in it?" never gets an answer, just a confused look. I must always clarify it with an "i don't eat meat" which will be met with an even more confused, slightly horrified expression, but this can all be settled if I then follow up with "so does this have meat? I don't want to eat any meat." (And then they serve me chicken, pronounced "ji-rou" because THAT has no meat/"rou" in it =S)
2. I very rarely wear more than one layer. As you all know I have quite a speedy metabolism or something which results in me sweating like some sort of a chocolate rabbit upon any sort of physical activity, turns out whatever the deal with that is, it also causes me to be pretty warm pretty much all the time. We haven't gotten too bad, just single digits (someone tried to tell me we'd hit zero degrees one time, wasn't sure that was true), but while lots of other people are up to 3 layers, I still can't hack wearing so much. I have practically memorised the conversation where some old Chinese person freaks out and demands to know why I'm not cold then proceeds to tell me I'm awesome or something.
So obviously the 1st one didn't come up but that damned 2nd point was mighty topical for a while. While I got caught up in the conversation, Lenny and Dylan snuck off to try and do some dips n chin-ups etc. This also caught the attention of my new friends. Lenny, massive guy, was struggling to get as many dips in as he could, and he was doing them nice and slow. This guy comes up to him, and is all "Nah sonny you're doing it wrong" then immediately launched into about 5 times as many as Lenny had done in half the time. Then he dropped, all the old people clapped, and he yelled the now immortal words, "WO SHI BA SHI BA SUI!!!" (I AM 88 YEARS OLD!!!) Everyone clapped. Then some guy appeared on the same monkey bars as Dylan. He lifted himself up using only two fingers on each hand and thrashed Dylan in a similar fashion.
I gotta admit, I'm a TEENY bit proud of the next bit ^^ So finally I make it clear that I wanna try some sort of exercise when this old dude maybe a foot shorter than me came out of nowhere and said a bunch of stuff, the only part I really got being "Let's have a competition! I challenge you!" Next thing I know, dudeman is standing on his head, using one thumb and one finger on each hand for balance, as far away from his head as possible (the further away the more strength and focus is needed). So I'm thinking, haha awesome what were the odds I'd get a chance to show off? Then I was upside-down, too. That got a lot of applause actually. I noticed his arms reached out a lot farther than mine. I hoped nobody else did. Thing is, I never tried any fancy stuff before like using only one finger and one thumb for balance, but for those who didn't know I can generally stay on my head indefinitely, until I get bored, so I really wasn't sure what to expect in terms of a challenge. I never lost this game with Mishy or Neo. Then my LaoRival started doing all this weird stuff with his legs, like stretching and kicking them and stuff. I tried to copy him, fell over instantly. The crowd clapped some more and one person tried to console me. Then a second person came to translate from the first guy's Shanghainese into Mandarin. Then I caught my LaoRival with his legs folded in the lotus position (i.e., like a genie, or in meditation). He lifted himself straight up like this and balanced on his hands. I followed suit, and then he started going up and down like it was push-ups or something. So I fell over again and everyone started clapping. "WO SHI BA SHI BA SUI!!!" he yelled again. Then he felt like a bit of a chat.
"How old are you?"
"Aw I'm just 21."
"Wahahahaha! So young! No wonder you suck and are so weak and stuff! Don't worry, you'll get there!"
"Ahah, um, thanks ... How can you do that?"
[LaoRival strikes dramatic tai chi kinda pose and takes a few deep controlled breaths]
"It's qi gong (breathing/energy power)"
[Mykal mimics pose, LaoRival lights a cigarette and starts rambling in between draughts way too fast for Mykal to understand anything past "yeah, breathing control and power is important, oxygen gives us strength"] It was around this point that I realised about a quarter of the old folks at this park were smoking while they worked out like madmen. We left with our tails between our legs.
Had a good coupla weeks besides just that. Lots of fun stuff, some of it in a sort of you-had-to-be-there kinda way. Been studying reasonably hard, even though perhaps my conduct in class may not reflect that and I could be better behaved. My contributions to class discussion (in Chinese of course) have basically centred around how I really enjoy the food that I brought to class and am perhaps eating a little noisily, would he like some, how no sir, i'm not cold, this weather isn't so bad, how i hate wearing shoes so i don't if I can avoid it, and how it doesn't matter what Ivy says to win my heart, she is a vampire, and has no chance with me. Probably just as well I'm sharing the position of Class Rep with Claire, she does all the fun stuff I don't find interesting, like arranging christmas parties and all, while I do lots of interesting things that she might not have found fun, like running around making sure photocopies of revision sheets essential for exam preparation are available to our class more than 30 hours before the exam itself. Our course is quite poorly structured, and matters are made worse by what feels like poor communication between teachers here and home. The Linguistics nerd in me is getting all excited about the prospect of some sort of postgrad centred around studying teaching methods of second language acquisition, Australia clearly needs some work.
And Joy bought a phone. We beened texting!!! She's in Qingdao (to Shanghai what Sydney is to Melbourne distance and direction -wise) right now, less than 2 weeks til she's here ^^ Ok I'm starting to fall asleep. Hopefully I'll be able to post again real soon. Who knows when these damn techies are gonna actually figure out what's wrong with our net connection? Sigh.
Funds: $6300ish
Sorry, internet problems. Still got em. Dunno when the next entry'll be. Want my damn net back damnit!!!
Ok! Lu Xun Park! All young white people should go to work out there!
Have I mentioned the public gyms? In parks in Shanghai and HK where we would have playgrounds for kids, they have gyms for old people. Some of these guys are insane. Upon seeing myself (in all my t-shirted and sandal-ed glory), Dylan (fairly standard-looking white guy, no disfiguring scars or the like) and Lenny (part EVERYTHING born in Singapore and sporting a mohawk), we were immediately approached. Lenny is a tank. I believe I have mentioned this before. So anyway I was the first to cop it. People here have decided I'm insane for two reasons:
1. I don't eat meat. Asking "does this have meat in it?" never gets an answer, just a confused look. I must always clarify it with an "i don't eat meat" which will be met with an even more confused, slightly horrified expression, but this can all be settled if I then follow up with "so does this have meat? I don't want to eat any meat." (And then they serve me chicken, pronounced "ji-rou" because THAT has no meat/"rou" in it =S)
2. I very rarely wear more than one layer. As you all know I have quite a speedy metabolism or something which results in me sweating like some sort of a chocolate rabbit upon any sort of physical activity, turns out whatever the deal with that is, it also causes me to be pretty warm pretty much all the time. We haven't gotten too bad, just single digits (someone tried to tell me we'd hit zero degrees one time, wasn't sure that was true), but while lots of other people are up to 3 layers, I still can't hack wearing so much. I have practically memorised the conversation where some old Chinese person freaks out and demands to know why I'm not cold then proceeds to tell me I'm awesome or something.
So obviously the 1st one didn't come up but that damned 2nd point was mighty topical for a while. While I got caught up in the conversation, Lenny and Dylan snuck off to try and do some dips n chin-ups etc. This also caught the attention of my new friends. Lenny, massive guy, was struggling to get as many dips in as he could, and he was doing them nice and slow. This guy comes up to him, and is all "Nah sonny you're doing it wrong" then immediately launched into about 5 times as many as Lenny had done in half the time. Then he dropped, all the old people clapped, and he yelled the now immortal words, "WO SHI BA SHI BA SUI!!!" (I AM 88 YEARS OLD!!!) Everyone clapped. Then some guy appeared on the same monkey bars as Dylan. He lifted himself up using only two fingers on each hand and thrashed Dylan in a similar fashion.
I gotta admit, I'm a TEENY bit proud of the next bit ^^ So finally I make it clear that I wanna try some sort of exercise when this old dude maybe a foot shorter than me came out of nowhere and said a bunch of stuff, the only part I really got being "Let's have a competition! I challenge you!" Next thing I know, dudeman is standing on his head, using one thumb and one finger on each hand for balance, as far away from his head as possible (the further away the more strength and focus is needed). So I'm thinking, haha awesome what were the odds I'd get a chance to show off? Then I was upside-down, too. That got a lot of applause actually. I noticed his arms reached out a lot farther than mine. I hoped nobody else did. Thing is, I never tried any fancy stuff before like using only one finger and one thumb for balance, but for those who didn't know I can generally stay on my head indefinitely, until I get bored, so I really wasn't sure what to expect in terms of a challenge. I never lost this game with Mishy or Neo. Then my LaoRival started doing all this weird stuff with his legs, like stretching and kicking them and stuff. I tried to copy him, fell over instantly. The crowd clapped some more and one person tried to console me. Then a second person came to translate from the first guy's Shanghainese into Mandarin. Then I caught my LaoRival with his legs folded in the lotus position (i.e., like a genie, or in meditation). He lifted himself straight up like this and balanced on his hands. I followed suit, and then he started going up and down like it was push-ups or something. So I fell over again and everyone started clapping. "WO SHI BA SHI BA SUI!!!" he yelled again. Then he felt like a bit of a chat.
"How old are you?"
"Aw I'm just 21."
"Wahahahaha! So young! No wonder you suck and are so weak and stuff! Don't worry, you'll get there!"
"Ahah, um, thanks ... How can you do that?"
[LaoRival strikes dramatic tai chi kinda pose and takes a few deep controlled breaths]
"It's qi gong (breathing/energy power)"
[Mykal mimics pose, LaoRival lights a cigarette and starts rambling in between draughts way too fast for Mykal to understand anything past "yeah, breathing control and power is important, oxygen gives us strength"] It was around this point that I realised about a quarter of the old folks at this park were smoking while they worked out like madmen. We left with our tails between our legs.
Had a good coupla weeks besides just that. Lots of fun stuff, some of it in a sort of you-had-to-be-there kinda way. Been studying reasonably hard, even though perhaps my conduct in class may not reflect that and I could be better behaved. My contributions to class discussion (in Chinese of course) have basically centred around how I really enjoy the food that I brought to class and am perhaps eating a little noisily, would he like some, how no sir, i'm not cold, this weather isn't so bad, how i hate wearing shoes so i don't if I can avoid it, and how it doesn't matter what Ivy says to win my heart, she is a vampire, and has no chance with me. Probably just as well I'm sharing the position of Class Rep with Claire, she does all the fun stuff I don't find interesting, like arranging christmas parties and all, while I do lots of interesting things that she might not have found fun, like running around making sure photocopies of revision sheets essential for exam preparation are available to our class more than 30 hours before the exam itself. Our course is quite poorly structured, and matters are made worse by what feels like poor communication between teachers here and home. The Linguistics nerd in me is getting all excited about the prospect of some sort of postgrad centred around studying teaching methods of second language acquisition, Australia clearly needs some work.
And Joy bought a phone. We beened texting!!! She's in Qingdao (to Shanghai what Sydney is to Melbourne distance and direction -wise) right now, less than 2 weeks til she's here ^^ Ok I'm starting to fall asleep. Hopefully I'll be able to post again real soon. Who knows when these damn techies are gonna actually figure out what's wrong with our net connection? Sigh.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Lately Hasaam's Been Underway
Day #25
Funds: [figure it out later I'm in a hurry!]
So I've been slumming it pretty much, just hangin around campus and the local area while people have been going crazy-touristy. I must admit this time round I've been a little disappointed with people's attitude towards bargaining. We seem to have a lot more 'shoppers' this time around, in that it almost seems like the spending of money is what's making them happy, nobody seems interested in the chase, and nobody wants to believe that yes, absolutely everything you buy here no matter where it's from or what label it has is equally likely to be of horrendous quality - it's not worth paying top dollar for it, just in case it is. People are bragging about having 5 kuai marked off, that's slightly more than a dollar, aw man no wonder the hawkers love us whiteys and try to rip me off all the time, ugh what a precedent some of these guys are setting ...
So yeah while people have been running around checking out sites I saw two years ago, I've pretty much been lounging around, going for walks or doing my homework sorta thing. Nice and simple, relaxing, is goooooood. The only problem is I pretty much don't take photos at all these days, just because I can't be bothered bringing my camera around all the time - I've settled. Whipping out a camera at a moment's notice isn't really part of my series of usual habits.
Oh went to the House of Jazz and Blues the other night, instead of Bonbons. Good call, Dylan! The ambience was very chilled, the music was awesome, and I caught up with this guy I met from the Shanghai Train there too. He brought a fellow student who also went to his Taiwanese Uni and we quickly realised she was Japanese. Cue the hilariously mind-bending 3-language conversation. Eugene and Rui with their awesome Mandarin + Me and Eugene with our native English dominated, but amazingly, there were occasions where I remembered a Jap word or two that Eugene didn't know the Mandarin for, and I tried to use as much Chinese as I could. I can't describe the weirdness of the using Japanese after so long. It was kind of like, you know when you sit on your leg or something for a while and then you try to walk and the blood just comes rushing back to it? It was kinda like that feeling, only IN MY BRAIN. I was even able to eventually come up with the sentence in Jap "remembering all these words feels like flowers blossoming in my mind", that was funny. [この言葉を覚えてるのは頭で花が咲いてるみたい/kono kotoba wo oboeteru no wa atama de hana ga saiteru mitai!] Part of me was reignited I spose, I'm really psyched about Japan all over again, like the way I was years ago. I can't really say or do anything useful, but I got a good feeling about how much I'm going to improve once I'm there.
But yeah, Bonbons = 150RMB to get in, then drinks are free. Drinks are incredibly strong, and water is an insane price. We swung by after to go make sure our terribly drunk friends were okay (didn't go in of course) and helped them taxi home. Monica was a little nuts, and wouldn't shut up about water. I continue to give her shit for this.
Me and this guy Quincy have begun distributing nicknames. I like this very much. I'm still Killer Mike cos that's what they called me for some reason last time, Shaun = Stinger and David = Deadly Dave. Man, we are out of control. Quincy also helped us discover that bread here actually isn't as bad as you might think, and I've been eating SO MUCH LATELY.
The food here tastes nice, but my goodness is it loaded with MSG and sugar and grease. I have no idea how I managed to eat out every meal last time. Me and Dylan snapped the other day and bought Australian-Made Oats (gooooo Patriotism!) and fruit and bread and yoghurt and juice, and having that stuff for breakfast really feels different. I feel all kinds of awesome having dodged the grease lately.
Uhhhh what else? Uh, got beaten up in the hallway. Sort of. This guy Lenny is a little nuts about physical fitness, boxing, martial arts, etc. The other night he taught me a few things to do with grappling, we drew a small crowd outside our rooms as we rolled around the floor pretty much dripping sweat all over, man did we smell bad. But it actually was pretty fun, this guy's a total tank so he had to go easy on me, let me get a few shots in and all that.
My dreams are becoming more vivid again. Lots of colour n stuff. Does that mean I'm sleeping properly or badly? Dylan reckons one night I sat bolt upright, mumbled something frantic in Japanese and stared at him. Then I apparently said nothing to him when he asked me if I'd just had a Jap nightmare, I went to the toilet and came back still ignoring him. I have no memory of this whatsoever, but Dylan can't seem to tell the story without laughing. =S
The vibe here is becoming gradually more high school as we go along. I'm trying to stay mature, last time it was so much easier to do that since I barely knew anybody. This time I'm just gonna have to stay grounded on my own merit/awesome. People are basically good now, few clashes of personality here and there though I guess. We'll see what happens. 1 week = 1 essay. That's doing my head in a little, too, since the material is OH SO MUNDANE AND DRY. More on that later, Dylan's trying to get me to go work-out in the park with him and the oldies. More on that later. Oh and I have a different story about old people in the park, maybe soon I'll just do a whole blog about that XD
Funds: [figure it out later I'm in a hurry!]
So I've been slumming it pretty much, just hangin around campus and the local area while people have been going crazy-touristy. I must admit this time round I've been a little disappointed with people's attitude towards bargaining. We seem to have a lot more 'shoppers' this time around, in that it almost seems like the spending of money is what's making them happy, nobody seems interested in the chase, and nobody wants to believe that yes, absolutely everything you buy here no matter where it's from or what label it has is equally likely to be of horrendous quality - it's not worth paying top dollar for it, just in case it is. People are bragging about having 5 kuai marked off, that's slightly more than a dollar, aw man no wonder the hawkers love us whiteys and try to rip me off all the time, ugh what a precedent some of these guys are setting ...
So yeah while people have been running around checking out sites I saw two years ago, I've pretty much been lounging around, going for walks or doing my homework sorta thing. Nice and simple, relaxing, is goooooood. The only problem is I pretty much don't take photos at all these days, just because I can't be bothered bringing my camera around all the time - I've settled. Whipping out a camera at a moment's notice isn't really part of my series of usual habits.
Oh went to the House of Jazz and Blues the other night, instead of Bonbons. Good call, Dylan! The ambience was very chilled, the music was awesome, and I caught up with this guy I met from the Shanghai Train there too. He brought a fellow student who also went to his Taiwanese Uni and we quickly realised she was Japanese. Cue the hilariously mind-bending 3-language conversation. Eugene and Rui with their awesome Mandarin + Me and Eugene with our native English dominated, but amazingly, there were occasions where I remembered a Jap word or two that Eugene didn't know the Mandarin for, and I tried to use as much Chinese as I could. I can't describe the weirdness of the using Japanese after so long. It was kind of like, you know when you sit on your leg or something for a while and then you try to walk and the blood just comes rushing back to it? It was kinda like that feeling, only IN MY BRAIN. I was even able to eventually come up with the sentence in Jap "remembering all these words feels like flowers blossoming in my mind", that was funny. [この言葉を覚えてるのは頭で花が咲いてるみたい/kono kotoba wo oboeteru no wa atama de hana ga saiteru mitai!] Part of me was reignited I spose, I'm really psyched about Japan all over again, like the way I was years ago. I can't really say or do anything useful, but I got a good feeling about how much I'm going to improve once I'm there.
But yeah, Bonbons = 150RMB to get in, then drinks are free. Drinks are incredibly strong, and water is an insane price. We swung by after to go make sure our terribly drunk friends were okay (didn't go in of course) and helped them taxi home. Monica was a little nuts, and wouldn't shut up about water. I continue to give her shit for this.
Me and this guy Quincy have begun distributing nicknames. I like this very much. I'm still Killer Mike cos that's what they called me for some reason last time, Shaun = Stinger and David = Deadly Dave. Man, we are out of control. Quincy also helped us discover that bread here actually isn't as bad as you might think, and I've been eating SO MUCH LATELY.
The food here tastes nice, but my goodness is it loaded with MSG and sugar and grease. I have no idea how I managed to eat out every meal last time. Me and Dylan snapped the other day and bought Australian-Made Oats (gooooo Patriotism!) and fruit and bread and yoghurt and juice, and having that stuff for breakfast really feels different. I feel all kinds of awesome having dodged the grease lately.
Uhhhh what else? Uh, got beaten up in the hallway. Sort of. This guy Lenny is a little nuts about physical fitness, boxing, martial arts, etc. The other night he taught me a few things to do with grappling, we drew a small crowd outside our rooms as we rolled around the floor pretty much dripping sweat all over, man did we smell bad. But it actually was pretty fun, this guy's a total tank so he had to go easy on me, let me get a few shots in and all that.
My dreams are becoming more vivid again. Lots of colour n stuff. Does that mean I'm sleeping properly or badly? Dylan reckons one night I sat bolt upright, mumbled something frantic in Japanese and stared at him. Then I apparently said nothing to him when he asked me if I'd just had a Jap nightmare, I went to the toilet and came back still ignoring him. I have no memory of this whatsoever, but Dylan can't seem to tell the story without laughing. =S
The vibe here is becoming gradually more high school as we go along. I'm trying to stay mature, last time it was so much easier to do that since I barely knew anybody. This time I'm just gonna have to stay grounded on my own merit/awesome. People are basically good now, few clashes of personality here and there though I guess. We'll see what happens. 1 week = 1 essay. That's doing my head in a little, too, since the material is OH SO MUNDANE AND DRY. More on that later, Dylan's trying to get me to go work-out in the park with him and the oldies. More on that later. Oh and I have a different story about old people in the park, maybe soon I'll just do a whole blog about that XD
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