jess.blogr.com - Blog (RSS 2.0)

change of plans...

jess — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:28:16 +0100

Things seem to be going downhill pretty fast with grandma's health so I changed my flight and I'm coming home on Monday. Yeah, I mean this Monday. I will go straight to Spokane and I'm not sure how much time I'll get to spend in Seattle. Anyway, I don't imagine I'll be posting much while I'm at home. But hopefully I'll see you all soon anyway!

I will attempt to get my US temp phone up and running again. I totally forgot the number but I'll post it on here next week some time.

headache.

jess — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:58:40 +0100

I got into work an hour and a half late today, if that gives you any clue about the kind of night I had. Ugh, this town has a way of turning an innocent drink with colleagues into "free-flow $7 all you can drink for two hours ready GO!!" Sorry mom, dad, grandma. I know how you hate to hear about my drinking. But to be honest this is worth a mention because there are few places in the world with THIS many expats who circulate in the same bars on any and all nights of the week. It's like being a member of a huge and intimidatingly well-dressed club, made up of 1 part nerds, 1 part business nerds, 2 parts euro-snobbery (of the French variety) and 1 part frat party. Throw in some cheap Chinese beer and you never know what will come out. Last night I ended up lost at some club with lots of rich skinny Chinese girls, where I couldn't find my recently friended French boy with glasses (of the nerd-Euro variety) so I stumbled out to a cab and went home. And now here we are. I'm considering a nap on my lap top.

Obama day!!

jess — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:51:42 +0100

As far as I can tell I'm the only person excited about Obama visiting Shanghai. The crap is going down as we speak though, and after numerous days of debate over format they have announced that the town hall meeting with Chinese youth will be aired live online (it was almost canceled due to Chinese desire to somehow censor the event = no live feed.) It's happening RIGHT NOW people, so if you're obsessively watching my blog and ALSO interested in Sino-American relations, TUNE IN HERE.

If you read this too late, you can still watch in online somewhere I'm sure. Although exciting in the fact that it IS live and there are real Chinese young people in attendance, I'm sure each and every Chinese question and attendee has been thoroughly screened. Let the games begin.

(note: I successfully watched almost the entire event until the second-to-last question, when for some reason both the video and audio stream from the White House website cut out. I find it both irritating and amusing that I lost the feed while he was expounding on the the importance of internet freedom. Also worth nothing is that live feeds of this event were exclusively found on English-language websites.)

Obama, rain, and general decay

jess — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:06:52 +0100

My fake Converse AllStars are falling apart. Their rate of deterioration is much faster than real ones, in almost direct proportion to the difference in cost. 1/4 the price, 1/4 the lifespan. Holes in your shoes don't really become a problem until it starts raining, which it did in Shanghai on Monday. Which was also the day I managed to lock myself out of the apartment for four hours without an umbrella. Man oh MAN it's hard getting a taxi in the rain in this town.

I'm pretty sure the Shanghai water is making my hair fall out. Someone warned me about this back in August and I didn't believe it. But I think it's true.

I've forgotten what it feels like to watch TV shows on a normal broadcast. It's always internet or DVDs. I miss cable and DVR (and Jeopardy!) Oh but we DO have a smashing Amazing Race knock-off show called Shanghai Rush, complete with REAL Shanghai expats saying annoying things and being dumb.

Facebook has started putting little notes on my homepage like "You haven't said anything in a while. Why don't you send so-and-so a message?" I tell Facebook to stop teasing an internet cripple and mind it's own business.

I had my first house party last night! But it started pouring rain right before start time and loads of people flaked. But it was fun anyway. Yay I have friends.

Exciting news! Everybody's favorite goofy-eared president is coming to town! The Obamas will be in China next week for a whopping three whole days! One of which will be spent in Shanghai. It feels less like a politician is visiting, and more like the pope or santa. Chinese people are STOKED on Obama. I'm trying to get my hands on some Oba-Mao paraphernalia. Try not to think too hard about all the references tangled up in that one.

Well it decided to be winter again this week and apparently I'm not the only one who can't figure out how to heat our school. My fingers are going numb so that's all for today.

blog attack!

jess — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:01:10 +0100

I logged into my blog today and for like two seconds thought I just might be the most popular person on the internet. 8 new comments! Wow-ee! I was crushed to discover they were all just advertisements from some asshole called "zixin" which means "self-confidence" in Chinese = jerk.

Well I was half-way through deleting them when I actually started reading each comment. Unfortanely I was too late to save the best one (I had already clicked delete) but the other two are gems as well. The first is from an Aesop fable, which in my opinion always needed more knock-off watch and video game references anyways. And I was surprised to read that roll forming machines have been in action for thousands of millions of years:

(warning: click links at your own risk... of boredom)

"AN ASS having heard some Longines shop chirping, was highly enchanted; and casio shop , desiring to possess the same Patek Philippe shop of melody, demanded what aion gold of food they lived on buy aion gold to give them such beautiful aion power leveling ."

"The tattoo equipment output of tattoo machine light and LV Bags Replica Handbags heat of LV Bags the Sun requiresconveyor chain that some 600 million forming machine of hydrogen forming machine be converted forming machine into helium in the Roll forming machine every second. This the roll forming machine has been doing for several thousands of millions of year."

Magic Kingdom, Middle Kingdom

jess — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:50:22 +0100

PSYCH! Not only is it definitely still fall, but a super duper shufu (comfortable) one at that! It's a warm and balmy 25 degrees Celsius today. I'd pretend I know immediately and exactly what that is in Fahrenheit, but I still have to google convert it... 77 degrees!! Instead of all this pesky conversion hassle, I've instead decided to memorize the clever reference points listed here.

Schizophrenic Chinese weather aside, good news!! Anybody looking for an excellent reason to move to Shanghai, look no further. Disney is coming! They've decided to open their fourth Disneyland outside of the US, and they're doing it in Shanghai's affluent backyard, Pudong!* I just have to hold out four more years and I'm in! Apparently this has been in the works for (20!?)years, and the English language blogs are abuzz with the thrill of it all.

Nobody is more excited, I'm sure, than Mickey and Mini Mikey and Mimi.

And even more good news everybody! I'm coming home for a visit next month, December 7th - 22nd. Why not Christmas you ask? Many reasons, the most important of which is I have to work the 26th. Anyway, I'll be in Spokane with the gran gran for most of that time, but I'll spend a few days in Seattle right before I leave I think. So mark your calendars...

* I live in Puxi, along with everybody else, on the West side of the Huangpu River. Pudong is the dead business stretch to the East (where that big phallic tower with the pink orbs resides) and although some boring rich expats would argue its merits, we all know it's super dull** and inconvenient to get to.

**Unless your hobbies include rolling around on piles of money in fancy private villas.

Siberian weather systems and beverage te...

jess — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:00:29 +0100

So I'm sitting at "my" desk in my school freezing because I have no idea how to turn an air conditioner into a heater. I'm having a hard time typing because I'm pushing my fingers closer to the keyboard than necessary, trying to suck the heat out of the computer. My fingers wouldn't be so cold if I wasn't drinking some chilled yogurt from 7/11 downstairs, which makes me worry about how my cold will probably get worse because everybody in China knows that when you're sick you can only drink warm or hot things or you'll pretty much die.

Now I'm left wondering a) will I survive the winter? b) at what point did drinking yogurt become normal to me? and c) when did I start believing that crap about cold vs. hot beverages?

On Sunday someone flipped the winter switch in Shanghai. Saturday was warm enough to make people sweat in their haibao costumes, but one of my friends warned me that some kind of Siberian weather system or something was blowing in. I called shenanigans, but boy was I wrong. Cold enough to pink the cheeks and numb the fingers.

There is no central heating in this city. I can't account for the rest of the country, but I seriously doubt they have it either. Instead, you switch your air conditioner to the "heat" setting, which I imagine is similar to warming your house with a large hairdryer. So far I've stubbornly refused to try this at home, instead doing more sensible things like closing all the curtains, wearing two pairs of pants and mummifying myself within multiple blankets.

Everybody is sick. I mean EVERYBODY. Coughing, hacking, spitting, and sniffling everywhere. And lots of surgical masks. I'm hovering between sick and well, drinking heaps and heaps of tea. The Chinese hold a VERY firm belief that you mustn't drink cold things when ill (or when it's that time of the month, ladies.) This isn't some old-wives nonsense. Everybody believes it. No more cold orange juice and Sprite with ice this cold season. Nuh-uh. Bring on the tea and wonton soup. Except I just had a cold sandwich and orange juice for lunch...

Hopefully from now on I'll be posting more often. I was a bit lethargic last month and almost gave up on the blog thing completely. I felt like I had nothing interesting to write about, but that's not really true. It's just hard to continue noticing everything after living here for a while. Somehow my sense of the ridiculous and absurd has been simultaneously dulled and sharpened. Guy-who-took-his-shoes-off-in-the-metro didn't even phase me yesterday. And last week I saw an old man in an electric wheelchair with a portable karaoke system (completely with mic, speakers, and laptop) rolling around the park singing his fave tunes. His driving/reading/singing coordination was impressive, and with only one hand! (the other was holding the microphone.) If that's not worth writing about, what is?

Also, I uploaded a couple pictures from my birthday last week. I have no idea what's going on with my blog - whenever I try to insert a photo within the text, it says "err:TypeError: tinymce is null". What does it mean?!? What tiny mice?! So you just have to click on "Photos" to see them.

all quiet

jess — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:19:54 +0100

Nothing much to report on the China front. The last week or two have been boring, punctuated by brief happy home-cooked Italian meals by my friend Aurelio. Beers at home have replaced beers at bars, which can probably be equally attributed to both frugality and laziness. Someone finally shut off the moon cake faucet, so the family I'm tutoring for are now showering me with Macaroons and chocolate instead. It's like they're paying me to gain weight.

I was excited for fall in this city - every street is lined with giant leaf-laden trees. But to my disappointment it appears that when these trees change, their leaves simply turn a sickly green/yellow and drop defeated to the ground. No brilliant reds and oranges. I'm toying with a day trip out of the city. It would be my first in almost four months.

So! Tomorrow I turn the big two-five and to celebrate I think we're doing all-you-can-eat-and-drink sushi/saki/beer. Or something to that effect. Then off to the YACHT concert (a band from Portland! Holla!) Should be a good day, especially considering it's starting with Skype chats and mimosas. If any of you wish to partake, look me up around 8pm PST. Skype name: jessica.colwell

Side note: If any of you have Facebooked me in the last few months, I've pretty much lost the ability to interact through that site (GFW, GO DIE) but snubbed you aren't! Email me. It's archaic, but it works.

government abuse chicken

jess — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:24:26 +0200

Every time I walk to the metro station by my house I pass by some kind of fast-food waffles operation. Delicious in theory, none of the options look overwhelmingly appetizing. But what confounds me is the one that appears to have meat and/or peppers on top. Fortunately, they have life-size plastic models on their counter for closer inspection. Unfortunately my blog is being retarded again so I can't insert the picture here. But its uploaded in my photostream so take a look.

Anyway, this is just one of many weird food experiences. Another includes the unhappy discovery of two egg yolks somehow preserved and hiding within an otherwise delicious mooncake. And because I'm in the middle of teaching the present perfect tense to a few of my classes, "What's the craziest thing you have eaten?" has yielded some interesting answers, the craziest of which were live monkey brain and live baby mice. This last one is a dish refered to as the "three squeaks" - one when you pick it up, one when you dip it in sauce, and one when you bite it. Ick.

Wacky and disturbing food aside, I've actually had a much more positive culinary experience this time around than when I came to Shanghai three years ago. I've puzzled out the differences between a few regional cuisines, and my Mandarin-speaking friends are teaching me how to deduce a meal's content from its tricky menu name. In a process that has, I'm sure, evolved slowly through its deep and multi-millennial history, China has developed a slightly anti-intuitive approach to naming its food. Menu translations into English have been eliciting chuckles from foreigners for years. Names like "government abuse chicken" and "chicken without sexual life" can and do easily find their way onto English menus (correct translations would be "Kung Pao Chicken" and "Spring Chicken.")

Well it's Thursday afternoon and I have to get back to work. And by work I mean watching Ghostbusters.

pimp my English teaching job

jess — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:49:34 +0200

Posting has been sparse these past few weeks. I would blame the National Holiday, but I spent most of my time off sitting around Shanghai in the sun doing as little as possible. And by sun, I mean ACTUAL sunshine, not just whatever hazy light managed to make it through all the smog and down to the sidewalk. Considering how rarely we see one another in this town, I’ve begun to feel a deep Peter-Pan-like affection for my own shadow.

Autumn in Shanghai is heaps better than summer. September brought immediate and considerable temperature drops. I’ve donned my first zip-up of the season and I’m already planning out what kind of coat to have made at the fabric market. No more profuse sweating and avoidance of any and all outdoor activity.

As far as National Day is concerned, all that build up and psychotic security tightening resulted in one huge, multi-million dollar, super boring two-hour-long display of military might. I found one time-lapse of the big show condensed down to about 3 minutes, and it’s basically the only version worth watching. Also one of my favorite comedy news podcasts The Bugle summed it up nicely if you care to give a listen.

Another exciting update is that I got myself a second job tutoring this SUPER loaded French-Chinese boy. His dad manufactures his own line of women’s shoes and handbags for Paris (apparently his brand is kind of a big deal, I forgot already but I’ll find out the name.) Anyway the gig is amazing. Perks so far include bottles of French wine, Italian espresso, countless mooncakes, and a private BMW escort. And they pay well.

If I haven't mentioned it already, there's a pretty decent blog I follow here called The Shanghaiist. If you're ever curious about the going-ons of this town and/or country, it's probably the most entertaining newsroll I've found to date. Highlights this week include imaginary Swedish lesbian villages and Jackie Chan being super fascist-y.

National Day! Get hyped!

jess — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:41:27 +0200

First of all, for any of you still unaware, our beloved People's Republic turns a whopping 60 years old next week! I'm not sure what kind of press coverage this thing is getting in the West, but the rehearsals and preparation going on here have been massive. In jubilant anticipation of the glorious event, Beijing has outfitted its subways with anti-explosive containers, forcedallowed hundreds of thousands of its citizens and soldiers to spend the last 3-6 months in intensive parade and performance rehersals, and banned the sale of kitchen knives, the flying of kites or pigeons, and all new foreign visas for Tibet. Happy Birthday China!

I've heard and read various stories from participants in the rehearsals, and it all sounds pretty brutal. One guy told me about a Beijing family he stayed with who's 8-year-old daughter was out until 5am at rehearsals. And they've hired mental consultants for the military participants in order to cope with the rigorous training. From Xinhua News:

"It is considered part of the normal life of hundreds of soldiers who are to take part in the military parade to stand straight and steady for an hour or not blink for 40 seconds.

For military vehicle drivers, they have to operate in a temperature as high as 60 [140 degrees Fahrenheit] degrees Celsius for hours of practice as air conditioners may affect the uniformity of vehicles."

The parade will take place on October 1st, and we might very well be in for an even bigger show than the Olympics last year. So I definitley suggest you snuggle down with some Chinese take out and watch the madness ensue.

Due to the super lame nature of my blog site (the URL should read blogr.GLITCH.com) I'm having an impossible time embedding any links. So here are a few, old school style:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/09/china_prepares_for_its_60th_an.html

http://www.chinasmack.com/pictures/training-chinese-army-60th-national-day-parade/

cowboys, soccer, and ing s

jess — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:06:40 +0200

Teacher's Day in China was last week so Wednesday we were told there would be an "outdoor activity" for all the teachers in the Pearson-Longman schools (12 campuses in Shanghai = loads of teachers.) They were taking us on a trip to Suzhou! (pretty town near shanghai) Dispite free travel incentive, I debated extensively over going because none of my teacher buddies could make it. I went anyway.

Wrongest decision of my life.

Firstly, they didn't tell us until Tuesday afternoon that we would be catching the buses at 6:50am Wednesday morning. FML. So I stay out until about 1am, drag myself home and get maybe four hours of sleep, then hop on a tour bus with about 50 Chinese teachers and 4 foreigners. We sit through painfully orchestrated get-to-know-you games on the bus (impossible considering the language divide) and two hours later it looks to me like we're getting close. Pretty scenery, mountains, temples, lakes, and the like.

Bus finally stops and we all pile off. I know things have gone terribly awry when all I can see are horses, camels, fake Teepees, and Chinese people wearing cowboy hats. We had arrived at Cowboy Town.

At first I'm giggling and enjoying the bizarre turn of events with the other foreign teachers. Then they file us into a big conference room where we're forced to sit through a long and extremely boring meeting (often accompanied by singing or poems.) The rest of the day took a turn for the worst.

I had inadvertently and voluntarily signed up for my first corporate team building experience. It stopped being funny immediately after lunch when they forced us into teams and started yelling directions over a megaphone in Chinese. To give you an example of how painful this process was, it took them almost an hour just to get us organized in teams and lined up correctly. My Chinese colleagues looked disheartened when I bowed out after that first terrible hour. Out of about 200 teachers (12 foreigners) there were two of us that took the low road. I regret nothing. Toward the end they FINALLY gave us some free time to go boating or go-karting but at that point our spirits were so crushed that we all just sat exhausted and depressed drinking beer at the cowboy lodge, discussing how exactly we had been tricked into wasting our day off.

I would say it DID result in some cohesiveness between the foreign teachers. Those of us that went (only like 12 out of probably 50) now reference Cowboy Town with the kind of solemn gravity reserved for disaster victims or wartime veterans.

The other notable experience from last week was a major local soccer match - Shanghai Shenhua vs. Beijing Guoan. Shanghai soccer is notoriously bad, both for the low quality of play and for the general lack of understanding by the spectators. This game, however, was supposed to be about as good as it gets, considering Shanghai and Beijing have a long-running rivalry (for obvious reasons.)

So I organized a group of about ten people to go, and spent the first twenty minutes of the game desperately searching for tickets. Eventually we located them at the ticket booth ("no duh?" you say? no, nothing is obvious in china...) where I was nearly crushed to death in the mob of about 70 drunken middle-aged Chinese men scrambling to stuff their money through the tiny window slots. I think I elbowed somebody in the face.

The game itself was brilliant!! The crowd ooh-ed and ahh-ed, screamed and booed to practically every kick of the ball. And I learned a pretty good curse word. The equivalant of calling somebody an eff-ing SeeYouNextTuesday. The entire stadium was constantly screaming it at the Beijing team, then after the match they were all outside, still screaming/cheering, and burning Beijing jerseys (even though it was a tie game!)

Obviously in the future I will be attending as often as possible.

comparative scruples, beer, and stripper...

jess — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 14:17:21 +0200

There are a number of things I've been mentally cataloging since my arrival in China. The most extensive list so far is the "Things Chinese People Don't Mind Doing in Public." Here's a few of the highlights so far:

-"Going Out" Pajamas! - by far my favorite. Going by the people in my neighborhood, pajamas are perfectly appropriate attire for an afternoon stroll, a trip to the news stand, or just the best outfit for hanging out on the sidewalk in front of your house all day. And I'm not talking simple sweat pants and t-shirts. I mean full-on floral and/or cartoon patterned two-piece button down sets.

-Last week at the grocery store near my house there was this dude leaning against the cigarette counter reading the newspaper - wearing only his boxers.

-You can easily judge how hot it is outside by how many men have their shirts rolled up to their armpits.

-I was walking on a busy street by my work the other day and I was puzzled to see two women sitting on the sidewalk, one doubled over with her head in the other woman's lap. For a second I was SURE she was cornrowing her hair, but no - she was combing through and systematically yanking out all the grey hairs.

-Right around 6pm I popped over to the convenience store opposite my apartment. Turns out it was dinner time for them as well:

I bought my ticket to South Africa this week. June 15th, 2010.

On Thursday this week I attended the Kunshan Beer Festival. Only about 20 minutes outside of Shanghai, Kunshan seemed like a very nice place (going by the train station, the taxis, and the dumplings, which is all I saw of the city.) But the festival didn't disappoint on the amount of Crazy China they fit into a fairly Western tradition.

I went because there was supposed to be a pretty fantastic German tent set up Oktoberfest-style. Which there was, but I was too cheap to fork out the $30 for a ticket. Instead, we bought $0.70 Suntory bottles from the Suntory tent, which was by FAR the nuttiest part of the festival. We walked in on some kind of "strip dancing performance" as the MC called it, and later they had beer-chugging through a straw competitions and then the MC started singing terribly while bubbles shot out of the stage.

strip dancers:

frenz:

we met some local yokels who spoke little to no English, but they kept buying us pitchers anyway. the two people across from me are my roommates, Jackie and Richard:

cherries and massages

jess — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:36:28 +0200

From age 8 to 18 I had a series of exactly three best friends. In the last two weeks two out of the three got married, and the third one is now engaged. I was about to begin some kind of crisis-laden self/life reevaluation... but then instead I didn't.

My favorite friend here so far is a Chinese girl named Ada Lui. This was a little weird for me at first because the pronunciation is eerily close to my grandmother's name - Aida Lou.

Anyway, so last night Ada and I decided to go for massages, China Style. Which means leaving the house around 10pm, stoping for an unplanned $4 shampoo/haircut because Ada thinks the place looks cute, then around 11:30pm we finally embark on what turned into my strangest massage experience to date. The two guys that gave us our $9, 60min full-body massages spent the entire time trying/failing to talk to us in English, which resulted in Ada and I constantly wracked by fits of laughter. Afterward they fed us free dumplings. Oh, and we were forcedpriviledged to wear some absolutely stunning sheep pajamas that for some reason said "cheese" and "mouse" on them:

We came out of the experience sore but happy, and with an unbinding verbal agreement to teach one of the masseuses English in exchange for Kung Fu lessons (he trained at Shao Lin temple since like age 6.)

Oh and look what I spotted on the bus last week!

it was a nice touch of home on my commute to work.

let's back up for a minute

jess — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 11:05:18 +0200

Due to a recent request by my onlyfavorite commenter Maggie, here is a brief recap about what the eff I'm doing in Shanghai:

So last year (January 2008) I return from my last quarter in Berlin totally broke and defeated by the Euro, but glowing from a fantastic Christmas spent with Other Jessica(BFFF) in Poland. I convert my College Job to a termporary Real Life Job - waiting tables, catering, deli work, etc. - in order to save up money for a hypothetical move to China. Why China? Because speaking Mandarin may or may not be literally my only employable skill (besides waiting tables of course.) History/Sociology degrees don't exactly get employers clamboring over one another with offers.

But then in September I go to this wedding with my mom where I meet some people and then we go out to drinks and BAM this guy offers me a job working all over Africa, based out of Cape Town. The job is for the Pearson Foundation and if you're curious about what they do, go ahead and look at the website.

So I wrap up my life in Seattle, say some terribly sad farwells, and move to South Africa in January 2009, with a quick stop in NYC for "training" but mostly just kicking it with my buddy Mark in Brooklyn.

Cape Town living is windy, soft, and warm with lots of drinks and pizza. But work itself seems slow and then all of the sudden I get laid off in April (economic crisis victim!!) They offer me an extra month's pay and a ticket anywhere, so I go to Thailand for two months where I get TEFL certified (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) so I can teach in China. We've come full circle and I'm back to my original plan.

I arrived in Shanghai the first week of July, found a job, and here we are.

I don't know how long I plan on staying. My contract ends June 15th, 2010 at which point I will return to South Africa for the World Cup (for those of you who dont know, it's a football(soccer) tournament - it's kind of a big deal.) That's where my ability to predict the future ends.

How is my Mandarin coming you ask? bu hao...