Yeah, that was towards Nickelplate. I agree, huge cars are ridiculous.

---

"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

Pleasantly surprise of groping

That one was the funniest. I chuckled out loud in my office.

---

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge

I own 4 cars and I used a gallon of gas to start a brush fire last week.

But really, I've built all my cars to have very good mileage.

---

I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com

Do you guys remember when a six pack of beer cost more than a gallon of gas? :rolleyes:

I get depressed every time I do my spreadsheet for my runs. Whenever I top 50% in fuel costs I get woozy. I've been woozy for about 18 months now.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Wil5on, best of luck learning Mandarin! It's hard, yes, but definitely rewarding and should be of vital importance in the future. If you want any advice I would say take the time to learn the radicals for the Chinese characters. They're the common elements of many many of the characters, and being familiar with them makes it easier to memorize seemingly complex strokes, because instead of just memorizing them as a picture, you can break the stroke elements down into (usually) logical pieces that can help you remember the whole character. Like... the first two radicals in the character for "who?" are "speak/say and person." Makes sense in an odd way. Also, try and master the tones. It's hard, but don't give up. I've learned the hard way that if you don't have the right tones here, you're pretty much unintelligable.

OK, so I want to recap the past couple weeks. I'll post pictures soonish if you prefer to see those instead of read about what I've done. This cut and pasted out of the journal entry I just finished writing:

So, I've had a couple big weekends in a row, with a lot of travelling and memorable experiences. Some of what happened is thought provoking, others just worthy of note.

Haha I guess we can Tarantino this (yeah Dane) so I'll start with this weekend and work back.

So, this was our travel weekend. We had Thursday afternoon and Friday classes off, and so a group of 8 of us left as early as we could to catch the seven hour train ride to Zheng Zhou, which is south of Beijing. We spent the night there at a surprisingly nice hotel for less than 8 bucks each, and then caught a tour bus (well we thought it was just a regular bus so that was a nice surprise) that took us to a few different Shaolin temples, with the last one being the biggest and most famous (and touristy). Not much to say, just took photos and wandered around, seeing as the tour was given in Chinese and I can pretty much only say stupid Chinese words and phrases like "homework" and "how big is your family?"

Anyway, a couple highlights. There was a Shaolin demonstration/show that we watched that pretty much showcased how flexible/badass the monks are. These kids were young too, since all the best monks tour internationally, but they still did amazing flips, broke metal bars over their heads, and pretty much proved they were the originators of all the cool moves break dancers use.

Also, we had fifteen minutes to shop before we had to catch a bus to some Buddhist caves, and so Gage, Louise and I all tried to pick up some tshirts for friends and family. Usually, its pretty easy and quick to bargain someone down to a reasonable price. They start off with 250 kwai, and you say f**k that, I'll give you 10, and then work from there. I'd say if you pay 15 kwai you feel pretty good about yourself (and they still make money off you). Anyway, the people at this tshirt stand were being real bastards. I figure since Shaolin temple is such a tourist trap they know they can get at least 25 kwai per shirt easily, and so they wouldn't budge on the price. The three of us got so caught up in trying to get a good price (plus we got our money mixed up and were pretty confused) we almost missed the bus. One of the other kids on the trip name Yi (who reminds me of a Chinese American version of Atom Ant) ran around the entire vendor area twice trying to find us. He was so desperate we pretty much grabbed the shirts we wanted and ran, leaving behind enough money for ~20 kwai per shirt. Stealing in a Communist country is such a bad idea, but in the moment we were pissed off at them, and desperate not to get left behind, so we didn't hesitate. I hope I can hide among 1.3 billion Chinese people for the rest of the trip, and that I wont get my hands chopped off before I make it home.

We saw some caves and did other touristy s**t on Saturday, and then Sunday we travelled back to Beijing. The train ride felt longer this time around, but all in all the travel went much smoother that I expected. I had heard such horror stories about Chinese trainstations I felt getting on our train would be like fighting to get on the last lifeboat on the Titanic, but we were able to pay 5 kwai to a porter to get us on early, and that worked out well. Oh 8 kwai = 1 USD.

Yeah, so that was this weekend. I'm sweaty, tired, but pretty happy with what we got to see and the fact that we managed to travel and organize it all ourselves. Also, Beijing has got to be the most polluted city in the world, and the pollution doesn't even get any better 7 hours away by train. It looks like the world is covered in perpetual fog 24 hours a day. I'll share some pictures later, to illustrate.

OK, so it's time to move back to last weekend. This was a big one for me. On Friday, I went to a KTV Bar (Karaoke) to celebrate one of the American kids' birthday. It was just Chinese beer and bad renditions of Piano Man and Like a Prayer. On the whole, it was a pretty hollow night, giving me a glimpse into the superficial westernized side of Beijing. It was good only because it was such a contrast to what I was lucky enough to experience on Saturday.

My Chinese roommate Kevin and I haven't hung out all too much. We eat a few meals together a week, and usually talk a bit about small issues before bed, but that's about the extent of our relationship. My weekend plans to visit Tim Lux in Dalian fell through, so on Saturday he invited me to his biannual family reunion at his aunt's house in Eastern Beijing.

We caught a bus and then a subway and then a train and then a cab and then walked. The whole thing took about 2 hours.... and we were still in metropolitan Beijing. It was then when I realized this city really is as huge as they say it is. I couldn't imagine travelling 2 hours in any direction from the center of NYC and still being able to see skyscrapers and highrises. Apparently, Beijing is as big as the entirety of Belgium. I believe it.

Anyway, for the walking portion of our journey, we turned off from the main road filled with apartments and shopping malls and other examples of modernity and entered a narrow, uneven backalleyway. This alleyway lead us to more, along which ran traditional Chinese courtyard houses, all in varying (but bad) states of disrepair. These areas are called Hutongs, and used to be everywhere in Beijing. Now, you can only find them in certain areas, because everything old is being knocked down to make way for modern buildings like high rent apartments. The people who live in the hutongs are basically forcibly relocated with a little compensation to places far on the edge of the city. It's pretty s**tty all in all, but the people in charge have apparently weighed the options and breaking a few eggs on the way to a ... uh ... western omlet (sorry) seems to be worth it.

(I notice I'm cursing a lot in this entry. Not really sure why. Perhaps it's because I just finished reading Waugh's "Decline and Fall" on the train and I feel feisty.)

Anyway, I knew this was a pretty amazing opportunity to see a different side of Beijing (and Kevin) as soon as we walked through the streets of the Hutong. It's been 8 days now so I don't feel as inclined to go into details, but basically his aunt's house was in the traditional style and very old, and very broken down. The family didn't seem nearly as well off as the Chinese I see driving Audi's and Beamers around. From what I've read the Chinese leaders seem pretty convinced that a rising tide lifts all boats, but Kevin's family didn't seem to be benefitting from China's rapid industrialization and economic boom. Regardless of their income, Kevin's family was so generous with the food and drink that it drove me to the edge of embarrassment from saying Che Baole(sp?) (I'm full, literally "I'm now round from eating") so many times. Despite the huge language barrier, I hope I succeeded in being cute enough with my Chinglish and polite enough via Kevin. We stayed for maybe... five hours before we headed back to the dorm, and when we left the whole family (which was huge, and just his mother's side-- which, in 1 child China, surprised me although I guess they are all too old for that policy) came out into the alley to bid us farewell. As we walked away shouts of Zai Jian and Bye echoed after us.

I would have written more details about it all, but I'm getting really tired at this point. So I guess it's time to come to a clean little conclusion for me to take with me back to suburban Connecticut. Maybe I can write something that will prove me worldly and perceptive. Right.

OK so here it is. Beijing, especially with the Olympics coming in 2008, has furiously been applying this vaneer of modernity and progress, and honestly... the best things I've experienced here are in no ways connected with what remind me of my first world home. There was an interesting New York Times article that pondered, "Will the Olympics, which organizers promised would enhance the city?s ??cultural heritage,?? instead help finish off what remains of old Beijing?" I'm afraid the author of the article is right. When Beijing finally emerges as a first world country, which it will, I doubt there will be anything like the old and the traditional left. It's a shame. And I mean shame in the deepest hardest sense.

Full Article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/world/asia/12beijing.html?ex=1152936000&en=1ce29102107eb311&ei=5087%0A
Sorry for the long link, I can't remember the link shortening code.

Some pictures for those of you who hate reading journal entries written by people other than themselves:

3 weekends back:





This weekend:







All these pictures were taken by my friend with the crazy hair. I don't have my camera's USB cable so I can't upload any of my shots, so his will have to do for now.

Woah! That buddha cut right out of the cliff is sick!

That buddha cut right out of the cliff is sick!

He had some bad shellfish :wink: .

French Toast said:
Woah! That buddha cut right out of the cliff is sick!

Yeah, that was by far the coolest thing I'd seen all weekend.

I'll post more pictures of it when I get back stateside.

By popular demand:

Sweetest image I've ever seen of the great wall.

My friend Klara took the photo at 4:30 AM when she woke up. Hopefully before I leave I'll go to that section of the wall so I can do the hike / camp out and get a picture to call my own.

Some really good pictures yesterday, I'll post em when Klara send em to me. A great Chinglish phrase from the binoculars on top of the highest building in Beijing that'll make you laugh.

Hey lep will be in China for a few weeks on 16th August or so. Hes doing some tourism guide majigger thing there then hoboing around with a m8.

---

-[Better to be Honest than Kind]-

That's cool, he should have a great time. I leave for the US on August 14th :smile:

This was my Saturday night. Started off with dinner in the CCTV tower, which has the highest restaurant in Beijing, which coincidentally serves the worst food. The view was nice, and with the help of the binocs you could see pretty far:



Note, the sign on the binoculars (which is the only reason I showed you the last pic:



I'll post shots of the city from the tower when I get back to the US, when I can finally upload them. All these shots are stolen from my friend via facebook.

Later that night we went out to a bar district. We ended up staying out till the sun came up, and I managed to get into bed at 6AM.

Here's us early on, clearly excited:



Me ruining an otherwise sophisticated shot:



In this picture, we were playing a game where my friend would call out a word or phrase and we would act it out. She yelled out "Ice Cube!" and my friend did the rapper by the same name... and I did the kind you find in your fridge. My other friend is clearly unimpressed by both of us.



Nearly home:



By the way, in case you didn't realize, I'm the one in white.

I'll post more cultural photos when I get home. I have stuff from the great wall, Tiananmen Square, our weekend trips to the desert and other good shots.

Taking a 12 hour train ride to Xi'an tonight. I'm gonna check out the Terracotta soldiers and all that jazz.

Will snap photos, and I will post them here eventually.

I went to a market street today, spent about 50 USD and bought a giant scroll painting of horses, a smaller one of some flowers, two old chinese coins (the kind with holes in the middle that would make good necklaces as gifts), two bead bracelets, a mahjong set, and a small painting of a horse done by hand.

I could probably have bartered more, but I didn't feel like I was overpaying.

The best part about today was I was having real full conversations with the shopladies and street vendors... after only six weeks of hard work, its all coming together. My tones and pronunciation still need work, but at least I can function and converse. That was the best part of today.

So who's the unphotogenic one who is taking all the photos? :biggrin: Loving the badly translated signs - I do enjoy a good visit to engrish once in a while to read s**t like that!

Looks and sounds like you guys are having a hell of a time :smile:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

I do enjoy a good visit to engrish once in a while to read s**t like that!

Heh, love the one with buger king, especially the way it's spelled in
kana: baagaakingu . Gotta love phonetical translations.

Nice pictures. :smile:

The sign on the binoculars, haha.. "beware of sun's dazzling", "pay attention to treasure".. you'd think they might manage to get a native english speaker to translate this a bit better instead of just running it through babelfish. :smile:

Hey, I just noticed.. the texture on the top face of the sidewalk corner in the last picture looks just like one in HL2.. this one:



Um, yeah... does it show that I've been mapping a bit too much lately? :smile:

---

-- midkay

You see? You see what too much mapping does to you?

I hope this is as bad as it gets because I'm gonna have to map like hell for around a week starting around ... now. :smile:

---

-- midkay

Hahah, that sign is brilliant!

Well, all the images from my last update were taken with Klara's camera (girl doing Ice Cube impression with me), as my camera's USB upload cable is sitting in my room in Connecticut.

My weekend in Xi'an was really fun, especially the first day. I also got to experience the Chinese sleeper trains. 12 hour trip each way, but relatively painless when you spend 8 hours asleep :smile:

I'll re-post a thorough update once I've done it in my journal, as well as some pictures when my friends tag me on Facebook and I get to steal them.

@midk, don't worry, half the time I spent looking out the train window I kept thinking about if the areas would make for good gamplay, how I would map it, or if such-and-such would make a good prop for cover or practice. :biggrin:

Haha, did you come up with anything interesting? :smile:

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-- midkay

I decided Chinese farmland and traintracks weren't that interesting to map for :smile:

But, some of the piles of brick, tiles, metal beams and poles, and other random junk along the side of the tracks would make good props for cover in CS maps.

They used to have lots more of those buddhas in the cliffs, but many Islamic extremists have destroyed them.

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I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com

In China?

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

Goofin' around at Shoalin Temple about a month ago:



I thought the timing of this picture was pretty good. I know nothing about martial arts but hey, I think I look halfway scary in this picture :smile:

As scary as..... THIS?!?!? Scottish Kung-feewww!

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I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com

Is that you Nickel?

Looks like Scottish ballet :smile:

oh, that's me all right, laddie! It's a kick about ten feet in the air... very impressive... :biggrin:

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I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com

I hope you wore something underneath that kilt.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>・quoting reaper47</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>I hope you wore something underneath that kilt.</DIV></DIV>

Yeah, I was glad the wind was being cooperative by blowing the kilt the right way (ie. over Nickel's nethers). :smile:

You'll never know... :dorky:

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I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com

Well, I leave for the US tomorrow morning, and so I wanted to make this weekend a blast.

On Friday, stayed out till 5AM. Saturday, I didn't sleep till 10AM. That's not typical for me at all. But this was my last hurrah in Beijing, so I didn't hold back.

What happend was I met these British girls at a club on Friday, and we've been hanging out (with one of my buddies here as well) since. I'm meeting them for the third time tonight, but this time in Tiananmen Square and not a bar. I've had about all the alcohol I can stand.

But anyway, they've been my first dose of British female company, and I have to say I've been pretty giddy for the past few days. I consider all of you living in Europe to be a lucky bunch. Their accents in particular.... ahhhh. I hope this doesn't come across as bragging. It's more that I can't contain myself. Even in all my time in London last spring, I pretty much only hung out with the American crowd. Funny that I'd have to come all the way to Beijing to meet a British girl.

Well, Sunday night came and went, and I got to spend more time with this girl. We had our own little "Lost in Translation" lovething going on, and it was great.

The positive vibes carried me all the way through the 40+ hours of travelling.

So yeah, I'm back! Time to upload photos, whooo!

Glad you're home safe and sound mate! So you gonna be keeping in touch with this girl, or just gonna savour the memories?

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Glad you're home safe and sound mate! So you gonna be keeping in touch with this girl, or just gonna savour the memories?

Thanks ReNo.

As for the girl, I'm not sure what exactly I'm going to do. I seriously doubt whether or not we have enough to talk about via email to warrant frequent exchanges (the connection I made with her started on a physical level, and it remained grounded in that, even though we did talk quite a bit).

She mentioned me flying to visit her in London or Madrid, but that was probably 90% pillow-talk and 10% hopeful fantasy. I've travelled quite a bit recently, but I think crossing the Atlantic for a girl I've known for 3 days would be a bit too much :smile: It's not like I have a corporate jet I could commondeer behind the CEO's back :smile:

To be honest, I drafted a letter to her when I was going stircrazy on the 12 hour flight from Tokyo to New York City, but I don't know if I'll ever send it. I wouldn't want to ruin the memories I have of our weekend together with some cheezy love letter or mundane email exchange. Ideally, I'd get a call a year or two from now and it'd be her telling me she's in NYC for the weekend and wants to meet up and reminisce. But that's wishful thinking :smile:

Welcome back, Morph.

Nice to hear you had a good night and a good flight home. :wink:

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-- midkay

Nickelplate said:

/me feels woozy now. I have never seen such a poorly rolled up garden hose before.
/me goes and sits down now.
/me notices that I am already sitting down, and woozy feeling availed itself while doing so.
/me contemplates another position to relieve wooziness.

---

The best things in life, aren't things.

Here are some of the shots I liked:

Edited out, smaller sizes below.

Hahaha, that second one is great, just 'cause it's got 'Tasty.' in big letters :biggrin:

Haha thanks, I like that one too.

I'm sorry about the huge image sizes, I just noticed how big they were :sad:

I'm too lazy to go back and shrink em down and reupload em.

Now there will be an outbreak of bird flu, SARS, and communism on the east coast.

---

o

You have 2 choices. Move these to Recently Photographed and no one will bitch about file sizes or, optimize the s**t out of these in this thread.

10 megs is asking a bit much, even for broadband users.

---

The best things in life, aren't things.

Well, option 3 would be to leave them as is.

I don't have time right now to resize these and reupload them right now, but tonight or tomorrow I'll get around to it, edit them out of the above post, and put them in a new reply.

Addicted to Morphine said:
Well, option 3 would be to leave them as is. And deal with the fact that I'll have to take a bit of complaining.

There I fixed option 3. It was a bit... insufficient. :razz:

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Haha fair enough.

I'm changing them right now, I'll edit this post with the slimmed down images.

Edit:

56k friendly(er)

Reedit: Captions

Great Wall:

Some small desert west of Beijing where I sandboarded and just chilled with friends:

An area on a lake about a two hour drive from the desert:

Shaolin Temple and a Shaolin monk:

Longmen Caves:

The view on the street near Zhengzhou, which is a 7 hour trainride out of Beijing:

The view from the CCTV tower in Beijing, on a clearish day:

The view from some buddhist tower in Xi'an (home of the terracotta warriors):

I dunno about the rest of y'all but it would be kinda nice if you turned these screens into a critiquesque type thingy. You know, add a bit of dialog to each so we know what the image contains?

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Sure, I'm gonna grab a shower and dinner right now, but I'll do it after.