so the last 2 days, i've had to go to one of the hospitals in macau to get a physical for work. i've had plenty of physicals in my life (at the same doctor's office i've been going to since i was 7), but clearly none in a hospital in another country. so this was my first experience with foreign medicine. the physical entailed a blood pressure reading, height/weight, surgical history, chest x-ray, urine test, and a tetanus shot. to be honest, i haven't been to a doctor/hospital since college when i went to health services when i was having my lung and chest illnesses in the winter of 08, so i haven't been in a while. even then, i've always known that when my blood pressure is taken, it always runs on the high side, always. while i'm no doctor, i always figured that this high blood pressure has always had a direct correlation with how much i sweat, so i've basically had it all my life, although doctors always say that it's nothing to really worry about.
then i get to china, where they obviously haven't had too many americans in there with high blood pressure. so i take my blood pressure first. they say it's on the high side (no news to me). i do all of my other things, and they ask to take it again, because it was high. it's even higher the second time. they seem worried, so they ask me to come back in the next day to test it again. since they seemed worried, it actually starts to worry me. i even went home and googled high blood pressure to see what i was in for. something about strokes. anyway, so i went back in today where i have to sit on the couch for 15 minutes before they can take it. i'm called back, i take it again. the nurse is utterly shocked. it's higher than yesterday. all she can say is "why?" like i know the answer. "i went to mcdonalds after the hospital and got 10 orders of fries with extra salt and a gallon of moonshine!" i just started to laugh. so they ask me to go back out to the waiting room and sit for 20 minutes and maybe drink so water to do it again.
then another nurse comes out to ask me whether hospitals make me nervous which would raise my blood pressure. really? who likes hospitals? i don't. i've never had a good experience in one. well, birth was probably pretty cool but all the screaming in the room probably scarred me somehow (thanks mom), but my first actual memory of being in a hospital was when i was 3 and had to get stitches in my forehead after i cracked it open on my headboard when i slipped while jumping on my bed. not good. the next one was probably when i accidentally split my little brother's head open with an aluminum baseball bat (seriously, an accident, my little brother hit my in the nether regions with a tennis ball when we were playing outside and as he was running away, i whipped the bat across the yard and it somehow zeroed in a hit him square in the back of the head. freak accident). but as punishment, my mom made me watch as the doctor stapled the wound shut. (again, thanks mom). then all my ER trips for soccer induced ankle injuries, concussions, broken nose and other things along the way. yeah, i don't like hospitals. so maybe that raised my blood pressure. that and them making me think i actually had serious health issues and would have a stroke soon (which inevitably got billy squire stuck in my head).
anyway, 20 minutes pass, i do it again. surprise, surprise...higher. so the nurse dusts off the manual blood pressure thing, with the hand pump and all. and do it. what do you know...lower. stupid machines. just when i thought chinese technology was supposed to be the best. EHHHH! (that's my best wrong answer onamonapia). anyway, i really hope i don't have to see another doctor while i'm over here. cheers to american medicine and mainstream high blood pressure!
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010
into the wide RED yonder
after a month and a half of being cooped up in macau, i finally got my chinese travel visa and headed to shenzhen for a long weekend to visit my buddy, woody, from home. he's over there teaching as part of a program of some sort. it was probably the best weekend i've had since i've been over here. while i've been having a good time in macau, it's not until you head out to the mainland to really find out what you're missing. macau, despite the giant gambling ring, isn't that hopping outside of the casinos. there's a bar strip near the coast and some bars inside the casinos, but there were way cooler places to go in shenzhen, which maked the streets of macau look like a ghost town. it was also thoroughly enjoyable to chill with people my own age who loved to have a prolonged night of fun. when i go out in macau, i always wind up hanging out with some randoms between the age of 28 and 50. anyway, i took a ferry into the shekou ferry station, which is the closest one to woody's house, but still an hour and a half bus ride away, which sucked a tad. anyway, the first night we actually crashed at one of his friend's houses who lived close to the beer garden that we began our night at. after a club and getting my long island game on, we headed back to call it a night.
digression...i don't remember if i've mentioned this here, but i made a discovery over the summer by complete accident, and i hope that you readers take my advice on this one. if you are ever ordering a long island, instead of a lemon, ask the bartender to throw in an orange wedge. over the summer i was at a bar in chicago and got a L.I., but they were out of lemons. i asked what they had and they said an orange and i told them to toss it in. it was delicious. way better than the lemon version. if you thought a regular L.I. went down smooth, try it with an orange slice. it's not even fair.
and we're back. anyway, woody's house is pretty close to the beach, so we spent a couple hours in the afternoon at the beach and then went back to his place to shower and clean up and start our night in earnest. the whole teaching crew showed up from all around china, because there was a beach party going on. by beach party i mean, there's a gated section of the beach near the beginning and you would buy a ticket to get in that included 5 drink vouchers. there were a few DJs, which we made friends with. overall, just a super swell night and a kickass weekend. i had been needing a trip like that ever since i arrived here. unfortunately since i have english club every saturday morning, i'm not going to be able to make mainland trips nearly as often as i'd like. woody and some of his compadres are going to head over here sometime in the next couple weeks, for what should be comparably fun. i also have a feeling i'm gonna try to miss a couple english club saturdays here, since i really just show up, sit there and drink water for 3 hours doing the occasional activity when i'm asked.
anyway, yeah, 2 thumbs up for red china! (except for the ideals, pollution, and using the street as a personal toilet)
lastly, this upcoming week should be pretty fun too though. downtown macau has a grand prix formula 1 race every year, the winner of which gets to join the formula 1 circuit, so i'm gonna try to check that out. also, the mgm grand is celebrating oktoberfest all week. maybe now i'll find some hearty beer from the motherland.
digression...i don't remember if i've mentioned this here, but i made a discovery over the summer by complete accident, and i hope that you readers take my advice on this one. if you are ever ordering a long island, instead of a lemon, ask the bartender to throw in an orange wedge. over the summer i was at a bar in chicago and got a L.I., but they were out of lemons. i asked what they had and they said an orange and i told them to toss it in. it was delicious. way better than the lemon version. if you thought a regular L.I. went down smooth, try it with an orange slice. it's not even fair.
and we're back. anyway, woody's house is pretty close to the beach, so we spent a couple hours in the afternoon at the beach and then went back to his place to shower and clean up and start our night in earnest. the whole teaching crew showed up from all around china, because there was a beach party going on. by beach party i mean, there's a gated section of the beach near the beginning and you would buy a ticket to get in that included 5 drink vouchers. there were a few DJs, which we made friends with. overall, just a super swell night and a kickass weekend. i had been needing a trip like that ever since i arrived here. unfortunately since i have english club every saturday morning, i'm not going to be able to make mainland trips nearly as often as i'd like. woody and some of his compadres are going to head over here sometime in the next couple weeks, for what should be comparably fun. i also have a feeling i'm gonna try to miss a couple english club saturdays here, since i really just show up, sit there and drink water for 3 hours doing the occasional activity when i'm asked.
anyway, yeah, 2 thumbs up for red china! (except for the ideals, pollution, and using the street as a personal toilet)
lastly, this upcoming week should be pretty fun too though. downtown macau has a grand prix formula 1 race every year, the winner of which gets to join the formula 1 circuit, so i'm gonna try to check that out. also, the mgm grand is celebrating oktoberfest all week. maybe now i'll find some hearty beer from the motherland.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Let's break down some stereotypes
some of you (my friends/readers) have sent me questions, either as jokes or actually because you want to know the answer. i'll take this time to respond to some of them. i actually had to go on wikipedia and search for asian stereotypes to research. there are several that i was not even aware of, but the ones that i am aware of, i'll try to tackle/explain/dispel. these are all meant to be explanatory, not derogatory. if anything i say sounds offensive, i'm sorry. i don't intend to, but i'm just calling it as i see it.
1. first, let's break down this "asians are bad drivers thing." is it true? well, not really, but i fully understand why western society would think so. here's why. over here, everybody drives very normally. the thing is though, driving etiquette is completely upside down here, and i'm not just referring to driving on the other (wrong) side of the street. i assure you that if i (or any of you for that matter) got behind the wheel of a car here, within 20 minutes i would have hit another car, a person on a little moped, a pedestrian, or some terrifying combination of all of three. first, there are practically no stop signs. people stop (or slow down) when somebody jettisons in front of them in the middle of the street when they want to go through, pedestrians and other drivers. everybody is constantly jaywalking, because that's just how you do it. i usually wait for somebody else to start this movement so they get hit first (survival of the fittest still translates here). the worst are the moped people, ugh. they're everywhere, cutting of buses, trucks, and cars. the only things they really yield for are pedestrians, probably because if there's a collision, that's the only thing that will be their fault. a personal example...i live on a one-way street. i was being dropped off by another teacher. i opened my car door to get out and nearly hit a moped trying to whiz by the side of the car. collision averted, but valuable lesson about moped drivers learned.
i'm also fairly certain that nobody uses blinkers to merge lanes. i've constantly found myself in cabs and buses that are clearly in the wrong lane for the direction we are supposed to be going, then magically moving into the correct lane before continuing in the wrong lane. i am still dumbfounded by this. in my little world, when you are in the lane that goes right, you should follow your lane and not just drift into the correct lane at the last possible second without coming close to a collision. it seems to me that all drivers are constantly prepared for a collision, so they all somehow avoid it when the opportunity presents itself.
so, in my opinion, there is so much inherent chaos in the streets with the lack of well-defined traffic laws and strict traffic patterns, that everybody expects it and deals with it astonishingly successfully. would this chaos fly in the west? absolutely not, which is where the "reckless" unsafe driver stereotype is born from. but over here, we would be the "horribly overconscious", unsafe driver.
2. the short thing is true. i can't hold on to the belt thing on the bus anymore because we lurched to a stop and i elbowed some dude in the side of the head. i think he understood "i'm sorry" and the embarrassed grimace i made in apology. i now hold on to the metal bar the loop hangs from. my elbow is not as lethal from that height. no accidents since that day.
3. i have not seen 1 martial arts facility. only basketball courts and ping pong centers. (so no, i have not mastered karate since i've been here) (a master of friendship for everyone though...)
4. 1 month here...still haven't seen anybody rocking the fu manchu mustache. i'm not mad, i'm just disappointed...
5. to close, i thought i might throw a new one into the ring. we can file this under the "thoughts by dave" section. i'm not sure how good of singers we have in these parts. i've stepped in a handful of karaoke bars (not to participate of course) and can honestly say that i have only heard 1 good singer. yes, i know that i am an extremely harsh critic and my ear has been spoiled singing under j.scott.ferguson, but when i am severely disappointed by a vast majority of the singing i encounter, i have to wonder. i feel like i'm treading on thin ice with this one, so we'll just wrap it up with that.
if you have any questions that you are dying to know the answer to, throw me a facebook message and i'll either respond honestly there where the forum is less public (not that these aren't honest, but some things are better said behind closed doors), or i'll collect enough to have another future post.
1. first, let's break down this "asians are bad drivers thing." is it true? well, not really, but i fully understand why western society would think so. here's why. over here, everybody drives very normally. the thing is though, driving etiquette is completely upside down here, and i'm not just referring to driving on the other (wrong) side of the street. i assure you that if i (or any of you for that matter) got behind the wheel of a car here, within 20 minutes i would have hit another car, a person on a little moped, a pedestrian, or some terrifying combination of all of three. first, there are practically no stop signs. people stop (or slow down) when somebody jettisons in front of them in the middle of the street when they want to go through, pedestrians and other drivers. everybody is constantly jaywalking, because that's just how you do it. i usually wait for somebody else to start this movement so they get hit first (survival of the fittest still translates here). the worst are the moped people, ugh. they're everywhere, cutting of buses, trucks, and cars. the only things they really yield for are pedestrians, probably because if there's a collision, that's the only thing that will be their fault. a personal example...i live on a one-way street. i was being dropped off by another teacher. i opened my car door to get out and nearly hit a moped trying to whiz by the side of the car. collision averted, but valuable lesson about moped drivers learned.
i'm also fairly certain that nobody uses blinkers to merge lanes. i've constantly found myself in cabs and buses that are clearly in the wrong lane for the direction we are supposed to be going, then magically moving into the correct lane before continuing in the wrong lane. i am still dumbfounded by this. in my little world, when you are in the lane that goes right, you should follow your lane and not just drift into the correct lane at the last possible second without coming close to a collision. it seems to me that all drivers are constantly prepared for a collision, so they all somehow avoid it when the opportunity presents itself.
so, in my opinion, there is so much inherent chaos in the streets with the lack of well-defined traffic laws and strict traffic patterns, that everybody expects it and deals with it astonishingly successfully. would this chaos fly in the west? absolutely not, which is where the "reckless" unsafe driver stereotype is born from. but over here, we would be the "horribly overconscious", unsafe driver.
2. the short thing is true. i can't hold on to the belt thing on the bus anymore because we lurched to a stop and i elbowed some dude in the side of the head. i think he understood "i'm sorry" and the embarrassed grimace i made in apology. i now hold on to the metal bar the loop hangs from. my elbow is not as lethal from that height. no accidents since that day.
3. i have not seen 1 martial arts facility. only basketball courts and ping pong centers. (so no, i have not mastered karate since i've been here) (a master of friendship for everyone though...)
4. 1 month here...still haven't seen anybody rocking the fu manchu mustache. i'm not mad, i'm just disappointed...
5. to close, i thought i might throw a new one into the ring. we can file this under the "thoughts by dave" section. i'm not sure how good of singers we have in these parts. i've stepped in a handful of karaoke bars (not to participate of course) and can honestly say that i have only heard 1 good singer. yes, i know that i am an extremely harsh critic and my ear has been spoiled singing under j.scott.ferguson, but when i am severely disappointed by a vast majority of the singing i encounter, i have to wonder. i feel like i'm treading on thin ice with this one, so we'll just wrap it up with that.
if you have any questions that you are dying to know the answer to, throw me a facebook message and i'll either respond honestly there where the forum is less public (not that these aren't honest, but some things are better said behind closed doors), or i'll collect enough to have another future post.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Film Review: Frozen
i honestly could have written this review a week ago when we had only seen half of the movie, but i really thought i owed it to the awfulness of the movie to finish the entire thing to see how ridiculous it can get. you know the sign or a really good horror movie? when the students are scared and the teacher is cracking up laughing after each thing that happens. oh, wait, NO! after reading the jacket cover of the movie, i already knew what i was in for: "open water" but substitute skiing/snowboarding for scuba diving. i'll kill 2 birds with one stone by exposing the plot to open water, because almost the exact same movie.
both movies come from the script line that takes murphy's law -- anything that can go wrong, will go wrong -- and plugs it into a recreational activity with a mild risk factor, making it a bizarre, this will NEVER actually happen "horror" movie. in open water, what's the worst that could happen? your boat SOMEHOW miscounts the number of people on the trip and those on the boat and leaves 2 people behind. then sharks show up. then somebody get hysterical because of the predicament. then somebody dies, leaving the last person with a life or death decision to make about themselves.
now to the hilarious details of Frozen...
***SPOILER ALERT***
ok, so the start of the movie is based on this awkward 3rd wheel situation. these 2 "bros" (one of which is iceman from the x-men trilogy; OH THE IRONY!*%*&) have had this yearly tradition of going to this one mountain and having quality bro time where they clear their heads and just be with the snow. (i'll be referring to our fateful threesome as iceman, non-iceman, and girlfriend) this year though, non-iceman his girlfriend along, who SUCKS at snowboarding. the pathetic dramatic tension that carries the first 30 minutes is all based around these boring, awkward 3rd wheel conversations, such as iceman criticizing the girlfriend for smoking cigarettes and then complaining to non-iceman that they haven't been able to get any sick runs in all day because the girl sucks at snowboarding (iceman's a skier, btw). so, the hill is about to close. the lift chairs are being folded up, but the gang - because of the lack of sick runs -, convinces the lift chair guy to let them go up for 1 more run, which he finally agrees to do. so, they are on their way up. now murphy's law starts to beat our threesome in the face like a whack-a-mole and annoy any intelligent viewers to the bitter end. so the ski lift guy, 5 minutes before our soon-to-be-screwed threesome has to take a piss, so he gets some other guy to replace him so he can relieve himself, telling him to wait until the 3 people he sent up get down the hill. in classic Home Alone miscounting fashion, the new guy sees 3 other people arrive at the bottom of the hill and, thinking these are the three people he's supposed to wait for, shuts the lift down with the threesome stuck on chair the middle of the lift.
they joke about being stuck until the lights on the hill shut off, then the girl now gets hysterical when they realize that if nobody helps them, they will be out there for 5 full days, because it's a sunday night, and this clearly is one of those weekend-only mountains that is completely abandoned m-f. (the funny part to me was when they actually mentioned dying from sharks while on the lift; priceless cap tip to open water) THEN an ice storm starts. oh, and non-iceman decided to wear, not a winter coat, but a hoodie with a poofy vest over it. i know that when i go skiing, i wear those ninja neck/face masks with a beanie over it, because being cold in the snow sucks, so normal people dress accordingly. anyway, they're sitting in the ice storm complaining, BUT HELP IS ON THE WAY, or so it seems. a truck is driving up the hill to check the slopes for the night. as he gets right under the threesome, he gets radioed to screw it and come back because of the storm. he pauses for a second, then turns around. while he was right underneath them, none of the three thoughts to drop a ski/snowboard on the truck to get his attention. they thought yelling from above in a windy ice storm would get the man's attention from inside the truck. (yeah, i know. they're stupid; they deserve to die).
so now they start to get desperate. chivalrous non-iceman decides that the best thing to do to save everybody is to jump to the ground and head down the hill for help. they're oh 3 stories high, you know, the usual ski lift height, and non-iceman jumps straight down, trying to land on his feet (clearly bad form if you want to lighten your fall) so what do you think happened? broken legs! compound fracture; bone through skin, which they graphically show. so as non-iceman is sitting there, bleeding out, girlfriend throws her scarf down for a tourniquet, which promptly gets stuck in a tree on the way down. THEN a WOLF shows up next to non-iceman! the two up top drop girlfriends snowboard scaring off the wolf. seeking an alternative route out, iceman contemplates climbing across the cable to the pillar that has a ladder down. (this should have struck most people as the first option) as the two talk this out, they look down to now see a pack of wolves which start to rip non-iceman apart as iceman and girlfriend stay close to not watch the carnage. (chivalry is dead. BOOM! i built up to that one) now, let's break this down...at this ski mountain, there is a resident pack of killer wolves. killer wolves...at a public recreational facility. ok then.
so 1 down. to backtrack a little, as everybody was still with us, the girlfriend dropped a mitten while trying to light up a cig. (smoking will kill you!). fast-forward till now --> because of non-iceman getting eaten by wolves, they ditched the climbing the cable plan and they both fell asleep overnight. girlfriend intelligently fell asleep with her hand on the guardrail. she wakes up with her hand stuck to the rail. think dumb and dumber, hand instead of tongue and actually losing a layer of skin instead of a rubber prosthetic tongue. idiot! you lost your glove and you have a perfectly good coat pocket. why would it ever leave the pocket if your hand is unoccupied? anyway, they are both horribly frostbitten and then the sun comes out giving them sunburn (another laughing moment for me). anyway, iceman attempts the cable plan again. as he climbs on the cable, somehow the screw of the chair begins to come loose, so the girl in the chair has that subplot going for her. as he's climbing, duh, the pack of wolves come back and circle underneath (this time, during the day: the time skiers usually occupy the mountain. seriously, killer wolves) since they're due for some good luck, iceman actually makes it across to the ladder. girlfriend throws his ski pole at the bottom to use as a weapon. iceman starts to get mauled by a wolf, but stabs it in the face to fend it off. then he sits on non-iceman's vacant snowboard and starts to slide down the hill with the pack of wolves following him. he promises help. the girl sits for a while, and help is taking a really long time. hmm, i wonder what happened to the help? she finally gets sick of waiting, so attempts to jump down as well (because this plan ended so well the first time...). as she positions herself, the chair falls, but not all the way because of some cable that held, so she has a much shorter drop now. she jumps, but the chair falls on her foot, so she can't walk. she army crawls down the mountain. on her way down, what does she find? iceman being ravaged by the wolves, intestines out and everything. but, the wolves (having eaten 2 grown men) are no longer hungry, and after a dramatic staredown from head wolf continue feasting on iceman as girlfriend continues down the mountain. she gets picked up on the side of the road by a minivan. the end.
both movies come from the script line that takes murphy's law -- anything that can go wrong, will go wrong -- and plugs it into a recreational activity with a mild risk factor, making it a bizarre, this will NEVER actually happen "horror" movie. in open water, what's the worst that could happen? your boat SOMEHOW miscounts the number of people on the trip and those on the boat and leaves 2 people behind. then sharks show up. then somebody get hysterical because of the predicament. then somebody dies, leaving the last person with a life or death decision to make about themselves.
now to the hilarious details of Frozen...
***SPOILER ALERT***
ok, so the start of the movie is based on this awkward 3rd wheel situation. these 2 "bros" (one of which is iceman from the x-men trilogy; OH THE IRONY!*%*&) have had this yearly tradition of going to this one mountain and having quality bro time where they clear their heads and just be with the snow. (i'll be referring to our fateful threesome as iceman, non-iceman, and girlfriend) this year though, non-iceman his girlfriend along, who SUCKS at snowboarding. the pathetic dramatic tension that carries the first 30 minutes is all based around these boring, awkward 3rd wheel conversations, such as iceman criticizing the girlfriend for smoking cigarettes and then complaining to non-iceman that they haven't been able to get any sick runs in all day because the girl sucks at snowboarding (iceman's a skier, btw). so, the hill is about to close. the lift chairs are being folded up, but the gang - because of the lack of sick runs -, convinces the lift chair guy to let them go up for 1 more run, which he finally agrees to do. so, they are on their way up. now murphy's law starts to beat our threesome in the face like a whack-a-mole and annoy any intelligent viewers to the bitter end. so the ski lift guy, 5 minutes before our soon-to-be-screwed threesome has to take a piss, so he gets some other guy to replace him so he can relieve himself, telling him to wait until the 3 people he sent up get down the hill. in classic Home Alone miscounting fashion, the new guy sees 3 other people arrive at the bottom of the hill and, thinking these are the three people he's supposed to wait for, shuts the lift down with the threesome stuck on chair the middle of the lift.
they joke about being stuck until the lights on the hill shut off, then the girl now gets hysterical when they realize that if nobody helps them, they will be out there for 5 full days, because it's a sunday night, and this clearly is one of those weekend-only mountains that is completely abandoned m-f. (the funny part to me was when they actually mentioned dying from sharks while on the lift; priceless cap tip to open water) THEN an ice storm starts. oh, and non-iceman decided to wear, not a winter coat, but a hoodie with a poofy vest over it. i know that when i go skiing, i wear those ninja neck/face masks with a beanie over it, because being cold in the snow sucks, so normal people dress accordingly. anyway, they're sitting in the ice storm complaining, BUT HELP IS ON THE WAY, or so it seems. a truck is driving up the hill to check the slopes for the night. as he gets right under the threesome, he gets radioed to screw it and come back because of the storm. he pauses for a second, then turns around. while he was right underneath them, none of the three thoughts to drop a ski/snowboard on the truck to get his attention. they thought yelling from above in a windy ice storm would get the man's attention from inside the truck. (yeah, i know. they're stupid; they deserve to die).
so now they start to get desperate. chivalrous non-iceman decides that the best thing to do to save everybody is to jump to the ground and head down the hill for help. they're oh 3 stories high, you know, the usual ski lift height, and non-iceman jumps straight down, trying to land on his feet (clearly bad form if you want to lighten your fall) so what do you think happened? broken legs! compound fracture; bone through skin, which they graphically show. so as non-iceman is sitting there, bleeding out, girlfriend throws her scarf down for a tourniquet, which promptly gets stuck in a tree on the way down. THEN a WOLF shows up next to non-iceman! the two up top drop girlfriends snowboard scaring off the wolf. seeking an alternative route out, iceman contemplates climbing across the cable to the pillar that has a ladder down. (this should have struck most people as the first option) as the two talk this out, they look down to now see a pack of wolves which start to rip non-iceman apart as iceman and girlfriend stay close to not watch the carnage. (chivalry is dead. BOOM! i built up to that one) now, let's break this down...at this ski mountain, there is a resident pack of killer wolves. killer wolves...at a public recreational facility. ok then.
so 1 down. to backtrack a little, as everybody was still with us, the girlfriend dropped a mitten while trying to light up a cig. (smoking will kill you!). fast-forward till now --> because of non-iceman getting eaten by wolves, they ditched the climbing the cable plan and they both fell asleep overnight. girlfriend intelligently fell asleep with her hand on the guardrail. she wakes up with her hand stuck to the rail. think dumb and dumber, hand instead of tongue and actually losing a layer of skin instead of a rubber prosthetic tongue. idiot! you lost your glove and you have a perfectly good coat pocket. why would it ever leave the pocket if your hand is unoccupied? anyway, they are both horribly frostbitten and then the sun comes out giving them sunburn (another laughing moment for me). anyway, iceman attempts the cable plan again. as he climbs on the cable, somehow the screw of the chair begins to come loose, so the girl in the chair has that subplot going for her. as he's climbing, duh, the pack of wolves come back and circle underneath (this time, during the day: the time skiers usually occupy the mountain. seriously, killer wolves) since they're due for some good luck, iceman actually makes it across to the ladder. girlfriend throws his ski pole at the bottom to use as a weapon. iceman starts to get mauled by a wolf, but stabs it in the face to fend it off. then he sits on non-iceman's vacant snowboard and starts to slide down the hill with the pack of wolves following him. he promises help. the girl sits for a while, and help is taking a really long time. hmm, i wonder what happened to the help? she finally gets sick of waiting, so attempts to jump down as well (because this plan ended so well the first time...). as she positions herself, the chair falls, but not all the way because of some cable that held, so she has a much shorter drop now. she jumps, but the chair falls on her foot, so she can't walk. she army crawls down the mountain. on her way down, what does she find? iceman being ravaged by the wolves, intestines out and everything. but, the wolves (having eaten 2 grown men) are no longer hungry, and after a dramatic staredown from head wolf continue feasting on iceman as girlfriend continues down the mountain. she gets picked up on the side of the road by a minivan. the end.
Monday, October 4, 2010
the bus, chinese holidays and random thoughts
it's been a couple weeks, some are macanese things, others non.
my 2 film/music classes didn't have the same movie in each class and because of the holidays, didn't finish either in the last 2 weeks, but they will be coming soon. and trust me, they suck. i hope you're as excited as i am.
- so the best way to get from A to B is to take the buses. there are small ones that go on the small side streets (i'm not even close to being able to stand up straight on these) and big ones that use the main roads. i take both often. anyway, the seats towards the front are reserved for the elderly and women with small children. in principle, i absolutely have no problem with either reservation. the problem i have is when there is an old guy that rudely pushes and shoves people aside in line to get on so he can get on first and snag these seats. if you're strong enough to push through a crowd of people like that, you don't deserve the damn seat. and the same goes for the women that similarly barge through the line using their baby as a shield/battering ram.
- i made my first home-made chinese dish. it was basically mixed veggies, mushrooms, seafood (which is pretty damn cheap here) and noodles in broth. i'm sure i butchered some sort of traditional recipe (since i didn't follow one), but it turned out pretty good. so i'm chalking that one up to success.
- i've had my first 2 chinese holidays so far, mid-autumn festival and chinese national day, which gave me some time to extra time for myself away from my rug-rat students. mid-autumn festival is the day in the lunar calendar where the moon is brightest and most full. there's a myth attached that has to do with this dude shooting down 9 suns from the sky with arrows (you know, back when there were 10 suns in the sky. that's not a little much or anything.) in payment, he and his wife got these immortality pills. then the story splits into 3 different versions, which all end with the dude's wife eating the pills herself and winding up alone on the moon. cool story! it's basically a day to share with family. traditionally, they eat these things called moon cakes. they may sounds delicious and looks delicious on the outside, but the inside is filled with some sort of seed past and an hard egg yolk. just what i want in my cakes too! it was raining so there was no moon. my family's not here to hang out with, so i went barhopping. chinese national day is the day the chinese republic was founded. i'm not chinese and there were no cool cultural things going on, so i went barhopping. great way to spend my holidays if i do say so myself.
- so i guess illegal immigration is a big problem here in macau. you don't need a visa to get over here like regular china, and there is a lot of work in the casino industry. i was at the immigration office with carlos (the chinese peewee herman - pictures still coming -) who started ranting about illegal immigration and the problems that he sees in macau due to so many illegal immigrants. carlos is old school macanese, half chinese/half portuguese, and he's been here for a while. just to be conversational, i mentioned some of the US problems with illegal immigration, and then carlos suggested the following punishment for illegal immigrants...10 years in prison, automatically, if found to be living in macau illegally. because "that will stop them." this is around the time i stopped talking about it and kind of chuckled to myself. the funniest thing was, the biggest things that bothered him was the way they dressed and looked, because the immigrants from taiwan, phillipines, thailand, etc... seemed to just have goofy, dyed haircuts and wore odd clothes. if you could only see the suits that carlos wears every day, you could share in my amusement.
- i'm really sick of seeing people post pictures of themselves next to the stupid Bean in millennium park. especially, when they decide that it's soooo cooooool that they need to turn it into their profile picture. if you're from out of town, doing this is still dumb, but excusable. if you're from chicago, you should know better. stop it.
- there should be an age limit to when you stop having all of your status updates be depressing music lyrics about searching for happiness. and that limit is somewhere between freshman and sophomore year of college, because that is the point where you should grow up and realize life kind of sucks sometimes and buck up. make your own damn happiness instead of bitching and moaning using somebody else's crappy lyrics to express yourself.
- cee lo's hit new song "fuck you" is the ultimate male anthem for being spurned. i think that it should be a rule that after every annoying song that girls love to sing together when it comes on in crowded places (i'm specifically thinking, "put a ring on it" by beyonce), cee lo should be blasted for a little male perspective.
my 2 film/music classes didn't have the same movie in each class and because of the holidays, didn't finish either in the last 2 weeks, but they will be coming soon. and trust me, they suck. i hope you're as excited as i am.
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