Sunday, September 28, 2008

The Magic of China's Medicine

Chinese people, I was told before, know their 拉肚子 (laduzi - diarrhea, sounds better in Chinese), and now I believe that.

I was given 3 medicines yesterday, I was to take the first one immediately, 3 hours later take the second, then 1-3 hours later when my stomach started to hurt take the third. I was told not to take the final, big daddy pill until my stomach began hurting. I was also told if it started hurting before I could take it. So I took the first 2 and still had no reprieve from the upset stomach symptoms, and like clockwork an hour after taking the 2nd one my stomach began to hurt. Thus at 4am I took the third one, and it knocked me right out. When I woke up my problems were gone, and I've been fine all day today with no issues whatsoever. It was like the third one nuked my digestive tract so hard it knocked me unconscious, and while I slept Chairman Mao himself entered my intestines and showed them who was boss.

I love being healthy again.

The Chinese Hospital

Been sick all weekend with what I am fairly certain is either food poisoning or a really bad reaction to some unclean food, I'm pretty sure it happened when I ate something I'd left in the refrigerator for far too long. In any case, I got to have a wonderful lesson in the differences between the Chinese and American hospitals.

I opted to go to a real Chinese hospital instead of one of the English speaking foreign ones, and the experience was fantastic. I was scared of dehydration so I had been drinking lots of fluids all afternoon, and when I did the urine sample it came out clear as a result of all the liquids I'd been drinking and she didn't believe it was my urine, she thought I'd spit in it. Aside from that, the main part of excitement was talking with the doctor and being able to understand and answer all of the questions. She's got me on some medicine with English names that sound powerful and strong, so I am certain I will return to full health in no time.

Monday, September 22, 2008

This One's For The 爷们儿 (Real Men)

I've given up eating a lot of my favorite dishes in my recently began effort to get my body fat percentage a bit lower, and as a result I have begun cooking some fantastic fusion. I mix Mexican, Italian, American, and Chinese cuisine together to make some fantastic healthy dishes, tonight involved chicken, bell pepper, spicy pepper, garlic stir fry. Whenever I cook I have an audience of girls wanting to learn from me, most of the guys in China are too cool or traditional to learn how to cook, their loss. They are a bit shocked by the amount of eggs I eat every day, but aside from that they are eager to learn my recipes and habits. I am already acting as personal trainer at the gym for two girls at the moment, and more are trying to get set up with times with me. This all exploded in the last week as people coming into the kitchen to grab their milk or leftovers saw me cooking massive meals - my habit is to cook several dishes to last me for a few days of variety eating, just stir fry or microwave a bit to reheat - and it is a bit overwhelming.

This is for JJ, Dan, Steve-o and all the others who must listen to metal and pump iron every day, we are like sharks and if we stop we will die. The 爷们儿。

Lately, I've been listening to copious amounts of Evergrey while studying or walking to the gym. My actual gym music has been dominated by throwbacks to Symphony X (Paradise Lost album), Iron Maiden, and Persuader. In addition, I've been listening to a lot of Ensiferum and Kamelot to get some new music in the mix. The latest great discovery I've made though is listening to the Ayreon I got from Dan. JJ, go get Aryeon right now, it is great listening music (not exactly gym material).

Monday, September 15, 2008

中秋节 - Mid Autumn Festival

Mid Autumn Festival happened yesterday, the holiday designated for spending time with family members. Since I didn't have any family in China, I spent the day learning how to make Chinese food with Chinese people and the night out looking at the lights and moon.

I made all sorts of goodies, but the most important/impressive is my ability to now make and wrap dumplings. And or the naysayers out there, such as Jessica Lin who insists that it is difficult to make them pretty, I would like to say mine were moderately attractive and showed definite improvement over the course of making about 50 of them
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After the giant lunch/dinner, we took a long journey to a big fancy park bedecked with giant art displays adorned with lights. The majority of them looked like holiday floats made for showcasing during the night with blinking lights, and some of them shot water or rotated to music. Mixed in with all of this was all the ancient architecture of the park itself, namely the bridges, which were also bedecked with lights for the holiday. The tradition is to go out and look at the moon, but since it was overcast and a bit smoggy we opted to look at the lights instead of the slightly gross yellow moon.

I would show you pictures of all this, but I forgot to charge my camera the night before and there was no charge left when I went to grab it for picture time. Yes, I am quite dumb.

Friday, September 12, 2008

100 RMB in the Subway

Yesterday, after leaving the internet cafe I go to for my post test celebration, I decided to stop and add some money to my subway card before boarding and heading home. I didn't need to, I still had enough money to last me for about a week, but I figured that now would be a good time since I wasn't in a hurry. I was wrong.


I followed all the instructions well, but when it came time to put in my money the machine took my 100RMB bill and didn't put the money on my card, just threw my card back out at me without asking me if I wanted to put the money on the card. I turned and asked the nearest Traffic Police attendant person what to do about it, and thus began what seemed like a gigantic event in their lives. I had witnesses to prove that I had put in my money, hadn't done anything wrong, and been cheated by the ominous machine, but still every person that came to investigate was incredulous that the machine could fail. How could the machine fail? It's the machine! It's new and improved and designed to make our lives either and would never betray us and cause us trouble! I feel, after writing that, that there is probably political satire in there somewhere, but I'm too lazy to find it and make it less obvious or more crafty since it wasn't really intentional. In any case, more and more higher ups kept coming down from wherever they come from, each one having the same investigation progress:

Oh you speak Chinese? Good! Your card didn't get the money? Well let's look for ourselves. Hm, you're right, no money. You followed the instructions correctly? Okay, that can't be. Oh these witnesses say you did it right? Okay, this is odd, let me talk to someone else, please wait a moment.

I waited for about 2 hours as different people came and went, and really I didn't care about the money in the end I just wanted to get on the train. They, however, had committed to solving the foreigners problem and they were determined not to be denied. They went behind the machine and took out parts of it trying to get the money thing open. After what must have been a long time fiddling with that, it was evident they didn't know how to get it open and weren't going to succeed. One of the ladies with relatively high status as indicated by her armband and some stars on her shirt asked me if I was sure I had put the money in, and if so perhaps the thing had spit the money back out onto and it had been blown in a breeze onto the floor. I wanted to tell her I wasn't retarded, and that for it to both spit out the money and then that money to be taken by a strong enough breeze to fall down I would need to have a severe problem, as the money accepting slot is in the middle of the machine and I never looked away. I indulged her though, and let her and 4 other police officers crawl around on the floor searching. It was touching.

In the end, the machine defeated them. They could not manage to make it cooperate. They took my phone number and said they'd call me today to get my money back to me, finally letting me go on my way. I'm fairly certain I won't see that 100RMB again, but I'm glad they at least let me go. The one thing I kept thinking throughout the entire ordeal was what if I were a foreigner who didn't speak Chinese? The main reason I got the level of help I did was because my Chinese was good enough to poke holes in their dumb theories and explain what the real problem was, if I were just a foreigner I wonder how fantastically blown out of control things would have gotten. A man can dream.

On a quick after note, Ron from Hangzhou (from America) came to Beijing to visit for a bit. We went to an awesome restaurant last night specializing in spicy stuff and something called ma, which they think is spicy but is in fact a tool of the devil. This is a taste/effect that American food does not have, it is a type of spicy that after eating sometimes causes the wasabi like sinus clean out, but then the real effect kicks in as you start getting weird tingles on your tongue or lips as though your mouth were going to sleep. To round it out, the taste is pretty good, too, so I take it as a challenge to see how much crazy ma la stuff I can eat whenever we go somewhere like this. I forgot to take my camera because I am an idiot, but we ate some excellent (read, expensive) fish, some vegetables, rabbit meat, and snail. The snail was excellent, it came with a plastic glove and skewer to wear and you had to work it out of its shell before you could eat it. It tasted amazing. The rabbit was the most punishing of the dishes, it came last and was just swimming in the peppers that give the dishes their signature taste. Slowly people around the table tapped out as they reached their limit of spicy/ma la, and it was up to me to finish the dish. The end result was us walking away from the with runny noses, sweating, and drooling uncontrollably trying to fan ourselves as we set off on a quest for ice cream and water.

It was a good night.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Mmm Fancy Restaurants

Yesterday I went and researched the different types of tea China has to offer at a local tea shop. It was partly for class, but I really do need to learn this stuff so I can show my mother the best tea places in China when she gets here and sound like I know my stuff. I am still trying to find White Tea for Dan, it is rather rare here as well, the lady at the tea shop has ordered some for me to try, so I need to wait a few days on that. Bought a whole heap of tea to add to my collection, including all the fun types that bloom into giant flowers and such when placed in tea. I've got herbal tea, floral tea, black tea, everything. I will be the tea master when I get back, even if I still don't really like the taste at all.

Today, after giving my report on tea, I went back to the New Century Hotel Nikko to meet with the infamous hotel man and get a room for my mother and aunt to stay in come October. This time I came prepared, dressed nicely and expecting a much larger even than merely showing off hotel rooms.

I am glad I prepared. He took me around and showed me off to different people, for 15 minutes we basically walked around the hotel showing off the amazing Chinese speaking white man, I am glad I made him proud. We took a look at different rooms, some of them frighteningly nice, and according to the brochure frighteningly expensive, but due to our long friendship I was told not to look at those prices. In the end I settled on the standard room, which although is standard is called the 'deluxe room' and is normally in the 2300 RMB range. I got it for 630. Connections baby, connections.

Following the show and tell and the room decision, we went to eat in yet another restaurant in that the hotel has. I have no idea how many restaurants are hidden in there but it seems ridiculous, I think every floor has a fancy and different restaurant. We ate some gloriously delicious things. First we had a soup that was both sweet and spicy, I couldn't quite figure out how but the combination blew my mind. We had this meat that I am convinced is the best of western and asian cuisine blending. It was basically beef as tender as a fillet mignon covered with onions and a sauce with a very distinct Asian flavor. It was fantastic, and only beaten by the excellent 肉饼, which is basically this fantastic concoction with a layer of bread, then meat, then bread, then meat, then bread. I can't really describe it without using Chinese. This is a bad sign. The place was ridiculously fancy though, so I am excited for those two to hurry up and get here.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

你说的英文very good!

I had a girl misspeak to today and tell me "你说的英文very good!" "You speak English very good (should be well, but she is having trouble with nouns so I'm letting that go)" attempting to make a joke and instead looking like an idiot in front of all her co-workers. Rest assured, I definitely made fun of her, too.

Lately been extremely busy being responsible and writing essays. My Chinese class is far too easy, and to prove that I should be put in a level by myself I've been writing 600 character essays to turn in every day. They give us a bunch of topics from what we study during the week to write about expecting us to turn one essay in on Friday, but I've so far turned one in every day this week. That'll teach them to put me in a level too easy for me.

Probably not.

The gym has been fantastic, the notable difference is that people like Trunks and DMS (see me for stories) are not there, and that you don't have to do the ridiculous weights they do with 0 form and 100% cheating to get respect. It is just a cleansing feeling really. Aside from that, there is also an excellent warning on one of the adjustable ab benches I've been meaning to take a picture. It states that if the machine is "used in improperly you will be damned", so every time I work my abs I laugh to myself because that means all the Chinese people I see flopping around on the bench are totally going to hell for it.

The roommates moved in awhile back, and we of course celebrated the first night with some authentic Beijing 串儿 (MEAT ON A STICK). It's pretty much the most awesome thing available on a wooden stick for 1 RMB. Pictures and more to come.