Monday, November 22, 2010
Tailor-Made Clothing
I am having two tailor-made 大衣s made. One is a (hopefully) replica of a red swing coat designed by Vivienne Westwood. The other is a Dorothy Perkins-esque military coat in a beautiful purple and green check I came across while looking at fabrics. They are costing me an arm and a leg (in China prices, of course), so hopefully they are completely worth it.
Friday, November 19, 2010
王府井
I ate two fried scorpions today.
I've been lazy, yes. Haven't posted. But everything has been recorded. Just, badly recorded.
I've been lazy, yes. Haven't posted. But everything has been recorded. Just, badly recorded.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Creepy Chinese Security Guy
One night whilst getting 串儿 right outside the gate of the university, I decided to be nice, benevolent, and ask the nighttime security guard if he wanted a skewer. Cuz, I mean, he was all by himself there and it was around 1 AM and really who talks to security guards? At first he is suspicious but then he agrees and says I can get him whatever skewer I want. I come back with a 羊肉串儿 and he asks me why I gave him this skewer. I tell him simply because he's out there by himself opening gates for us. He then asks me if he can have my number, to which I give him a -_- really look and say bluntly, "我不要给你我的手机号码" and walk back the steps to the dorm.
The Great Wall
October 30, 2010
I went to the Great Wall today. It was uneventful, apart from me being too cheap to purchase a cable car ticket (cheap way to "climb" the wall) and therefore having to climb a small mountain to get to the wall. and then being too tired to climb to the top of that one area in the distance that's really far because half the time was spent climbing the stairs to get to the wall to "climb." More like, walking the Great Wall.
I went to the Great Wall today. It was uneventful, apart from me being too cheap to purchase a cable car ticket (cheap way to "climb" the wall) and therefore having to climb a small mountain to get to the wall. and then being too tired to climb to the top of that one area in the distance that's really far because half the time was spent climbing the stairs to get to the wall to "climb." More like, walking the Great Wall.
Midterm
汉语：91%
口语：91%
听力：94%
Indignant. I swear the teachers grade differently for foreign-university affiliated white people.
口语：91%
听力：94%
Indignant. I swear the teachers grade differently for foreign-university affiliated white people.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Beijing Without A Computer
Emotional Stuff
10/15
I chatted with Jinwoo for about 4 hour straight, about Korean vs American culture and naming male kids with the same character, about liking homework, about his 谢谢 rock and Tigger, about different ways to eat ramen and a whole slew of other stuff. It took 4 hours because it was all in broken Mandarin, Korean, Cantonese and English. The meaning of 大关系, which i know now to actually be 大件事… I hope he enjoyed it; i know i did, and maybe this is the kind of conversation both of us likes. Maybe. I guess i expect men to express their boredom right away, or be able to sense they're bored, but Korea may be different…
10/17
i washed my clothes… and washed some of them by hand. washing clothes by hand means it takes a while for them to get clean. it's kinda rustic. old day, way back when work, and i kinda like it. i must have been feeling ok because i didn't write a depressing note on the ipod.
10/18
i went to 阜成门 with andrew because he wanted to visit this supercool castle like place. chinese malls are full of cool/cheap stuff and bargaining and delicious cheap food. the problem is, for a prissy girl like me, cool/cheap stuff means bad or subpar or fake quality. but in any case, i bought the mahjong set i was so bent on getting since coming to china, and only got it for 100k, or about $15. afterwards we went to the castle likee place. it was a mall decorated on the outside with chinese mythology characters mixed with zebras and noah's ark stuff and the zodiac characters and christmas characters like jingle bells and christmas wreaths and people-sized nutcrackers. supercheesy, but the stuff inside was expensive. it was interesting to look at, though. afterwards we made banana bread with a mini oven and went to the english corner to chat in english with chinese english education majors (yeah. english education in china. i don't know, man.) of course, while everyone asked the white people their for their phone numbers, no one asked me for mine. because i'm ABC. i don't count. but afterwards, we went bowling at the bowling alley near the school. young chinese people are retardedly inept at bowling. it was almost comical.
since it had been raining the previous night, it was fucking freezing. it couldn't have been much higher than 35-40 degrees fahrenheit. and to think, it only gets colder. i'll probably have to ask chinese people to help me pick out a good, huge winter jacket. otherwise, i'll freeze come winter. i also don't have shoes fitted for winter, i think. converses are made for like, california.
10/19
today i went with another guy (i have no girl friends. well, i'm starting to have girl friends. more to come) to a mall next to sanitarium to get his sister athletic shoes for her birthday, and send them back to america. an interesting guy, similar to two people i know. has an air of arrogance and doucheness, but all in all he's not a bad guy. just overly confident and a bit clingy. afterwards we went to this restaurant called the blue frog, where the food was f-ing expensive for china prices. i found it a bit admirable that he just went and sat down without pondering how expensive it was, something that i've started to do simply because everyone is stingy with their money here. we had a pretty long discussion about his and my personality, starting with my telling him that i liked that he didn't think about how much it would cost, but rather how good it would taste. also an american, when he saw cold stone, the guy flipped and bought a 50k waffle cup of ice cream, so yeah like 7 bucks. it was interesting to watch, and overall a fun guy to be with. too bad another guy warned me as i was leaving: "be careful, make sure he doesn't try to rape you."
afterwards i wanted to go to unique to buy some of their heat tech garments to try. they seem very good quality and so far have worked well. they are also extremely formfitting, so any bulge shows.
when getting back to the dorm, i thought about custom made clothing and wondered if it was better for me to just spend 500-700 on a coat made exactly to my specifications rather than a coat off the rack for 200 less? i thought about it...
10/20
i skipped my first class to sleep in.
after having lunch with classmates i was feeling bored and restless so i went to get dumplings, then went back to the dorm to see if anyone was in the cafe. the guy i was with yesterday, his uber christian friend and the central asians were in the cafe. i decided to perform an experiment. i was wearing the heat tech turtleneck i had bought the other day, and sat down, then slowly got up and took my jackets off to reveal the turtle neck. then sat back down. then got back up and walked to the counter to ask the guy behind it if he had vinegar. then, walked back. out of the corner of my eye i saw mohammed watch me with steady eyes. so predictable. and then kept staring at me. then, after about 5 minutes, got up, bought a bottle of water, and left without saying a word to his friends who were laughing at the chess game that was going on between two of them.
later that night when i went to dinner with other people and a girl named joy, one of the guys said "nice sweater." thing is, now that i know / am aware of when a guy says something like that, it means something more along the lines of "damn girl, __insert something sexual__" rather than the female meaning which is more fashion based and not carnally based.
anyway, i met this girl named joy, who is someone the guy who commented on my sweater had met online. i didn't know those things existed. yeah. i tried to strike up small talk / conversation with her, and she was pretty receptive. thing is, i couldn't tell what kind of person she was. she had dark skin, she looked southern asian, but finally revealed that she was actually Chinese and just didn't like speaking chinese unless she had to. we exchanged numbers and promised to call to hang out and stuff.
this was the night i couldn't sleep. i couldn't sleep and didn't sleep until 6:30 and woke up at 7:30 pissed off and totally tired and wanting to sleep more. but i had class and had already missed a class. so i went.
10/21
class was horrible. the portuguese girl has finally realized that i'm not a fan of her and thus decided to be wan and lackluster and a bit rude to me. a teacher noticed that she was being a bit rude and decided to intervene. quite frankly, i was glad to have an intermediate.
after class, i decided to go shopping for a birthday present for jinwoo.
10/22
my fake real leather mulberry's clasp broke. the only thing i could think was: this is the result of you buying something fake. fake fendis, man. fake fendis.
I also got my computer back today. From a friend of my mom's boyfriend. While I was out with some people I met through a friend who met one of them through the internet. And we went to eat Russian food. And then went to a bar frequented by the foreign business people of Beijing. And then went to the very first club I visited in Beijing.
Guys are easily interested in a girl. Sheesh you men.
10/15
I chatted with Jinwoo for about 4 hour straight, about Korean vs American culture and naming male kids with the same character, about liking homework, about his 谢谢 rock and Tigger, about different ways to eat ramen and a whole slew of other stuff. It took 4 hours because it was all in broken Mandarin, Korean, Cantonese and English. The meaning of 大关系, which i know now to actually be 大件事… I hope he enjoyed it; i know i did, and maybe this is the kind of conversation both of us likes. Maybe. I guess i expect men to express their boredom right away, or be able to sense they're bored, but Korea may be different…
10/17
i washed my clothes… and washed some of them by hand. washing clothes by hand means it takes a while for them to get clean. it's kinda rustic. old day, way back when work, and i kinda like it. i must have been feeling ok because i didn't write a depressing note on the ipod.
10/18
i went to 阜成门 with andrew because he wanted to visit this supercool castle like place. chinese malls are full of cool/cheap stuff and bargaining and delicious cheap food. the problem is, for a prissy girl like me, cool/cheap stuff means bad or subpar or fake quality. but in any case, i bought the mahjong set i was so bent on getting since coming to china, and only got it for 100k, or about $15. afterwards we went to the castle likee place. it was a mall decorated on the outside with chinese mythology characters mixed with zebras and noah's ark stuff and the zodiac characters and christmas characters like jingle bells and christmas wreaths and people-sized nutcrackers. supercheesy, but the stuff inside was expensive. it was interesting to look at, though. afterwards we made banana bread with a mini oven and went to the english corner to chat in english with chinese english education majors (yeah. english education in china. i don't know, man.) of course, while everyone asked the white people their for their phone numbers, no one asked me for mine. because i'm ABC. i don't count. but afterwards, we went bowling at the bowling alley near the school. young chinese people are retardedly inept at bowling. it was almost comical.
since it had been raining the previous night, it was fucking freezing. it couldn't have been much higher than 35-40 degrees fahrenheit. and to think, it only gets colder. i'll probably have to ask chinese people to help me pick out a good, huge winter jacket. otherwise, i'll freeze come winter. i also don't have shoes fitted for winter, i think. converses are made for like, california.
10/19
today i went with another guy (i have no girl friends. well, i'm starting to have girl friends. more to come) to a mall next to sanitarium to get his sister athletic shoes for her birthday, and send them back to america. an interesting guy, similar to two people i know. has an air of arrogance and doucheness, but all in all he's not a bad guy. just overly confident and a bit clingy. afterwards we went to this restaurant called the blue frog, where the food was f-ing expensive for china prices. i found it a bit admirable that he just went and sat down without pondering how expensive it was, something that i've started to do simply because everyone is stingy with their money here. we had a pretty long discussion about his and my personality, starting with my telling him that i liked that he didn't think about how much it would cost, but rather how good it would taste. also an american, when he saw cold stone, the guy flipped and bought a 50k waffle cup of ice cream, so yeah like 7 bucks. it was interesting to watch, and overall a fun guy to be with. too bad another guy warned me as i was leaving: "be careful, make sure he doesn't try to rape you."
afterwards i wanted to go to unique to buy some of their heat tech garments to try. they seem very good quality and so far have worked well. they are also extremely formfitting, so any bulge shows.
when getting back to the dorm, i thought about custom made clothing and wondered if it was better for me to just spend 500-700 on a coat made exactly to my specifications rather than a coat off the rack for 200 less? i thought about it...
10/20
i skipped my first class to sleep in.
after having lunch with classmates i was feeling bored and restless so i went to get dumplings, then went back to the dorm to see if anyone was in the cafe. the guy i was with yesterday, his uber christian friend and the central asians were in the cafe. i decided to perform an experiment. i was wearing the heat tech turtleneck i had bought the other day, and sat down, then slowly got up and took my jackets off to reveal the turtle neck. then sat back down. then got back up and walked to the counter to ask the guy behind it if he had vinegar. then, walked back. out of the corner of my eye i saw mohammed watch me with steady eyes. so predictable. and then kept staring at me. then, after about 5 minutes, got up, bought a bottle of water, and left without saying a word to his friends who were laughing at the chess game that was going on between two of them.
later that night when i went to dinner with other people and a girl named joy, one of the guys said "nice sweater." thing is, now that i know / am aware of when a guy says something like that, it means something more along the lines of "damn girl, __insert something sexual__" rather than the female meaning which is more fashion based and not carnally based.
anyway, i met this girl named joy, who is someone the guy who commented on my sweater had met online. i didn't know those things existed. yeah. i tried to strike up small talk / conversation with her, and she was pretty receptive. thing is, i couldn't tell what kind of person she was. she had dark skin, she looked southern asian, but finally revealed that she was actually Chinese and just didn't like speaking chinese unless she had to. we exchanged numbers and promised to call to hang out and stuff.
this was the night i couldn't sleep. i couldn't sleep and didn't sleep until 6:30 and woke up at 7:30 pissed off and totally tired and wanting to sleep more. but i had class and had already missed a class. so i went.
10/21
class was horrible. the portuguese girl has finally realized that i'm not a fan of her and thus decided to be wan and lackluster and a bit rude to me. a teacher noticed that she was being a bit rude and decided to intervene. quite frankly, i was glad to have an intermediate.
after class, i decided to go shopping for a birthday present for jinwoo.
10/22
my fake real leather mulberry's clasp broke. the only thing i could think was: this is the result of you buying something fake. fake fendis, man. fake fendis.
I also got my computer back today. From a friend of my mom's boyfriend. While I was out with some people I met through a friend who met one of them through the internet. And we went to eat Russian food. And then went to a bar frequented by the foreign business people of Beijing. And then went to the very first club I visited in Beijing.
Guys are easily interested in a girl. Sheesh you men.
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