Pudding and Chopsticks

For some reason there isn’t much street food where I currently live. At least the southern style.

Here are some photos when I hit up one of my old haunts.

And some photos from the bus ride to the airport.

This is my 91yr old grandfather who recently passed away. I took this photo when I came back from Colorado before coming to China, I think anyway. I haven’t looked at the photo data to be sure.

I see it and I remember him in one word….. Well.

He said it with a long drawn out u-curved sound. He was making his point. If you stated a fact that he didn’t agree with or thought was contradictory to something, weeeelllll would roll out along with his eyes.

He was a quite man, who had a am/fm radio on the dining room table. Ate bananas everyday, and watched the Wheel of Fortune.

Chaqita banana stickers were every where around the table. Stuck on anything and everything.

I would roll over to find him puttering out in the garage. Tinkering on something mechanical.

I can remember one time when I was playing on some concrete play ground items. I slipped and wacked my head on the edge of one, splitting my eye lid open and bleeding all over. He drove the truck to the doctors. It was dusk, he jumped curbs, which lead to the conclusion that he had cataracts. What a way to find out.

The green Dodge prospector. The truck I remember him having. Whatever the car it was always a Dodge or Chrysler.

I was named after him. I am the fourth, he was the second or Jr. As you could say.

The Lincoln. The fender.

The hats. Lots of hats.

The suspenders.

The little mind games in the drawer by the chair.

The garage. The mowers.

Putting me through college.

Newspapers.

The stories the last couple times I saw him.

The way he would meander into the room, stop look, then keep going.

The Homer furnace iron plate in the window of the garage.

The green truck.

Tweetie bird.

Table saw.

The funny faces.

The garden.

The wit.

Looking out the window of the house, watching the birds and squirrels.

The neighbor that got his with the tree.

These are things that remind me of him. I am proud to have the same name as him, I only hope that I can do it justice and make him proud along with the rest of my family.

Thanks for the photo grandpa, peace out.

I got the day off today because it is a Chinese holiday. Tomb sweeping or something. Basically it’s a day were people go to sweep the graves of those who have passed away. I am guessing that they don’t actually sweep the graves, it’s just an expression used to say that they are paying their yearly respects to their relatives.

So that leaves me at Starbucks again. Well not entirely. Today I did the laundry, cleaned the house and them went to buy a 3G sim card for the iPad. Awesome. I then walked a long ass ways because the weather was good and then I ended up here at Starbucks. Currently I have a cute girl sitting next to me. I am guessing that she has rich parents because she has a iPad. I doubt that she is a hooker or married, or even a mistress so that leaves a rich daddy to take care of her. She is probably a student of something. Which is why she is sitting next to me sucking down a vanilla frap. Waiting for me to say hello so that she can start to barrage me with English questions. Or I am over thinking this and she has a secret crush on me and has been staking me since this morning. That actually would be cool.

Oh forgot to a mention that she is watching An English TV show. Gee, why doesn’t that surprise me.

Anyway here are some photos from, well, recently.

Stay stunned for some blogs about important things.

This is a photograph of the area that Starbucks is. I took that little gem at night so that the world my gaze upon my ability to stitch together a panoramic photo from a point and shoot.

Enjoy.

Ok, so I will admit that in America or anywhere for that matter there can be an excuse for everything. But here in China there is actually an excuse for everything and everyone is a lawyer.

For instance. I told one of my employees that they needed to call me when they have a problem. They said that they didn’t want to use their phone because phone minutes are expensive. I said ok, then come find me. She then said that she can’t come find me because my office is too far away. I asked her if she had two feet, she said yes, I then said, good you can come find me.

This happens everyday with everything. No one wants to do anything and everything is a fight. Everyone has excuses and answers for everything.

Just the way it is.

I would like to blog more but I’m not really in the mood. I know it’s Sunday and I should be expanding the rest of the world’s brains with knowledge of China but, I just can’t. So this week I will try to write some more.

So ya’ll come back now ya’ hear.

There is this place very near my house that have 麻辣汤. MaLa Tang. It’s a type of spicy soup or hot pot thing and it’s awesome. It’s hot, spicy and goes good with beer. Actually it translates to something like, hot and numbing soup. I could be wrong though.. Whatever it is it’s spectacular.

I usually go and order a lot. Sometimes I hit the place with another person. We proceed to order a ton of food and drink a bunch of beer. The ities gets real heavy. Anyway, here are some photos.

How you order is grab a bunch of junk, throw it in a basket, and then give it to someone who looks like they work there.. They procced to boil it into awesomeness.

This is how you chop meat in China.

There is this restaurant here in town that is amazing. It’s called 外婆家，Grandma’s House.

That’s just what it is, amazing food that’s actually cheap.

So here I am sitting at Starbucks. Why do I come to Starbucks you might ask, well, because they are the only ones in the city that I live in that have good coffee. McDonald’s also does but hey, who wants to sit there and work on the computer all day.

I ask what the hell is coming of China because I don’t know what the eff is going on here. I just ordered my drink, the weekly coffee. I ordered in Chinese, because I am in China. The cashier was Chinese, the Starbucks is in China, and I can speak Chinese. So that’s why I did what I did. The guy behind me ordered using English. Why, well I don’t really know why, because he is Chinese. So what the eff is going on here. The Chinese speak English to each other now? WTF? I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand I think that you can do whatever the eff you want, but on the other hand WTF are you doing? Your Chinese, you English sucks and your speaking to a Chinese person, order using Chinese you twit.

Also everyone here has an Iphone 4. I mean everyone, I am not exaggerating one bit. EVERYONE. All the girls are wearing make up, dressed up, fake, LA style, it’s sickening. Maybe I’m blowing this out of proportion, in fact I probably am. But it seems to me that everyone here is trying to not be Chinese so hard that they have not a clue how they look.

Everyone wants to be a different class. That’s the point. That’s China, that’s the game. No one is here to drink coffee. Everyone is here to show off their wealth, their status, how powerful they are. It’s the game, it’s China. Kind of makes sense if you think about it. What did emperors and what not do? They built buildings, had lot’s of wives, jewelry, and everything else. I am guessing they wanted to show that they are of a different class. But now it’s Ipads, Macbooks, Iphones, makeup, Designer clothes, etc. Girls here don’t want to be tan because white skin is prized. Don’t want to look like a farmer with a tan. Guys grow pinky nails long because what was a sign of wealth. Common workers can’t do that in the old days, only wealthy bosses could. Everyone is trying to climb the ladder. I guess we all are.

I don’t know why but it bothers me, but it does. /rant.

UPDATE: I had a comment on this post and it got me thinking a little more on it. Here are some more thoughts on this subject.

I really don’t care what non native English speakers do. I just feel, I not sure how to put it, offended maybe? Well maybe not even that. If say, I found a girlfriend and she wanted to learn English, fine. If I am conducting business and the opposite party is Chinese and speaking English, fine. But for some reason, speaking English because it is hip, show your trying to be as smart as me, or smarter, and or trying to jump a class from the people around you by just knowing how to speak it really bothers me. If I got any more thoughts I’ll try to share them.

Lately I have been noticing that my beloved Macbook Pro has been creeping along. For daily tasks it’s fine. But when I get into something design wise, Photoshop, Illustrator, have a ton windows open it just likes to creep along and push my button. Yes I have a button that it something doesn’t happen immediately I explode. Anyhow enter the new Macbook Pros released this week.

They are awesome and expensive. I wasn’t thinking they were going to be that much but hey it’s Apple and well, I love the computer so I am going to have to pony up. Although I am going to admit I am disappointed. Why? Well I was hoping for a design refresh. The insides are all good, but I was hoping for something lighter, smaller and different. Mainly because I want to stand out at the local coffee shop. For that and for something new. I’ll be honest. But all and all, they are three times faster than my current Mac. I mean really, if I can’t be happy with that I’m stupid.

So probably this summer I’ll dive in. If not I’ll wait until the next ones come out, then the next ones, and the next ones until I have a perfect Mac and have aged 50 years.

Anywho.