YCQ #13 / New Years' Resolution

Since my time has expired this month, and my life has clearly been too boring to have anything to comment about, we now have what I know you all have actually been most hoping for: an all new episode of the Yellow Card Question Show!

Tuturuturu!

To make your life a little easier, I am also choosing your New Year's resolution for you. And today's theme song is also your New Year's resolution: Wear Sunscreen.


And now, the moment you've all been waiting for. With great gravity and ceremony, magnetism and antimony, I spin the stack and flip the wheel:


There were lots of good places to play when I was a kid. Wild grassy fields, big branchy trees, a lake for swimming and canoeing, clay hillsides and dirt drainage ditches. When I was living in this house:

there was a valley just off to the left there that had lots of entertainment. There was a small patch of jungle (including bird-of-paradise flowers, termites and cowkillers, porcupines, ...) and grassy little hill that we frequently had campouts on. I remember one summer (I think it must have been 1988) my friends and I must have camped out there several times in just a few weeks, and we got mad at our sisters when they did too, because they were copy-catting us. (A clear violation of childhood etiquette.) We also played a lot of tag and hide-and-seek games in that yard, and the bushes around the edge of the yard (gone now) were just the right height for jumping over. And when the wind was blowing good, you could stand at the edge of the hill and lean really far into it, especially if you tied a sheet to your ankles and grabbed the other two corners with your hands.

When we lived in this house:

we were a lot closer to the lake, and the neighbors had a canoe we could borrow. I spent a lot of time out in that canoe during the summertime. For some reason I can't articulate, it was particularly fun to be out when it was windy or rainy. That ditch in the foreground was also great for building a dirt city. Me and the neighbor kids made quite a town carved into the side of that ditch, with roads for matchbox cars, little lawns made of moss, and a couple high-rise buildings made of fresh mud. The brush and palm trees along the lake had parrots and cranes, boas and iguanas, and an occasional fox. In the lake we caught cool fish (mostly for the fish tank, since the largest ones were dogfish and piranhas, which generally had worms) and sometimes turtles. In the old days, there was a giant mango tree right in front of the house that was pretty good for climbing, and there was an even better one up the hill on the left.

There were so many different good places to play in those days, I think the best I can do is say that the whole area was my favorite.

A wedding like no other

On April Fools' Day 2007, I wrote a post about suddenly falling in love and getting hitched with a woman I met in a bar. I thought it was a pretty preposterous story considering I was the protagonist, but ultimately the joke was on me. Sometime in the prior month I had in fact met a woman at a bar, we did suddenly fall in love, and we are now married.


Our first impressions of each other were admittedly not great. I was cultivating my nerdy, girl-repellent look at that time, and when we were first introduced, her first words were "Do you wanna teach some English classes?", a line every native English speaker in China grows tired of hearing. But we ended up spending a couple days of our May holiday together, and I quickly realized I rather liked her. Besides her frankness and ease with strangers, she was pretty cute, clearly intelligent, culturally experienced, and unlike any woman I've known. It turned out all my friends already knew her, and everyone who knew her liked her. It took a little bit longer for her to figure out that I was a likeable guy, but before long we were spending all our free time together.



I delayed my planned return to the States as long as possible, but trying hard to not follow in the footsteps of my Fool's Day alter ego who quit school, and not quite able to believe she really liked me that much, I went back to school in California, with a visit scheduled for my winter break. It turned out she actually was as stuck on me as I was on her, and by the time winter break came, we were making marriage plans.




Marriage plans are a little complicated when the partners have lives on separate continents. It's taking a while, and still isn't done. It won't be official until after her visa process finishes, which looks now like it will be a few months more. But last month my parents came to visit, and we celebrated with her friends and family here, in a wedding sui generis, including scenic mountain views, fireworks, dancing, a bonfire, and lots of super people all having fun together.

Joining the tea trade

My career as an English tutor isn't quite lucrative enough to support my extravagant lifestyle, so I sold out last week and joined the tea trade. The early 20th century tea trade, that is. In my career as assistant to a conniving British tea merchant, my main duty is telling the enemy that my boss is not available, but I also act as his intelligence officer, tea taster (haha), and muscle (haha). And I have to remember not to blink too much. Here I am with our driver.

That is the car in the background. We are not sure if it was made from scraps or if it fell through a warp hole.

This is me with one of the enemy bosses. Before he joined the tea business, he was Stephen Chow's "Uncle Tat".

BTW, this post is not late or pre-dated. I wrote it in 1913, and post-dated it for your sakes.

Wandering around China

I'm here on a tourist visa that says I can only be in the country for 60 days at a time, so we planned a trip to the northeast, thinking we would hop over the border into Russia or bib over to South Korea. (North Korea is a whole lot closer, but a little harder to get a border stamp.) But after we had bought plane tickets and told people we were coming, we realized that Russian visas can only be obtained in your home country, and the plane/boat to Korea is more expensive than the plane/train to Hong Kong, so we took a few days in Hong Kong first. One country, two systems, but it still counts as exiting the country.
We got there on the last day of a typhoon, so it rained a lot the first day, but was really clear after. We spent one night in Kowloon, one night at a hostel an hour's walk from the road along the sea, and after going back to the main island to get a clear view from the top, we went back across the border just before midnight, during the opening ceremony of the olympics.
Our plane back from Shenzhen was delayed, so we only had 5 hours back in Jinhua before starting off again. We visited Angie's friends and family in Dalian, Dandong, Changchun and Yanji, before returning home.

The photo albums are in picasa instead of the usual flickr. Let me know how well that works.

Photos in Dandong

With Angie in Dandong
Originally uploaded by serapio

Swimming to North Korea
Originally uploaded by serapio

Guard house on the Korean side
Originally uploaded by serapio

I've posted some more photos, of our time in Dandong. It's a really nice city, with a river (the Yalu River) that's clean enough to swim in. Angie's dad swims across the river a few times a week, and I went with him a couple times. You're apparently allowed to wade in the shallows on the North Korean side, but not get all the way out of the water.

There are lots of monuments to anti-American efforts and Sino-Korean relations in the city. There's two bridges next to each other, one complete and the other half-destroyed by American forces during the Korean war, kept up as a war memorial. There's also a big "Counter-America Assist-Korea Memorial Museum", that still has a lot of anti-American propaganda. But actual anti-American sentiment seems to have waned greatly.

Also, if your Pirate Talk is a little rusty, be sure to brush up on it today. (If you are older than 45, younger than 21, a feminist or an impressionable male, you should only watch the first half, but that first half is pretty good.)

Pet picture month

Petting the cute little camel
Originally uploaded by serapio

Cute little goats
Originally uploaded by serapio

Here are a couple nice pet pictures. They aren't exactly my pets, but I am petting some domesticated animals. Here is a camel, and then a couple little goats. Aren't they so cute?

The Truth

Self-Portrait
Originally uploaded by serapio.

So I thought I should clear some things up. My previous post, dated April 1, did in fact have a number of true statements.

• The first sentence about thinking about what I want to do with my life is true.
  
• At the time I wrote that post, the sun had come out, and in fact it had been over 30° C Saturday. Oddly, winter returned Sunday, and by Monday night it had dropped to 2°. Today it is spring time again.
• I do kinda like it here these days. Posts about why are forthcoming.
• My camera is broken. Sometime between celebrating Carnaval, Chinese New Year, and President's day in L.A. and when I arrived in Ningbo March 2, my camera decided to construct it's own reality.

The rest of it is nonsense. I am returning to San Diego in the fall.

Home Again Home Again, Jiggity Jog

In the past four weeks, I have slept in eight cities, and ridden buses, metros, trains, a bullet train, a motorcycle, a rental car, a moto taxi, a few regular taxis, airplanes, and several cars of friends and family. And I walked a lot too. It was very good to see everyone, and it is good to be back.

I celebrated Chinese New Year, Carnaval, and President's Day in Los Angeles with my family. In my family, whenever these three important holidays fall on the same weekend, rather than trying to dance half-naked in the street, lighting firecrackers and waving American flags, we just sit around filling out income tax forms and taking turns holding the baby.

Now I have returned to Jinhua, where they are hanging red paper lanterns and shooting off fireworks to celebrate my birthday. It's very thoughtful of them.

N views of West Lake, and other stuff

Before I go gallivanting across the globe and visiting such exotic locales as Visalia and University City, I should say something about Hangzhou, since I previously said I wanted to say something about it, but was waiting until I uploaded some pictures. Well, I've uploaded some pictures, but can't think of much to say about it, although I did already say a few things on the photo pages. Anyway, go take a look. It's a nice place.

Today was a nice sunny day, and I rode my bike (a bright red folding bicycle) much of the way to Double Dragon Caves, which is a pretty famous tourist attraction, not far away, that I managed to not visit all this semester. I've just put up some of the pictures I took today.

A new tradition: yellow card questions

So, today I'm missing my third estimate of when I would finish grading exams. If I lower my standards, I may still finish tomorrow. In celebration of that realization, I am blogging.

You may recall that I have recently started a couple traditions, which seem to be suffering some continuity problems. Well, in the spirit of lowering my standards, I am starting a new tradition, and this one is easy, so if I can't do this one, I will officially be a failure, and you can banish me to Hainan forever. (Pretty please? Seriously, that used to be a not uncommon punishment, back in the good old days.)

And now for the show! In this activity, I draw a random question from the stack of conversation question cards that I use for my oral English classes, and then I answer it! Isn't that exciting!

So, the "yellow card" question for today is:
"If you could have any car you wanted, which car would you choose?"

Well, that one's a lame question. Especially here, since a car would be pretty pointless. (Where would I drive it? Where would I park it?) Oh, and apparently I'm not allowed to get a driver's license, since I'm color blind, and according to the legal code here, color blind drivers are unsafe, perhaps because (it is said) they can't tell the difference between the red and green lights. (1) I can tell the difference between red and green lights. I've never had a problem with it in the US. (2) People here don't pay much attention to the lights anyway.

Um, so where was I. Oh, if I could have any car... I would want a car that is clean enough that I wouldn't feel wasteful driving long distances, and small enough that parking wouldn't be too hard. The main reasons I might prefer a car over a moto is for long drives, or in bad weather. Although the convenience of being able to carry around more than a backpack amount of stuff would be nice too.

In view of these factors, I think I choose a Smart Car. Plus it's super cute, isn't it. I would like to show you the picture of Slowlane and Jeorge with one we saw in Berlin, but that photo is not digital, and is sitting in a box in San Diego. Please imagine it. Thanks.

Tune in next week for the next episode of The Yellow Card Question!

CUTEST. MANGOS. EVAR!!!!11

CUTEST. MANGOS. EVAR!!!!11
Originally uploaded by serapio.

My Movie Career Begins

A Pakastani, an American, a Palestinian, and an Irani, as Evil Soldiers from Nebulous Foreign Country

About two hours east of here is a city with several "film industrial parks", consisting of permanent film sets, with neighborhoods of replica buildings in various styles. There is a small but steady market for foreign extras, and there are a few agents who specialize in recruiting foreigners for these roles in made-for-TV movies and commercials.

This weekend I began my acting career by appearing in a TV movie, playing the role of an evil soldier from a nebulous foreign country. I appeared in three scenes, mostly seen carrying a rifle, chasing after one of the protagonists. We also kill someone off camera and steal some treasure. It seems the part was made directly from the stereotype of the greedy, dull-witted foreign devil.

For most of the day, I was just having fun hanging out with the other foreigners, and suffering in the cold. But towards the end as it began to sink in what sort of character I was supposed to be, and afterwards as I tried to imagine how someone watching the movie would see it, I feel like I have acted wrongly. And it's a given that I acted badly. My career can only go up from here, right?

Yum

A bit busy here, no time to write much. Which is where you come in. Your job is to: (1) identify what I am eating in this picture, and (2) provide a caption. A hint: it isn't turkey with cranberry sauce. Thanks.



In other news, the Great Firewall has migrated to include blogspot.com and beta.blogger.com among the civilized. It has accordingly been moved down on my enemies list.

Happy Thanksgiving!

View from Jian Feng Shan

Last weekend I again hiked up Jian Feng Shan, this time with several others from the university. It was a bit hazy/cloudy, but the view was still quite good. Afterwards we had a BBQ lunch. Yum!

尖峰山

尖峰山
Originally uploaded by serapio.

I have posted a few more photos of the area, starring the local geographical landmark, Jian-Feng Shan. This mountain is about two miles north of the campus, and on most days it is clearly visible even through the fog. Its means Pointy-Peak Mountain, and that pretty accurately describes it. It rises about 1000ft in less than a mile of trail, and the top is just big enough for a couple small picnicking parties. I hiked up the trail the day after I took this picture, and it is necessary to take many rests on the way up. It has been raining or sprinkling 24hrs a day for much of the last week, so everything is fairly wet, but temperatures are pleasant.

Zhejiang Normal University

I have uploaded some pictures of the campus. The lake in this picture is right outside the front gate of my apartment.

The campus is preparing for a giant 50th anniversary celebration by adding lots of buildings and gardens on the east end of campus, and generally prettying up the older west side of campus.

Sanborn Clan Reunion Photos

Conversation
Originally uploaded by serapio.

I've uploaded my some of my photos of the Tahoe reunion.

And here's some movies too.

Blucker by Sweetwater River

Blucker by Sweetwater River
Originally uploaded by serapio.

I have been informed that I should point out to my faithful readers that I have posted pictures of the hike Biker and I took when she visited me.

For further entertainment, provide the syntactic tree for the sentence above. Then insert "on flickr" in the most natural place, and redraw the tree. If you figure that out please explain it to me.

Or perhaps we need a poll. Which would you feel more comfortable saying?
a) I have posted pictures on flickr of the hike we took
b) I have posted on flickr pictures of the hike we took
c) I have posted pictures of the hike we took on flickr

Is this covered in those formal-syntax type classes?

Hike up San Miguel Mountain

Me and Jerry went for a hike up San Miguel Mountain Monday. The flora and fauna were out in full force.

Lomalinda

Bienvenidos
Originally uploaded by wildmansmee.

Kurt Metzger posted on mklife a bunch of photos he and Jon Captain took on their recent trip to LML. I have pulled a few into my flickr photos.