It’s official - hell has frozen over. Pigs are now flying. I can’t believe it but.. I somehow made it into a magazine.

Check it out!
Female Magazine: 50 Gorgeous People

In other news, I graduated (who woulda thunk), found a job in the Yay, moved to SF but am somehow currently working in Singapore. Annnd we haven’t updated since Pogs were cool.

‘Tis the season for posting I guess - Happy New Year 2007 y’all. I spent this new year’s with Sheyi and crew at Suite 181. This was actually the first time I was in a club to see in the new year and while I didn’t expect a night of debauchery, I at least expected some confetti, or a balloon drop, or even a damn clock on the wall counting down. But noo, what we got was a random loud ass DJ at 11:57 goin, “WHATS GOIN ON YALL, WE GOT NEW YEARS IN 10..9… MAKE SOME NOISEEEEE!” Weak. Well at least for the $60 bucks, we got an open bar, right? Oh wait, it was only free from 8-10PM. The only redeeming factor was the scene at Naan and Curry at 4AM. We sat / drummed to blaring bhangra music / stole food from other tables, as we drunkenly waited 2 hours for them to make our food. Good times, good times.

Best youtube vids of the holiday season:

A Charlie Brown Christmas / Scrubs mashup:

It’s hilarious!
A Special Christmas Box:

*gasp* something good from SNL - I can’t believe it.

Believe it or not, we are still alive. Without wasting any time on explanations or excuses for our absence, lets get back to business.

Here are some quality gifts from holidays long past. We are truly living in lesser times.

http://www.radarmagazine.com/features/2006/12/toys.php

Getting one of these for Christmas would be pretty nuts,

So, living in New York City this summer has definitely been an interesting experience. There’s so much exposure to everything, it’s easy to find yourself thinking to yourself, ‘just when I think I’ve seen it all…’ This weekend was no different in that sense, which means it was different in almost every other sense. There was the hobo entertainer on the 1-train dropping 50 Cent verses and spitting indecent (and hilarious) Michael Jackson jokes (ask me if you want to hear a few). There was the guy at the club that got up in my face and started freestyling to me and my buddies about how Mexicans, Asians, Blacks, and Whites got to stick together (he was Black and my friends were Asian and White. So I guess I was rep’ing the Mexican crowd). Everything’s been incredible fresh. That was just Friday night, courtesy of Turntables on the Hudson on the Frying Pan Lightship. DJ Nikodemus, Marino, and Cato were awesome.

The Frying Pan is an old ship that’s been converted into a club, with multiple dance floors and chilling spots. It’s probably the most original venue I’ve seen. The whole establishment is dingy and classless, almost as if it were a Disney World ride set up to be that way. In reality, it’s just the old rusted innards of a 70+ year old ship. It sits out on the west side of Manhattan at pier 63, on the Hudson River. At one point the wind picked up and the boat started rocking back and forth. Eventually the party died out and we just sat around on some couches next to the ship, waiting for the sun to come up. When the sky started turning pink, we got up and walked over to a diner in the meat packing district for a little breakfast.

The following day, my friend and I took a trip down to Jackson Heights, often times called Little India because of all the brown people. I’ve never been there before, so it was a somewhat educational experience for me. All the shops sold either 22k gold, clothing, or cds/dvds. My friend looked in the back of one of the cd/dvd stores and commented on the fact that there was a stack of 9 VCRs stacked. It made me realize that it wasn’t much different from the Indian stores at home. Just, these ones were all side by side. One other thing about Jackson Heights, I’ve never seen an Indian grocery store quite as large as the ones out there. The mangos were so fresh and cheap (compared to the absurd 2 for $3 here in Harlem), but coming back from Queens and then switching trains at 42nd with a box of mangos in hand isn’t really ideal. After grabbing an $8 buffet at an Indian restaurant on 37th Ave. we took the 7-train back towards Manhattan, but stopped off at P.S.1, a contemporary art gallery inside a renovated public school building.

P.S.1 is affiliated by MoMA (Museum of Modern Art). The gallery had some crazy stuff, stuff that makes you realize that someone actually came up with the idea of whatever’s in front of you. One piece of a giant contraption that took up the entire room; you sat in it and it projected shadows through a thin film to make it appear as though you were driving along.

Outside the gallery, P.S.1 was hosting Warm Up 2005. They provide music and people go crazy. When we were walking out of the main building and into the court yard (which was packing shoulder to shoulder with people dancing and jumping up and down to the music), one of the security guards said that there were 7000 people there. The music was alright, it was all techno/trance (I don’t really know the difference. Basically, lots of heavy bass and a hook that just gets repeated over and over). The DJ spinning this Saturday was apparently from Berlin. So the sun eventually went down and we hopped back on the 7 and went home.

The next day I met up with some friends and grabbed some (overpriced) brunch. Shortly thereafter, my plan had been to go home and chill for the day. But my friend convinced me to come down to Coney Island with her because DJ Nikodemus and Cato were spinning on the boardwalk, right by the beach. The next several hours consisted of us trying to find me flip-flops and shorts. We walking in and out of several drug stores, but were unable to find and flip-flops. Apparently the 79 cent store only carries ladies flip-flops. At one point, we were looking inside a drug store, and my friend found a beach mat that would prove useful for when we got to the beach. So in true college student fashion, she stole accidentally walked out with it. She didn’t actually realize she still had it with her until 20 minutes later. So, to prevent myself from going home and lying on the couch, the beginning of the afternoon turned into scavenging for beach clothes. I borrowed someone’s flip-flops (I met him for all of 10 minutes) and a pair of shorts.

Took the long, arduous trip all the way down to Coney Island, which is at the bottom of Brooklyn. That was a first for me as well. Basically, Coney Island is a carnival town. The boardwalk novelties (read: rides and games) seem to push pretty far back into the actual town. The ocean (probably dirty toxic river water) was kind of cold, and not too refreshing. After getting there, we just laid around for a while, not far from the boardwalk spot where the DJs were spinning. Later on we went over and talked with the DJ’s a little while, and stuck around and chilled till they closed up shop around 9. And then the best part, we rode the Cyclone, the world first modern roller coaster. The machine is deadly. It’s run by shady employees trying to skim a few bucks off the top without management finding out. And frankly, I appreciate that. Because at 5 bucks for one ride, I would rather get as close to dying as possible. People in line (probably locals) were telling us about how pieces of the coaster or scaffolding fall off sometimes, during normal operation. The damn thing gives you more whiplash than a third world taxi. After your first ride, they’ll let you ride again for 4 bucks instead of 5. But their dirty little secret is, if you get off and walk past the guy who holds your bags and loose articles, he’ll offer you 2 for 5 dollars. So if it’s you and a friend, he’ll let both of you ride for 5 bucks. We told him all we had was 4 bucks and some change; he let us ride again, because all he really wanted was our money anyway, and something is always better than nothing. My guess is that they were pocketing the cash without the manager being the wiser.

After than we walked around the carnival for a bit and then took the train all the way back (somehow we were stupid and rode local all the way from Coney Island up to 116th street). I spent the twoish hours on the train educating myself about Savanna, Georgia (all my friend had with her beside what she was reading was a Lonely Planet travel guide for Savanna, Georgia). If anyone wants to road trip down to Savanna, now that I’m all educated and whatnot, just holler. Cause now that I know all the lowcountry slang, what they eat and drink, their history, and even a few of their ghost stories, we’ll be able to blend in, no problem.

So, what’s been the most shocking thing about China so far? Up until two years ago, relationships were banned on campus. Relationships. Completely. Banned. That’ll score you some points on the “how communist are you” web quiz. I’m still not clear on how the university policy was enforced (caddle prods? Equilibrium-esque drugs?), but I’ve heard the tale from enough students to believe them. Accordingly - when the emotional Berlin wall was torn down, all students immediately hooked up with each other. I’d estimate about 85% of the campus has a signifigant other.

Ah - but the plot thickens. Dorms are strictly single sex - all guys in the guys dorm, all girls in the girls dorm. Grouchy old ladies patrol live at every entrance to foil trespassers. So, lets do some math: a signifigant other for every student + no ‘private areas’ = …public displays of affection ! Yes that’s right - you thought it was bad in high school, but no! Everywhere you look are couples walking hand in hand/hand on ass. At night it gets worse, we have this mountain behind our campus creatively called 後山 (back mountain); at night this beautiful landmark quickly becomes make-out-because-there-are-no-lights mountain (因為沒有燈可以接吻山). The dorms on campus have a curfew of 11PM when the doors are locked and electricity is shut off (another story). From 10:25PM to 11:00PM, you have to wade through the tender goodnights of throngs of couples to get to the door.

But for all the PDAs, I think there’s very little actual sex going on. Whenever I attempt to bring it up, all I get are ‘no-no-no-no’ responses. The campus has zero information about safe sex, much less any actual condoms to be found anywhere. It’s like the college is on a high school relationship scale here. However, I’d probably chalk this one up to cultural differences - relationships are taken very seriously (guys are called boys until they’re married), I often see very young married couples, and arranged marrages are still popular.

All in all, not what I expected at all. When I arrived, I pictured something like Berkeley - maybe with a couple more asians, but still something similar. Relationships in China are more.. innocent. Perhaps not all bad eh?

I’ve almost hit halfway for my two months here, and I think I’ve finally gotten used to livin in China. One of the biggest things that I’ve realized since I’ve been here isn’t even something really unique to China. It’s the amount of work and energy a teacher needs to educate and motivate students. Or as Rohit puts it: “teachin ain’t easy.” Until last month, I’ve never actually taught a class before, much less an English class. Having only been on the receiving (passive) end of the classroom, I never really thought about how much effort it even takes to come up with material, much less interesting ways to present it. Teaching has given me newfound respect (read: ‘mad props’) for teachers in general. Well, all except for Prof. Lee of PS128, whose brilliant powerpoint recital had the same effect as a bedtime story — read while simultaneously overdosing on Valium.

But anyway, I’m teaching three classes of first year middle school students (初一), one class of college students and a bunch of government officials in the neighboring city. My favorites are probably the middle school kids. Each class is made up of about 40 eleven year olds who have never taken an English class before. It’s pretty nifty, since they have not had any formal English education, the majority of them lacked an English name. I printed out and distributed a bunch of name lists from off the Internet and let the kids choose their own name. After hearing horror stories about giving kids this kind of power from other teachers (some poor kid actually named herself SARS), I was impressed by my group. A lot of Lily’s, Mary’s, Blake’s, a Jayda, a Maya, one guy named himself Tiger, but I back him up on that one; he’s not only a bad ass jungle creature but also a pretty, pretty Mac OSX release.

Speaking of preparing and such - I need to sleep. Did I mention these wonderful middle school classes start at 8AM? Ugh. More on life tomorrow before the government folks hopefully -
If you don’t see anything, that means I had to go to the next city to teach and didn’t come back. Last weekend they told me they were going to take me and this other foreign teacher out to a club(disco) after the lesson. From what I understood, they were rambling about returning the next day or something. Heh, clubbing with the government officials. Oh yea.

http://www.ticketmaster.com/artist/975062

too bad i have class

McDonalds is a beacon for lost souls in the town of Harlem.

In New York City for a while. I’ll post more stuff later.

10. Everything is big.
9. $10 USD will buy you at least a week worth of food.
8. Lanzhou = Cleveland, Ohio
7. There are no foreigners here. How many Chinese tourists you think visit Cleveland?
6. Crossing the street is like frogger. Life-size frogger.
5. Six Flags has nothing on China’s “Sit in a Taxi/Bus and look out the front window” ride.
4. All Americans play basketball.
3. The internet is indeed censored. You can’t say *这两字删了*.
2. The Backstreet boys are hot stuff.
1. No matter what, all conversations somehow result in someone being asked to sing a song

Real update still to come.

I guess ‘it’s been a while’ doesn’t really cut it. I think the last update written by me on here related to something like ’sorry I haven’t posted, my computer is broken’. Well, my computer is still broken, but a couple months ago, I stole borrowed work’s laptop, yet still never got around to writing. There’ve been many pictures and stories to write about but, unfortunately I can’t post it again because..

I’m in China. Right now I’m sitting in this youth hostel across the street from Beijing central train station. This is Noah on about 4 hours of sleep for the past two or three days (who knows how time zones work anyway?). Through some kind of divine intervention and very poor chinese skills, I managed to get through customs, across the city on a bus, and on a moped thingy to finally get to the hostel for the night.

I’m writing I guess because I’m particularly impressed with my first hostel experience. It’s so frekin multicultural! Just tonight (between 12-1AM) I’ve met people from across europe, singapore and hong kong. Crazy! And every single one of them has been friendly and outgoing. I guess the 5 yuan (~70 cents) beers could have something to do with it, but really, I’m impressed.

I’m off tomorrow to go to Lanzhou to teach english for the summer. The flight leaves at some ungodly hour, and I gotta sign-language my way back to the bus somehow in the morning. I should have net sometime in Lanzhou - until then ~