Hello again,
I know it has been a while but I'm finally back to blogging. In defense to the chosen few who continue to read this blog, I live in a city where there are literally two good months of weather for the entire year...September & October. That's it. It's start to get cold & windy come November, and then in December the snow hits the city and everyone runs for cover. Mix Chinese snow with one of the most polluted cities in the world and you get yourself a toxic slushy that is dangerous and destroys my Fake Air Jordans by the week. Chalk up about five pairs of fake Polo socks (for work)and Nike (for regular activity)socks for play, and you get the contents of my weekly dumpster run. FYI- there are no dumpsters in China. There are only these bicycle-propelled trash cans that the entire neighborhood forages through for anything of value. Furthermore, seeing as I consume more plastic/glass bottles than the entire neighborhood, whenever I throw my stuff away the locals run to the trash can. I have mixed feelings about the whole scenario; on one hand, I feel that my privacy is being supremely violated; on the other hand, the people of China as a whole are poor and I shouldn't judge them. Nevertheless, I do judge them and what makes it worse ss that one local woman literally screams and curses at me if somebody besides her is the first to my trash can. WTF! Am I supposed to flag her down? Man, China is so weird sometimes I just can't really put it into words what I feel during these types of verbal exchanges.
Work is good, it is the one constant out here. I have been promoted at the prestigious People's University (Renmin Daxue), as I now teach Undergraduate Students, Doctoral Students, and the Administration. I wear really flashy three-piece suits that distinctly resemble the wardrobe Robert DeNiro wore in the movie "Goodfellas". I top it off with a vast collection of Aviator shades which I buy by the handful whenever it is that go to "The Silk Market" the mecca of counterfeit goods. Last time I went there I came out with a remote-controlled counterfeit helicopter which I promptly crashed into the trees of the courtyard outside of my apartment. I may have scared the hell out of half the neighborhood, but they all look at me like an American ambassador panda anyways so it's all the same to me.
The students all do exactly as they are told, so they behave exactly the opposite of how I did when I was a student. They call me Sir or Professor, and whenever they see me on campus they are "honored". Both the men and the women call me "handsome", which I find awkward at times. I am guessing it has to due with their limited vocabularies. In each class I have a "monitor" and she (it is always a she), does anything I ask...literally. I sent one of them the other day to Chinese customs to pickup my Amazon Kindle with my Passport and Credit Card. I have not heard from her yet, but I'm fairly certain she will return with my documents and Amazon Kindle tomorrow or I will surely fail her.
I give the students a list of mostly ridiculous names to choose from, and when they choose a name such as: Leroy, Kostas, Richie, Caesar, Alejandro, or Grouse (personal favorite), I don't even chuckle since it would ruin my joke. What I have done for two of the classes is take their photos and put them up on Facebook, and then tagged said named friends. Fortunately, the Chinese have put up "The Great Wall of Facebook", and this is what keeps me safe from these students finding out about how I am kindof clowning them. I think I may be the only person in the Orient who is completely opposed to the Chinese taking down "The Great Wall of Facebook". Since I work at the #1 government affiliated university in China I would surely be fired or worse if these students knew about my shenanigans.
On a lighter note, I do feel that I take my job seriously (besides the small pranks). At least compared to the other teachers who mostly resemble stone-age creatures that are still stuck in the chalkboard and ruler days. For my Administration class, they have me teaching with another professor because some of the Administration are highly-ranked Communist Party members and demand the satisfaction of two teachers. One of the guys that I teach with is super-cool, and we get along great. However, this guy I work with on Wednesday nights played a makeshift game of Duck-Duck-Goose using a name game during our first clsas. Subsequently, when I gave my lecture which was comprehensively organized on PPT with hours of effort and due diligence on my part, he acted as if I was messing up his schedule of things to do and what-not. We have a dinner date before class at 5PM on Wednesday which I will surely try to cancel. I have only missed one day of class in almost four full semesters of work at the University, but I have ducked & dodged a multitude of nonsensical meetings as if I was Barry Sanders in his prime.
Anyways, I should probably be getting back to my couch. I caught a Cold the other day, and that is another reason for the return of my blog. Next time I promise to tell more interesting stories, as I have been going to this crazy bar full of Mongolian whores at 7 or 8 AM to watch USC football games and the World Series. "The Den" is the only place I know open 24 hours, and a few weeks back I saw the gnarliest fight of my life which ended with a Mongolian whore breaking a bottle over the head of another Mongolian whore. Seriously, DO NOT MESS WITH MONGOLIAN WHORES.
Additionally, I have made enemies with two rent-a-cops who work the gate outside of my gym, and I may have to ask one of my students who is a real police officer to tell them to leave me alone. I really wish I did not call one of their mother's a whore...hypothetically speaking.
I'm out,
Atkinson
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Final Grades and World Cup Fever
Hello whoever it is that is reading this blog:
From the comments section it seems only a few spammers from China are on the site. So I have now completed two semesters worth of teaching both Spoken English and Introductory Business at Renmin University in Beijing, China. I teach basic English to Doctoral students, which is probably the equivalent of a third-grade English class in the United States. Secondly, I teach an elective course to mostly Undergraduate Business majors that covers: Marketing, Organizational Behavior, Finance, Accounting, and Economics. Therefore, I get to at least salvage a little bit of use from the MBA Degree I recently completed at Pepperdine.
My Doctoral Students are between the ages of 25-40. For those of them who don't already have English names, I give them a list of suggestions which are equal parts ridiculous and culturally-insensitive. Most of the names I have recommended come from "bros" that I went to school with at USC, as those days of glory are still remembered fondly, even though I'm pretty sure due to over a decade of debauchery I have managed to erase a good 90% of these memories. I would bet dollars to donuts that my class is the only one on the continent where Chinese students proudly call themselves: Mauricio, Maradona, Caesar, Grouse, and the list goes on and on. Caesar Orozco you should be proud, in just one year of teaching I already have compiled five future leaders of the country who are enthusiastically calling themselves Caesar. When I say leaders of the country I am partially serious, as the university I teach at is the People's University and it is a hard-core government talent pool. I would say that 95% of my students are active party members, and many are looking to make it big in politics. Hopefully, my association with them will buy me out of any future logjams that I'm likely to find myself in if I continue living in the Orient.
My elective business course is for Undergraduates, and this last semester all of the students in my class were Freshmen who at the tender age of eighteen and nineteen were forced to deal with my reign of terror. They speak English better than some of my friends, and they eat, sleep, and drink homework. Most of them have between 25-30 hours of class a week, and spend another fifty hours doing homework. Sometimes I get up early on Saturday morning to get breakfast and will walk past the library that looks more like a line for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. I don't know what I was doing at 8AM on Saturday when I was a Freshmen at USC, but I am fairly certain that I wasn't waiting for the library to open. It has been much more rewarding to teach this elective course as these students listen to everything I saw as if I was Moses.
I have also instituted an extremely effective policy for combating tardiness...I make them sing. I have been using this incredibly hilarious technique more for my own personal amusement than anything else, as there is nothing like an embarrassed bespectacled Chinese student with a teddy-bear sweater singing "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer" (I have printed out a copy and keep it in my binder at all times). Speaking of teddy-bears, if Beijing is the worst dressed city in the world (and it is) then Renmin University is its epicenter of cross-dressing. "Teeny-Weeny" is a teddy-bear that a good half of the girls are wearing on their shirts on any given day, and this goes all the way up from Freshmen to Doctoral students. When I ask these girls why it is they love "Teeny-Weeny", there answers are always somewhere along the lines of: "every woman loves a teddy-bear." LOL
To make the dress code even more outlandish, Chinese women constantly walk around with umbrellas whenever it is even moderately warm. When I ask them why they do this they almost always say: "I don't want to be black." Which although culturally insensitive, is the way that women want to look around here, because dating back to the old days of China having lighter skin meant that you were upper-class as you didn't work in the fields. Some of my Chinese students literally have lighter skin than I do. Those women who don't wear "Teeny-Weeny" apparel are likely sporting some ridiculous American phrase in big block letters on their clothes that 9 out of 10 times does not make sense, as whoever is selling these foreign shirts must be even more of a sarcastic bastard than I am. My personal favorite is: "A surfer dreams is wet."
Now that the World Cup has begun I have started mingling more with the locals around here. Since I am abot as lazy as a crippled panda, I have found the very closest restaurant/bar on campus and made it my home away from home. I would much rather go to some of the classier spots around town, but I can walk to this place in five minutes and they reserve a table for me as I come in EVERY NIGHT. I love the World Cup, more than any other sporting event, and add a little bit of gambling and you have absolute magic. The "Water Stone Cafe" got themselves a slide projector; rearranged the seating chart; and now it is the place to be. Out of a good 50-100 people on any night, I am by far the loudest, most annoying, and whitest. To be as politically incorrect as humanly possible, I have chosen to root like crazy against all teams from the continent of Asia. South Koreans, North Koreans, and Japanese, all would love nothing more than to take a baseball bat to my watermelon-sized head...and I don't disagree with them for feeling the way that they do...it's a total dick move.
Nevertheless, the South Africans most definitely hate me the most. During the first match I chose to root for Mexico against South Africa, even though there was a posse of heavily-muscled Africans who let it be known that they were not a fan of my antics. After a little bit of liquid courage I became louder, and progressively more annoying, and as my friend Blake Dirickson would say I was "that guy". When Mexico finally did score I was so excited that I did some sort of a dancing jig that I combined with a fist pump, and after getting yelled at by the Africans I blasted them with the double-barrel middle finger salute. Fortunately, I managed to get out of the bar alive, but I have followed up these antics with subsequent debacles of American travel lore that give our kind a bad reputation in virtually every country we Americans step foot in. However, due to the fact that I am a paying customer and the staff that works there actually like me (I can be charming on very occasional occasions), when I walk into the bar now: a cold beer is poured for me and placed at my table without a word; a bevy of bespectacled, albino-skinned, vampire-fanged Chinese women smile and wave at me; and different crews of Africans, Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese all point and stare as if they have just locked eyes with Lucifer himself. Damn it feels good to be a gangster.
Anyways, that's it for now. I gotta finish grading Final Exams and then submit grades by tomorrow. I hate grading papers worse than, well I can't think of anything worse but I'm sure that there is something worse. Hope all is well back in the States and that USA takes down Algeria in there next World Cup. Tonight is Portugal vs. North Korea, and even though I have a date with a voluptuous Russian girl named Liliya who I managed to convince that the Waterstone Cafe is a wonderful establishment; I still plan on antagonizing all supporters of North Korea and probably everyone else.
go get em' Portugal,
"That Guy"
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Return to Blogging
Hello everyone,
It has been a long time since I last blogged. There are two reasons for this:
So much has happened in the last eighteen months, so I'm not going to bore you with all the details. I graduated from B-School at Pepperdine; had knee surgery AGAIN after tearing another ligament in my knee; moved to China for what I thought would be a vacation; accepted a job at Renmin University (The third-ranked university in the capital city) teaching Business English and an elective Business course; and now I am an employee of the Chinese government and a well-respected member of the Chinese community. WTF....WTF, indeed!
I live inside the campus walls of Renmin University (The People's University), and it is the weirdest place on Earth. I think they must have messed up my housing assignment because instead of moving me into a cozy building with fellow like-minded Westerners I was placed in a building that looks like it was built one-thousand years ago. The university used to have a deal where if teachers were employed by the school for a certain number of years, then in return they would give them free housing fo' life. So all of my neighbors are ancient Chinamen whose average age is 164. In the building I am living in there is only one other apartment with younger people (not that I am that young), and nobody speaks more than a few words of English. My apartment is O.K., with a: living room, bathroom (about the size of a tiny closet), bedroom, and kitchen. However, the bathroom is designed so that the shower head and the toilet are facing each other...I HATE IT! Also, whoever lives in the apartment next to mine must has a piano; and this mystery person plays the piano all day, and all night, and is most definitely the worst piano player on the planet. It's like a blind drunk man has been forced to play piano as many hours as humanly possible or he will be eaten by a dragon, and I am the one who must face his wrath. If I ever get a chance, I'm taking a baseball bat to the piano.
There is a courtyard, where an old Chinese woman has created "Cat City". Since the old Chinese are the definition of Old Skool, they have taken over all of the areas in between apartments that in most societies would be used by the whole instead of the few. It is like I'm living on gang turf, and a tough bunch of rough senior Chinese have become the equivalent of the Crips and the Bloods combined. Anyways, this woman has taken every stray board she could find to create a shanty town for stray cats, all together there are twelve cats in "Cat City" and their numbers are growing. There are Chinese men playing Chinese checkers all day long; Chinese doing their laundry outsideby hand; Chinese playing badminton from the early morning until the night, and Chinese people who look at me as if they have seen a ghost; so in a nutshell you could say I don't exactly fit in around here.
The only group of other young people in my building are these five Archaelogy major girls who live in the apartment upstairs and dance to Lady Gaga music sometimes until late at night. This would be a lot funnier if we didn't share a common wall, and it makes life more than difficult when I hear their pit-pattering feed dancing to the beat at the midnight hour. A few nights ago a piece of the wall celing actually broke and hit me in the head while I was sleeping...not cool. One of the girls bought a rabbit about a month ago from a street peddler and it had been living in a cage not to far away from cat city in the courtyard area. Why she didn't move it into the safer confines of their apartment I still don't really understand, but the rabbit seemed to be a huge hit with the old fogie community that domintes the streets in my hood. Anyways, the girls (five of them live in the same size apartment as me) grew extremely attached to the rabbit, and for a rabbit this white furball appeared to be living a nice existence. This last Friday night I went out to dinner with some friends and around eight P.M. I walked by the rabbit cage and saw this spooky ancient Chinaman with less teeth than I have fingers staring at the rabbit like he either wanted to: make love to the rabbit, or eat the rabbit. At the time I didn't think much of it but when I woke up the next morning the rabbit was gone. I called the girls and they said that they were told by one of the neighbors at exactly 8:15 P.M. last night that the rabbit was not in the cage, and by simple process of elimination I deduced that this old Chinaman must have taken the rabbit to his room for either a one-night stand or to to take a hot bath in a boiling cauldron or water
The girls were sad at first but not manic as they had assumed that the rabbit must have escaped his cage and would come back soon. I explained to them that I was pretty sure this old Chinese fellow I had seen last night had taken the rabbit, and that he most definitely ATE the rabbit. I am such an idiot! For the last 48 hours the five girls have been crying non-stop. Their screaming, wailing, and other random extremely loud acts of sadness have made it so that I have not slept more than a few hours for the last two days. If I see that Chinaman who ate the rabbit I am going to punch him in the face.
I think that's enough blogging for now, but next time I will get into the magnificent mockery I have made of the Chinese educational system. I have taken my role of teacher and designed it around the principle that "The teacher is always right". Therefore, I've been running the show like a young dictator in his prime and have become extremely fond of the omnipotent powers that I now possess. It's way better than invisibility. The students never question me and do exactly as I say. For those students that don't already have English names, I have ruled that it is the teacher's job to also give them American names. In a tribute to many of my friends from the United States I have put together quite an exotic assortment of rather unusual named students. Some people collect stamps, I collect weird names for Chinese students, so far I have: Caesar (four times over), Mauricio, Georgie, Smokey, Grouse, Maradona, Esperanza, and many, many more. I just can't imagine that there are a lot of Chinese people these days calling themselves Mauricio. I also have developed a rather effective policy towards coming to class late...public embarrassment. I make any student who comes in late sing a song of my choosing. I love it when they tell me that they hate to sing, as this is exactly the answer I am looking for.
That's it for now, next time I'll post some pictures of my students and discuss some of the funnier stories I have experienced as a teacher/white devil. The irony is that the university thinks I am a kind and wonderful man and have already offered me a contract extension complete with more money and power.
It's good to be back,
Professor Atkinson
It has been a long time since I last blogged. There are two reasons for this:
- The Chinese government placed a firewall on Gmail Blogger, along with Facebook, Youtube, Hulu, and other sites.
- I am now an employee of the Chinese government and was reluctant to break protocol.
So much has happened in the last eighteen months, so I'm not going to bore you with all the details. I graduated from B-School at Pepperdine; had knee surgery AGAIN after tearing another ligament in my knee; moved to China for what I thought would be a vacation; accepted a job at Renmin University (The third-ranked university in the capital city) teaching Business English and an elective Business course; and now I am an employee of the Chinese government and a well-respected member of the Chinese community. WTF....WTF, indeed!
I live inside the campus walls of Renmin University (The People's University), and it is the weirdest place on Earth. I think they must have messed up my housing assignment because instead of moving me into a cozy building with fellow like-minded Westerners I was placed in a building that looks like it was built one-thousand years ago. The university used to have a deal where if teachers were employed by the school for a certain number of years, then in return they would give them free housing fo' life. So all of my neighbors are ancient Chinamen whose average age is 164. In the building I am living in there is only one other apartment with younger people (not that I am that young), and nobody speaks more than a few words of English. My apartment is O.K., with a: living room, bathroom (about the size of a tiny closet), bedroom, and kitchen. However, the bathroom is designed so that the shower head and the toilet are facing each other...I HATE IT! Also, whoever lives in the apartment next to mine must has a piano; and this mystery person plays the piano all day, and all night, and is most definitely the worst piano player on the planet. It's like a blind drunk man has been forced to play piano as many hours as humanly possible or he will be eaten by a dragon, and I am the one who must face his wrath. If I ever get a chance, I'm taking a baseball bat to the piano.
There is a courtyard, where an old Chinese woman has created "Cat City". Since the old Chinese are the definition of Old Skool, they have taken over all of the areas in between apartments that in most societies would be used by the whole instead of the few. It is like I'm living on gang turf, and a tough bunch of rough senior Chinese have become the equivalent of the Crips and the Bloods combined. Anyways, this woman has taken every stray board she could find to create a shanty town for stray cats, all together there are twelve cats in "Cat City" and their numbers are growing. There are Chinese men playing Chinese checkers all day long; Chinese doing their laundry outsideby hand; Chinese playing badminton from the early morning until the night, and Chinese people who look at me as if they have seen a ghost; so in a nutshell you could say I don't exactly fit in around here.
The only group of other young people in my building are these five Archaelogy major girls who live in the apartment upstairs and dance to Lady Gaga music sometimes until late at night. This would be a lot funnier if we didn't share a common wall, and it makes life more than difficult when I hear their pit-pattering feed dancing to the beat at the midnight hour. A few nights ago a piece of the wall celing actually broke and hit me in the head while I was sleeping...not cool. One of the girls bought a rabbit about a month ago from a street peddler and it had been living in a cage not to far away from cat city in the courtyard area. Why she didn't move it into the safer confines of their apartment I still don't really understand, but the rabbit seemed to be a huge hit with the old fogie community that domintes the streets in my hood. Anyways, the girls (five of them live in the same size apartment as me) grew extremely attached to the rabbit, and for a rabbit this white furball appeared to be living a nice existence. This last Friday night I went out to dinner with some friends and around eight P.M. I walked by the rabbit cage and saw this spooky ancient Chinaman with less teeth than I have fingers staring at the rabbit like he either wanted to: make love to the rabbit, or eat the rabbit. At the time I didn't think much of it but when I woke up the next morning the rabbit was gone. I called the girls and they said that they were told by one of the neighbors at exactly 8:15 P.M. last night that the rabbit was not in the cage, and by simple process of elimination I deduced that this old Chinaman must have taken the rabbit to his room for either a one-night stand or to to take a hot bath in a boiling cauldron or water
The girls were sad at first but not manic as they had assumed that the rabbit must have escaped his cage and would come back soon. I explained to them that I was pretty sure this old Chinese fellow I had seen last night had taken the rabbit, and that he most definitely ATE the rabbit. I am such an idiot! For the last 48 hours the five girls have been crying non-stop. Their screaming, wailing, and other random extremely loud acts of sadness have made it so that I have not slept more than a few hours for the last two days. If I see that Chinaman who ate the rabbit I am going to punch him in the face.
I think that's enough blogging for now, but next time I will get into the magnificent mockery I have made of the Chinese educational system. I have taken my role of teacher and designed it around the principle that "The teacher is always right". Therefore, I've been running the show like a young dictator in his prime and have become extremely fond of the omnipotent powers that I now possess. It's way better than invisibility. The students never question me and do exactly as I say. For those students that don't already have English names, I have ruled that it is the teacher's job to also give them American names. In a tribute to many of my friends from the United States I have put together quite an exotic assortment of rather unusual named students. Some people collect stamps, I collect weird names for Chinese students, so far I have: Caesar (four times over), Mauricio, Georgie, Smokey, Grouse, Maradona, Esperanza, and many, many more. I just can't imagine that there are a lot of Chinese people these days calling themselves Mauricio. I also have developed a rather effective policy towards coming to class late...public embarrassment. I make any student who comes in late sing a song of my choosing. I love it when they tell me that they hate to sing, as this is exactly the answer I am looking for.
That's it for now, next time I'll post some pictures of my students and discuss some of the funnier stories I have experienced as a teacher/white devil. The irony is that the university thinks I am a kind and wonderful man and have already offered me a contract extension complete with more money and power.
It's good to be back,
Professor Atkinson
Sunday, December 28, 2008
The Laborious Life of Learning the Language
Ni hao!
I would write a bunch of other stuff in Mandarin, but I think 95% of the people who read this (not that there are 95 people that read this blog) would not understand it and I would probably incorrectly spell 95% of the words. Nevertheless, I have taken to learning Chinese like a greedy child chasing Santa Claus around your local mall. My knee injury really put a hindrance on the learning curve of Matthew Scott Atkinson, and with the clock ticking on my stay I sometimes feel like that same angry child who didn't get his "Mighty Morphin Power Ranger" or whatever it is that the Generation XYZ Child of today is demanding. However, I have come to the conclusion that it is only I that is whom to blame, as I recently took a hard look at my Tsinghua Student Identification Card (taken around the same time as my knee injury occurred) and my face looks to be about the same size & shape of an overblown basketball (fortunately this is no longer true). I should have either come into the soccer season in better shape, or not played at all. Additionally, the fact that I made the team at all is a true miracle on Earth.
For the last five weeks I have taken 3-6 hours of Mandarin every day (yes even on weekends), and the only classes that I missed were during my infamous three-day excursion to Qingdao. I have learned to: ask/say my name (which is WU XIONG "Kung Fu Bear" in Chinese); tell time & dates; ask and give directions; talk about the weather; order food at a restaurant without being served something that you might see on "Fear Factor"; buy pirated goods from knock-off Prada purses to pirated DVDs, etc. My teacher Mrs. Wong, a bi-bespectacled sweet lady who has become a good friend, and I recently even gave her my bicycle which I of course cannot really ride anyways but it's the thought that counts right?!? I have gone from remedial learner to legitimate student, and I have to say I really do enjoy going to class. So much so that I have cashed in on the party lifestyle of Beijing so that I can be fresh and clear-headed the next day (with a couple of exceptions, but only a couple). It's been a real role-reversal for me as these last few weeks are the time where the majority of my closest compadres are off to travel: China, Southeast Asia, or head home for the holidays; however, this is the most serious I have been ironically the happiest.
That being said I can say for one that even knowing the small piece of the puzzle of the Chinese language that I hold in my hands really does make all the difference in the world. By sending text messages to Barbara/Mengjie I have been able to rekindle our friendship/romance and was even told today that my "Chinese is fabulouse"(not a typo this was her spelling, although I do admit that the particular text message she is commenting on was written by my teacher). It's a funny deal too because I I have learned more about Barbara in the last month than the previous four, and have Mandarin to thank for this.
The girl I met at the airport, whose name is "Ming Ming" I have gone out with a couple times over the last few weeks and as I speak almost no Chinese & she speaks almost no English, our conversations have not yet gone as far as "The Electoral College". For one of our dinner dates my teacher even wrote four pages of questions for me to ask her, after I finished the script in all of five minutes there was really not a lot for me to do. I can't tap-dance, do magic, or even juggle and it was looking pretty grim... that is until I pulled out the somewhat bad words that I recently picked up on the mean streets of Beijing, and out of nowhere I was right back in the derby. Since these are not really, really bad words I will write them down here: "Er Bai Uh", "Shen Jing Bing", "Bian Tai"(if you want to know their meaning feel free to say them to the next Chinese person you see who is not carrying a loaded weapon). All of the sudden I was a smash hit, and as I acted like the dumb foreigner (I do know what these words mean and Ming Ming Ming was in on the joke), and in dead-pan seriousness asked the waiter/other staff at the of the restaurant the meaning of these taboo phrases my dinner date was laughing so hysterically that I thought she may have been possessed by the devil. Soon afterward she was tugging on my arm and took me to a place which is so incredibly metrosexual; so incredibly generic; yet so incredibly awesome.
Ming Ming took me to a Pool Hall filled with Alpha Male Chinese Metrosexuals, Pop/Rap Music not played in the US since 2004, and a cheesy female VJ with one of those old-school Madonna microphones from the "Vogue" days. Jaws dropped as I walked into an exclusively non-foreigner mingling point, but I am used to this sort of thing and played it cool as a fiddle until that is it was time to shoot some pool. Not only was every Chinese metrosexual the modern Chinese man's "Minnesota Fats", but my dinner date Ming Ming smashed me to smithereens in front of the hipster crowd full of males sporting skin-tight jeans and shaggy blond haircuts. Even though it was just as humiliating as it seams (and yes it was humiliating as everyone in the damn place was laughing at me), it was still one of the most memorable good times of my stay in the Orient.
The couple of times I have gone on for drinks with the boys haven't been at clubs or bars, but a much more magical place. "U-SPEED GO -KART" a place where you are allowed to ride Go-Karts at incredibly high speeds, sip on suds and munch on burgers, and crash into your fellow racers with reckless abandon and no warnings or reprimand. You also get to only race against your friends, so there really are no boundaries when it comes to putting a glove in a fellow Tsinghua student's face! In the six races I have competed in over the last few weeks I have finished: fifth, fifth, fifth, second, fourth, and fourth. This would be out of a talent pool of five drivers, so I have not been winning the Indy 500 of Go-Kart (or whatever my German sauerkraut eating adversaries say that the top Formula One Race is). BUT, I have gotten into more life-risking crashes than anybody at that track by a mile. In my fourth race I crashed into my friend Ralf's kart with such speed that it actually broke the cart, and even his seat belt snapped off. It really could have been an all-time great YouTube clip since his cart was stuck on the rail, and rather than just drive around him I decided to crash into him at top speed with such ferocious force that my kart actually popped into the air. He kept asking me, "Why would you do that...Why?" I never really had an answer for that one, but by the looks on the faces of all the startled Chinese watching our races from the upper-deck area he was not the only one who thought that way.
It was a magical moment and henceforth I got the street credibility that I always wished I had as an adolescent, and this was proven true by the legendary driver EBO (whose finishes are polar-opposites of mine) as he was stuck on a rail and saw my kart coming and yanked off of seat-belt and ran out of his kart like the German ferry-duster he is. I have to admit, my neck still hurts and my back is sore, but I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.
well that's all for now, this may be my last post in the Orient but I will put some pics up soon.
Love & Respect,
The King of Crash
I would write a bunch of other stuff in Mandarin, but I think 95% of the people who read this (not that there are 95 people that read this blog) would not understand it and I would probably incorrectly spell 95% of the words. Nevertheless, I have taken to learning Chinese like a greedy child chasing Santa Claus around your local mall. My knee injury really put a hindrance on the learning curve of Matthew Scott Atkinson, and with the clock ticking on my stay I sometimes feel like that same angry child who didn't get his "Mighty Morphin Power Ranger" or whatever it is that the Generation XYZ Child of today is demanding. However, I have come to the conclusion that it is only I that is whom to blame, as I recently took a hard look at my Tsinghua Student Identification Card (taken around the same time as my knee injury occurred) and my face looks to be about the same size & shape of an overblown basketball (fortunately this is no longer true). I should have either come into the soccer season in better shape, or not played at all. Additionally, the fact that I made the team at all is a true miracle on Earth.
For the last five weeks I have taken 3-6 hours of Mandarin every day (yes even on weekends), and the only classes that I missed were during my infamous three-day excursion to Qingdao. I have learned to: ask/say my name (which is WU XIONG "Kung Fu Bear" in Chinese); tell time & dates; ask and give directions; talk about the weather; order food at a restaurant without being served something that you might see on "Fear Factor"; buy pirated goods from knock-off Prada purses to pirated DVDs, etc. My teacher Mrs. Wong, a bi-bespectacled sweet lady who has become a good friend, and I recently even gave her my bicycle which I of course cannot really ride anyways but it's the thought that counts right?!? I have gone from remedial learner to legitimate student, and I have to say I really do enjoy going to class. So much so that I have cashed in on the party lifestyle of Beijing so that I can be fresh and clear-headed the next day (with a couple of exceptions, but only a couple). It's been a real role-reversal for me as these last few weeks are the time where the majority of my closest compadres are off to travel: China, Southeast Asia, or head home for the holidays; however, this is the most serious I have been ironically the happiest.
That being said I can say for one that even knowing the small piece of the puzzle of the Chinese language that I hold in my hands really does make all the difference in the world. By sending text messages to Barbara/Mengjie I have been able to rekindle our friendship/romance and was even told today that my "Chinese is fabulouse"(not a typo this was her spelling, although I do admit that the particular text message she is commenting on was written by my teacher). It's a funny deal too because I I have learned more about Barbara in the last month than the previous four, and have Mandarin to thank for this.
The girl I met at the airport, whose name is "Ming Ming" I have gone out with a couple times over the last few weeks and as I speak almost no Chinese & she speaks almost no English, our conversations have not yet gone as far as "The Electoral College". For one of our dinner dates my teacher even wrote four pages of questions for me to ask her, after I finished the script in all of five minutes there was really not a lot for me to do. I can't tap-dance, do magic, or even juggle and it was looking pretty grim... that is until I pulled out the somewhat bad words that I recently picked up on the mean streets of Beijing, and out of nowhere I was right back in the derby. Since these are not really, really bad words I will write them down here: "Er Bai Uh", "Shen Jing Bing", "Bian Tai"(if you want to know their meaning feel free to say them to the next Chinese person you see who is not carrying a loaded weapon). All of the sudden I was a smash hit, and as I acted like the dumb foreigner (I do know what these words mean and Ming Ming Ming was in on the joke), and in dead-pan seriousness asked the waiter/other staff at the of the restaurant the meaning of these taboo phrases my dinner date was laughing so hysterically that I thought she may have been possessed by the devil. Soon afterward she was tugging on my arm and took me to a place which is so incredibly metrosexual; so incredibly generic; yet so incredibly awesome.
Ming Ming took me to a Pool Hall filled with Alpha Male Chinese Metrosexuals, Pop/Rap Music not played in the US since 2004, and a cheesy female VJ with one of those old-school Madonna microphones from the "Vogue" days. Jaws dropped as I walked into an exclusively non-foreigner mingling point, but I am used to this sort of thing and played it cool as a fiddle until that is it was time to shoot some pool. Not only was every Chinese metrosexual the modern Chinese man's "Minnesota Fats", but my dinner date Ming Ming smashed me to smithereens in front of the hipster crowd full of males sporting skin-tight jeans and shaggy blond haircuts. Even though it was just as humiliating as it seams (and yes it was humiliating as everyone in the damn place was laughing at me), it was still one of the most memorable good times of my stay in the Orient.
The couple of times I have gone on for drinks with the boys haven't been at clubs or bars, but a much more magical place. "U-SPEED GO -KART" a place where you are allowed to ride Go-Karts at incredibly high speeds, sip on suds and munch on burgers, and crash into your fellow racers with reckless abandon and no warnings or reprimand. You also get to only race against your friends, so there really are no boundaries when it comes to putting a glove in a fellow Tsinghua student's face! In the six races I have competed in over the last few weeks I have finished: fifth, fifth, fifth, second, fourth, and fourth. This would be out of a talent pool of five drivers, so I have not been winning the Indy 500 of Go-Kart (or whatever my German sauerkraut eating adversaries say that the top Formula One Race is). BUT, I have gotten into more life-risking crashes than anybody at that track by a mile. In my fourth race I crashed into my friend Ralf's kart with such speed that it actually broke the cart, and even his seat belt snapped off. It really could have been an all-time great YouTube clip since his cart was stuck on the rail, and rather than just drive around him I decided to crash into him at top speed with such ferocious force that my kart actually popped into the air. He kept asking me, "Why would you do that...Why?" I never really had an answer for that one, but by the looks on the faces of all the startled Chinese watching our races from the upper-deck area he was not the only one who thought that way.
It was a magical moment and henceforth I got the street credibility that I always wished I had as an adolescent, and this was proven true by the legendary driver EBO (whose finishes are polar-opposites of mine) as he was stuck on a rail and saw my kart coming and yanked off of seat-belt and ran out of his kart like the German ferry-duster he is. I have to admit, my neck still hurts and my back is sore, but I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.
well that's all for now, this may be my last post in the Orient but I will put some pics up soon.
Love & Respect,
The King of Crash
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Qingdao Express
Qingdao is a city by a beach, a beach where overweight Chinese men run on the sand in bright blue Speedo's on absolutely frigid days. I have never wanted to be blind, but during my walks on the Qingdao beaches I would have liked to trade places with Stevie Wonder. Nevertheless, I took off my shoes and dipped my toes in the water in order to say that I did, so I did my own stripping of sorts in order to acquiesce to the powers that be....and after I had done so, I vowed to never do it again.
I spent my Saturday touring the beautiful beaches and being bombarded by merchants, beggars, and well more merchants & beggars. I am way too nice when it comes to the homeless, and upon seeing a woman with a baby with gobs of dirt oh his face, I caved in like a Malibu landslide and and put $50 RMB in their basket (about eight US dollars). Within seconds a small army of women with babies were storming after me, and because I could not outrun them with my crippled knee, I had to give each pair some financial assistance in order to flee without being attacked by a mother and her small child. On a side note: I learned a few days ago from my Grinch of a physical therapist that many of these babies are "rented" from rural villages, and are not actually the children of the men/woman that use them to gain sympathy from tourists. Even worse than this is that the sludge on the face of the baby is not because of a poor standard of living, but it is carefully applied by the adult to the child in order to get bigger "donations". Additionally, many of the families who rent children are very wealthy in their respective native villages. This is not a made-up story and is a well-known swindle in the Orient. I got served!
After escaping the relentless beggars I spotted a carnival-type game where you throw a full-size basketball at seven bowling pins from about ten feet away, and the object is to knock them all over for great financial reward. Within a few minutes there was an audience of some fifty Chinese people (I was THE ONLY white person on the beach, so that alone made me quite the oddity) and my braggadocios boasting and crossover dribbles inspired a mob of Chinese revelers to cheers and jeer me like the village fool. Every time that I tossed the ball at the seven pins of pain I would seem to knock over all but one of the adversarial bowling pins. This made me both more more determined than a competitive eater at "The Coney Island Hot-Dog Eating Contest" and as angry as Star Jones in a planet where plastic surgery is outlawed. With each miss a fossil of a Chinese man with less teeth than I have ears would scream in my grill..."LIANG KUAI!!!" Meaning that I had just lost another two RMB. I was trying everything: rolling the ball, tossing it like a jump-shot, granny-style, overhand... all for more financial failure. As the crowd grew to a ruckus atmosphere, and teenage Chinese vixens made me feel like a pretty-boy karaoke king I became relentless on my assault of this impossible game. When it was all said and done I had not knocked over the seven pins a single time...and I was $300 RMB poorer (yes that is 150 misses!)
Later that day I had my big dinner with the CEO of Asian Ops for a large company. He picked me up with his personal driver in an AUDI, and we were soon joking around like old friends. The car stopped at an Italian restaurant named "Napoli" and rather than order from the menu, Chris had them bring out his own sampling of all the best dishes. We polished off a bottle of red wine and in the hour conversation that came with the food & drink, I learned an immense amount of knowledge about the business climate in Qingdao; Chris the person and his rocket-launch to success both in the United States & in China; general tips about how to do business in China; and women, he loves to talk about women. Chris sold all of the American franchises that he owned in 2005 for huge financial reward, and was so high on the hog that he was about to retire in his early-forties. The CEO of the entire company coaxed Chris into doing the consulting for a move to China, and soon thereafter Chris decided to purchase the license rights for all franchises in China and there will soon be many. The dinner was pretty serious and I have to say I was a wallflower in the talks, as I had little to teach and much to learn...this was until dessert.
Instead of Mud Pie or Vanilla Ice Cream, the waitress brought out three bottles of Desertif alcohol and she sat down with us as did the entire female staff of the restaurant. In fact the restaurant basically stopped doing business as a whole, and only Chris, myself, and a slew of the female staff at our table were left in what at first seemed like a very packed place. A "drink yo' face off setting" came out of nowhere like a hurricane in Switzerland, and Chris morphed from serious business executive to John Daly on Spring Break right before my eyes. I had no idea this was coming, and reluctantly fired up shot after shot of God knows what. Thankfully, my friend J.P. from Korea had been training me for such an event, and within a half-hour it was Chris that was drunk as a skunk and my demeanor was still not seriously altered. I kept drinking glass after glass of water, and managed to keep my bearings about me during yet another incredibly strange exchange in The Orient. The "Gong Fu Xiong Mau" (Kung Fu Panda) Tsinghua student identification card was displayed soon thereafter and beautiful Chinese women were continuously greeting me with compliments I in no way deserved because of their love for the greatness of panda lore.
After the hurricane ended Chris demanded that I accompany him and his posse to "The New York Bar" where a rag-tag jazz/funk band belted out Kenny G hits. Our table was pillaged by other executives in the same never-never-land as Chris resided in: and owners of yachts, managers of restaurants & hotels, a C.O.O., and other prominent business figures were soon yucking it up with a gang of other expats and Chinese waitresses. I was being ordered "Scoobey-Doo" drinks which were incredibly sour and made me want to head for the hills, but to "save face" I kept up with the rest of the group. Speaking of saving face, one of the girls at "Napoli" told me she hated drinking with Chris, but had to "save face" for her manager and restaurant and therefore followed suit with everybody else. Since I am not yet adapted to the Chinese culture I decided that I wanted to "save my face" and took a taxi home so I could enjoy my last day in the city. Chris and his gang of lush executives were shocked & appalled that I would leave early, but I made up some ridiculous excuse about my knee acting up (when I really need an excuse to leave somewhere, this one never lets me down), and was soon back in bed and waking up with the incessant ring of my cell phone the following day.
The next day I realized something pretty quickly, I would never work for somebody like Chris. A heck of a nice guy, and a prominent businessman, but I am going to need to have a separation between the business & social side of things in my life. I believe that this is a major difference between the business world of the West & East, in that in the West my paradigm of work & social life is kept separate; however, in the Orient many times these two worlds are meshed into one. I believe this to be the most true in Korea, as my friend J.P. has lectured me many times on how the company you work for becomes your family, and your real family becomes secondary to your business family. I love Koreans and think they are beautiful and entertaining people, but I am certain that I could never want to work there. I feel confident that for a short-time I could handle a business project both in Korea or for a person like Chris, but for a long-term position there is just no way. Sometimes I just want to go home and watch a pirated DVD (saw the new James Bond last night on my DVD player, not bad).
I spent my last day doing more sight-seeing, even going to the Tsingtao Museum where sadly enough I was too tired from the previous evening to sip even a sprinkle of Tsingtao greatness. I also rented a cross between a taxi & a tricycle, and this three-wheeled specimen was about as powerful as a push-cart powered by overweight donkeys. I could not stop laughing the entire ride as I was still delirious from the previous day, and this inspired my taxi driver to laugh as well; thus, making me laugh harder and so on and so forth...a truly magical ride around town to say the least. I'm pretty sure I changed the destination three or four times so that he wouldn't stop touring me around by the beach, as I kept my window down and my head held higf. Upon making it to the airport, I received a frantic text message from Chris asking me to stay at his place for another week. That he had big plans and lots of huge dinners & parties for us to attend. Within seconds I received a phone call from him, I took a brief look at the Caller ID and then turned off my phone. Enough was enough and the towel was thrown like I was a battered boxer whose only chance for recovery was abandonment.
Qingdao Express is now closed,
matthew
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Holiday Nonsense in The Orient
The "Three Amigos of the Orient" (the dumb American Matt, the polite Norwegian Oystein, and the crazy Korean JK). This would be us laughing uncontrollably as the Chinese acted out scenes from "Titanic"...priceless!
Crazy Chinese acting out love scenes from "Titanic"
Santa demands satisfaction...love & respect from the Orient!
So a Norwegian & a dumb American go to a Danish Christmas party in Beijing...The worm has turned again for me in the Orient as the last few weeks have been nothing short of spectacular. For those of you who tried to convince me to come home and have my surgery under Uncle Sam's watchful arms, I have to say that you were about as wrong as a Chinese metrosexual dancing in a mosh pit at a punk rock concert (yes this does happen here on a regular basis, for those of you not possessing MTV Asia). My knee is healthy and I'm out and about every day all-day; the city is open and new friends are ever-present; and I've still got a month of being a full six inches taller than the average Chinese height (if only I could play basketball!). Long story short life is very good again, thanks to advice from my amigo Eric whom I met at Hooters a few weeks ago in Shanghai: if you learn the language in China everything opens up. Not that I have learned the language, but I'm now taking intensive one-on-one sessions every day, and am well on my way to winning back the heart of the former ex-gf as well as several other Chinese vixens before my inevitable departure back to the States. I'm back in the good graces of Barbara as I now send her text messages in the Pinyin version of Chinese (in which I get replies back in seconds, and will be spending many days with this former flame before I depart). The Pinyin Chinese language is a bridge for us gringos because it uses the American alphabet to form words. It is like the elementary version for the Chinese before they learn the characters, and it is stern...but fair. Nevertheless, I'm learning this stuff with more diligence than I can remember having for anything...well ever.
I now spend about six hours a day completely devoted to learning Chinese. I wish I could say my motivation was to do more business with in China, but in reality it is about 90% driven to meet women. But I guess any motive is a good motive, at least I keep telling myself that. I picked up a Chinese business-woman who looks like a ballerina as I waited for my flight from Beijing to Qingdao this morning. She was so far out of my league(maybe galaxy), and strangely enough it is was this mighty Aphrodite who waltzed over to me: while wearing an ensemble of Prada, Gucci, and other Paris Hilton propaganda with a dynamite pair of tight leopard-skin pants. She pounced on me as I methodically studied my "Chinese 101" book at the Beijing Airport. Soon thereafter I found myself missing my flight and having lunch with this Chinese She-Devil, and as I type this my cell phone is blowing up from this woman who demands satisfaction immediately (I dressed snappy at the airport so she probably didn't realize I am a social-loafer at heart....well actually am a social-loafer but at heart I detest the truth...LOL).
Am I an idiot for not immediately figuring out how important it is to learn Chinese...YES! But is there anything I can do about that now.....not so much. Plus I was granted the golden goose of excuses as a metal bottle-rocket was kindly inserted into my knee by a mad scientist of a Chinese doctor. I'm throwing around this excuse at family barbecues like Crocodile Dundee hitting that limousine driver with his boomerang in "Crocodile Dundee 2". But as they say in The Sopranos, New Jersey, and other unsavory places of the world..."now, it's all gravy."
So speaking of gravy let's now talk Chinese Turkey Day. It was easily the most surreal day of my many surreal days out here in a world that anyone in the Western hemisphere would classify as surreal, or just plain nuts (in a good way in my opinion). Remember we are talking about a place where pedestrians are moving targets and launching a spit-wad on the side of the street is about as normal as someone in the Unites States picking up a quarter off of the ground.
I embarked on my mission to the Tsinghua Thanksgiving Festivities with a few friends from the Exchange-MBA Program and we brought a multinational faction that would make the UN Proud: Norwegians, a Korean, a couple of Germans, and some other Euro or two in the mix whose national heritage I'm invariably forgetting. In terms of demographic scale of the actual Thanksgiving Party which was held at a medium-sized restaurant, I would say it was about 85% Chinese people, my eight or so foreign colleagues in our infamous outfit, and well that was about it.. Also, a few of the Euro crew I was holding court with were well above the six-foot club making them Jolley-Green Giants in a see of jockeys...so yes, we stuck out more than a little bit. Instead of grabbing individual beers like the rest of the Chinese faction, we just decided to pillage the pitchers that everyone else used to pour their drinks into. So out of the six or so pitchers at any one time that the whole party was using, at least one and probably two were residing at our table. We came, we saw, we pillaged.
Upon arrival it seemed more than a little odd that a laptop was set up in the front of the restaurant with a movie projector connected to it. This was the first sign of the strange times that were about to come. Not soon after it was time to dine and instead of turkey and pumpkin pie I was greeted with pasta, onion rings, a miserable salad, chicken wings that looked as if Colonel Sanders himself had spit on them, and more random decrepit food that we all inhaled. It was terrible, but we still ate and drank...well mostly drank. The Chinese are so f$%^% weird sometimes. Instead of football and turkey, we spent our time watching duets of random Chinese couples who performed scenes from "Titanic" & other American classics that I hope to never see again. Since I am the loudest laugher in the room about 99.9% of the time, and the Chinese elite performed some incredibly non Oscar-worthy performances right in front of our very table, I could not hold back from cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West during each and every one of these so fantastically miserable performances. This made the Chinese couples (they were picked out of a hat, when one of our crew members was chosen we ignored and gave mean looks) performing feel both uncomfortable, and so angry that they will never donate to an American charity. I managed to get my misfit outfit to follow suit, so as each Chinese couple performed another magical number where they hoped to have all of Tsinghua behind them...we pointed, laughed, and slammed brews like it was Oktoberfest. It was so damn sweet. Honestly, I can't think of a better Thanksgiving.
The best part is when when one of the random Germans in our crew turned to take a phone call, we volunteered him for this utterly-ridiculous game where you pass a miniature Hoola-Hoop across your neck from one team member to the next in a race. Well, this sausage-eater happened to be about Six-Foot-Six, and the Chinese on his team were not tall enough to be jockeys. Just priceless! They eventually brought out a turkey at the end of the night but by then my stomach was as full as a pregnant Canadian, so I had to call it a night.
A few nights later it was time to have a Christmas Party... Danish style! Since I've had my ego compromised so mightily that I now look both ways before crossing the street thrice, I decided to actually dress up as Santa Claus. The outfit was a huge hit at the party, and we got guapo loco. Only issue with the party was that the two girls who threw this Holiday Dash are both incredibly attractive, and every man in a 10 Km Radius came to the party. So I remember seeing a few girls, but I also remember meeting and greeting a love parade full of Germans. My bro Hans from Belgium who brings the pain like the Famous Grouse, decided we should venture out and about on the town. It was 2AM, I was dressed as Santa Claus, and I had completely drank my face off...so it was on!
We hit up Mic's (next to my olde stomping ground "Vics"), but had a mix up in the party posse and had to switch plans and go to "Blue Bar". We dined on some street food to get our mojo back, and we were off... I walked into the bar with full Santa appeal. I had become St. Nick at that point, and everytime someone would ask for a present, I would greet them with the, "You have been bad, and Santa knows. I suggest you clean up your act or you're going to get nothing but coal in your stocking for X-MAS!" Or something like that. Either way, it worked and after grabbing a seat at the bar, we hit the dance floor...And at about that time Santa realized that he is still gimped out and retreated back to the table. Where I was shocked to see two of our team members having a Pamela Anderson/Tommy Lee orgy on the couch. I looked around and there was nothing: there "was that guy" dancing like a maniac to the funky beats, the cheesy Brits pounding fists and looking for a fight (not me...I'm a cripple fellas), fat Americans, weird Chinese metrosexuals, I was about to go home and then... I got a tap on the back by these two Filipino lady-tigers who were smoking hot and seemed to have a thing for olde St. Nick. Soon thereafter I was shooting the breeze with these two Filipinos and actually managed to spit some game Christmas style and had these ladies laughing in stitches. I guess they figured anybody crazy enough to come to a club full of degenerate booze-hound maniacs with a Santa Claus costume outfit on has got some cajones (I guess I fooled them). I have dinner with the sexier of the duo on Wednesday who is easily an eight. Santa Claus demands satisfaction. I will mos def be wearing the outfit to the club at least a couple times before I go back to the States...I do not want to go home!!!
mackin & stackin in the Orient,
St. Nick
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Looking for an ENTOURAGE
So I'm listening to the Doors drinking a glass of red wine thinking about Entourage as I type away on a random Sunday night. Not my Financial Statement Analysis Class, no not even International Finance, not the ex-GF that kicked me to the curb last week, or the fact that I feel pregnant right now from a long week of dubious debauchery that would make Charlie Sheen proud. Nope...just Entourage. I had not seen the show seriously since I lived in Hollywood with a crew of compadres that I miss ever so much in my sometimes lonely nights in an apartment located at the far East corner of the world. Entourage is much better than I remembered, but I still got another kick in the crotch...WTF! I will get into the glove slap via Johnny Drama at the end of my post but first some highlights of most likely the most infamous week of my being here...
I went out, I mean OUT Monday, Tuesday, Friday, & Saturday night with some fine folks from: Costa Rica, Germany, Spain, Denmark, France, KOREA, and who knows where else.
In the early evening on Monday I bumped into the CEO of Asian Operations (who I randomly met three months ago and had lunch with to talk football) for an American car-repair company (that I will not name but it is a large-scale corporation) & charmed the pants off of his monstrous mustache. So now I'm off to visit him on the 7th-9th in Qingdao, and may be able to pull off a job out of this upcoming misadventure. I am good in these sort of meet-and-greet situations as I cannot stop talking period, and don't get intimidated or nervous. I would prefer to come back to Beijing, but this may be too good to pass up.
To celebrate I met up with some Tsinghau students at "Propaganda", I know irony can be quite ironic (phrase coined by Craig Benner), and I wore a jacket that says "Hey Panda" on it with a panda that looks like he is in some sort of a street gang. Most likely the Crips, or possibly the Mexican Mafia. Women love Pandas, if my jacket didn't get a Red Bull Vodka spilled on I would be sporting it tomorrow morning and most likely have a Hugh Hefner style orgy by twelve in the afternoon. I'm hanging these days with quite the globalized crew, and my amigos Alejandro & Kai were nice enough to zip my jacket all the way up so I could not breathe while I was tying my shoelace. Instead of panic, I decided to spin around in circles and then attempt to dance which made a mockery of Pandas, The Orient, and myself. FYI- Propaganda is the modern man's destitute bar where drinks are cheap, but the level of sophistication is right around a kindergarten class. My kind of place. Next morning was not so pleasant.
The following day I did my thing and eventually ended up hanging out with "The King Of Tsinghua Facebook" Phillip, my former soccer amigo Alejandro Dos (he was the other non-local on the soccer pitch when I went down for the count), and our friend Makele (this is not the right spelling of her name) from Belgium. I bumped into a Mom & Daughter crew from Panama and we managed to steal the daughter from her beloved protector. Later that night I told a story that involves the most just flat-out awful prank ever created in the history of mankind. So hilarious, but just wrong. Even worse it has been pulled by "The Three Amigos" (my travel posse) in both Italy & Brazil. I think the clip is still saved and may be on YouTube somewhere.
A few days later I gave a presentation in my Economics Class that went off incredibly well, especially since I winged pretty much the whole thing. I volunteered to give the entire presentation for my six team-member group in order to not have to do any actual real work, and I did a song & dance that even "Milli Vanilli" would give me props for. To celebrate I decided to actually do something positive with my life & sign up for daily three-hour Chinese lessons for the next five weeks. Of course I broke out my "Kung Fu Bear" Student ID card upon entering and was a huge hit.
On Friday I brought it back like it was 1999, and hit up a club called "Bling" with a bunch of students from the language school. I am one corrupt S.O.B. as I'm most likely five years older than the mean age of the birthday party that I was invited to but still borderline crashed. I am a horrible dancer as is, but with my crippled-ass knee it is borderline impossible to mack & stack at clubs these days. Give me a bar/restaurant where I can crack jokes and I'm all good, but take me out to the dance-floor and I'm like the red-headed step-child drunk on whiskey at the Prom without a date. I met a girl from Kazakhstan (no joke) and things were looking well until she got a look at my handicapped mating dance and bailed on me in a matter of minutes and was soon thereafter making out with the drunk Mexican birthday boy. Overall, the night was pretty sweet because the crew that I first hung out with when I first came to Beijing was in the house,... and these guys bring the pain! I missed hanging out with the O.G. Beijingers too, except one of the crew went to the University of Texas and for that I will forever have animosity towards him. I went to USC for undergraduate, and Henry brings up the USC vs. TEXAS game every time I see him and it is not so easy for me to deal with. I still despise that game and wish I could erase it from my memory.
On Saturday I was gonna keep it mellow but decided to call my bro from Korea J.K. who invited me out to a casual party. There was nothing casual about this party as Koreans drink their faces off. One of the dudes at this party was an Aussie who is a Bacardi Rep out here in Beijing, and gave me the low-down on the city which I wish I had six months ago. This Aussie gets paid to go out to bars and make sure peeps are sipping on his stuff, and he took us all out to some legit bar called "PUNK". J.K. was a bad-ass wing-man and we had a loco time. The ladies from Korea were so friggin' sweet, they danced all night & drank like politicians. What a fantastic night...
Now it's Sunday & things are back to pseudo-normal. Got up, lifted weights & went for a swim, Chinese lessons, and doing the pirated movie thing. However, I uncovered an ancient treasure that happens to be Entourage Seasons 1-3. I had watched some of it, but had about eight hours of pleasure on my flat-screen waiting to get some love. And I did not go Mormon, I went all out and could not stop like Gary Busey at a motivational speaking convention. Back in the day when I lived in Hollywood we had a ton of close friends we nicknamed "the homies" that would gather at my crib every Sunday night to watch Entourage together on my forest green couch. These were the good old days. All day I have been reminiscing about these days of glory, sometimes being close to shedding a tear as I'm far away from any kind of entourage. If I get three phone calls in a day I'm popular according to "Matthew Atkinson in China" rules. So as every episode went by I kept thinking of the good old days: J.C. & Ballgame Jr. doing WWIII in the living room, Nino Brown & I going to war on the PS Deus, Agnew's wild world of amazing outfits, Pete the Greek, The Famous Grouse, Laro, Don Cheech, Roach's fantastic Halloween party when I dressed as Don Zimmer and got harassed by a bunch of Dodger Fans. This was a time that can never be duplicated as I'm losing my touch and a little bit of my hair. And when it was all about to come to a very emotional close in the final six minutes with Johnny Drama looking for his "Vikingquest" crush...the DVD FROZE! I did everything. Cleaned the DVD player, the DVD, and again & again to no avail. MF'ing Drama!
MF JOHNNY DRAMA!
Thadeus (old nickname from the infamous day of Hollywood)
I went out, I mean OUT Monday, Tuesday, Friday, & Saturday night with some fine folks from: Costa Rica, Germany, Spain, Denmark, France, KOREA, and who knows where else.
In the early evening on Monday I bumped into the CEO of Asian Operations (who I randomly met three months ago and had lunch with to talk football) for an American car-repair company (that I will not name but it is a large-scale corporation) & charmed the pants off of his monstrous mustache. So now I'm off to visit him on the 7th-9th in Qingdao, and may be able to pull off a job out of this upcoming misadventure. I am good in these sort of meet-and-greet situations as I cannot stop talking period, and don't get intimidated or nervous. I would prefer to come back to Beijing, but this may be too good to pass up.
To celebrate I met up with some Tsinghau students at "Propaganda", I know irony can be quite ironic (phrase coined by Craig Benner), and I wore a jacket that says "Hey Panda" on it with a panda that looks like he is in some sort of a street gang. Most likely the Crips, or possibly the Mexican Mafia. Women love Pandas, if my jacket didn't get a Red Bull Vodka spilled on I would be sporting it tomorrow morning and most likely have a Hugh Hefner style orgy by twelve in the afternoon. I'm hanging these days with quite the globalized crew, and my amigos Alejandro & Kai were nice enough to zip my jacket all the way up so I could not breathe while I was tying my shoelace. Instead of panic, I decided to spin around in circles and then attempt to dance which made a mockery of Pandas, The Orient, and myself. FYI- Propaganda is the modern man's destitute bar where drinks are cheap, but the level of sophistication is right around a kindergarten class. My kind of place. Next morning was not so pleasant.
The following day I did my thing and eventually ended up hanging out with "The King Of Tsinghua Facebook" Phillip, my former soccer amigo Alejandro Dos (he was the other non-local on the soccer pitch when I went down for the count), and our friend Makele (this is not the right spelling of her name) from Belgium. I bumped into a Mom & Daughter crew from Panama and we managed to steal the daughter from her beloved protector. Later that night I told a story that involves the most just flat-out awful prank ever created in the history of mankind. So hilarious, but just wrong. Even worse it has been pulled by "The Three Amigos" (my travel posse) in both Italy & Brazil. I think the clip is still saved and may be on YouTube somewhere.
A few days later I gave a presentation in my Economics Class that went off incredibly well, especially since I winged pretty much the whole thing. I volunteered to give the entire presentation for my six team-member group in order to not have to do any actual real work, and I did a song & dance that even "Milli Vanilli" would give me props for. To celebrate I decided to actually do something positive with my life & sign up for daily three-hour Chinese lessons for the next five weeks. Of course I broke out my "Kung Fu Bear" Student ID card upon entering and was a huge hit.
On Friday I brought it back like it was 1999, and hit up a club called "Bling" with a bunch of students from the language school. I am one corrupt S.O.B. as I'm most likely five years older than the mean age of the birthday party that I was invited to but still borderline crashed. I am a horrible dancer as is, but with my crippled-ass knee it is borderline impossible to mack & stack at clubs these days. Give me a bar/restaurant where I can crack jokes and I'm all good, but take me out to the dance-floor and I'm like the red-headed step-child drunk on whiskey at the Prom without a date. I met a girl from Kazakhstan (no joke) and things were looking well until she got a look at my handicapped mating dance and bailed on me in a matter of minutes and was soon thereafter making out with the drunk Mexican birthday boy. Overall, the night was pretty sweet because the crew that I first hung out with when I first came to Beijing was in the house,... and these guys bring the pain! I missed hanging out with the O.G. Beijingers too, except one of the crew went to the University of Texas and for that I will forever have animosity towards him. I went to USC for undergraduate, and Henry brings up the USC vs. TEXAS game every time I see him and it is not so easy for me to deal with. I still despise that game and wish I could erase it from my memory.
On Saturday I was gonna keep it mellow but decided to call my bro from Korea J.K. who invited me out to a casual party. There was nothing casual about this party as Koreans drink their faces off. One of the dudes at this party was an Aussie who is a Bacardi Rep out here in Beijing, and gave me the low-down on the city which I wish I had six months ago. This Aussie gets paid to go out to bars and make sure peeps are sipping on his stuff, and he took us all out to some legit bar called "PUNK". J.K. was a bad-ass wing-man and we had a loco time. The ladies from Korea were so friggin' sweet, they danced all night & drank like politicians. What a fantastic night...
Now it's Sunday & things are back to pseudo-normal. Got up, lifted weights & went for a swim, Chinese lessons, and doing the pirated movie thing. However, I uncovered an ancient treasure that happens to be Entourage Seasons 1-3. I had watched some of it, but had about eight hours of pleasure on my flat-screen waiting to get some love. And I did not go Mormon, I went all out and could not stop like Gary Busey at a motivational speaking convention. Back in the day when I lived in Hollywood we had a ton of close friends we nicknamed "the homies" that would gather at my crib every Sunday night to watch Entourage together on my forest green couch. These were the good old days. All day I have been reminiscing about these days of glory, sometimes being close to shedding a tear as I'm far away from any kind of entourage. If I get three phone calls in a day I'm popular according to "Matthew Atkinson in China" rules. So as every episode went by I kept thinking of the good old days: J.C. & Ballgame Jr. doing WWIII in the living room, Nino Brown & I going to war on the PS Deus, Agnew's wild world of amazing outfits, Pete the Greek, The Famous Grouse, Laro, Don Cheech, Roach's fantastic Halloween party when I dressed as Don Zimmer and got harassed by a bunch of Dodger Fans. This was a time that can never be duplicated as I'm losing my touch and a little bit of my hair. And when it was all about to come to a very emotional close in the final six minutes with Johnny Drama looking for his "Vikingquest" crush...the DVD FROZE! I did everything. Cleaned the DVD player, the DVD, and again & again to no avail. MF'ing Drama!
MF JOHNNY DRAMA!
Thadeus (old nickname from the infamous day of Hollywood)
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