The art of showering

It's gotten cold here. Not very cold, I guess, probably just in the low 60s or high 50s, but I'm freezing. Sometimes I think about all the stories I've read and all the important historical figures I know, and I am in awe that they lived in a time before central heating. I feel like I expend half my energy just getting up to make some oatmeal, remembering to flip the switch for hot water first so it has at least ten minutes to warm up. Since my shower is outside (enclosed but not insulated) on the balcony, I do a terrific dance of jumping in in the morning. I first spend a few minutes struggling with the slide door thats off its tracks, then shed my clothes quickly, thrusting them onto a nearby chair, then try to slip into my flip-flops before running into the bathroom area and shutting the door before any of the neighbors see my bare ass. I live in one of those apartment complexes where I can only see other balconies in every direction- sort of like Rear Window. Since the water is sometimes still too cold to handle, I first use the hand-held shower head and point it away from me, and then try to set it back in place over my head while trying to keep my mouth closed and my eyes from burning (I also have to remember to take the toilet paper roll outside, otherwise it gets completely soaked). The hot water only lasts about 5 minutes, so I sort of have an ongoing rotation in terms of which body parts to wash first. The bathroom is also tiny, so I constantly try to not stumble over the broken toilet in front of me and not hit my back with the different pipes and such behind me (in fact, it's so small that I have to sit sideways when using the toilet, and the shower head still drips on my feet). Afterwards, I grab the towel from the clothesline, quickly change into real clothes with the slide door still open because it's too much of an effort to open and close it so many times. I should probably get that fixed. It's certainly going to get much worse in the next two months, so I should save the rest of this rant until then.

I bought a jacket, though. I don't love it, but after obsessing over it for a week now and having three different coats on hold, I guess I'm just happy it's over. But I continue to browse Chictopia with a jealous eye, trying to spot styles I SHOULD have bought...

Fail, fail, fail

Lest I soon forget my latest cooking-on-a-hot-plate debacle, here's the summary:

Last week, after watching "Julie & Julia", a movie I thought was pretty forgettable actually, despite the rave reviews, I was still inspired enough to do some of my own cooking. Now, I'm not really a newbie to cooking. I lived in a co-op for a semester where we had to cook for twenty people at once, and after that I slowly learned to cook a few staples. I'm at the point where I can look at a recipe and it'll turn out pretty good, but I wouldn't dare to begin innovating. Well, I've been spending way too much money eating out for every meal here, but its easy to do since a meal is really only about $3, so it doesn't feel like much. But at the same time, if you can buy a cartload of veggies and herbs and such for only $1.50 (rough estimations), then you're still spending way more than you need to. The problem is that I only have a microwave and a hot plate. Now before coming to China, I've never heard of hot plates as cooking devices... I thought they were only for chemistry class. So not only have I never used one before, but I've never used one before that solely has Chinese characters written on it.

Despite this, I went out in the pouring rain last week and decided to buy string beans, cilantro, broccoli, eggplant, garlic, onions, the works. So far I've been able to use the hot plate to heat a pot of water to make oatmeal, but when I put the broccoli in, the damn thing wouldn't heat up. It would start, then make a sudden beeping noise and then turn off. I tried pressing all the buttons but after 45 minutes or so (now, still wet and starving), I ended up microwaving all of it. It wasn't the best, but with enough black bean sauce, it was edible.
Today, I decided to go for something much simpler. Hard boiled eggs. The water actually boiled this time, but after removing the eggs from heat, they were soft and gooey and basically, repulsive. I scooped out the little yolks and tried to mix it together like scrambled eggs. I reached for the pepper shaker, when I realized that I used the SAME pepper shaker a month earlier as a rock for my turtles' aquarium. I had brought the turtles home and immediately started freaking out after reading that they need a surface in which they can dry off... otherwise, their shells will grow moldy and they'll die. In my sudden panic, I took the pepper shaker and stuck it in with the turtles, thinking I really never cook anyway. Anyway, I have no idea if I've washed it since then. Then, I tried to find the salt. The only reason I have pepper in the house is because the girl from last year left it in the room and the only reason I have salt is because when I had a sore throat a friend I had just met that very day went out and bought me salt to mix with hot water and drink. Well, it's just been sitting in this plastic bag and needless to say, half of the salt came pouring out onto the pan with the pathetic tiny yolks scrambled around enough to look like jaundiced mucus. I took one bite, and immediately had to gargle with a cold glass of black tea that has green tea leaves in it from last week.


I just washed everything. No matter how hard I try to get my life in order, things seem to fall apart so much faster than I can take care of them. If I do laundry, I don't actually collect the dry items from the clothesline for a good week. If I remember to wash the pans, then that apparently takes up too much brain power and I forget to feed the turtles. Something always has to give.
This is getting too long. My one rule was to keep these short.



On the upside, I finally bought a top similar to this Complex Geometries one, but in navy and with a few studs... actually, I think mine is way cooler.

pretty things!

(becauseimaddicted.net) What a beautiful bracelet. I could totally do that. I spent the day in Dongmen, which is a kind of absurd shopping area pretty much always TEEMING with people. I found all these great rings for about $15 US, which I realize isn't a lot but for here it kind of is and I left with zero rings. I never know what to do about rings. On one hand I think they're so pretty, but then I just KNOW that I'll lose it within a couple months. It's happened to me so many times before. It's just not worth it. Or is it? I had a somewhat fruitful day other than that... found a really poofy skirt that looks like its made out of old curtains and dark heart tights, which'll sure be useful. I somehow didn't realize that Shenzhen would have winter. I thought it'd be in the 70s year-round and not that its already falling into the low 60s, I don't know what to do with myself. I need a coat, surely. Well! My first day of tutoring babies is tomorrow, we'll see how that goes. As long as I can remember the words to "If you're happy and you know it" and "Take me out to the ball game" I think I should be fine...

What if the whole world spoke only English?

I've been thinking about this article for a few days now. I even emailed the link to one of my old professors to see what he thought about it. I know no one actually reads this because this blog has absolutely no real theme, no consistency, no interesting images, and I post maybe once every six months. Well, on that note, for the invisible reader, this article is about English becoming a global language. The author argues that its somewhat politically correct to fear the loss of native languages with people moving into cities and all that, but that losing language actually doesn't have anything to do with losing culture- that this concern for language is a purely aesthetic concern. He also argues that the only reason we have this total hang-up against it is because English automatically has colonial associations, so we would be much less perturbed by the idea of one global language if that language were, say, Inuit, instead of English. I was really excited to stumble upon this article because in my last four months here (in China, I'm living in China now), I still haven't gotten used to the fact that there's so much English around. It's one of those things that I know-- I've traveled quite a bit, and its not 'surprising' to me, per se, but it just pops into my head once and again. It's like being amazed that the world is so big and there are so many people in it- it's something you already KNOW, but is still amazing, every time you think about it. This is how I am with seeing English around. Of course I know all the historical reasons that led up to English being such a huge force here, but it still feels so strange and arbitrary sometimes! Like going to an ex-pat bar in Hong Kong and hearing all these different people speaking English is tons of different accents. All these people from all over the world, and the default being English. It makes me realize (again, and again and again) how strange it is for us Americans, to never HAVE to learn another language. This must seriously make us so different from the rest of the world, have such a different frame of mind. I was eating lunch in a Vietnamese restaurant today reading "The Blind Assassin" when suddenly I heard The Star Spangled Banner playing on a Chinese news station on the TV. The song was dubbed in Chinese, though. So bizarre.

That felt good, actually. Maybe I'll start updating here more often. Pictures, rants, all that jazz.

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2009%20-%20Fall/full-McWhorter-Fall-2009.html

PS. Since Mad Men is over, I need a new fix. I'm starting on "In Treatment" tonight... we'll see how it goes

PPS. I've been thinking it over, and how can language NOT be a part of culture though? This past summer I helped my mother translate a Bengali short story into English for this online literary magazine and it was so much more difficult than I would've imagined. I knew all the right words, but it just didn't sound the same. Words have completely different tones and implications in different languages. I feel like a different person almost when I speak in Bengali, my other self. Is this just me not sufficiently being able to express myself in both languages? What's lost in it?

gilmore girls nostalgia...

The last couple days, I have been on a constant Gilmore Girls kick. I started watching this show at age 13, and continued watching faithfully for the first three seasons or so. It was a good influence on me, I think. Here was a smart, witty character who knew as much about Dickens as she did 80s pop culture… pretty much the exact image I was trying for in my early teens. Actually, forget trying. Impressing others really didn’t require much. Since 90% of the other teenagers around were too obsessed with Kate Spade backpacks and John Mayer to read, it was pretty easy to stand out. I read a lot of books and knew about music played with real instruments- pretty much all I needed to gain the respect of parents, teachers, whoever. As a teenager, you could be precocious. By 14, I read the completed works of Oscar Wilde, tried to get into Virginia Woolf. I was lucky to have a few friends who were equally interested, so we could throw out Dorothy Parker verses to each other and then snuggle up and watch Vincent Gallo movies. Twenty-two year olds can’t be precocious. Maybe you still have potential, but no one really cares about what you could do anymore, just if what you are currently doing is respectable or not. In your twenties, you have fewer excuses. The other day at school (this time as a teacher), I was having a particularly off-day and couldn’t help myself from crying. Several of the other teachers in the office tried to offer me solace and asked me my age. I muttered “21” without even thinking about it, and it took me a second to realize I’ve been 22 for eight months. She exclaimed, “Oh! You’re still a baby!” and I felt better. Yes, yes I am still a baby and I’d like to stay one for awhile, please. But why am I already starting to lie about my age? When you’re a precocious teenager, you’re special and there aren’t too many of you. But then, over time, like when you finally get to that elite college you’ve been trying for all this time, you realize you’re a little less special. By the time you graduate, you’re hardly special at all (like me, I participated in almost zero extracurricular activities and my GPA was astonishingly average and I certainly wasn’t even the most avid reader in my school). And now, post-graduation? I am suddenly jealous of people who were definitely non-precocious teenagers eight years back, people who happen to be doing more interesting things than I am. Why didn’t I go to art school to become a children’s book illustrator? Anyway, watching Gilmore Girls is like watching the end of an era for me, the last time I was smart, the last time being smart was good enough. The last time I thought I could make a swift transition from the best reader in high school to senior officer at the UN. Ah well. Makes me wonder— if Rory were real, what would she be doing now?