I Feel Sorry for Subway Bag Checkers

Last week, I went with my company to visit one of our manufacturing sites. Its primary product was pigment, used in makeup and packaging. The actual science behind it was pretty cool; mica (a flaky, shiny, clear mineral. So pretty, I kept a piece in my wallet) is crushed into small flakes and then coated to form a thin film effect; the resulting wavelength interference is what actually produces the color, and is what is tuned. The color in production that day was gold; somehow, I was the only person that managed to get some pigment on my clothes.

Migrant laborers have it hard. 12 hour shifts, doing the same thing, in less than ideal environments. The mica, which is enough to fill half a warehouse, tended to dust up in the air, looking like masses of tiny butterfly wings. While it's an almost magical effect, especially in the afternoon sun, its quite bad for your lungs; dust masks are required. One of the jobs is mucking around raking mica in water the entire day, while another example would be throwing chips into massive industrial grade stirrers which made quite the racket. While it definitely was a pretty safe facility, it is not something I'd envy doing for the majority of the day.

The weird thing is that even right around the factory, it was a very traditionally chinese landscape; green grass, small rivers, crop fields, ecetera. It would be a very peaceful place to work if not for the noise.

Part of my time is spent socializing with family friends older than me, or coworkers, and in that period of time, no doubt some drinking occurs. I drunk with my boss, and my bosses boss, and my dad's friends... ect. I'm starting to develop a taste for beer, but huang jiu is still going to take a while longer. It's kind of a culture thing though, so it's a good thing my tolerance is fairly high. So far the most I've done is a bit less than 1.5 bottles of huang jiu by myself (the three other men at the party did two bottles each.) It was korean style (one of the guys only knew korean and japanese), which means that you don't refill your drink (also it's hard to refuse, haha). Thankfully the worst effect is just queasiness.

I keep trying to draw, and nothing ever looks good anymore, really. I'm convinced that I hit my peak in senior year of high school, and it's just been me in denial after that. Although if I just focus on pens, it doesn't matter so much, as it becomes more cathartic than anything else. Once you make a mark, that's that. A nice sense of finality.

It's really a pity that I didn't manage to get train tickets to Wuhan to hang out with friends. I'm not very impulsive, so I tend to unconsciously hem and haw. Because I know this, I tend to overcompensate, so I agree to do things even though it might not be practical. In this case, I wasn't sure I could book tickets, since they went on sale ten days ago. It's a pity, since it would have been a grand time I think.

On the nerd front, the one thing good about being demoted to Platinum is that I now have the highest random portrait in Starcraft 2. Time to choose a race now; I dislike the swarm playstyle of zerg, and I'm always quite inflexible with protoss even though I enjoy playing it, so it seems as if I'm going to be sticking to Terran as my main, which works fine for me. MtG's China scene is much different from the US: all the players pretty much are in college or are working. Cards are localized, which makes for some collector value, and when I do go I feel as if I'm reading/speaking more chinese than I ever do in Shanghai. I think reading everything in chinese causes me to tilt though :/. (excuses excuses). On a random note, I miss playing Settlers and Puerto Rico.

 I've gotten lazier and lazier about making complicated dishes. These days I try and do everything in one pot, with as little preparation outside the pot as possible. Breakfast is mass quantities of one item (probably a grain). Maybe this will make me less picky?