The Internet Suddenly Gets Worse at 8:30 PM

   My default font for writing documents used to be Trebuchet MS. Now, it’s Garamond. Must be a nostalgia thing from the time I took graphic design (a.k.a typography).

   I ended up recovering from the cold in about a week; in the meantime, I had to prepare my business writing course for new grads. Apparently being fluent in English (and going to an Ivy, I guess) makes me qualified to teach business writing. Previously they hired an outside firm to do it (now they are… cost cutting? My instruction would definitely be cheaper), and thankfully they still had a few materials from those classes. I ended up making a powerpoint presentation and activity handout. HR definitely helped me out, but their idea of decorating my powerpoint involved placing Microsoft clip art that may or may not have been relevant to the subject of the slide… so I replaced them all with rage comic faces. The actual presentation went better than I expected, given that I still had trouble vocalizing; speaking in public isn’t too much of a problem for me and I had help running the activities from HR. I apparently have a habit of rolling my notes up while I lecture and smacking furniture to make a point. Once I was done, I was gifted… an official Merck cup set. This is actually good, because I only had two cups in my house. Someone also gave me rage face stickers in commemoration, which I put on my subway card and nameplate at work. Overall, I think giving orders with a little room for creativity is a much better tactic for dealing with Chinese students than trying to prompt a discussion, precept style.

   This was further emphasized by the failure (in my opinion) of the second English corner. It started out okay, as I whined to my fellow foreign interns about leading it again. But then, I asked those that assembled (around ten people, still almost all girls) what they wanted to do. As I presented each option, one of them said no to each one right after I said it. I chose one anyway (taboo) and we ended up playing, but it’s such a noninteractive game for the non-playing team that many looked bored. In addition, I ran out of cards. After, I tried to lead a discussion about current, but there was very little enthusiasm for it. It’s quite hard teaching a class without grade motivation or even knowledge about how your students were brought up. I proposed to send a list of options on what people want to do and have people rank them; I still have to get on that.

   Two new colleagues came last week. One is going to be the eventual lab manager, and one is an EE colleague. Discussions have become more animated and knowledgeable, even if more conversations than before are in Chinese. Last week I ate out all the time because I didn’t go grocery shopping due to illness, but this week I vowed that it would be spaghetti week. Over the weekend, I didn’t do anything of note except make enough spaghetti to last about five meals. It turns out the ingredients are quite expensive in China, but I was in desperate need of something not rice related. It’s pretty good… given that I’ve eaten it for the last six meals or so. Variation is so hard when you’re only cooking for one.

   On a sidenote, I nearly bought pig intestines instead of ground beef. Nearly.

   I still am really bad at inviting people to do activities and coming up with activities to do. When I tend to rehearse things in my head, or think about how things will turn out, I always view it as kind of creepy (although in some cases, I probably am, haha). I think I just have to remember that this is the case for a good number of people, and that I’m a bit of a natural cynic. In addition, it’s not about what you do, it’s the company. Sigh. Regardless, I kind of want to try barhopping to really nice places one Friday or Saturday night, and it would sound kind of pathetic if I just went by myself, haha.

   The weather these days is quite hot and sunny with blue sky, which is quite a contrast from all that flooding going on in Beijing. It’s quite nice if you aren’t outside wearing business oriented clothing. Playing Diablo 3 is not as fun as I think it is, but it’s not bad. I definitely wish it was easier to talk to people when you play multiplayer though. The auction house is also like shopping with fake money, which is a lot more fun than I’m probably comfortable admitting to. I think my drawing style has moved past the point where I try to put super deep shadows on everything in an effort to get texture. Whether this is good or bad, I can’t really say.

All I can do is CC.

   Chinese karaoke is much different from American karaoke, even amongst the Asian-Americans. When someone sings, it’s optional for the rest to pay attention, which is both good and bad at the same time. Good, because if your singing is subpar no one is really paying attention to you, but bad, because unless you like singing for the sake of singing, there’s less of a thrill. Regardless, I had fun on Saturday, where I went with some coworkers (some future students! Awkward.) to a Chinese karaoke place. It is so much cheaper than karaoke in America; each person only had to pay 35 kuai for a seven person room with beer and popcorn. Their selection of English songs was quite good, and since one of them kept choosing English songs (the rest couldn’t sing them) I sang quite a bit to accompany her on the second microphone. I also rapped and did a rendition of some of Lonely Island’s greatest hits, which was kind of embarrassing. I only sang one Chinese song though, as the ones I maybe could have sung only had traditional Chinese subtitles. Very unfortunate.

  Shanghai was the final destination for John as he wrapped up his teaching duties in Jishou (not Jiangsu province… heh heh), so he opted to stay with me for about two nights. He hasn’t really changed much over the past year; then again, neither have I around him. The first night I got introduced to his foreigner friend from Jishou, her parents, and his former Chinese teacher. It was fairly relaxing, although we ate dinner quite late. Unfortunately we really didn’t have time to do anything else. The second day, John explored the city with yet another friend from Jishou (lots of friends of the female persuasion, hehe), and I met up with them and their teacher at night for dinner. We spent quite a while looking for a place to eat, and decided finally on one of the first non-fast food places we found. The food we ate both nights was not any sort of specialty cuisine; nevertheless, they were still quite good. I’m not exactly the type to insist on a notable restaurant every time I go out.

   Afterwards, the Chinese teacher left and his previous friend joined us, and we walked along the bund much like I did with Kathy, and then went to the same bar that I discovered with Adrian. We drank a bit and played some verbal games (multiples/containing 7, rhyming, ect), and pretty much just chilled for a while. As usual, it had a good view, but it was more crowded than usual (although it allowed john’s foreigner friend to bum a cigarette, hehe). Overall, it was quite a nice, low key night meeting some pretty awesome people.

   John’s friend also slept over at my house that night; normally I really loathe agreeing to this before I get to know the person, but I guess him vouching for her was enough. Back in my apartment, there was just occasional banter and talking/gaming. In the morning he met me for lunch during work, and then they both bid adieu.

   Alex and Maxine came to Shanghai after their epic train from Russia. The first night, we had dinner with his mom surprisingly across the street from my apartment at a hotel she was familiar with; Traditional western style, with wine, with lots of catching up in between. We walked around the malls and the east side of the Bund after in lu jia zui, which is significantly inferior to the west side of the bund, in my opinion. I’m extremely surprised that we didn’t run into a PMT place somewhere on the way, where Maxine could get her fix, hehe. At night we watched a bit of Community and I played some League. The next day we had dinner at this greek restaurant; it has been so long since I had greek food, which was one of my favorite cuisines. I was quite appreciative, especially of the soup. I was less appreciative of the… distinctly “Japanese” style mousepad that they bought that day, but it was still quite amusing. We ended up doing the same thing as I did with John: the bund and then the same bar. I’m not very imaginative when it comes to visiting locations for friends, but is it really so bad to go with tried-and-true places? Regardless, we tried some cocktails that I’ve never had before (Depth charge, Chinglish), and made innuendoes without cracking up the entire time. I’m quite, quite out of practice. It’s also hard to make innuendoes to two people already going out.

   The next day’s English corner, however, was not nearly as fun. I showed a clip from Community, which apparently no one understood because it was too fast (of all reasons), and hence no one would participate in the discussions. Basically I overestimated everyone’s English abilities. I classify it as a near- total learning/entertainment failure (but at least I learned from it! Haha…). On a positive note, it was record attendance for English corner: 15-20 people… three guys. I expect much less attendance next time, if there is a next time, haha. Discouraging ><.

   It doesn’t help that around the time of English corner I felt the effects of Alex and Maxine’s Russian illness hit. I actually couldn’t get through a presentation review because I was so feverish, but I didn’t want to go home because using a sick day on half of half of a day seems like a waste. Saturday and Sunday I basically spent sleeping, making tea or some other type of drink, and gaming occasionally (but mostly sleeping). I tend not to take medicine unless I really need to, otherwise I just wait it out. I don’t know how safe that actually is. Quite unfortunate that being sick made me cancel weekend plans -__-. I’m better right now, I suppose. No fever anymore, but my throat is funny.

  There was totally going to be a more interesting part to this blog post, but I’m all out of ideas. I was also trying to finish a picture by now, but I’ve totally slacked off upon it. This has to be one of the more event-y posts here, but I think at this point there are so many that we might as well just consider it the norm. Oh well.