Catching up

Much has happened since my last post, so I'll try to chronologically recap everything. I spent a weekend in Jeju (small South Korean island) playing in a nasty nines tournament. The Korean government along with various sponsors helped subsidize the tournament. One of the sponsors happened to be a Soju company so as you can imagine the soju was flowing freely Saturday and Sunday. Which was the main ingredient for a particular incident involving a former Michigan State ultimate player, a moving bus, projectile vomiting, screaming babies, and locked windows. We pwned everybody, won the tourney, and took the prize money (approx $1,100 USD).

The following Monday we fly back to Shanghai. I get a night of rest and have to get ready for the trip to Guilin (Guangxi Province) with 8 other Jiao Tong friends. This was was my second trip to Guilin and Yangshuo. It was just a beautiful as last time, but much more crowded because of the May holiday. My friend AH set the trip up with the help of his aunt who lives in Guangzhou, whom has some guanxi (connections). Which meant our group had our own personal bus driver to take us where ever we wanted and a tour guide. The trip was fun and I got to do a lot of things that I didn't do the last time (back in 2000). My highlights were the riverboat tour down to Yangshuo from Guilin, the hot springs in long sheng, the bike tour around the Yangshuo countryside (esp Uncle do a Dave Mira off the side of the road), and bonding with my friends.

When we got back I hit the books again and get my Chinese back on track. Resumed spartan training, which has now become: Track workout, 5 X 12 dips, 25 min of abs, 8 X 25 pushups, 100M walking lunges, 5 X 10 pullups. Been doing this workout about 2x a week and playing some pickup ultimate on Saturdays. Partied some more, introduced some beer pong to Asia, catching up on Naruto, 24, Sopranos, and Entourage.

怎么说 "Wingman"? part II

...I do a quick scan of the situation and room. The left most side sat three girls in isolation who were friends of another girl who was an acquaintance of my friend (probably also wondering wtf is going on). There were approx 1.5 hostess girls for every man in our group. Each of us had our own hilarious look of feeling slightly embarrassed and awkward written on our faces. My Korean friend beckoned me over to him and his woman and introduced me to a couple of girls sitting next to him. I was promptly introduced as "my friend from America" (“美国的朋有”). So I broke out the chinese I accumulated over the last 1 1/2 months, which meant I could hold a conversation for about 45 seconds. Everyone else in my group is already pretty fluent and seemed to be holding their own, which meant watching the girls play dice games and drinking our liquor. Fortunately this memorable experience lasted for only about 10min. After which all the girls left our room in the most efficient formation possible. I suspect for two reasons: (1) They had paying clients elsewhere in the club. (2) Someone in our group leaked that we were students and had no jobs (thus no $$$). I keep telling myself it was #1.

We were basically back to the same situation as before. The three other girls were hanging out by themselves, six of us drinking and wondering what the hell just happened, while my Korean friend is making out with his women. I initiate some conversation with the three girls whom I originally thought were all Korean. I found out two were actually Chinese after complimenting one of them on their speaking ability. Unfortunately one of the girls had her mind polluted with Western culture after spending 8 years in England studying. She didn't find my sexist jokes charming and was speaking out of turn. So I go back to my friends who are hitting on the serving girl (服务员）, who was actually much prettier than the hostess girls.

It was still early so I call around and make plans to meet up with some other friends at Attica. BTW while all of this is happening my Korean friend is making out with his woman. While coming up for air he would occasionally look over at us with a slightly guilty and embarrassed expression. Plans get squared away and we take off for Attica sans Korean friend and woman.

Updates since: Korean friend and his girlfriend of 10 days broke up. Korean friend lost a lot of face with us that night. If he would do the right thing and cut off his pinkie perhaps we could find it in our hearts to forgive him. We also still have two bottles of cognac reserved at that club, we are looking for the opportune moment to go back and pre-game there.

怎么说 "Wingman"? part I

Last Friday the boys and I headed out to the semi-new Korean club. Forgot the name and location of the club or at least it has been repressed by my subconscious. A week before, we had all promised our Korean friend that we would all go there this past Friday. Said friend had attended the club's opening night a couple weeks ago, where he met his current "girlfriend". I was told said girlfriend wanted to introduce us to her friends. Where do I sign up?

For some reason we plan to meet and leave the Tao at 8:30pm(太早了!). Didn't actually leave until 9:45pm, which is how things kind of work in China. While walking to pick up a cab my Korean friend and I talk a little more about the evening to come. Through this conversation I gleaned a few more kernels of information and put together a very different picture of what to expect that night. It turns out that the girlfriend also works at the bar along with her friends that we are supposed to meet. The ladies all work as "Hostess girls" at this Korean club. Hostess girls are employed by the club and are paid money by clients to pretend to like you and drink your overpriced alcohol. I think the rate for these particular ladies was 300RMB for the night. I've heard the going rate is between 200RMB - 700RMB. However, since my friend was dating one of these girls we were going to receive this special privilege for free.

So the crew hit the club around 10pm or so, K-lou and I got some quick pre-gaming with a semi-nasty 白酒and orange juice concoction. We walk in like movie stars and are immediately led to our private room on the 2nd floor. On the way to our room, I did a quick scan of the joint and noticed it was mostly empty with the exception of a few groups of ladies at various tables and older business men (turned out to be this way for the rest of the night). So the 7 of us + 1 girlfriend are hanging out in our room. We are given the soft sell on why we need to buy 3 bottles of cognac..done (1,700RMB). Actually not a bad price and we were told the bottles would be saved for us if we didn't finish them that night. We spend the next 30min or so sipping cognac and green tea. Our Korean friend and his woman were getting cozy in the corner while the rest of us were just chilling and pretending to not be uncomfortable.

Korean friend asks his woman about the rest of her friends, considering that was the only pretext for us being at this place. I get up to use the bathroom and come back to find all the seats in our room occupied by "the girls we were supposed to meet".......to be continued.

Shanghai Routine

Life here has been unexpectedly busy for me, but probably not enough to justify not having posted anything for the last couple weeks. Initially I wanted to blame the Chinese gov, but they only make blogging mildly inconvenient.

Nothing particularly interesting has happened over the last couple weeks. I've settled nicely into the routine of waking at 7:50am going to class till 12pm, getting lunch, taking a 1-2hr nap, watch a little *TV downloaded from the intertron, eat more food, then I usually hit the books from around 10pm-1am on the 1st floor of Tao Li Yuan. Interspersed in that schedule is the occasional 2 1/2 hour *workout session on Wed, Fri and Spring League on Mon.

*I just finished the 2nd season of 24. Have to say the show isn't bad. Keifer Sutherland has come a long way from being the weak link in Young Guns I to the badass now known as Jack Bauer. The one thing I can't stand is Kim Bauer, I'm hoping from season 3-6 they find a way to make his daughter just go away. BSG season finale was damn good, lots of wtf moments.

*the last few weeks I've been working out with a couple friends. There is a decent 400M track on campus. We've been doing light track workouts followed by dips, pushups, and pullups. Its not the same as the gym, but its enough to keep the gun show going.

Currently all foreign students have the entire week off from classes. Some students signed up for trips to either Xian, Beijing, or Tai Shan that had been organized by the school. I chose to spend the time off in Shanghai....umm catching up in my studies. Besides I just committed to flying to Jeju (Korea) to play in 9-man roster tournament the weekend before the May holidays. During the May holiday I'll be flying to Guilin with school friends for around 6 days. Last night I just received the initial costs of the trip and suddenly feel very poor.









Pre-game action before a night out in Shanghai

Lao Shi Hao!

Mandarin classes here at Jiao Tong have been going well and I've about adjusted to my schedule. Most of the students who have come here seem to have spent some time studying Mandarin either through their home universities or in another Chinese city (i.e. Beijing). The program here is divided into 3 levels (n00b, Intermediate, and Advanced). Within each level, students are further siphoned into 4 groups (i.e. n00b I, II, III, and IV). A majority of the foreign student population fall within n00b I - Intermediate I. I'm in n00b I.

I have classes 5 days a week for about 3 hours per day. I have morning classes M, W-F (8:30am - 11:50am) and afternoon class T (1:10pm - 4:30). Schedules vary for everyone and they give us a week to settle on which classes and schedules we want to attend. After the musical chair session that was the first week my class ended up with around 22 people. About 9 Europeans, 5 South Americans, 1 Filipino, 1 Thai, 2 Russians, 2 Canadians, 2 Americans. All the Koreans and Japanese hop classes until they found ones that were primarily made up of their countrymen. However there are always a few white guys in these classes who are looking to meet an Asian girl.

Every one in my class has the same schedule, which means we get to see each other 15 hours a week. Our n00b I class attends 4 intensive reading, 2 intensive listening, and 4 intensive speaking classes each week. The classes move pretty fast and every day we encounter a new set of vocabulary words that need to be processed and memorized. Westerners (including me) definitely have a harder time learning the language than those from other Asians countries. The Japanese use a lot of the same characters so reading and writing is pretty easy for them, but their pronunciation is crap. Koreans have a completely different spoken and written language, but they are used to writing characters and I hear the sentence structure of the two languages are similar.

Most of the people in my class are really nice and its been fun learning with such a diverse group of people. The only complaint I have against my classmates is when they open their mouths and try to speak what they think is Chinese. Granted the Asians in the class have spent more time around Chinese and are used to hearing the syllables. But when some of my classmates speak it sounds as if they are mentally-handicapped, deaf, and have a chunk of meat in their mouthes. Kudos to our instructors for being so patient and being able to comprehend the gibberish that comes out of their mouths. Some of the Latinos in my class are having a really hard time with the language. Due to the nature of the Spanish language they are just incapable of reproducing and differentiating the tones necessary for speaking Chinese (i.e. pwned).

Initially I found all facets of the language to be challenging, but over the last month I've gotten much better at writing characters and my listening skills are improving. I still find stringing together complex sentences to be my biggest challenge. I usually spend my weekday evenings downstairs in our building studying. I've been trying to spend about 2hrs/day studying. 2hrs/day is probably close to the minimum needed just to keep up with class. However living in a city like Shanghai has sometimes made it difficult to hit this quota.