daoge's Xanga

www.redpoe.com

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 13:05:50 GMT

I've gone and done it. I've taken the leap.

www.redpoe.com is where it's at.

"It" being my new blog.

Please update your links; I'll catch y'all over there.

An Open Letter to Everyone

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 15:12:39 GMT

Hi Everyone,

The powers that be have decided that Xanga is not worth my time, or anyone else's. Since their reach only extends so far, they were only able to block all Xanga sites inside this country. There are ways around their mighty reach, but I would never do something like that. I'm emailing this post in, and it's my last post to this site. Well, until the powers that be decide that Xanga is acceptable, or until I move to a place where the powers that be are not as wise or all-knowing.

Until that day I will be posting on my old blog ~ chinadoug.blogspot.com. I moved from there to here for the same reason I am now moving back. Good times. I hope to see you all soon on my new (old) site.

Peace,
Doug

The First Question

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 15:45:10 GMT

What am I doing here?

I’m not questioning my existence (not yet), but I am questioning why I am sitting in a coffee shop in Beijing, China. Well, I’m in a coffee shop because my internet is down in my apartment. That was relatively easy. The hard part is “why am I in Beijing?” This is the sticky part of the question. I am asked this question every Sunday at church, and any other time I meet new people. I have a simple answer that I’ve memorized and that I say as quickly as possible to hopefully eliminate all follow-up questions:

“WellI’mteachingEnglishatauniversityandrunningaconsultingbusinessthathelpssmalltomediumsizedAmericanbusinessesgetinvolvedinChina.”

And that’s what I do here. But it’s not an answer to the question that gnaws at me. I could be anywhere in China and do this. Thanks to the wonder that is the internet, I could be almost anywhere in the world and do this (with only a few small and mostly insignificant problems.) I'm not involved in the culture at all. I’m spending the majority of my time by myself, apart from China. I eat Western food almost exclusively, spend lots of time in this café drinking coffee and surfing the web, and when I go somewhere I make sure I have my ipod and my wonderful headphones that block out all ambient noise. I’ve done almost everything I can to isolate myself from Beijing. Why am I here? Why haven't I moved to Shanghai? Why haven't I gone back to the States? Why haven't I moved to London? Why haven't I moved on? What is keeping me here?

As near as I can tell it's a mixture of things. There are so many more opportunities here in Beijing than there are back home. That's a big part of it. I have a great support network of friends here in China. That's a part of it as well. I've settled down and gotten far too comfortable here in Beijing. Sadly, that's part of it too. Beijing was supposed to be a step in a process, but I've lost my focus. I've taken my eyes off of my goal and stopped moving on. Well, that's not entirely true, since my goals now are different from the goals I had when I arrived.

This question has lost a little of importance since the first time I tried to answer it three weeks ago (this is draft #6 for those of you keeping score at home) since I've decided to move on after this semester. I've taken the GMAT and I am applying to B-schools for the fall. If I was debating whether or not to stay, this question would be irritating me to no end. But now I'm more concerned with learning from this so I don't end up in this situation again.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 17:11:16 GMT

Before I get to the first question, I need to give out a few props and make a few clarifications. I should have done this in my last post, but I was in a hurry and overlooked this. I apologize profusely. I have the Q&A ready to go, but I'm going to sleep on it before I post it. While I don't have a sense of shame or decency, I have been blessed with an overabundance of prudence.

First, the props:

Props to Jared and Maria for putting me up and putting up with me. Special props to Maria for making the best brownies I’ve ever eaten. Maybe it’s because I’ve been brownie withdrawal since the Brasser’s went to Australia, but these brownies with their peanut butter chips, caramel goo and rich chocolate goodness were almost a religious experience. Kudos.

Special props to Jared for dealing with the trouncing I gave him in our first game of Acquire in a magnanimous way. He managed to both eek out a win in the second game and only spend ten minutes or so doing the happy dance. I’m impressed with the amount of personal growth shown, I really am.

Next, the clarification:

I didn’t make this clear earlier, but my “Gadget Guy” segments are available online. Click on the link provided, and at the bottom of the page you’ll see a section labeled “Archives.” My segments run on Tuesdays in the second hour of the program. (I managed to make it work with IE7, but it doesn’t seem to like Firefox or Opera.)

This needs no explanation:

Friday, February 23, 2007

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 13:21:54 GMT

There’s a long list of questions I have that if a student asks I will not answer directly. For example, if a student was to ask, “do you think Chinese women are beautiful?” I would respond with a cagey, “there are beautiful women in every country” and thus answer the question while ducking the questioner’s intent. I’ve gotten pretty good at not painting myself into a corner; I always leave myself a way out. I don’t want to look stupid, and I really don’t want to offend any of my students by giving an insensitive answer. So I’ll answer the question without really answering the question. For those of you who knew me at Calvin or know the metaphor, I have been practicing, and I can now use the BS cannon with amazing surgical precision.

There’s also a short list of really hard questions that I don’t like to think about. These questions are primarily focused on who I am, and I am afraid that if I answer them I’ll be forced to make big changes that I won’t enjoy. Also, I am afraid that I might not be able to answer some of these questions, and the lack of an answer would be worse than a life-changing answer. The questions are mental acid, so I keep them quarantined in the back of my mind. I try to keep myself distracted so that I won’t have the time to deal with them. Sometimes, when it’s late and I feel a little guilty, depressed, and in need of a change, I might reach deep, pull out one of the questions, and then spend a few minutes lightly contemplating it. I usually have a sketch pad or a notebook to doodle on while I think about these questions; it seems to help me put my thoughts in order.

Over this break from teaching I’ve been filled with a desire to change, to reinvent myself. I think if I am able to deal with these questions I’ll be a different person. I’m a writer at heart, and I think I’m going to type out most of what I think rather than write and doodle.

In the past two weeks all of the questions I have locked away have been brought up in one-on-one conversations (face-to-face, over Skype, through email, and on the phone) with friends, fellow teachers and family. I know that other people are struggling with these questions as well. Most of these questions are personal, (and I guarantee that my answers will be personal) but three years of teaching in China has managed to completely remove my sense of shame and privacy.

Now that I have explained what I am going to do, it’s time for the disclaimer. With one or two exceptions, this blog has been about sharing “China war stories” with my friends and family back home. Now, it’ll still be about that, but I’ll be adding the occasional personal growth post. Before I tried to keep this blog like marshmallow fluff, but I’m going to forgo that rule starting now. It could get messy and dark and depressing in here; please don’t freak out.

I’ll post the first Q&A tomorrow.

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 06:40:12 GMT

Today's the type of day when I yearn for change. Hence the new look for my blog. Also, I decided to spend today on my couch, since my couch is really comfy and my arse is sore froom from spending far too much time on my crappy office chair.. It’s been good so far, but I just finished a 2 liter bottle of water. It’s just a matter of time until I have to get up. The couch thing isn’t why I ‘m posting; the real reason I’m posting is because I want to talk about fireworks.

Tomorrow is the beginning of the new year according to the lunar calendar, and people have been setting off fireworks every five minutes for the past two days. The fireworks are supposed to keep malevolent spirits at bay; the malevolent spirits must not be that bright. I’ve gotten used to the constant booming, and I lit off a few myself last night. I didn’t buy them; I was given them by a group of very, very drunk Chinese men who were lighting them off on the bridge that spans the 4^th Ring Road. Rob, one of my fellow teachers, and I were walking back from Wudaokou around midnight, and these guys were lighting off big mortar-style fireworks (the kind that launches a shell which explodes into a plume of bright burning colors; the kind you see at 4^th of July celebrations in the States) as we walked up. We stood on the far side of the empty, six-lane wide bridge and watched as they lit off other styles of fireworks. After ten minutes they hailed us over, put fireworks and cigarette lighters in our hands, and asked us to light’em off. We obliged them, and stood talking to the guy who happened to be both the drunkest of the group and in charge of lighting off the fireworks. I lovingly call him Mr. Boom.

After our fireworks were finished, Mr. Boom chuckled to himself, fished in his bag and pulled out a cardboard cylinder about the size of a pop can. He slow-stumbled about fifteen feet away, and put the cylinder down on the curb. He stood up, tensed, and then took a cigarette out of his pack and lit it. He looked at Rob and I, took a drag on the cigarette and smiled. Then, with a remarkable amount of grace, he lit the tiny little fuse on top of the cylinder with his cigarette and sprinted away from the cylinder and us. Rob and I had enough time to bring our hands up to our faces before the cylinder exploded in a plume of multi-colored sparks that sizzled as they flew past our heads. Yep, Mr. Boom thought it was a good idea to light the unexploded mortar shells from earlier in the night. He had three of them, and once Rob and I moved to safe distance, he both lit off the other two and miraculously managed not to die.

After the show we went over, shook Mr. Boom’s hand, and then went home, ears ringing.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 23:47:58 GMT

I’ve become nocturnal, once again. The last time my sleep schedule was this out of whack was during my freshman year. My roommate (Sharda) and I would spend the evening socializing, the night studying and talking to the Bass and whoever else would wander by, and we’d sleep a little between classes and a whole lot on the weekends. It worked fairly well, right up until final exams. Then I burned out, and swore I’d never do it again.

Since I’m not teaching at the moment – I love my nine week paid vacation – I’ve been sleeping in. The constant sleeping in starts a horrible cycle; the first day I slept until ten am instead of my usual eight am wake up. That night I went to bed at three am instead of one am. So, the next morning I slept in until noon instead of ten. I keep waking up later, so I go to bed later. Unfortunately, the cycle has stopped with me going to bed around eleven am and getting up around seven pm. Today, I’m breaking the cycle. I’m recording some “Doug the Gadget Guy” segments at ten, and I’m going to power through the rest of the day and hopefully make it until ten tonight.

Who Needs Sleep?

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 20:25:47 GMT

It's either really late or really early. I don't know how to classify it. Taking the fact that I'm pretty sleep-adled into consideration, I'm going to list what I know.

1. My old story (13056 words) was so craptacular that it pained me to work on it.
2. I decided at 7 pm yesterday that I needed to start a new story
3. In a rare flash of pure enlightenment at 7:03 pm it came to me: Horror & Wendigo
4. I've spent the past 10 hours writing this story
5. I'm at 6745 words, fairly error free.
6. When I close my eyes I see the Wendigo - burning blue-eyed skeleton, clothed in mossy rags with a cold, damp fog surrounding it when it moves. It stays behind me, and when I feel its icy fingers on my neck, I spin around. But it's never there. As long as I stay calm and don't run, it won't attack me. If I lose my cool, flip out and run, it'll track me until I can't run any farther or I fall and hurt myself. Then it'll pounce, rip the flesh from my bones and dine upon it.
7. It's a figment of my imagination. That's not as comforting as it should be.
8. Encyclopedia Mythica rocks.
9. This story will end up being much longer than 50,000 words
10. I won't sleep well until I finish this story.

Well, I'd better get back at it. No rest for the weary, especially when the weary have overactive imaginations.

The Rest of the Week

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 20:30:48 GMT

I should have posted this sooner, but, well, I didn't. Enjoy!

Saturday

Mood: Sleepy
Amount of Sleep: 2 hours

Dream: I was standing in the middle of a large frozen lake. I could barely make out the edge of the shore. The wind was whispering, and I was doing my best to figure out what it was saying. I stood for a long, long time trying to understand its meaning. Eventually the voice started to move to the north, away from me, and I chased after it. I had run only a few steps when I heard the ice crack, and I looked down to see the spider web underneath my feet. Then I woke up.

Last three songs I listened to:
Xavier Rudd “My Missing” from Food in the Belly
Ben Harper “Blessed to be a Witness” from Diamonds on the Inside
Damian Marley “Beautiful” from Welcome to Jamrock

Big Purchase: None

Friday

Mood: Happy-go-lucky
Amount of Sleep: 7 hours

Dream: I was having a cup of coffee at the Kava House. I spent the entire dream swirling the dregs in the bottom of my glass and trying to decide whether or not I should order another cup of coffee.

Breakfast: a banana
Lunch: Half of an egg-and-tomato over rice, a tray of dumplings, and a Coke
Dinner: Da pan ji, lamb skewers, yogurt, and nan bread
Snack: A bag of popcorn

Big Purchase: None

Thursday

Mood: At peace
Amount of Sleep: 4 hours

Dream: I was out in Nordhouse Dunes, hiking. It was summertime, and the weather was absolutely beautiful. I’d been hiking for a long time, and I stopped to take a break on the beach. I sat on the sand in the sun, watching the waves break on the shore.

Breakfast: the last of my oatmeal and a banana
Lunch: a ham and edam panini and a cup of coffee
Dinner: a jian bing and a Coke

Big Purchase: None

Wednesday

Mood: Chock full of afflatus
Amount of Sleep: 9 hours

Dream: I was being chased around campus by something I couldn’t see but I could hear and feel it behind me.

Last four songs I’ve listened to today:
Colin Hay “My Brilliant Feat” Scrubs Season 2 Soundtrack
Death Cab for Cutie “Summer Skin” Plans
Eels “Rags to Rags” Beautiful Freak
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “Breathless” The Lyre of Orpheus

Big Purchase: None

Tuesday

Mood: Energized
Amount of Sleep: 6 hours

Dream: I only remember bits and pieces, but I remember that my hands were covered in honey, and I was busy swatting away the flies that were swarming around my sticky hands.

Breakfast: Oatmeal and raisins
Lunch: Fish-flavored pork over rice and a Coke
Dinner: Bacon Cheeseburger, fries and a Jack & Coke from Browns

Big Purchase: None

The Great February Write Up

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 02:49:38 GMT

Guam et al,

Are you still interested in doing a late NaNoWriMo? I'm going to start on the first of February. I'd love to have someone to suffer through this with.

On a related note, Naomi and I are starting a writer's support group for Beijingers. If any of you would like to join, send me an email and I'll send you the details.

Peace,
Doug