mf.rox

I have a sudden houseguest, who is here to get away from some people who want to murder him! Really!

It’s a long story.

I finally confronted the neighbors about their insane, screaming kid. Actually, she’s probably just bratty rather than insane. She’s like 12, but throws tantrums like a two-year-old. She screams, knocks things over, etc. I’ve never run into this type of behavior before. The problem is that she is so loud I can hear it all over my entire apartment. Once before I got mad and hammered on their door so I could have it out with them, but they didn’t open up (maybe they couldn’t hear my knocking over her yelling). Anyway, this time I banged on the door and the mother opened. She seemed to think the whole screaming thing was funny. Anyhow, I talked to her, told her I could hear her daughter all over my apartment, it was really annoying, that even people outside playing cards could hear everything she was saying, and she was too old to behave like that. Some of that is not too diplomatic, but the mom didn’t seem too offended. I didn’t shout or anything like that. I’m glad I talked to them before getting too annoyed.

Here’s part of a message I got from American Citizens Services of the US Consulate-General in Guangzhou:

…the Department
of State has decided to pre-position the drug Tamiflu at its Embassies and
Consulates worldwide, for eligible U.S. Government employees and their
families serving abroad.?Tamiflu may not be readily
available overseas and the State Department encourages American citizens
traveling or living abroad that are interested in obtaining this medication
to consult with their physician.?There is no provision for the U.S.
government to provide American citizens traveling or living abroad with
medications, including in the event of a pandemic.

My emphases added. More compassion from the US government. Not a government employee? Well then go die.

Why are they even telling us they have it if they’re not going to give it to people? So we don’t annoy them by calling and asking for it?

I bet the Canadian consulate would give people Tamiflu!

What do you do when you are attracted to someone that common sense tells you is unsuitable for you? I think I’m attracted to the dog man, the guy whose dog I’ve been walking since the summer time. He’s smart and interesting. But on the other hand, he’s almost ten years older than me, didn’t even go to high school (although this isn’t that uncommon for Chinese people of his age). He has this big family (two brothers, two sisters, and a dad), who would certainly find out instantaneously if anything happened between us. Plus, because he runs a store that a lot of people in the neighborhood go to, lots and lots of people would find out about everything too. His family is actually very nice, but I’m not used to dealing with families of any kind. The guy also smokes a lot and spits. Plus there is the fact that usually, deep down, I’m disgusted by the human body.

I just feel confused, though. I do like spending time with this guy, and sometimes feel sort of lustful toward him. But maybe I am just horny in general? Maybe I need to have sex more? I also have an urge, to raise a child, despite the ambivalence I have about the realities of doing that. (I’ll have to keep it forever!) I felt kind of weepy today while looking at kids’ clothes at a store.

Eh, but there are all these things that make me think this is all unrealistic — the guy doesn’t speak English at all, he doesn’t speak standard Chinese well (so I don’t even know his surname because I couldn’t understand it when he said what it was). I don’t think he has a very big income, which might be embarrassing for him when compared with mine. Plus he doesn’t have any free time because he always has to stay and watch his dad and the store.

Still, I do chat with him every day. I like him a lot. Am I just throwing unnecessary roadblocks in front of something that could be fun? I’m a very “CAN’T” person. Am I just being too negative? Should I give it a try?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Today I saw some foreign tourists get amorous in the Longhua Temple. The man and the woman were about to start making out, from the looks of things, until a temple steward started circling around them, giving them a look.

Advice to tourists: Don’t make out in Buddhist temples.

I had to show my work card to get online at the net bar tonight! I’d heard this was going to happen, and now it finally has. Bummer.

Yesterday I went to a shoe store. The saleslady there offered me candy, and because I thought it would be impolite to refuse it, I said OK. The strange thing was, she wanted to put it in my mouth herself! I let her. I figured she wanted to do it for the novelty value, since the store doesn’t have many foreign customers. I’m more fun than a barrel of monkeys!

I had this friend who said that the whole time he lived in China, he never took a solid crap. Actually, I have a different problem. I almost never crap at all. The amount that comes out is really alarming in relation to what goes in, and I only go maybe once in five days. I’ve been worried that there’s all this stuff in there, and have had fantasies where I just blow up. I’ve tried to deal with this by eating more fiber, but it’s useless. This has been going on for years now. I guess I shouldn’t worry about it, but it really seems abnormal. How often do most people go to the toilet?

Today, I drank a little water from that tap that wasn’t boiled completely, and maybe that did it. I was able to crap! Yeah!

Fans of communist propaganda will enjoy http://www.nk-news.net/index.php, with its cataloguing of North Korean news releases. It even has a random insult generator!

I just started watching Supersize Me, and I had to turn it off because it gave me a feeling of dread. On of the things it said in the movie was that 1/4 of Americans eat at a fast-food restaurant every day. I really can’t believe that. It’s like nothing I can even imagine. Does this mean my life and experiences are so far from those of most Americans? On one hand, I’ve assumed that for a long time. On the other hand, having a little, concrete example of a basic but major lifestyle difference really freaked me out.

It dawned on me last summer that every time I go back to the US, people are fatter and ruder. This sounds like a really mean thing to say, but on the other hand, it’s true. It’s like there’s been an exponential explosion in people’s weight, just during the five years I’ve been in China. Sizes that I NEVER saw in real life, only on documentaries about obesity, seem to be common now. A guy on the plane from San Francisco to Cincinatti needed an extension on his seat belt because he couldn’t get the normal one around his waist. The woman sitting next to me was angry at me because she asked me to put up my armrest so she would have more room (she was already several inches into my seat, so I couldn’t sit without crossing my legs), but I wouldn’t do it. Plus, people were so nasty. Some security people in one airport openly made fun of my clothing. It was I was trapped amongst a bunch of overgrown 12-year-olds.

Just now, after watching the movie, I was fretting about this, and came to the net bar to vent. The first thing I saw on Yahoo news was an article called, “Modern Americans: A Rude, Boorish Lot?”

Sometimes I feel like, “Who are these Americans?” I don’t seem to fit in with a lot of people in the US, politically, culturally, religiously, etc. It seems like I can’t understand a lot of people’s points of view at all.

I always have a hard time writing detailed stuff in the net bar, but I’ll say a little here about my mother’s visit. I’d say it went much better than I expected. I planned very carefully, and none of the things I’d worried about, like illnesses, falls, or other accidents occurred. I took her to eat a variety of food, and none of it made her sick, except, strangely, a store-bought muffin, of a brand that I eat all the time.

A partial run-down of activities:
Day 1: Eating non-spicy Hunan food.
Day 2: Massage, wndering around campus, meeting some students.
Day 3: Going to museum, eating dim sum, going to excellent acrobatics performance.
Day 4: Lousy national day concert; most patrons left. Then, going to old city, eating at fantastic restaurant Meilongzhen.
Day 5 & 6: Going to Suzhou by train. Seeing gardens, meeting people who wanted to know my mom’s age.
Day 7: Bus tour of Shanghai.
Day 8: Going to class with me.
Day 9: Resting, dinner at hotpot restaurant.
Day 10: Going to class, having lunch with students, and extravagant dinner with the dog’s family.
Day 11: Going back.

Today I saw a Chinese person wearing a shirt that said, “100% Black Man.”

This was a two-part dream. I had the first part of it early last night, and the latter part just before I woke up this morning.

In my dream, I was in the stairwell of an American university building. I think I was upset about some sort of slight I had received, because I was feeling really touchy. All of a sudden, this other girl came down the stairs. She was tall and pretty, with long blond hair, and was holding a thick paperback novel. For some reason, I felt compelled, and even justified in, hitting her. As soon as I did it, I didn’t know where I could go from there, because she was angry, and would make a complaint against me. The only way out I could see was killing her, or at least knocking her out so she couldn’t remember what had happened. So, I started beating her up as much as I could, and she fell down the stairs (or I might have tried to make her fall). When she was laying there unconscious, I was aghast, and felt panicky, wanting to hide the evidence of what I had done. I found a big garbage bag, and stuffed her into it, head first. I went home, and then later that night, realized that she would inevitably suffocate in the bag and die. I realized it was too late to go and get her out. I could only wait until the body was discovered, and then I’d have to worry about whether anyone would know if I’d done it or not.

That was part one.

When the next part of the dream started, I was still waiting for them to find the body. Actually, it took about three days. People had just kept putting more garbage in the bag, without looking at what had gone in first. Eventually, a janitor discovered it. There was a big uproar. The girl’s family came to campus, her friends were very vocal, everyone was disgusted by the crime and was eager to find the perpetrator. Meanwhile, I was really guilt-ridden and scared. I really wanted to escape public shaming, but on the other hand, I knew I was guilty of murder. I kept thinking that I had always wanted to be a person who helped others, but now I had killed somebody, which is the cruelest think you could do. I found keeping the secret a huge burden, and really wanted to tell someone. I asked my mom if she knew I had killed someone, if she would go to the police, and she said yes. I was unhappy about that, but vaguely intimated that I had murdered the girl, which upset her. In the midst of all this, I was trying to keep my cool around the university (where I was a student), not give away that I knew anything about the crime, and deal with my guilt and anxiety. Somebody asked me about a blood stain I had on one of my boots, and despite wanting to keep out of trouble, I also felt strangely attracted, at this point, to all the notoriety I new I would get if people knew I had something to do with the crime. Still, being scared that my mom would really report what I had done, and tried to think of a way of getting out of trouble if she did. I started thinking that I should get a good lawyer. Maybe we could say that, although I hit the girl, she just fell down the stairs, and then I panicked and put her in the bag. I was hoping I could just get manslaughter for something like that, or maybe even reckless endangerment. I tried to compare the facts of my case with those of other cases, and their outcomes.

At that point, I woke up.

My mom is here, and things have been going pretty well. It’s tough that she is overdramatic about some things some times, so I don’t know whether to believe what she is saying. The other day, she was like, “Oh, I’m so tired. I’m going to collapse,” which got me all worried, but then she said that she wasn’t that tired. When I told her not to say stuff like that if it wasn’t true, she said, “I never said I was going to collapse.”