I was so happy to see so many wonderful things happening around the world to really get everyone into the Christmas spirit.  Christmas should be a time of peace, happiness, and love no matter your religion – at least that is what the priests in Catholic school use to tell me and what it says on all the Christmas decorations 😀  Personally, I think that the following news events belay that attitudes.  See the following article:

Kenyan Muslims shield Christians in Mandera bus attack – http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-35151967

Had a really nice day today – my students bought me a Christmas tree and apples 🙂  I am not sure why apples are considered Christmas items in China but I love food decorations on my Christmas tree and food in my belly.  Miss my traditional Chinese food Christmas tree from the U.S. as it has Hong Shao Rou (Roasted Fatty Pork), Ji Yi (Chicken Wings), Pai Gu (Pork Ribs), Ying Mun (Lemons for my tea), and Ji Dan (Eggs).  Those of you from Christmas 2008-2009 know what I am talking about.  If I can find those photos, will totally post them next time.

Current Mood – Happy and Hungry

Remember the Hunger Games fiasco where some idiot complained that one of the characters was white but in reality the book stated clearly that the girl was black?  We now have more foolishness with the Harry Potter play which I am really excited about and thinking about flying to London to see once more tickets open up.

Seriously, if the founder of the Harry Potter concept is okay with having a black Hermoine, the rest of you all should be fine with it to.  She wrote and created the darn story after all.  So what if the cover art shows a white child as Hermoine, the artist drew what she wanted but she did not create the Potter universe so everyone needs to take a chill pill.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child announces lead cast – http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-35149864

Hermione Granger to be played by black actress Noma Dumezweni, sparking fan debate – http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/35150488/hermione-granger-to-be-played-by-black-actress-noma-dumezweni-sparking-fan-debate

It’s like the debate from a few years ago which was black baby Jesus versus white baby Jesus in the nativity scene.  Seriously, we were not around when Jesus was walking the earth, who knows what color his skin was.  He might have been like Plessy from Plessy v. Fergueson who was 7/8 white and 1/8 black.  He might have decided to be white one day and black the next – after all he was the son of God who died and came back to life in three days so frankly he probably had powers to do just about anything he wanted to in a philanthropic and non-intrusive manner.

What I am trying to say on the subject is – it is Christmas and the holidays so can we have one holiday season where we put aside race issues and just be happy that we are all alive and the aliens have not invaded us and wipes us out yet?  Wait a second, maybe we should all be excited that we have not caused our own apocalyptic death.

Current Mood: Hungry and Tired

While I prefer to be able to trust people on their word – it is a hard task in any country but especially here.  I decided that until I get a contract in hand I need to stop helping others because 1) not appreciated, 2) headache, and 3) unreliable.  Have learned through getting burned that if I do not have it in writing then it does not exist.  This is especially so with employment related matters.  I don’t want to be a “should have, would have, could have.”  Either you can do something or you can’t – never lie to me and never lead me on.

It has even gotten to the point where I need contracts to get the simplest things done because people start asking you for things that were never negotiated on but they will tell you that you totally did.  I know I talk fast because I am from NYC but I do know what I say and don’t say – hypotheticals are not by any means an agreement.

A few projects are on hold because of the holidays and the lack of trust.  I can push things through later but I want valid, legally binding pieces of paper.

Why was contracts so boring in law school?  Bloody things are the most useful and most irritating things to draft but way more fun in reality.  Wish I took more contracts classes now.  Learning through trial by fire is not fun.

Current Mood – Tired and Feeling like a Professional Student

I think that it is hysterical that every time something changes on campus, the foreigners and the locals think that I am the cause.  I am definitely less of a rabblerauser in China because I don’t comprehend everything going on around me but I will always interfere if it is wrong.  Apparently, I am still a rabblerauser – see there are somethings that even I cannot change 😀

The foreign professors were complaining about how on their walks to and from home, they often run into students and random other people having sex in the woods right next to their apartments.  Apparently, some of the people involved in outdoor, woods-sex are butt naked when the American professors walk upon them BUT do not even stop, others stop, wait until they pass, and keep on going, an/or others start putting their clothes on.

Frankly, I think that having sex in the woods is gross as there is too much mud and too many people to walk upon you.  Also, if the couple cannot gather enough pennies to pay for the love hotel across the street from campus then maybe you do not like each other enough to swap spit.  But most of you already know that I am a prude and only naked when changing clothes and/or getting ready to shower.  Obviously, people on campus do not share my sentiments.

What I think is hysterical is one of my friends on campus asked me if I was the one who made buildings and grounds go and trim the woods back.  While I would have probably asked the university to do that if I was living next to the sex woods, I do not live in that part of campus so I did not.  If you are all happy with walking on students and random others having sex within site of your apartments, then who am I to complain about it.

Needless to say, the sex woods pruning project was not my idea.  I personally think that the area was just on the list of trees to winterize so the university got it taken care of.  We shall see how long it is before the lovers return to now see-through woods.  Frankly, I do not think that those who are having sex there care about others stumbling in on them so unfortunately, those poor professors are going to have to keep on dealing with that problem.

As I keep telling my students, although American tv and movies show sex all the time, most Americans are prudes.  We will talk about sex in classes because of sex and health education but we prefer everything to be behind closed doors and out of sight.

Current Mood – Tired but still trying to figure out how to conclude my paper.  Feeling stressed.

A friend of mine told me that there is a difference between friends who share the same background and culture and those who do not.  He reminded me that it is always going to be easier dealing with and explaining to people how you feel about those who share the same experiences.  I needed that reality check and it truly made me feel better.

People were asking me why I was so pissed off when they ask me about the dating life in China – well see for yourself.  I know that there are a lot of men in China and that because there are a billion people floating around that not everyone is to be thrown back to the waterways.  However, you have to realize that when this is the “normal and acceptable” behavior and attitude of men in China, you wonder why I have already planned my IVF date.

See the article below…

A Chinese Husband’s ‘ad’ for his wife to get plastic surgery sparks debate – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-35106611.

What is interesting about this article is the following:

1) This is trending on weibo and if you look at the comments, some are actually supportive about this husband’s request.  I was really surprised about the women who seemed to think that their job is to please their significant others.  Score one for the make up business in China and in 5-10 years the booming psych business here because eventually you are going to realize that you need self esteem and a shrink to obtain one.

On the other hand, this explains the high rate of women who cheat on their spouses with very ugly Westerners in Shanghai – we saw this 3 of a white guy with an 8 Chinese girl who said that she was married to a wealthy Chinese businessmen who was never in town to take care of her.  I started to laugh my butt off after she kissed him and then they walked out hand in hand.  You know that there are significant sexual diseases going on in that corner.

2) I cannot tell if this is advertisement is suppose to be a joke or real but many people are taking it seriously.  If this ad is real, I recommend the woman get a quick divorce because she deserves better.  You know that this husband most likely does not have the most fit body.  Do not take my word for this but look at the average married Chinese guy with his wife – most of the time the woman looks fine and the guy has a gut.

3) CHINA’S GREAT FIREWALL BANNED THE ARTICLE :d.

On the other hand, the great firewall of China has not banned articles questioning and negatively featuring articles about attitudes towards women in other countries or areas…  See France passes bill banning excessively thin models – http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35130792.

While I was having a bad week in China because I was pissed off that people were lying to my face and trying to pass it off as I did not understand their culture, I have decided to just forget about learning about their “relationship” culture because I do not want to learn how to lie and manipulate people because I need to unlearn it once I go home.

I figure if the Chinese government is going to go as far as barring an article about a guy behaving badly, I certainly should not be upset or unrealistic in thinking some members of society would think lying their ass off about petty stupid matters is acceptable – especially to someone they think is an outsider or a foreigner.

Current Mood – Pretty Happy now that the nose seems to be working and I can breath.  Might need to go back for some more of that Traditional Chinese Medicine.  Cheeky if nothing else 😀

Forgive me but I am having a very bad China week because I miss mom, the holidays, the shopping, and the ability to communicate with people on a similar level of understanding.  Furthermore, I checked the calendar and realized that I have hit the 6 month mark in China.

There are these studies about foreign researchers and their moods through their stay.  Back in 2008 when I first got to China, there was a study that separated a yearly stay within 3 month increments where the first 3 months are euphoric because everything is nice and new, the next three months are less happy but productive because you are trying to figure out the system, beginning in month 6-7 you generally start becoming disenchanted with everything around you because you are tired with dealing with all the cultural differences and people giving you the excuse that its the cultural differences, and by month 8 you dig yourself out of the “everything is terrible mode,”and back to euphoria.  I had forgotten about this study until a friend of mine reminded me about it this morning.

So my posts for the next week are going to be on the negative end and I am going to lift myself out of this mess because I need to get back to work.  Therefore, you will see a whining 7 day period to get my 6 month blues out of the system.  I need to write my paper and study for the UBE.

Trusting people in China is ultra hard.  Christmas is probably the hardest.  Normally would be back home buying and wrapping presents for homeless people, working at the shelters and soup kitchens, and trying to figure out the next “puppy” project.  But in China, every time I do something, I am told by locals that I am either doing too much, expecting too much, or not doing enough for myself, which leads me to question my basic principles which is a little confusing.

Dad asked me why I was bothering to help the school negotiate a better contract for the students when I did not get anything from the deal.  I had no extra monetary compensation.  I am not going to get credit for negotiating the deal.  I cannot benefit from the deal.  Dad made all these great points and then pointed out this is why I always get screwed.  But I am who I am and its always been enough.

Lately, I am not sure.  Am I morphing into something I don’t want to be?  The professor I constantly disagree with once told me, “Spend enough time in China and you will act like the rest of us.”  I had always told him that would never happen but recently, I am starting to see his point.  It really is hard to be me in China when most of the people cannot be genuine if looking at the end of a barrel.  I always knew who was lying to me but not always how or why.  Mom taught me enough to treat people like chess pieces if I did not understand their motives because at least if I had a pattern, I could analyze based on the pattern.

Problem I have in China is that I do not understand the culture enough to know a pattern.  So I finally figured out the pattern of most people in the office I interact with but it has taken me five months.  Is that too late?  It might be in my case.

The sad thing is that the office pattern is very simple and very selfish.  The problem is that my mindset and actions are so contrary to theirs that I did not comprehend what was going on.  Originally, I tried to spend as little time with the other westerners on campus because I wanted to integrate my language skills and learn about Chinese culture.  I think that attitude backfired because it was not until I had, had a few discussions with the other Americans who had been here for a few years or had gone back and forth did I realize what the pattern was.

I have not seen Survivor in a long time – since the first season but it feels like that.  I have always been at a huge disadvantage for having a low EQ in the US but in China having a low EQ and lack of cultural background is just suicide.  The only good thing is that for the most part my IQ balances the terrible EQ.

The other night I had a dream about a news story that was on Dateline NBC and 60 Minutes.  It was about  one of the smartest people ever recorded in terms of IQ – never finished college and became a janitor in the midwest.  When interviewed they claimed that his EQ was close to zero and he could not function with most people because he just could not communicate with them.  He dropped out of college because he constantly fought with his professors and was just tired of not being able to get along with others.  When I woke up I was trying to decide if my mom was trying to tell me to hurry it along in terms of understanding Chinese culture or to warn me about some impending doom.

For the most part, I think mom was trying to tell me about impending doom.  I know that the professor that I do not get along with has way better EQ than I.  I know that he kisses butt and tells people what they want to hear.  I know that fighting with him is terrible for me because he has worked here for 10 years and has had that amount of time to build relationships with people.  I know that in China most people have their jobs and keep them because of “guangxi” and not because they really know what they are doing or work hard.

I now know that office gossip is a traded jewel, way to socially bond, and to smear others.  I was told by my Chinese friends that this is the way that China works but I did not think that it was that bad.  Office gossip works amazingly well in China at universities because professors do not come into the office all the time and most staff wander in and out to get forms approved through seals.  This gives them the opportunity to interact with others and claim that a 5 minute activity took 20-45 minutes or longer because of wait times.  Sometimes it does but most of the time no, it does not.

Personally I think that the lack of time cards and ways to track the efficiency allows the system to function this way.  If they were forced to keep track of every 15 minutes of their day like we have to back home, no way would it be this bad.  Most of the time, people here ignore corruption and bad things because it is in their self interest.  The idea of doing things because it is the right thing to do does not exist.

I started teaching American Constitutional Law thinking that I would help my students understand American values and ideas more.  Instead, my con law class helped teach me about Chinese culture.  Yesterday some of the professors and students were confused about suing over principles, asking for damages such as “to prevent this from happening to others,” and “individual applications.”

In response to one of the guest lecturer’s question about how the concept of “face” affects laws in China, a student stated how they want to conform to society.  Another professor stated but why should we sue “to prevent this from happening to others,” when it costs us money and time.  At that point, I had the biggest Eureka moment in China.

So for the holidays I am thankful for the following:

1. My awesome Chinese friends who let my complain and pepper them with questions about Chinese culture and society.
2. The professor that I am always arguing with because without him, I never would have even begun to wonder about the different values and circumstances in China.  Sometimes you just need to be burned in order to see the truth about things.  I certainly never would have learned the Chinese idiom, “You should not pity people but hate them.”
3. The office people who sit around gossiping and defending their positions through spreading gossip because I never would have realized that gossip could be used as a weapon.
4. My students who ask lots of questions that make me think about cultural issues and values.  They certainly force me to think about the best way to explain my values to them.  They have certainly taught me more about Chinese culture than some of my peers and colleagues.  At least they can explain things to me with relative ease and honesty.
5. The wonderful mentors, colleagues, and friends from home.  Without them being so awesome to me all these years, I never would have been so blind to what was going on in China.  If you had not been wonderful human beings all these years, I never would have been the happy, idealistic fool I am.
6. For my China experience, without the bad you do not realize the good.  Sometimes, I just forget that there could be worse out there.  It also made me realize that my life and principles are not for everyone but it works for me.  China certainly puts me and my principles to the test every day.  If nothing else I can say, I will always defend my values and principles without it being empty words.

Current Mood – Happy and Contemplative

There are lots of things that happen in my neighborhood and I have no idea why.  I took a nap and when I woke up, I thought I hear a really loud storm come through the area but nope – it was someone watering the plant bed below from the 5th floor across the way.

After realizing this was an actual employee because of the uniform, I started wondering if they were going to pay the people in the apartment for the use of their water or if they had a water tank with them.

There are things that happen in China that I just don’t get like watering from the 5th floor of an apartment when we have spigots below.  It also happens to be ranging from -5 to 7 degree C so maybe they decided to water from above because of the pipe bursting issue but then you need to wonder why water at all when the plants are all dormant now…

I did screw up last week.  I thought that the recycling and such would all be together because I have not seen a separate recycling bin near us.  I threw all the recycling in the normal waste bin.  It turns out that there is a day where all the recycling is picked up.  I was wondering why the cleaning lady kept piling all of the recycling together.  What I did not realize was that the old people in the building tie up all the recycling into these bundles – interesting no?

The guy picks it up and converses with people for about a half hour and then goes off to the next place.

Everyone back home makes fun of me because I do not know any of the pop references but I have started to watch lots of movies in China which includes American movies – classics and current.  I will get to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory one of these days 🙂

So I have decided that one of the best movies other than Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2 is The Loarx 🙂  So fitting for all developing countries which are or have industrialized.

Last week there was a meeting in Beijing about environmental science and law.  Unfortunately, it was also the first time China had declared a red alert for air quality in Beijing since the beginning of its monitoring system.  I decided not to go because of work piling up and also because of the bad air quality.  Not sure why, but I am convinced that every time I go to Beijing, I come back sick with a really bad sinus infection.  Unfortunately, while Beijing was 850+ in some areas, Wuhan had pretty bad air quality as well.  In Wuhan it was 288 in the morning and by afternoon its was 399.

So you can understand why the people and the government of China are so concerned with environmental issues.  While I do not agree with the restaurant owners in Jiangsu province automatically adding a surcharge for “air quality” within their establishment, due to the installation of a new air quality filter, had they informed or advertised their additional 1 yuan charge prior to customers ordering, I would be all for it.

If you let me know beforehand you are going to do something and I agree, charge away.  If you are charging me and I have no idea why then of course expect angry lawyer to show up.  Personally, had I realized that you installed an industrial filter in your restaurant, especially in Beijing, I would be in your restaurant anytime I need to eat in that area.

If we do not improve environmental air quality in China soon – someone really is going to open a “clean air” business like in The Lorax and be the next billionaire.  So much for the tragedy of the commons 😀

China: Diners charged ‘air cleaning fee’ – http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-35091784

Hurt my hand last year and had two finger hairline fractures which for the most part were okay as they did not interfere with my everyday use but it was frustrating as I did not realize how much I rely on certain digits.  For example, I never realized that I swing around an umbrella, a pen, and sometimes my bags around one finger – so I had to learn to use my whole hand to lift things again.

Physical therapy was not working well as I could not really make the time to drive around and take care of it but I did realize that some of the finger and hand strengthening exercises were similar to my piano playing movements.  So in the past year I have tried to play the piano once a week.  I have not always been successful in this endeavor as for most of the summer in China I had no piano and my pianos at home have been turned into beautiful but giant desks.  However, I am thankful that my current place has a piano – LOVE.

I even picked up my dusty piano books from home and brought them with me to China, so be still my heart, I am going to finally teach myself the Chopin nocturnes and waltzes that I love listening to and did not get a chance to learn with college applications, work, and graduate school commitments.

I even decided that if given the chance, I want to be the oldest competitor in the piano competitions around town because I do not want to lose my skills.  As it is, I play slower than I did when I did compete.  I do not have the attention span anymore to play long pieces.  Also, my arms and hands sometimes feel sore because I no longer have muscles in those places.  I need an incentive to maintain my training or else I am going to let it go by the wayside again.  Maybe I need to sign up to take the Royal Music Exam Teaching exams as I never took those in the past.

I did learn the other day from the Mystery of Museums television show that Beethoven intended his pieces to be played very quickly but most people cannot play them the way it was composed so musicians have altered the pieces to play them at a slower tempo.  For a minute there, I wanted to call all my former piano teachers and let them know that I do not play the pieces fast but they were meant to be that way.  I wanted to tell them that the piano competition judges were wrong – I played the pieces at the right pace; unfortunately for me my piano teachers are dead and the television show then started talking about chamber music ensembles versus orchestras 🙂

Current Mood – happy although sick of my habitual sinus infection situation.  Out of the low dose antibiotics 🙁  Trudging along and trying Traditional Chinese Medicine which seems to be working.