Shopping, Bars, and Hungover Dads

Welp, yesterday my dad got drunk. It was hilarious. He brought my sister and I to a bar that is fairly popular among foreigners and it was nice to hear people speak English hahaha. But yeah my dad isn't supposed to drink because of his health or something like that, but he ended up having 1.25 tequila sunrises and was definitely drunk. We were at the bar for about 3 hours, and he was still drunk on the cab ride home and after we got home. In fact, the last thing he said before heading into his room was, "Oh man, I am DRUNK."

I'll back up a bit though. Yesterday my day consisted of doing Yoga X again with my sister, eating lunch, and then heading out to a pretty well known market in Hangzhou. It's known for not only being very cheap, but also for having the most petty theft/pick pockets. So it's a trade off I guess hahaha. I ended up getting pair of athletic shorts for 40 RMB, which is a little more than six dollars. My sister got some sunglasses for 20 RMB (~ 3 dollars), a gold (fake of course) owl necklace for 7 RMB (~two dollars) and this odd hammer thingy that you hit people with and it talks (it was like a stuffed toy). The head of the hammer was also made to look like a pile of poop that is crying. Yeah I know, China can be weird.

For those of you who don't know, haggling is HUGE in China. Of course it depends on where you go to buy things, if you go to just a super market you're not gonna haggle for anything. But the place we went to is basically just a huge seven story building that consists of lots of small spaces for people to set up their shops for clothes. Each shop was probably about...10 feet wide by 15 feet long, and there were probably at least 100 stores on each floor. Like I said, huge. The point is, my dad is pretty good at haggling, and usually got things at about 25-40% of the prices the people were stating as their starting price.

After that we headed to a restaurant chain known as "s.he restaurant" for dinner. I don't really know why it's named that, I thought it was odd too. We met up with some of my dad's friends that Steph and I met the last time we visited my dad here. They're a middle aged couple and are super nice. The husband is a professor at several Chinese Universities and was just finishing up teaching a class for this semester. He'll be heading out on Sunday (today) to another province to teach an accelerated class for a month. So we all ate some interesting food but I couldn't take any pictures because my dad had said to only bring money and that's it because we didn't want anything to get stolen from us. I actually kept my hands in my pockets about 95% of the time we were at the market to make sure I didn't get pick pocketed.

After we ate we headed over to a Starbucks, believe it or not. We were all a bit tired so we got some coffee and sat and talked for awhile. We actually discussed a super interesting Chinese concept that I'll try to explain/translate. So my dad's male friend (who's name is Billy), still had a lot of stuff to do before leaving at 6 am the next morning, but still came out to see us before he left. The Chinese concept is used in the sense that he sort of...gave us respect? Made us a priority? Showed that he cared about us/considered us important? It's a very difficult concept to explain. But yeah, this all came about because I asked him if he and his wife were going to drink with us, and his reply was, "Oh I don't drink." Now this is a blatant lie. I've seen him drink, several times. In fact, the very first time I met him, he was drunk! I tell him this and he just looks at me and grins while laughing. But yeah, he was still willing to hang out with us and say good bye since we don't visit Hangzhou very often, so it was very nice of him to do so when he was leaving in less than 12 hours.

So then we headed to the bar. It was pretty nice, but fairly normal in terms of being more like a bar in the US. There was also a pool table so my sister gravitated it rather quickly. They were playing king of the table and there was a white dude and an Indian dude playing. The white guy won so my sister went up to the table to see if she could play. It took some prodding anyway, but she did. Actually at this point we didn't know it was king of the table, but I figured it out right as the guy (his name was Chris) walked up to my sister to play her, and as I saw people's names written on a small chalkboard next to the table. Thankfully the guy who was going to play decided he didn't want to play so my sister was the next up anyway.

So an interesting thing about the pool table at the bar, I believe it was technically a snooker table. It was almost nearly 12 feet long. Most tables in the U.S. are 9 feet long. Also, the pockets in the U.S. are generally around 1.75 to 2.25 times the width of a ball, but this table had pockets most likely 1.6 times the balls' width. Basically, this was a much harder table to play on. My sister lost to Chris, who coincidentally was British and pretty decent at pool as well. He was nice though and a pretty cool guy for a 50-something year old.

The bar was having a happy hour deal as well, which two grad students from the U.S. actually told us about. It was buy one get one free for all drinks, but you had to finish your first drink before you could get your second one. Also, you had to order your second drink before it hit 8:30. Since I was at the snooker table watching my sister play and my dad was at our actual table watching our stuff, he ended up finishing his drink first. My dad has gout, though it's not super bad. However he really doesn't drink anymore because of it. This resulted in my father being drunk despite not having that much to drink. My sister also ended up feeling a bit queasy halfway through her margarita, so I ended up finishing her drink, my dad's second drink, and having two beers of my own. I simultaneously felt like a baller for cleaning up everyone's mess, and an alcoholic. I ended up being just decently tipsy, even after downing my sister's drink and finishing my dad's,  and a third of my beer, all in about two minutes.

But yeah, it was a good time, the prices were kind of steep though. A Budweiser? About $5, which if you're in a decently sized city, that isn't too bad. However say, a Guinness? Ten bucks. Most mixed drinks were only about seven to eight dollars though. These are all me just converting things to U.S. dollars by the way. So after I finished everyone's drinks, we headed home. Steph and I read for a bit and then attempted to pass out. Unfortunately drinking Starbucks at 7pm makes it really damn difficult to fall asleep, especially if you have three cups of tea at dinner. We ended up staying up and talking for quite awhile.

Anywho, tonight I still need to pack because I'll be off to Yellow Mountain tomorrow morning. We leave at 6:30 am and it'll take anywhere between 3.5 to 5 hours to get there depending on how fast we're driving. I'm looking forward to it, but I also won't bring my computer with me because hiking in the mountains with a laptop isn't really useful at all.

Oh and an update on the Chinese soap opera my dad watches. The dude who is the main character ended up being tricked my the main bad guy into becoming addicted to gambling, opium, and alcohol. His life has degenerated, his wife is worried, and so is his family. That's all I can really pick out so far, but the montage of him becoming addicted and shit is hilarious, though I know it's supposed to be sad and dramatic and all that. It's like, the bad guy gives the main char a cigarette, they both begin to smoke but the bad guy discretely drops his on the ground of the casino and grinds it under his heel while smiling menacingly and whatnot, I mean c'mon!

Anywho, bedtime! I'll talk to you all again soon. Lates!

Badminton, Bike Riding, and Karoake (Tuesday-Thursday)

So I have a few days of updates to catch up on, so I'll try to keep this short since my posts are generally long anyway hahaha. 

Tuesday, June 19th

So my second day here in China was Tuesday. Most of the day was uneventful, my sister and I got lots of sleep and just lounged around and whatnot. It was awesome. By far the most interesting part of the day came around 5:45 pm, when we headed to badminton with my dad's co-worker/assistant. Apparently his work people reserve four courts at a school in Hangzhou, and so my sister, Viola (the assistant), and I played with other people from my dad's work for about 3 hours. 

Now it's been around two years since I've really played badminton. I was the assistant coach to the girls' team in high school since we didn't have a boys' team and it was really the only way to play while I was in high school then. It's definitely the sport I'm the best at and I love it. My freshman and sophomore years of college I played badminton a decent amount but then frisbee took over my last two years of college.

With that in mind, I'm apparently still pretty good. I've forgotten a lot, but after about 30-45 minutes of playing I was really getting back into it again. We played only doubles due to the small number of courts and high numbers of people there, probably about 30 people or so for six courts (the other two courts I assume were reserved by other people or were just for whoever showed up). It was king of the court style and people constantly swapped doubles partners too. 

One thing to understand about China is that badminton is huge here. I mean HUGE. Basically just swap out every basketball court you see in the U.S. for a badminton court that could be indoors or outdoors, and you get the idea. In terms of the national sport, it's only matched by table tennis. The point is, everyone plays and nearly everyone is above a certain threshold of good. 

That being said, I kept up, especially when I had a decent partner. This isn't me trying to place the blame on other people if I did badly, don't get me wrong I was the weak point on almost all of the doubles teams I was on. However the most important part of doubles is team synergy. You have to know when you're covering your partner and when they're covering you. Unspoken communication is crucial if you want to win, as is spoken communication. Sometimes you'll be yelling to you partner to get a birdie but 95% of the time you shouldn't even need to. If I can reach it, my partner should know. If my partner can't reach the birdie, I should already be moving there. This is why doubles can be both incredibly frustrating and incredibly rewarding. Working in sync with another person feels awesome, flowing between covering weak spots and attacking opponents. But when you and your partner don't cover each other well and move out of sync it's like carrying an unpleasant taste around on your mouth. 

But yeah, I kept up, even won a bunch of games (definitely not the majority though). My dad's co-workers were surprised, my dad was surprised, my sister was surprised, but I was definitely the most surprised. This is another example of how I'm terrible at working out but am great at sports. I believe this is because simply going to the gym has goals that are simply too intangible for me, but winning, oh winning I definitely get. The goals in all sports can be fairly simple, and badminton is one I definitely understand. 

So a completely soaked shirt later (I'm bringing a towel next time) we get back home and I take a shower and pretty much just head back to bed.

Wednesday, June 20th

Now on Wednesday we climbed a mountain. It was painfully humid, but we did it anyway. My dad lives in what would be considered a suburb of Hangzhou, across a river that separates the main part of the city from the "suburb" part. Now suburbs in Hangzhou are pretty much just waaaaay more apartment complexes in a small area as opposed to all the other things you see in a city. There aren't really any houses, and getting to the city is as easy as taking a bridge to cross the river. It's essentially a five minute drive to get into the city. 

So it was about 5 km (3 miles) to climb up one side and down the other. It's important to note that "climbing a mountain" in most of China just means taking a stone path. This particular mountain had lots of green tea bushes growing on the sides and was very pretty. The climb was also difficult for about a kilometer or so because the steps were angled at about 45 degrees. My dad had to stop like 50 times before we got to the top, but he's also nearly 60 years old. It was a tough climb, and my legs were getting rather gelatinous by the time were at the bottom of the other side of the mountain. 

You're probably wondering what the name of this mountain is. I have no idea. Neither does my dad. Helpful I know. The point it, it's the most difficult climb around here he lives, so be impressed and all that shit. Monday is going to be a much harder climb, we're going to the Yellow Mountain, the most famous mountain in China. If you've ever seen the end of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, you've seen the Yellow Mountain before. (also, the link is to my favorite fight scene from that movie, which is also my favorite fight scene of all time. It does not actually show the Yellow Mountain though n_n)

Thursday, June 21st

Now on Thursday we did a decent amount. We went to a well known lake in Hanzghou and biked/walked around it with one of the interns from my dad's company. She was super nice and was a grad student in cinematography of all things. My dad works for Nokia Siemens, hence our surprise when we found out what her graduate studies were in. (we being my sister and I) But we talked and walked and biked a bit too which I really enjoyed. She looks kind of like a Chinese Ellie Kemper but with a slightly more round face. Yes, she was cute. She was also only 25 but that's not the point, quiet all of you. 

After that my sister and I went to a restaurant to meet up with my dad, Viola, another co-worker of my dad's that lives in his apartment building named Lin, and another co-worker named Leo. We had hot pot for dinner and it was delicious as always. For those of you too lazy to even click the link, hot pot is basically just a pot with hot broth in it and you add thinly sliced meat such as beef or pork, as well as veggies and whanot to it. There's a flame under the hot pot to keep the temp of the broth high and make sure your meat cooks and all that. I also had some Chinese beer, which was pretty much what I expected. The Chinese prefer lighter beers, so I wasn't blown away or anything, but I still love beer so I can't really complain. 

After a delicious dinner we headed to karaoke. The only problem with karoake in China is that while there are lots of English songs, none of them are things I would want to sing. It was either lots of rap/hip hop, or much much older stuff, or Celine Dion. They'll have 750 "English" songs, but the pool of songs I'll actually know will be more like 200 songs, and of those I'm not gonna sing, "My Heart Will Go On" or all of the damn Lady Gaga they have. Stupid Lady Gaga. But it was still a lot of fun, plus Leo and Viola both have great singing voices. I even got in American Pie for a mini-NRP Sing-Along. Miss you Nerps a lot <3

So yeah that's been a quicker than usual update of the past few days for me. Those of you who have managed to read all of that/just skipped to the end here will be rewarded with a few random things I have seen/discovered/re-remembered from the past few days. 

-There are two transformer boxes (electrical boxes) on the sidewalk a few blocks from my dad's place, and they're painted so one is Spongebob and the other is Mario jumping to hit a block

-China is fascinatingly dirty. Even super nice restaurants that are clean and sanitary and shit have super dirty parts, such as just the windows outside. I had forgotten about this. 

-No one uses dryers for their clothes, they just hang them

-cab drivers here make fairly good money, about the same amount as a college grad would in a normal day job in Hangzhou (as in, college grads living here in Hangzhou, not college grads that are living in the states), which is approx 2000 RMB a month  and exchange rate is currently ~6.36 RMB to $1, so ~$314 a month. However they also work 12 hours a day

-Karaoke is huge here. It's basically where all the young people go to hang out with their friends, think of it like bars in the U.S. where lots of young kids go to drink and hang out with peeps, but older folks do too

-Everyone smokes almost everywhere. It's very annoying. 

-Remember that card game I was talking about that I played on Monday that I mentioned in my first blog post? Well they have the equivalency of a poker channel for that game. They show everyone's hands and analyze them and shit, it's pretty cool. The only big difference is that don't show the people playing because they're just sitting at computers playing. Still, it's pretty interesting

Alrighty, that's my update for now. Tonight we're gonna hit up the bar street, tomorrow we're probably gonna climb another mountain, perhaps go karaoke-ing again, and hopefully Sunday I can play badminton again. Monday we head out for Yellow Mountain, and we'll be there til Thursday. I dunno if I'll be able to update much between Monday and Thursday, but I'll do my best. 

Lates!

And now for something completely different: Bonnaroo Day 2

I mentioned in my first post about how I wanted to write about Bonnaroo as well, and this will be my first post about it. I left for Bonnaroo on Thursday, which was also the day it started, so I missed a lot of the performances for that day. Friday the 8th was the first full day of Bonnaroo I experienced, and it was awesome.

The majority of the bands I wanted to see at Bonnaroo were on Saturday/Sunday, but I still had a great time on Friday, especially since I got to experience Bonnaroo in the daytime. So we woke up around 9 or so due to the heat. The neighbors of ours that we actually got to know happened to be to the east of us and they had both a tent and a canopy in order to keep the sun off of it. They angled their canopy to help block the sun for us as well, but by 9 am the sun was already beating down on us. Plus we also had a rain fly on the tent just in case, so that added to the heat as well. It was fucking hot in there. 

But yeah, so we do our morning business and all that and I loaded up my day pack for a day of Bonnaroo. This was one of the coolest parts of Bonnaroo for me, having a backpack and knowing that everything I would ever need for the whole day was there. More and more I'm beginning to appreciate the idea of having all of your belongings on your backpack and with you at all times. I still dunno if I could backpack through Europe...but it's becoming a consideration.

The first band we saw were the Kooks. Honestly I don't really remember much about them except that Vickie (the friend I went to Bonnaroo with) wanted to see them, they were British, and they were pretty decent. 

The next band we saw was Two Door Cinema Club, another band Vickie wanted to see that I hadn't heard of before. In actuality however, I had heard one of their songs before, this one. They were pop-ish, fun, and I enjoyed them a lot. They were a pretty decent dancey band, though I didn't hit my stride with boogeying until Saturday night. It took me a bit to get into all, though the friends I was with mattered as well. At this point I was just with Vickie, which was fun and all but when Nerps showed up things got even more fun :) For those of you who don't know, Nerps are people from my theater troupe in college, the New Revels Players, or NRP, hence Nerps. 

Anywho, then we saw Avett Brothers, who were also on the main stage. I had heard good things about them, and they didn't disappoint. They're compared to Mumford and Sons sometimes, and I agree to a certain extent. They were a bit more bluegrass/country, but I still enjoyed them a great deal. They also played a fairly long set, most bands were only an hour but they were slotted for an hour and a half which was nice. 

Oh a short note

We went to Feist next, and I didn't actually know it was basically just this woman singing. She was really good though and talked to the crowd a lot which I liked. She was asking people in the front to sing one note and people in the back to sing another. And then she went, "And if you don't want to sing that note, well then chose your own note I don't mind!" She was just very earnest and kind and I liked her a lot.

Then we stayed at that stage to watch Foster the People which most people know by their song Pumped Up Kicks. They were also pretty good but I didn't know any of their other songs so I was just standing and swaying a lot hahaha. They had a pretty sweet light show though, and of course ended with Pumped Up Kicks.

By this point it was pretty dark and there was still the headliner for the night to head to. And Friday's headliner was Radiohead. Now I have to preface a bit (wait, Tim giving some back story? Shocker I know) but I haven't really listened to them very much. I don't have any of their music but have definitely heard their stuff before. I know that in terms of the music community, their reputation is impeccable. Their monsters in the industry and are critically acclaimed and have been for like two decades. That being said...they're really not my thing. They were good, no, great in concert. Their light show was mind blowing. They played an amazing set. I knew all of these things and appreciated them, but didn't particularly like them. I can't remember what random class I read this in, but it went something like this: There are three different types of people in this world, people who see good art and love it, people who see good art and appreciate it for what it is but do not necessarily like it, and people who see good art and hate it. I feel like we should all try to be the first or second types of people. I butchered the quote, but you get the idea, I'm the middle kind of person when it comes to Radiohead. 


The crowd was packed all the way to the end of that part of the grounds, which I'll ballpark around half a mile or so. If I jumped and looked behind me, I couldn't see the end of the crowd. Like I said the set was amazing but just not quite my kind of music. 


So after Radiohead Vickie and I were actually pooped. Getting out was a clusterfuck but meh what should we have expected right? We headed back to the tent, had some food, and passed out. I had brought ear plugs because I'm a light sleeper, and they were godsends. I had read a few lists/guides on what to bring to Bonnaroo and they all pretty much had the same items on them, so I brought all of the ones I knew I would need and a few I wasn't sure I would need. 


Well I as might as well talk a little bit about what I brought to Bonnaroo now that I'm on that topic. It's not like I'm gonna list all of my shit out, but just some of the important things I feel were especially helpful. First off, a tent. If you ever go to Bonnaroo, bring a tent. You can sleep in your car if you want to, but it will be miserable unless you have a large enough car to put a sleeping back down in. I also brought a decent amount of food, but could have brought more. I would have needed another cooler, but it still want have been far cheaper. I ended up bringing a cooler with dry ice in and it and frozen water bottles on top of the block of dry ice in order to keep everything else cold. Then I had four pb and j sandwiches, four sandwiches with provolone, salami, and ham, some pasta, chicken and broccoli (to be eaten with the pasta), pistachios, hunter's mix (which was basically trail mix but without sweet things, and with sesame sticks and other salty things), Cliff bars (blueberry and chocolate, both of which were very good), pita chips and red pepper hummus, Stella Artois, and Supper Club (both beers). As for water, I had a full 24 pack of water bottles, my 1L nalgene which I let Vickie borrow, and I had my hydration pack which was basically a Camelbak (a pouch of water that fit in my backpack) that held 3L of water (100 oz). 


My hydration pack was a lifesaver. I probably drank 2-3 full ones a day. I was unbelievably happy that they had water refilling stations. Things could get a bit hectic around them, especially between noon and later afternoon, but there were enough of them where if you saw one teeming with people, moving on to the next one would probably mean a less crowded station. 


Sunscreen. My god sunscreen. I'm also very, very glad I brought some. And it was SPF 75 sport level ultra sweat-proof shit. I was re-applying every 1.5-2 hours and never got sunburned, besides a tiny bit of redness on the left side of my neck. I did return to Madison sporting a sweet tan though. 


Okay, more on Bonnaroo later. I still have to write about all the stuff that happened yesterday here in China. 


Lates!

Day 1: Shopping, Badminton, Sound Systems, and Card Games

So yesterday (Monday) was the first day of my trip where I was in China for the full day. But first I'll explain something from the day I arrived (Sunday) because I find it hilarious. Oh and to clarify, we're 13 hours ahead here, so right now it's Tuesday at 11:48 am here, but it should be 10:48 pm back in the central time zone where Madison is. 

So the night before last my dad was watching a Chinese soap opera. They're pretty much as ridiculous as all soap operas. The episode we were watching was chock full of emotion, huge surprise I know. So the main character is the eldest son of a rich family, his father being the head of the household. The scene I walked in on is when he finds out his father (who is now deceased) was killed by his uncle, who is in actuality his real father. His "uncle" slept with his mom, who is the wife of the father he always thought was his father but actually isn't. After learning this new information and confronting his uncle aka real father, he secedes from the family bringing his wife with him. His wife is a peasant and is eternally grateful to her husband for bringing her out of poverty, but she doesn't really love him. She's a good person, she just loves someone else and is carrying this other dude's baby in her belly. Her husband knows she's pregnant, knows it's another man's kids, and still loves her so much that he's willing to support her and another guy's kid. After explaining all of this my father goes, "I would marry this dude in a second, he's wonderful!" I laughed pretty hard not gonna lie. Also, I would totally marry this guy too, he's a winner let's be honest.

Anywho, onto yesterday's adventures. Steph (my sister) and I woke up around 6:45 am or so after falling asleep at 9 pm the night before. We did yoga (the P90X yoga dvd) for about 2 hours, showered, and ended up watching a random movie on my dad's tv (his cable service has the equivalency of ondemand that Comcast has), it was called, "This Means War" and it was actually a pretty decent chick flick. On the other hand I've been known to enjoy chick flicks, so go figure. 

After that we went to this HUGE supermarket that I went to the last time I was in China to visit my dad. It had three floors and had everything. I mean everything. Imagine like a Super Wal-Mart except the grocery part is much larger and includes like tanks of fresh fish and a meat counter and where the bottom floor is also a mall with lots and lots of store selling everything from toys to watches to shoes to whatever. The place was enormous. We got some crappy-ish badminton rackets and some birdies so we could play later. Also there is an interesting note about the supermarket. There's a bus that goes to the market, and it's free if you take one of them at 1 pm. Getting on the bus at the market is also free, but I believe is free at any time. So I guess the market pays for the bus system in order to encourage people to go there. Pretty cool if you think about it, and worth it considering the amount of people I saw on the bus. It was only about 20 people or so, but there were ass-loads of people at the market itself, so I suppose the system works. Oh, and we bought double flavored blueberry/raspberry Oreos. That's right, dual flavored Oreos, bitches!

After lunch my sister and I ended up playing badminton in the courtyard of my father's apartment complex. It was nice to finally play again but it was also stupendously humid and drizzled for a bit of the time we were out as well. We then proceeded to watch the final Matrix movie while waiting for my dad to get back from work. He had invited three of his work friends over, two dudes about his age (mid 40s to mid 50s) and a woman who looked like she was actually in her mid to late 20s or so. They were all work friends and were pretty cool too. They taught us how to play a card game that was incredibly fun and deceptively complicated. I would explain it but...well it's really damn complicated. Basically you need an even # of people and sit in a circle so every other person in the circle is on the same team. There were six of us (My sister, dad, his three friends, and me) and my father, his female co-worker, and me were on a team and my sister and the other two co-workers were on the other team. We probably played for about three hours or so and it was incredibly fun. 

After finding out we play badminton my dad's female co-worker (her name is Viola) invited us to play at an actual gym today, which hopefully we'll get to do. My dad wants to go later on in the week so he can invite some other co-workers he knows will play with us, so we'll see. Anywho, more interesting stuff later, it's time for me to eat lunch. 

Lates!

My first real post from China!

For those of you who read my first post...I technically lied. Apparently I can't used blogger in China. I stupidly thought I could and didn't even check ahead of time if it would be blocked. I knew Facebook would be, but for some silly reason assumed blogger would be alright. I knew if I really wanted to use Facebook I could just pay $15 to use a VPN for a month, but figured I would be alright with being cut off from Facebook for two measly weeks. Long story short, I had to use a VPN anyway, since there was no other easy way to access Blogger. I still plan on keeping off of Facebook though, largely to see if I can even do it.

So first things first, my flight. I was on a Boeing 777 and it was a United Airlines flight. They've been revamping their interiors and it really showed. I was in lowly economy class and my seat actually slide forward a bit when I reclined in order to facilitate even more horizontal movement. It was something small but quite pleasantly unexpected, like when it's hot outside and you're parched and you finally find a drinking fountain and not only is it working, but the water is ice cold. It was kinda like this.

Now for something a lot flights get a bad rap for. I mean it's been a long standing joke among comedians for yeas. In-flight movies. The last time I was flying to China there were some pretty awesome in-flight movies on the channels. I watched Scott Pilgrim not once but twice since it was showing on the way there and on the way back. There was a tv in the back of the seat in front of you, right above the tray thingy, and it was awesome. This time however, things were different. Way different. The screen on the back of the seat? Touch screen. It was a kind of crappy touch screen that wasn't calibrated super well, but why do I care when I get to choose between tv, movies, games, or a map of where the airplane currently is? What movies you ask? Casablanca. Breakfast at Tiffany's. All the Ocean's movies. Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Both Christopher Nolan Batman movies. Beauty and the motherfucking Beast. There were at least 50 different movies to chose from. I almost pooped myself while sitting there gleefully trying to figure out how to entertain myself for the 13 hour flight. 

Tv? Big Bang Theory. Parks and Rec. How I Met Your Mother. Phineas and Ferb. It was a god damned gold mine. There were only two small disappointments, no Scrubs and there were only so many episodes of each show. The latter didn't break my heart or anything and was understandable, but I want to watch Parks and Rec from the beginning so I skipped it. But yeah, there was some quality entertainment on that touch screen, and I figured out I had to touch the screen a little to the left and below the spot I actually wanted to hit, so the calibration issue was pretty much moot anyway. 

If you can't tell, I ended up watching a lot of movies/TV. I started off with Young Adult and it was kind of disappointing, you saw the ending coming after the first five minutes, but hey it had Patton Oswalt in it and I'll see him in pretty much anything simply because I love his stand up so much and want him to succeed more in life. I had heard lukewarm things so I really should have seen it coming. I then proceeded to 21 Jump Street  because I had heard it was surprisingly good, and it really was. It was just the right blend of funny, clever, and serious, I highly recommend it. Then I knocked out an episode of HIMYM (the one where Barney tries to stop wearing suits in order to nail a hot waitress and the episode ends with a sweet musical number) and watch some Phineas and Ferb with my sister while sharing headphones and I passed out in the middle of hte episode for 3 hours or so. The flight was at 10:37 am, which meant getting up at 6:45 to make sure my sister and I got to the airport on time. My sister didn't arrive in Darien (where my mom lives and where we spent the night since my mom was the one driving us to the airport) until about 4:30 am and I had to let her into the apartment since she didn't have her keys, I was pretty damn tired. Hell, I still am. More on that later. 

So I wake up and proceed to knock out both Batman movies in chronological order and then got about an hour and ten minutes in Chronicle before the plane landed. So all in all, 4.75 movies and 1.75 tv shows, a sweet nap, and two in flight meals that were quite good (beef and veggies with bread, butter, a salad with sweet onion dressing and a browning, and then an hour before we touched down dumplings and veggie noodles with a bag of Kettle chips and two cookies) I arrived in China. I didn't lose my passport when we were getting our luggage like I did last time, (yes it was embarrassing, yes I was panicking, no I will never live that down) and we found my dad after waiting only about five minutes for our luggage. 

We then took a "long distance bus" from where we were (The Pudong International airport in Shanghai) to Hangzhou (where my father lives). The bud ride took about 3.5 hours and started at 3 pm, so we arrive in the city at about 6:30 and then grab a cab to head to dinner with my grandpa and some friends of my dad who we met the last time we visited. They're super awesome, I'll probably have lots of fun stories about them later on. 

We ate some damn good food. I think I'll upload the pics tomorrow since my battery is dying and I forgot to ask my dad for a power adapter for the wall outlet. You'll all get to see tomorrow. 

But yeah, I wasn't kidding when I said I like to type a lot. I feel like I type a lot like how I talk, with too much detail and lots of tangents. Well too bad jerks, that's how I roll. Oh also, it's supposed to rain pretty much the whole time I'm here and may make it not only insufferably humid, but also just plain miserable to do anything outside of my father's apartment. Balls. Oh, and I forgot how dirty China is. I don't know how, but I did. 

TL;DR: watched 4.75 in-flight movies on a built in touch screen, pooped, landed in China to rain and dirt. 

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So I haven't had a blog in ages. I mean the closest thing I ever had to a blog was xanga. I loved that shit back in the day, I xanga'ed all throughout high school like it was going out of style. And then it did. So yeah. I'm starting this "new" blog for a few reasons.

First of all I'm going to be in China for two weeks and I would like a place to record stuff. I forget things easily. Very easily. And I've never really been a big picture taker. But as most of you know, I love talking. A lot. I also happen to enjoy writing a great deal so this all works out. So part of this is to simply record what happens to me in China so I don't forget it all the day after it happens.

Secondly, I would like to have all of you informed as to what I'm up to while I'm out of the country, especially since Facebook won't be around. To be honest though, Facebook is far less useful when you're not using it to plan things socially. Don't get me wrong, I love to post things on people's walls and share hilarious gifs and all that, but technically email does that too. Anyway the point is I want my friends to read this and be jealous and shit. You're welcome.

Thirdly, I actually want to update how my Bonnaroo went but I didn't have time this past week to really record it that well. So I plan on posting each day here on this blog and then essentially copy-pasting it into Facebook notes later.

Fourthly, I hope this ends up morphing into a non-travel oriented blog after I get back from China. When I write too much I tend to spend a lot of time in my head, which can be a good and a bad thing. I would like to get back to writing more though, so I figured this is a risk I'm willing to take. Plus if I'm convinced people will actually read this, maybe I'll actually update it. Who knows. So, I hope my friends are reading this, and if you're not then fine you suck and clearly don't care about me or how I'm doing guilttripguilttripguilttrip


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