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So the games have officially started.

Its crazy here... obviously. We had friday off from work because it was impossible to do anything. I spent the day wandering around the city tiananmen was closed to the public. Th worlds largest public square was closed.... uh yeah...brilliant idea. So ther were uncountable number of people on the sidewalks around the square.

We also hit wangfujing and the very first thing we walked by were uncountable number of plus sized white people eating cheeseburgers and ice cream at the mcdonalds.

Other than that every one was decked out in china apparel. wearing headbands and tshirts that said i love china. people were carrying flagc and had heart shaped chinese flag stickers on their faces.

Me and 2 friends were wearing zhon guo jia you "go china" kung-fu headbands and some one asked to have their picture taken with us and the seal was broken and tons of people kept coming up and having their picture taken with us. Then a camera crew from HK television came up and had us yell zhong guo jia you into the camera. then at least a hundred people crowded around us and watched us and EVEN MORE people flooded to have pictures taken with us. it was getting a little overwhelming and scary. we had to readjust our seats so our backs faced the crowd and it slowed down. i also got lots of enjoyment freaking the chinese out with the fact that i spoke chinese they would be talking about us like for example saying "i wonder where they are from" to each other and i would respond that were were from america in chinese and they would have that intial moment of embaressment they would then use the genereic chinese response saying in chinese that "your chinese is quite good" ( which it is not ) they would then ask where i learned to speak chinese thinking i was a lao wai in beijing for the games. I always tell them in chinese "in america EVERYONE can speak chinese" this really freaks them out!

That night we hit ditan park sneeking as many cans of warm beer as we could hide on our bodies. Ditan park has 2 massive stadium like flat screens so we watched it with the locals and it was a very cool experience to be there for the live countdown with thousands of chinese people counting down shi... jiu... ba... chi... liu... wu... si.. san.. er... yi... but also a tad bit creepy. I literally got chills when the opening ceremony started and the soldiers marched with a flag in the begining. A friend of mine commented there was a lot of RED in the performance.

The ceremony was a bit wierd especially with li ning running around the edge lighting the torch. Does anyone outside of china even know who he is? he is chinas most famous gold medalist in the 1984 olympics which was a big one for china opposing russia and atending and he is also owner of li-ning sports apparel company which is the Nike of china. In fact Lining is only behind nike and adidas in the market and has a 5 year deal with Shaq. I never heard of li ning before living in china and i doubt any of you have heard of it either but because the population is so huge its a MAssive company. And for the record the sneakers and clothes are not very cool. lots of pink and pastels.

Anyways after the peformance and they atarted intrucing the countries most of which i had never heard of we decided to change lcoatons to a bar in hou hai with a screen on the roof so we could see the fireworks. 3 hours later america appeared and the whole world cheered for Kobe... is it just me or didn't he rape a girl???

Afterwards we looked into the sky towards the stadium to see the fireworks. Unfortunately behing all the sm/fog all we could see was a glow.

we then crashe a privte bday party and ate all his food and drank his booze. I took the subway home about 2am and there were only a few people on the train one girl was clutching here opening ceremony ticket stub. she was in awe and said it was amazing.

Tickets for the event were going for about $3000-$4000 usd. which is more than the average annual income in china.

Tonight I have basketball tickets for Australia vs. Croatia then the big one TEAM USA vs. CHINA and i have tix in the 3rd row. OH YEAH!

Olympic fever is in the air. took me over an hour to get to work today. they blocked all the major roads and had caravans of buses and sponser vehicles going by while the locals just sat there.

Last night was cinco de drinco at the saddle cantina. Its funny this place is SWANKY! i remember when chris opened the first saddle then he open cox chicken wings. both were hole in the wall dives. then he opened the rickshaw and that became the "it" place. it was a little swankier and pricier but still not bad. Now they re-opend the saddle and this place is like a resturant at the grove in LA. its huge has a enormous outdoor patio actual mexican food and 7 nights a week its packed full of people. the downside is beers are 35 yuan and margaritas are 50. thats roughly $5.50 for a beer and who knows the math on the margarita. ( luckily everything is half price on the 5th of every month )

The thing is thats expensive even by LA standards. I usually eat lunch for 9 yuan. so in a new math kind of way in america if lunch is $5 usd think of 9 yuan as the same. would anyone pay $5 for a beer... most likely but would they pay 4 times the cost of what they pay for lunch for a bottle of beer. would anyone pay $20 for a beer? no f'ing way. especially when at the place i eat lunch a beer is 3 yuan for a da ping. so this place charges ten times the amount.


I know this is confusing but its is just a crazy thing you see in beijing. THERE IS NO MIDDLE.

either someone is driving a 30 year old bicycle or driving a bentley! a beer is either 3 -15 yuan or 45+... the mid ranged places are few and far between.

A new bar that just opened up for the olympics a tsing tao a domestic beer that is usually 3 yuan in a resturant or shop or 10 yuan in a bar is now 45 and ils are 120. so beers are $7 and cocktails are almost $20.

I know this is a rant and i sound cheap but bear with me. the thing is chinese people WANT to pay more they have this whole concept of saving face where its a way to impress people and gain business contacts. if they take a client there the more money they spend makes them look better. so they WANT to go and pay for overpriced things. And they think everyone who arrived feels the same. I think people are going to be shocked when they realize we dont have the same culture and think differently.

A chinese guy cant look at a menu and say wow this place is crazy expensive lets go someplace else because they would lose "face"... they would in fact buy a $100 bottle of chivas drink one glass and leave the rest to impress people. And chinese bar owners capitalize on this. this is their main business strategy especially during the olympics.

I am pretty sure when a 300 pound retired school teacher from ohio is in town for the olympics and goes to get a cocktail they are not going to want to pay $20 for a mint julip or $7 for a tsing tao or worse $10 for a budweiser.

anyways we shall see. and if none of this makes sense its because i drank 10 margaritas last night and i am feeling rough typing this as i am pretending to work

either way the socail calender is booked solid ELS arries tinight and there is talk of a thai dinner followed by shennanigans. then tomorrow is a bday party then friday is the opening ceremony!

i'm back

I got my first paychek which is nice! it about a third of what i made in the usa but proportionately to the cost of living i am making 3 times what i usually spend to live here so in a way i am making way more money. I am sure i will find a way to squander every penny. so the first thing i did is got my laptop is fixed and now i can blog again. In the end the apple service center wanted 6000 yuan ( around $900 usd ) to replace the LCD. the shady chinaman with the soldering gun at the computer market wanted 1300 yuan. i let the shady chinaman do it but i cringed watching him fix it.... and btw i will not disclose how the laptop broke but pornography was involved.

so not much else exciting has been going on i turned 33 last week and i am getting progressively older. I was recently contacted regarding my 15th high school reunion so that really made me feel old. most of the people i went to highschool have children and families and i have a pair of checkerboard vans just like their children wear. ( actually i have 6 pairs )

then someone sent me this... uh. BINGO! ( serendipitously the grandpa square put me over the top and i cut my curls of so i no longer have the white boy fro... actually it was a afro jagger haircut hybrid)



Anyways the olympic fever is happening the truckloads of white people have descended upon china and the week started big last night at huxleys. tomorrow is a cool book lecture about the "lost beijing" written by a guy who spent 2 years living in a hutong studying traditional beijing life and how in the face modernization and things like the olympics things changing quickly. should be interesting.

after that is cinco de drinko. half price everything at the saddle cantina. ( 25 kuai margaritas ) AYE CARAMBA!

Then later this week E.L.S. is rolling to town. thursday is the olympics opening ceromonies which i will be watching from a place with festive beverage in hand then sunday night I have tickets to china vs. team USA basketball! Me and E.L.S. get to watch kobe, labron, and garnett take turns raping yao ming in front of his 5'2" tall teamates.

Then jenny from the block is also rolling in from hong kong for olympic festivities. She was the one who introduced us all to the magic and wonderment that is huxleys.

Other that than I have tickets for another round of basketball, tae kwon do, wrestling, and the big score was Ping Pong. Oh yes! you haven't seen ping pong until you've seen it played in its natural habitat. i am expecting that scene in forest gump to pale in comparison to seeing china vs china in a life or death struggle to see who takes home olympic gold fame and fortune and who gets sent of to the rice patties for years of hard labor to "re-adjust" their thinking.

ayways lots of fun stuff coming up stay tuned!

stay tuned...

I dropped my laptop and broke it.

The computer still works but the LCD is FUCKED UP!

But don't go any where the olympics is in 9 days and i get paid my first big FAT paycheck this wee so lots of shennanigans are on thier way!

wierd observations of racism in china

My friend anna the russian just got back to beijing a few weeks ago from moscow. She moved to beijing her family a few years ago. Recently she also had visa problems and had to go to moscow to get a new visa. When she arrived in the 'jing she went to register with the local PSB ( public security bureau ) and she was told that since she was a young unemployed russian girl in beijing she was suspected of being a prostitute and would not be granted a residence permit unless she had like 200k RMB in the bank ( $45k USD ). I was shocked personally i would be MORE suspicious if a 22 year old russian girl had $45k in cash but thats just me....

Anyways this and the recent visa crackdowns and deportations of so many foreigners got me thinking. Something i find interesting as a blonde haired blue eyed protestant is the concept of being discriminated against in china. There are two standard chinese words for foriegners in china the first is wai guo ren the politically correct term the second is lao wai which is essentially a racial slur. I hear the latter considerably more than i hear the former. There are lots of times when chinese people will make fun of me not realizing i understand what they are saying and sometimes they will choose not to pick me up in taxis or serve me in restaurants. I haven't let this bother me because deep down i know i am taller than most of them and also have a larger penis.

As hosts of the 2008 olymics an event celebrating culural diversity blah blah blah.... I am also finding interesting chinese peoples 1950's sense of politically incorrectness very sad... and by that i mean chinese people are complete racists. I first experienced this in a conversation I had in chinese with an anonymous chinese person. We were talking about the upcoming olympic games and i was being told how china will surely win this year. I was teasing back about how thats impossible america ALWAYS wins the olympics. Their reply in chinese was loosely transltated america "always wins because amwerica has lots of black people"

It is also no secret to those who live here and else where in the world of chinas increasing involvement in african nations. With deeper political ties has also brought a wave of african immigrants looking for opportunities to prosper in chinas currently booming economic growth. This is the group that gets the moste persicution in china and its kind of sad. There have been several occasions when police just come into the foreign bar areas shut everything down and arrest all the africans. I read recently in that in the coastal city of guanzhou the chinese rounded up and deported 10,000 africans.

The worst story i have heard yet is that the police have unofficially been asking all the bar owners to not serve either africans or mongolian girls. There is a definite problem here in beijing with africans dealing drugs and mongolian girls working as prostitutes. This is a problem but the situation is bound to happen as a result of the discrimination these people receive as poor immigrants. They find themselves in a new country discriminated against and when left destitute there is only one way for them to survive. In order to solve this problem the police find it better to just not allow a black people or mongolians into bars and resturants. ROCKET SCIENCE. ( for the record all the lao wais here will tell you you you will never meet friendlier drug dealers and prostitutes anywhere in the world... they will be missed )

Anyways its going to be very interesting to see how the chinese react to a sudden influx of 500,000 foreigners. i am pretty sure they aint gonna like it and the olympics might not go as well as planned.

Why the World Hates Us!

This is th back page from City Weekend Beijing. City Weekend is the local expat magazine that like it or not is required reading. It provides a kind of a dailey arts and entertainment nightlife guide to Beijing. It covers bands art show and other life necessities. On the last page they always do a day in the life of an expat guide usually featuring writers or diplomatic personal or other interesting expats living in the 'jing. This past week they focused on an american.

photo show

If you've been reading the comments you know mr finley is hosting a photo show and asked me if i was interested in showing some photos. the show is a group show featuring artwork from people working int he film industry.

i am not sure what to submit so i thought i would ask opinions. i made 2 flickr slide shows of what i think are the best ones and was wondering if you guys could help me pick the best ones for the show.

i would love to hear your thoughts on which way i should go color or B&W and which are the 4 strongest images.

color
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28606527@N08/sets/72157606139380898/

B&W
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28606527@N08/sets/72157606139323612/

chinese fau paux

Point of reference if ever you find yourself working in a room full of chinamen and they invite you to lunch don't complain that your sick of chinese food.

The thing is chinamen hate that... in china chinese food is just called food.

Ziyo

So this weekend i actually went and saw ziyo on friday AND saturday. I saw them friday at 2 kolegas then randomly a friend of mine went to see them at yu gong yi shan on saturday. i was over at rm 101 catching boy #6 then after that show shot over to catch a little bit of jungle cat and then ziyo again.

The music scene in beijing is great. It reminds me a lot of when i ws living in chicago. any night of the week you could see some great live music. the only problem with chicago is all the bands thought they were on the verge of making it big and becoming the next smashing pumpkins. The thing about the china music seen is no matter how good they are or how popular the bands never distance themselves from the audience. Even the most famous bands when they play the music is unbelievable but the show itself feels like a college band and really connects.

Anyays Ziyo is definately fast becoming my favorite local band. i dont quite know much about them but they definately really connect. their sound is sometimes very siousxie and the banshees meets new wave. hard to describe but their shows are great.

as for the photos i shot them on my canon10d with a 50mm 1.8f lens. no idea what i am doing but practicing shooting bands in low light with out a flash.

Big News!

So after months of waiting and negotiations and chinese physicals I am now actually employed AND officially disease free! ( in order to work in china you can't have hiv OR syphillis )

Although i didn't want to take this step i just could make a living teaching english with out teaching kindergarten. So I pulled every string and connection I had and got a job working for Technicolor Beijing. Actually I signed a 2 year contract with them. If you don't know who technicolor is its the company that invented the color film process used in d in Wizard of Oz and Snow White. They purchased several visaul effects facilities all over the world and are now trying to get VFX work outsourced from america.

I have no idea what i am supposed to do there as I have no live action VFX experience and I dont really speak chinese all that well. I imagine its only a matter of time before i am fired but they spent several thousand dollars to sponser a work visa and residence permit. So i am here for a while whether china likes it or not.

I talked with the vfx supervisor today and right now i am just doing pre-vis stuff for a chinese movie but the first VFX work will be fully CG shots from a persons point of view underwater. The director doesn't want to actually shoot underwater so they just want to do it in CG and I am supposed to make this seemless and photoreal with a stock copy of maya and 32 proc renderfarm. yeah i see this happening!!!!

anyways they seem to have no concept of 3D and just say yes they can do it and then i will have to figure it out later. ( insert cheek blowout here )

thoughts commens anyone?

update

so its been a while..... my laptop is brokenm and things have obviously been hectic.

so last weekend i took a flight down to shenzen to find myself a shady china visa. It was a whole lot cheaper if i had a connection in shanghai. I got to shanghai around 11 and my connecting flight was at 2 arriving at 4. sure enough it got delayed apparently a typhoon had hit hongkong and blew in north to shenzhen. ( shenzhen is the border town ) I was paranoid about getting stuck in the 'hai for the evening anyways finally around 5 we borded the plane and sat for two hours on the runway. the dinner consisted of pickled radish's and wierd dinner roll in a bag.

I finally got to shnzen arouns 10ish and got the last shuttle across the border. it ended up being like 90 kuai instead of the normal bus which is 20. On the bus i met an american guy who owned seven toaster factories in china. he had been coming to china for 24 years and was the main toaster supplier to walmart. he was supposed to fly from shenzen to shanghai but his flight was cancelled so he was rolling back to hong kong to enjoy the comforts of the first world. he told me all kinds of crazy stories about the factories and that the employees make 900 month. i make 2400 month teaching english 4 hours per week.

anyways i was loaded with rmb and it was too late to change money so the guy gave me enough hong kong dollars to get to jenny from the blocks. Jenny was taking off the next morning for dubai to visit her boyfriend who was working as freelance geologist and was gracias enough to let me crash at her place. I got there hung out with her while she frantically packing. I then drank half a bottle of wine and fell asleep.

next morning straight over to kowloon for to a shady visa office full of BURLEY lloking expats all doing the same as me. the guys in front of me came over that morning from shenzen and reeked of hookers and ripple. we bonded instantly.

afterwards i met up with E.L.S. and we got our curry on then he gave me the keys to his tiny HK casa and went back to work. ( wheni say tiny this place makes a place in manhatten look like a plantation ).I passed out and met up with him that night. it was thursday and he was crazy busy at work so we decided to just grab a couple beers in lan kwai fong. after a couple beers we decided to get our rage on and met his financial planner jo-jo who was a smoking hot cantonese girl. her and her friend got us into the party for free hosted of all places at the "BEIJInG CLUB"! can you say destiny. after too many $15 cocktails we gound ourselves in another bar on the dance floor surrounded by hookers. after that it got fuzzy i remember ELS dissapearing and me wandering around hong kong. unfortunately i woke up in bed next to ELS in his microscopic apartment.

he took off from work and i slept ALL day waking only to eat falafels and indian food. We vowerd to never go out again and next day i caught the direct train back to the 'jing.

Anywas i am back in china and have big news coming.... so stay tuned.

update

Not really sure what to post lately because everything seems to be in limbo. As it stand right now i am on a 1 way flight to shenzen wednesday morning and take the bus to the bus to hong kong. how ghetto is that leaving china by bus.

I did receive my Olympics tickets this morning which in some crazy way might enable me to extend my visa. but i am not counting on it.

the plans is to maybe try coming back on a tourist visa then either stick around long enough to watch some olympic ping pong then who knows.

Unfortunately i am slowing learning that the profession of leisure is not a growth industry.

holga058

holga057

so here is another of this man. he came back and found me after i took his picture and wanted one of him and his daughter.

the holga in this video

I saw this on one of the geeky holga forums i frequent.

Anyways lots of people write me about the holga camera from my blog. anyone take any pictures they want to share? I am out of developed ones for my blog and need to process more film....