Return to Volleyball

Good news. I played volleyball today. For the first time in over two months.

My original intention was to meet up with some guys to play basketball. But when I looked down in the distance, there were a couple of guys warming up to play volleyball... and they were good. So I and another guy from our basketball group wandered over there to ask if we could play around too. And they said ok. It turns out that they play almost every night. Granted, it's outdoor court volleyball (diving would be deathly; already i scraped up two knuckles while reaching too low for a dig).

But the level of play was great. There were about 15 guys... so, enough for 3 teams and games constantly running. I think I played about 6 games (to 15).... over 2 hours of volleyball.

It felt so good to play again. And I'm slowly learning the Chinese terms for all the volleyball positions and moves. I can't wait to go back. :)

We .., Are ... Starting to Catch Our Breath

This past week we have had some of our friends from the states come visit us to teach at the university near us. They have been super encouraging and fun to hang out with, but we have been quite on the run from morning till night. Today is the last night most of the teachers will be here and so we have had a little time to catch our breath.

I don't have one topic for my blog, but here are some random thoughts.

1) I found out that the 3 lb gummy bears are from J & A Low via carrier EL. Sorry for not giving you credit earlier.
2) Went to KTV out here. I realized that it is not about the quality, but it is about singing it from the heart that matters.
3) I went outside for 15 minutes without mosquito repellent, and I got 7 mosquito bites.

Ok, that's all I have right now. Got to catch up on some sleep.

Redefining 成功

This afternoon I went on a quest for a voltage converter (transformer) - something that could help me power up a small stereo system that normally uses 120V in our home here, where everything (in this country) is 220V.

So, I rode a bus for about an hour, to get into the part of the city where they sell stereos and computers and electronics. Then I shopped around and searched for about an hour. Then I got on a bus for another hour to return home. And I came home... empty-handed.

成功 (chéng gōng = success)? Totally. Really? Successful? How so?

Because, even though none of the shops I visited actually had a step-down voltage transformer, it was satisfying enough for me that at least they knew (meaning, understood) what I was talking about when I was trying out my Chinese.

I would ask for a 电压转换器 (diàn yā zhuàn huàn qì = voltage converter). This was the key pre-trip term to learn for today. And they would reply to me (in Chinese), "Oh, what do you need that for?" I would tell them that I have a 电器 (diàn qì = electronics appliance) that runs on 120 电压 (diàn yā literally means "electricity pressure"... voltage) but now I need to use it on 220 电压. Then they would say, "Ohh... we don't have that."

And I would walk away from the store saying to myself, "Yes! They understand me! 成功!" Even though I came home empty-handed, I still feel like I came home successful. So, I have redefined what it means to have 成功 when running an errand. If the language interaction during an errand actually helps to facilitate the errand and doesn't impede it, then I will consider that 成功. As long as it's not a language issue that is the barrier to completing an errand, then I will consider that 成功. Actually completing the errand? That's just frosting.

Help and Rescue

In a previous entry, I was raving about how gummy bears have been super comforting to me here. But the last few weeks, I have been slowly rationing out my gummy bears. Here are the ones that remained as of yesterday: (Notice the amount of green gummy bears)


But then, here comes the rescue supply. A couple of friends came in to visit us, and thanks to AW and CT (through the carrier CW), I think I will be set for a long while. Yes, the big bag is a 3 lb. bag. Although we did gorge ourselves on one of the small bags today. Oops, dentist will not be happy.

Gifts and Givers

Coming into the end of last week, I had 1 tbsp of Komodo Dragon whole beans remaining. I had planned it that way, knowing that friends were coming into town and, if all worked out, that they would be bringing me a fresh supply. I was so blessed and so thankful on Sunday to receive this from our visiting friends:



But, as much as I love coffee and was absolutely thrilled to receive this supply of beans which will probably last me for 3 months or so... I think I was even more thankful just to see some of our good friends again. Even if they hadn't brought coffee, I would have been excited and ecstatic to see them. Thankful for gifts. Even more thankful for the givers.

Steps to be a Good Local Bike Rider

I have realized that there are baby steps (obstacles) to becoming a good bike rider. After biking for a month and a half, I feel like I have progressed in my steps of bike riding. Yet, I am only on step 6 (riding with an umbrella); I have much to practice.

Steps to be a good local bike rider:
1. Get on the bike and ride it.
2. Learn to cross the street. This is quite hard because walkers and bikers do not get the right-of-way.
3. Learn to maneuver around people and small gates.
4. Riding with something in your basket. This is complicated because it makes your bike unbalanced.
5. Ride and talk on the phone. I can do this, but I try not to do it.
6. Ride while holding an umbrella. Here's a picture of me with the umbrella.



I have used the umbrella now both for rain and to be a sun shade. It is harder than it looks because that means you only have one hand to maneuver, and you also have to hold the umbrella in a way so the wind doesn't blow it aside. They also have hands-free umbrella holders you can attach on your bike. I will have to invest in one.
7. Riding with a person sitting on the back of the bike. I can't do this because nobody wants to be the first to try sitting on the back of my bike. Alvin refuses, although I have sat on the back of his bike a couple times.
8. Doing the local mount and dismount. This includes starting with one foot on one pedal, and then mounting the bike and starting the bike in one swift movement.

Steps 9 and 10 are rare and things I would never do, but we have seen really good bike riders do:
9. Riding a bike while holding and leading an empty bike alongside him/her.
10. Having a whole family on the bike. This includes one parent riding, one parent sitting on the back holding a baby, while the toddler is standing on the bike behind the second parent. We have seen this a couple times, but I promise that I will never let my family do this.

Sluggish

It's Saturday here. In the States, Saturday's meant... morning coffee with a friend, lunch with Bethany, volleyball in the afternoon, and then dinner out with volleyball friends. Oh my, I haven't touched a volleyball in nearly 2 months.

I've been sluggish all day today. Didn't get much sleep last night, but as soon as I woke up early this morning, I decided to stay up. I like waking up early in the morning because I feel like there's so much that can be done in the morning before the world around gets churning. That, and... bandwidth is pretty good between 5-8am. But, waking up early in the morning... only works well when I've gone to sleep early the night before.

So that, coupled with today's heat (it's about 96°F right now), has been me just kinda... sitting around. Getting little things done here and there, but probably at a productivity/efficiency level of about 20%. (Wow, just re-reading that last sentence makes me realize how geeky and mechanical I can be sometimes... haha.)

I haven't had many days like this since our arrival - fewer than I can count on one hand. But, by mid-afternoon, as I try to force myself not to nap (because I hate the feeling of waking up when the sun is setting)) I find that all I'm doing is waiting around for dinner, and then bedtime, and then tomorrow... where I hope that I will be back on my feet and running again. Interesting. This isn't homesickness. And it's not culture stress. I guess it's just one of those odd, sluggish kind of days.

So Much to Learn

The last month I have been meeting with a language tutor on Tuesdays and Thursday. She is a college student who is in town only until the end of June.

She has been super helpful during the sessions. At first I thought I had to work on my pronunciation and vocab. And my tutor agrees. But my tutor helped me see that I also have to work on my grammar, my spacing when I talk or read, and understanding the culture to have my language reflect respect. And there is the whole side of writing words my tutor hasn't even touched. Man, I have so much to learn.

For right now, I need to practice the difference between c --> ch, z --> zh, s --> sh, words ending with ng vs. words ending in n, and then pronouncing r's more properly. One thing that is encouraging is that the tutor does tell me my pronunciation is improving, but then she will bring up a whole new thing that I need to do, ie grammar.

I enjoy each session, but after the 2-3 hour session, I am exhausted. By the next day, I am back to being excited to learn the language. I am now looking for a new tutor for the school year and look forward to more tutoring sessions.

Photo Published

Back in 2002, when I was traveling in Singapore, I sat outside one evening in the light rain so that I could take some pictures of the distant lightning. It's one of my favorite pictures, mainly because I loved my Singapore trip, and I remember squatting in the drizzle for 10 minutes shooting slow exposures over and over again until I caught one with lightning.

A few weeks ago, I got a message through my flickr account from somebody who works for a department within Singapore's National Energy Agency - they publish an e-magazine, and they wanted permission to use my lightning picture for one of their articles.

EnviroBytes

Cool, eh?

Good to Bad Dog

I have always liked dogs. I thought they were cute, fun to play with, and a great companion. I never had a dog, but thought that I would like one if ever given the chance.

This dog represents how I used to think about all dogs:


The second week we arrived to this city, Alvin and I were biking, but we got a little lost. We ended up biking into a dead end where a German shepherd ran up to us and started barking incessantly. The dog was as big as my bike's frame. I got really scared, and decided to ride away as fast as I could. Big mistake. The dog started chasing me. I'm not sure what would have happened next if the owner of the dog didn't start yelling, and running over to stop the dog.

From that moment on, I have been scared of dogs. Maybe it is because there are many stray dogs here, or it is because I am not sure if all the dogs have gotten their rabies shots.

This dog represents how I now think about dogs:


There are many very tiny dogs here in the city. I am not scared of any dog smaller than a football. But anything bigger, is starting to scare me. It is funny, when I was in the states, I thought it was odd when people would be instantly scared of dogs, even domesticated house dogs. Now I get instant fear when I see a dog.

Will this fear go away with time, or does it now stay for life? What am I supposed to do when a dog is running after you?

The Whole is Less than the Sum of its Parts

Yesterday at the market, we came across a few ingredients which all go into a dessert that we have had at a restaurant in Monterey Park, a dessert which we absolutely love.

So, as sort of an experiment, I tried to make the dessert tonight, by reverse engineering my memory of the Monterey Park dessert and combining those insights with pieces from various recipes found online.

The result... is not worth writing a blog entry about. Let's just say that the dessert went the way of Saturday's kim-chee.

So instead of telling you about the final result dessert, I thought we would have a fun little "guess the ingredient" game. Came you name these three ingredients which were all part of my not-so-wonderful-dessert?

1.


2.


3.

Yo Quiero Tacos

The other day, I had a big craving for tacos. So the past week I have been plotting the event of making tacos. The big trouble is that it is really hard to find tortillas here in our city. So I bit the bullet, and made my first batch of tortillas ever.

Here is the collection of what goes into making a taco here:
Rolling Tortillas


Cutting Tortillas into Rounds


Tortillas


It was quite a bit of trouble that I made some extra tortillas for later this week.

Pico De Gallo


Lettuce


Shredded Cheddar


Tomato


Beef


Chicken


Soft Taco!


Soft Taco (Bird's Eye View)!


After making some tacos, we also made some burritos. Honestly, by the time the tacos and burritos were made, we were all so hungry that everything tasted and reminded me of home. These burritos took me back to 1999 when I met my first Baja Fresh chicken burrito. Yum!
Chicken Burrito


Steak Burrito


By the way, we don't always have successful attempts at cooking. We just don't post the pictures of food that failed. Haha. The last few days we were making kimchi, and it looked great, so we could have taken a picture. But it tasted super disgusting; super sour and too salty. Waah! I guess even though everyone thinks we look Korean, by failing at making kimchi, we still fail the Korean-ness test.

Potpourri

Back in the day, Potpourri was used as a Jeopardy category whenever they wanted to find a place for a bunch of questions which had no running theme. Today, Potpourri will be the title of this blog post on multiple random things.

First, regarding some cool things I've recently discovered...

A Chinese tv station, called 东方电影 (dōng fāng diàn yǐng = Eastern Movie) streams online - it often plays American movies with Chinese translations. Movies like... A Few Good Men, The Wedding Singer, and others. But also, on weekday afternoons, it plays 2 episodes of Smallville. This has been great for language practice - simple dialogues, easy to follow, and somewhat entertaining.

The Twitter Website has been inaccessible here all this week. But, thanks to The Captain, I have just learned that Twitter Gadget is accessible. This will be useful until the Twitter website comes back online.

Next, regarding candy...

Saw this in the store the other day:


If the green packaging doesn't give it away, then perhaps you remember our little Chinese lesson from a previous post that the very first character in the top left of the packaging: 酸 (suān) means sour. That's right... sour skittles. Wonderful. (By the way, I have grown to really like the sour milk that I bought last week. It's already all gone. Will probably buy more.)

Lastly, regarding fruit...

We've been pleased that there is a large variety of different fruits available. Fruit is somewhat expensive here, at least relative to other food; but, nonetheless, we have many options. I was very pleased to find mangoes here. Mangoes are possibly my favorite fruit. Just by looking at this picture, can't you tell right away that this mango is sweet and juicy? Well, it was.



Also, regarding fruit... I went out today to buy a lime. For salsa. It was part of our Mexican food dinner tonight (which was delicious... but Bethany will blog about it tomorrow... with pictures - something to look forward to for sure!). I bought the greenest lime I could find:



And then I cut it open. This... was not a lime.



I felt deceived. Is this a lime? Is this an orange? What. Is. This. Thing?

I Like Reading Movies

Sometimes, when I have some free time, I think, maybe I will watch a movie. But Alvin and I only have 7 DVDs, total. And all of these DVDs have been gifts from our friends, so we have never even bought a DVD. We have seen all of these movies a couple of times. So I have found a new option. It is fast, cheap, and helps eliminate time wasting movies.

My new substitute to watching a movie is to read about a movie on Wikipedia. Most movies these days have a plot summary on their Wikipedia entry. I like to read about movies that I wanted to watch, but probably will never have the opportunity to see. I also like to read about movies with a mystery in it, that were panned by critics, ie., Eagle Eye and The Happening. I want to see what the mystery was, without wasting my time watching the bad movie. For those movies that I really want to watch, and probably will get the opportunity someday, ie. Up and Harry Potter, I refuse to read about it on Wikipedia. Although for HP6, I guess I already know the story since I read the book.

I have started doing that for books too. Last weekend, I read on Wikipedia, the plot to a couple of Stephen King novels. Wow, even the plot summaries on Wikipedia scared me. I had trouble sleeping that night. I still am reading real books, but right now I am reading Les Mis and it is going so slow. I could read thousands of book plot summaries in the time it takes for me to finish that book.

Yes, I know that it is about how the story is told, and not just about the story. Yet, there are so many good stories in the world, I can't invest all my time reading and watching movies. So I do the cliffs notes version to figure out which stories and which movies I should invest my time in.

So would you ever read about movies? Have you seen any good movies lately that I should read about?

Rainy Days and Open Windows

In the few years that I lived in Dallas, I never got around to installing screen doors. Talked about doing it every year, because I love having windows/doors open when it's raining outside. I love the rain - love to feel the coolness of a rainy day, love to hear the rain outside, and love enjoying a cup of coffee inside while it's raining outside.

Yesterday I got asked if I would ever live in Seattle. Let's see... Seattle = rain + coffee + software. Hmm... sounds like my kind of city.

Well, it turns out that, where we live now, it rains maybe just a handful of days each year. Today is one of those days. And, we have screens on our windows. So the windows are open. The rain is falling. And the coffee is steeping.

We All Look Same

In this city, normally, a local person would not be able to tell that Alvin and I are foreigners until we speak. Once we speak, our cover is blown and we are immediately asked where we are from.

When we are riding on our bikes, usually, nobody notices us. This is a different reaction than what we have heard our Caucasian friends get here. A normal bike ride would include a couple of hellos from strangers, and sometimes a person or two pointing and calling them a foreigner.

Well, the past few weeks, Alvin and I have gotten a couple of weird reactions on the reverse side. One day, as I was riding my bike, I saw this Caucasian man that I have never met, but heard from a friend that this man just moved back here. So I ride next to him and said, "hello." He turned, quickly said, "hello," and just rode away as quickly as possible. He probably was thinking, "oh great, another local who wants to practice their English with me." Later on that day, we finally were introduced to each other, and I am not sure he realized that I approached him earlier.

I thought that situation was funny, until a couple other events happened this past week. There is another Caucasian man whom we have met, who lives near us. I have talked to his wife more, but this man has also e-mailed Alvin and I personally to exchange information. We know that he knows about us and should be able to recognize us.

Well last week, we were sitting at the main gate of our complex as he rode by. We both smiled, but he ignored us. I thought, hmm, maybe he didn't see us. Alvin's theory was that maybe we just look like all the other Chinese people.

So today as we were biking, we saw him and two of his kids ride past us in clear daylight. This time Alvin said, "hi" and waved, and there was no reaction. So I said, "hi" and waved. No reaction. I asked Alvin, "huh, I don't know what happened?" Alvin says,"maybe since we look like all the other locals, he doesn't even think that these may be the ABCs."

Haha, I guess to some foreigners, we all look same. The funny thing I have also noticed is that a lot of the Chinese people here think all the foreigners look the same. Many of the Caucasian women here have been mistaken for each other, or told that they have been in a certain store, when they have never stepped inside the store before.

Does this milk taste like I'm illiterate?

I ruined a perfectly good cup of coffee this morning. Why? Because I can't read Chinese.

We ran out of milk yesterday. You remember... milk that comes in 8 oz. bags which you buy in cases of 18. We ran out. So I went to buy some last night, just in time for this morning's coffee.

I went for a different brand this time. Looked good. Not too expensive. Would keep for a few weeks.



And then this morning, after pouring a perfectly pressed cup of Komodo Dragon, I added some of this newly purchased milk. Took a sip. Something was wrong. Something was... definitely wrong.

What was the problem? I'm illiterate.

This... is flavored milk. What kind of flavor? Let's learn to read, shall we?

You'll notice from the picture that there are three large characters in blue at the left side of the bag. The center character is:

酸

酸 (suān) means... sour. SOUR? You mean, people actually buy sour milk here?

In the bottom right, you will see two more characters:

原味

原味 (yuán wèi) means... original flavor. ORIGINAL FLAVOR? You mean, people actually buy various flavors of sour milk here?

Apparently, they do. So, after souring and dumping my first cup of coffee, I proceeded to drink another cup with just sugar, no milk.

I tried this "original flavor sour" milk on its own - not in my coffee. And believe it or not... it actually tastes pretty good. Bethany says that 原味 is like the equivalent of vanilla flavor here. But, to me, it tastes like the key lime filling on a Krispy Kreme donut. A little bit strange still, because this is milk. And definitely NOT to be used in coffee. But, on its own, this might be one of my new drinks...

The Next Generation Deep Star Trek Vogager Enterprise

A couple months ago, Alvin made fun of me for not having a knowledge of Star Trek: When Your Wife Is Not A Geek. Since then, I have watched two Star Trek movies. I watched the newest Star Trek movie, and I will have to say that I enjoyed it. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had seen the original movies or series, but I still thought the story was pretty good. Alvin did get annoyed a little because in the theaters I kept asking, "is that Lenoy Nemoy?"

Well, a couple days ago, Alvin and I watched "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." I thought it was also very good. I liked how the Kobayashi Maru test was in both movies that I watched. Then, I started reading about Star Trek on Wikipedia. I read all about the two movies, including the symbolism and back story. The Wrath of Khan is actually a Kobayashi Maru scenario and many of the lines and the villain is based off of Moby Dick. I found out the history of Star Trek and how the original cast was only on TV for three seasons. I even read about the turmoil Shatner had with the original cast (drama drama drama).

I started telling Alvin about facts that I read about Star Trek. I started feeling confident in my Star Trek knowledge. Does watching two movies, and reading about Star Trek on Wikipedia make me a Trekkie?

I guess, probably far from a Trekkie. I might have to watch an episode of two of the series to even be considered a fan of the show. Most Trekkies may accuse me of being a fair weather fan for just watching the two best critically acclaimed Star Trek movies. Oh well, I guess I will only dabble in the world of geek.

Are there other Star Trek movies I should see? How many movies do I have to watch before I can be a Trekkie? What would you do in a Kobayashi Maru situation?