Blogs
Arrives in Beijing
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Hi All~!
So I've finally made it to Beijing. And for a while I didn't have a blog because apparently all blogsites are banned in China, except Chinese blogsites. So I made a blog on this, the only Chinese website that has been translated into English. Anyways, I have some things to say about Beijing. I earlier told some of you guys about this via e-mail but I think that I'll just put it all here.
The Good:
I was recently at a local bookstore where I bought mad text books to help me learn chinese (the bookstore was 8 floors). When I realized how much the textbooks were, I decided to buy 4 more books. I now possess two chinese textbooks, one physics textbook, a calculus textbook, and two novels. The total came out to a little under a hundred U.S. dollars. How sick is that? Where in America do you ever buy even ONE textbook for less than a hundred dollars? It's like American book-sellers are hell-bent on punishing students for learning. Maybe this is why kids in Asia are so smart. Knowledge is almost free here!
Although the incredible difference in standard of living has been really awesome, I'm having some trouble getting adjusted to life in Beijing.
The Good and the Bad
Did you know that you're allowed to smoke EVERYWHERE?! At first it was a blessing. It's so nice to be able to just light up after a meal and have the server bring you an ashtray while you finished talking about whatever. But then it just started getting ridiculous. Think of the most ridiculous scenario where someone can light up a cigarette and it's happened to me. I was even standing in the bathroom peeing at a urinal when a guy came in and started peeing next to me with a stoge in his mouth. "Excuse me sir, let's put aside the poor ventilation of this room for now, and the inherent awkwardness of the situation, but have you thought about the health hazards to what you are currently doing? You're continuously moving your hand between your mouth and a jet of urine... douchebag," but I digress.
The Bad
Another thing I don't like about Beijing is that all the doors can be locked in every possible way. I'll elaborate with two first-hand examples:
1. I was staying over a couple of days at Summer's house. Summer is my sister's friend. The first morning I left Summer's apartment I diligently locked the door behind me and went to meet my sister at the local starbucks so we could iron out the synopsis of one of our screenplays. Two hours later Summer calls me. And it took me fifteen minutes of asking the same repeated questions before I finally understood what I did: I locked her inside of her apartment. Yes that's right. Apparently you can actually lock someone into an apartment FROM THE OUTSIDE. Safety issues? Fire hazards? Weirdness? No not at all Henry, those locks were made to keep kids inside the house when the parents are away...
2. My room over at Summer's apartment is connected to a little storage room that's no more than 6 feet by 6 feet. That's the room that I put all my luggage into. After I came back home I decided to go arrange the clothes that were still packed into my luggage. I have this habit of closing doors behind me when I enter or exit any room. And this instance was no different. I closed the door behind me and was locked inside the storage room for 3 hours. My cell phone, books, laptop, and cigarettes were all in the outter room. I was completely cut off from civilization. I found my camcorder and recorded my isolation for 24 minutes before it ran out of batteries (I'll splice it and put it up online sometime later).
The funny thing is that four months ago, between studying for my Industrial organization and Descartes finals I decided to research how to pick locks on WikiHow. i completely remembered all the schematics and diagrams of the tumblers. I knew how to get out. But I didn't have any paper clips or hair pins in that damn room. For an hour, I tried to use different twisted versions of twisty-ties as faux-paper clips, to no affect. I finally got out of the closet by kicking down the door... something I wish I did 3 hours earlier before I tried everything else (I even completely removed the door handle with a coin as a substitute screw-driver.)
I also remember reading the wikihow on how to properly kick down a door (you gotta aim right near the lock) and thinking to myself that "I'm never gonna get to use this," and it turns out that I did. It took a few tries but I got it down on the third attempt (it was just like the movies). You know what they say about brute force: If it's not working, then you're not using enough."
Re-cap:
Moral of the story: Never stop reading articles on Wiki. You never know when it'll come in handy.
Observation: Deciding to read a wikipedia article about the dumbest subject I could think of turned out to have more short-term relevance to my life than studying for two exams for my majors.
With much love and unflinching tenderness,
Henry
Perfect!! And glad to see u.
