The Annals of the Post-Modern Bum
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postmodernbum's LiveJournal:
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| Monday, May 16th, 2005 | | 11:04 pm |
Family Guy
!!! I finally found Family Guy on DVD. Life is good. Bad news, my place is filled with mosquitos (and I have no idea from where). And my ankle quite drained of blood.. but only my left. But I have Family Guy, all is good. | | Tuesday, March 15th, 2005 | | 7:07 pm |
For Ben
Found this, thought he might enjoy it: You Know You're From Portland, OR When... Two-thirds of the people you know are from California, yet there is no sun. You can list five reasons why Starbucks is evil. You blame everything that's not right on ex-Californians. You remember the date, severity, time of day, where you were, and how long you were out of power for every winter weather event for the last five years. You know what and when the Columbus Day storm was. Bonus for having been there. You go to a coffee bar and see two guys get into a fight over who makes the best India Pale Ale. You own more than 10 articles of clothing that have microbreweries/brewpubs printed on them. Bonus for embroidered stuff. You can go a whole week without seeing the sun or a person of color.. You have a bookstore, coffee bar, and brewpub all within walking distance of your house. You think downtown is scary 'cause you were panhandled there ... once. When you drive out of town, every other guy in a pickup looks like the governor. When you drive out of town, even the Hondas have gun racks. When the weather gets above 50 degrees you put on your shorts, but you still wear hiking boots and your parka. When the weather gets above 60 you replace your hiking boots with sandals. You think people who use umbrellas are wimps. You can recount more than five anecdotes about why the East Side is a crime-infested jungle ... OR ... You can list more than five reasons why the West Side is a boring, snobby, white-bread suburb. You know what it is in between the East Side and the West Side, and how to pronounce it. You are sitting at a red light surrounded by Subaru Legacy Outbacks. A tree or mudslide has ever damaged your house or car. You live equidistant to a symphony hall, a winery, and a volcano. You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from Portland, OR. | | Sunday, February 20th, 2005 | | 7:10 pm |
pictures of Cambodia
Tried uploading a bunch of pictures to the picture-gallery place. Some of them uploaded, some didn't. don't have enough energy to try to reupload other pics. Tomorrow will be a fun day of in-the-car traveling around and trying to remember how not to get lost for when I make the same trip in two weeks. I already feel exhausted. The whole week will pretty much be like that, and then things might get busier. =================== --update: maybe none of the pictures uploaded. oh fun. hopefully will trouble shoot and solve another day. | | Tuesday, February 1st, 2005 | | 10:05 am |
rooster
I hear a rooster crowing (or whatever you call out) outside. Kind of an odd experience, as I generally think of rooster-sounds as being a countryside thing. ..and there it goes again. | | Monday, January 31st, 2005 | | 11:27 am |
update update
Chinese New Years is quickly arriving, a time when work stops through out China, Cheng an turns into a practical ghost town, and I get to travel somewhere in SE Asia. I'm going to be travelling to Cambodia for around a week with a friend from Cheng An and 4 other of his friends. The guy (Chris) is from New Zealand, and is actually leaving Cheng an seemingly for good. After Cambodia I return to Hong Kong where I'll try to meet up with some Amy Long and Justin (ex-roommate from first time I went to Beijing, also used to live in Austin). And after that I should have a day or two in Cheng an to try and find an apartment in the city center. And after that it's gonna be work work work. | | Friday, January 21st, 2005 | | 11:07 am |
quick update
Yo yo. things going well, though I really need to figure out what I'm doing for Chinese New Years. Might be impossible for me to get a ticket. I want to go somewhere with friends, but that's looking unlikely right now. bummer. Anybody free from the 6th to around the 15th of February and want to travel with me somewhere in SE Asia? | | Monday, January 10th, 2005 | | 10:23 am |
back in China
Yup, back in factory land. Have been readjusting the past couple days - jet lag, polluted air, having to work, the social life... Am not feeling 100% this morning - mighta eaten something that was a little off yesterday. Either that or else the OJ has finally gone bad (it's been in the fridge.. for around 3 weeks). It's also freezing cold - and the office has a noticable lack of heat (might invest in some thin gloves). Also, some of the items that make doing my job more or less possible (i.e., the new catalog, the new sales report) are noticably missing. Just gotta work around it. Am doing well overall though. Have a nice stash of American junk food, active social life, and of course, as I'm in China, am relatively rich (just got myself another blanket last night - cost me $2 U.S. -- kinda has a nasty new-blanket odor though. helps keep me warm though). Also, managed to steal a small electric heater from Tony's room (Tony - the Chinese general manager who just left to start his own business-type thing -- he's gone, he left the heater, it's mine now :-). Only sad thing is that the heater is pretty weak, but hey - what helps helps). Also, in good news, the water is working again -- had been off for around 2 days (repairing a water main or something). I miss having a faucet for hot water though - washing your hands here means risking a bad case of frostbite. | | Wednesday, December 29th, 2004 | | 11:33 pm |
America West sucks
I'm back home in Texas. While on the flight over from, I picked up a little bug on the flight - seemed to be getting over it, which was good as my family and I were about to go the grand canyon (which we've never been too). So we get there around sunset, just in time to peek over the rim to glimpse a view of this huge yawning ditch in the middle of the earth, then head off to the hotel. I wake up the next morning feeling like shit, worse than before -- the air at the canyon was dry as heck (not to mention being at a mildly high altitude), which helped make things worse - either I had a bad cold or a minor case of the flu. Either way, for the two days we had at the canyon I spent most of my time in bed, didn't do any hiking and just had one afternoon of driving around to various scenic spots on the rim. After the canyon were supposed to fly down to Mexico - we had quite a vacation planned. However, America West decided to turn our flight around when we were 30 minutes from our destination (something about no runway lights -- apparently they could have landed the plane but then it would have been stuck in Mexico). Next flight we could get to where we wanted to go was then 2 days away (flight the next day didn't have enough seats for everyone), which wouldn't leave us with much of a vacation -- so we just ended up heading back home to Texas the next day. Which I have to admit I didn't really mind that much - as I was still sick, and being in China didn't give me much time to spend at home anyway. Really sucked for the rest of my family though, specially my mom who was looking forward to meeting up with an old friend in Mexico. America West seems to be a pretty cruddy airline -- not only did they really screw over our flight (and all the other people who were on it), but every other one of their flights seemed to be having delays (as well as them having huge lines at their check-in counter). well, whatever. We're all happy to be together - it's nice to be home, to be able to sit down, watch some US tv with the family ("Lost" - seems to be a pretty good show), and have the cat sit on on my lap. Tomorrow will probably be doing a movie and a dinner with the family. Should be a nice, relaxed day. | | Saturday, December 11th, 2004 | | 11:18 pm |
| | Monday, November 29th, 2004 | | 8:16 pm |
another whee
taking the bus tomorrow, this time on my own. Should be interesting. I'll kick up my feet and try to enjoy the downtime (make the best of the situation). Had a good time over last weekend - had Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. Was staying with some of my parents old friends in Beijing - had around 20 people over in all - great food, great conversation. Also, met up with my friend Justin who's teaching in Beijing, and his girlfriend (and there's a chance he might actually start working with me). And in other news I'm pretty wiped out. uck. ::failed attempt at a decent LJ post - sorry:: | | Monday, November 22nd, 2004 | | 8:56 pm |
blah blah blah
i'm tired, probably too tired to go out -- it's 9pm, I gotta get up at 7 so I can leave at 7:30 to catch an 8 am bus so I can get to the Zhongshan busstop at 9:30 so I can meet up with James (QC) to get a taxi and then go to a factory. At 2:30 I'll be at another factory. I'll be back who knows when, hopefully not too exhausted. Mosquitos are still a problem - I'm doing a better job of not getting bit though. Stuffing plastic bugs under the door seem seems to help a bit. whee. | | Friday, November 19th, 2004 | | 10:31 pm |
Yar!
Hmm.. my sis as the cabin "boy" -- interesting, but I guess it makes it easier to properly deputize pirates (YAR! ::hand in a fist with clenched thumb, body contorted::). Looks like I'm gonna clash with Vino enterprises, but hey, competition will keep us both in good shape.. As for Mike -- does this mean I'm gonna be running into legal problems in the future? Let's see.. Mike's probably gonna beccome an IP lawyer.. I work for a company doing product development.... Luckily, the odds are on my side ;-) . Had a long day, and really need to get to sleep early (to prepare for another busy day tomorrow). Oh fun. At least I'll be able to sleep in on Sunday. | | Saturday, October 30th, 2004 | | 10:20 am |
daylight savings time
HAHAHAHA!!! You have to set your clocks back tonight. I don't. PBBBTT!!!! I want pop-tarts. ::sniff:: I'd be willing to change my clock back for pop tarts (and instant mac and cheese).. | | Wednesday, October 27th, 2004 | | 11:08 am |
Gmail HELL
Gmail.. I love the way it organizes messages, has 1 gig of storage space, has the convenient google search built in, and is overall a very useful mail program.. Except for the fact that it's about freaking @#T#WR impossible for me to open my messages. Which kind of makes the all the good things about Gmail a moot point. ..Sometimes gmail works just fine for me (and when gmail works its great.. good enough that it caused me to d/l and use firefox cause it don't work with opera [which I'm still using, btw]), but sometimes it takes me a good 15 minutes of clicking just to open a single message. Is anyone else having similar problems? | | Thursday, October 14th, 2004 | | 11:15 pm |
For those of you who are intersted: http://www.huachao18.com/ turns out at least one of the factories I'm "responsible" for has a website. It has an English language version. two other things: skype and QQ. Skype is internet telephony -- call anyone who has it for free (over the computer) - works pretty well so far. Other is QQ -- it's the instant messaging program everyone in China uses. It's free, and also has telephony (as well as videoconferencing). Both the programs work very well. So if you want to talk with me for cheap, get one or the other and let me know. Just got back from playing basketball -- good way to meet people, make new friends, and to find a nearby 24hr taxi service. Good news for this weekend -- get both Saturday and Sunday off (note: this only due to the bad news from last week, namely having to work on Sunday, so yea, I better damned well get Saturday off [I'm greedy, aren't I?]). random thing for this post: cheap Chinese wine might end up tasting like grape juice. Pay the extra $3 (making it around $4) and get the half-decent stuff (Great Wall). | | Tuesday, October 12th, 2004 | | 6:10 pm |
Ok, I'm not surprised about my sister, and Dan's certainly tricked people before, and well, so Ben gave me a page from his Go book -- I guess that counts as a "treat" (at least to him.. by the way Ben, if you're reading this, I know a guy who's good at GO and would be willing to play you). But laurel -- a toothbrush?? I thought you'd be better than that.. (although i guess it can be traced back to Dan..). I'm hungry.. me go eat now. | My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul |
|---|
| postmodernbum goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as alfred e. newman. | | hatchetman_z gives you 14 light yellow root beer-flavoured miniature candy bars. | | issa_sd tricks you! You lose 13 pieces of candy! | | kamenoitte tricks you! You get a piece of paper. | | pandaferret gives you 5 green spearmint-flavoured gummy fruits. | | perion tricks you! You get a piece of paper. | | protolawyer gives you 16 mauve vanilla-flavoured gummies. | | sbeath gives you 7 yellow apple-flavoured gummy bears. | | serienna tricks you! You get a toothbrush. | | skyfaller tricks you! You get a used tissue. | | vino313 gives you 11 blue cola-flavoured pieces of bubblegum. | | postmodernbum ends up with 40 pieces of candy, a piece of paper, a piece of paper, a toothbrush, and a used tissue. | | Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern. |
| | Sunday, October 3rd, 2004 | | 1:05 pm |
::yawn::
It's Sunday. Chris just arrived here - will probably be a day to take it easy (which yesterday kind of was too.. except I spent it fixing up his laptop). On Friday went with Ryan to meet a couple other foreigners who met at a bar for lunch (Bob and Lauren - Lauren's a guy; Bob has great Mandarin). They've been here around 3 years, are in the electronics business. We then walked around taking pictures (well, bob and lauren, who had really nice cameras), which was actually really cool. Everyone was loving it - tons of people were posing for them, and lots of the local ladies were pulling us foreigners aside so they could get their pictures taken with us - quite an experience (Friday was also October 1rst, the birthday of the Communist party, so it was a holiday with tons of people wandering about). Afterwards we just hung out and eventually ended up eating at a really nice japanese restraunt. --Also, a big front blew threw Friday night, making today and yesterday absolutely gorgeous -- perfect weather. I actually got to see blue sky today (not to mention its in the 70's). I'm going to head up to the roof soon and take some pictures (if there's still any blue sky left over). Also, on Friday night ended up playing a bit of basketball - some guy who works in the area ("a wen" - his name/nickname). | | Monday, September 27th, 2004 | | 9:54 am |
received a grand reception as I entered my office today
At least 10 mosquitos were waiting for me this morning. read it - ten. t-e-n (at least). After seeing 3 waiting for my knees below my desk, I ended up breaking out the bug spray. Turned out there were more. Lots more. They flew around a bit, and then most died. I went to Chang'an park yesterday (went with a friend, one of the women [Helen] that works for Ryan) - it was pretty nice. Afterwards, hung out with Ryan and Helen, made spaggetti and then went to the bar for a bit. It was the same bar that's near the tea shop i went to last time, so I returned to the tea shop, ended up laying out 50 kwuai (~6 dollars) for a bit of "hua cha" (no idea what English name is). Sat and chatted with them for a bit, and they gave me a cup and two insanely small cups (the bigger one you steep tea in, smaller ones drink it out of) to drink the tea with. Pretty sweet (even though so far, I could be their biggest customer -- they've been open 10 days and so haven't built up much business yet). I returned a bit later with Ryan (after an incident in the bar where one of the bar girls/waitresses ended up smashing a small version of the American flag, which lead to us storming out of the bar in feigned disgust), and they ended up teaching us how to properly drink tea (ala wine tasting in a way, but with tea - there is a proper way to do it - basically, when first sipping the tea, keep it away from your tongue, moving it around your teeth and the sides of your mouth, then drink it -- it really does help one get a much fuller taste of the tea than just drinking it normally). | | Sunday, September 26th, 2004 | | 1:10 pm |
Ahh.. the weekend. Took it relatively easy yesterday - just hung around the area. Ryan came over and we went to a locar bar (that had kaoroke) for a bit - cheap beer, bad music. We then went to the local billiards hall -- 3 kwuai an hour (less than 50 cents) - tables and balls were slightly smaller than normal, and the table was slightly warped, but hey - that's what you get for 50 cents. The place was located outside under a covering, not too far from the local "superstore" (which was actually kinda small for one - but they have groceries, kitchen items, clothes, and the such). It was also located right next door to a SARS factory (chicken + duck seller). You can buy one for under a dollar, and I'm noticing that HDC-Asia doesn't have a mascot.. It was a cool place though, and we had a good time. Also, on Friday I visited two factories on my own (and it was the first time I visited them). Things seemed to go ok though - the first factory produced rattan (wicker) items, the second specialised in metal furniture (mostly chairs). Got to see people weaving rattan, bending metal into shape - all very neat stuff. The metal factory had a machine that could heat up an inch thick metal bar in under a second, by merely placing it through some metal coils (Ben, Matt, someone -- how the hell does that work?). Very efficient (faster, less pollution than coal). In other news, I noticed that some trees or something here seem to be releasing pollen. I'm pretty sure I do have a cold, but part of it might also be allergies. Good thing I brought a decent amount of meds from the States with me. | | Thursday, September 23rd, 2004 | | 9:23 pm |
long day
went to two factories - first was one that I'll be responsible for, talked with them about new products. next one I was just following one of the office ladies to - she was discussing delayed orders with them (I was catching maybe 1/4 of what was said). Then dinner -- met Wolfgang (brother of one of my parent's friend's friends) - he owns a furniture factory not to far from where I live - makes mirrors, lamps, and some other accessories. Tomorrow I'll be visiting two other factories on my own about new ideas - will be interesting. ..back to work (gotta prepare some for tomorrow). whee the mosquitos are aggressive tonight.. ack. |
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