going away

slept three hours. really quite sick. could not be more miserable because i need to finish packing and say goodbye to all the baoan today.

shishman two

last night i walked down the street in expo dressed like a cat, holding a turkish ice cream cone, and crying

errands packing

it is damn early. i am sick again. blue skies, helloagain. tomorrow is the last day of expo. i have not begun to pack yet my things litter the apartment.

things i'm looking forward to about home -

shoe shopping. toms and my annual, ritual desperate failed search for over-the-knee boots. the return to a country where shoes actually exist in my size.

doggins.

good company.

it not being so cold.

not paying for my internet by the hour. no great firewall.

driving like indiana jones on the hills of ktown.

chipotle.

aging

i find myself needing naps more and more often

new hat

i have this new hat that's my new favorite thing.

i was wearing newhat while in line to buy a headband at h&m when i turned around and three young chinese people were standing behind me, two boys and a girl, each clutching two fauxfur hats similar to mine. we all looked at each other and burst out laughing.

early coughs

3 am, finally stripped down and swam with the danish mermaid, in front of many. my cough, recently engendered by the weather's change for the incredibly-fucking-cold, seems to have become immediately worse. my hair is still wet and i think i have a fever. but i am awesome.

also, today, went to the kazakhstan pavilion for the fourthtime. while waiting for the 4-d show, bek told catherine and me about the different ways to eat horse meat, including horse sausage. i caught myself nodding and saying, yes, i would try that, and at the same time mentally berating myself because, no, no i wouldn't.

also also, somehow passed my foreign service test. even though i don't know nothin' about congress or iraqi geography.

cough cough. two days off.

good bad i dunno

aliya

rex said that in shanghai, the weather turns instantly from summer to winter, skipping fall entirely. it was so outrageously cold today, somewhere between 11° and 15°, that i wore sneakers, socks, leg warmers, a 3/4-sleeved shirt, shorts, a miniskirt, two jackets, a sweatshirt, and a fauxfur hat. and i bitched the entire time about the biting cold. sea dragon explained that there are two kinds of cold - the kind that chills your skin at the surface, and the kind that cuts to the bone. shanghai is the latter. i didn't know it gets this cold here. all the baoan were frozen and hopping from foot to foot because they are skinny chineseboys and their uniforms are pieces of chinashit made in the fabric market. one baoan was literally red-nosed from cold. after a mediocre day at work, we went to an incredible party at the dutch pavilion. i thought they would leave us outside in the cold with the sheep, but the party was very generously held in the crown - their VIP lounge. the golden bricks were each emblazoned with VIP and we were gifted with drink vouchers, which we managed to secure multiples of. the eclectic dj/house music was beyond excellent and i saw all my favorite people - hamburg germans, general germans, odense danes, sascha наш russian bartender, lithuanians, and the kazakhs. the kazakhs said, you look like you could be kazakh, which i think means, you look asian but bigger. they decided i need a kazakh name, which bek chose for me. afterwards, spent ages begging a delivery truck to take brandy and me to gate 4, the gate we need to get home from. they delivered us eventually, but too late, so that we missed the second bus home and had to walk all the way.

muji music

this morning an italian man took my hand and rubbed it all over his face. do not understand.

had these fnails sawed off today. haven't seen my real nails in two months. helloagain

bulletproof

my hair is turning into dreadlocks.

it's a robot it's a robot

went to the much-talked-about japan pavilion today. the queuing time is five hours, but the work-a-place made us a reservation so we could come in and take a look. the girls' uniforms are pink and gray, topped with a beaked hat that makes them look like funny birds. the inside was pleasant, but if i'd waited five hours i may have been mad. my most vivid memory of the japan pavilion will be of the girl seated in front of me, who vomited all over herself during the finale performance. the smell made me heave and i literally had to stand and flee my row.

southern barbarian

make your garden grow

am i getting cleaner or dirtier if there is mold growing in my shower?

teppanyaki four

blacked out before we left the restaurant. only thing i remember is falling in a bush. was carried home, apparently.

segregate

got into a fight with our CEO. this week only gets better and better.

heart attack

w0rk could not have been more of a suicide-inducing shitshow today. as soon as i was released i promptly went to the russian pavilion and had four shots of стандарт with kate and sascha.

pop the glock

today, re-visited germany, uk, and the netherlands. while working, met one of the three architects of the german pavilion itself. he told me about how the german pavilion is inspired by the structure of an umbrella. post-shift, massive turnout at the brazil party. i enjoy seeing the familiar partymongers stroll in to pavilion parties in packs, representatives from the danes, swedes, australians, kazakhstanis, canadians, us. the traditional brazilian dancing and drums inspired me to visit the real place someday. plus i want to see the big jesus. we were given tinsel boas and masks and confetti poppers that sprayed colored confetti into the air, into my gifted kiwi caipirinha, and all over the floor. i met a lithuanian named vitas on the shibo dadao bus home. he said, yes, like the singer. i work at eightthirty tomorrow morning, seven hours away from now. with eleven days of expo left, i'm going to attend every party i'm invited to and then some.

jimmy vs. joe

i was reading a decorating blog the other day, and i came across a carpet that actually gave me epilepsy. my brain was fried. i had to lie in the dark for like an hour.

sassy taxi

the other day, when i was paying a taxi driver for taking me home, he looked at the crumpled bill and exclaimed, why is this so shitty?! you need to love your RMB.

ttl picturesque

26° out today breezy perfect. went to a park, two subway stops further into pudong from where i live. walked in rubble, flew a goldfish kite i bought outside of jin mao tower yesterday for 20 kuai. lied in grass and dirt, smoked cigarettes, tried to skip rocks on the river, failed. had some of the best chinese food i've had in shanghai.

Robert: ok well... be well, live well... and keep in touch please... tell Val I says hello and all that... miss having you both as roomies or housemates, whatever

jeffer

this morning i got an hour-long massage at this chinese medicine practice on huafeng lu that was so mind-numbingly painful that i could feel my eyes rolling into the back of my head. it was like experiencing an exorcism. in a good way. i've had a chinese hairdresser tell me my hair is unusually dry and knotted, a chinese makeup artist asked me why i have such sparse eyebrows, do i overpluck them? no they are just that way, and this chinese masseuse told me that some muscle in my back is misshapen. and he dug into my acupressure points until i thought his hands would delve through dermis and separate muscles strand by strand and come out grasping on the other side.

tonight i had wine and cheese during sunset at cloud 9 on the 87th floor of the jin mao tower. nice view.

germany

there were over one million people in the expo, which makes the day where we ooh-ed and aah-ed over six hundred thousand moot. there was a massive line, staffed by chinese military, to get into the line of the german pavilion, which already wrapped several times around the building.

my guide, lina, was the cutest german-born vietnamese girl. she had enormous eyes and would cover her mouth with both hands and giggle like minnie mouse.

mao livehouse

as i predicted, boys noize opened with kontact me and closed with my moon my man. great show. third time i've seen him this year, but i've never seen him from so close before. i heard jeffer live for the first time, which i've wanted for a long time.

ghost

i haven't been sober in a week. it's been festive lot's to talk about. nothing to show because i lost my camera, naturally.

high blood pressure

i could not be more exhausted and frustrated from work than i am today. it was one of those days where you had to tell the old woman hitting your arm not to touch you, stop some kid from pissing all over the floor, get continuously mobbed by a hundred people every ten minutes, pushing and rioting and knocking down all the stanchions that bar them from your body, all yelling and demanding different things and complaining and betchin and blaming you. i'm lying in bed with the shades drawn and my heart still won't stop beating a million beats a minute.

extremely deutsche

upcoming two-day german experience. tomorrow, boys noize from 10 pm to 3 am, and then working at the balancity GERMAN PAVILION (on exchange) from 9 am to 4:30 pm. i am extremely excited, to say the least.

I WILL BE IN THIS MAGNIFICENT STRUCTURE

predestination

not only am i moving out and losing my room with a view at the end of the month, but the view itself will be gone when everything is torn down ephemeral

this morning i dreamt about having to write a screenplay sequel to batman

party in the usa

closing time today

puppy patrol do-gooding

body hurts from digging trenches for habitat for humanity in the rain with shovels and pickaxes. hand hurts, back hurts. we were completely covered in mud. we unearthed centipedes and earthworms and broken bowls. all the people in the area spoke a completely unintelligible (to me) form of Old Shanghainese, and an old lady talked to me for a solid three minutes as i nodded at her. the family had a very large pig with moist contracting and dilating nose, little piggies, baby goats, and bitty puppies. when we finally got back to shanghai we had our first and last party at our pavilion. big turnout. one of the kazakhs, whom i'd accosted at the last australia party, came up to me and said, you should have told people in our pavilion that you can speak russian. i said, why? i'm really bad. he said - we are very interested in people who can speak russian.

olivia was just doing stretches on the floor, downward-dog sort of stuff. i can't even imagine moving my body like that right now. we did this horrible brick-passing stuff yesterday and my right bicep feels like it's being stabbed by a sharp knife.

festive

our boys

i once asked them what's up with the peace signs. they said they don't know, they've just been doing it since they were kids.

killing like i'm supposed to

this morning, via skype, my parents couldn't agree on how my name is pronounced in chinese. identity crisis. i maintain that the second character is second tone, not third (opinion of my father)

tonight, the resident Beautiful Dane of building 14B said that my danish is "very funny." when i asked for further clarification, he said it is "cute." it's shit, but it's much better when i'm sober, promise.

double ten

I spent 07/07/07 in Shanghai at the 7th Absolut Icebar in the world, now closed.

I spent 10/10/10 somehow in Shanghai again, wandering around the A zone of World Expo with TTL. Amongst others, we saw TTL's Anhui province, the slang and funny dialect of which I have been trying to learn, and Fujian province, the probable land of my extreme ancestors.

Today was Taiwan's national day, uncelebrated here of course.

Taiwanese has extremely extensive tone sandhi (tone-changing) rules: in an utterance, only the last syllable pronounced is not affected by the rules. The following rules, listed in the traditional pedagogical mnemonic order, govern the pronunciation of tone on each of the syllables affected (that is, all but the last in an utterance):

If the original tone number is 5, pronounce it as tone number 3 (Quanzhou/Taipei speech) or 7 (Zhangzhou/Tainan speech).

If the original tone number is 7, pronounce it as tone number 3.

If the original tone number is 3, pronounce it as tone number 2.

If the original tone number is 2, pronounce it as tone number 1.

If the original tone number is 1, pronounce it as tone number 7.

If the original tone number is 8 and the final consonant is not h (that is, it is p, t, or k), pronounce it as tone number 4.

If the original tone number is 4 and the final consonant is not h (that is, it is p, t, or k), pronounce it as tone number 8.

If the original tone number is 8 and the final consonant is h, pronounce it as tone number 3.

If the original tone number is 4 and the final consonant is h, pronounce it as tone number 2.

qianyu

At work, I was helping a group of older people from New York and one of the men asked me where I learned my English. I told him, as I've so often had to defend myself so far - I am American.

I hate to berate him because he was, previous to this, a pleasant man. But this was infuriating. I wish the fact that I was wearing a full uniform, a name tag with my first and middle name and USA printed on it, spoke perfect English, and maybe the fact that we are an immigrant country, could have clued him in to the idea that I just might be American. I learned my English in the same place you did, sir.

The subject of the end of Expo came up again today - as it often does now - and a baoan quoted a poem to me about good friends never actually being separated, as they are under one moon, by one river. i said - what river. he said that there is a very long river that runs through china. i said - this does not work internationally.

dajiangyou 打酱油

i've learned to say hello, goodbye, and i have come back in shanghainese. i forgot how to say i love shanghai. in the anhui province dialect i've begun to learn sort of unsavory phrases that boys teach you and then hastily tell you not to actually say to anyone.

today a chinese man showed me the elaborate book of stamps he had collected from each pavilion and very seriously explained to me what better city, better life means to him and his hopes for world peace. i stamped his book on a separate page set aside especially for the united states, because it is an important country in the world and he did not want it lost amongst all the other stamps.

on the bus home from work a baby kicked me with it's small foot, which will become a big foot, which will stomp on the earth.

these days seven

7 thursday

Shamed by outdated/old world/largely inapplicable moral code

Had dinner at The Little Dirty, our staff canteen, with TTL, the baoan with whom I am closest. We talked about the end of Expo inexorably rushing forward, and about how meeting again would be rather unlikely. Hesitation, then small, hopeful promises were offered of future visits to America (someday, once rich) and layovers in Shanghai. Silence, and we dug around in our rice with chopsticks.

these days six

6 wednesday

Joyous Alexandr

Last day of my weekend. Spent it with Kelsey wandering the Middle East and Asia on foot. Morocco was a beautiful structure, but the best of the day - Qatar. Informative, interesting, friendly, beautiful. I did not understand Hungary. It had a lot of wooden sticks and a strangely shaped metal rock in the middle. Israel was an uncomfortably hot and stuffy greenhouse. Naturally, by our second pavilion I was fatigued. Three hours in, we escaped the Middle East in search of beer.

In the hidden Moldova wine bar a very friendly lady poured us generous samples of various Moldovan wines and pretzels that tasted like animal crackers. A big-boned Moldovian boy wandered around with a black eye and brightly-colored vest. The friendly lady was replaced by a spritely Moldovian girl who laughed and cursed a lot. When we tried to pay, there was no change in the register so the girl took the small bills we had, half of what we owed her, and exclaimed, "Let it be!"

The short detour did not distract us from the main goal of beer. We went to Russia's Snow Bar, where the Russian bartender boy I'd once met in the village happened to be working at the completely empty bar. I'd been walking back from a party late in the dark and he had said привет as a joke and was surprised when I responded.

Kelsey and I bought two bottles of Baltika 7, sat on the barstools, and watched the bartender be a total nutcase. He was already drunk, but he celebrated our new company with a White Russian, which he made with vodka - стандарт - and coffee. He tried to teach me the correct conjugations of танцевать and tongue-twisters like "рыбак рыбачил рыбу" and something else that I couldn't even begin to repeat. He blasted techno music and danced around and laughed, kicking an empty bottle around the floor.

these days five

5 tuesday

MOCA Shanghai

Walked through People's Park, through the marriage market, eating two big fried crabs on a stick. Here in the day parents convene with signs stating their child's stats (height, education, etc.) and desired stats (height, education, etc.) of potential matches. No pictures on aforementioned signs. I should have hunted for my dream man there.

Who decides that ooh-ey aah-ey ambient ghost noise is the appropriate backing track for contemporary art? I somewhat wonder what cumulative damage all the kooky films I've watched in contemporary art museums have done to my psyche. This one was of animals - shrimp, african clawed frogs, salamanders - seemingly being electrocuted in petri dishes.

these days four

4 monday

On How the Vikings Did It

It was our last day of work before our two days of break. We were freed from work at 15:30. Kelsey, Selina and I grabbed pisco sours from Peru, a few steps away from the United States. A pisco sour is some sort of Peruvian alcohol (pisco) mixed with egg whites into sort of a frothy mess with some suspect looking red powder sprinkled on top. It tasted like vitamins. Hank, Kelsey and I wandered into Norway, a glorious, beautiful structure that looks like stretched tarp, angled awnings, a ship. It is the only pavilion constructed entirely of wood. An affable boy, born in China but raised in Norway, ambled over to us. He proffered Snus, a sort of chewing tobacco in a little packet that my Norwegian friends all indulged in while I was abroad. I decided to authenticate my Norwegian experience by trying the infamous snus, sticking the packet under my upper lip in a very unattractive fashion. This resulted in my general inability to speak while in the Norwegian Pavilion, since attempting to do so would cause the snus to slip out and become potentially projectile. The more seasoned Norwegian snusers obviously have learned to somehow clutch onto the packet with their upper lips. I opted to just stay quiet for the most part. The juices made my mouth numb and my head dizzy. It all felt really Norwegian.

The Norway Pavilion is wonderfully serene inside - all windows and streaming with natural light and the smell of roasting Norwegian fish from the restaurant, which is supposed to be one of the best eats at Expo. I felt at ease and welcome to wander and read the displays. You can drink water from a water filtration system on display; it will be donated to India post-expo. Whereas many pavilions focus on modernization, the Norway Pavilion is based on the concept of nature in Norway, and how it provides a better life. There were binoculars with small 3-D movies inside and some pictures of polar bears. On my way out, I de-snused.

Afterwards we convened outside of Belgium for waffles and beer. The waffles were expensive - 40 kuai ($5.99) for a few bites - but it was so incredibly delicious (at least 40% butter) that I predict further waffling in my future. Hoegaarden (35 kuai, $5.24) washed down the waffle in a very indulgent affair (almost a delicious half of my daily income).

sneaky sound system

at this point, only girls hit on me. she was beautiful in a silent, bashful but persuasive way.

goodmorning

it's a glorious day out

look how complex this thing became in the post

my american friends

what in the hell geoff dyer spoke at the getty in june. and i didn't know about it. not a whole lot happens in los angeles, but even when it does word doesn't always waft out

balancityelectroparrty

blessed limbo

my main takeaway from china is that i can't possibly feel bad about myself or my prospects when everyday here i meet people who feel inescapably boxed in

nciku

i fucking hate writing e-mails in chinese

no more night coffee

i feel absolutely terrible because i lay sleepless in shanghai for three+ hours because i had a mug of black coffee at work. when i did sleep for three hours i dreamt most vividly about discovering that i am actually 1/8th black, and that my father is michael jackson's nephew and that i am actually related to michael jackson, despite never having been a rabid fan of the music

posterity

encounters

today i met some american girls who insisted that i should let them through the fast access lane because the chinese people would want to take pictures with them inside the pavilion. i do not think they were very happy with me after our little chat. i also met some wild chinese young people who sat on a train for fifty hours - two days and two nights from northern china - to come to expo in matching outfits - matching plaid shirts and jeans and big lens-less glasses. over dinner at the little dirty, one of the bao an talked about how he wants to work very hard while he is young so that someday he can move to america.

pastel

noon just woke up. this morning i dreamt of drawing a very large apple in oil pastels while singing rainbow high from evita

best i ever had matematics

free beer all night in poland tonight. which is why it's 5:10 am and i've just gotten home. we rode a coca-cola truck back to the village and paid the driver in pins. you have to be creative when the buses stop running. a taxi driver once told me that the expo village isn't really a village because real villages have crops. in poland i met a norwegian boy and a polish man who's lived in denmark for the past 35 years. i don't hunt them, they just find me. it's meant to be