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Shamed by outdated/old world/largely inapplicable moral code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