Chinee Foo and Other Musings

Hello, faithful readers.  I thank you for joining me on another reflection of my exploits.  ***Disclaimer: all Chinese contained in this post is completely suspect and reproduced solely through my supposed understanding of its pronunciation.  The words are most likely wrong, please don’t hold it against me (hopefully Mandarin lessons begin next week).

Not much has changed since we last spoke, except that I started my job today.  More on that later though.

I’ve graduated from eating rice and noodles every day for breakfast to not eating breakfast at all… pretty sure I’m ready to go back to my carb crunching habits of last week.  Every now and then I grab an eggbread (which is exactly what it sounds like) or a Chinese donut.  You can get this grub from one of thousand vendors that occupy every corner.  Each place had a different variation of this fried dough.  Some are coated in sugar, while others are filled with spiced potato, chopped meats, carrots and cabbage and other goodies.  All are delicious and every time I find new one, I try it whether or not I have just eaten a meal.

While we’re on the topic of food, it is troubling to say that I have developed an awfully debilitating love/hate relationship with a particular cuisine in this city.  I am especially fond of a dish known as “Chwar/Chwan” (the pronunciation depends on where you are in China).  Rather than a dish, It is very simply just grilled skewers of various vegetables and meats; some of which I have no clue as to what they are (crossing my fingers that I haven’t tried dog yet, but who knows).  It is Street Meat of the highest caliber.  I ask for it “laDe,” which means extra spicy.  The vendors who pay particular attention to this request quite literally bring tears to my eyes.  Seeing as I am not living in Sichuan, this heat is much stronger than I had previously imagined, and very much welcomed.  On the spectrum of cheap/delicious foods, this delicacy takes the cake.  Only making this munchie further enticing is the fact that these grills are open until 4 am.  So why am I troubled about this delight that is seemingly in the same food group as Manna?  Because it decimates my stomach like a screen hatch on a submarine.  I mean there is no relief- no matter how many tagamets, peptos, pepcids, rolaids and immodiums I take, I just have to wait out the pain.  What can I say, I’m a glutton for punishment.

Now I thought I had experienced the pinnacle of bad smells- but the heinous stink that I have encountered here has opened up a new category in that book.  That’s not to say that it always reeks here, but NYC’s worst moments on a scalding summer day in between trash pickups is like a glorious bouquet of roses compared to this.  My olfactory system wants to implode and suck my entire being into a singularity.  Woah Nellie!  I would assume that it has something to do with the fact that this place is like NYC except Times Square on every single block, as well as the matter of kids dropping trough and TCBing all over the street (look at my last post if that reference whizzed by you).

In another completely different tangent, I bought a bike the other day.  My buddy Shaun came with me on his bike and we rode about 8-10 miles back to our apartments.  The excursion was intense to say the least.  Traffic is wild and unpredictable here, so its fitting that noone wears a helmet and everyone careens blindly the opposite direction down one-way streets.  There were more than a few moments when I thought, “Holy crap this can’t be safe,” but was having too much fun to stop.  Also there were no other options for getting the bike home.  Needless to say, I will try to stick to parks and small streets from now on.

I have no idea how to transition into any of the following random thoughts/hilarious moments so I’m just gonna throw ’em out there:

* Cissy, an associate at work, gestures towards my hair and asks, “Um, Jacob, is it nature? Can I feel it?” Hellz yeah its natural, and naturally I obliged.

* I watched a Philippino cover band play at a bar, and it was legitimately the worst live performance I have ever seen.  It was a woman who had an awful voice and was backed by two guys.  One guy “played” the keyboard although every one of his parts was recorded, while the other guy “played” the bongos, but his tracks were pre-recorded as well.  It was just atrocious.  I’m very motivated to practice some songs and try to land a gig once my work schedule gets settled.

* On the topic of my schedule, my schools wont give me a legitimate time table to expect breaks.  If I decide to travel, there is no way I will be able to buy reasonably priced plane tickets because apparently I wont know when or how long my breaks are until two months or less before.  Very lame.  When we complained about this during orientation, our director basically responded, “Hey, tough luck, this is China, get used to it.”

* I was walking around my neighborhood with a friend when we stumbled upon a bar that was replaying last years super bowl.  Wanting a beer and feeling upset that I am essentially going to miss this entire upcoming season, we sat down and watched most of the game.  We were the only people in the bar even remotely paying attention to the game.

* Chinese convenience stores are the same as US ones in that they have a ton of unreasonably inedible foods.  In every single store like this, I have seen this bizarre tub of hard-boiled eggs with partially cracked shells in this black liquid, as well as something that can only be described as chicken feet on a stick.  No thanks.

I’m going to hold off on going into the details of my job seeing as I have only finished one day.  I am teaching 3-8 year olds; some are very cute, others I want to punt through a window.  More of that next post though.  As always, comments and advice is always appreciated. Love to all.

Zai Jian,

sucs