China Stuff

I went to our third of four ACCE meetings last night, to work out the logistics of our trip to China in July. Things are coming together nicely... My tickets are reserved and paid for, visa applications will be sent off today or tomorrow, and all that really remains now is to start gathering my stuff to pack. And actually packing it, of course, which is always a fun nightmare.

One of the people going on this trip, a man named George, was kind enough to give me a really nice Chinese→English dictionary. It was given to him as a gift, but he has little use for it (and not much interest in the Chinese language itself, I gather). I've already looked through it, and it is excellent. Printed in 1997 by the English department at Beijing Foreign Studies University (北京外国大学), and it sold for around $8.50 USD. Amazing price for this rather large dictionary of around 1,750 pages and 18,000 entries or so. I'm sure it'll come in handy, given my obsession with written Chinese. Thanks, George!

Not much else to say for now. Just letting you all know I am still alive and bloggin'.

Photos of India

A fellow Zooomr user, Visithra, has uploaded some stunning pictures from Karnataka, India. You can check them out under the Karnataka tag... Or have a gander at this handful of my favorites:

eBay Scammers Must Die

Lame. I put my Playstation 2 and games (15 of 'em) up for auction today, and within a few hours it sold for my "Buy It Now" price. Well, the buyer had -1 feedback (with the single comment of DO NOT BUY OR SELL, THIS IS ANOTHER NIGERIAN SCAMMER). Sure enough, I got "urgent" e-mails from this guy saying his daughter was in Nigeria and needed him to ship it on her behalf, and that his eBay page was broken, that he needed to PayPal me the money directly, etc. etc.

What really blows, though, is that I have to wait at least 2-3 days for eBay to investigate the situation. I could turn right around and relist it right now, but if I do that, I'm opening myself up to bad feedback (which I'd have to fight with eBay to get removed). In the mean time, I'm losing out on actually getting legitimate bids on my PS2. Ridiculous. eBay scammers must die.

For 2008

Do you know who you will be voting for in 2008? If I'm still in the States, I know who I'll be voting for. It will be presidential candidate Stephen Colbert, and his running mate Jon Stewart. And after they win, I look forward to them appointing Judge Judy as their press secretary... "Excuse me! I'm the Press Secretary here. STOP TALKING. When my lips are moving, that means YOU DO. NOT. TALK. Get out of my press conference."

Ah, glorious days ahead for America... Glorious indeed.

Elsewhere

What a weird day... While I was skating around and going downtown, I had this really odd feeling of displacement. Here I am in Albuquerque, but it didn't feel like Albuquerque. The sounds and the feel of the air around me were telling me I was somewhere else.

Despite being smack dab in the center of this very populated, very busy city, it all felt very serene – there was a hush with a mild breeze, like being in the middle of an evergreen forest, the wind rustling through the branches and pine needles. I'd look up a street and see people, cars, and buildings, but I'd feel nature and the breeze and the swaying pines. It was as if some of my senses were elsewhere (it felt like Montana), while the rest were still here at home.

Odd stuff indeed.

Mankind gave me the headache, but nature can take it away.
- Unknown

So It Begins...

Yes, the planning stages for my China trip are kicking into high gear now. We've got weekly ACCE (American-Chinese Civic Exchange) meetings for the next 3 weeks, to continue making arrangements and undergo training for teaching the kids out there. The logistics of the trip are still being fine-tuned, but we're getting there. By the way, if anyone reading this is interested in going to China with us this July, go to the ACCE web site and get in touch with them. It's possible to squeeze more people in up until June 16th.

It's going to be a long journey out to China. I'll leave here in the late afternoon, arrive in Los Angeles a couple hours later, and get the joy of killing 7 hours(!!) of down time until my flight to Beijing at 1:40am(!!) that night. With time changes and transit time, I'll arrive in Beijing around 6am two calendar days after I leave home. And that won't be the end of it - once in Beijing, we turn right around and hop on a domestic flight to Changsha.

It's going to be a sweaty, tiring trip - with some fun sightseeing thrown in. We're most likely going to spend a day or two at a place called Zhang Jia Jie, one of the top sites for natural beauty in China. Me and my camera can't wait to go see it... Hopefully I can take better shots than the mostly crappy ones I've found online so far. Here's a couple okay of ones:



After our 3 weeks of teaching, we'll spend a few days in Beijing to check out the Great Wall and other must-sees. Weeeeeeeeeee... Wo ai zhongguo!

Pointless Post II

Man, it's nice not having to do homework and papers and such. One good thing about being a lowly wage slave at a service job... Your work doesn't come home with you. I clock out, lock the doors to the store, and that's it till my next work day. So nice, compared to the back end-loaded BS of college, where for every 5 minutes in the classroom, you're expected to dump an hour of your time into reading some junk from an overpriced textbook written by some pompous academic fat cat in New York. (rant mode off)

Anyway, not that I'm bitter or anything... :-) Just under two months from now, I'll be going to China! Woohoo! It will be so nice to get away from this city, and the country in general. Sure, the teaching will be challenging work, and the language issues will be completely uncharted territory for me... But I'm a lot more enthusiastic about this than any of the "challenges" I faced as I was working towards an Air Force career. Somehow, I'd rather struggle to understand some Chinese kid's butchered English than get yelled at in a dining hall on base, or get deployed to a desert wasteland (one even worse than here) for a year plus. I miss a lot about the military environment, but it twisted my soul around in very unhappy ways I've only recently come to understand. It's not for everybody, and I have great respect for those who can go that route and still hold on to who they are.

So, what was the point of this blog post? Beats me. Anybody want to chip in $$$ so I can buy some more Chinese books before I go on my trip? :-P

AIM Pages - Spam Warning!

As mentioned earlier, I've been playing with AIM Pages. I'd highly recommend not signing up, or deleting your public page if you have done so already. I've been getting tons of spam on AIM today - I've never gotten ANY spam on AIM in the 8+ years I've been using it. I've plastered my AIM name all over the web on profiles and such, and never received spam like this.

Somebody has already begun crawling the public pages and started spamming accounts with porn links and the like. Either don't put a page up, or change your privacy settings to disallow messages from people you don't know. Since the web addresses for profiles on AIM Pages are tied to the instant messenger name a given person uses, it is obviously very easy to run through all the public ones and collect names to spam. I can only imagine the potential for spreading viruses/worms by combining this with an AIM security hole...

If you already have a page on there, here's how to remove it (although the damage may already be done, as in my case):

1. Log in and go to your profile on AIM Pages.
2. Click 'EDIT' to edit your page.
3. Click 'Settings' near the top of the page.
4. There's an option to delete your page there.
   

Sheesh.

THE SEMESTER IS OVER!

Time to dance! Crank up the volume or put on your headphones, and enjoy... The evolution of dance!

The End...

... is nigh!

Vroom Vroom

Okay, I'm bored (as usual). I was hoping this Which Sports Car Are You? quiz would pick something cool, like a Zonda C12S. Oh well. Apparently...

I'm a Chevrolet Corvette!

You're a classic - powerful, athletic, and competitive. You're all about winning the race and getting the job done. While you have a practical everyday side, you get wild when anyone pushes your pedal. You hate to lose, but you hardly ever do.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

Seems kinda bogus to me. I specifically said I'm NOT competitive, and I don't think I'm wild... But I wouldn't mind being/having a car that was.

Best Buy "Invaded"

A group called Improv Everywhere got 80 "agents" together in blue shirts and khaki pants to "invade" their local Best Buy:



Some choice quotes from the very detailed explanation of what went down:

Security guards and managers started talking to each other frantically on their walkie-talkies and headsets. "Thomas Crown Affair! Thomas Crown Affair!," one employee shouted. They were worried that [we] were using our fake uniforms to stage some type of elaborate heist. "I want every available employee out on the floor RIGHT NOW!"

Agent Shafer confidently informed the cops that it was not, in fact, "illegal" to film in Best Buy and that they couldn't accuse him of trespassing until he had been asked to leave the store. He pointed out that he was perfectly willing to leave. A manager told Agent Shafer, "I don't come to your house and film you," to which he replied, "Who lives here?" The cops argued for a bit, but finally realized there was nothing they could do.

And my personal favorite:

There a manager claimed it was "illegal" to film in Best Buy and instructed someone to call 911. She informed him that he had violated her "civil rights" by filming in her store.

Uh, sorry to burst your bubble, lady... You do not have any guaranteed right to privacy in a public space, or in a private space open to the public. You have no "civil right" to not being filmed, even if you are a manager. Besides, what do you think all those security cameras in your store are doing?

Birdies!

I spent a couple hours at the duck pond on campus today, reading by the waterfall. I took a bunch of pictures of sparrows drinking/bathing at the top of the waterfall, and I uploaded a few. Here are two of my favorites (especially the "sparrow happy dance" in the first photo):