I could be a Part-Time Model*

*But I'll probably have to keep my normal job

I work part-time at this place called "Web International English" here in Huzhou. It's a commercial school for learning English.

On Monday of this week, Apple, my boss (that's her English name) said that there was an elevator company in Nanxun (pronounced Nan Schwinn, one town over, in the same county as Huzhou) that was looking for some foreigners to use in its advertisements and promotional materials, and asked if I would mind going to Nanxun to be a model for them.

The offer, in addition to stroking my ego, paid 1000 yuan (about $140) so I figured, yeah, why not!

On Tuesday, Apple sent me a text message asking if I had a suit, to which I replied, "Not in China." She then asked me for my size so the photographer could bring one that fit me.

On Wednesday she asked me, "Do you have any leather or formal shoes that are not sneakers?" To which I replied, "Not in China."

I think it's safe to say that my formal events and occasions have been few and far between during my last 14 months here.

So today, I went with Apple to the elevator factory in Nanxun. The photographer supplied the suits (there were 2: a blue pinstriped suit, and a gray pinstriped suit), a few shirts (different elevators had different colors and different lighting some some colors were better suited than others), but no shoes. Turns out that wasn't really a big deal, they just didn't include my feet in the shots.

Afterward, I signed a release for them to use my photos and they handed me 1000 yuan cash. As a bonus, since they had purchased those shirts just before and in my size, they let me keep them. The shirts are nothing special, not designer labels or anything, but are still nice shirts, and it was a nice little added bonus.

Within the next couple of weeks I should get some copies of the photos taken, and I'll post them here when I do.

On a side note, Ellis, my American co-worker at the college, went to model for this company a few weeks ago, as well as Brandon, my American co-worker at Web. Their photos came out fine, but the company wanted some more pictures and some different faces. If you want to see their photos you can catch them on Ellis's blog:

Ellis's own photos: http://plateofwander.com/?p=3563

The final professinal ones: http://plateofwander.com/?p=3797

Thanksgiving '09

So about two weeks ago Ellis (the other foreign teacher at my school, remember I am a foreigner) invited many of the Huzhou laowai (foreigners) to her apartment for a Thanksgiving dinner.

It was a nice little affair with food (everyone brought something), conversation, and even a some guitar and singing (real guitar, not fake plastic guitar).

I made some spaghetti to bring, and I have to say... it was REALLY good. I only used a Hunt's tomato sauce, but I also added some browned ground pork and some fennel and I let it simmer for about 4 hours. It turned out SO much better than expected. Grandma, you would be proud. I may be a particularly strict critic of my own sauce, but one nice compliment was that Ellis, a self-proclaimed "foodie", immediately asked for seconds after finishing her first helping.
The only thing that would've made it better is if it had been hot, I had prepared the spaghetti and the sauce, but unfortunately we began eating about 90 minutes after we arrived, so it was a little cool (The apartment is not heated).

Now me, always forgetting to bring a camera, I didn't take any pictures, save for one here I took with my camera phone of the spaghetti.


However, Ellis, being inseparable from her camera took several pictures. I'll upload a few of them from her blog here, but she's got several others with annotations at that on her Thanksgiving blog post:

http://plateofwander.com/?p=3744

Jean and I arrive first

People Snacking

The Huzhou foreigners dining

Englishman Jack plays the guitar

Canadian Paul and I sing a song (maybe Oasis)

New Record

Recently broke my personal record for running up the six flights of stairs to my apartment again:

11/25/09 - 22.8 seconds

Too Long

It's been a long time since I've last posted, which is due to a combination of blogspot (the blog hosting site) being blocked in China, making it inconvenient, but not impossible, to post, and the fact that I've been a bit lazy to post. (Note, I began drafting this blog post Nov 11, but didn't post it because I didn't have the pictures. I got the pictures and published the blog post Nov 25, despite the fact that it says it was posted Nov 11.)

So here's a quick recap on the last couple months:

A few weeks ago I organized a Rock Band party at my place. I invited over the Huzhou laowai (foreigners) that I know, and a few of the English-speaking Chinese with whom I am friends. I made tacos (thanks to Aunt Mary for the taco seasoning), Ellis baked a delicious cake, and with plenty of beer we had a good time eating, drinking, singing, and playing faux guitar and drums. I've got a few pictures below:

The tacos!

On the left, Canadian Paul and his Chinese wife Annie. In the middle, Englishman Jack, and on the right American Brandon.

My beautiful girlfriend Jean

And here are a few of me REALLY getting into singing "Chop Suey" by System of a Down. When its blurry, I'm jumping.


The excited, happy lad in the chair in those pictures is American Edward... a guy who I'll mention in the next blog post (tomorrow).

Two weekends ago while in Hangzhou, Jean and I went to a restaurant that was recommended to her by a workmate of hers. It is a western-style restaurant (read: not Chinese food) and it was purported that the pizza there was pretty good. When we went in， I noticed that the vast majority of the patrons there were indeed foreigners, something, at that point, I had not yet seen outside of Shanghai. Anyhow, Jean and I sat down at our table and ordered the fried squid, the nachos, and a pepperoni pizza.

The appetizers came out first, and the nachos... they were not Chinese nachos, they were not some Chinese approximation of nachos, they were honest-to-goodness nachos chips topped with chili and cheese, and they were awesome. The fried squid were tasty, if perhaps a little too salty.

On a side note, the expression "fried squid" in Chinese (pronounced chow yo yu) means "to be fired" as in, to lose one's job.

The pizza, pictured here, looked delicious, and seemed to be brick oven baked, the way good pizza ought to be. The flavor was also quite good, better than any pizza I'd had in China thus far. But, I have to say, it may have been one of the greasiest pizzas I have ever eaten.

The pizza would look better, but it was taken with a phone camera.

In any case, I was impressed and I think I now have a favorite restaurant in China. I saw their breakfast menu, and I look forward to giving that a go sometime.

That's all up to recently, but I will eventually be posting the remaineder of the summer Beijing/Xi'An trip, and also, I'm going to have a post pretty soon on some if the minor niggles about living in China (other than the aforementioned blockade of websites).

Fall Semester begins, I'm clumsy

I realize it's been a month now since I've last posted, and I eventually will finish posting about the Beijing/Xi'an trip, but I'm blogging again for now.

The new semester has begun and it's business as usual, though for the first 3 weeks I don't have my freshman classes. For whatever reason the freshmen begin 3 weeks laters, something to do with military training.

So this weekend is an important weekend as I will be meeting my girlfriend's mother for the first time. She lives in Harbin which, geographically, if Huzhou is like Atlanta, Harbin is like Nova Scotia. Just her mother is visiting, not her father. I'm a bit nervous, but to be honest, considering the level of my Chinese, I don't know enough to really make a fool of myself, so I don't have too much to worry about.

In other news, this last weekend I lost my cell phone on a bus in Hangzhou. No one stole it, I think maybe I dropped it while sitting in my seat and I didn't pay close attention. Luckily I had saved all my important phone numbers to a file a few months ago, so I didn't lose anything too important, just annoying having to spend the money on a new phone. That said, the phone I lost wasn't great, and since it had been dropped many times and soaked at least twice, sometimes it didn't work exactly as it was supposed to, so getting a new phone isn't all bad.

I got my new phone yesterday, and I am really pleased, it looks sexier than the previous phone, it's faster, it's more functional, and it was actually cheaper! (In case you are curious, the old phone was a Motorola ROKR E2 which I bought for 600 yuan, about $88, and the new one is a Motorola ROKR Z6 which I bought for 530 yuan, about $78.)

One interesting thing I discovered as I was adjusting all the settings on my new phone: I downloaded the "Opera Mini" web browser for the phone, which lets you browse web pages more efficiently than the browser that comes with the phone. Now, the way it works is, you enter an address, it goes to Opera's servers, they get the page to their servers, then compress the page, and then send it back to you. It's actually faster this way because any images and text get compressed first so instead of waiting for a 100kb page to download, now you are waiting for a 9kb page to download, and when you're talking web browsing on a non-3G network, that is a huge difference.

Anyways, I began to think, this whole system essentially works like a proxy, so, I wonder, let me see if I can access blocked websites in China, such as youtube, facebook, or even my blog right here. So I typed in those pages, and lo, I had access.

I think it's strange that if I go to a computer, I cannot access facebook or blogspot.com (without some mucking around), yet on my cell phone, I can just go right to it. Go figure.

Other Huzhou Laowai

This post isn't really a post for me. It's a link to my friend Ellis's blog.

She has a post on an all too typical experience for her: Chinese people's fascination with foreigners.

http://plateofwander.com/?p=2798

Now, it's a very interesting read, and from what I've heard from her and others, not an atypical occurrence. But not for me.

Now I can certainly understand that at first glance I may not get noticed as much as other foreigners, I'm neither glaringly white nor dark, my hair is black, and I'm not too tall. From behind, it might be hard to know that I'm not a Chinese.

Once people see my face, though, they are immediately aware that I am indeed not Chinese. I get some stares, but not the way my other friends seem to.

And as far as something like Ellis's experience at the gym, the well-meaning, yet still annoying pestering while working out... it just doesn't happen with me. The only people that talk to me at the gym are essentially one of two physical trainers that work there. One uses English, and the other uses Chinese. But even then, I wouldn't say they talk to me at length or to an annoying level, it's usually just a hello and a few words.

I'm not complaining. I'm sure this would get old fast. But for whatever reason, even though other gym members can plainly see I'm not Chinese, I guess I just don't incite the same level of curiosity. Or maybe it's because I'm a dude.

By the way, if you don't know, "laowai" (from the subject of this post) means foreigner.

July 23, Tiananmen Square & Forbidden City

The first morning in Beijing we got up early and headed out for Tian An Men Square via, and for the last time, the subway. When we got there, it wasn't too hot, as it had rained that morning and was still cloudy. It would rain later, so it stayed cloudy, but that did make our outing pleasantly cool. We took some pictures in the square.

First Arrived

Facing South

Facing North

Always LOTS of People Everywhere

As you can tell from some of these pictures, there were always lots of people here in the square... which makes this picture Jean took when she was a little girl all the more confusing. There is literally no one else in the square (only a few across the street). I asked her about this, and she said she doesn't know why there was no one, perhaps it was very early in the morning, and perhaps it had just rained. Also, not nearly as many Chinese took touristy trips 16 years ago as they do today, as the Chinese people have more money today than in the past.

Jean, age 8, Tian An Men Square

Later, we decided to get in line to see Chairman Mao's body. First we went to a building across the street to put our stuff in the locker. I knew no pictures were allowed, but I didn't know cameras weren't either, so I didnt put my camera away in the storage place. In retrospect it kind of makes sense, though they don't disallow cell phones, but you do get in trouble if you try to take a picture with one. We waited in line for about an hour until we got to the entrance and the security checkpoint. Since I had my camera on me they denied me entry. What I should've done is stopped taken a deep breath and told my family, ok you guys go through, I'll see you at the exit. Instead I wasnt thinking and I just exited. After I realized what I should've done, I hoped they still would go through, so I made my way to meet them at the exit.

20 minutes later, however, they still had not shown. I decided to wait 5 more minutes, and then if they were still a no show, I'd go to our pre-arranged "get separated" location. But just at that time, I got a phone call. Uncle Jack had borrowed one of the workers' cell phones and called me. They had been waiting at the entrance for me for the last 20 minutes. He asked if I was just going to wait for them at the exit, I said yes, and they went through, and after regrouping I apologized for making them wait there in the first place without giving them notice.

It was all good, and we then went to go eat lunch. We just walked a short way away from Tian An Men square and saw a Chinese Fast Food place. These were NOT the kind of Chinese dishes to show off Chinese cuisine, but we needed to eat, and we didn't really know where anything else was. There could've been a great place right around the corner, or just as easily 10 blocks away.

After that we walked back toward the forbidden city, but made a pit stop along the way. Katy and Uncle Jack needed to use the public facilities while we waited outside.
Uncle Jack returned first, followed shortly by Katy, who shortly began with a disgusting tirade over the state of the bathroom inside and the shortly thereafter labelled "squatty potties."

Afterward we crossed the street toward the Forbidden City. Before we entered, Beth asked me, "If it's a forbidden city, why are they letting us inside?"

Out in Front

Courtyard Inside

Lion Statue Crushing a Baby Lion
(at least that's what I say it is, but when you read
"crushing" you must imagine Borat saying it
and doing the crushing motion with his hand)

We finished the afternoon with an educational (we rented the audio tour device) stroll through the city/palace, shortly after which it began to rain. Luckily we snagged a cab back to our hotel minutes before the rain came down really hard. The driver was different than most other cab drivers I have met in China in that I could more easily understand what he was saying. His Chinese pronunciation was fairly standard, which unfortunately for my comprehension, is something that is a bit rare among taxi drivers.