China is awesome

I'm back in China. It has been a while since I was here and it is still as awesome as ever. Never ending buildings, throngs of people, and large copious amounts of food and beer. Taking the plane here I realized that there is an international discourse and that everyone who is going to or has gone to China is saying the same things. People complain about the organization, it is wild and exotic in some kind of way, and lets not forget that it is growing very fast. China seems to attract all types, the bohemian English teachers, students, business or wanna be business people, chick hunters, ball busters, corporate headhunters, construction workers, cooks, professors, gold diggers, Chinese family members, civil society organizers, and other types. I am obviously one of them, although I'd like to not define myself, kind of like rock band refuse to adhere to a style. I will be a nameless shadow on the wall of prejudices.

We are living in a very secure housing complex. There is expensive foreign food and security guards that x ray our bags at the entrance. Obviously this in no way makes me feel more secure because security is actually pretty lax and it is only a show. The security people are real friendly and like most of the Chinese army they just look like young enthusiastic farmers. Fun is to be had outside this little foreign city. Although I think the government (of both china and Canada) would probably like us to be nice little expo workers who stay at home in our foreign compound.

I went out the other night and the nightlife is still the same. Rich Chinese kids and foreign expats. Sometimes you meet cool people. There are actually quite a lot of cool people in Shanghai, its just that you meet so many people unlike yourself that you also meet a bunch of weirdo losers, the majority being perverts. Then again, Canada is full of perverts too. The world is probably a big perverted ghetto, thats why we love television.

Une Journée folle dans ma vie, encore une

Il faut voir et vivre la vie comme une expérience enchanté et inédite.
Je suis sortie se matin pour aller déjeuner avec Joel et ces compain. Ils étaient arrivé en ville samedi soir en allant en Ontario pour planter des arbres. Il y avaient Joel, son ami qui est aussi un drummer dans son group de musique et le cousin du drummer. Le drummer avaient des grosses dreds et le cousin du drummer une grosse barbe. Le jeune cousin m'a invité pour un joint le soir et en se réveillant se matin ils a aussi fumer en se réveillant. Nous avons été mage rau nouveau palais du pain des oeuf et du bacon.

Je suis revenue à la maison et Antoin m'a appelé. Je jouais de jeux vidéos, mais j'avais des plans avec lui. Il est venue te nous avons été jouer au pétancle avec un de ses amis Jonathan. C'était vraiment le fun. Ont buvais de la bière en tirant des gros morceaux de métal le plus près possible du cochon. Finalement Antoine a gagner toutes les joutes. Moi j'était près, mais je suis aussi facilement déconcentré.

Après 3 heures de pétancle nous avons été chez Mélika. J'ai joué un peu de piano et nous avons vite commencé avec des jouet en plastic Lego. Des cheveaux, des chameaux et des formes animales plastique partout sur la table, nous nous sommes amusé pendant au moins 30 minutes a les arrangés correctement pour des photos. Les meilleurs photos étaient sexuelles bien sûr. Des Lego qui se four.



Nous avons mangé et un des amis a Mélika est arrivé. C'était un de ses collègues du vieux Montréal. Nous avons cusiné des saucisse, des oignons frit avec des champignons, et une salade Grec avec une petite suaces au citron et miel. C'était très bon et nous avons aussi tôt aprés avoir mangé pris de phots en costumes de toutes les couleurs qui finalement ne nous insultait pas. Des perruques de toutes les couleurs, de vrais fous. J'ai ensuite été dans le salon jouer du piano. Antoine a emballé Mélika dans du plastique rouge. Nous avons pris des photos et Antoine a déballé Mélika pendant que je riais comme un fou. Antoine c'est ensuite perdu dans le plastique et nous avons eu un moment de folie collective.

Toronto, Lesbians and Communists

On my way back from that sweet paradise that is my girlfriends arms and the hellish place that is Michigan, I stopped for a few hours in Toronto to visit a friend. We are going to China together. He was just there and so we swapped stories from his trip there, my trip to Brazil, life and some things from way back. He had a friend there who just finished his studies in philosophy, but I don't think that is what we talked about. Toronto is a nice city and it is funny to realize that because all you hear in Montreal is that it is a horrible place with no life, no fun, and clean streets. What I saw is a lot of awesome looking restaurants, people that are really pretty fun and a nightlife that did seem a bit expensive. I really like their tramway.

We went to a weird bar because of a misinterpretation somewhere. We went to a lesbian folk show or something of the kind. Everyone was wearing plaid, hip haircuts, curved shoulders, big glasses. As more and more lesbians kept poring into the front door entrance I felt increasingly out of place as one of only 3 straight guys in the room. The music was odd with a big French horn/piano/drum player mixed with a banjo playing, hick looking little tiny women that sang like a 6 year old. She had a frail and emotional voice and sang things like "our hearts are really awkward". We left immediately after the end of the show and following a joyous discussion on the French porch I left knowing that everything would be fine in China.

Another 6 hours in the bus and I was in Montreal at 7 am. It was cold and rainy, just generally Montreal in the spring. People are not kidding when they complain about the weather here. I went for a great breakfast with my roommate who is just one of those people that is in high demand for coffees and breakfast because she makes them so enjoyable. She says thing like "I feel","I sense", "I apprehend" etc,. She is a great person. Later I had diner with my cousin. We had pork loins. It was very good, and I also watched some hockey with her. I guess I could have stayed longer, but i got nervous and left. My friend was supposed to call me and he hadn't. So I walked through Rosemont on the empty streets for about an hour. When i finally got home he called me and I had to leave the house again.

A mutual friend is a big Communist. I am not so friendly with him actually, but he is a friendly guy. He is from Columbia and my friend fears that he might get killed by right wing militias upon returning to his country. We got there and there weren't so many people. It was in a slightly dirty house in Hochelaga. Beer was 4 for 8$ and we took 2 each. People there were incredibly geeky. I listened to 2 people have a discussion about Star Wars game for like 10 minutes. People were signing these Communist songs like the international, in English and then in German! It made me realize how much you have to live in a different reality to be a Communist in Canada in 2010. It is a religion with rituals, tenets, an unattainable paradise, and all those things.

We left the religious folks and went to Le Cheval Blanc on Ontario. It was half full and the bartenders were playing country music that night, but the right kind of country. I told them they were turning the place into Saint-Hyacinthe. It took them a while to understand me. Then I told them I was from NewBrunswick and suddenly they were like "A c'est ça l'accent"... Il avait de la misère a me placer. There was a girl there with us and she was from Peru. I thought my friend was hitting on her, but then he told me she was a lesbian. So that was that. We had poutine at the Banquise, felt bad about it, hopped a cab, got home fell asleep.

Music of the night: Big in Japan, Tom Waits
LCD Soundstystem: New York I love you but you're Bringing me down

Leaving Michigan

My life always seems to be divided into neat little time periods of around 6 months. The last 4 months have definitely been one of those periods. Usually, my life is separated into where I live, this time it was what I was doing. I am finishing my research contract. I still have a to finish, but most of the work is done and now it is a question of putting the finishing touch on everything. I was lucky enough to be able to work from wherever I wanted to. I had the chance to go to Michigan, then Montreal for a week, then Moncton, then Montreal, then Sao Paulo, then Michigan. the travelling was fun, so was the work. Except that it was incredibly repetitious. I also have a problem with sitting in front of a computer screen with no human contact for 6-10 hours a day. I don't like what the computer does to my brain, it is very unhealthy. I become unfocused, I waste a lot of time because the work is repetitious, and I don't think linearly, instead, I think about many broken little things that interconnect. Translation work is a lot easier, I get to let my thoughts flow and just change the words. Writing is more gratifying though because I get to input my ideas.
It will be good to be unconnected and talk to people most of the day for the next 6 months. I look forward to the next 6 months, but I know that in my memory the last 4 months will be pleasant. Just like most of my pas life. I am so lucky really. I hope to pass that luck on to others.

Shopping in America

We went on a shopping road trip yesterday. We were in Auburn Hills, in the far Detroit suburbs. It was a lot like a giant mall in the middle of farmland. It was a pleasant shopping experience. The mall fills your whole mind. There is no window, and its built like a loop. So you are going in circles and entering shop after shop. It is a bit of a surreal experience. It reminded me a bit of Ikea. The only Ikea I have ever been to was in Shanghai, but it was a pretty amazing place. It is built like a circuit, and there is room after room of furniture, all arranged. It really creates a shopping experience.

I think that my American shopping experience was a bit like the American eating experience, a battle of man against food. In this case it was man against wallet, or against the exhaustion of shopping. This whole idea of going to a far away place and shopping for an entire day is a bit odd to me. In Montreal when I buy something I just go to a boutique and get that one item I need. I don,t go on a shopping spree. The mall is conceived to make you buy more than you need, and with as little effort or thought as possible. I think the abundance of things on display really makes you want to get one of the items, it's like going to a buffet, you want to get as much as you can,even if you aren't really that hungry.

I was there with a group of Chinese engineers. It is funny how they are still very Chinese, but put in this American context. It makes me think of myself in China, or any foreign country for that matter. You have to take what you like of the culture, and you end up refusing a lot of the stuff that simply isn't compatible with your beliefs or way of being. My friends here have a big problem with American food. I think they also don't enjoy American social life so much, or they simply don't have any connection to it. The whole college culture doesn't seem to attract them, nor does the bar drinking thing. I think they would be into the wholesome American side of things, but it seems to be hiding in houses, families and churches, and that's not easily accessible to a foreigner. It's odd that one of the easiest way of entering a culture is through debauchery.

Capoera

When I was in the south of Brazil with Canada World Youth this Capoera teacher came to the school where I worked every week. He was pretty amazing, he could do a backflip from nothing. The school was in a really poor neighborhood. it was meant to provide a place for the kids to come after their half day of school. a lot of them had fleas, some of them didn't eat enough and they got really cold in the winter. Anyway, one day the budget got cut and the budget to bring the teacher was cut. The teacher was saying his goodbyes and he started crying. He was a tough guy, real tough, but he was crying about the kids because they were so destitute. I used to do Capoera with all those kids.

Duck Killer

Some Asshole killed a ducked on the road. That is seriously the best part of Michigan, the Canadian geeses in the driveway coming home with SYT. But coming back today there was a dead pile of animal meat on the roadway. I really hate cars sometimes, most of the time in fact...

Humans are mean!

Me and my mother don't see eye to eye on this

I thought this was actual advice, according to my mother its about the absurdity of society... I guess I shouldn't look at things so literaly

Friendly Advice to a Lot of Young Men
Go to Tibet
Ride a camel.
Dye your shoes blue.
Grow a beard.
Circle the world in a paper canoe.
Subscribe to The Saturday Evening Post.
Chew on the left side of your mouth only.
Marry a woman with one leg and shave with a straight razor.
And carve her name in her arm.

Brush your teeth with gasoline.
Sleep all day and climb trees at night.
Hold your head under water and play the violin.
Do a belly dance before pink candles.
Kill your dog.
Run for mayor.
Live in a barrel.
Break your head with a hatchet.
Plant tulips in the rain.

But don't write poetry.

- Charles Bukowski

Anti-China Media Bias

This New York Times article ticked me off a bit. It wasn't a horrible subject. Except that it isn't saying anything new. China has been censuring the Internet for a long time now. But with Google leaving the country, the newsmedia seems to have noticed again. Reading the article you get China is a horrible place, where free speech is practically impossible, that's not the reality obviously. China is incredibly complex, and pretty much every opinion can be found, if one is willing to dig deep enough.

Chinese censorship works in a way that is very similar to western corporate media ownership. It doesn't completely erase all dissent, it just pushes dissenting voices far enough from the mainstream so that for a majority of people dissenting opinions are seen as marginal and unimportant. Obviously the Chinese government works in a more forceful way to impose its point of view. Reading the WikiLeaks site this week got me a bit distraught though. They claim to have been intimidated, and they were actually blocked in the US for a while after a judge ruled against them in a case brought forward by a bank.

All this to say that when I come to the US the anti-China message coming from the media always strikes me. I think Americans are a bit afraid of China. The political values in both countries are really different. The US was built on freedom of speech, religion, freedom to bear arms, a deep mistrust of government, freedom of enterprise, etc... China is a collectivist society. People accept the large presence of government in most affairs as natural. They do not believe that the individual is more important than society, and as such the individual should kind of "shut up" and be as they are told. People in China accept censorship, polls have shown this. People accept limited freedoms.

I read the introduction to Mitt Romney's book the other day while doing the groceries. He was talking about a short trip to China he made. He talked to students in Pekin University and he couldn't understand why they didn't revolt against their government, why they didn't follow in the footsteps of the Tiananmen protesters. He couldn't understand that people don't necessarily have the same values, and that some people can accept the loss of some rights, if it means a certain measure of wealth and security. The difference between China and the US is the level to which we are asked to make this compromise. People talk about a clash of civilization between the west and Islam, but Islam is really similar to Europe and the US. China takes things to another level on some aspects. People are afraid of difference, hopefully the fear won't become violent.