Entries for August, 2008
24/08/08
Waiting for the Olympic closing ceremony to start...
What a legacy of attention to China. Soon enough I'll be in Shenzhen, if events haven't unfolded that prevent our entry. I saw some boxing on TV; That was cool. I saw some kind of choreographed contortion that resembled circus but with rules! I don't know what it was called. I missed some other interesting stuff like martial arts and I missed anything else too. I'm not a patriot and feeling rather geographically and, especially, nationally unassociated or dissociative (or "whatever") and nomadic, I see the Olympic and many other internationalist events limited by their structure of competition. Surprising to see that China has twice as many gold medals as America in second? That's because spread evenly like butter or something within it's borders, is that hugely dense population (not to mention it's administration). Oh, and why is Germany behind Australia? Steffen tells me it's because Australia buys competitors. Considering a taxing policy firmly established through intimidation (Aren't they all?), What's more important than the Olympic games?
I promise, no more political discussion. References at best, since I'm reading an autobiography of an American in China... And idealism is generally spared as private.
Today I deep fried some more of my interpretation of vege spring rolls.
Written by choben at 08:47 PM.
25/08/08
I got up this afternoon with no particular determination, and I'm floating around the apartment doing the unnecessary: eating and taking photos of fruit, watching TV, turning on my computer - unwilling to play video-games... And I seem to have forgotten to read my book, study Chinese characters, study Japanese, try to read my Malay book, fix the bicycle (attach a second pedal!), go anywhere or do anything. I have decided to leave organising my teaching experience testimonials for the nifty certificate III to the two weeks before we set off for Shenzhen because I want to organise all my luggage and send one costly package to Home-in-Oz.
I went through a dilemma on the sofa today; Steffen told me that our friend told him that her English language school told her that they want us to work for them as they sponsor our work permit. It's tempting as I effectively have no money when I go to Japan and originally wanted to work a year as a teacher but, I want to go to Japan. I have someone to go with and I've paid for the flight to Shenzhen. I'm now aware that there are work prospects should I wish to come back to the area and stay and, I'll most-likely be back in the area next year on the way to Australia, depending how far I can afford to go!
Written by choben at 10:38 PM.
26/08/08
Frustration - I can't wait to change my spectrum of reality again. Having a modern house and no job is, to me, like having a cosy jail cell in a cave in a fantastical, Scandinavian forest. The janitor isn't telling me how ridiculous the wild dances in the outside cold are, but CNN tells me... so much...
Again, procrastination patterns and shortening attention span... Body under-stimulated, eyes overstimulated (by spurts of reading and TV), and brain over-irradiated.
Steffen just finished his plastic coconut that I bought him the other day while I was drinking an authentic one, and pulled out of the fridge. It had been briefly neglected but it included all of the tasty parts: water and hastily scraped slivers of flesh... He is laughing at home videos from when he was five years old onwards and becoming more and more demonstrably and hysterically amused; I don't want to be mean saying so, but it's hard not to react as such displays of amusement are only naturally expressed in the presence of others. A couple of times, I have carefully responded - or not - neutrally to his attempts at sharing his amusement. It's interesting that although we may now share relatively similar attitudes, his family situation can seem too unalike for me to relate too. Such is the respective context for humour. My family has always represented a sort of cynical satire to me; a conditionally wearing and predictably unpredictable roller-coaster of over-extending, petty tragedy implied by paradoxical complexities - a black comedy - that could overshadow Shakespeare in the oddly exclusive arena of English literature; If only it would be communicated. I miss it, now that I'm experiencing a different family of green grass. A sufficiently-more-innocently carved person would likely be disgusted by a second-hand account of my growth in detail; not because of any particularly recognisable significant human tragedy, but the effects on the intellect - not emotion - that a clear perspective of the futilities my family members could persistently contribute would conjure. So I speculate in boredom and wordy naivety.
I chatted with the Malay boy (that could have been older than me) at the roadside stall where I bought coconuts yesterday. Nicely contesting local prejudices, he told me that he had learned Chinese from his ethnic Chinese girlfriend, after he inquired to my usage of limited Bahasa Maleyu; A common perception is a lazy and uneducated Malay who depends on the support of the government. Chinese-Malaysians often share the opinion that they are pressured to study many languages at school, whereas Malays only learn "BM" (Bahasa Maleyu). My acquaintance was apparently a superior character. He briefly confirmed my claim in BM to a broken bicycle before I left by briefly trying to thread my pedal back in to the crank. I had just been riding for exploration's sake, mug-shot a live exhibit over the wall of an ostrich farm, discovered a random town and managed to break my pedal off by standing on it in front of a full-house in a restaurant, in the middle of the road. I had left the apartment bare-foot but, even I was self-conscious pedalling back with one foot while the other awkwardly rotated the crank the rest of the way.
Written by choben at 11:00 PM.
