Six months is long enough, isn't it?

So, I've been incredibly lazy and demotivated in the last six months. As is typical for China (and, indeed, anywhere) I've been hit with the "no good deed goes unpunished" thing this year and had, thereby, my life sucked out of me. I could rant for a while on this subject, but I think it's better, given the catching up I have to do, to just give you the executive summary: three of the foreign teachers at the main campus of WUISS did such a good job and were so popular with the students that in punishment for this we were sent to the Sweathogs campus (a.k.a. "The East Lake Campus of Wuhan University International Software School, a business division of Wuhan University"). So instead of having 14 hours per week with students that were an active joy to teach, I got, last term, only six hours with students of that calibre and 10 hours with the Sweathogs. (Yes, they increased my teaching hours by two so I could have more exposre to these dullards!) These students, in particular my early Friday class, are so worthless—not just as students but in many cases as human beings—that I just found myself not wanting to think about things.

Added into this was the increasing stress of my imminent fatherhood. Joan, as can be seen in the picture next to this paragraph, was increasingly obviously going to be changing my life still further with a bouncing baby basketball child of some indeterminate gender (you're not allowed to know this in advance in China and Joan didn't want to spend the money it would take to get the answer through bribery). The nervousness I felt around this I couldn't let show because Joan was already nervous enough for about fifteen people. I instead kept it bottled inside and pretended to not be worried.

Joan, in retrospect, is a pretty incredible girl. Where most women in China won't work for three months before giving birth, Joan was working literally up to the night before the exciting series of hospital visits leading to final delivery of our child. Those hospital visits in themselves were nerve-wracking—we went three times with false labour before we finally got the real thing—and in retrospect I'm very happy that the school completely screwed up in organizing a special class (it was to have started on the 7th of January but actually started on the 14th) because I'd have been useless in the classroom while all that was going on. As it was, I didn't feel particularly useful, but at least I could be there a little bit.

(I had to keep rushing home, you see, on the off chance the school gave me the information I needed for my classes so I could plan. In the end I had three days' notice to plan for a 14-day—uninterrupted!—course where I taught over four terms of English in two weeks to a single class. Three. Days'. Notice.)

Anyway, by now anybody who actually bothers to read this blog already knows that on the 9th of January, at 12:40AM, in the city of Wuhan, Lucas Richter (a.k.a. 王森鋭 – Wang Senrui) was born to two loving, exhausted and emotionally drained parents. It was a difficult delivery, made even more difficult by the fact that he weighed 4.35kg (9.57 pounds) that finally led to delivery by caesarian section. Still, it's all over now and Joan is recovering nicely from the surgery, albeit getting a wee bit cranky at our child. (Ironically I have more experience with babies than Joan seeing as I was babysitting at about the same time she was born....)

Lucas is, as of yesterday, one month old and has already wrought massive changes to our life. Now of course some of this is because of the horrific weather we've been having—China is experiencing the worst winter in living memory right now, but I'll be saying more on that later, complete with pictures—which has crammed us all, effectively, into the only heated room in the apartment. (I have a small space heater in the office, so I can do work there, but it's not very comfortable.) This crazy weather is beginning to let up, but we're still all stuck in that one room complete with jury-rigged bed extension for Joan's mother to sleep on. Still, all that aside, Lucas is now the master of our household. When he wants to eat, he eats (or our ears bleed – our choice). When he wants to sleep (which isn't often enough...) he sleeps. And, of course, when he decides that he wants to sleep on a person, not on a pile of blankets so soft it would embarrass a cloud? He sleeps on a person. (The choice, again, is that or our eardrums bleed.)

On the whole, though, to be fair to the little tyke, he's been good. I've babysat for kids far more prone to squalling and I've heard the horror stories of not getting any sleep at night because that's when the baby is active. Lucas sleeps through most of the night without fussing, waking up only at midnight and, typically, 5AM for feeding. A minor adjustment to my sleep/wake cycle will account for those late night feedings without me getting too wiped out by lack of sleep.

Lucas, at this point, according to everybody, looks a lot like me. (This will, of course, change and already has.) He's a big-'un and he definitely has my eye shape. His nose, to me, looks more like Joan's and his eye colour....

Well, people keep asking me about the colour of his eyes. I keep having to say "I don't know". It's frankly quite embarrassing, but the truth is that, despite Lucas' eyes having opened long ago (first glimpse of them was day 3 -- by now he's looking at things and actively tracking movement) I still can't really describe his eye colour. The eyes are dark. Very dark. But not dark like Chinese eyes which reach the point of almost looking black. There's a hint of blue to them. Or something. Maybe dark hazel? I have an idea. Click on the picture next to this paragraph (I took a closeup) and decide for yourself. Maybe then you can tell me what colour the eyes are.

Anyway, that's enough catching up for today. I promise that I will restart blogging with something resembling regularity so that my mother doesn't kill me. I'll also have more pictures to show next time around (it takes a while to upload these things!) including what it looks like in Wuhan when there's more than three days of snow in a winter.

And another blogger in the family

Joan has a blog because I forced her to start one at gunpoint (or so she'll claim if asked). Pop on over and have a look. You'll have to have a font that displays Chinese to read the stuff that Joan didn't write herself, I'm afraid to report.

Announcing the family's newest blogger!

I said I would announce the family's newest blogger and I'm a man of my word. Without further ado (or adon't, for that matter), here is...

My mother's blog.

Yeah, I know. Not the announcement that was expected after the last blog entry, but Joan still hasn't come around to the idea of blogging yet. Now that my mother has one, though, she's going to make one of her own.

Catching up.

It's been a long time since I've posted here. I have a good excuse, however: I'm a lazy bastard.

Now in my defence, since the last time I posted I did my exams (a brain-melting activity), calculated marks (an exercise in creative justifications) and then started working on my project with Jeff full time. These all interfered with my mental energy in writing blog entries. Too, I'm back to my old trouble: the things I write about are, to me, after six years in this country, everyday and commonplace. It's hard for me to believe that any of this could be even slightly interesting. Still, my mother has not-so-subtly hinted...

Joan, my little mother-to-be, is progressing well in pregnancy. Everything is going according to The List I was given (a list from an experienced father of what to expect as the mother goes through the assorted physical, mental and emotional changes of pregnancy). I'm not going into details, but just rest assured that it's all according to The List.

One problem Joan faces (and, therefore, so do I) is that she has nothing that takes up her time. She's never learnt how to handle free time. In her whole life she's never had any. She's been invariably studying or working (or, more often, both). This interacts very badly with so-called "morning sickness". (Why is it called this? Because calling it "twenty-four-by-seven nausea" is bad salesmanship....) A typical day after she stopped working basically consisted of Joan sitting around the home, sleeping, disturbing me at my work and complaining about an upset stomach.

We found a cure for this, however, on Sunday. An old friend from my previous school invited us out to where he lives over the summer. (Basically a palatial house rented by a foreign engineer in the middle of one of Wuhan's largest parks.) Joan likes Robert (the friend in question), likes Xin Xia (Robert's girlfriend) and was really looking forward to the visit. The visit was amiable, fun and wound up, as most visits here do, in a restaurant for supper, together with our hostess (the Australian wife of the Dutch engineer who rents the palace). Joan ate, drank, chatted and generally had a good time -- and to both our surprise she didn't get sick. She had an appetite, and then didn't chuck it back up afterwards.

This sealed it for me. Joan's going to have to find a hobby or something to do during the day so she's not dwelling on her morning sickness. When she's occupied she is happy, perky, cheerful and not at all sick. When she's left to her own devices her life is miserable. I don't like seeing her miserable.

One suggestion (thanks, Mom!) that I've received is for Joan to start a blog of her own. I'm trying now to gently coax her to that idea, so hopefully it happens. If it does, I'll announce my family's newest blogger with great fanfare right here.

But Mom? Turnabout is fair play. I have no idea what's going on in your life. Maybe it's time for you and Andy to start a small blog?...

Baby pictures are in!

Not much to say here. Just click on the photo to the right and look at my child through the glorious wonders of ... black and white ... something.

It's Official. My life is disturbing.

So, yesterday was the Big Day, news-wise. By the time it all settled down, though, I was too drained to have the energy to write. So today is the day I try to settle down and organise my thoughts to transmit not only the news, but a taste of my life over the past year and a bit.

Of course all of this starts in March 18th, 2006. A lot of things -- basically the meaningful bits of my whole life -- started then. Of course Joan, being Chinese, and me, being a bit of a traditionalist at times, thought the whole point of marriage was to have children. For a variety of reasons, however, we didn't seriously start working on this until July of 2006. Well, OK. October.

Still, by the end of January we started to get a little suspicious. People around us who got married at about the time we did (or, in many cases, long after we did!) were in a family way, but our oven had no bun. February through March heightened all suspicion to the point that in April we decided enough was enough. It was time to bring in medical opinion. (And, of course, by "we" I mean "Joan". I would find it hard to consider anything less appealing to me than going to a doctor for this kind of thing. Even in Canada, where notions like "privacy" aren't just known but actively enforced I'd be antsy. Here in China? Where people discuss their most intimate personal details openly in public with a thousand others around? And where people are endlessly fascinated with even the most minute detail of foreigners' lives? "Antsy" isn't strong enough a word. Remind me to tell you of Joan's first experience with how foreigners are treated here in China sometime.)

A lot of dates are getting branded on my brain around this time of year. March 18th. April 30. May 14. May 19. April 25.

April 30 was our first trip to a hospital specialising in reproductive medicine. It was an abortive attempt (no pun intended) but it really heightened just how uncomfortable I was going to the hospital in China for problems like this. The doctor sat at a desk in an office and people just clustered around competing for her attention. When they got it, they blurted out their problems openly. And, of course, when Joan started talking, everybody was staring at me and listening intently. The result of it, however, was that the doctor suggested that another hospital would be better for this particular problem -- specifically the big one here: Tongji.

We decided to take that doctor's advice and arranged for a trip to Tongji hospital, finally getting there on May 14. There I had my panic attack as the number of people involved was truly incredible to behold. There was just no way in Hell I was going to have this potential problem discussed out in the open with literally hundreds of people in earshot. The visit was cancelled.

Well, almost cancelled.

Joan tried one last time to get actual information from the "Information Desk" and this time actually got it. There was a speciality clinic in a completely different part of the hospital than we had been sent to, you see. And when Joan went to check it out, she found it to be actually civilised. Private consultations, for example, with the top professor. Private. Closed door, even. I jumped at it like a shot.

(Well, actually I didn't. I still wasn't happy with the whole situation, but this I was willing to face at least.)

An hour later, after a strange man had fondled my genitalia and pronounced them structurally sound, I found myself in the lab building in a private room ... How can I put this delicately? Extracting seeds. Yeah. That's the way to word it. I found myself in a private room (or as private as the Chinese can imagine a private room to be -- the glass was frosted) extracting seeds. Into a small plastic cup. Surrounded by classic paintings featuring nudes (since actual pornography is technically illegal here). The cup was handed over to a technician and we waited for the results.

The results, after interpretation by the professor, were not good. Basically a low motile sperm count with a larger-than-average proportion of malformed cells. What we had suspected turned into a true nightmare. This was the low point of the week.

Slowly over the week we recovered from the shock and started investigating things which could be done. The news wasn't exactly encouraging, but neither was it hopeless. I wasn't sterile. I just had reduced fertility. I did a lot of research, as did Joan and we started to plan sort of a reverse of the Catholic "rhythm" method of birth control. Joan was a real trooper as we investigated and planned, proving once again that I had made a very good choice in marriage. (Her choice? We're still debating her taste in that....)

That Friday, however, I noticed a few things that had me curious. First, Joan was late with her period. Way late. As in, by that point, six days late. This is not the first time that's happened, though. In fact it was the third. The record was almost two weeks late, in fact. So missing the period wasn't a strong sign. There were, however, other things that weren't adding up for me. Small subtle changes in Joan that I hadn't seen before. Things that added up to me, on Friday, asking Joan what she thought and us agreeing that on that Sunday we'd go get a home pregnancy test to see what the scoop was.

I'll segue a bit here and describe a minor incident that happened Friday morning. I was shifting some clothing around from storage to use and stumbled across a small plastic bag with what looked like a small box of pills. That evening, before we started to talk about the possibility of Joan being pregnant, I asked Joan -- as a kind of afterthought while doing something else -- what they were, pulling them out and glancing over them quickly. Joan gave some vague thing about "women's stuff" and I dropped them back where they belonged. No alarm bells rang. Later, as we went to bed, I noticed that Joan had left that drawer slightly open, but again no alarms rang.

Fast forward to Saturday morning. That would be the 19th. A day before we agreed to go out and get a pregnancy kit. At 5:30AM I get woken up by a voice saying "Michael? Michael? Wake up." As I clawed my way toward consciousness, that same voice added "You're going to be a father." As I struggled to make sense of my suddenly upside-down world, I realised what had happened. That "box of pills"? Was a home pregnancy check. Joan was already suspicious a couple of days before I started to get suspicious and had picked up the kit. She wanted to test without me knowing in case it would raise false hopes. But the hopes weren't false. The kit showed "pregnant".

So consider the timing. On Monday I was told I was low fertility. That it would be a lot of work and effort (and possibly even require in vitro) to make a child. Quite possibly the lowest point in my life. Then on Saturday of the same week I'm told that I'm about to be a father. Quite possibly the highest point in my life, second only, maybe, to March 18, 2006. The timing of all of this is very disturbing.

Later calculation has us figuring that conception occurred on April 25th, incidentally. Which means that Joan was pregnant already before we visited even the first doctor, not to mention the one who fondled my genitals and pronounced me infertile.

Of course I'm still a cynical bastard, so, although I told a few people about this already, I didn't blog it until today because home pregnancy kits aren't 100% certain. But yesterday Joan and her mother went to that first hospital and had a proper lab check done and it's now official. Joan is pregnant and I'm going to be a father.

Easter Sunday of the Living Dead

Sunday was my family's day for 清明 (Qingming or "Grave-sweeping Festival"). It also happened to be Easter, something which completely escaped my attention this year until this Monday morning I had lots of people I know online wish me a Happy Easter. Knowing this, in retrospect it was probably good that I didn't mix the two in some way. There would be something disconcerting about mixing the Resurrection with visiting a graveyard that indicates, to me at any rate, that I've watched a few too many zombie movies.

I've ruminated about this in the past, but I think the Chinese attitude toward death is far healthier than what I see in the west. We're so afraid of death that we put it away in sterile, white rooms that smell of nasty chemicals. We fill bodies full of other chemicals so that we don't have to admit that the person isn't in the room with us any more. We like the illusion that the deceased are merely sleeping. It gets so extreme that even the slightest hint of death -- old age, we like to call it, although given our proclivity toward euphemism we change even those words around to "golden years" or "senior citizens" or the like -- and we lock up the poor people suffering from it in "retirement communities" and just have them shuffle around among strangers until they pass on. Those last two words, of course, being another euphemism for that subject we don't dare mention. They die.

Funerals in the west, as well as visits to the grave, are sombre affairs. Everybody wears thoughtful or sad faces and dresses as if they were themselves dead to commemorate the occasion. Tears are normal and expected. Laughter and gaiety are not. There are exceptions of course. The Irish throw a really good party to celebrate a life instead of a flood of tears to mourn a death. The most common, however, is to be super-serious and super-sombre.

The Chinese are not that way.

This is my third visit to the tomb of my father-in-law (plus assorted other family members). It's also my third chance to observe the Chinese treatment of death. By sheer good fortune I have, across those three visits, managed to see most stages of said treatment. The first time was just my then-fiancée, my future mother-in-law and some other assorted family members. That trip was like a family picnic. People brought food and drink and the family had a good time chatting and laughing and having conversations. (Some of those present didn't talk very much, but that's to be expected considering that they're basically just ashes.) This, from observing both my family and the families of those around us at the time, seems to be the normal case.

The second time I went there was, not too far from our last stop (for which c.f. below) a lady who had obviously just lost her husband. She was still in mourning and was shedding tears and crying loudly, chanting some kind of litany about how miserable her life had become since her husband was gone. She had two teen-aged children with her who were looking decidedly uncomfortable and embarrassed at her display, so I'm assuming this is not normal behaviour. Everybody else was carefully looking everywhere else except at her, so they too kind of tell me that's not normal. Too, the second time was a watershed event in the family. An old family feud was in the process of healing (partially triggered by my then-impending marriage, I think) and some family members who'd never visited the grave of my then-future father-in-law before were present. They too were sombre and spilled tears as they spoke to him. It was short, however, and life went on shortly after that.

This time the same people were there again, and there was no hint of tears. It was back to being a family picnic, only this time the family was whole -- the old rift seems to be healing fast. If my intuition of this resulting from Joan's marrying me is correct, I'm happy to have been a part of that.

Anyway, back to the visit. It was a nice, sunny day and all the sellers of paper goods were out in full force. For those who don't know, it is traditional to burn paper "money" and other paper goods as gifts for the dead. What you burn as paper, you see, turns into the real thing on the other side for the use of your loved one. Last year I bought my future father-in-law a car, an expensive watch and an electronic dictionary (so we could talk). This year I only got him a 麻将 (Majiang or Mah-jong) set. And, of course, he got lots of money. Interestingly, last year, when I suggested cutting out pictures of beautiful girls from magazines and burning those, I got an elbow in the ribs from Joan. She thought it was funny, but that if I did that her mother would kill me. This year you could buy paper dolls of beautiful women.... I really think I should have got a commission for the idea!

(Just how seriously do the Chinese take this paper thing? I honestly don't know. I suspect most of them know it's not real and treat it the way they do -- with some gonzo things like large paper houses, etc. -- for the same reason adults talk "seriously" about Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny. Yet sometimes the Chinese can be almost frighteningly superstitious. Don't give anybody a number that ends with 144, for example....)

The first stop on the tour is to Joan's grandparents. (Grandfather: 1904-1977. Grandmother: 1913-1989.) There we cleaned the grave, left an offering of sunflower seeds, peanuts and soda. We burned special funerary candles, "money" and tea leaves. Everybody present bowed three times to the grave. (There is an order to who bows when, but I haven't figured it out. The age of the participants is part of it, but there's other stuff involved too that I just can't fathom. It always resulted in me going last, however.) Once we finished with all that, the cute part happens. Any of the food that the grandparents didn't eat was assumed unwanted and we took it with us to visit the next grave.

The next grave, Joan's aunt (1945-1994), is a long way away up the hill. Unlike the first grave which is just a square box in a concrete wall, this is a proper gravestone. It's painted in red because she liked that colour a lot. Again food and sodas were offered. Money was burned, as was incense and those special candles. A ribbon was wrapped around the tombstone and flowers inserted. We bowed and, again, the food and drink were recycled.

A new "business" has started this year in the graveyard. Strangers will come up to people who are honouring their ancestors and will burn about 0.01RMB worth of paper "money", bow to the headstone and then claim that they did something for your ancestors so you should give them money. Funereal begging, in other words. It disgusts me a little. OK, a lot.

After that little unpleasant incident, we trundled off back down the hill and about half-way back to where the grandparents were to visit my father-in-law (1950-1992). Yes, we walked past his grave to get to the aunt's grave. I'll let you see if you can figure out the pattern. (I'll give you a hint: there's a reason why I'm putting those years in there.)

At that grave we did the same routine. Clean the grave, put out the food (he got a lot more than the others!), burn lots of money (plus the 麻将 set), left flowers, bowed and then recycled the food he didn't want to eat. It was while this was going on that I "lucked" into seeing the last piece of the Chinese funereal puzzle. I saw not one, but two funeral processions.

Funerals here aren't like Irish wakes. They are serious. There's none of this nonsense of wearing black and crying and carrying on, however. There is instead a processional march. The remains of the departed are in a box wrapped in lovely brocade. The first procession had people carrying big, ornate "bouquets" (for want of a better word) made out of what looked like coloured Mylar and ribbons. Each of these things had a single character in the middle which I am reliably informed (by Joan) means "mourning". The second procession didn't have this, however.

What both processions did have, however, was music. The music is slow, but not morbid. It's seemingly intended to make people think instead of dance or cry. The people had serious expressions one and all, but nobody in either procession was crying or making a scene. It was interesting to watch -- and watch it I did, although I had to be careful. I don't know what is and isn't permitted, so I can't just stare and take photos.

And while I'm writing this I'm struck with a thought: a lot of people live long periods of time in China. How many of them have even seen what I'm describing? There's so much that is unseen tucked away in the nooks and crannies of any culture, isn't there?

One Year Ago Today...

One year ago today the unfathomable occurred. A lovely, young, vivacious, otherwise-intelligent Chinese girl by the name of 王琼 (Joan Wang) consented to marry a cynical, cranky Canadian. Friends and relatives of said Canadian flew in from Canada unable to believe, without seeing it with their own eyes, that their Michael Richter was actually getting married.

One year ago today they saw it all. I really had no choice, in the end. Once I met Joan in 九江, it was pretty much inevitable that I would fall in love with her and seek to marry her. Joan, however, had a choice and, in an incredible event that warped both time and space in its significance, nonetheless chose me. Not a day has gone by without my wondering what I did to deserve such a perfect girl. My end conclusion was that I must have done something truly spectacular in a past life, because nothing in this life can explain what happened.

One year ago today this lovely girl and I both had to adjust. I had to adjust to a life spent, now, with someone else. I had to learn to give more and take less. I had to learn how to be a good husband and a decent person. I had to learn how to stop having money flow from my hands like water from a faucet. It was hard learning it all -- I still haven't accomplished it completely -- but worth every minute and every hard lesson. For her part Joan had less to learn. What she mostly had to learn -- or at least exercise -- was forgiveness as a cranky man set in his ways painfully adjusted to a newer, better life.

One year ago today 王琼 changed my life forever for the better.

One year ago today.

First Week Ruminations

The first week back is always fun (in the ironic sense of that last word). Lots of things have to come together all at once:

• I have to get used to waking up at 6AM every day again.
• I have to figure out where my classes actually are (as opposed to where I've been told they are).
• I have to re-introduce myself to my students because, as with students anywhere in the world, they've forgotten everything they learned prior to their long vacation.
• I have to get back into the whole "delivering information" mode that's atrophied over a month of disuse.

After five years of this, though, this all becomes increasingly easy. (Except for that first item.)

So, this week I just did a mostly teacher-talk lesson. I had to go over the previous exam and identify the strong points (many!) and the weak points (only two) the students had. I also started off the extracurricular activities I have planned for this term -- in effect replacing the school's anemic "English Corner" with one that the students actually want to attend. And, finally, I went over a brief look at what was happening this term. (The secret words are "public speaking".)

One thing I've found I really like with this batch of students is their eagerness overall. In five of my seven classes, for example, we actually had to elect people into the positions for running the new English Corner. Enough people were interested in the position that I didn't have to appoint anybody in the remaining two. I put my contact information -- notably my instant messenger accounts -- up on the screen and now have at least a dozen students who've gone to get GoogleTalk accounts to speak with me online. From this I stumbled over a couple who are avid Linux users and a couple more who, because I'm using Linux, want to give it a try. So now I think I'll also be arranging a WUISS Ubuntu User's Group as an outside activity to help these newcomers learn more about Linux. I've also ordered 300 CDs from Canonical's free "shipit" service to give as gifts to the students.

So, now the week is over and the weekend upon me (and also almost over) I find I'm a little bit lonely. Joan went off on a junket with her female colleagues arranged as part of International Women's Day (little-known trivia: the Mandarin pronunciation of the date -- 三八 or "sanba" -- is a homonym for a Cantonese epithet for women). She left very early Saturday morning and her mother subsequently took off for a while to the apartment in Hanyang (like she does most weekends). As a result I've been here mostly by myself which is now sufficiently unusual that it's actually uncomfortable. I guess that means I'm well and truly used to married life.

Something I'm still not used to is back pain. (You'd think that by now I would be, wouldn't you?) While under control, it sometimes flares up and this last month of inactivity made it flare up more. Following this with the week of lugging a laptop to and from class has left my back in pretty bad shape. The medication is controlling it -- I'm only taking it when it flares really badly -- but I'm running out of it to the tune of eight remaining doses. After that I'm going to have to either get some more shipped to me at tremendous expense or go on another likely-fruitless search for methocarbamol here in China.

Windows Security And Other Oxymorons

So, last time I installed Windows on Joan's laptop (my old Sony), I made a mistake. I installed Windows.

OK. More seriously, I made the mistake of installing anti-virus software after connecting to the network. Long before protection was in place her system had viruses up and running which could not be cleaned out with any anti-virus application. Still, the system was usable and there's no other Windows systems on the network for her to infect, so we left things lying.

Lying, that is, until her system was slowed down so much under the assault of viruses and adware that just minimising a window would take longer than 30 seconds.

So today it was "back up all your data so I can reinstall all the software in the known universe" day. This time, however, I did the smart thing and installed Windows, installed an anti-virus package, then installed the network. If this doesn't work, I'm going to tell Joan that she's got no choice. It's time to switch to Linux.

Happy Birthday To Me

So, today is my birthday. I've already talked about the present I got (and the amusing way in which it was bought) in yesterday's blog entry. Today I'll talk about the birthday itself. I'll be updating this entry as the day progresses so stay tuned.

My day opens up with the best present possible: waking up next to the beautiful girl who was somehow sufficiently brain-damaged to become my wife. After that a printer is next to nothing.

I woke up long before Joan did, so I spent much of the morning watching her and listening to her snore lightly. I also experimented with moving around and watching her move after me (although this had the side effect of continually shrinking the space available to me on the bed). Finally she woke up and wished me a happy birthday. We then got up.

Joan's mother had been busy. When we got up, we were faced with the traditional birthday...

...noodles. Yes. You read that right. Birthday noodles. You were expecting cake?! Which country do you think I live in again?

In China the birthday tradition is to make a bowl of "long life noodles" -- basically a spicy noodle soup with slices of beef, vegetables, mushrooms and other things (this one had spicy sticky rice dumplings, for example)
-- and, to be strictly traditional, share it with family and neighbours. (We decided to keep it in the family, however. We're not that traditional. Our neighbours aren't Chinese and wouldn't understand the meaning of it anyway.)

That's it for the morning report. Stay tuned as I update my birthday report over the day.

Afternoon update:
Joan had to go to the dentist today to get her braces adjusted, so I was left pretty much alone all afternoon. I tinkered with my printer, mostly, figuring out how to make it do its tricks and such. I also, as an acid test, printed off an e-book I'd been wanting to get run off at a print shop for a while. The new printer is sweet: fast and yet with good quality output. This even though the Linux drivers don't support it fully.

Evening update:
My birthday dinner was delicious. Joan's mother bought some 夫妻肺片 (Lit. "Married Couple Lung Pieces" -- mysteriously named because as far as I know there's no lung pieces in it, nor any married couples), a dish consisting of sliced beef, sliced beef tripe, sliced beef blood vessels, peanuts -- all in a peppery, garlic oil sauce. Other dishes included 腐乳 (fermented "cream tofu"), a marinated tofu and pepper dish, some Chinese cabbage hearts, and fried, spicy fish.

After dinner my friend from SCUM dropped by with his girlfriend. Oh, and a new coffee maker as my birthday present, so now its time to find some decent coffee.

Night-time update:
So, I headed out for my night-time walk and fell into a mud puddle, coming home dripping wet. Fun, fun, fun. Still a decent birthday overall.

Shopping Shell Games

Today was spent buying my birthday present (a new HP Deskjet D2368 printer). I had spent yesterday looking at printers while Joan and her mother were out shopping for clothes (without, as usual, buying any) and then the evening figuring out which printer would work with my Linux system.

I always have fun watching Joan while shopping. Joan is a natural bargainer who, despite always being friendly and polite and nice, manages to cut throats like a pro assassin. She will bargain for almost anything -- I really do pity the poor fool of a car dealer that mistakenly believes that he can slide one past her when we come to Canada....

What I noticed, however, that is really alien to we westerners in China, is the culture of deceit that pervades everything here. Taxes are avoided as much as possible, but only if the buyer is willing to trust that the seller isn't going to screw them over on warranties or the like. Fake goods are everywhere and quick changes can happen when your back is turned. Even something as simple as price tags are not indicative of the price -- they are the starting point of negotiation. Anybody who pays the price tag on any sizable purchase is a fool. This is true whether or not the place you're buying from is a major chain or a small corner shop, incidentally.

Starting prices can vary significantly depending on a wide variety of circumstances including:

• the seller's guess as to what you can afford
• what kind of relationship the seller has with his supplier
• whether the seller is a woman or a man (men tend to be more push-overs)
• whether the goods are legit or not (fake goods -- of any kind! -- are epidemic-level)
• whether you want an "official receipt" (tax receipt), an "informal receipt" (proof of purchase, but otherwise under the table) or no receipt at all
• how willing you are to just leave and not buy
  
• how many other people sell the same thing
• what kind of store is selling the goods
• what your skin colour is (the Chinese can be insanely racist at times -- and foreigners get stiffed, always)

How wide can this vary? Well, the lowest initial price we got from a shop was 320元 and the highest was 495. And the final price for what I got was 300, with an official receipt. (Joan is very good at "salami tactic" brinksmanship.)

Of course Joan then found out that the expensive part of printers isn't the printer, it's the ink. (290元 for a black and a colour cartridge.)

Another interesting ritual whenever buying anything major in China is the unpacking and verifying contents ritual. The printer I got was in an HP box with HP seals all over it and HP-branded packing tape covering every possible means of ingress or egress. Yet, before money changed hands, the seller brought out a carpet knife, deftly sliced the tape and seals, opened the box and showed us that it contained everything it was supposed to contain: printer, cables, manual, disk, trial cartridges, warranty card, etc.

I've been buying computer hardware all of my adult life in Canada and never felt the need to open up branded items to verify contents, but here it is necessary. If you don't do it, you will get ripped off someday. I know this because I know several foreigners who did get ripped off this way: "1GB" flash disks, for example, that turned out to be deftly switched for 256MB ones -- all sold without a receipt, of course, so no way to get what you were supposed to get. The seller has notoriously short memory when faced with a customer he's ripped off without a receipt....

(Just a friendly clue: never buy anything in China that's worth more than about 10元 without a receipt if there's any chance whatsoever that you may need to trade it in or get it repaired.)

So, anyway, fun observations at an end, my day ended well with a nice new printer and another blog entry about the weirdness that is my life in China.

Down The Rabbit Hole

Only it's not a rabbit hole this time. It's....

Let's back up a bit.

So, this afternoon Joan goes to the washroom. (We have a squat toilet here to Joan's delight and my eternal unhappiness.) As she prepares to go, the gold chain around her neck which has my father's old wedding band on it unlatches and slithers down her chest and into the toilet.

The wedding band, luckily, lands next to the toilet on the floor.

Still, the chain is down the "rabbit hole" -- about a one-meter drop down to the trap. (This, incidentally, is why I prefer western toilets. I mean another reason why. As disgusting as it would be, I could, in a western toilet, just reach my hand in and grab the chain.) Further, the way the plumbing is set up, to get to the trap and open it to gather the chain would require us to go to our neighbour downstairs. Who isn't at home, this being Spring Festival and all that. On top of that, we need a monkey wrench to open the trap, a tool I sadly do not have in my toolbox. Of course we could just hire a plumber but since this is Spring Festival season the for-hire workers we can usually not throw a brick for fear of hitting three or four on the head are nowhere to be seen.

So we've been using half-assed measures like snipped coat hangars tied to wooden poles trying to snag the chain from the toilet. As of 5:30PM today, about an hour after the incident happened, I managed to snag it to the point of it being visible once. Sadly it slipped off and plunged back down the hole then. Since then I've not been able to snag it again. Joan's trying it now.

I'll update this post with our progress for those who are sitting on the edge of their seats wanting to hear how it comes out.

Update #1
As of 6:30PM still no luck. Joan hasn't quite given up hope yet.

Update #2
We've given up as of 7:10PM. I can only think, "Thank God it wasn't me who dropped it -- I'd not hear the end of it for the next six months!"

In other news, it turns out we forgot a scheduled class with our four girls at the hospital today. I hate holidays.

Final (I GOD-DAMNED HOPE!) Update:
The chain has been found. It never actually fell down the toilet. It fell into Joan's clothing after a segment gave out. (The clasp is rock-solid.) She had me, her mother (and herself, but that's not important) fishing in a stinky, grotesque toilet for hours. She went out for a walk with the necklace hanging somewhere inside her clothing. Then, when getting ready for bed, it fell out on the bathroom floor.

How irritating.