Eyes and Books

So I woke up this morning and my right eye was all crusty. I looked in the mirror, and this was staring back at me:



Kinda looks like I got knocked around in a bar fight or something, haha. But really it's a sty. I went to the hospital and got some medicine for it, in addition to advice about warm compresses every so often. Good times! My parents didn't even mind that it canceled our planned trip to Salado. Instead, we went to Half Price Books where I ended up blowing some money on this stuff:



Oh, yeah, more stuff to add to the backlog of items to read. I'm currently reading this, then I have to read and review this (I promised the author I would; she is a fellow technical writer/blogger in Austin), and then it's on to other things. Oy!

In other news, you will likely be seeing a lot more pictures from me in the coming ... year. I've decided to do something called Project365, in which I take at least one picture a day for the next year. I probably already average at least one picture a day, but of course I skip most days and make up for those w/photo-intensive days, like trips to NY (or China!) or whatever. But this will be a daily thing. I officially kicked it off on August 10th and, so far for the first week, have been keeping up with it quite nicely. The photos will be archived here on Flickr. I won't lie; part of the motivation here is to convince myself it's worth it to buy a nice macro lens or maybe an external flash :-) But I swear that's only part of it ...

Book Review: Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman

Title: Downtown Owl
Author: Chuck Klosterman
Plot Summary: Three residents of Owl, North Dakota, deal with their lives in the winter of 1983.
Verdict: Skip (especially if you are at all familiar with Klosterman's style of writing)

Ever since being introduced to Killing Yourself to Live, I've been a Chuck Klosterman fan. Chuck seems to write like a hyperanalytical version of how I think, and, well, isn't that what draws us towards our favorite narratives? Being able to see parts of ourselves in the main character, or imagine what we'd do in that person's place? He's more, how to put this, focused and critical than I am, but still, I could hear Chuck speaking my thoughts and providing some insight into them. (David Foster Wallace is another person I feel this way about.)

So after finishing that book, I went back and read his first two, Fargo Rock City and Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. I then attended a book signing at BookPeople where he signed copies of Chuck Klosterman IV. I've read all four books and generally enjoyed them, although since I don't share his fascination with 80s glam metal, Fargo Rock City wasn't the most enthralling material. But it was still fun.

At the end of IV, Chuck includes a short chapter from some fiction he'd been writing. It's about a drug-addled newspaper reporter in his mid-20s who lives in a small Midwestern town, seems bored with life, and feels disconnected from the people he knows. From what I have gathered about Chuck's background from reading his nonfiction, I bet $5 there's more than a little of himself in this character.

It was with these facts in mind (at least unconsciously) that I cracked open Downtown Owl, Chuck's first full-length work of fiction. I think I started it last weekend night; by Thursday night I'd finished it. The book is told from the viewpoint of three people: Mitch, a high school senior; Julia, a new teacher in her mid-20s who is a fish out of water in ND; and Horace, a 73-year old retired farmer and coffee afficionado. We also get throwaway chapters told from the viewpoints of Mitch's football coach English teacher/supposed arch nemesis (John) and the resident school sociopath (Cubby).

Put mildly, it's disappointing. Here's a couple reasons why:

(Warning: may contain minor spoilers)

• All the characters speak and think like Chuck, even the characters outside the primary three. Chuck has a very distinct style of communicating his thoughts, which (as stated previously) I thoroughly enjoy. But this style shines through when any of his characters speak or think, and that fact really kills the immersion and suspension of disbelief. I really noticed this in the chapter where Julia and Vance have a conversation and Chuck compares what they say with what they really mean. That chapter really brought out the Chuck-ness inside both Vance and Julia, which is strange if you think about it, because these people are supposed to be Vance and Julia -- not Chuck Klosterman.
  
  Similarly, lots of Chuck's past comes out in the characters. Mitch is on the football team (and not very good at it), just like Chuck. Julia debates music criticism like Chuck. Horace is the only primary character who doesn't seem very Chuck-like; not very coincidentally, I found myself caring about Horace the most, especially in the passages where he reminisces about his wife's terminal illness, his big secret, and his life since those incidents. In fact, the chapter where Horace goes over the details of his big secret is probably the best in the book. I found myself eagerly reading ahead and getting more and more drawn into it. Unfortunately, it lasts all of 5-6 pages and it has absolutely no effect on the rest of the novel. Feh.
  
• There's no real plot -- the characters just kind of meander along in their daily lives, doing and saying what they normally do. Nothing happens. Nobody does anything interesting. Mitch accidentally starts a fight between the school's lunkhead and sociopath, and Julia starts a "love" interest, and Horace reminisces about his life, and there's a blizzard, but nobody has any real problems that go anywhere. This might be what life really was like in mid-80s in small-town North Dakota, a subject that Chuck undoubtedly knows tons about, but it doesn't make for compelling reading material.
• The ending is just ... strange. I'm really picky about endings. They can make or break a book (or movie or TV show or whatever). In the vein of the second bullet, there's no real ending to Downtown Owl, just sort of a deus ex machina that impacts all the characters. There's also your standard "newspaper column ending" that beats you over the head with an obvious incongruity/unfairness in life -- but because there was no build-up or development to this, nor any emotion inherent in any of the characters or plot, this ending just comes off as ... strange.
  

Combine "characters I can't get into or believe" with "nonexistent plot" and you've got a recipe for a bad book. I really only kept reading because it was easy going and I wanted to finish it (I don't think I've ever not finished reading a fiction book) and I'm still loyal to Mr. Klosterman as a person :-)

Ya hear that, Chuck? I still love ya, and I'll keep re-reading the four nonfiction books of yours that I own. But please hire someone to edit out your own voice from the characters in future fiction books :-)

The Zen of Dusty Baker

"Everybody knows [Micah Owings] can hit," Reds manager Dusty Baker said. "If anybody knows he can hit, they know he can hit."

-ESPN

Let me be the first to say: What??

In other news, the Orioles have mathematically guaranteed their 11th straight losing season. They will finish last place in the AL East for the first time since 1988. Damn you for getting good all of a sudden, Rays.

I was really shocked to find out that David Foster Wallace committed suicide. On a complete whim back in April, I ended up purchasing his book Consider the Lobster at Garden Books in Shanghai. I specifically remember reading the titular essay while sitting on a bench at Fuxing Park, and another one in which he reviews a dictionary (wow, nerdness alert), while waiting to pick my parents up at Pudong Airport. I was hooked instantly and ended up buying another book of his, well, one that he edited, anyway.

Just got back from a fun little trip to Wuxie and Shaoxing. Pics are going up as we speak -- err, as I type. If you are wondering where your socks are made, I would bet that Zhuji (the city near Wuxie) is the answer, as I saw numerous sock factories along the road. That makes for some gripping tourism, I assure you.

When This is All Over ...

I think I'm going to keep blogging here after I return to the US from China. I really like it. Who knows what interesting things I will have to say when I no longer am living in China, but hey, one can always hope, right?

Meta-blog note: I use Google Reader and occasionally (okay, pretty frequently) share items that I find interesting or amusing or worth, you know, sharing. Those items now are encompassed in a widget labeled Interesting Stuff on the right side of this blog. So you can get a sense of the things I like to read.

Book note: I am about halfway through The Best American Essays 2007 and am loving every word. I became a DFW fan after reading Consider the Lobster and so picking up this collection, edited by him, was a no-brainer.

Chunky Air

I'm not sure if the following observation is a consequence of living in a big city, living in China, or some unholy combination of both factors. But some places in this city really stink. And I don't mean "stink" as in "are not fun or enjoyable". I mean stink as in "What the fuck died here, did it poop everywhere while doing so, and how long have the remains been lying around?"

For instance, the corner of Dingxiang and Changliu, just outside my apartment complex, routinely smells like butt. (Strangely enough, Dingxiang means "Fragrant flower.") I'm not sure what it is, but I've never felt the urge to investigate, and so it remains a mystery (that I actively try to avoid). And there are many times walking around the city that you'll accidentally get a whiff of something rotten, foul, or just plain nasty. (I'm not even talking about stinky tofu here, but smelling that in certain places doesn't really help things. There used to be a stall that sold it outside the Zhangjiang Gao Ke metro station, which meant my olfactory senses were bludgeoned repeatedly every single day after work, but I don't smell it there anymore, which either means the stall closed or my nasal receptors have shrivelled up and died, but I don't think the latter is the case, because I smelled it in the Yu yuan area about three weeks ago and, unfortunately, the scent came through just fine.) But really I'm making this post because I exited the Pudong airport yesterday at the ground level, looking for a taxi after my flight back. As I stepped outside, I was greeted with two unpleasant sensations:

1. The intense humidity making it feel like I was swimming in vat of lukewarm Jello
2. The overpowering smell of poop

For #2 there, I mean it literally smelled like poop, which, if you're me, and you've just finished over 24 hours of solid travelling, particularly from a city with clear blue skies and (relatively) fresh air, and the last 13 hours of that travelling was spent drifting in and out of consciousness on a metal tube hurtling through the sky at 550 miles an hour, and you're not looking forward to jet lag, and a cab driver has just attempted to take advantage of your whiteness by overcharging you up front for the trip to your house (of course I told him to take a hike) -- is just like the icing on the cake.

A really stinky cake.

Whence did this foul odor originate? I have no idea. And it because the stench permeated the cab stand area, I had no choice but to ride it out while I waited. (I didn't want to haul my luggage into and off of the MagLev.) Luckily I have learned to vent my frustrations (perhaps an unfortunate choice of words there, but there is no pun intended, I assure you) by learning how to say "Too smelly!" in Chinese: Tai chou le.

For those readers whom I convinced to visit me, well, I hope this doesn't dissuade you. Just be aware.

I will say that flying China Eastern airlines was great. They gave us really good food and were very nice. Because I was like the 4th person to check in (yay for 4-hour layovers at LAX) I got to sit in the exit row, which meant extended leg room on the A380 they used for the flight. The flight was not full - several people spent the whole flight supine across the six seats in the middle aisle. Lucky.

I read (it's now standard for me to start and finish an entire book in one flight), listened to some music, talked to my seat-mate a bit, and watched a movie whose only saving grace was the presence of John C. McGinley, which meant it was easy to pretend like I was watching Scrubs. Actually I lie, it was also fun to ponder the irony and sociological implications of one of gangsta rap's originators acting in a derivative suburban family comedy.

It's 7:30 AM and it's really muggy in my apartment. Because I don't have central A/C, only the unit in my bedroom is on. When I open the door, it's like diving into a bowl of tomato soup. Yes, the air feels chunky.

Delicious.

Tidbits

• Looks like I'll have a chance to see baseball in three countries. The China Baseball League just announced their 2008 schedule. I plan to attend a game in Shanghai on April 19th :-)
  
• Until yesterday, my feet were killing me after every long walk I took. I could really feel the pavement on the balls of my feet after each step. So this past weekend, I went shoe-hunting, only to get laughed out of two stores at the Thumb for having gigantic lao wai feet. However, I was tuned into this place called Decathlon, a sports/outdoors store, and so yesterday I visited and picked up a rather decent pair of light hiking shoes for just 250 RMB. They are Quechua brand, which I assume is Chinese for "of outstanding quality." (And not, as some might believe, an ancient South American language.) So far they are really nice and my feet feel tons better after a long walking trip.
• The Decathlon also had rollerblades in size 47, which is one size below what I need. That makes me think that somewhere in this city I might be able to buy a pair of rollerblades and go skating around Century Park or the Shanghai S&T Mueseum metro plaza. The hunt is on!!
  
• I discovered the Chinese word for "Jewish" is youtai. Not sure what, if anything, that translates to. (My guess: "Super Awesome".) So now I can say Wo shi Youtairen! There's even a book about us -- unfortunately it's in Chinese. I still should try and find a copy, though.
• Speaking of Judaism, one of the Chabads over here recently moved to within a 10-minute walk of my apartment. That should make it more likely that I'll go and visit them :-)
  
• Last Friday, I attended a technical presentation given by a group manager at work. He gave most of it in English, although there were points where he had to continue in Chinese because he didn't know how to describe the relevant terms in English. And actually, it was the basic stuff that he had trouble with in English. Like correlating a sine wave to the rotation of a coil when wrapped around a wire caught between two opposing magnets. He couldn't find the words in English for that. I thought that was pretty interesting. I can't really explain why I think that. Just -- I dunno. An example of how important language is, I suppose. And how extremely difficult it can be to learn one as your second language. As if I didn't know this already :-)
  
• Along these same lines, I was talking to another co-worker today about his English name. It is nothing like his Chinese name, which is Xiangjie. He picked his English name in college. We talked a little bit about whether it felt weird to be called by his English name all the time, at work and such. He said not really, because he was used to it. There are even some people at work that don't have English names - we theorized this might be because some people don't like picking one, but in some cases it might be because their Chinese name is really easy for us foreigners to pronounce. I said it was weird being introduced to a Chinese person and having them say "Hi, I'm Scott" or "Hi, I'm Wendy." Because I immediately want to be like, "Liar!" Hahaha. But I guess not really - because they decide what they call themselves, so it's not like they're lying. I guess I just want them to trust in my ability to remember and pronounce their Chinese name. But of course that will not be the case for all Westerners.
• I'm sort of in the middle of getting my own Chinese name. The first name is set, and I think it's Rui an. Amazingly enough when you plug the Chinese characters into Google Translate, it spits out "Ryan". Haha. So I think this was pre determined by someone other than myself :-) I don't have a last name yet, but since most Chinese prefer names that have a total of 2 or 3 characters, I'll have to pick a one-character last name. I was thinking gao for tall, so that might be it :-)
  
• I was totally going to go to the gym tonight but I unwisely sat down in front of the computer to update my blog first. Now all my motivation's gone -- boo -- and I just feel like making some jiaozi for dinner :-)
• I got another power bill today ... (dun dun dun ....)
  

Framing Babies

I was so intent on setting up Flickr last night that I forgot to describe what I actually did during the day :-)

I woke up and did laundry. Exciting! I won't bore you or embarrass myself with the horrible details of what occurred. Let me just say that my hands were freezing and my floor was wet. The wash itself went well though, and I'm relatively certain that my clothes are actually clean. The hanging-out-to-dry thing is very new and unfamiliar, but I checked this morning and it seems most of my clothes (except my jeans) are actually dry. I need to invest in an iron though. And, let's just say, a laundry basket.

In setting the wash and looking at the washing machine, I recognized the Chinese character for "middle" or "normal" which I think is 中. You would pronounce that as zhong. For you Westerners out there, that's "jong" but with the tip of your tongue closer to the roof of your mouth your teeth. That, and the g is soft. And it's not the typical "o" sound like in "long" -- it's more, hmm, it's softer than that. Oh, and it's first tone, which means you raise the pitch of your voice and keep it steady, like you were an opera singer holding a high note. Come to think of it, it's tough to think about how to describe it by just using English. But anyway, when you put that together with the character for "guo" (country), you get "middle country" or "China".

So anyhoo, I chose the "middle" setting on my washer, and it seems to have worked out pretty well. If my clothes aren't actually clean, they at least smell nice, which has to count for something.

After that I was getting ready to go to Garden Books when Tim called. He had to run some errands around that area and wanted to know if I wanted to tag along. I said sure thing, and in 30 minutes met him and his wife Laurel outside my complex. We walked to the subway station, got on, transferred to Line 1, and ended up at the South Shanxi Road (Shanxi Nan Lu) station. We were all hungry so we had lunch at Di Shui Dong, which serves Hunanese food. Among other things, I had the ziran paigu (cumin ribs) which, wow, were amazing. Chairman Mao would have approved - he was from Hunan province. But the highlight of the meal was when I successfully ordered my first bottle of water :-D Laurel graciously took a picture of me with the bottle, and I put it up on flickr, but the site's down now so I can't link to it. Just look in the Shanghai - January 12, 2008 set.

Tim and Laurel are avid photographers and travelers - they've been in Shanghai for over two years now - and they were going to get some of Tim's pictures framed. If you check out his blog you can see his skills. We headed to a framing store that his friend had recommended, but that was swarmed by expats. But we checked around and there are no fewer than five framing stores all along that same street (Maoming Lu) within three blocks of one another. We'd unwittingly stumbled onto the Framing District in Shanghai :-)

While Tim and Laurel haggled with the owners of one of the stores, I said I'd meet them later at Garden Books, since we were so close. I walked down Maoming and turned right on Changle to end up at the store, where I ordered a coffee (woohoo!) and just rested my legs, which were tired from so much walking.

Garden Books isn't large, but it's the largest English-language bookstore in Shanghai. So it was swarmed with expats. Again, not what I'm looking for right now :-) But I looked around at the book selection. There were of course a lot of books about Shanghai and China. There's even a German-language section, where I saw the German editions of two familiar books. That was kind of neat.

After a little bit I decided to go for a walk down Changle, so I did. For the next hour I wandered around the Changle Lu / Shanxi Nan Lu area, which is pretty interesting. There's a bunch of neat little stores that sell knicknacks, interesting styles of clothing, furniture, and generally just what you'd expect to find in the South Congress area of Austin. One tidbit: I noticed that a lot of stores had maternity clothes on display. I wondered as to the origins of this phenomenon until I passed the window of one building and saw a nurse swaddling a baby while a happy mother looked on. It turns out that I was passing the Shanghai Center for Health of Mother and Baby, or something like that. Suddenly all the maternity stores made sense ;-) I even saw a clothing store that advertised its clothing as being resistant to electromagnetic waves, or something. (I wish I had taken a picture of this ad.) I snickered to myself until Tim told me, later on, that electromagnetic-resistant clothing is a common concern among pregnant women in China. Hm.

So in one day I found the Framing District and Maternity District of Shanghai :-) Here's where, if my family and co-workers were not reading this blog, I would joke about putting both of these districts to good use during my stay here. Oops -- guess I just made the joke anyway ...

After that I met back up with Tim and Laurel at Garden Books, where we ran into a friend of theirs. This friend actually is the senior editor of Newsweek's Chinese-language edition, which sounds pretty cool. She's American but has been in China for six years (or maybe eight, I can't remember exactly). We ate and drank some more in the cafe, and then they invited me to dinner, which turned out to be at a new restaurant called Effigie just down the block. Tonight was the "media preview" which meant that the owner, a friend of Laurel's friend, had invited a bunch of magazine writers to eat at the restaurant like 2 weeks before it actually opened. It was close by, so we got there quickly. For the next four hours, I drank good wine, ate amazing food, and had awesome conversations with some really cool people. It was neat being around a bunch of magazine writers, because I'm a writer myself but in a completely different capacity.

I talked with a guy who sells programmable milling machines that make jet engine turbines. This gave me the perfect chance to geek out about NI and start talking about virtual instrumentation and modular hardware in a casual dinner setting :-) And what's more, he understood me because he was an engineer. We even discussed hardware-in-the-loop simulation. Nuts. I should have gotten his business card or something and passed it along to our sales department ;-)

Unfortunately I also had two cups of coffee, which meant that when I got home around 11, I stayed up until like 2:30. But that turned out to be good, because it gave me the opportunity to set up Flickr because Picasa seems to be blocked.

Right now it's about 11 AM, and I'm gonna take a shower, go eat some breakfast, and recharge my transportation card. Don't know yet where I'll end up today, but I promise I'll bring my camera along :-)

T Minus ...

Five days and counting. I leave for Chicago at 6 AM on Thursday Nov 1st, then transfer from Chicago directly to Shanghai.

I got my passport and visa ready. I need to buy some more long-sleeve shirts because it's colder over there right now, and because I live in Austin, I have gotten rid of much of my non-short-sleeve attire.

I picked up a flu shot, some prescriptions, and some medical advice from the doctor's office on Wednesday. I also need to pick up some over-the-counter stuff like Immodium AD. Talked to some of the more experienced travelers at my company for some tips. I emailed my immediate co-workers and let them know I was going. I joked with one of them about getting "wigglies," our fun-sounding word for parasites and/or other creepy-crawlies just looking for a chance to set up semipermanent residence in my body. (Note to self: keep eyes and mouth closed while taking a shower.)

I got a nice Chinese history book that I'm reading (and even highlighting passages in!), as well as a travel guide to Shanghai itself. I'll have co-workers there who know the city, so I've made plans to hang out with them the first (actually, the only) weekend that I'm there. Because I'm a huge nerd, I also picked up a baseball rules book to read on the plane. If I end up doing an extended stay in Shanghai, I'm gonna try and travel to Tokyo and take in a Yomiuri Giants game. I've also got the latest issue of Wired.

I arrive in Shanghai around 2:30 PM on Friday Nov 2nd. To my body, this is equivalent to 1:30 AM Thursday. I'm supposed to try and stay awake for seven hours until it's actually time to sleep. I wonder how well that's going to work out :-) I think it'll only happen if I can sleep on the plane. When I went from Maryland to Alaska in 1999, I slept for like an entire day after I arrived.