Thursday, November 17, 2011

Robots: The solution to the one-child policy demographic crisis

Today I started a discussion about the one-child policy and its impact upon Chinese demographics.  Namely, that in 40 years, most of the population will be of pension age and will need to be supported by a smaller workforce.  The Chinese people in this discussion took the argument down a path that I would have never foreseen: the future robot population in China.

No, I'm not kidding.  This group spent an entire hour discussing not if robots could fill in the workforce gap, but when, and what type of robots would be used.  Would the robots be machines or artificial intelligence? would the robots be able to make critical thinking decisions?

Oh China, everyday you surprise me.



Monday, October 3, 2011

hospital photos



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"Xiao Ya, my coworker and one of my good friends- somehow still looking ok even after surgery"

The little boy in the market



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"The little boy in my market"

Friday, September 23, 2011

Accidentally getting Shock Therapy treatment: The 5th Worst China Hospital Experience I've had.

"Bzzz! Bzzzz!" the doctor explained to me, jerking his hands spasmodically to show the effect of electricity on one's body.  It was at this time that I first noticed that the doctor was not wearing a shirt under his doctor's coat.  My doctor was no more legitimate than my Chloe bag. Conned again.

I considered my options.  My first instinct was to fling myself off the table,  emphatically stating that there will be no electrocution of Meghan today!  Only... there were needles on my head, neck, hands, feet, arms, and chest.  The needles were attached to electric wires.  The electric wires were connected to what I could only hope was a safe-for-humans voltage box.  And the voltage box was controlled by Dr. Qu, who was currently miming the word electricity in a very theatrical way.  

Obviously, jumping off the table in a righteous fury would be challenging.  Righteous fury is often lost in translation, I don't know the word for electrocution, and most importantly, I had dozens of tiny needles piercing my skin.  

My Dr. Kevorkian/Qu smiled benevolently down at me, and I was filled with a sense of foreboding.  But the idea of plucking each needle out of my skin while trying to convey my horror seemed dismally time consuming, and I made the executive decision to just let this happen.  After all, the worst that worst that could happen: my brain frizzles. 

I passively watched as Dr. Qu turned the dial on the voltage box.  The needles started jumping around in my head while Dr. Qu interrogated me as to my favorite type of Chinese food and how I could possibly prefer Greek food to Chinese food.  

"Greece is so small!  How could you like their food more?  So strange!" he marveled.  When I noted that actually, this (meaning the electric needles) was more strange than my food preference, he and the other patients and nurses in the ward all laughed at me. 

Monday, September 19, 2011

the Joint Conference on the "Harmonious Human Machine Environment"



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"Tsinghua university. Chinglish or a freudian slip?"
But the question remains, are they saying that humans are machines? or is this a conference about the harmonious co-existance of humans and machines? Hopefully the former, because if it is a later, that is an entirely new set of disturbing questions.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Friday, August 19, 2011

Apartments in China: A story of cyclical woe.

There are times when one forgets that one is in China, times when one starts to feel a level of comfort in China, times when one falls in love with the different, unique aspects of Chinese culture, and times when one would rather set fire to a Hutong, then throw themselves into it, than deal with the cultural divide. 




Welcome to apartment hunting in China. 

Looking for a new abode is never fun, but looking for an apartment in China is a very special, highly developed form of torture that renders most people substantially more paranoid and less humane than before they began their quest.  

                               A "ridiculously expensive apartment"
                               The view from my Dalian Apartment

As of now, I have gone apartment hunting three times.  I am now wiser, to both the market and the wiles of real estate agents.  All of this does me exactly no good, as now I have to acquiesce to the unfair practices with impotent fury instead of confused naivete.  

Lesson 1: Dalian: Things can always get creepier

This was my first time looking for an apartment.  With little language skills and absolutely no knowledge of the renting market, I somehow managed to get a fair price for a beautiful apartment, albeit after a series of bizarre days.

Day 1: Me vs. the Communist Apartments


Standing outside of the communist, unrenovated grayish-white blocks, I was caught up in the history of it all.  Imagine what these blocks have seen! Imagine the lives that these people lived! I wanted to be part of it, I wanted to eat cabbage and rice, I wanted the full Mao experience.  I could, for sure, rough it for a few months. 

Then, as I walked past the stacks of dried cabbage lining the hallway, noted the crazy maze of pieced-together, patched pipes and finally entered the dismal, tiny apartment, my little capitalistic heart fought back and won over my common sense.
-- 
Day 2: Me vs. future murder crime scene apartments 

By the end of this day, my real estate agent's will had been broken. Every apartment was exponentially more disturbing than the apartment before it.
        
Apt 1) A giant teddy bear painted on a hot pink wall — I was told that this apartment "was meant for girls." 
Apt 2) A studio apartment with the walls to the bathroom made of entirely see-through glass — "very modern Chinese building." 
Apt 3) An apartment with a massage table in the middle of it.
Apt 4) A studio apartment with three middle-aged Chinese men hanging out in it.

This was the final straw for my poor real estate agent.  She opened the door to find three older men staring blankly at us, she slowly closed the door and could only look at me with mute horror.  

Day 3: Me vs. the "ridiculously expensive" day of apartments


On this day, I looked at apartments that were nice and, according to my Chinese friends, insanely expensive.  They informed me that I was being tricked by my real estate agent and should find a new one.  The absurd price?  Around $250/month.  Based on what I had seen previously, I decided I didn't care if I was being cheated.  

Lesson 2: Beijing I: Deception is the name of the game

This was perhaps the most enraging of the three.  Every person, landlord and realtor, lied to me.  About everything.  One-bedroom apartments were actually studios, 5-minute walks to apartments were actually 35-minute walks, and apartments in Guomao were actually in Shuangjing.  

Lesson 3: Beijing II:  Being prepared doesn't help


This time around, I was prepared.  I knew exactly how much I should pay for an apartment, utilities and taxes.  But it didn't matter at all, because, as my real estate agent informed me, though I knew what I should pay, other people did not, and if I didn't take the apartment for the price that they wanted, some other person would.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

American Airline's New Marketing Strategy: Diagnosing me with a disease.

Today I received a concerned email from American Airlines. Apparently, they are worried that I have a disease, the terrible Wanderlust.
       The only cure? 1 million frequent flier miles, which only 4 will receive.  What do I have to do to be in the running for the cure?  Only buy a roundtrip, transatlantic flight, of course.  Who would fall for this?
The Email:
      
Dear Meghan __________,
Are you experiencing symptoms of The Wanderlust? Do you feel:
[ ] Trapped in your own home or office?
[ ] Like you haven't taken a vacation in years?
[ ] Consumed by thoughts of exotic lands?
[ ] All of the above?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you have the Wanderlust. In celebration of our newly enhanced relationship, American Airlines and British Airways have found the cure. Together we will turn four travelers into Miles Millionaires*.

To become eligible to enter The Miles Millionaire Contest, register, then book a qualifying round-trip transatlantic flight on American Airlines, British Airways or Iberia now through June 17, 2011, and complete your travel on or before June 30, 2011. Once you complete your travel, you'll receive an email** with details on the contest entry process. You just have to creatively answer this question: "If you were cured of the Wanderlust with 1 Million Miles, where would you go and what would you do there?"
         As I read this, I became increasingly irritated at how much American Airlines underestimated my intelligence.  Part of me wondered if American Airlines takes note of the people who routinely buy their transnational flights less than 2 weeks beforehand, and if we alone were targeted in this absurd marketing ploy.  Just because I'm spontaneous/indecisive does not mean that I lack the critical thinkings skills that allow me to see this, the potentially worst deal of all time (If you spend $1200+ on a transatlantic flight, we'll give you a statistically insignificant chance at winning 1,000,000 frequent flier miles...on American Airlines, rendering your miles useless as AA hates redeeming FF miles more than they hate edible food), for what it is. 
       These terrible deals, the business equivalent of "I'll trade you 5 shiny pennies for 1 old quarter" have become a reoccuring theme of American Airlines emails to their FF customers.  Thank you, AA, once again you have made me feel valued. 
        
         
        



Friday, January 28, 2011

5 normal things that can kill you in China.

         When people find out that I live in China, there usually is a series of questions they ask me, but one of the first questions is often, "Is it safe there?"
          This time last year, I would have said with full confidence that China is the safest place I've ever lived.  Now I would still say the same, as the other places I've lived are Washington, DC (murder capital of the country) and Moscow (murder capital of the world), but without the confidence.
        In the past year, I've been 1) robbed, 2) dragged out of my cab and almost down a set of stairs by a group of rabid drunk Chinese people and 3) got into a screaming showdown with the "leader of the taxi cab drivers of Dalian".
        That being said, that isn't the norm for foreigners in China. I just happen to be exceptionally unlucky, to the point where I don't even think Switzerland would be safe for me.  That being said, I wouldn't even put crime into my top 5 dangers in China because criminal activity is so scarce.  What would I put in my top 5 list?  5 things that every person in China encounters on a normal day basis.  


1) Death by Taxi cab drivers who live in a Grand Theft Auto World.
      Every single driver in China seems to think that he is Mad Max, and drives as such. 
At heart, every Chinese taxi driver is this man.

 However, even the Chinese people I met in Beijing noted how terrible the drivers are in Dalian, apparently Dalian is notorious for the death racers that are responsible for dozens of peoples' lives on a given day.  Worst of all, taxi drivers take it as a personal insult if one wants to wear a seat belt, indignantly informing the passenger that they are a good driver, then unbuckling the offending seatbelt.
 Just one example of a normal taxi drive.  
         While cheerfully asking if you like Chinese food and informing you that they like Obama/Kobe Bryant/some other American sports star I don't know, they are playing a chicken/bumper car hybrid game with their car: going into the wrong lane, driving full speed in reverse for over a mile (it was maybe the most impressive thing I've ever seen) and driving through active construction sites,  just of the top of my head.


2) Death by Mystery Meat Street Food
      "Fried tofu! How delicious!" It's not even meat, so it has to be okay right?
            Wrong. In street food, people often mix tofu with cardboard.  Can you imagine what they mix their meat with? As one might have heard, the Chinese culinary scope and width far exceeds ours in terms of what they will eat.  Which means that they will pretty much eat anything and everything, except for ice water. That means that a stick of chuar (a kabob) could be mutton, or it be the intestines of a rat.  There is a reason why Hepatitis B. is a huge problem here, and it pretty much starts and ends at mystery street food.  
Grasshoppers. 


             The worst part is that street food is curiously delicious, and most of the time, the street food is safe to eat, which lures people into a false sense of security about the food.  I've gotten around this problem by eating only seafood and vegetable chuar, which is delicious and easily recognizable.  


3) Death by being a Pedestrian 


     Being a pedestrian in China is a little like being in world where you are a bowling pin, and every car is a bowling ball that wants you dead. If you are lucky enough to make it to the safety of a sidewalk, one still must contend with the rickshaws.  As they are neither a car nor a pedestrian, they abide the laws of no man, and as such, are the lone source of anarchy in a country where everything is controlled by the government.

4) Death by Construction sites/random manholes
     When people say that China is a developing country, it isn't just economically.  It is literally developing, everywhere, in every city.  What happens when lots of buildings need to be torn down/built up in a short amount of time and there are no safety regulations?
       The question is, what doesn't happen.  Steel beams hanging above a sidewalk like an blade of destruction, sudden drops into the dark netherworld of Chinese sewage, skeletal buildings with frames held together by twine, and burning infernos of melded iron steps away from the sidewalk, these are not  occasional occurrences.  It's just a walk to the grocery store.
They'll get around to building the rest of this sometime
                      
5) Death by Fireworks
             The Chinese people are a moderate people, but when they celebrate, do they ever.  Going out for a few beers? Only if by a few, you mean "their body weight," and by beer you mean baijiu.  This is the country that only told their employees not to drink at lunchtime after heavy drinking competitions put one man in a coma and the other in a coffin in one week.  So throwing confetti? Eh, only if it is confetti of FIRE.
          As I've mentioned before, Spring Festival is the time of year when Chinese citizens throw fireworks (and caution) into the wind, with a reckless devil-may-care attitude of where the fire might land.  After all, what is the worst that can happen with millions of unmonitored pyromaniacs setting off fireworks in heavily populated cities?
Oops!
            Just to get an idea, this building is in the center of Beijing, and took up an entire block of downtown real estate.  It is now unusable, as no one can figure out what to do with the charred remains of the brand-new hotel that was build for the 2008 Olympics.
my street, full of fun and confetti


my street, under attack/"celebrating spring festival"
           For two weeks, China is under siege by people armed with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of fireworks.  And not just sparklers, but 4th of July-style fireworks as well.  They also have a cutesy type of firework that shoots balls of fire out of a tube, I discovered as I walked behind a group of little boys, all busy shooting the fireballs at the windows of the apartment buildings they saw.  
         Every year, dozens of people die, hundreds are hurt and several buildings burn to the ground, as tends to happen when dealing with combustible fire. 

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Forget you, Eat Love Pray, I'm taking my vacation back :Thailand Pt. 2

        Since  my freshman year of college, I have been surrounded by people who are more liberal than me.  I am either viewed as a moderate or a soulless big-business vampire who bleeds third world children dry in the name of greed, depending on how dramatic the person is feeling.  
         All the same, I will admit that the free-spirited bohemian gypsy hipster wearing long skirts, hand painted beads and drinking iced thai tea while explaining that we're all connected by an energy is not me.  While I understand why people have their views, I do tend to err on the pragmatic side, and I've never felt the need to "find myself." 
       I've spent my life reading.  Beautifully disturbing Russian novels, stoic yet sweeping British romances, books on 1001 ways to use baking powder, it doesn't matter.   Anything and everything I will read.  The only exception to that rule is books that try to tell you how to live your life and enlighten you.
         I first heard about Eat Love Pray when a junior in college, and refused to read it for four years, due to the fact that it seemed to me to incorporate everything I was wary of.                                                          However, in China, beggars can't be choosers when it comes to English books, and desperation for a decent book wore me down.  
      This is important to understand in regards to what comes next.  I decided to go to a meditation retreat in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  I blame it completely on Eat Love Pray. In case you have no idea what this book is about, it's about a depressed woman who travels and finds herself and is happy again.    
        So I trekked back to Bangkok, bought my ticket, then went to the most rickety train station one could imagine.  It was literally just a platform of rotting boards on either side of the train tracks.  I was quite worried, imagining the type of train that would pull up.  I didn't care if it was clean or dirty, stuffed with people or empty, I just prayed that it would have a working air conditioner, because the Thai heat was draining me of both my energy and, I feared,  my logical reasoning skills.  That morning I had bought an enormous bag of strange, heavy fruit that I had no idea how to eat.  I had just bought it because it look interesting and the street woman told me to, and so, for the next few hours, I lugged around my tiny backpack and the huge bag of uneatable fruit. 
         Luckily,  a train that appeared to be a smooth pewter bullet emerged on the horizon, two hours after it's initial estimated arrival time.  I had kept busy by watching some Thai women torture their clothes by plunging the clothes into water, twisting and whipping the clothes against a small shed, then beating the clothes with boards in the most violent washing I've ever witnessed. 
         Not only was the train air conditioned, it was frigid.  The icy, stainless steel speed train contrasted so much with the heavy humidity, festive colors and comfortable dirtiness of Thailand that it seemed like it belonged to a different time, a different world.
          Shivering, I emerged from my refrigerated cocoon into Chiang Mai the next morning, ready for meditation to be the garbage disposal to all of my convoluted thoughts.  I imagined myself, thoughtless, still and serene, while Buddhist monks nodded their head approvingly at my imitation of a statue.  I imagined what life would be like when I thought less and slower, when my words would be measured and wise, not the steam of consciousness chipmunk-speak that they usually are.  I would return to the US, and everyone would be so impressed by my changes.  They would say things like, "Meghan, you speak so slowly now!", "Meghan, you are so chilled out, it's like you're from California!" and "Look at you, reading the news and not getting sad." 
        So I went to the monastery, put my things down and still had two hours to meander before the retreat stated.   So I went to find Thai iced tea, my obsession in Thailand.  As I explored the little Chiang Mai streets, I started to feel uneasy about the meditation retreat, but I tried to push it out of my mind.   I went into a tiny tea-house on a side street of Chiang Mai.  Moments later, two foreign women walked into the tea house as well.  One looked very whimsical, 60s hippie-ish, she had black and white streaked short hair, big star earrings and was wearing a billowy shift dress.  She was a real, life-long hippie! She had to be, looking as she did and living in Thailand.
          So I started up a conversation with her, I told her about the retreat, expecting that she would have something to add.  And did she ever.  She lived on an ashram in India for 10 years, in serious meditation. 
           "Oh wow, really? I'm actually just about to go to a meditation retreat.  Any suggestions or tips?" I asked.  
           "Yes.  Don't do it." She answered solemnly. "Meditation lets in everything, and not all spirits are good.  Many are evil.  I ended up joining a cult and was haunted by evil spirits until I was saved. I'm now a missionary in Thailand for the Catholic Church." 
         I blinked. That was not at all what I was expecting. 
        What are the odds? That in the 1 hour before my retreat, I would run into an ex-cult member/current Christian missionary who would warn me against meditation? 

         I had to return to the monastery to pick up my things, but I was having serious second thoughts.  
         "Oh no!" I scanned the room full of hipster hippie backpackers with their fedoras, lonely planets and supercilious conversations about finding truth. I saw a Che Guevara T-shirt and I started to panic, as I imagined my next few days, a captive audience to listening to Bob Marley and diatribes about the US government. On the far side of the room, the monks were moving a gong into the room.
         Then I looked at myself, after all, I was there too.  Days of endless heat had broken down my resolve and I was wearing a peasant skirt, and I was backpacking through Thailand, trying to be as frugal as possible.  Was I really any different? 
          And that's when I had it, my moment of epiphany.  They aren't me and I'm not them.  I don't want to meditate.  I don't want to clear my mind and get rid of my thoughts.  I realized that
      1) Just because I'm backpacking doesn't mean I need to have the backpack lifestyle. I'm not a hippie, and I don't want to be.
      2) I don't like gongs, and I don't want to listen to them 
      3) If I wanted to not be in my head anymore, meditation was perhaps the worst idea I've                had so far. 
      5) I don't need to find myself, because I never lost myself.  
which could all be summed up to: 
     6) forget you, Eat Love Pray, I'm taking my vacation back.      

       So I picked up my things and walked out, away from the meditation, the gongs and maybe spiritual enlightenment.  
     
 I didn't know what I wanted, but i knew that I didn't want to go on elephants, i didn't want to go to temples, I didn't want to take the backpacking vow of poverty, priding myself that I spent $2 a night on a room full of cockroaches instead of $6 on a clean room.  
           Let me be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with cheap hostels, backpacking, or even Che Guevara (as long as people actually know what he did and what he stood for, instead of some abstract idea that they just link to him), it just isn't for me.  I can do it, but it isn't my idea of a vacation.

       I wanted to do what I wanted to do.  So I went to my hostel a day early and signed up for a cooking class.
       That was the beginning of the wonderful last two weeks of my vacation.  I spent one week in Chiang Mai, that is where I discovered the kindle, which changed my world.  An electronic book that could hold hundreds of books! I rediscovered my love of reading, and realized that it was always through reading that I gained perspective.  I spent the rest of the vacation wandering around Chiang Mai, talking to people, eating random things and going to nearby lakes and villages.  
          The last week I spent in Koh Phangan doing nothing, and I loved every minute of it. Koh Phangan is known for the infamous full moon parties, but besides the actual full moon party, I stayed on my sleepy side of the island in a cozy bungalow.
              I spent my days making friends with the other guests, reading everything I could, snorkeling, swimming, hiking and drinking copious amounts of coconut shakes.  Boring? Maybe to some people, but for me it was perfect.



Isn't she cute? She was so excited when I asked if I could take a picture of her.
At the marketplace, picking out veggies.
 Main lesson of Thailand: Kindles trump Meditation

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

How driving a motorbike off a cliff was the best thing that didn't happen to me: Thailand, Part 1.

The last photo of my ill-fated motorbike ride

As I watched my white motorbike fling itself in a suicidal dive out of my hands, across the broken paved road and soar into a tree, all I could feel was exasperation.
The island of Koh Chang from the ferry
"Fine! Fine! You win!!" You. WIN!" Happy?" I was not sure to whom or what I was conceding to.  God? Asia? My common sense? As Thai people ran out of their houses made out of boards and insulated by newspaper across the rotted log that I had just gingerly tiptoed across, that led from their beach to the main road, I crossed the road to inspect the poor bike.  For the first time,  I saw that the only barrier between the road and a several hundred foot freefall was that gnarled tree.  The lone foreigner, a britishman, came up to me.
          "You let go of the bike." he said.  "That's good, most people never do." Picturing myself and my bike soaring off the cliff in a final blaze of glory, I realized just how close of a call I had just had.
         I had a flashback to when I was in 2nd grade:  standing in my kitchen, anxiously recounting the boxes of girl scout cookies I had sold, realizing I was under quota, and my mother's response to my woeful lamenting. "So what are you going to do? Jump off a cliff? Figure it out." 
         Here I was, seventeen years later, anxiously counting and recounting, standing on the side of a cliff.  
         What was I doing? Why was I here? How did I get here? How did I almost drive off a cliff, alone on a remote island in Thailand? 
         It was a reality check.  This was far from the first dangerous situation I'd encountered in the past eighteen months, but it was the first time that it had been my fault.  I had been reckless, I had told the person I was riding with to go on without me, I had wanted to stay behind and take pictures.  Sure, nothing bad had happened, but I was lucky.  What was I thinking?
        The issue was, I hadn't been.
         According to all the expats I've talked to, as well as a graduate students whose actual study is the effect of living abroad on people,  after living in China for about a year, expats experience what is scientifically known as the "China funk." It's symptoms are different for everyone, for me, it manifested itself in homesickness.  
           The difficult part of living abroad isn't the culture shock, the language barrier or traveling.  The emotionally draining part is the unsettling knowledge that everyone who knows and loves them is 3,000 miles away, and that they have to build a life without any of that support, and that everyone else's lives are moving on without them.  
         So in the throes of the "China funk", I decided to escape from the crowds of people and disconcerting street food.  
            I was going to backpack my way through Thailand, hostels and all. I was inspired by a friend known for her chill, laid back demeanor,  love of traveling and penchant for staying in hostels that looked like someone had just been murdered there.  If she could travel cheaply and light, so could I.  Carrying only a small backpack filled mostly with sunscreen and the book Eat Love Pray (more on that later), I boarded the plane to thailand. 
           Baby powder beaches, vivid blues, grey matte skies (it was the rainy season in Thailand) , bizarre yet tasty street food,  hospitable Thai people, it was as if I had stepped into a computer beach screensaver.
This is an actual picture I took myself.  Go to your computer's screen savers...look familiar?
              Perfect, right? The only problem was myself. I snorkeled, accidentally deep fried myself, meandered on beaches, saw insane amounts of temples, tried to find elephants and consumed every type of food I saw; yet I was still plagued by the same thoughts, namely, that I was 24 and still didn't know my exact life plan. 
            Standing over the mangled body of my poor motorbike, I realized that throwing myself off a cliff, metaphorically or physically, wasn't for me.  I had passively brooded over my potential life plans for months.  It was time for me to be proactive.  
           A few hours later, after a kindly Englishman and Thai man took me back to my beach bungalow and I had negotiated and paid the motorbike rental price for the damages (about $90, which I was later told was far too expensive, but I did wreck their bike, so I didn't negotiate too much), I started to read Eat Love Pray
            And thus started my attempt to be proactive by being exceptionally passive.  I,  the anti-hippie, anti-vegan republican, decided to go to a meditation retreat on a quest to find myself.