daygan rocks the world

I've been so incredibly busy lately doing The Spot Café work that really there's nothing else interesting going on in my life at all. We've really grown lately in terms of customer numbers, and that's really exciting for me. It means that finance difficulties are quickly fading away, and we can look forward to a very bright future doing this business. That, in turn, means that we can start developing more, possibly, and one of those development plans that I would like to work on is getting the patio renovated and looking more inviting for customers. In fact, this week, a designer will be coming by to share her ideas for patio designs with us, and we plan to start construction very soon. I'm really excited about this plan.

In more personal news, having been away from the states for over four years now, I am finding that I am longing to return more and more lately, and I hope that sometime before the end of this year I will be able to actualize this longing. It will be very good to return, visit friends, enjoy the cities that I visit (in particular Rochester, NY will definitely be among those cities) and rest for a period of time. I would really like to spend time actually working as a waiter at a restaurant for a month or so while I'm back, just to re-acquaint myself with the busyness and social connections that are a part of that kind of work, but I'm not sure if that will happen. In any case, I look forward to driving a car again, to enjoying lush green landscapes, clean air, and nice restaurants.

 Anyway, one of those things is my flower garden. I wrote about this some time ago, and haven't really updated, but I think it's worth talking about, just because these flowers that my mom sent me have grown so amazingly tall!! anyway, the best way to explain is with a picture:

Another nice thing is that after having my 11th and 12th bicycle stolen (or is that 12th and 13th?) within only maybe 3 weeks of each other, I finally got another bicycle, and it's a pretty cool one. pictures below - (it's folding, so that means I may be able to take it on the subway!)

China is a land full of lazy, selfish people, liars, and theives. I just had my eleventh bicycle stolen here in Tianjin, China. I have nothing more to say.

 ** just to explain to those who don't know me that well, this post was made during a time of extreme personal frustration, and doesn't really represent a regular, long-term attitude towards China. While I prefer to leave the post so that visitors to my blog can see the many facets of my life and not just the "happy times", i would like to emphasize that these feelings of frustration and opinions about China are only temporary, and not representative of my current attitude    - 11-07-2008 - **

I've been so busy with my coffee house lately that I haven't had any time to blog about regular life.. but I have really wanted to do a post about this for quite a while, so, though I'm sure people are going over to The Spot Cafe right now and wondering where I am, I am going to take just one more minute to write about :

 My flower garden: my mom sent me a bunch of flower seeds about a month and a half ago, and I immediately planted them in my garden just outside my apartment... and Now they've grown really well and are in nearly full bloom - just waiting for the sunflowers in the back to start blooming, and then it'll look really sweet.. anyway, i just wanted to show folks some pictures and say that I'm really pleased with this garden from across the ocean

Maybe not yesterday, and maybe not tomorrow even, but today, at least, I truly believe that at least 90% of all Chinese people in mainland China are completely self-serving and heartless. I have already run into many instances that make me believe (and I have had it verbally confirmed by other Chinese close enough to me to be open and honest with me) that most Chinese people think purely of themselves and their own personal needs and wants and don't really care about other people unless it directly affects oneself, and now I believe that most Chinese people really are cold and heartless.

 I am trying to get my coffee house started up, and part of the process means that I have to get a business license. Now, before getting the business license, I had to get the sanitation license, which required that I rent the location for the coffee house and renovate it to be up to sanitation standards. This, of course, means that rent money for the location has already been paid, and a great amound of money has also been paid for renovation. So when we get to the step of getting the business license, they tell us that we have to take a form to each and every person who lives in the building above us and get their approval to open the coffee house so that we are certain that no one will feel disrespected if the coffee house is too loud for them. That means getting the approval of 14 different people who live above me, and if even one of them doesn't approve, then we don't get a business license for this location. Well why the heck didn't they have us do this before we went and dished out all the rent money and renovation???!!!

 Okay, that's just the first issue. Second issue is that after I start going up the stairs asking people if they can sign for me, I get a whole slew of people who say, like idiots, 'oh, well, that doesn't have anything to do with me - I live on this side, not that side - so i don't have to sign' or 'well, i'll have to think about it' or 'i'll wait till the very last - after everyone else has signed' ... and then tonight, which bugs me the most, is this guy who tells me he'll wait till everyone else has signed, i tell him we've already invested a huge amount into this and we aren't going to be noisy or bother any of the neighbors, he tells me, well, you should have done this before you rented the place, i say, yes, I agree, but they didn't tell us until now that we have to do this, and he says, well, you should have consulted a lawyer first to find out. Absolutely no heart, no concern, no wish to help me, all the man can do is tell me what a sad situation I am in and what I should have done after I've already done it. What an ass hole. The people I seem to be encountering in this quest to get people to sign in agreement to me opening a coffee house downstairs seem to be either all idiots or ass holes. I think 90% of all Chinese are just plain heartless.

Well, I tried for the last 3 years to live with the incredible inconveniences of China, but after 3 years of realizing more and more how stupid it is to even permit such inconveniences which could be resolved with some very simple pre-planning, I've finally had enough. I'm making a list here for everyone to see, so you know about some of the things that you might expect when you come to China if you're not already here. Or at least, you'll be aware of those things that are inconvenient for me, if not for yourself
..

 1. tile floors that get dirty easily and the practice of wearing plastic slippers inside the house - very annoying, because one feels as though he is living in constant dirt and every time you come into the house, you have to not only remove one pair of shoes, but put on a new pair of sandals. Why can't we just have carpet?? Anyway, I finally bought one.

 2. Bathrooms with no bathtub. Ridiculous. showers tend to spray water right onto the bathroom floor, and that means that it can easily splash under the door into the rest of the house, and since people wear plastic slippers everywhere, and since the floor is dirty from being walked on during the day, that means that you have to wear plastic slippers in the bathroom too, but you can't just wear your regular plastic slippers, because then you'll be tracking water everywhere after you take a shower, so again, you have to take off one pair of slippers and put on another pair just for taking a shower.

 3. Washing machines that don't have output hoses that hook up directly to waste water pipes. Chinese people tend to drop the waste water hose into the bathroom, which has a water drain right there in the middle of the floor. So disgusting.

 4. No good electric dryers.

 5. cardboard thin doors (and walls and everything else for that matter)

6. bars around windows that look like prison bars. How ugly!

7. No such thing as home security systems. I know these guys have the technology for it. Why hasn't anyone done this yet?

8. Electricity payment system - in a large number of houses, you have to re-charge a card with electricity credits, and when your credits are low, you're electricity just cuts off and then you have to go put the card in again and it will leave you with 10 credits left, and then you have to go buy more electricity. It really screws people over if they're running a computer when the electricity goes off. Can't they think of a more efficient, less annoying way to do it?

9. Water payment. Some lady comes knocking at my door at 7:30 a.m. yelling - water payment!! water payment!! water payment!! water payment!! until i answer and pay her. no, wait, that was gas. and i didn't answer. and i didn't pay. .. but water's the same concept. retarded.

10. No water spickets on the outside of apartments. These people don't believe in flower gardens.

11. large sheets of metal posing as roofing. They put these huge sheets of metal on the top of the apartment and call it a roof, which they suppose keeps the rain out, and they don't even nail it down or anything - they put bricks on top of it to keep it from blowing away when the wind comes by. And mine aren't metal, they're plastic and probably 10 years old, and they have holes in them, which means that water gets into the ceiling beams, and then leaks through my ceiling, and gets all over my kitchen. Haven't these people heard of shingles??!!

Anyway, that's a small list of the horde of annoyances that this country (China) has brought me while I've been here. I'll write more when I have the time and am annoyed enough. Hope everyone enjoyed!!  

Two days ago I just got back from filming "Da Jing Men" for the second time in Beijing (we filmed for two days) and I have a couple pictures and a video to post for that. I also filmed a comedy show a few weeks back and just had no time to post about it because I have been incredibly busy with renovation of my coffee house. I'll post a couple pictures of that here also.

a Da Jing Men photo

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A five minute video of a scene that I acted in

A couple photos from the comedy that I acted in a few weeks back

Last night I was sitting at home minding my own business... (either reading comic books or going through videos on http://www.trueworldhistory.info/  when all of a sudden, behind me, my celing crashed down in a huge puff of dust behind me!! Now, don't get too worried, because it was only a layer of concrete that was evidently glued or something to the concrete slab of concrete that holds up the apartment, but still - wow - what a wreck!! It took me about an hour to clean the crap up! Here are a couple pictures:

 -  This is where it all came from!! -

Just three days ago I finished my last day of filming for this TV show being filmed in Beijing. I actually only filmed three days for this one - and it was basically one day a week, so I didn't have a huge part, but it was still pretty cool. I was able to meet a fairly successful Chinese American actress named Anya who was the main actress that I acted with. It was really interesting to get to know her, since she basically grew up in the United States but is also Chinese and is now doing film here in China...

  Of course there's always the increased experience that comes with the work, and acting opposite Anya was good because I got to learn how she acts and worked with the director, who, by the way, is a very nice, friendly guy, by the name of Shen Hao Fang.

I don't have a whole lot of pictures yet (still waiting for them to send me more) but I'll post a couple here for everyone to see.  The name of the TV show is "Lost in Los Angeles", and is about a group of of Chinese people who had, because of reasons related to their parents, moved to America, and are now returning to China to find their relatives.. I played a not so nice guy in America who does some harmful things to one of the main characters, played by Anya.  Unfortunately, I missed out on the bigger role, which would have allowed me to go with them to L.A. and film, mainly because at the time they needed someone who had a valid driver's license in the States, and I lost mine a year ago, so they were uncertain, and ended up giving that part to an Australian guy. Oh well..  The good thing, though, is that I was able to work a little more with Anya. That was pretty cool and educational

Anyway, here are the pictures:

Here are a bunch of pictures of the new "park" that suddenly popped up across the river from where I live: 

about a month ago, this whole place was just a big dirt road 

 this is actually a nice looking tree

workers building a nice cobblestone path 

dumptruck dumping stuff 

the dumptruck scrapped off a bunch of bark on it's way in (I say in because the bark is lying on the left side of the tree, the direction that the truck would have been going when it was coming in. Don't they care about the area that they're working in? or do they only care about their one particular job (dumping things) and after that's done, who cares what happens? 

pile of trash. Does no one maintain this area at all? 

and the workers just leave their trash behind after their done. no one cleans up their own mess. it's ridiculous.

I have been meaning to write about this a little more than I have.. but, anyway, this is a very tangible issue here in Tianjin for most everyone - This city is a city right smack in the middle of major construction all the time.

 Okay, barring that fact, as we approach the Olympics, it's really amazing to note that the amount of construction and structures appearing has increased exponentially. Just outside of my neighborhood, across the canal that runs along the border of two major universities, there is a park-like landscape that basically sprang up in the time of about two weeks where there used to be just barren dirt and trash. Trucks came pouring into the area carrying hundreds of evergreens, shrubs, flowers, and grass, and in what seems like the span of a few nights, suddenly plants where there where they weren't yesterday! It's really amazing.  In other places, huge scafolding structures are constructed around buildings so that they can erect western-building-like roofs atop the apartment buildings that were previously just square and flat. All of this, what, to a number of international residents here, looks  like facade for the sake of presenting a false image of beauty, just to make a good impression during the Olympics. The problem is that we know the record here for keeping places clean and beautiful is rather poor, and maintenance is relataively non-existant, so I really wonder if, after the Olympics are over, these insta-parks will really just go-unwatered, un-kept and turn into brown wastelands littered with trash like so many other places. It's sad that I am left with this expectation, but it's a reality here.

unfortunately, it's getting late, so I'll have to wait till tomorrow to upload pictures of the insta-nature that suddenly popped up across the river from me. 

Well, I just spent the last four days in Beijing, and am finally back! I spent the four days hanging out with some fairly experienced Chienese actors and filming some scenes for a TV show, and getting done up like some business dude from 1930, mustache and all! pretty interesting. The names of the Chinese actors that I worked most closely with are Liu Jun (刘钧）and Zhao Yi Ran (赵艺然) . I had a really interesting time. Anyway, here are a few pictures of the filming process for everyone to check out!

So, today I decided to try to submit this blog to a bunch of those blog indexers out there ... because mostly, I just would like more people to be able to read about my life here in Tianjin and learn more about this great city   ... and I came across a site that I think is going to be fairly helpful in getting my blog "out there" ... it's called RSS Hugger  , and what they say is that they are

     "a new website developed to help bloggers promote their blogs, and to help visitors discover new blogs that write about subjects that the readers are interested in. Through the power of the internet and viral marketing, rssHugger looks to bring blog writers and blog readers closer together. If you own a blog, you can get your own page on rssHugger for 10 years for giving an honest review of the site on your blog. If you want to join rssHugger but do not want to review our site, you can pay a one time review fee of $20. rssHugger will be the first ever quality, spam free, and viral rss directory strictly for bloggers. To learn more about what rss feeds are or how owning an rss page can benefit you; visit the About page. "

 Anyway, that's them - RSS Hugger .. and here I am, givin' 'em a hug

Well, Yesterday, I went biking around Tianjin taking some pictures, and I came across some very interesting bronze statues on the bank of the Hai He River that runs through Tianjin. These statues are newly erected, and, as you'll see in some of my future posts, the city is going through a massive transformation! Anyway, I has just crossed a bridge called jie fang bridge (means "independence / release from constraints")    and was traveling along this strip:    before I got to This   bridge, when I saw these very attention grabbing bronze statues:

 Yes, Tianjin is changing quite a bit!

Obviously, I can't speak for every member of Tianjin in terms of what Tianjin really is like, but I do know, for my own world inside Tianjin, what it's like for me. I realize that in the coming months, we may have a lot of people that are interested in coming and visiting Tianjin, particularly during the Olympics when Tianjin will be hosting some of the competitions in the Olympic Games. I would like to take a little bit of time to help people understand, from my perspective, what Tianjin is like, and perhaps, through my perspective coupled with knowledge from other peoples' perspectives on Tianjin, an outsider coming to this city might have a slightly better grasp on what kind of city he or she will be coming to.

First I'll give everyone some pictures to look at of the city just outside my apartment here in Tianjin:

This first picture is a look across the street from just outside my apartment complex. The other side of the street is the Nankai University area, and the building that we see is a bank. You'll note the bridge there too - yes, there's a river / canal running parallel with the road over there, but it is usually fairly polluted. An interesting thing, though, is that here in China, they love to cut corners and neglect important things in regular life, but whenever they think other people are watching, or it might make the difference in developing their economy or getting them, personally, more money, they suddenly make a lot of superficial changes to impress the outsider. Thus, as the Olympics are approaching, I have noticed a lot of sudden, visually notable changes, particularly in the last few days. Across the river, you'll notice a number of evergreens and shrubs planted there next to the bridge. Those weren't there just a few days ago . I am sure that the city will suddenly do some quick changes to improve the pollution problems in the canals around the city. So by the time any visitors get here, it just might be, on the surface, at least, a fairly attractive city here in Tianjin.

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This is a view from down the road from my home - just outside the Tianjin University main entrance. Lots of bicyclers. The blue wall across the street is a metal barrier that they put up around construction areas. That site is the grounds of the Tianjin Television tower, and right now, because of the olympics, they are tearing down the large, brick wall that used to be around it, and, from what I understand, they will be replacing it with a fence. Evidently, they believe that that will give a better impression international visitors. Walls tend to be very unwelcoming and give people a rather closed, cold impression.

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Since working on getting my coffee house set up has basically been 95% of what I've been doing for the last 6 months, I can't help but end up writing about it at least a little bit in my regular life blog... So I have to say that quite possibly, I'm at a break-through point in the coffee house. Currently, we only need less than half of the total investment money before we can start (112,000 RMB) so we're getting pretty close - and this week, there are a few interested investors that, after some negotiating and discussing, could very possibly take us over the top! It's not absolutely certain, but it's quite possible, and for that, I'm really excited!

Anyway, once all the money is all set up, i'll have to get to work right away on arranging the proper contract, and then getting the necessary permits and stuff for the store, and then after that will come the renovation and furniture buying and everything else - wow .. i'm getting excited just talking about it ..

Anyway, things could happen very fast (or then again, they could not happen fast, but i'm leaning on the side of hope here for right now).. and maybe by the end of next month (April) the coffee house could be open for business to the public! We'll have to see! Regardless of whatever happens, I'm hopeful, and I know that progress is continually being made, so I'm very excited. 

My new apartment is actually about 2 months old already(to me), but I have to say it's the coolest place I've ever rented on my own (not that I've rented a lot of good places in my life - in fact, most of the places I've ever rented in China have pretty much sucked). This place, however, sucks a lot less, and is even fairly cool.

 Let me describe the coolness of my apartment : First cool thing - It's a first floor apartment. That means I don't have to go up and down any stupid stairs every day to get home or leave for work. Now, that's pretty cool.  Second cool thing - this is actually in following with the first cool thing - I have a little back porch area that opens up to the path behind the building. The porch area is more like a small, outside, enclosed patio or something, but eventually, when I get some more money, I want to build a wooden deck out there on top of that ugly tile, and set up my hammock and just really enjoy that place. It's a cool, relaxing little outside place - something I've never had here in China! Third cool thing - there's a nearly 15 square meter storage area outside of the apartment (out back across the path) where I can put all the stupid things that i don't need. That's a great space saver!

 Oh, and the kitchen's pretty nice too.. Anyway, I think the outdoors aspect of this apartment is really going to be nice.. and hope to use it to its full potential during the time that I stay here. I'm looking forward to that! I even have crazy dreams of maybe setting up a pit for a fire and roasting marshmallows with friends some time - that would be so much fun!

anyway, keep it real, everyone, and..

 rock on 

casual reader, friend, whoever you may be, you're here reading now, and as at the time of writing, there are no previous articles, you may be wondering just who this daygan guy is. Well, whether you are or not, who I am will be the subject of this first entry. I'm an American, I live in China. That's not so much who I am as where I'm from and where I am now. I'm a person who is passionate about his goals and can be tremendously determined when it comes to achieving those goals. I love nature and activity, I love moving, exercising, running, walking, and exploring the world. I like to dream about the future, and I like to do my best to make my dreams come true. I love language, and conquering the Chinese language is one of the many goals that I am determined to achieve, as I live, work, and play in this Asian world.

I do television acting and Chinese comedy, and I am also currently working on starting a coffee house in Tianjin, where I live. There are more links on the side for the curious. Feel free to click!