so.. here's what happens.. I start out slightly peeved, or maybe just a little upset, and then the other guy starts saying something that makes absolutely no sense, and I tell him it makes no sense, but he continues to repeat it over and over; the more he repeats it, the more upset i get that he's being so freaking retarded and not listening to what I'm saying, and then by the time he's given up on that pointless conquest of his, he moves on to the issue at hand, but by the time we're at the real issue, he's already yelling because i've been continually getting upset about how stupid he was being, which only makes me yell more.. and he thinks at this point that i'm yelling because i disagree with him, but really it's only because he's yelling at me.. so the more this goes on, the more he thinks i won't agree with what he's going to propose, which only prompts him to pose his statements and questions in ways that are just rude and unkind, compounding on his perception of conflict. The truth is, if he would just chill out and tell me frankly what the situation is in direct and honest terms, and not make assumptions that what I'm saying is against him, we would be able to come to a mutual understanding and resolve our issues.

Today, this is what happened: I walk into a store where i previously bought a coffee grinder which is now broken. I show it to him, and ask him to fix it. He tells me to contact my "wife" who was the one that spoke with him about buying it. I tell him she's not my wife, she's my girlfriend. He corrects him self, in a somewhat annoyed manner, and continues to tell me i have to contact her. I say - why should I contact her? This item was bought by my store, and I'm here about it. What does this have to do with her? This is between you and me, because this is my coffee grinder. He continues to tell me to contact her about it and tell her about the issue because she was the one that evidently "spoke to him" when we bought it.. The more he insists on me contacting her without giving me a real reason, the angrier I get, because it just seems to me as though he's skipping over me and wants to only talk with her and have nothing to do with me at all. Why would that be? Why can't he just talk to me directly about the machine? Why does he have to go around me and talk to my girlfriend? Am I not a person to? Am I not the owner of the café? How rude that I'm right here in front of him and he doesn't even want to talk to me and tells me that I have to call my girlfriend! She doesn't even know anything about this and doesn't need to - it's not at though she's my boss in regards to how the coffee house runs!

So, anyway, this goes on for a while, and the more it goes on the more annoyed I get.. finally he lets out that it's because he told her that they don't cover repairs for the machine because we bought it at a cheaper price.. and then he goes back to telling me i need to contact her. Well, that's great to finally know what his strange reasoning was for not talking to me directly, but 1. couldn't he have just said that upfront? and 2. why do I still need to contact her now? you've explained to me what your issue is. .. and 3. I really don't care, I just want you to fix it! so.. already, the yelling volume is up, so I'm sure when I tell him next that I just want him to fix it, he interprets it as disagreement, when really, what I mean, and it would have been understood just fine if the idiot hadn't instisted over and over from the beginning that I needed to go running to my girlfriend about this issue, is that I understand that he doesn't cover repairs, but surely he can repair it, and i can pay for whatever the repair costs might be. He doesn't get that, and I keep telling him to just freaking fix it for me, and then he comes out with this "the way you talk really makes people uncomfortable" which is a Chinese way of saying that they think you speak rudely.. when, really, dude, I think you come out with some pretty ridiculous demands and refusing to speak to me directly and interpreting every single sentence that I say into some twisted insult is pretty rude too. And pretty much I don't think it's all my fault, it's just sort of "snowballed" into this, and now he's starting to fling insults, just because the man wouldn't listen to me from the beginning and insisted on talking to my girlfriend.

Well, that's the jist of it. Today's little Chinese-Western argument. Honestly, sometimes, some Chinese people are just impossible to communicate with.

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!)

 ** 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 - **

 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

 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.

 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!!  

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

 -  This is where it all came from!! -