Stick brought in the mail yesterday, and brought me a book I’d ordered and a couple adverts, and then asked if maybe I was waiting for something else to arrive. I guess in the excitement of getting my press credentials confirmed and booking my Los Angeles solo trip, I’d completely forgotten that a physical E3 media pass was on it’s way!

Yeah, I’m going to E3 next month! I first blogged about wanting to see E3 in 2006, so when my press pass came yesterday, I was more than little excited. I’ll be covering some events for Indie Game Mag, and then I’m going to go into the press room and file my stories, the way a real games journalist does. I’ll be the kind of games journalist who’s completely starstuck by who else is in the press room… but still.

Think I have time to find an old-fashioned press hat before the expo?

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

E3

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Dear TurboTax,

Thank you for making my taxes kind of annoying instead of a total nightmare. Sure, it cost most of my tax return to pay for the TurboTax version for under-employed freelancers, but that’s fine. You made it easier to turn a stack of 1099s and scribbled receipts into the single-digit check I’ll be receiving from the state of North Carolina. This is the very first year I’ve filed on time, and it’s all thanks to you. (Well, thanks to you and a nagging worry that I might be paying this year instead of receiving, and I’ve heard the IRS is less forgiving about late filing when one is meant to be sending them money.)

But a Captcha at the end? Seriously? A check to see if I’m human after all that? Turbo, honey, if there were a program that could find my gross income from last year’s return, the employer numbers from a half dozen 1099s, my date of birth, my social security number, my special TurboTax pin, my routing number and bank account number, and then put all those numbers into the right little boxes on a hundred different pages… well, if there were a bot like that, I don’t think it would be thwarted by a Captcha image!

Meg

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

The TurboTax Turing Test

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The other day, Stick saw my throwing-star picture and called me “the worst ninja ever”. Turns out, I’m not even the worst ninja in Essex county.

CLIFTON — Two “modern day Ninjas” calling themselves Shinobi Warriors on a quest to rid the area of drug users and drug dealers have been put out of business by police.

On Wednesday at 2:35 a.m. police officers approached a car parked in the left lane of Route 46 east and found two Clifton men dressed in black claiming to be Ninjas. The men were wearing tactical vests and armed with knives in sheaths at their waists along with Ninja throwing knives, Chinese throwing stars, four-pointed tacks, swords, bows and arrows and nunchucks, said detective Capt. Robert Rowan.

The two men, Jesse Trojaniak, 19, and Tadieusz Tertkiewicz, 20, told police they were “modern day Ninjas” also called Shinobi Warriors on their way to deliver warning letters to known drug dealers and drug users to stop their “impure” activities. They told police they planned to leave the letters on the front doors of these individuals they had singled out.

Apparently these kids took the war on drugs literally.

Via “Clifton Police arrest Ninjas” in the Clifton Journal, thanks to Pandapassport‘s recent tweet for tipping me off to the story in the first place.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

New Jersey Ninjas

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Dear Hugo and Diana,

Don’t forget that all traffic signs and road markings are purely decorative and should never be used as a guide when assessing traffic patterns.

Love,

Meg

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Pre-China Travel Note

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In Beijing, it’s hard to get away from the Olympic improvements. I think the changes are somewhere between using the good china for company, and completely reinventing your wardrobe, habits and personality to attract some guy from history class. (Not that I ever did that) I’m seeing more and more English around town, and English-language menus, maps and information are supposed to be readily available in Beijing before the Olympics. Unfortunately, I’m afraid these Chinglish attempts will cause more confusion.

There are a lot of factors leading to Chinglish disasters. First, in many cases, a literal translation just won’t do. Common signs like Take Care Knock Head and Already Broken still crack me up. But no longer thinking of a direct 1:1 ratio between English and Chinese words has really helped in my language learning.

The new English signs and menu are prone to other problems, like the typos of normal human error, rush-job spelling mistakes, confusion between similar letters and words, and so forth. At times, it’s literally easier for me to decipher the Chinese. (Which either means that I rock, or that I’ve memorized the collection of dishes we usually order. You decide.)

Not to mention the obscure English vocabulary brought back to life by electronic translators. Stick and I went to see an apartment recently because the landlady promised us a bathroom containing a lavabo and close stool. That’s a sink and a toilet to those of you without SCA membership. I don’t know if ad and pamphet translators agree with my students, and feel that the longest semi-synonym provided by the dictionary is the most impressive, and therefore the best choice. But you can easily imagine the humor of these BabelFish translations.

The plan is great. A few words of English — even broken English — have helped me out many times. But in practice, there is an East-meets-West problem.  The Chinese praise even the clumsiest attempts at Mandarin and will probably be expecting the same in reverse. They’ll be expecting thanks and praise for their English accommodations. They’re adding English to places they expect foreigners to visit, with the convenience of foreign visitors (or at least the tourists’ wallets) in mind.

But Western visitors of all sorts will be giggling and snapping pictures of Crap Salad or Bland Kitty, which are just too funny not to be shared with folks back home. The offended Chinese will wonder why Westerners have not only failed to thank them for their English translations, but are actually criticizing them, failing to respect the effort that went into creating an English-language menu just for foreigners (even if it was plugged into Babelfish and then printed off).

But I’m worried that this attempt at hospitality is doomed create more international bad blood. Negative comments in the Western press about any aspect of China, are often seen as proof that the Western media is biased against China. I’m sure this will be a general problem with all the foreign reporters and visitors at the Olympics, someone’s going to have something negative to say, but it’s especially rough in this situation. I’m worried that this will feed the Western stereotype of the Chinese producing worthless garbage, and the Chinese stereotype of rude, anti-Chinese foreigners.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Take Care Knock Heads

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“When we first started dating, did you ever think we’d go on a romantic date to McDonalds?” Stick asked me. We were in line at the Kan Dan Qiao 24-hour McDonalds, getting milkshakes in what is likely to become a usual Saturday-morning activity for us. (I also got a Happy Meal so I could get the Hello Kitty doll in the posters but I got a Nini Olympics cup instead. So sad! Now we have to go back!) The way we say “I love you” has really changed since we’ve been in Beijing… I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated a milkshake properly. Or Stick, for that matter.

“Did you ever think you’d take me to McDonalds by bus for this special date?” I asked him.

“Did you ever think we’d need a fifty to pay for it?”

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From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Happy Meal

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Stick got me a toaster oven for Christmas! I hope he knows this is only romantic in China, and I’m not in for a lifetime of yuletide appliances. He hid it from me in the closet, which is a perfect place to hide things from me because I never put any laundry away. Actually I did once, about three weeks ago, and I’m still talking about it.

I got Stick some good WoW-playing food, Hot Pockets and Tina’s Burritos. I hid it from him in the freezer because although he might open the fridge to get a beer, he’d never open the freezer.
Fantastic Christmas presents! If you’re trying to say “I love you” or “I miss you“, you might go with flowers or jewelry. But nothing says “I like living in China with you” like a toaster oven and Western snacks. Then we lit our Christmas-tree-shaped candle, and had sandwiches and wine and Christmas candy.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

China Christmas

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We were drinking coffee in the office this morning, just before my first class, when I asked my TA to make sure the kids had their markers today. I asked the kids to bring them yesterday, but they’re only 5 so they forget.

“Oh, last night we took the desks out of the English room,” my TA told me.

“What?” I asked.

“The English room is only for playing games now. No more desks.”

“How can they color their letters!”

“You can play some English games.”

I know I make it look completely effortless, but I secretly do put some thought into planning my lessons, and today’s lesson plan did involve the use of chair and desks. Not only because I am an uninventive old stick-in-the-mud who believes in using a flat surface to teach writing, but because both “desk” and “chair” are unit 1 vocabulary words.

One problem with second-language English is that I say “And when were you planning on telling me this?” and they say “Yes”. And besides, the answer was already clear.

Three minutes before first period was when they planned to tell me.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Surprise! No Desks!

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My home state, New Jersey, warns locals not to eat squirrels from the toxic dump.

A lead-contaminated squirrel was found in the area two months ago, prompting the agency, along with the state Department of Environmental Protection, to send out letters advising that adults eat squirrel no more than twice a week and even less for children and pregnant women.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Only In New Jersey

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Most nights, I go to dinner with my co-worker, Zorro. (Dave, we miss you!) He’s really fun, loves talking about our students, and he’s been really helpful with my Chinese. Of course, when we go out, no one will listen to my Chinese.

Waitresses can understand my halting Chinese when Zorro’s not there, but when he is, they check with Zorro on every request I make. Sure, my Chinese is terrible, and customer service is just different here, but sometimes I feel like the hapless victim in a Monty Python sketch.

Zorro can also read a lot of characters so I’m always asking him for help. Me walking down the street in China is a lot like a car trip with a kindergartener, but instead of shouting out letters and numbers, I look for characters I can read.

I ask questions like “What’s that character? Second from the left? It looks like bu written on top of tian… I think I’m going to call it Hell.”

I can’t imagine what China must be like for Zorro. He has an entirely different set of assumptions than I do. He doesn’t get the foreigner price, or giggles everytime he speaks. He does get paragraphs of rapid-fire Chinese, based on the assumption that everyone who looks Chinese must speak it fluently. And it’s hard to be a foreign English teacher when you don’t elicit theHELLO!!! LAO WAI! greeting.

Last night, we went to the local sushi place. After the waitress double-checked my order and left, I realized Zorro was looking over my shoulder.

“A guy at the table over there has been staring at you for almost ten minutes!” he said. “That must get really annoying!”

Behind Zorro, I could see a sushi bar full of diners openly or covertly staring at the foreign girl.

“Yeah, it happens.”

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Someone Else’s China

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