New Year’s

My cousin Andrea sent this to me, before I even told her that we spent most of New Year’s Eve one-more-turning with Civ4!

We did take a break in the world-conquering action to go out to dinner with Manfred and Xuemei, at Ganges, the Indian restaurant we like in Haidian. We had a hilarious time with the menu, it turns out Manfred had never had Indian before, so we looked for something not-too-hot that was still tasty and spicy.

At one point, our waiter made a recommendation in English, which I said in (terrible) Chinese to Xuemei, which she told Manfred in German. Manfred commented that we were a really international group, with him from Germany, Xuemei from China, Stick and me from America and the waiters from India.

“Oh, but I’m not Indian,” our waiter said. “I’m from Nepal.”

At least I didn’t give him directions to the wrong embassy.

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China Christmas

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.

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It’s The Teeth, Isn’t It?

I was on my way to the American Embassy the other day, and lost my way in the maze of manicured gardens and high-security gates in the embassy district. I stopped the first guard I saw, who wasn’t standing at attention on a little pedestal, and asked in my terrible Chinese where the America… um… big office is located. To my suprise and delight, he answered me in very good English, and gave me detailed directions in complete English sentences.

I followed his excellent directions to what turned out to be the British Embassy. Oops. I retraced my steps, and saw the same guard again.

“You’re going the wrong way,” he told me, pointing me back the way I’d just come.

“No, I’m looking for the American embassy.”

“American!!! But all the foreigners who look like you are going to the British Embassy!”
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The Dog Ate It.

Stick and I had an odd meeting with our boss today. We were meant to be addressing some of our recent issues, which involve a mysterious someone in the school’s hierarchy changing our schedule, and not telling the foreign teachers. We can’t get a straight answer on either the final-exams schedule or who the mysterious rescheduler is to ask them when we’re working, so we finally had a sit-down with our boss.

Of course, it wasn’t her fault, the school never tells her anything, she hasn’t been feeling well, the school told her but she couldn’t open the email, she wasn’t in the office to get the call, she tried to call us back but there was no reception, she wasn’t avoiding us, but she works so hard and so long trying to keep all the foreign teachers happy, and all we do is complain.

I don’t mind our TAs saying they expected our boss to tell us because, well, I expected that too. But when our boss tells a complicated blame-screen (with a couple consistency holes), it seems like she’s not so good at her job. It’s much, much worse than if she admitted a goof.

I don’t really care who dropped the ball here, I’m not going to sneak out and toilet-paper their house. I’m an American, I just want a plan for the future. I want to get on the psychic network or email list or whatever I need to get on to hear about schedule changes before I’m meant to be in class.

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Sandman

From Neil Gaiman’s journal a few days ago:

I learned from Wikipedia that Sandman:The Dream Hunters was actually based on Pu Songling’s Strange Stories From A Chinese Studio, which I thought I ought to read.

I don’t know if that’s funnier as proof that you can say anything on Wikipedia, or as another example of how the Chinese invented everything first.

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Shenme?

There’s a boy in our school, his English name is — well, it’s not important because no one calls him that. The foreign teachers call him Huh? and the Chinese teachers call him Shenme? It’s the word he says when he realizes you’re addressing him. He’s not dumb, though. If you can take him away from Planet What? and get him to look at his book, he’s pretty bright.

Anyway, if you can’t spot him by things he knocks over without noticing, or the teacher from his last class following in his wake with the books he left behind, you can definately spot him now. The poor kid has two giant black eyes, and a bruised nose. Apparently he walked into a desk that someone had left carelessly in the usual place. Poor little guy.

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Following Traditions

When I was younger, right before Christmas, my family would drive to Kearny, NJ, where there was a street of Scottish import stores. We would get our all-important Christmas meat pies and sausage rolls, and eat our the traditional pre-Christmas fish-and-chips supper, followed by gigantic empire cookies.

My granny would get nostalgic over all the foods “from home” and the Scottish accents of the women in the butchers’ or the chip shop. I remember her showing me the candies she’d liked best as a child in the highlands, but unfortunately I also remember not being very impressed, and thinking that all candy is candy, so what’s the big deal with those toffees, Granny?

Yesterday, Stick and I took a pre-Christmas cross-town pilgrimage to Jenny Lou’s. Jenny Lou’s is a Western-import supermarket, and we thought we’d get some Christmas presents for ex-pat friends and some treats for ourselves. I’ve heard it’s a chain, we went to the one at the northwest corner of Ritan Park, and I was pretty happy with the selection.

It turns out that my granny was right, and all candy isn’t just candy. Stick and I found little packets of Jelly Bellies and Haribo gummy bears, so we each had a chance to make the very romantic announcement “You can get this for my stocking!”

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Happy Holidays

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More On Zoodoka

A few months ago I was asked to write about Zoodoka, a new blog RSS-to-email program. I said:

With any email marketing program, spamming is going to be a major issue. Any free, mass-mailing program has a huge potential to be abused.

Today, I heard on ProBlogger that Zoodoka is suspending all blog emails because of spammers. From the Zoodoka blog:

We offered the service completely for free and so, as is the way with all things Internet, a annoying minority decided to abuse the system. We found ourselves a few weeks ago facing a massive backlog of broadcasts many of which were spam related. …

…. We’re not spammers, we don’t support spammers and we do support everybody’s freedom of choice when it comes to opting in and out email lists.

Today we’re stopping Zookoda broadcasts. The system will remain live, but broadcasts will not be sent. We are going to be making some more changes to the infrastructure and will allow for broadcasts again in early January. In the meantime though this is a pain for our legitimate users and I can only offer my most sincere apologies to you guys for the disruption this is undoubtedly going to cause.

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Professor Xavier’s Primary School For The Gifted

Amy campaigned tirelessly to be called a “postal worker” and not a “mail-cyclops”.

Dr. Colin gives a booster shot of anti-gravity serum to his young patient.


Although being a giant firefighter was a rewarding career, Kim couldn’t find pants that fit comfortably.

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