What Grinds My Gears

1. “Eastern-Style” toilets

I like to think of myself as a fairly culturally open-minded person, but, I’m sorry, I’m going to have to be pretty ethnocentric on this issue. I simply fail to see how a commode-less commode could possibly be an improvement on the tried and true super bowl. Sure, it would be completely understandable if the area in question did not have the resources (financial or technical design) to support such a product. However, we are in one of the commercial capitals in a country with one of the world’s biggest economies. Moreover, we are at an ENGINEERING school, one of the best in the nation. You’d think we’d have put something a little more user-friendly together. It’s certainly not for lack of porcelain; they have urinals in the same bathroom! If I ever become a plumbing engineer here I’m redirecting the raw materials. Build some real toilets, scrap the urinals, plant a tree in there and we’re in business.


2. Surprise Presentations

This was a new one for me. As with most of my experiences on these junkets in Asia, details for events tend to remain sketchy until the event actually goes down. We have our proposal presentations next week, so I’ve spent this week, among other things, putting together a nice little powerpoint. I finished it today around 2:30, and I figured I’d have some time on Monday to practice what I was going to say. Normally when I give a presentation like this, I spend a good bit of time on this stage of development, since I can’t stand when people stand up there and muddle through things by reading the text off their slides verbatim. Thus, you can imagine how thrilled I was when, at 3:30, I got pulled into a conference room with about 20 people in it to give my presentation. I knew I had a meeting, but I had no idea what the meeting was about. All things considered, I’m pretty pumped about how the whole thing went; it reinforced my notion that I should try out for the Rochester Improv group in the fall. I threw one or two Chinese words in there with butchered pronunciations and they loved it. Bumbling American: instant comedy gold.


3. Cat Pee

Our building smells like it, mostly because of the flocks of strays that live outside. These guys are pretty quick. I learned this when I tried to liven up a mid-week evening by venturing into the night with my laser pointer to see what sort of action I could stir up. They didn’t go for it. I need to find some dumber animals to mess with.

Note: I’m told that at the Dalian zoo you can buy a live chicken for about 100 yuan to pitch into the tiger pit. I’d like to point out that this isn’t quite what I mean by “dumber animals to mess with”, though it would make a good story for when those stupid PETA people come back to campus preaching about the horrors of biology lab dissection.


4. Self-injury

This is becoming a bit of an unsettling trend in the karma department. First I cut myself trying to peel a mangosteen, then I gimped it up running around the soccer field. Now, I find myself bleeding again, another fruit motivated finger casualty. No problem though, just dumped some Purel on that sucker and finished eating my mango. Isn’t that how they used to sterilize amputated leg stumps during the Civil War?


5. Always being behind in writing my blog

It’s a bit of a drag consistently writing in the distant past tense, so I’m trying to mollify the problem by writing an entry like this where I can cover a lot of ground with a short burst of complaining. Maybe in a few weeks when I fall far enough behind again I’ll complain some more? I’m hoping to get another post up tomorrow to see if I can’t avoid that, but I’m sure the procrastination monster will rear its ugly head again soon. Stay tuned.


NEW ADDITION

6. Internet Censorship

Well this is great. Looks like the Chinese government or somebody has figured out my scam and I can no longer post from China, at least for the immediate future. Looks like I’ll be emailing these back to the states for publication, we’ll see how that goes. Sorry for the delay.