Shanghai Apt pics

Check them out here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22414193@N06/sets/72157603607519836

Sigh, if only I can have you guys over for drinks now :(

The Eagle Has Landed

First post from Shanghai. Yay!

Thoughts from Central Europe

It's now Day 12 on our Central Europe + Berlin tour. Kodawg and I are on the last leg of our trip in Budapest, after having visited Berlin, Prague, and Krakow. So far, Prague is my favorite city. Krakow is pretty cool too. Berlin has been somewhat disappointing.

All the Central Europe cities have blurred together in my brain because they all have a lot of similarities. Beautiful architecture cut through by a river. An old town here, a more modern/hip new town there. A few mega churches here and there, (ok A LOT if you are in Poland), all with ridiculously ornate altars and chapels and tombs. Tons of souvenir shops all selling the same junk, all of which were made in China. A Jewish quarter where all the Jews lived happily together before the Holocaust. A castle here and a bridge there. Museums with paintings of Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, and more Jesus, sometimes maybe Jesus with Mary.

Here are a few memorable memories (brain is not working too well today after the 11-hour night train from Krakow):

* Getting yelled at in a Berlin bar by some German chick because I used the wrong bathroom. Hey, it's not my fault that 1.) the bathroom is for a single person and 2.) some other dude was in another bathroom with the exact same sign on it. All I heard was, "Shlauphen hauphen, shlauphen hauphen, ick veen hauphen..." Which is what all German words sound like to me. That language sounds like an abomination. The only language that sounds less sexy than German is that tongue-clicking language used by the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert.

* Seeing Kodawg getting accidentally elbowed in the nose at a club in Prague by some crazy black dude who was flailing his arms around when he was dancing. It was a good thing that he didn't suffer any bad injuries, so I could have a hearty laugh without feeling too guilty about it. We weren't even in the dancing pit! It was so strange it could have only happened to Kodawg.

* Trying to tell the bartender at a club in Prague to get me enough drinks so I can proclaim the next day, "I have a monkey," which is another way of saying "I'm totally hung over."

* Seeing a huge glass display case full of human hair that were collected from victims of the Holocaust at Auschwitz I. A real hell on earth.

* Enduring all the gawking in Krakow by all these elementary/high school kids who acted like they had never seen Asians before. At first, I kinda enjoyed the attention. After a while, it became progressively more annoying, especially when they started throwing in the "Ching Chong" noises. Didn't know that Chinese sounded like that to Polacks too. When we went to the salt mine in Wieliczka, a small town about 10 miles southeast of Krakow, I walked in an opposite direction from a pair of high school girls. When I made eye contact with the girl on the right as I walked past them, she literally gasped, like she just saw Jesus or something.

Later on, I stopped feeling annoyed because I remembered being fascinated by white people myself when I was in elementary school in China. My school was next to a college dormitory for foreign visiting students. We used to yell "Hello" at the white students biking past the school.

Anyways, so the next time a bunch of school children were gawking at us again, when Kodawg wasn't looking, I busted out the Bruce Lee "Hai Yaaa!" pose. And they went, "Whoa!" It was pretty entertaining.

Last night on the night train from Krakow to Budapest, at 5 AM a bunch of what sounded like high school kids came on the train and were running around yelling and being idiots in general. Kodawg and I were lying on the seats trying to get some sleep. When one of the kids walked past our cabin, I swear I heard, "blah blah blah Jackie Chan blah blah blah."

* Speaking of languages, Polish just sounds like a bunch of "sh" sounds to me. When I bought something for 29.99 PLN at a local mall and the cashier told me the final price, all I heard of "sh shh zh zh sh zh sh" and nothing else!

* Devouring an AMAZING ice cream/fruit combo extravaganza in a mall in Krakow. I will post pictures later, but if this Italian gelato chain ever moves to New York, it would obliterate all other ice cream/dessert places.

* Seeing Da Vinci's "Lady with an Ermine" in a Krakow museum, or as I dubbed it, "Chick with Furry Animal."

* Watch in amazement as Kodawg tracks down souvenir fridge magnets for his collection at home. I swear that kid has developed some kind of weird fridge magnet sixth sense by now. It's almost like he can smell magnets.

* Buying some shirts/underwear/socks from H&M because I was running out of clean clothes and it's a pain to find a laundromat here. Got the 7-pair sock bundle that has a day of the week on each pair of the socks. Have a big grin on my face now because I'm wearing my Friday socks.

Anyways, time to go. Still have to explore Hungary. Defintely will visit the famous public bath here and maybe get a nice foot massage too. These feet have walked miles and miles lately.

Panda Mania

I would totally pay $130 to hug some panda cubs. Who's visiting me in China next year?

Booyakasha!

How do you like them apples now.

Amateur Hour

Commerce Bank blows. It's seriously the worst fucking bank I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with. I have had to call and visit their branches more times in the last two weeks since I opened my account there than I've had to do the same with Chase in 5 years. What's the point of being able to reach customer service on the phone immediately and being able to go to a branch at 7:30 PM when they can't help with ANYTHING!!! Ugh!!

Anyways, here's what happened: I opened the WOW checking account with them a couple of weeks ago because it offers unlimited ATM surcharge refunds, won't charge me transaction fees for international withdraws, and only has a $2500 minimum balance. I opened the account and made a deposit on 9/27. Then I made another deposit with two checks on 3 days ago. The first deposit STILL isn't available for withdrawal and won't be available until next Monday, a full 7 BUSINESS days after the deposit, even though the money was deducted from the other account the day after the deposit was made!

Today I got a letter from Cucksucking Bank saying that they couldn't verify the 2nd deposit because "the paying bank won't allow the check to be paid." I dropped in to a branch and asked WHICH bank wouldn't allow the check to be paid. They didn't know and told me to drop by tomorrow before 5 PM so they could call the check processing people. Then they speculated that it may be a problem with my dad's and the roomie's banks. Of course the money has been taken out of both banks already a couple of days ago.

Their online banking site also looks like it was designed by some mom and pop shop out in buttfucking Iowa. See for yourself.

Commerce Bank sucks!! Commerce Bank sucks!! Commerce Bank sucks!! Commerce Bank sucks!! Commerce Bank sucks!! Commerce Bank sucks!! Commerce Bank sucks!! Commerce Bank sucks!! Commerce Bank sucks!! Commerce Bank sucks!! Commerce Bank sucks!! Commerce Bank sucks!! Commerce Bank sucks!! Commerce Bank sucks!! Commerce Bank sucks!! Commerce Bank sucks!! Commerce Bank sucks!!

Three Generations

This past weekend and the weekend before I went up to my parents' place in CT to hang out with my sister and niece, who were visiting from CA. I wish they lived on the East Coast so I can see them more than once per year, but then again, I do get an excuse to go to CA and hang out with my friends out there every year.

My niece had always been somewhat temperamental the previous times I had visited her. Sometimes she came running to hug me while other times she would barely acknowledge my existence, even during that time I bought her a huge stuffed puppy from FAO Schwarz!

Fortunately, she seemed a lot happier to see me these past two weekends. We held hands and skipped along on the sidewalk near my parents' house. I gave her piggy back rides when she was too tired to walk. When I hoisted her tiny waist on my shoulders and helped her "fly," the little rascal farted in my face! It stank too! I tried teaching her how to do a proper push up but her little arms weren't strong enough to keep her stomach off the ground, although she did get quite a kick out of climbing on my back while I was doing push ups. She always let out a hearty laugh and yelled, "You are naked!" whenever she saw me walking around the house without a shirt on. It's even funnier when we were walking on the street and she pointed to a statute and exclaimed with the same happy laugh, "He's naked!"

For some reason, she refers to breasts as "taggles," as in "That lady has big taggles!" which she actually yelled out to my sister once when they walked past an evidently very gifted lady at a mall. Once she pointed to a little black boy living across the street and said innocently, "You are very dark," which of course mortified my sister. Apparently, she has inherited her uncle's childhood ability to utter devastatingly blunt statements that could cause severe embarrassment to all grown ups nearby. Supposedly, there was this one time when one of my parents' acquaintances, who walked with a slight limp, came to our home for a visit, I greeted him with a loud "Hello uncle [a respectful term used for male grown ups]!" He acknowledged me with a big smile, so I followed up with, "Are your legs gimpy?" My parents wished they could have dug a hole somewhere and hid there. And that's probably the least embarrassing of all the amusing things I've said as a kid that my parents always reminisce about.

Anyways, as I looked around my parents' house at all of Cindy's toys and books -- the Dora chairs, jigsaw puzzles, lego pieces, crayons, children's books in both English and Chinese, finger puppets, coloring books, pieces of the playground set my dad was assembling for her -- I couldn't help but compare her charmed little life with that of my parents, my sister and me.

My parents have endured a tremendous amount of hardship in their lives. My father's mother passed away shortly after giving birth to him. My mother's grandparents were supposedly wealthy landowners before the Communists took over, which meant a huge black mark on her record and led to much persecution from her classmates. They were fortunate to have survived their teens because of the devastating famine that swept through the country and killed tens of millions. Just as they were preparing to leave home to go to college, the Cultural Revolution came crashing down on them. Dad was sent to some rural village on some mountain near our hometown and worked as a blacksmith making farming tools and kitchen utensils (he still has fond memories of the bulging muscles he developed) while Mom was sent to some other village hundreds of miles away to be a farm hand. By the time my parents finally made it to college, they were in their mid-twenties already. Then they had to juggle college/grad school with raising my sister, and, a few years later, me (for whom they had to get a waiver because I was born after the one-child policy came into effect and the only reason they were allowed to have me was that my sister was severely injured in a fire). After all that, they packed up all their stuff, left all their friends and relatives, and moved to America.

[To be continued ...]