Chinese Democracy

http://chinesedem.tumblr.com/

2010-11-30T07:48:00.002+08:00

fuck this blog. I AM OUT!

sold my internet soul to tumblr, but dont worry internet souls are a dime a dozen

bits of new photos

2010-11-30T07:17:00.000+08:00

my scanner sucks so much i have to take photos of photos with my phone. phuck

there is a secret orchard behind my house. I must remember to pillage it next year.

fall from the i of a phone

2010-11-30T07:13:00.000+08:00

regnad, redrum

in order to fit in with the internets i feel like at least one cat photo must be included

even i cant deny that cat photos are cute/creepy

First try at water colors on prints.

2010-11-08T14:27:00.001+08:00

I recently decided that I was going to test my luck at coloring some of my prints. And yes i realize that it is odd to take a photo in black and white and THEN color it. But hey man its art, it like doesnt have to make sense and all.
it worked okay, i have a long ways to go to really be able to get the results i want. I have also realized that my scanner is not all its cut out ot be either. The first time i scanned i forgot to make it a color scan. turned out pretty cool.

once i made it a color scan, it got weird. I forgot i have a budget as hell scanner that did not seem to fancy pink in the slightest. For some reason the scanner lightened up all the pinks so a pink red blended mix looks all fucked up.

strangely enough both the flowers were painted in this print. my scanner just didnt feel like acknowledging that (pink again).

same print as above, just scanned in black and white.

last photo of the garden for the year. i swear.

creepy looking house next door at night. pretty stoked this turned out, i totally winged it on how long the exposure needed to be

2010-10-08T13:25:00.000+08:00

some slides that i took over the summer. my camera sucked, so i had to roll them by hand in a sleeping bag. i guess i am lucky anything turned out.

night shred

2010-10-04T11:42:00.000+08:00

some of the less blurry photos of this fridays activities

seriously need to take pictures of something other than my garden

2010-09-06T06:11:00.000+08:00


The weather has been crap here so my favortie photo subjects will all be gone soon.

i have the best intentions to update this thing more often

2010-08-23T13:53:00.000+08:00


so like bookmark this shit or tell someone you hate to look at it. but i really have no way of knowing if people visit the blog or not. so really just do what you were doing before, its safer that way

camping

2010-08-21T07:12:00.000+08:00

the home stead for about a week. NICE

Josh pondering where the best place to catch dinner is

the drive in was epic. Golf ball size hail, trees knocked down, and rocks that were much much to big for my car.

lots of wet shoes and trout.

portland homies dropped by for some shred time

2010-08-21T07:04:00.000+08:00

Cam, getting nosey at UofI. he wanted to take this to the ten stair but his smarter half objected and it didnt go down. next time?

of course Josh skated it.

yeah, umm we'll wait here

not gonna join this sesh either

Shoebottom knows his video deadline is creeping

lots lots more shredding went down, but i put the camera down to grab my board. well thats a lie, i grabbed some beers and checked out for the day.

garden shots

2010-08-17T01:23:00.000+08:00

Lisa and I have a pretty ruckus garden going on. fresh veggies everyday.

some scans of prints i made

2010-08-16T09:32:00.001+08:00

just some plain ass lettuce in the garden. lots of good contrast.

probably my favorite thus far. the definition in the eye is perfect. some how it also was really contrasty

his was the very first photo i developed my self. pretty stoked on it. Not to toot my own horn but i really like the depth of field on it.

for some reason a whole roll of film of mine has these annoying defects. like the chemical stain(or something) above her head. it wont wash off, of leave me alone. a lot of the other photos have huge gauges in them that make them pretty worthless. i dont know what i did but cant imagine how this is not my fault. just wish i knew what i did.

when i walked up to this random farm two horses came right up to my face. one black one white, pretty much the B&W photographers dream. i got all giddy thinking about the contrast options. now i am officially a skate/science/photo geek.

i actually dont know why this one is messed up, but its got a great lomography feel to it. that sort of hipster
bad photo feel.i mean its the perfect shot, it adds some extra creepy ness to the grave (with a bottle of yukon jack infron of it. if i die and only get yukon jack id be pissed

more random phone stuff

2010-07-17T04:44:00.000+08:00

blahhhhhhhhh

2010-07-01T04:57:00.001+08:00

phone photos phrom all over

2010-06-28T11:42:00.000+08:00

zeno KICK then flip

2010-05-02T04:40:00.002+08:00

first two are way out of focus, but they are also 7 months old, so it was a long time ago. Ive payed for those sins. I really like the dust coming up on the last one.

palouse falls

2010-05-02T04:39:00.000+08:00

totally did not realize that my film was color. This would probably be better in black and white.

2010-04-14T10:09:00.000+08:00

2010-04-14T10:06:00.000+08:00

front rocken the hell out of this shit

2010-04-04T13:49:00.000+08:00

driving it out

2010-03-19T08:14:00.001+08:00

needed a break from the world for second. driving around wheat fields till you find somewhere to pull over and walk around is a half way decent way to do that. i really really like the antlers photo, definitely a keeper

2010-03-14T02:08:00.000+08:00

these tests need to be over, like yesterday.

2010-03-09T10:08:00.000+08:00

it cant all be skating photos from here on out.

or can it

2010-03-09T09:35:00.003+08:00

just got/stole Aperature 3. Have not had much of a chance to mess with much more than the simple stuff, but overall i think its much easier to use than P.S. hopefully i will actually start using this dumb blog more, or at all for that matter.

skate trip

2008-05-19T10:06:00.005+08:00

decided to get off the couch (for a change) and went to some skate parks. Oregon is well known for having the craziest parks, they are also in the middle of a project that will give the Portland area 19 skate parks. so this place will be off the hook soon. There is also Burnside, which is crazier and harder to skate than you could ever imagine.
But there are also really huge and ridiculous parks all over Oregon. So we went on a little trip to see what these parks had to offer. To make a long story short, the parks offered huge transitions, crazy lay outs and burnt out red necks. Most of the time I got to the parks saw that they had no street stuff to skate and would then go to the shade and drink some beers. Basically a dream come true for an old people who are as burnt out as i am.
Luckily one of the parks was located in Lincoln City, which is conveniently located right on the Oregon coast. so when we (they) we done skating, and i was done relaxing, we went to the beach just in time for an epic sunset and a polar bear style swim in the Ocean. we then went to a sick ass camp site and slept under the stars. it was well worth the time. and here are some shots to prove it.

d

I also threw a couple shots from a recent skate mission around Portland. jumping fences to watch other people skate that time.

phish I fotos

2008-04-23T06:51:00.004+08:00

I got a new toy camera and went nuts.

more 35mm action

2008-04-08T07:13:00.004+08:00

35mm never looked so good.
and yes that is the Death Star they are building in beijing. the olympics are just the beginning. the coolest thing about 35mm is that your camera/ the ass hole developing the photos sometimes messes up and mixes up the frames. like in the photo of "moon hill". look to the left of the mountain, there is a little corner of the photo i took before this one. its cool in a way, but really annoying and anger inducing in so many more ways.
i really like how the line of communists turned out. i just stuck it in good old photoshop and took away all the colors but red. then made red REALLY bright. crazy communists and there Marxism. when will they learn...

does anybody even read this thing?

2008-04-08T07:07:00.004+08:00

here are some of my 35mm photos that i took in china and then scanned in the USA.
what is 35mm you ask? well back when you were just a wee pup sucking on your mothers teeets people did not have your fancy instant gratification. we had to wait all the way threw 24-36 shots and then an hour of developing only to realize that we messed up 3/4 of the photos we took. that "delete" button is sure looking sweet right about now.

more best of the worst

2008-04-02T02:17:00.003+08:00

i lied when i said i had no photos of people. i should have said that i have no "good" photos of people. pretty much the same thing. and that first photo with the fireworks, there is a guy in it, he just did not stand still and totally ruined the awesome photo opportunity. i should have mentioned that it was for my blog, if he only knew how famous he could be.

Best in show.

2008-04-02T02:03:00.004+08:00

these are some of the photos from china that I think ended up pretty sweet. I now know that i should have taken WAY more photos while I was there, but hind sight is a bitch. and i am lazy as hell. I also dont have many pictures of people cause i dont like to shuv my junk in random peoples face. so these are mostly just shots of places.

more new years stuff

2008-02-12T14:26:00.000+08:00

some more photos. Those fireworks make a lot of noise and leave a big mess behind. Pretty Much awesome!! i dont know when i took the one that just looks red, but it does look cool.

new years

2008-02-12T14:22:00.000+08:00

some new years photos. chinese new years that is. i dont know why they are sideways. its annoying me too.

2008-01-07T15:19:00.000+08:00

i dont know if its a good sign or a bad one that i can read this.
it just says "明天下午送洗衣机。。跟我来“ the .. are there because i forgot that in the picture its all backwars. so i guess i can read it backwards and all messed up. i guess a lot of it comes from the fact that i can really just assume what word will follow the next one. me so smart.

TGI 星期五

2008-01-05T16:55:00.000+08:00

god i am glad this week is over. only 4 days of "work" but still its wearing thin on me. its been almost a year that i have been here, wow.I have been having mixed emotions about china lately and just really want to know about the job and everything. but all is still well.
here are some random pics from Shenzhen]
星期五的意思是friday. the cabs in shenzhen all have head rests that say what day of the week it is, you cant really trust them too often, but this one ended up being on the spot.
the ghetto looking shot is actually right in a developed area, sometimes you forget how fast stuff can develop here, everything is out of date before it is finished.
then its me at the chrsitmas dinner i went to. good eats.
have a good one y'all

SZ

2007-12-30T13:21:00.000+08:00

more random photos from shenzhen.

some cool horse architecute in really the middle of nowhere.
a ghetto that is about to be torn down (i think)
and notice to Mat and Greg, fear the ackward photo when i have my camera and you guys grow facial hair.

shenzhen: the return

2007-12-30T13:11:00.000+08:00

i have not written on this thing for ever, i hope people still read it.
but i just got back from shenzhen where i spent the christmas holiday. it was still damn hot and the skateboarding was awesome as ever.
here are some pictures of random crap i took while i was there.
the first one is me and greg getting nuts for the holidays
For christmas day it self i went to a christmas gift exchange, limit of 20kuai for a present. so i bought some toy guns, really its what i wanted for christmas.and in the spirit of giving i got crakers back. at least i made this Che Guevaro dude happy.

have a good new year!

2007-11-26T15:20:00.000+08:00

Sunday was boring the hell out of me so i labored to get myself out of bed and go take some photos and try and enjoy myself some. I jumped on the only bus i sort of know and headed in a direction i have never been before. It ended up being pretty similar to the rest of town. I did see the olympics facility that they are building (it acutally looked like they just started). It supposed to be run by wind and stuff, but I would not be surprised if they pull backa curtain and they have 1000 chinese on bikes making power. But i also got some pictures of some dudes squid kite that he left on cruise control. I then went to the dock area and as soon as this dude saw my camrea he insisted i take a photo of his crabs. The lighting kind of made it look cool.
thats really all, not much more to say.

an introduction to my thrown.

2007-11-18T15:05:00.000+08:00

well i know it may seem weird to talk about your bathroom. but the "can" is something most people take for granted. In China you have many types, from insanely elegant to a hole in the ground, and i have tried them all but really wish i had not tried to later. but here is the one in my current residence. The washing machine is not a permanent fixture, it is moved in and out as i need it to be. But the one main difference that my place has that the many places dont is that i have to fill the washer up, and on top of that i have to fill a bucket with water from the sink every time i want to flush the toilet. which seems crude but is really not that bad when you think about it. It is kind of a bitch to wash my clothes in hot water, but i figured out that since the shower is just right there i can just use that water to fill the washer when hot water is a must. It weird when you start to feel like a western toilet is a gift not a necessity.

Burn one down

2007-11-14T15:51:00.000+08:00

there is a custome in China to burn money for the people in your family that have died. Apparently the after life is pretty boring if you aint got the loot. So people buy fake money and burn that shit down to mourn thiet loved ones. Seems kind of weird to me, but hell when in ROme right? So about a week ago, i have no idea why, everyone in my neighborhood took part in some good old money burning. Later that night I found some non burnt Benjermins on the ground and took them home. I hope it is not a bad omen to steal a dead persons fake money.
I then burnt the hell out of it (DUHHH). man it feels like i am burning threw money these days.
god i am lame!

b-day blow out

2007-11-06T14:49:00.000+08:00

i guess after 2 of them they just dont really hold the same kick they used to.

could not have said it better my self

2007-11-06T14:39:00.000+08:00

浪费时间

2007-11-02T14:36:00.000+08:00

你好
so i was bored and took some pictures of some random crap that i found interesting or funny. the can of fruit juice was just so damn funny the first time i saw it i had to buy it. It tasted weird, but not too bad.
then there is the basketball magazine. I bought it some for practice, but got aggtivated because they have really bad chinese names for every one. i.e Kobe is 抠比（kou bi) which sounds like his name, but it has no meaning and in chinese you dont capitalize. so imagine running into a name like Zydrunas Illguaskis but in chinese. So i gave up. but the cover is awesome because Kobe plays for the lakers (the yellow jersey) and has never worn the red Bulls jersey. Its completely Photoshopped. Also it would be hella illegal in the states to do that, considering they just faked a photo of him. And i doubt he is getting paid for that shit.
then there is the money. dont know why i took a photo of it. Really its just to illustrate the whole Quantity vs. Quality issue. but then again i normally use the dollar and that is not worth the paper it is printed on.
then we have just a creepy artsy shot of the street i live on, at around 3am. just bored walking back from a 酒吧，
i hopefully will have something good to tell everyone next week! keep your fingers crossed.

edit: next time i will try and make sure the photos are not in the wrong directon.

2007-10-17T15:52:00.000+08:00

so i went to beijing to see my friend Brian a couple weeks ago. and i took like 4 pictures all together. and here they are. i was only there for a couple days and i really love that city. It is like a break from China to go there and actually see what could resemble a world city some day. I have yet to go to Shanghai but i hear that place is like many world famous cities. So here are some pictures of skate spots. But i put those up because of the photo i include of the dead mice and glass in the gutter.This skate spot was a huge area for recreation, had ping-pong tables and all that jazz. But on the other hand it had dead mice and broken glass everywhere. also there was some steps that went down to nothing (totally a chinese thing) and at the bottom there was just piles of human shit. it was gnarly as hell. This place had to have been a shitter for bums for a long time. And this is China, they are trying to change. But change in attitude come a lot slower than change in how tall your buildings are and how much money you make. Picture China as a giant Beverly Hillbillies. You can take the china man off the farm but you cant stop him from taking a shit in an empty hall way.
also the other photo is from Brians apartment. its about 26 stories up. Its a modest place, still nice. but they have an elevator girl that pushes the buttons for you. He lives in a nice place, but not nice enough to justify elevator assistance ( does anywhere justify that?). just goes to show that labor is damn cheap here. i dont want to make China to sound absolutely horrible so i will stop now.

behind the language

2007-10-09T16:01:00.000+08:00

so now that i can speak a little bit of chinese i think that i can say some things about the language. i am only doing this because so many people back home have asked me if i am learning chinese. and I am, but i would like to share some general knowledge of the language.
So, we all know that chinese uses charecters. They do look scary i will tell you that. but each one is built off of parts from others. so there is a method to the madness. the worse part is that there is no real phonetic guide to them. they have some things that help like (jin)近 looks a lot like （xin) 新 they both have a similar right side. look at them in a big font to realize it. but others like (wang) 往 and (zhu) 住 look very similar and have nothing in common. some are pictures as well like (ren)人, its a fucked up looking person. and ren means person and people. from there you take 人 add another 人， and get （cong) 从, which means to follow. so the charecter has two people following each other. it also means from, that makes some sense. but that works out hardly ever.
the charecters are really not that hard. i can remember 40-60 new works in about a week or so. so its not impossible. the hard part is that there only about 500 sounds in chinese. That means that EVERY word falls into those sounds. for instance there are about 100 different meanings for the sound SHI. some are more used than others. but that can make for some interesting situations.
Probably one of the worse things is that the average Joe ( or really average Wang) has really bad chinese. If your poor you dont get a good education, plain and simple. So a lot of people have bad chinese and are hard as hell to understand. they also speak in ways that could have many meanings, but you have to know what it means for that situatuion. for instance a bus driver asking if there is anybody for the next stop will just yell XIA(下）! which has about 20 different meanings, it just so happens to sort of mean to get off the bus. its hard to explain and things like that dont really happen in english
the last thing is that there are four tones in chinese. that just means that any word can be said four different ways and mean four different things. so this was made to along with the fact that many words have the same phonetics. but its totall bullshit. no one uses them, it just does not make sense to change the pitch of your voice all the time. So something that was supposed to clarify the language has just muddeled it up. YEAH!
well that is the basics, then there is the fact that the charecters have gone through simplifications in the past ( some up words of 40 strokes). so they have lost a lot of the differences in them and the are no longer pictures of what they meant.
thanks for taking time to read this. it is a real basic explanation of what i have been doing for 7 months here.

they all look not a like

2007-10-09T15:18:00.001+08:00

well i had a talk with my brother last night and he brought up some interesting questions that i would like to answer. manly being that i am bored and forgot to upload my pictuers of my Beijing trip last weekend.
But the first was asked after i mentioned that Qingdao has 30,000 koreans and maybe 20,000 japanese. he asked if i could tell the difference. now lets just take this as not an "all them asians look alike" joke and more of how do you tell the difference between a Frenchie and an American? (obvious, Americans dont talk like they have peanut butter stuck to the roof of their mouth). But it is actually really easy, especially with koreans.
they tend to take pride in standing out. All the Korean guys have long hair, and a lot wear hats. Not much of a disguise right? but because of this not chinese person here will have long hair or wear a hat, because they dont want to look like the Koreans. i dont think its because they hate them, i mean would you be happy if someone said you look Canadian?.
the Japanese are harder to spot, but they do stand out. they tend to keep to groups of only japanese people. the chinese and japs do not have a great history of getting along. but, i think the japanese make it worse by staying in only japanese areas. they also tend to hide their japanese-ness, maybe in fear of the chinese. who knows. they also carry themselves with this air of stoic confidence. They as well have different hair cuts then the Chinese.

so thats the way to stereo tpye and pigeon whole about 2.3 billion people. all in two paragraphs!!!! man i am good.

next post will be on languages, and learning them. well more on lack of learning them.

laoshan

2007-09-24T15:47:00.001+08:00

yo folks,
this last weekedn i busted out of Qingdao, and went a whole hour away from where i live. But the thing is that it looks nothing like the city. I went to a place called Lao shan ( lao mountain). its famous and stuff. it is supposedly where taoism started, the scenery made some old guys invent some religion. here are the pictures. it was cool and far more scenic then your average Chinese city. they also had some mammoth sized spiders that scared the jesus out of me (was jesus ever in me?). There was also a kick ass beach there too, so overall a day well spent.

some pictures dude

2007-09-19T16:14:00.000+08:00

howdy there, we are in the middle of some typhoon BS or something. Not really the end of the world..yet
but here are some random pictures from the shoreside of Qingdao. Its a rather nice area and has some cool stuff to see. like that big red thig for example. It is called the wind of may 5th or something like that. but it marks the day that the Boxer Rebellion started. That is when the chinese decided to expell all the foreigners from its country and go back into the dark ages.
other than that not much here. I put the photo that has the women leaning against the post because it is a funny story. I was taking a some pictures when i saw this lady in my photo and she was possing for her photo for like 10 minutes. I finally looked at who was taking her photo and it was some old lady who was looking threw her camera backwards! it was hillarious to watch them try and take a photo and she had no clue how to use the damn camera. she kept saying that it looks wrong. So i finally stopped laughing and decided to practice my chinese and tell them how to use the damn thing. I went up and said "ni hao ( hello)" and she looked at me then turned around and ingnored me for a minute. Then in proper chinese fashion shuved her camera into me hands and went and possed for me to take a picture, all the while not listening to a damn word i had said. People are just so amazing sometimes.

not all doom and gloom

2007-09-12T19:00:00.000+08:00

here are some photos to appease the masses. just some random beach stuff and that kind of jazz.
the one i like the most is the kid giving the thumbs down. He was at the summer camp that i taught at, it sucked everyone hated it. Kids are really the great at telling you the truth.

trains, pains, and anurisms

2007-09-12T18:22:00.000+08:00

sorry about the lack of posts. time is harder to come by these days than a chinese man over 5-5. HAHAHA. shit that was lame,
anyways. i do not really have the pictures you all have come to rely on, but i will give you a taste of what China can offer the stupid traveler.
So went to Bejing to sight see and all that before i came to Qingdao, and of course i waited till the last minute (3 days before) to buy train a ticket to Qingdao. The train takes about 7 hours and is a night train, so you really want to have decent seat. I asked for a good seat and they said they had none, but they did have the hard seats left. So i got that thinking that i was going to be spending the night on a bench all uncomfortable or something.
i got to the train about 20 minutes before it left, thinking that would be the prime to get a seat. What i did not realise was that i had no seat. the ticket i got reserved a SPACE on the train for me (if that much). So when i got there i saw that there was just a horde of people tryjng topush their way onto the train. I had two big ass bags with was pretty sure that this ride would suck, but i had no idea how much it would suck. So i got onto the train, this was accomplished by pushing shuving and being a dick. All my efforts got was a standing in a hallwall next to the toilet, So i obviously was not a big enough asshole. SO the train was packed to the brim, shoulder ot shoulder, and we headed off. Stupidly i assumed that people would get off the train at the next few stops and all would be well and in an hour or so i owuld be in a seat and counting sheep till Qingdao. HA!
After about 30 minutes the train stopped and i moved to the side to let all the people i was expecting to leave off the train. ABout 10 people started to push their way to the front of the car, not nearly what i thought. But the worse part was that 100 people were waiting to get on. So after these people some how managed to squeeze and squirm into the train we got going again. i thought this could not get any worse! HAHA, stupid me. Apparently all these people must have been in a rush to get to the train station, because all of them needed to piss once they got on, and i was luckily right by the bathroom doors. For about 25 minutes i endured the chinese politlely askeing to get by ( I.e Elbows to the groin and all major organs) great patience ( trying to open bathroom doors they goddamn know to be full, and then asking if someone is in their (to me for whatever reason) about 100 fucking times) and their great bathroom habits ( i.e shit everywhere, literally).
I dont want to bore you with how many times we stopped and how no one ever got off, but thats what happened 7 and a half hours. It was super bad because it was 4 am when most of this was happening, i was sweating the whole time, my buzz only lasted till the first stop, and the people were just fucking rude pigs. not that all chinese are rude, just every asshole on that train was.
but then to make matters worse the tracks were flooded and we had to stop at a train station outside of qingdao, and wait in the rain for a bus ( 1 and a half hours later it came). I also had no where to go, since we got to QIngdao at 7 am. So i chekced my luggage somewhere, and went to a coffe shop where i pretended to read a book ( horribly might i add) while i was actually face down init sleeping for an hour.
But now everthing is okay, that horror show is over. and i am a better person and all that bullshit i dont actually mean.
take home Lesson for the kids: dont buy the cheap ticket in china, just fly for christs sake.

sorry to rant, but it is a blog, i think thats what god intended these things for.

2007-09-05T15:58:00.000+08:00

So I know I have been half assing this whole blog thing, but since no one has really been bothering me about it I figured that it was not a big deal.
So as you should know by now I am living in Qingdao now. Qingdao is on the northern coast of China. Its got the normal 3-5 million people living in the city. The city is supposed to be one of the prettiest cities in china, as far as big cities go. I would sort of agree with that. It has trees lining the streets and the beach is only 15 minutes away from my house. BUT again it’s China, so its not that clean. They are in the process of tearing up all the sidewalks and laying down new tiles for them. So the city looks like its in shambles. Also there are tons of people who sell seafood and other crap on the streets by where I live. They just kind of throw any meat scraps or leftovers onto the street and then leave. So it really can look quite gross and smells bad to boot. But I do like the city, it actually has stuff going on, unlike Shenzhen.
My new job is also better. They pay double what I got before and I work less! Also I am not just some foreigner monkey that they like to parade around. All I have to do is go into a class read some stuff from one of their books and TRY and get them to talk about it. Most of them are high school aged so they wont say anything. So basically I speak English for 50 minutes 3 or four times a day. One of my classes is about grammar I don’t know shit about that, so that will get bad before it gets better. But whatever.
Qingdao is also the city that Tsingtao beer comes from. They are both pronounced the same, one is just a German way of phonetic Chinese (makes no sense, no one uses it) and QIngdao is the proper way of saying the cities name. I arrived right about the time their annual beer festival started, and me being me, I cant turn down a chance to celebrate beer. So me and some people went to check out the festivities. It was actually kind of lame for a beer festival. It was more festival then BEER festival. But I have added some pictures for those who care. I think the fact that the average Chinese person gets wasted off of two beers really made the beer drinking odd. In about an hour most of the people were too drunk to do anything. Some of the more ruckus types got up on tables and danced shirtless. The worst/best part was that in a giant room of about 500 people I was the only foreigner so everyone wanted to ganbei me. Ganbei literally means “dry glass” ( I think you get the idea of what you have to do when someone says “dry glass”), so by the time we found a seat I hand ganbei’ed about 3 or four times. It just went down hill from there. But was fun never the less. Here are some pics, enjoy and try sending me some emails, I am bored as shit most of the time.
Oww I guess the pictures might need an intro. One of is beer ans squid legs, they go to gether so well! Not nearly as well as the monkey brains we ate with the next beer (joking, maybe). The others are of the people I went with. And the last is just a little cultural take on china. There was not parking close enough to suit the people who went to the festival so they just started to park where ever they damn well pleased. Like in the middle of the street.. on the wrong side. Awesome.

photo shopped wall

2007-08-23T17:02:00.001+08:00

so these are my " i am so bored that i will use i photo to change my great wall photos". love them or leave them i guess. but the one of me is not photo shopped, there is no BADASS filter to add to a photo.

the great-ish wall

2007-08-23T16:51:00.000+08:00

well here it is. i finally am able to use the internet on my computer. only at work for some reason though. I will try and keep up dates and pictures flowing freely from hence forth.
so while i was in Beijing me and the croonies went to see the great wall. It was actually really sweet. it was a pain in the ass the go across. its ontop of the mountians so its not exactly flat. and the step sare pretty much made how ever the fuck they were feeling like. so one step is 6 inches the next is 3 feet. but it was awesome to see it and realize how crazy it would have been to make it that long ago. the wall was in good shape, far better than i had imagined. and it was only 45 minutes outside of Beijing. i thouhgt that it was crazy that it was in such good shape till i got to the end of the part that we were on and saw the crumbled remains that were ahead of me. so i figure its been rebuilt a time or two, but who cares. its really damn old and cool. so enjoy the pictures.

oww yeah. the best part about the wall was going down it. they dont really give a shit about any health risks here in china so to get off the mountain you ride a sled down this metal shute. it was pretty sweet, but these damn French ladies were in front of me riding at about 2 km a year. stupid frenchies. it would have been the best thing ever if it was not for the french. if i had a nickle for every time i have said that.....

wuhan panorama

2007-07-21T15:48:00.000+08:00

so here is a big ass picture or Wuhan. It was taken from the top of a place called yellow crane tower. It was a really scenic place, and has been there for about 1000 years, although it has been rebuilt every 500 years or so. But really as an American if anything is over 10 years old its pretty cool. i just thought that I would throw this up here to show people what a chinese town really looks like. Not much different than any other city that big really, its just weird to think that there are 8 million people in Wuhan and probably about 20 people in the USA know that it exists. I did not even know it existed till I bought a ticket to go there! I am going to Beijing in two weeks, so there will be more pictures coming from that. Then after i do that i will move to Qingdao and start teaching there on the 13th of August. These next few weeks will be really busy so I will try hard to keep everything up to date.

Wuhan.. so hot right now!

2007-07-15T20:10:00.000+08:00

I just got back from taking about a week trip to a city called Wuhan. Its a meager city of 8million that about 3 people in America know about. The city it self did not look much different than any other chinese maga city, but it was really a cool. Not cool in the heat sense, its known as one of Chinas three Furnaces. and that is saying a lot since Shenzhen is 90 everyday and is not one of them. So needless to say it was hot as hell. But my chinese friend Eric (not his real name...DUH) went with us and has some friends there that rolled out the red carpet for us, more like rolled out the party bus for us. Really had a great time. the food is know for being really spicy, but it was really good. Food from the area that i live in (Quangdong provence) is known for being bland and now i know why. there was also some really cool things to see in the town. like a 1000 year old tower thingy, and some old looking shit. the women there are also known for being very beautiful, tall and skinny, and they did not dissapoint. The people there also were also more open, maybe because we were in a college part of town. Shenzhen is really reserved and people are just old fashined here. while Wuhan looked older than Shenzhen the people are definetly more out going and open then here. I think the best explanation of Shenzhen is that Its a city where everything building has changed, every road built better, but the people have not changed, and probably wont for a long time.

But enough jibber jabber, heres some photos. enjoy!

Hong Kong

2007-06-17T13:28:00.000+08:00

so after living about 2 hours away from HongKong for 5 months i finally got around to going there.
Definetly a fun place. But not at all China. I mean by law it is part of China, even though you need your passport to go there, and chinese people need a visa to go there. But when you are there its not at all like China. Its clean, people all dress western (the girls were a sight for sore eyes) there are Mexican restaurants ( maybe 5 in all on mailand china), tons of white people, black people ad alot of Arabs. All of which is not something that you see on a daily basis on the Mainland. So it was cool, but not too carzy. The prices were outlandish, i spent about a months pay there in one day. I also bought a camera, but thats besides the point. there are also escalors that take you around the city. which is any lazy mans dream.
here are some cool pics form the trip.
fun fact: i had my first allergic reaction to a food, ever, while in HongKong. I dont know what did it, but in the middle of a margaritta and tacos my face swelled up like a giant red puffer fish.

polaroids

2007-06-13T22:30:00.000+08:00

So Greg has a polaroid camera. Which is really fun and interesting, but kind of a novelty since there is no zoom and the cameras are really limited.
But they dont have them in china. So when greg showed my friend Eric he went nuts about how cool it was and went out and bought one. so here are some of the pictures that he, and everyone else has taken with his camera. I was there to see some of them being taken, but some of the others are just cool and i want people to see them.
see more on his blog ericlai.blog.com.cn

son of a beach!

2007-06-13T21:17:00.000+08:00

sorry about the lame post name. shit happens
i went to a chinese beach a week or so ago, and it was awesome. It was about 2 hours away and seemed totally secluded. Since it was China we were not at all alone, but there was not that many people there. Also most people stayed out of the water becuase it was a little cold when we got there. But the stupid foreigners were all about it.
As soon as night time rolled around the people who ran this "resort" brought out a ton of grills. The chinese people we came with then brought out about a crap load of meat. There was meat of all sorts, from mystery meatballs to chiken breasts. The spice that is used in all chinese BBQs is the best thing ever. If i spilled some on my arm i would end up eating my own arm off. its that good. So we grubed and chilled in hamics for a couple hours.
One of the most awesome parts was that the average china man works like 10 hours a day and 6 days a week. so when they live it up, they really get the most of it. At 5 am there was still a healthy portion of people up. not really partying but just chilling. People were swimming and playing mahjong all night. Some of our chinese friends wanted to stay up and watch the sunrise at 6 am. i made it till 5. then was woken up at 6 to be told that a mountain was blockign the sun.
the next day was hot as hell. and well there was an ocean and a beach right by us. so you i trust that you all can fill in the blanks.
here are some pictures.
Peace.

s

long time no post.

2007-06-06T13:08:00.000+08:00

sorry about the utter lack of posts. i am not really that sorry since i dont think anybody even looks at this thing.
but here are some more photo goodies from my recent-ish trip to Thailand.
it was all i could have asked for, except that the airline i was on stole my camera, hence no posts for a month. i finally got around to getting some pictures to put up here. they were so kindly taken by one brian Jackson.
thialand had the most amazing beaches. we actually chilled on the beach that Leo Dicapprio filmed the movie "the Beach" on. so you can assume it was epic. Greg also got attacked by monkeys on a beach. i dont there is anything funnier than monkies chasing a grown man into the water. they even swam after him. just to see that was worth the trip.

so here they be. pictures of a chinese beach to follow shortly.

2007-05-21T22:08:00.000+08:00

sorry for the month off. i am not sure if anybody even reads this stuff anymore. i mean other than the great and all knowing chinese government.
I went to tailand for a week in the begining of the month and it was hella tight. And by that i mean that it was paradise found, then the stupid airlines lost my bags for two days and when i got them they had stolen my digiral camera. I am trying to sort it out with them but it does not look too good. Anyways that would be the reason why there are no pictures of my trip here right now. but i promise to change that and get some stuff up here ASAP.
Another reason that i have not been posting so much is that i dont go out that much and i study chinese a ton of the time. I am at somewhere about 3 hours a day of studying and i have a conversation partner for 4 hours a week.
so there are some excuses why there is nothing new here. Also live here as become normalish and there is just not that much to say that would interest the average person.
If anyone cares i have met som any pro skaters since i have been here. i mean i met Eric freaking Koston. I am not fanning out but it is pretty cool to see the guy that i had on all my binders when i was in high school. and guy mariano was shredding it hard when i saw him. not bad, not bad.
so i will rectify the problem of no pictures soon. I hope.

Part of freaking history Bro

2007-04-16T22:07:00.000+08:00

so there is now bridge from shenzhen to HongKong. it will make stuff even nuttier than it already is. so basically two cities of 12-15 million just got a super easy connection. and one (HK) is stupid rich and one is woking on it. But we got to be part of the first people to ever use it, even if it was just to walk halfway across it and turn back. and even if it was 7am. still, FIRSTish still counts. there was about 20-30 thousand people there, just a drop in the old chinese bucket. Overall i give it a 5 out of ten on the worth getting up at 6am to go to meter.

easter rain

2007-04-13T12:01:00.000+08:00

for the language centers Easter celbration our boss came around to all the classes dressed as some sort of really scary bunny. none fo kids had been told what happens on Easter so they were all pretty wierded out. Some had actually been told, and when they started to draw their easter cards they all put Jesus on the crucifux on it. It was pretty great to see that. I dont know their chinese teachers explained the link between our lord and saviour and a bunny who lays eggs. Shit i dont know how we can get over that little fact!

more random pictures for your enjoyment

2007-04-03T11:38:00.000+08:00

tau yuan ju

2007-04-03T11:30:00.000+08:00

so a little while ago there was a celebration for the area that we live in, tao yuan ju. its just a giant housing development. They did about 10 different song and dance acts that told the story of how they conquered a mountain (with dynamite) and made this glorious place. it was entertaingng for the first half hour, the next two hours were rough. But it was kind of cool. they really went all out to celbrate their neighborhood.

update

2007-03-27T12:04:00.000+08:00

hey all,
things have definetly slowed down here for the most part. i work four days a week, from 2pm till 8pm. work is not hard, but kids do start to wear you thin.
Me and a couple others were treated to a day out by the owner of a club we frequent, the dame guy who had greg sing with the band last wekk and made me sing "with or without you" with them last saturday. he took us to some mountain that we climbed. it was nice, they dont like to actually climb mountains here, so they put steps up them. i figured it would be a cake walk, but alas it was almost 3000 steps to the top, and some sets of stairs looked pretty much vertical. i would show pictures but when we got near the top ut started to pour down rain. and after2 hours of climbing we got to the top and could only see 3 feet in front of hands. not a good picture opportunity.
we then went to some crazy restaurant. all wet and soggy, i was actually given ( he does not want it back apparently) some Ralph Lauren sweater to wear because i was soggy. But we have some fancy meal that consisted of Alligator (yummy) wild pig, and other various things. I also ate some pig felopian tube, which was as horrible tasting as you could ever imagine. and of course all of this was on his tab and he did not fail to mention to us how expensive this was and flaunt his fat cash. but he was nice guy.
other than that things are a bit more normal. i dont know if i have changed or if i just avoid shit that is different.

Oww yeah. my blog has been blocked by the chinese government, apparently the chinese word for democracy is not supposed to be spoken. They must not get the joke. i can post but i can not see what actually shows up. so keep me posted if stuff looks wac for whatever reason. that is if anybody actually reads this stuff.

2007-03-20T13:24:00.000+08:00

here are some more pictures. I am trying to amass all th photos from other people as well, so i will put some up in waves. the internet is also slow as dirt here.

rokcin from 9-5 ( not the 5 that ends in p.m)

2007-03-20T13:06:00.000+08:00

so we had a crazy ass saturday. it started at 9 a.m with a trip to a temple in shekou ( an area of shenzhen close to the water). this temple was a shrine to the water gods basically. People also pray ang give fruit and food sacrafices in hopes of good fortune to the shrines their. There are these really cool pots that if you rub the sides just right water sprays out of them, that kept us busy for hours. then it was 25 minute walk tot he tomb of the last emporer of the Song dynasty. He is the baby on the guys back. He obviously did not do much as a ruler, the guy whose back he was on drowned both of them rather than let the mongol hoard get them. we then went to a fortress about thirty minutes away and looked at some dope cannons and shot some toy guns. This was all over soon and then the real fun started.
we then went to a KTV ( kareokee) and got nice and wasted. It was fun to go out with everyone we work with, both foreign and chinese. the place we went was nuts. very big and very plush. but only 80 yuan (10 dollars) an hour. So we had fun there and sang our little hearts out for a couple hours.
we then went on to a bar. and for un known reasons we got free wine and some free beer brought to us. Not totally unusual, but still odd. Then to take the cake a guy came up and said that we would get a free bottle of booze if someone went on stage and sang with the band. which seemed odd, but whatevs. So greg went and sang "summer of 69" for a couple hundred chinese dudes and dudettes. we then got a 900 yuan (125$) bottle of hennessey for free. needless to say the rest of the night is foggy at best.

pay the cost to be the boss

2007-03-11T16:52:00.000+08:00

sometimes you have to pay the price to have places like this to skate. and yes that is marble. They must have some huge mining area around here cause everything, and i am not joking, everything is made of polish granite or marble. Its nuts but awesome

Smog and skateboards

2007-03-11T16:40:00.000+08:00

These photos are of a place called ling ji. its a public area near where i live and we skate there without any hassel form security, which pretty amazing considering what you go through to skate in the US. The other photos are of a skatepark that we go to run by a guy named johnson. People here get the make their oun english names so you get some pretty good ones. like Thrasher, and one kid i know is named Janoski ( after the pro skater stefan janoski). you will also notice that it looks like an over cast day out. Nope, it was really hot actually. But somedays the winds just dont work to your advantage and all the smog just stays around the area. When it got dark you could really tell how bad it was. There are some buildings being constructed by where we live and they had lights on top of them for what ever reason. But the lights were reflecting off the smog and you could not see the actual source of the lights, and the building cant be taller then 10 - 12 stories. Now that just aint right. I think i am getting the black lung just sitting here. Please take time today to take a breath of fresh air for me!

the END

2007-03-05T00:25:00.000+08:00

the spring festival has reached an end, and not a minute too soon.
today was basically chinese valentines day. people write wishes and love notes on paper and hang them up everywhere. not sure what its all about but it was cool. every china dude and dudette came out of the wood works for this one.
Here are some more random photos i have taken over the festival and some of the city. Enjoy.

More new years stuff

2007-03-01T20:29:00.000+08:00

here are two more photos from the new year festival. i am still working on getting this blog to let me put up my panaramic stuff. so cool your jets

2007-03-01T18:28:00.000+08:00

This is me shredding at a very epic building. it is the new city council type building. It goes on a lot longer than it looks in this photo. I am at a football arena size open are where they probably have very intense Chinese Nationalism pep rallies.
I also have a good panaramic photo that i need to peice together and put up. More photos soon, i think

New year same shit

2007-02-20T14:44:00.000+08:00

new year

2007-02-20T14:32:00.000+08:00

The chinese new year has come and gone. It came with a bang and left with about a billion more. The new year celebration pretty much shut down the whole country. Everyone gets the week off. Thats pretty crazy to do in most places, here its down right nuts. The average person in this area works 10-14 hours a day in a factory. then you go and give them all this free time and they go nuts. Well as nuts as the average repressed person around here can.
The city must have spent a small fortune to decorate the city. EVERY street light has red lanterns hanging from it, and when you consider the fact that there could be a million street lights thats a lot of lanterns to make hang and then take down. there are also decorations put up every where. as seen by the photos. once that is done the fireworks start. They did not stop till today ( 3 days later) and that is not an exaggeration. i could look out my window and see explosions five inches from it for 3 days straight.
the only bad thing was that i could not find a fireworks stand or anywhere to buy them. some how a billion rockets were sold with out my knowledge. I am pissed.
HAPPY YEAR OF THE PIG. (westerners changed it to the boar cause they dont want to be called a pig)

more pcitures

2007-02-09T11:04:00.000+08:00

Here is one of the skate spots with in 5 minutes of my house.
the first day in china i went there to check it out and about 8 pro skaters from America where there. The chinese dont see many white people ( they freaked out when they saw the one black guy) much less white people on crazy pieces of wood jumping around every where.
I will take more photos of the other spots and put them up as soon as i get around to doing it.

2007-02-09T11:00:00.000+08:00

this is the view from where i am living and one of where i am living.
enjoy

the begining of the end

2007-02-06T23:25:00.000+08:00

Well i made it to China! WOOOO
despite what most people think its really not that crazy here.
But you dont want to here about all the normal shit that goes on here so I will not bore you with the normalcy of my life. So one thing that will weird a normal health conscience bloke out is the pollution. Some days it will role in like a fog. it smells horrible ( that might also be the smell from the Chinese lady boiling dog or who knows what on the balcony under me) and in general gives you a not so fresh feeling.
Another thing is the driving. people dont give a shit about any laws having to do with driving. the only law is that you must honk 5 times per minute and flash your lights accordingly. the honking is funny cause it happens so much that everybody ignores it, but everyone still does it. Also no body gets road rage. they honk and flash lights and all that shit, but never get all crazy.

The most shocking and or annoying thing is the staring. Apparently the normal joe here aint never seen a white boy here. little kids laugh and point while everyone else just looks at you wide eyed (insert Asian eye joke here). It really can catch you off guard cause you are just walking down to the store and three out of 10 people stop and take a second look.
but it is kind of cool at the same time.

So no real craziness, the food is good ( just dont ask what part of the animal it is) the people are really nice. the weather is really good, like 70's every day.

Look for photos soon. i have some but i have to use other peoples computers to put stuff up so give me a minute to do that.

if my blog sucks go here

2007-01-29T07:36:00.000+08:00

Also if you want some background info and want to see some photos check out this (theprecipice.us). it is blog by a friend who is already in China.

the C word

2007-01-29T04:06:00.000+08:00

So after a long time it is here. I told myself that i would never do this blog crap but whatever.
i thought of a couple other names for a blog but this seemed like it made the most sense.
i was going to go with "use your illusion" but some band already used that.
But anyways, I am going to use my little corner of cyber space to chronicle a forth coming trip to China
Namely Shenzhenm where I will be teaching english to some dough eyed children.

Don't worry, Future posts will not be plauqued with so much of me talking. I plan to make this much more of a photo exhibition than anything else. I am not a prolific writer so I will not try to be.

I get to China on the First of February. So start looking for some photos soon after!