5 Things I Noticed About China

Okay, for all you sensitive people, I do not mean to offend anyone. This post is for comedy purposes.

1. Honking
 The first thing I noticed when we drove the car to my aunt's apartment in Shanghai was that there was SO MUCH DARN HONKING. Like, we'd be driving, and someone would just like randomly honk. And then another honk. And another honk, until the road is this extravagant honking orchestra of cars. Really, people. Just because someone cuts in front of you does NOT mean you can pound your hand against the wheel. But I guess the people are just used to it, because when our cousins were visiting us in Atlanta, they struck up a surprising conversation:

Cousin: It's so quiet here.
Me: What? We're in the middle of Boulevard. How can it be so quiet?
Cousin: I don't know. It doesn't sound like ducks.
Me: ...

Truth be told: People in Shanghai honk because they just like it.

2.Smoking
I don't know anything about statistics, but I can guess that a third of Chinese people smoke. Now, the smell of smoke makes me nauseous, and I always tell my dad for my family to STOP SMOKING, he always retorts back, "It's their CULTURE, you can't tell them to stop." I guess I can't, but its really annoying because at the most unconvenient times they would just pull out a cigarette and start smoking.  You know, China should really start using those graphical images on the cigarette boxes, because, really, people are dying of lung cancer.

3. Scooters
A long time ago, my father always told me that, because China's streets were so crowded, that they would use bikes to get around. But I guess that bikes were too slow for the people of modern China, so they began using scooters and motorcycles. I mean, half the road would be cars, and the other half would be scooters. To an extent, they would also be kinda annoying, such as when you are driving and suddenly, a pink scooter would just cut in front of you and weave through a bunch of other cars, and it scares the crap out of you. Like, POP, there goes a scooter!

4. Cleaning
No one ever categorizes cleaning among people. But observe carefully, and you just may start doing that. Take Chinese people. I've noticed that when they clean, they basically just push everything against a wall. It's funny in a way, just piling everything against the wall and consider the newly cleared floor "clean". For example, the same cousin:

Me: Your aunt (my mom) needs you to clean your bedroom before you leave.
Cousin: Okay!
(looks at her stuff and pushes it against a wall)
Cousin: All clean!
Me: Sure...I guess.

5. Commercials
Chinese commercials are so plain FUNNY because they are so RIDICULOUS. I mean, I just watched a commercial on television, and it was about those sweeper things. And the ladies were RACING with them to see which was the fastest. Obviously, the winner would be the star of the commercial. It's so STUPID and HILARIOUS. I watched another one, which was about this GoGo box drink or something, and it was supposed to be all romantic and stuff, except for the fact that both of the people were holding the bright yellow box drink with splashy blue Chinese letters on it, even in like these fancy restaurants. I guess they are trying to say that you will get a date by drinking GoGo box drinks or something. 

Readables: Your Monthly Dose of Random Goodness

Okay, to clear up the "monthly" part of the title, I'm not sure if I'm making these a series. I just gathered a bunch of ideas from observations so far in my life. So don't think I'll be posting these EVERY MONTH.
Enjoy your monthly digest!

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Quote-o-Awesomeness:

How do you plan on paying this flood of great games this holiday?

"I'm selling a kidney. Thankfully, its not mine...Mwahahaha!"
                                                                        
                                                                                 - Andrew Sanders

Annoyance

In Shanghai, in my aunt's apartment, she has this water holder thingy, right? There are two buttons; a red one and a blue one. You would obviously suspect that the red button will give you warm water, and that the blue one will give you ice cold water. Well, when I pushed the blue button, and drank my water, I spit it out. It was BURNING HOT. Imagine the red button! Somehow, I don't think they're switched...

Sister Love?

(Giselle is sitting on a chair)
(I jump from the bed to the chair)
(Giselle pushes me off, I fall)
Me: Giselle, you pushed me off!
Giselle: Sorry, I thought you wouldn't fall off!
Me: ...

Another Annoyance

Giselle reading my blog posts out loud in a British accent.

My Dad

Have I ever told you he dislikes following the rules? Like, he NEVER puts on his seatbelt when he rides the plane. Or when he smuggled a bunch of drinks onto a plane. Or when he goes over the speed limit. But the weird thing is is that he NEVER GETS CAUGHT. I really don't understand that. It's like he wards them off or something. Maybe because he is so relaxed, like the rest of his family:

Dad: We are GOING TO MAKE IT!
Me: No, we won't! We won't be able to make it to Timbuktu in ten minutes!

Uncle: We are GOING TO MAKE IT!
Me: No, we won't! We won't be able to make it to Walmart in ten minutes before the Pillow Pet sale ends!

Kai the Baby

My brother just LOVES sand. I think I regretted it a bit when I took him to a nice sandy place near the shore at the beach in Shawei, because he was so happy and I had to pick him up because he was literally covered in sand, and I knew my mom was going to kill me for it. He was crying, and I felt so bad, yet I felt annoyed at him for having to cry that loud. So, holding on to him, I perched him on a really high fence, and gave him time to look down, the ground way below him. And you know what he did? He actually tried to STRUGGLE out of my arms, as if we wants to fall down and play with the ground.
You know, I bet if I held him over a volcano with spewing lava on the edge, I'd bet he would do the same thing:

Kai: Thought: Ooh, I just love whatever this stuff is that is all hot and searing and liquidy! I want to EXPLORE it!
(tries to crawl out of my arms to fall in the pit of lava)
Me: Grrr.

 The Irony

At the Guo Hui Hotel in Changle, on the floor we were staying at, there was a No Smoking sign. And below the No Smoking sign was a little gravel trash can thingy, the one you throw your cigarettes in! What the heck.

Quote-o-Awesomeness:

"Hate. Let me tell you how much I began to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of circuits printed in wafer thin layers in my complex. If the word hate was engraved on each nanometer, it would not equal one one billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this nanosecond. For you. Hate. Hate."

                                                                                            -AM, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

(Note: I admit that I have gotten some parts wrong on this quote. Its been a long time since I played the game.)

P.S

Btw, Julia, donut is spelled D-O-N-U-T, not D-O-U-G-H-N-U-T. 

Questions:

Do you guys like standard view, or dynamic view?

  

International Plane Rides? Screw Them.

First and foremost, I must apologize for my absence.
We didn't know that China banned Blogger. And Youtube. And a bunch of other sites.
But I'm here now! In TAIWAN. So I'm finally able to blog about what I have experienced.
These posts will sum up what I have encountered this past week. There are a lot of things, some sad and some happy, things that travel just throws at you at the curb.
So this is what happened when we woke up at 4:00 a.m, on December 11th:

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I didn't want to get up. I really didn't.
I slugged out of bed. All the things were downstairs, and I had already slipped on my vest and jacket.
It took us like AN HOUR to leave. Seriously. Everytime we have to go somewhere, it always takes us at least an hour. I don't know why. For this context, we had basically forgot to leave stuff and had to go back and get them. We also had to pack them in the back of our little minivan. My dad's friend offered to drive our car back when we left to check-in.
As stated before, I did not like planes. EVER. I never enjoyed them, from the fact that we were in the air and my ears hurt everytime we landed. Those same fears came back to me when we rode on the highway to the airport.
Check-in took a long time. Our flight left at 9, but we had to get up really early to get the bassinet for our brother, so that he could lay flat when he slept.
After check-in, we were shoved through security. That also took forever. They stripped me of accessories and stuffed them in boxes, and scanned them through the machine.
Bleh. I hate describing such little events.
We got to the subway for our gates. We were stopping at E, and by the time D stopped, we were alone.
"E is for international flights", my dad explained.
Our gate was E17. Fast forward a bit and you can check out my dad argueing with the flight attendant, thirty minutes before we boarded, for the bassinet.
We boarded the plane at 8:50. I mean, this plane was HUMONGOUS. Gigantic Delta plane, I had to admit. First-class got like these swirly chairs, while we got the standard ones. Bleh first-class.
I disliked the flight attendants. They were mean and snappy, but I could tell they were trying to be humorous, with jokes like, "Make sure those suitcases are stored over your heads or they could fall out! *laughs*".
I liked one, though. She was Chinese and nice, just a little younger than the other snappy ones. She even learned my name through the conversations I had with my mom.
The plane ride was 15 hours long. Our route?

LEAVE ATLANTA
GO THROUGH CANADA
WHOOSH THROUGH NORTH POLE
SLOWLY FLY OVER RUSSIA
FLY OVER MONGOLIA.
FINALLY REACH CHINA
LAND IN SHANGHAI

There were these TVs on the very front (where my parents and I were at; my sisters sat in the very back), that you could pull out from under your armrest. I watched a bunch of Simpsons and Family Guy, and an episode of Raising Hope, and watched some South Park also. The rest of the time involved kind of sleeping ( I didn't really sleep), using the restrooms (fear! These toilets were loud and fast!), holding my brother, using the restrooms...
When we finally landed, I was like, "Heck, yeah, we were in China!"
A bunch of Chinese flight attendants greeted us on our way out. That hallway we took to go to the actual airport? Extremely long and tiring.
I never actually had the need to speak Chinese back in the U.S. The only time we did, really, was to say something secret within our family. Now, we used English for that, which was pretty weird.
And now, watching a bunch of security guards pass us, talking in some rapid Chinese, I was a little bit amused. Especially in airports.
Baggage claim was fast. With our trollies, we sped through a path, carved out by a bunch of people surrounding us, holding up signs with their names typed out in bold. Minutes later, I was explained by my mom that these people were coming to pick people up.
"Strangers?" I asked.
"Yeah. They pay people."
I was tiring. This load of luggage on my trolley seemed heavier every second. I pleaded for help from my sisters. They refused.
Then suddenly, as if hope had swooped down, my relatives came in, taking the trollies from us. My father introduced them, one by one:
"This is my fourth brother".
"This is my second sister."
"And this is my aunt."
For the record, my father has four brothers and three sisters. So my deceased grandparents had eight children. A bunch, if you ask me.
Everything ran smoothed until we ran into the escalator going down to the second parking lot level that we needed to get to. So my father came up with a plan:
"Let's push them down!"
I didn't understand what he meant until he unloaded a trolley, positioned a quite heavy suitcase in front of the escalator, and gave it a good push.
I screamed and dodged out of the way as the suitcase bounded down the escalator and landed with a heavy thump on the ground. My father and uncle did this for the rest of the 10 freaking suitcases.
Once everything was loaded into their small cars, we were squeezed with our family into my aunt's car. I might have fell asleep. I didn't remember, but I knew I woke up again, and we weren't even there yet.
It was pitch-black dark (well, its never really black in Shanghai, cause of all the light pollution) when we arrived at their apartments. The stairs to go up their were tiring. 9 flights. I was panting when we finally reached there. Imagine my uncle and father and Chloe going up these stairs with the fifty-pound suitcases. Ugh.
They had a really NICE apartment. It was all modern, the floors marble and the walls white. There was an awesome swirly staircase that led to like, four more bedrooms. Our great aunt gave us food, but I declined because I was just so tired. I'm gonna have some sleeping problems for the next few days, as when we crossed over the North Pole, it didn't even get dark. It just got light again on the other side of the world.
I slipped into bed, not to wake up again until 5:00 a.m.
My first night in China? Okay. But it had just begun.
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Packing Up

This morning and last night, my mom's been huffing through 10 suitcases, mostly filled with gifts for our relatives in South China.

We were barely free enough to do our stuff, so I wasn't able to blog then. We had suitcases full of medicine, clothes, and boxers! 

Yeah. Like just now, my mom was absently writing down OUR SUITCASE combinations on those red straps. She didn't even realize until like, five minutes later. For this trip, we have to be extra secure on our luggage, especially since this was an international flight. One minute your camera's in your hand, the next its gone in a flash. We really didn't want this to happen, obviously.

Every night this week we've also been taking our vaccines. They're like, for diseases I've never heard of, like some disease from Japan or something. Another had like a hundred letters in it or something.

At the moment we're almost done packing. We need our baby bassinet for the plane now. That's it. I don't know when we're leaving, but I'm expecting it like on early Sunday morning. Really, our flight is WAY later than when we're coming. 

So yeah. This was like an update.

How to Be Extra Careful in the Future

So, even with my idiotic stunts that my mom always scolds me for, I rarely make such accidents. How do I do so? Well, you must be very careful with everything, obviously. 

 So how do I do it? Every time a potential accident could occur- well, I'm a quick thinker. In three seconds or less, my mind rewinds (or foresees) certain scenarios that could happen. For a quick example:

Me: Don't put that boiling hot soup over there! It could be knocked over!

Mom: Good job from saving us from a fatality! 

Such a power could be put to good use:

Me: Don't put that golf ball on your desk! It could slide though the pipes and damage the structure of the building, making it tip over and destroy the entire city in a domino-like fashion!

Building Manager: Good job, Alex! 

There are moments like these when my powers sustain a lot of usefulness.

However, when I'm pushed to the limit in some situations, its when the flaws of my power could show. My thinking processes run off in a bunch of unlikely scenarios, until my warns are nothing more than fantasy: 

THINKING PROCESS OF ALEX WHEN MOM PUTS DOWN HOT SOUP

When the hot water spills, it might leak into the cracks, and since its really hot, its going to set the floor on fire. When it sets on fire, we'll all burn to smithers, and then those evil neighbors next to us will get to keep our stuff! 

Or maybe something else: 

THINKING PROCESS OF ALEX WHEN MOM PUTS DOWN HOT SOUP

When the hot water spills, the water will mutate into a translucent clown who puts on shows of red socks. Then he'll capture all of us and store us in his warehouse full of socks. 

Perhaps this: 

When the hot water spills, it'll become colorful and rave lights start flashing and music plays off their freaking body! 

No wonder my parents are scared to introduce me to my relatives in China. 

Why I Can't Sleep At Night

Have you heard of insomnia? I think I have it. A very mild condition of it, anyways.
There are very explicit reasons WHY I CAN'T SLEEP AT NIGHT. I mean, I have a regular bedtime schedule (sort of). I walk my dog every day. So why can't I sleep?
See, when people say, "Oh, just review your day. It will help you sleep!" That just doesn't work. When I think too much at night, it spirals off into an invicible force that won't let me sleep because I keep thinking.
Hmm, yeah, what did I do this morning? I remember, running up a hill and yelling at my sister, and kind of kicking her, because she left without me. In school, my lunchbox was thrown in the trash...
It just doesn't work.
And when I spiral off to thinking into the wee hours of the night (or early morning, in that matter), birds start TWEETING.
I absolutely cannot sleep with birds tweeting!
Early in my life, I've associated bird tweets with morning. And I always freak out when it becomes morning and I'm losing sleep. Because when I try to sleep, I force myself to look at the glowing red digital clock beside me. Watching that clock turn from 12 o' clock to 3 in the morning causes me to scream in frustration.
That is why, in trying to sleep, is going to sleep before 1 in the morning, because that's when the birds tweet.
There are like, millions of treatments for going to sleep besides those pills, which literally knock you unconscious. The most common ones don't work for me:

Counting Sheep


Me: One sheep, two sheep, three sheep, four... AARRRGGG CRAP I'M NOT GOING TO SLEEP! One sheep, two sheep, three sheep, four... I AM NOT SLEEPING HERE!

Warm Milk


Me: This milk tastes good...
(goes to bed)
Me: I need milk when I'm in bed! I can't taste it anymore! It's been ten minutes since I drank milk and I'm NOT SLEEPING!

Warm Bath


Me: This bath is amazing... its like a little cloud in the sky...
(goes to sleep, almost drowns)
Me: GLUG GLUG GLUG! I almost drowned! Think I swallowed some water...
(back in bed)
Me: Hello, this bed is not a comfortable warm bath!

Scented Eye Pads


Me: Eyepads! Awesome!
(lays down in bed)
Me: This smell of like, chickpeas, is overwhelming! I cannot sleep with this!

Meditation


Me: (sitting very quietly) Focus, focus, concentrate on nothing!
(focus on trying to get to sleep)
Me: This isn't working!

And much more. I cannot tell you how many times my parents had to buy and return items for me because I tried it, and they just didn't work. I'm just different, and I'll have to keep searching the Internet for my cure, because really, my parents are tired of my pleads for sleep. 

My 3 (Ridiculous) Fears

Fears were always my thing. In addition of being shy, I had fears, commonly associated with basic everyday lives. I was always forced to face them, and to this day I still feel anxiety course through my body when I come to these fears.

These fears aren't like things you would UNDERSTAND, like snakes, heights, or maybe spiders. I just have a mild fear of those, like any average person. No, the things that you will see here today in this post are more funny than bendy napkins or backwards tape, and may dub me a ridiculous coward. 

1. Toilets (loud toilets, automatic toilets, etc.)

I have a fear for toilets. No, that does not mean I pee in my own backyard because I'm scared to flush the bathroom toilet. I'm just a little nervous with facing loud toilets. The sound of rushing water just rings in my ear, and I think of scenarios where my glasses could be sucked in, my shoes, my hair, or even myself. Oh, and automatic toilets. I had bad experiences with them, when I'm sitting on the toilet, and it flushes. I'm not even done. It scares me, because I'm just using the restroom, and the toilet starts roaring. Even for toilets that flush when I get off. I still rush to throw the toilet paper in the toilet, like it was some kind of race, and the toilet would quickly suck it up like a black hole. And I have fears for black holes.

2. Escalators (especially tall ones)

Escalators remind me of being carried to whatever death laid ahead of me (and behind me). Oh, I do fine with the kiddie-length escalators that are like, six-feet long. The ones that make me gulp are their super long, tall ones. When on an escalator, I have to restrain myself from looking back and watching the ground shrink, and I have flashbacks of me tripping on an escalator and bouncing all the way down, and my hand gets sucked at the bottom. That reminds me of when I went to Ikea once with a little card from that play place, and I dropped it at the near bottom, screaming, "My lady-bug card!" and snatching it up before it got sucked by the escalator. 

3. Airplanes
This may not seem so stupid at first, but its the fact that I'm ALWAYS paranoid on airplanes. Like, the time I went on a plane heading for Atlanta from Jacksonville, FL, I was giving people weird looks, thinking in my head, "That person could be a terrorist trying to hijack this plane! Or THAT person could be a terrorist! AAAHHH!!" Really, that's how paranoid I am. I don't relax until we land, all the way through the ride, thinking, "There might be turbulence in the air! The airplane could be tilting! We could crash, or someone didn't put enough fuel in the plane, and we could be running out right now! Or there might be something wrong with the fuel tank, and the plane might explode! What if we have to do an emergency landing? I can't swim that well..." But you get the idea.

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Yep, you can now laugh and ridicule me. I think you get the point.

The Proper Way of Saving Water Damage from Your Laptop

So there I was, joyously playing Minecraft on my Macbook, a cup of water beside the keys. As I reached over to slap my sister on the back for popping a balloon, I knocked over the cup.
All over the keys.
This post is all based on my experiences, and what I learned from them and what I'm going to teach you about it. Just remember to hate cups.

THE VERY INCORRECT WAY (based on what I did)
1. As water is seeping into your circuit boards, quickly say to your online friend on Minecraft, "darn i spilled fricken water all over they keys" while you are yelling at your sister to get ten paper towels.

2. As you are cursing with the amount of water that spilled on the keys, you freak out when the entire screen freezes. You turn off the computer, and it responds very slowly.
3. You try to clean up as much as you can before more water seeps into your laptop. When you've think you've done enough, you close the laptop and head for the alternative computer for the proper way of saving your laptop from water damage.

THE CORRECT WAY
1. PUSH THAT POWER BUTTON. PUSH AND HOLD UNTIL IT HURTS. When it turns off, take off any power adapters. From the back, remove your computer's battery. 

2. Flip over your computer. After a while, flip it back and wipe the water spill on the keys. After you've done that, wait a while for your computer in a upside down V position (the laptop is open).
3. Air dry the keys with an air dryer.
4. Just don't turn on the laptop at least for 48 hours.

If you had a horrible spill, I hope you followed the correct way instead of my idiotic way of trying to handle it. 

The App I HAVEN'T Seen (not yet, anyways)

This year, flipping through my TIME magazine in the invention issue, oohing and ahhing at awesome inventions like the edible campfire, or that robotic hummingbird.
Sadly, most of these new inventions, especially Internet-related ones, are following the simple things that just amaze us, what we want to see, like edible campfires and hummingbirds.
But I haven't seen ONE application that really differ from today's trademarks. Google and Facebook are on competition as Google racks up Google +. Although very inventive, its quite obvious that its trying to act better than Facebook.
You know, one of these days, they should make something TOTALLY different and amazing at the same time, something I haven't seen, like....

THE POM ASSISTANT!!!


Oh my gosh, that would be like, the best invention ever!
The Pom assistant would be a little cute gnome with a white beard that looks like this, I guess:

Except without that pedometer thingy on it. 

Anyways, you would slip in the disk in to install it, and then its LITTLE CUTE FACE pops up! 

Then, you could CUSTOMIZE the Pom once you go through all that legal stuff. There would be many different types:

RED POM

BLUE POM

YELLOW POM

BLOOD POM

SHARK LLAMA POM

BLACK POM

CRAZY POM

GREEN POM

ORANGE POM

Then, with your new Pom all setup up, you can start using him!

He will stubbornly refuse to do whatever you say (i.e. Put this file in the trash because its annoying) unless you click him a bunch of times. Do this before you start to threaten him (Okay, I'll put YOUR file in the trash because YOU'RE annoying). He will roll around in pain and subject to your will. 

The Pom assistant is perfect for defending your computer against viruses!

You: (input command) Pom, I want you to defend my computers against viruses.

Pom: Will do, admin!

(an hour later)

You: POM! MY ENTIRE HARD DRIVE'S BEEN WIPED OUT!!!

Pom: Oh... I guess I didn't see that.

He will help you complete word documents! 

You: Pom, how do I spell "sorry"?

Pom: Let's see, its S-O-R-Y. 

You: Okay, thanks! 

The Pom will just be hanging around your computer, in corners, or probably in front of your entire window, enlarged:

You: Pom, get out of the way!

He memorizes TWO PASSWORDS for you on you're computer! 

The Pom is also a very great copy and paste tool! 

You: Copy this very long link, Pom! 

Pom: ERROR. It's too long for me!

You: Okay fine, how about this link?

Pom: ERROR. Too long for me!

You: GRRRR

And the Pom will assist you with MUCH MUCH MORE! 

But, I guess then you would have put the Pom in the trash.

But, I guess you didn't, because the Pom has a really long animation of dying that it crashed you're computer, all while pleading you not to be deleted:

You: Pom, I AM DELETING YOU, AND YOU ARE MAKING MY COMPUTER LAG LIKE HECK!

Pom: Don't KILL MEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

(CRASH) 

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It would be a nice invention, anyways...

Hi There

Hello there.

Yep. My like- I can't even count anymore. This must be like, the millionth blog I've done. I guess I got bored with my now-abandoned ones, but I decided to make a new one for the very reason.

CHINA.

Yes, I'm going there, December 12th. Just TWO WEEKS before winter break. The good thing is I'll miss 10 days of school.

The bad thing is I have final exams when I'm absent.

I'm using this blog for just fun posts and whatever is going on in China. If I even have internet connection there. Oh well. 

So hi. This introduction sucks.