February 6th: China Day 2 + Haircut

Day 21, 7:30AM: After my “experience” the previous night, I woke up in the spa very tired, but ready to leave. We left the spa and grabbed some breakfast before buying our train tickets for the trip to Guangzhou. The first thing to catch my attention was that our train ticket had no barcode. Instead, it actually had a RFID chip embedded in the paper so you just waved it over the machine and it let you in. That was really cool.

The train itself looked like an modern train, it was electrically powered and traveled at about 200 kph. I enjoyed sitting in my window seat listening to my iPod and reflecting on my experience the day before and contemplating life in general (I seem to do it a lot). It was interesting to see how the transition from city to rural landscape, complete with farming and straw houses in some areas next to giant freeways. China is certainly a land of contrasts. The other interesting thing was that I decided to actually start drawing up the schematics for my crazy invention I’m going to try and build next summer and it felt good to finally get something on paper after thinking about it for so many years.


Ri Huang, CS, Chang Sheng, me, and Lucas by the train

When we arrived in Guangzhou we took the subway from the train station directly to our hotel, once again using RFID chips for our tickets. It really surprised me how all the forms of transportation in Asia seem to use RFID chips, yet I’ve never seen them in use in the US. Perhaps this is because I rarely take public transportation in the US. Nevertheless, we arrived at our hotel and got checked in – into our rooms on the 18th floor that is. I rarely stay on floors that high up because my mother hates heights so when traveling with my family we are always on a very low floor, but I enjoyed the view that our room offered. I found it fascinating to look out and see the contrasts of China. Right next to our hotel were very tightly packed houses of sorts in what looked like an old and poor part of town, but right next to it were skyscrapers. I will include pictures of this in a later post. Two things in particular caught my eye, however. First, everywhere on the horizon I looked I could see construction cranes of new skyscrapers being raised. Second, the smog was pretty bad, not that I was terribly surprised by it.

Feeling adventurous, we journey out into the streets to grab some lunch. We ate at a nearby street café because most of the stores were closed due to the New Year. After walking around for a bit more CS said he wanted to get a haircut, so Ri Huang, CS, Deborah, and I went to find a haircut place near the hotel while Wai Zin, Chang Sheng, and Lucas went and did something else (I know, how descriptive of me). We found a place literally next to the hotel that looked really nice and decided to try it. This was the start of my next ‘experience.”

First off, ask yourself: “If I were in another country where they don’t speak any languages I know, how easy would it be to get a haircut?” Let me give you a hint, it’s pretty hard. But, I just successfully got through a spa where no one spoke English, so a haircut shouldn’t be that hard, right? Wrong. You have to communicate a lot of information to the person who is cutting your hair, when getting a massage they just do it, there’s no need for communication. So, it begins when they take you in the back and wash your hair. This part was weird for me. Remember how I said I don’t like other people touching me? Now I have a random guy washing my hair for me, it was slightly awkward to say the least. So I managed to get through it easily enough, although I felt bad that I couldn’t talk to him. At one point I did hear him ask Deborah where I was from and I heard her say ‘American’ in Chinese, so I could tell I was rusty, but there was hope for me yet. After washing my hair (very thoroughly I might add) they sat me in the chair to get my hair cut. This is where the troubles began. First, they offer you a beverage while your hair is being cut, which I said I didn’t want, and they weren’t quite sure what to do about that.

Then, I saw a group of 4 of them standing and looking at me talking amongst themselves, presumably trying to figure out what to do with me. CS to the rescues! He came over and was able to translate what I wanted done with my hair. I will spare the details of the next 45 minutes while the guy cut my hair, but he kept leaving and not returning for several minutes at a time and he couldn’t ask me what I wanted done. This only compounded the problem that I like my hair short, but my hair was already shorter than everyone else’s in the salon. So in the end, I looked like David Beckham. Yes, not my normal haircut, but I’m guessing it was one of the few hairstyles the guy knew. After he was done cutting, they then wash your hair again, which was just as weird as the first time. In total, 68 RMB (about 10 USD). Yeah, everything is cheap in China.

So, this was my second experience in a very short time period where I felt very bad about how much I was paying for the service I was getting. I don’t like other people doing things like that for me and I feel very guilty knowing how little they get paid. The other things I noticed was how dependant I was on my friends for everything here because so few people speak English. Also, I haven’t used my Chinese in 2 years, so I’m beyond rusty. Not to mention I had trouble learning it the first time around.

After our haircuts we went to a different part of town and walked around, the highlight of which was when we were walking outside a mall and there was a musical fountain, the sort where they time the water effects to music. Much to my surprise, they were playing “The Final Countdown” which I had first heard about two weeks ago. That surprised me a bit, but I thought it was kind of cool. After that came New Years dinner!

For the faint of stomach, it might not be a good idea to be eating food while reading this because I am about to describe the culinary items that shocked me during dinner. I knew it would be outside my comfort zone when we walked in the restaurant and the front is lined with fish tanks. This in and of itself is not a bad thing, but the fish in the tanks are your seafood. In Asia they display the live fish for you to see so that you know your seafood is fresh. We then went upstairs and actually had a semi-private room for our dinner. So, the first surprise awaiting me during dinner was the first dish to come out: pig leg. They take most of the meat off the leg, but include the leg (mostly bones at this point) on the dish so you can get all of the meat out of the hard to reach areas. When they set down the plate and there was literally a pig’s foot on it, I had to subdue the gag reflex for the next several minutes. Once I finally got used to it my next shock arrived: our chicken. We had ordered half a chicken as one of the plates and indeed out came half a chicken – complete with half a head. Yes, half a head. Insert gag reflex here. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. So, it looked as though someone had taken a chicken and cut it in half with a saw, then cooked it, cut it up a bit, and served it. I must admit, I came close to throwing up when they set down the chicken plate and Ri Huang saw them setting it down and tried to cover it up so I couldn’t see it (I appreciated his attempt) but it was too late. He must have seen the expression on my face and kept telling me to look away but the damage was done. After the chicken, the unagi (fried eel) didn’t bother me as much as it usually does and the goose didn’t either. Here are some pictures of our meal.




The bowl is the eel


The pig claw is the front dish




Goose




Sweet and Sour Pork, finally a dish i can eat!


Potatoe


These ones reminded me of pill bugs.



So, towards the end of the meal I was lucky enough to be introduced to a Singaporean custom that I think I’ll adopt for my own use when I get back to the US. It began when Chang Sheng and Lucas wanted to order a beer and did so. The waiter obliged by pouring the bottle into 7 small glasses for each of us. At this point I’m thinking ‘not again.’ I’ve been told by other people that beer tastes bad, and I was none too eager to try it. But once again I found myself in a situation where everyone else had their cups in the hand raised up at the table and figured ‘why not?’ So, with great reluctance I raised my glass. At this point I was expecting us to simply toast and get it over with. I was wrong. I’m not entirely clear on the tradition, but it involved standing up, toasting our glass, and yelling “Yamseng” as loud as we could. So, we’re standing there and they instructed me on what to say so it started out loud, and by the time we were done we were shouting at the top of our lungs “YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMSENG!” Yelling that one word lasted over a minute. After that everyone else drank their beer as I sat there waiting to try mine and none too eager enthusiastic. So, once again for your viewing pleasure is my first taste of beer.


The Beckham hairstyle is quite apparent in this video.

Yeah, as you can guess from my expression, it tasted really bad. I do not enjoy the taste of alcohol (even though I’ve only had very small amounts). By the time I was done tasting it, everyone else at the table had already finished theirs (including the girls). Honestly, I was slightly embarrassed at this but it tasted DISGUSTING! After a couple minutes I decided to brace myself and right as CS and Wai Zin were telling me not to worry about it (they saw me just staring at my glass) I downed it in about three gulps. It was indeed as bad as I thought it would be.

After our dinner we went to Teemall, which used to be the largest mall in China and to none other than the arcade! The arcade was enormous! It was so big I even got lost inside it a few times. We hung out there are a while and I tried a tank simulator where you sit in a chair that’s on hydraulics and it shakes you around as you move up and down terrain and get hit by enemy fire.







After walking around the mall until 10PM we headed back to the hotel. When we got back I was looking forward to sleep after such a short night yesterday, but this was the Chinese New Year – certainly no time for sleep! Instead we went across the river in front of our hotel to a giant festival. I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking, but there were probably hundreds of thousands of people packed into the street for over a mile with shops lining the center. The atmosphere was vibrant and festive unlike anything I’ve ever been in before. The one nice thing about having me in their group was that I was about a head taller than most other people there, which meant I could spot people if we got separated and they could easily find me in the seas of people.


Can you see me?


Yeah, i stick out that much...


This gives you a small sense of the crows that were there to celebrate. imagine this going on for over a mile!!!






Oh, I forgot to mention that it was COLD again!!! Yes, lucky me it was freezing. Not as bad as Hong Kong had been, but I was still shivering with my jacket on. The unfortunate part of the festival is that the mile we walked was away from our hotel, meaning that we either had to take a taxi back or walk the one and a half miles. I opted to walk back with Ri Huang, Chang Sheng, and Lucas and it was actually quite fun walking back, but still very cold. The most surprising thing to happen on the way back was when we were walking in an underground tunnel to cross the street and some guy was throwing those Cherry Bomb (the ones that make a loud sound when you throw them on the ground) at the homeless people trying to sleep in there. Being inside the tunnel it was extremely loud and my ears were ringing. As I walked up the stairs on the other side he threw one at my feet and I lost hearing in both ears for the next minute or so.

All in all, it was an interesting day, and I managed to keep this down to 4.5 pages single spaced. W00t!

February 5th, China Trip Day 1, What a day!

Day 20, 10:30 AM: Before I begin, I will give you a warning about this particular post (as well as the next one). This was one of the most amazing days of my entire life and I will be recounting it in great detail, meaning that it will be very long, although I certainly try to make it interesting. I have been waiting to write this with both eager excitement as well as great trepidation because I’m uncertain how to put all of these experiences into words. Without any further adu, I shall begin.

It began the way my Tuesdays will begin for several months, I went to class. I was able to speak to my parents in the morning and say goodbye before I left for China and then headed to my 6 hours strait of upper-level business classes. I will only say two things about my classes because although they took up a large portion of my day they were not interesting compared to what happened after class. First, in my Judgment and Decision Making class we played a game of prisoner’s dilemma that my group (and our competitor group) won through mutual cooperation and trust. We only make one mistake during the day and that was our group, based on my recommendation, decided not to cooperate in the first round and the other group did. This was remedied after round three when we were able to collude temporarily. As a matter of fact, our competitor group and we were the only two able to cooperate for the rest of the game, with the rest of the groups backstabbing each other. The second thing I was that it’s a bad idea to have your worst two classes at the end of the day because it just crawls along.

After class I returned to my room, beginning to fill with trepidation about the trip to China I was about to embark on. After eating lunch (because I had class from 10:30AM to 4:30 PM) and realizing I only had an hour to pack, I began to frantically run around my room throwing clothes and things I would need on my bed while figuring out how to cram everything in my backpack. I did not want the hassle of carrying an extra bag with me, but at the same time I wanted to bring along my laptop because I knew I had to write these blog entries while the experiences were still fresh in my mind. I carefully surveyed my things and made sure I had an adaptor, my computer power cord, my phone was fully charged, and I had my camera. At this point I distinctly remember looking at my camera and thinking “I’ve been taking a lot of pictures lately, should I charge the batter before I go?” I decided against it because I was using both plugs on my side of the room because my camera battery lasts for months usually. After much cramming I was barely able to fit everything in and proceeded to go to the meeting point. This was only interrupted when I got half way there and remembered I needed to send an email before I left and I had to run back to my room, boot up my laptop, send the email, and arrived about 10 minutes late. There are seven of us in our group: CS (Chorng Shin), Ri Huang, Chang Sheng, Lucas (who is from another university but from Singapore), Wai Zin, Deborah, and myself.

From there we departed to the MTR and took that to the train station where we took a train to the border with China. This train was not a subway like the MTR I usually speak of, but rather an actual train with engine and coaches. I enjoyed the brief trip and it dropped us off right besides the customs area. Now, lucky for me I’m not considered a visitor to HK because of my student visa and am able to travel in the HK resident line through customs. This went without event and my entry into China was simple and easy. When we walked outside the customs building we exchanged money and began our journey to dinner. At this point we were in the city of Shenzhen which is just across the border with HK, so we hadn’t traveled very far into China yet.

Now, I thought china looked the same as HK when we got out, and mentioned so. As soon as I said this CS got a horrified look on his face. Apparently he thought I was crazy. As we began walking around I realized that my initial impression was indeed incorrect in several ways. I do not mean anything I say here to be construed in the wrong way or insulting to anyone; these are simply the things I noticed. First, lots of people smoke and they also smoke indoors (like in Macau). Second, being polite is not common and people have no problem walking into you, cutting in front of you, and pushing their way through crowds. Third, lots of people spit on the ground and do not use the trashcans. Fourth, the buildings might look similar in style to many in HK, but they are generally more worn down, older than, and not as nice as HK. Fifth, I could actually recognize many of the characters on signs because of the semester of Mandarin I took my freshman year. Sadly, although I could recognize them I still don’t remember what they mean. Sixth, people don’t really use crosswalks. Instead, they just walk across the street wherever they are if there is or is not a break in traffic (basically they just cross if they think they won’t die). Seventh (it’s the list that never ends), they drive on the right side of the road like in the US. It took me a few days to get used to HK driving on the left side of the road and having escalators going on the left and such things, and just when I was finally trained for everything on the left China goes and switched it around. Lastly, I also saw that many times people have complete disregard for the traffic laws. People would do u-turns in the middle of the road even if there was a steady stream of cars traveling in the opposite direction, sometimes cars would blatantly go through red lights if there wasn’t traffic coming or pedestrians crossing (and sometimes they would go even if there were pedestrians in the crosswalk and I had to jump out of the way). Whew, that was a long list, but I think I understand why CS gave me that funny look. Oh, I forgot, almost no one here speaks English.

So, we hopped on the city metro and went to a Japanese buffet restaurant. This was my second Japanese buffet restaurant (I went to the first one with CS and Wai Zin where they made me try Saké) and it was fun. My favorite part of the meal was a dish of steak that was cooked very well and had just the right amount of seasoning on it, and I found several other dishes I liked. One of the more interesting parts was that we ordered both Saké as well as some sort of plumb wine Saké thing. So, there’s a saying in Singapore called “yi si, yi si” (pronounced “esu”) that means you should try everything, even if you don’t like it. I knew that I would not like this new plumb wine thing, but I tried it nevertheless. After all, I’m here to try new things and experience new cultures. Turns out, I was right; I didn’t like it at all. For some reason, the taste of alcohol and sweet plumb does not sit well with me. So, after the first sip I poured the remainder into my empty Coke glass and continued to eat. Next came the obligatory toast where we all had our small glass of Saké together which was slightly less revolting than the first time I tried it. To help wash it down I grabbed my glass of coke which still had some ice cubes in it and some water in the bottom. Well, as luck would have it, it was not melted water but rather than plumb wine I dumped in earlier in the evening. Lucky me, it was just as bad the second time. One of the most interesting dished I saw was a dish that had some sort of long and curled strips of something that moved. Ri Huang explained to me that the heat from the dish causes them to move in different ways, but I was absolutely fascinated by it. I was so interested that I decided to take video of it. So I pulled out my camera and took some video and was about to turn it off when I almost slapped myself. Right then, the low battery light came on and I didn’t bring the battery charger with me. I learned an important lesson from that: the little voice inside of me that makes me notices things like that is almost always right.

In addition to the meal itself, I encountered a rather big shock while at the restaurant. So, after we were done eating I went to the bathroom. Guess what! I walked into the stall and much to my surprise there was no toilet. Yes, for those of you who are as ignorant as I was the toilet was not a normal toilet like in the US but rather more akin to a porcelain hole in the ground. Certainly nothing I had seen before! So I stepped into the stall, saw this, and literally jumped back out of the stall out of surprise. A picture of what it looks like is below. In fact, most of the toilets here are like that. Furthermore, they actually had an aquarium with fish in the ceiling. Yes, I wrote that correctly, in the ceiling. It was a large plate of glass and about four inches of water with light shining down through it to make very interesting reflections on the floor and I’ve included a picture of it as well.







At this point we walked around the town a bit where I observed people spitting everywhere, tons of smoking, people throwing litter on the ground next to the trash cans, and my favorite part was when we were walking by a street store and I heard the Numa Numa song playing (the one from that youtube video). I started to crack up and my friends couldn’t figure out what was so funny. We also visited a DVD store, but they were just closing. So after my adventure at dinner we got into taxis and went to the spa. And I mean a full-service massage parlor, not like a hot tub type of spa. So we arrive and an employee comes over and holds open the door of the taxi while we get out and then another doorman holds open the door to the actual place. I think this deserves a bit of back-story before I go any further. One of the things the rest of the group had been very excited about for the trip was going to the spa because it was only about 200 RMB. Now, RMB is akin to the dollar we use in the US, and Yuan is the name of the currency. So, 200 RMB is about equal to $30 USD. Unfortunately for me, I have a history of being extremely ticklish. What does this mean you might ask? I hate massages. Every time in my life someone has tried to give me a massage it has ended in one of three ways. First, I’m so ticklish that I squirm in agony until they give up. Second, I decide I can’t take it anymore and ask them to stop. Third, I refuse it to begin with. As such, when I was told we were going to a spa for massages the first night I was anxious to say the least. So the seven of us finally arrive and walk into the spa. The inside was very nice, with Chinese New Year decorations prominently displayed around to create a festive atmosphere, but not in a way that detracted from the existing décor. A few people gave me some strange looks as we stood in the lobby, but I’ll come back to that later. At this point I have no idea what to expect. My guess was that we would go into a massage room to get our massages and then go to whatever sleeping arrangements they had for us (because you got to stay overnight in the spa for free). Let’s just say my guess was wrong.

At this point I will warn you that the following several paragraphs will describe the spa experience in great detail and reader discretion is advised (I always wanted to say “reader discretion is advised” in my blog). By now it was around 10:30 PM, and the next 24 hours were quite possibly the most memorable 24 hour period of my entire life. They then proceeded to direct the two girls to the right, with all of us guys walking to the left. Then each of us received a bracelet with a number on a tag that identified each of us. We were led down a passageway and a couple turns later they took each of us to our own cabinet in a large locker room of sorts. This is where my troubles began. So a guy looked at my bracelet and lead me to my locked where the ID tag on the bracelet has an RFID chip embedded in it, and when you put it up to the locker along with one of the bracelets from the attendants in there your locker unlocks. I thought that was really cool, because so many things here in China and HK use RFID technology like the MTR systems (subways) and public transportation all use it. So, I have no clue what to do at this point because I don’t speak Chinese well enough to pick up more than a couple words of what they are saying. Starting now is the part where I said reader discretion is advised. Based on their hand motions I figured I was supposed to put stuff in my locker such as my backpack (because my backpack was the only luggage I brought with me) as well as my coat. Right now I’m thinking “oh, so we store all our stuff here before we go to the massage rooms.” No. I look around and ask the other guys I’m with what to do and they explain that we’re getting ready to take a shower (which is why it looks like a locker room). Now, I’ve never been in the military or anything where I’ve used public showers so I’m starting to get nervous because there is obviously nothing for me to do but go along with what everyone else is doing. So I wrapped a towel around my waist and undressed. OK, I can deal with this. So now we all walk into the shower area where there are several hallways of sorts with shower stalls and I follow my friends into one of the rows. Then came the next big surprise of my day, the shower stalls have walls, but no doors. Awkward moment number two. So I went to the last stall and took a very quick shower. I’m guessing the other guys picked up on my awkwardness and they asked me how I was doing and if this was weird for me, to which I replied something along the lines of “You have no idea how awkward this is.” They laughed. So after a quick shower (we’re talking about 45 seconds including washing my hair) I waited in my stall and tried to read the back of the shampoo bottle to see what Chinese characters I remembered. After they were all done we walked back to the main hallway area where there were several sinks. At each sink was everything you could want from shavers to toothbrushes to skin care products. So I washed my face and brushed my teeth while waiting for my friends to do the same. After that was finished we were led down yet another long hallway to a place where they gave each of us shorts and a shirt. At this point I just keep telling myself, “I’m trying something new, experiencing another culture, wow this has been awkward for me so far!”

So far I have no seen anyone else in this entire place who was not Chinese, nor will I see another non-Chinese person for the remainder of my stay, so however much I stuck out walking around there streets where there is the occasional White person here in the Spa I stuck out even more. Practically every part of me stands out: my hair isn’t black and even has some blonde in it, I’m taller than anyone else there and my head sticks, and obviously I don’t look Chinese. In HK I got somewhat used to sticking out, but this took it to a whole new level. People kept staring at me everywhere I went! Trust me, I’m not being paranoid or overly sensitive here. So after that was done we were led into a huge room with recliners in rows. We were then taken through another two rooms similar to the first one and into a fourth room with similar amenities. Here we sat down in comfortable chairs and each one even had a personal LCD TV on a swivel joint. Someone came and took drink orders from us and we relaxed. At this point I’m thinking to myself, “this isn’t so bad, now we just sit here while we get our massage before bed, it’s actually kind of nice.” So whenever someone says something I have to wait for CS to translate it for me and then relay messages back to the person asking, which I’m sure was annoying for him. CS, if you’re reading this, let me say thank you so much.

After several minutes four ladies came over to give us our foot massages: it was about to begin. I was tense and filled with apprehension, awaiting the moment when I would discover just how much I could control the ticklish part of me. For you information, my feet are the most ticklish part of me (or so I thought). Then it began, and at first I had to use every ounce on self control to prevent from pulling my feet back and screaming. It slowly got better, and I eventually enjoyed it somewhat. I’m not sure if it was a good massage or not, seeing as how I have never had one before, but it did not give me that relaxing feeling (although my anxiety and subsequent tension over the whole thing could be to blame). After about 30-40 minutes of foot and leg massage it was over, and I admit I was glad. I also felt very bad because everyone else was talking to their masseuse the entire time, and I was clearly unable to. I ended up leaving her a 30 RMB tip (about $4 USD). At this point it was a little after 1AM and I was amazed at how much activity was still going on despite the late hour. I was happy at this point. The massage was over and I could go sleep. I managed to get through it! Or so I thought…

Next we were led down more hallways to even more hallways with massage rooms on each side. Instead of being over, I realized my experience had only begun. So the girls went down another hall and CS and I were led to a room with two massage tables where I awaited the next leg of my journey. Shortly thereafter two young ladies walked in and spoke to CS. He then explained to me what to do and we lay down on the tables (the ones with the hole for your face). I lay there in immense apprehension as I knew that this would be much, much worse than any foot massage. Every second seemed to last minutes as they prepared the room and my anxiety grew. Finally it began. She started with the shoulders and began working her way down my back. Remember those worries of mine about getting a massage? Turns out they were well founded. About a minute after she began I heard laughing and she said something to CS. He then relayed the message to me “you need to relax” he said. Every time she touched my back I could feel my muscles contract and tense up and try as I might, I found myself feeling helpless to stop it. So she started again. Another minute of agony went by until she said something to CS again. He relayed the message “she says you’re still too tense.” Great, somehow I managed to find a way to mess up a massage, apparently I’m talented. So I redouble my efforts of focus solely on relaxing my muscles and not letting them contract when she touches them. This mostly worked. Another couple minutes went by before she said something to CS again. For the third time he relayed the message for me, “she said you are still too tense, do you want her to be softer or harder?” I asked him to tell her to go softer with the thought that softer might mean I won’t tense up as much. Nope, no such luck. I did manage, however, to force myself to relax a bit and was mostly successful in preventing my muscles to contract.

I thought it was bad at first, but it only got worse as time went on. Soon after, she began a technique that involved reaching on your side and massaging sideways across your back. Remember how I said I thought my feet were the most ticklish part of my body? I used the word ‘thought’ on purpose, because it turns out my side is much, much worse. Every time she touched it my entire upper torso would lock tight and I had to fight the urge to burst out laughing in convulsions. Massages are supposed to be relaxing and calming for the person receiving it, but as I manage to prove over and over again, I don’t conform to the norm very often. So let’s recap so far, it’s not 2AM, and I’m in the middle of a back massage that is excruciatingly difficult for me. Finally she stops, and I was happy beyond belief that it was finally over. My happiness was soon replaced by reality when she placed very hot rocks on my back and began yet another new massage technique. This time instead of using her hands she used two large round stones that she rolled along the length of my back to create a strong point of pressure. In earlier techniques when she used her whole hand to apply pressure over a large area I was fine, but the worst was when she used her fingers or knuckles to apply concentrated pressure. If that was bad, you can imagine how I felt about these two stones. The second they touched my back I could feel my entire body tense up and I might have even jumped a bit the first time she did it. As she rolled them along my spine I could feel all the muscles in a one foot radius go completely rigid. I sensed that my poor masseuse didn’t know what to do with me, and I felt so bad about the whole thing, but I was trying as hard as I could not to tense up. After about a minute of trying I think she finally gave up and moved on to the next technique.

To summarize a bit, after my back came the legs, then I flipped over and she did the front of the legs and my chest, of which my abs were just about as ticklish as my side. After that she did my neck and my head. To give some explanation to this, I’m not used to other people touching me and so the entire sensation of a massage was not something I’m used to in the slightest and was honestly quite uncomfortable. CS must have been enjoying the whole thing, because he fell asleep twice. The lady doing his massage didn’t know what to do and has great expressions on her face as she tried to do massages, but clearly did not want to wake him up. Eventually, CS began to snore a bit and I honestly couldn’t help be laugh, and that pushed the two ladies over the edge and they laughed a bit as well. You could tell that they had worked hard to hold it in until that time, and my laughter was the tipping point.

Finally, at 2:47AM it ended. I can’t tell you the sense of relief I felt when it was over with. It wasn’t that it was bad per se, but rather that my own hypersensitivity to touch turned it into a stressful experience instead of the relaxing occasion it’s supposed to be. At least now I’ve tried something new and have a memorable experience that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Now that the massage was done we were led down yet more corridors to an area that had more hallways with sleeping places. Each place is sort of like a cubby about three feet wide that has walls and a pull-down cover in front. This way you just hop in, pull down the cover thing, and you have a place to sleep. I found myself so taken in by the entire experience of the day that I was much too awake to sleep even though it was already past 3AM. I ended up reading a magazine until sometime after 4AM before I fell asleep.

This day was simply amazing in so many ways. China was much different than I had imagined and I could never have guessed my experience at the spa would be so memorable. There are two more things I would like to mention before I end what will most likely be my longest post of the year. First, I felt guilty the entire time. The entire thing ended up being about $40 USD which is barely anything compared to the service I got. I dislike having other people wait on me because of my independent personality and so it was a bit hard for me to let all these people do stuff for me. Then, it was so cheap and I know they aren’t getting paid very much I feel even worse. Second, I wish to expand my earlier comment that I was the only non-Chinese person there. Everywhere I went people stared at me. I got a few looks in HK, but nothing like this. I got the sort of look like I was the first White person some of these people had seen in person and felt like everything I did was being examined in detail. Overall it was quite uncomfortable, but as you will read later, not the last time this would happen.

If you thought this was interesting, just wait until you read about my haircut tomorrow… Thanks for actually reading all 4700 words on this post (it’s taken me around 5 hours to write this so far) and I hope it was an enjoyable read.

February 4th: Grady’s Secret

Day 19, 2PM: It’s agonizing as I sit at my computer, waiting and thinking. “What could it be?” I ask myself. “Did my experiment backfire on me?” What could he possibly be scheming?

The morning went by uneventfully with the usual chatting with friends and games of Starcraft, except for the discussion about the dreaded whiteboard. This deserves some explanation. I suppose it began when I was watching House last semester and he decided to implement a point system on his whiteboard to decide who to hire. The points were completely arbitrary and there was no particular system in which they were assigned, but it was fun! In general, games of any sort are fun, even if they are not fair. So, while talking to Grady today I decided that it would be fun to buy my own white board and do the same thing in our apartment next year. Yup, this is going to be fun.

Sadly, Grady did not think this was a good idea, nor did the other people in the apartment. For some odd reason they don’t like the idea of me being able to arbitrarily assign points to them whenever I feel like it for whatever reason I deem worthy. In all fairness, I can understand their reaction, but it’s just a game. True, it’s a game that they have no way of controlling, but please refer to my statement earlier that games are fun. So, in retaliation for my decision, Grady told me that he was going to do something too. This of course sparked my interest. Alas, he was less than forthcoming with details except to say that it was in retaliation for my whiteboard idea. Of course, this only served to generate more interest on my part.

So I began trying every method of persuasion I could think of on him to reveal the details I so longed to know. I tried first to appeal to our friendship and asked nicely. When it was clear that was not going get me anywhere I began to get creative. Eventually, I began to do what anyone would do, I started to take away points. Yes, everyone on the whiteboard starts at 100 points so I began to subtract points from Grady. Much to my dismay, once he reached -260 I realized that this strategy was clearly not working either. Eventually, I pleaded with him and was able to get him to tell me what it was: nothing. Yes, that’s exactly it, it was nothing; he didn’t have an idea in the first place and that’s why he wouldn’t tell me what it is. I should mention that at this point I was feeling a bit stupid. I just wasted 3/4th of my techniques to get people to tell me information trying to get information that didn’t even exist. In the end, I must say: that was some nice retaliation on his part.

So after that whole ordeal was over (and it took several hours) I went to the main academic building to try and add a class. Of my four classes I was not very impressed with my teamwork class and wanted to take Entrepreneurship instead. So I got on the website to sign up online (there had been open seats on Friday when I checked) and went to sign up. That’s when I found out that between Friday and today an additional 17 people tried to add the class and got on the waitlist. Oh great. So I signed up for the waitlist and went to the class. Often, professors will give first priority of students on the wait list to people that come to the first day of class, so I figured I should give it a shot. I walked in and decided to first ask the professor what my chances were of getting in. I began by asking him if they were planning on adding any seats to the class and increasing the quota (which two of my other classes did). He responded by saying “No, I think I’m going to keep it at 55.” Shot down. There went all hopes of getting in the class. 17 people ahead of me on the waitlist, this is clearly not happening. So I left, somewhat disappointed, but oh well, at least my perfect TTh schedule was still intact.

After that I went to buy my books, which cost about the same as they do in the US. A book in the US is about $100-$200 and it’s the same price here. What’s different is that they cost the same, but in different currencies. So, my books were about $150 HKD. This means that they cost less than 1/7th the price of my book in the US. I was amazed at how cheap they were. After that I got a call and had dinner with CS and Wai Zin.

Once dinner was over CS invited us to go up and see his lab. The lab itself was mostly computers and work area (he’s a dry chemist, not a wet one) and it was fun, but the part that sticks out most in my mind was the turtle. There on his desk was a tank of water and a turtle. When I was little, I really liked turtles and almost convinced my parents to let me get one. As we sat there in his lab and talked, I couldn’t help but stare and watch the turtle the whole time. And I mean the whole time. Picture me sitting in a chair staring at this water tank and mesmerized by a turtle that is sitting there in the water not doing anything. I enjoyed watching how it moved, the details on the shell, and I was hooked. We were in the lab for about 1.5 hours, and I easily spent a full hour just watching the turtle. It was so interesting to me, but I think CS and Wai Zin thought I was crazy. And now you probably think I’m crazy for staring at a turtle for an hour.

February 3rd: Reflections and Ramblings

Day 18, 7:30PM: As I stand at my window staring at the fish pond behind my dorm, I can’t help but contemplate life itself. Thoughts swirl in my mind like a whirlpool of thousands of separate thoughts, each of which being pondered in great detail. I can’t help but analyze the lighting patterns of the leaves on the water, the way the light diffuses in the water, picturing the angle of the incoming lift and the resultant vectors of the photons that seem to make the landscape dance before my eyes. Everywhere I look I don’t simply see trees and concrete, but the possibilities that exist before my eyes.

I think to myself “Ah! It’s Sunday! Hmm, what do I do now?” This was my first day with truly nothing on my agenda. So what do I do? Nothing really.

The most interesting thing to happen was when I was talking to Grady (a good friend of mine at USC) and he went off to dinner. I was slightly annoyed at the fact dinner took him two and a half hours and I had to wait for him to get back before we could play Starcraft, but when he returned he asked me an interesting question, “What is it to be human?” On the surface it seems deceptively simple, if you look like a person and are physiologically like us then you’re human. End of story, right? Not really. This question arose when Grady was talking with Henry at dinner and the subject of upgrading humans came up. Now, I’m a huge fan of technology and believe it has the power to transform our lives in ways we can’t even imagine. If someone offered to implant a device in me that would allow me to be stronger or faster, I would probably take them up on it. But at what point does upgrading people no longer make them human? If you change someone’s DNA to make them smarter, are they still human, or something else?

At the beginning of our conversation I thought I knew the answer to this question, but the more we talked the more I realized that it is a very difficult issue, and will only grow more complex as technology advances. For example, we like to think of ourselves as rational beings. Yeah right. Nothing could be farther than the truth – we are certainly not rational. Those pesky things called emotions get in the way of us making rational decisions based on the information available to us. So, if you could tone down a person’s emotions or eliminate them completely, one could argue that it would produce a better human. On the other hand, without emotions, is it still human? I found this idea to be particularly intriguing because I am certainly not an emotional person; I do not like emotions because they interfere with logical and rational thinking. In fact, most of what I do is carefully calculated and I suppress emotions because they are often an annoying hindrance. By doing so I can look at situations clearly and not have my judgment clouded. It’s not a perfect solution by any stretch of the imagination, but I like control. So, although I personally am not a very emotional person, I’m still human.

So is a person without emotion human? I think not. Experiencing and dealing with emotions are part of the human condition. One of my favorite quotes of all time is a quote from none other than Star Trek Nemesis in one of the deleted scenes where Picard is talking to Data about the human condition and says to him “To be human is to aspire to be more than you are.” This is one of my favorite quotes of all time because it speaks to our innate desire to make ourselves better and improve our lives. Anyone who does not aspire to better themselves isn’t living out their life to their fullest potential. This single quote shaped my life a great deal and is one of a small handful that I try to live my life by. No matter what I do or accomplish, I always strive to be better than I currently am and to improve myself.

Later that night I was sitting at my desk when I happened to pull up the ‘my pictures’ document on my computer by accident. I was about to close the window when something inside me decided to look through the folder. I ended up looking at all the pictures I took during one of my last nights at USC where I wondered around campus in the pouring rain at 2AM and took pictures of the campus at night in the rain. As I browsed through the pictures and recalled the experience I had that night taking the pictures I began thinking. This is not an uncommon occurrence and I devote a large portion of my time to thinking because I believe that striving to discover deeper truths and better understand the world in which I live is crucial to making me a better person.

So I looked out the window and allowed my mind to race through whatever thoughts happened to swim through. When I think, I don’t think in words or images, but rather I let my subconscious wonder and do whatever it likes. It’s sort of weird to know that I’m thinking, but is not know what it is I’m thinking about. Anyways, because I don’t entirely know what I think about it’s hard for me to say much else, although I think I thought about the same things I usually think about. Generally that’s looking back on my decisions and trying to consider the alternative ramifications, or pondering what I want to do with my life and what will make me happy. Often it also includes thinking about friends, so if you’re reading this, chances are you’re one of the people I think about. But looking at those pictures of USC at night is something that is more special than most other pictures, partly because of how much I love my school, but largely because the way the light reflects and the shadows and contrasts simply ignite my mind and help the idea flow. If you’re curious, look at this link for those pictures: http://usc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2196575&l=20d84&id=3423216 and http://usc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2196578&l=ddf63&id=3423216

But I’ve rambled on enough for now. Maybe that gives you some sort of insight into who I am as a person, maybe not. I hope it didn’t come across sounding weird or anything because it’s sort of hard to put into words. In fact, kindly disregard this post. Thank you.