A day off…

Means a blog! Yeah yeah yeah, I haven’t updated in awhile. But it isn’t my fault because 1. most stuff isn’t 2. I seriously have been very busy and 3. my internet is very spotty and it seems the only time I can actually get a connection are Sunday nights. My internet is spotty because I steal it and for some reason I can only steal it on Sundays, the lord’s day. I’m writing now because I have the day off and hanging out at my local coffee shop instead of working on my visa paperwork and resume. I do what I want. *Side note: a priest just sat down next to me at the coffee shop. Interesting..I’m talking about stealing the internet on the lord’s day and a priest sits near me. A guy just walked by and said, “how the hell are you?” to the priest. Weird.*

Saturday was the Bizarre Market/1st Annual Art 180 Festival for Jonny Z. I had such a great time hanging out with friends, seeing the mural the kids from St. Andrews School painted and the beautiful tribute mural to Jonny. I have pictures but I haven’t uploaded them yet, but I will soon. Tess has pics on her blog if you want to take look. The weather was perfect and I just had a great time. I really needed this to help me remember all the great things about Jonny and some of the reasons we all loved him. I get so caught up in life’s daily struggles and I forget that I have a lot to be thankful for and should really enjoy the great life I have. Sometimes you just need a little reminder & Saturday was that for me.

I saw the Dark Knight a couple of weeks ago. It was good, not FANTASTIC like everybody and their mom have been saying, but very good. The best part was the Leonardo Dicaprio preview before the Dark Knight. I liked that it just said DICAPRIO instead of his whole name when it introduced him. The movie is called Body of Lies and Leo is sporting a shitty beard and some rings on his fingers, but man, he totally pulls it off. He also has an accent, from where I have no idea, but it just shows the true talent he is. Some (me) say he is the greatest actor of our generation…yeah, think about it. The movie comes out October 10th and I’m going opening night, who is going with me? If this movie doesn’t interest you then don’t worry, he has a few movies coming out. The one I’m really looking forward to is called Revolutionary Road where he reunites with Rose Dawson aka Kate Winslet. I wish it was “Titanic 2: Jack is Thawed and Looking to Party”, but sometimes life hands you lemons and you have to make lemonade, hence Revolutionary Road.

Justin Timberlake is back in the studio and apparently working with the Jonas Brothers. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, can I go 5 minutes without someone mentioning them? They are all over the freaking place and it’s driving me insane. I honestly didn’t know anything about them so I watched an interview with them on Dateline or something, and will admit I was a little interested when they said one of the brothers was going to talk about his health struggles. Well, after learning that the brothers were raised by a pastor and they all wear “promise rings” (by the way, what the freak? promise rings? yikes) the interview started getting to the juicy medical drama of the youngest brother. They were really building it up; talking about how he was tired all the time, getting sick on stage and his family being really worried about him. Well, they finally “announced” that he was suffering from diabetes. Diabetes! I was hoping for a rare form of throat cancer, leukemia or better yet, some sort of venereal disease. But I stayed up late for diabetes!? BFD my dad has diabetes. Boring.

I’m totally watching the Olympics and loving the swimming. I watched the men’s 4×100 relay last night and saw the US kick France’s trash talking ass. I like that it is in Beijing and I can say, “I’ve been there..I’ve seen that”. The opening ceremony was amazing and if you didn’t get a chance to watch it, you should youtube it and watch the drumming part.

This weekend should be hell with Best Friends Day 7 happening. I’m working at 821 Thursday, Friday night & Sunday. I’ll also be around in case they need extra help on Saturday. I’m one of the few people in Richmond that hate Best Friends Day and that is because these shitty kids come into the restaurant and are so disrespectful and don’t tip at all. It’s bullshit and I’m not putting up with it this year. No split checks and I’ll probably add a 20% gratuity to large parties or people that I don’t like. I’m going to try really hard and not be a bitch, but I’m not making any promises. If you are going to come in this weekend with lots of people then your ass better be prepared to wait for a table and I better not hear any complaining.

By the way, I made progress since posting last month and moved the TV from my car to the side porch. Granted, I just did it last week but it’s the point that it is now out of my car. I still need to bring the swiffer and a dresser drawer in, but I need a few more weeks.

I’m out.

I’ve been eating a lot of peaches.

I’ve been super busy and haven’t had any time to sit down and write a lovely blog about my oh so exciting life. My laptop cord stopped working so I couldn’t charge my computer, I’m currently working three jobs (soon to be two) and I have a TV in the backseat of my car that I don’t want to move.

I got this in the mail recently: “In recognition of the successful completion of the required course of study, the Board of Visitors and the President of the University, by virtue of the authority vested by the Commonwealth of Virginia, hereby confer upon Kate Elizabeth Lamberta the degree of Master of Social Work”. Yep, my diploma…my crappy hard earned diploma that I forgot to pick up so they mailed it. I opened it up after arriving home from one of my three restaurant jobs where I was literally mopping up sewage b/c the pipes busted. My mom put it on the mantle but I I took it down because I couldn’t take the mockery.

I’m feeling the pain of losing my wallet in Shanghai. I didn’t realize everything that was in there till I needed it. In my wallet were my social security card, prescriptions for Adderall, a coupon for $10 off my next haircut, my license, and an old Kelly Clarkson concert ticket. Somewhere in China a woman/man is opening credit card accounts to buy fake shit, scheduling a hair appointment at Mango, and raving about the Kelly Clarkson concert they “went” to. And they are doing all of this high on Adderall. In case you are keeping score that is China 2 Katie 0.

Im excited about the Olympics and find myself getting a little emotional everytime I see the James Earl Jones Visa commercials featuring athletes that didn’t actually win a medal, but “won” in a different way. That way is, of course, pulling at our heart strings. The one commercial showing the runner who fell and couldn’t get up to finish, but his dad comes running onto the track and they both cross the finish line. Together. Ugh, it kills me. I wish Ian Thorpe was swimming b/c 1. he is hot and 2. he is a really good swimmer and the Thorpe/Phelps showdowns were the best of the Athens Olympics. During the showdowns, Amber would come over to my house where we would drink cranberry and vodkas and watch swimming. I didn’t realize my obsession with Ian Thorpe until I was closing my account with Dominion and saw that I had named the account the “Thorpedo”. Yikes.

There is going to be a 90210 spinoff and Shannon Doherty is going to be on it. ohhh yeah I’m excited about this and think the spin off will be good. I haven’t been able to keep up, but Depcrynski is my eyes and ears for the news. DON’T LET ME DOWN, AMY!

Beijing

In between the time I was initially in Shanghai and my trip to Beijing, I got scammed by some Chinese folk. It sucked b/c I didn’t really realize it fully until afterwards and then felt like such a victim. I was embarrassed for awhile and didn’t really want to talk about it, but my attitude now is to talk about it b/c then people will know what to look for in the future. Let’s just say if anyone starts talking to you in the park & then invites you to go somewhere like a teahouse (in my case), restaurant, art gallery, store…be suspicious. I’ll talk more about this later.

I am in Beijing right now and it is kinda awesome. I took an overnight train from Shanghai to Beijing last night, we left at 8:40pm and arrived at 9:50am. I booked a “hard sleeper” seat which means that it is a bed on the train but I guess a hard bed…something like that. It is a level below the “soft sleeper”. I think the differences are that a hard sleeper has 6 beds in the room (3 on each wall), harder beds and no table or chairs. I guess this is in comparison to the soft sleeper which has 4 soft beds per room and some frou frou curtains. I got a bottom bunk which apparently means (not to me) that everyone can sit on your bunk if they don’t want to lay down in theirs. I did let a guy eat on my bed because the attached table was there, but I’m not letting you hang out. The guy on my friends bed kinda forced his way onto the bed and then sneezed all over everything. The Shanghai train station was an experience because there were so many people there; there was a long ass line just to get into the station. I guess when you book just a seat, people will just sit in your seat anyway and you are kinda forced to find another. There were so many people in the seat car that a lot of them were standing up b/c there weren’t available seats.

After arriving in Beijing we went to the hotel which looks like a hotel from 1970’s in California…it’s kinda sweet. We have a basement room which means no window, but it’s barely noticeable. But before we could deal with the room we first had to find the room which proved a little difficult since the wallpaper was on both the hallway walls and the doors. Because I have a college degree I was able to find the door to the room without looking like a total dumbass.

First thing we decided to do was go to the Lama Temple, which is probably the most famous temple and buddhist monastery in China. It was a pretty awesome experience because we got to see the monks pray and chant during a prayer service. There was a really old monk near the center, younger monks around him and then a monk walking around I guess checking on the younger monks to ensure they were doing what they were supposed to be doing. At one point two monks were joking w/each other and the monk walking around sort gave them the ole stink eye and walked by them. The two monks stopped, but then were nudding each other when the other monk walked away. It looks like Buddhist monks and I have so much in common.

After the temple we decided to hit up the Olympic sites. We saw the main stadium which is called the Birds Nest and the Aquatics Centre which is called the Water Cube. The area around both buildings are still being worked on (the olympics start in 2 months, get it together China) so we couldn’t get close, but I got some ok shots from afar.

I just came back from a street market and I finally felt like I was on Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmerman. I haven’t been exposed to a lot of weird things yet, but clearly that had to change. When we walked up to the market the first thing I saw was starfish on a stick and it just went downhill from there. All of these things can be eaten off a stick: seahorses, scorpions, beetles, octopus, insects..I decided to stick with tofu and broccoli. I didn’t stay long b/c my friend was so disgusted by the market (and she’s Chinese so I don’t want to hear anything about not accepting their culture) so we got out of there. Plus the smell from the raw seafood/insects/stinky tofu was so pungent I was getting ready to lose my dinner. There was a couple of street kids looking in the trashcans for some food so I gave one my corn on the cob. I haven’t seen a lot of people who are homeless but I’m sure that is because of where I’ve been visiting and staying. I also haven’t seen a lot of street animals. The street dogs will bit the crap out of your finger as I almost witnessed when I tried to feed one some of my cold noodles. Not only did he almost bite me, but then a bunch of locals laughed at me.

Yummy shaved ice with strawberries and pudding.

Qianmen in Tienanmen Square. Used to be part of the front gate.

Starfish on a stick

A little video from KTV. While a person is singing, the artists video is usually being played with the words scrolling at the bottom. I guess in China if they don’t have the video they put their own video and pretend that it is relevant. Apparently the video for Living on a Prayer wasn’t available so they put in a ridiculous video…just watch. I’m not singing but I do make a noise at a key part.

Shanghai Part Deux

I lost my wallet. I lost my wallet in a taxicab. I lost my wallet in a taxicab in China. Shanghai has been awesome but one of its huge faults (like all big cities) is that its incredibly fast paced. The whole week has been me trying to keep all my stuff organized while dodging people and not having the subway/elevator/bus doors slam on you. I’d been doing pretty well but little did I know that not getting slammed by subway doors were just the precursors to the battle. It is now famously being called “The Great Wednesday Night Battle”. Ok, nobody but myself is calling it that, but soon the entire city will be talking about it, singing it in songs and writing it on walls. Wednesday was a bizarre day because it started with the cleaning woman trying to kick me out of my room. I have perfected one phrase in Chinese, “Ni Hao Mao”. This means hello cat. Nobody says that of course, but I find it funny and I only care about entertaining myself. Needless to say this phrase didn’t help me out much when I was faced with eviction and could only say “hello cat” over and over again to the confused cleaning woman. I managed to avoid eviction, but it started the day out on a bad note because it was early in the morning and I left the room feeling rushed and disorganized. Anyway, moving on with the story, people were just rushing me the entire day and it was bugging me so much that I snapped at someone when they questioned how fast I was paying my bill. After dinner in the cab ride, I was exhausted and not paying attention to my surroundings like I normally do; I didn’t look at the driver, I didn’t pay attention to his ID number (which I have been doing just out of curiousity b/c I’m in China) and I didn’t notice that I had taken my wallet out of my bag and laid it in between the flap and pocket instead of in the pocket. When the cab pulled over, I paid and was quickly hustled out and w/in 5 seconds I knew my wallet was in the cab. However, the driver was half way down the street and yelling for him to stop didn’t quite work due to the obvious language barrier and the fact that I only know how to say hello cat. Long story short, it sucked and I had to call my bank to cancel my debit card and had to transfer $ to my mom’s account so she could western union some cash to me. I got the money Thursday morning and things are fine. Just a stressful experience but luckily i didn’t have much money in the wallet and it wasn’t like I lost my passport. Ahhh the great battle of Wednesday night.

Yesterday we went to an “antique market” in Puxi called Dongtai Rd. Antique Market. It was so great probably the best part of the trip so far. The day started off not hot and I finally found the trees I’ve been looking for. We walked onto a side street and it was kinda like looking at the China I think we all envision; narrow roads with stand after stand of old looking goods, Chinese babies with their butts hanging out being carried around and school aged children in their uniforms eating lollipops on the sidewalks. Seriously. *By the way, the babies are the cutest things I’ve ever seen and I got to take my picture with on on the subway. My chinese friend asked a random woman with a baby if I could hold her daughter and she suspiciously agreed and then quickly took her away after I got a picture with her. Totally creepy and the baby was kinda scared, but whatever.* The stands were selling many of the same things, but it was fun to just walk up the street and look at the random/funny things; for instance: Chairman Mao pocket watches/posters/buttons/porcelin dolls. I bought some cool things, took a lot of pictures and even hailed my own taxi cab. After the market we walked to Nanjing Rd. which is a sort of the Madison Ave of Shanghai. It’s a walking street with a bunch of fancy shops on it. At night it becames Vegas because with crazy neon lights and people trying to sell you things that glow. It’s clear that China doesn’t care about trying to keep their electrical bill down. After Nanjing we walked towards The Bund which is the strolling path that you can see the Shanghai skyline. We decided to go to a rooftop bar at a hostel instead so we could see the skyline. Unfortunately the Pearl Tower and the JiaMao buildings were not lit up, but hopefully I’ll get to see it sometime before I leave.

Today I’m going to get my karoake on with a little KTV. I hope they have “Love is a Battlefield” b/c I’m going to school Shanghai if they do. Later tonight we are going to a Chinese acrobat show which has been promised to be “amazing”.. I hear it is like Cirque du Soleil but a little bit more death defying. I really liked Cirque so I’m excited for the show.

I think I’m going to Beijing on Sunday, we shall see.

Chickity China the Chinese Chicken

Obviously I didn’t update my blog while in China, but it wasn’t my fault. As you all know, I’m quite the wordsmith, and if there is anything China hates more than the Japanese and the Dali Lama, it’s a skilled wordsmith. So, China addressed the horrible problem of free speech by blocking all blog sites including wordpress. I decided to do an email blog instead and I’m just going to post those emails on this here site. Suck it, China.

Because China are a bunch of communists they have decided to block wordpress. No blogging allowed much to my distress since I decided to open up my private blog to people so I could discuss my travels. Damn you China! I think there are some ways aorund it but I havent had the time to figure it out. This is the first time since I arrived that I am actually sitting down in front of a computer for longer than 30 seconds…it has been quite an insane couple of days. Lets debrief….

After traveling for a very very long time (by the way, I had an exit row seat; so awesome) we arrived in Shanghai around 930pm. My first impression of China? It smells like sewer. We walked outside and it smelled so bad…China needs to stop worrying about people blogging and concentrated on the smell..get it together. Anyway, Abby’s brother and fiancee live on the outskirst of Shanghai in PuDong, so we went there and sort of hung out for a little bit and then crashed. We got up the next morning and had a wonderful breakfast of fresh fruit that consisted of lychees and mangosteens. They were both so good. Lychee is common in American Chinese restaurants, but I’ve never had fresh lychee. It has a rough skin and is the size of a big strawberry and you can easily peel the skin and then eat the fruit. Mangosteens are about the size and color of a red apple with a thick attached stem and a few leaves. The skin is tough and smooth and to get inside the fruit you have to break the stem and then use both thumbs to open up the fruit. Inside are white segments that you can eat; sometimes they have pits sometimes they dont.

After breakfast we decided to venture to Puxi, which is the largest section in Shanghai. Puxi and Pudong are separated by a river and most people live in Puxi. I think Puxi hosts most of the museums and cultural stuff. However, when you see pictures of Shanghai’s skyline, those buildings are on the Pudong side. Anyway, we headed to Puxi and exchanged our money. I exchanged $240 and got back 1651 RNB w/the exchange rate of 6.88 RNB (the Chinese currency) to $1. As I got the money back I said, this is better than what I got in Ireland, I’ll take it! The girls in the bank were staring at me and didnt smile at all…I was like, hey, you don’t have to speak English because I’m going to go buy a bunch of fake ass bags and shoes, so later. After exchanging money, Abby immediately wanted to get Starbucks. Starbucks is considered a little elite because the prices are the same in China as they are in America, so I don’t think a whole lot of people get it..but then again I’m seeing them on a lot of corners so I might be wrong. I veteo’d starbucks and instead went next door and bought a bottle of water for 25 cents. We walked in the city towards an area that is for tourists because us Americans need see red lanterns so we don’t feel that our trip to China was a complete waste. On the way to the area I was looking around getting an idea of my surroundings, when I turned around and saw this guy close to me and doing a hand signal to someone. Not being a complete moron I quickly realized that the guy was signaling to someone to assumably pick pocket me. Well, as soon as I saw the signal and said outloud, “what the F?” I felt a hand at my pant pocket and at my bag. Because I was ready for it I was able to quickly move my bag from my back to my chest. They didn’t get crap and then I stared the asshole down that made the gesture. I’ve traveled a bit and this has never happened to me before, so it threw me for quite the loop. I was paranoid all day and when a woman walked by me and said, “want to see some bags?” I immediately thought she said, “watch out for your bag” until Chris told me that isn’t what she said.

Chinese people can’t stop staring and just look at me (us) but don’t even try to pretend they aren’t. It is so weird. We actually had 3 guys stand in front of us when they thought we weren’t looking and take a picture with us in the background. Since I am quite familiar with that trick, I just decided to pose in the picture with them instead of them being sneaky. When I put my arm around the guy and gave a thumbs up, a small crowd of Chinese tourists gathered around and camera flashes were flying. It was the most bizarre thing I’ve experienced and I don’t like it. You would think I would (I would think I would) but it’s annoying. The sucky part is that after they (men & women) turn their heads they freaking talk in Chinese to the friends so I have no idea what they are saying.

Today we went to the markets that sell all the fake shit so we could buy fake designer bags/wallets/shoes and barter the people down to pretty much nothing. It is a common accepted practice, but I can’t help but feel like a jerk. But it also isn’t a product that is handmade or anything..but still. It is not an experience for the timid because as soon as you enter there are women & men just yelling at you to enter their room so you can look at their bags. They kept saying, “you like? you want good price? you want tshirt? you like watch?” You can handle it if you walk past the store, but if you enter the store…look out. Luckily we have Abby’s brothers fiancee who is Chinese and this girl is a pro. She is amazing. She was able to get a bag down from 780 RNB to two bags for 120 RNB. Before the experience she said that you know you made a good deal if they people are very pissed when you leave. Sure enough, everyone was very angry and wouldn’t even look you in the eye or say goodbye. After this intense experience, we went to a market to get cheap DVDs and found that the place moved to a secret location because they were hiding from the police. Abby’s bro got the location from a friend so off we went trying to find the location. We found it after passing through a revolving gate to a big alley. It was a small well lit room with thousands of dvds…movies, tv shows, CD’s..everything. I got the UK version of The Office (1st & 2nd season PLUS the christmas episode), the fourth season of the US version of The Office (last episode just aired last week) and 3 movies all for 70 RNB, which is 10 bucks. The quality is pretty good too, none of that taping the movie with a camera in the theater crap. They had everything so if you have any requests let me know and I’ll try to bring some back. I can’t bring the boxes or sleeves back b/c customs will get me, but I can get you just the disc. Also, this isn’t a free for all so I’ll be requiring payment if I get you a movie. I think it will be around $2.

The weather has been miserable. It is hot and humid and a pain to walk around in. I’m sweating a lot and I didn’t bring a hairdryer so I’m having a few bad hair days. It just started to rain here so I’m hoping it will cool down, but probably not. The worse part is that many of the stores/restaurants aren’t air conditioned so there isn’t a lot of relief when shopping, especially when we are in basements/tunnels and buying fake things. However, when we come out of the tunnel and into a swanky mall catered towards tourists, the AC in on blast. Also, there aren’t many trees and it is quite smoggy. No blue skies and there has been a permanent haze over the city. According to people that live here there were several nice days last week where they had some blue skies and nice weather, but I guess that quickly evaporated.

Plans have changed and I’m heading to Beijing next week instead of this week. Originally Chris and I were going to Beijing Wednesday and Thursday b/c Chris is heading back to the US on Saturday, vut, the travel time is long and not convienent, so Chris is skipping Beijing. I’m going to head up there next week so I can spend more than 2 days there and not feel rushed. There are more things to see up there than Shanghai so I want to have more time.

Alright, I’m out. Hopefully I can figure out how to trick China into letting me blog from WordPress..I hope they don’t check emails.