Western Stuff

Living in a city of (officially) 17 million leads to a lot of modernization and a lot of Westernization. A couple years ago I might have lamented the omnipresence of Western business in foreign lands, but as a person that now lives in one of those places, Thank God for franchising!

It does not take much work to find a lot of Western stuff, the grocery store is full of Oreos, Lays, and plenty of Proctor and Gamble products. When we need something more specific there are a few Western grocery stores scattered throughout the city that sell import products from around they world (cheese!). Finally, KFC and McDonalds are everywhere (Chipotle is still nowhere to be found though, and will be visited within 24 hours of my return to America, probably twice).

Finally, though, Western stuff means Western prices as things cost about the same as they would in America, which usually means twice as expensive as they cost here and as a result Pizza Hut is considered a popular date restaurant, KFC is a special treat, and Dairy Queen is a upper middle class location.

Of note, this post was written from a Starbucks, where I ordered my iced coffee in the local language and they spoke back to me in English . . . still cost me about 3 bucks.

Ultimate!

Recently, I had the chance to help introduce a new sport to this country: Ultimate Frisbee. One of the world's best games.

Most of our friends who played this game had never thrown a Frisbee at all before but they learned very quickly. I think their familiarity with basketball and soccer helped them to easily understand basic passing and movement without the disc.

Plus, we got to play on the beach which is one of the best ways to play. Here are some picture, sorry they aren't the best ones, but I had to be careful not to show faces. In one you'll notice our friend LeBron (yes, that's his name) doesn't quite understand Ultimate is a non-contact sport.

Blue, er, Gray Skies!

While smog is common here, we do sometimes have blue skies, like today (today we even have white poofy clouds!), but this is rare. Here's a picture of a particularly low visibility day (and a picture from today to prove blue skies can happen).

Where the government control everything . . . even the weather

The weather here is the same as the upper Midwest with three additional words needed: Dry, Dry, Dry.

The city I live in experiences 4 seasons, with the summer being a little hotter than the Midwest and the winter a little milder than Minnesota, but in no season is precipitation common. This year we had zero (that's right 0) days of precipitation in October, November, and December. Then finally, one day in January it snowed a quarter of an inch (maybe a half).

So, yes dry.

A few weeks ago we finally got a break and it rained two days in a row. I was quite amazed, and then even more amazed when I was told the rain was man-made and that the government had seeded the clouds, so that the rain would fall.

My life is weird . . . and dry.

Is this happening . . .?

Tonight I was eating dinner with a friend, he ordered a chicken sandwich and fries . . . he then proceed to eat that entire meal with chopsticks.

Wish I would have grabbed a picture.

Sports!

From morning to night sports and fitness are incredibly popular in this country. Racket sports like badminton and ping pong are very popular and I have had the chance to play ping pong with some of my friends. They're skill levels vary greatly, but when they are good, they are really good and I lose by scores like 21-5. Soccer also has a following but people always quickly lament at the repeated failures of the national team.

But by far, the most popular sport is basketball. I would say that, if it is not already, the NBA will be more popular here than it is in America within the next 10 years. Not just in total number of fans, but in percentage of the population that actively follows. As an example, I was talking to a friend about Reggie Miller (a former NBA player) and I referred to one specific feat from his career, expecting my friend would not know much about a player from 10 years ago, but my friend responded correcting the facts I had given him and providing several more Reggie Miller related stories.

More signs of NBA influence, I have met people with English names such as Lebron and my personal favorite, Allen Iverson. No, his English name was not Allen, it was Allen Iverson.

People here also like to play basketball, but most everyone gives and identical response when asked if they are good, "I like to play, but I'm not very good."

But its not just young people, folks of all ages get participate in sports, each morning elderly women gather outside my apartment and do their excercises (sometimes with swords!) and this video below shows my personal favorite form of East Asian excercise (in case you are wondering, as best as I can tell, these groups don't practice or rehearse, they just do this on the fly).

March Madness

Not even a 13 hour time difference can stop the Badgers (though, apparently defending 3 pointers can).

Thanks to the wonder of the internet the NCAA tournament was available here for our viewing pleasure. After the Badgers exciting last second overtime victory in round one, a couple of us got together at 2:20 AM to watch their second round game. While the team did not exactly come through (losing as their offense failed to show up in the last 10 minutes), watching the tournament provides a surreal feeling where it almost feels like you're in America, but then you wonder why the game is on at 4 AM.

But yes, even with the loss, it was worth staying up for.

One Bike, Two Bike, Three Bike, Four?

Some things are nearly essential to life here, for example, a cell phone (almost all my work revolves around it), an index finger (almost all my food ordering is done through pointing), and a bicycle. But bicycles have been hard for me to hang on to lately.

After losing my first bike in late December, I soon lost another bike and had to move onto a third. And by "lost" I mean, "was stolen". In this country's culture, talking about negative topics is discouraged and this is reflected even in the words that are used. So no one ever says their bike was stolen, you will say it was lost. To say "stolen" would be considered a little bit impolite.

(Positive note: A student who is a native of this city actually congratulated me saying, "Well, once you have lost two bikes you are a true [resident]" and another student informed me that she had lost seven bikes while in high school, so I'm far from the record.)

So anyways, after "losing" two bikes I was not about to spend very much on my next bike, so I went to a shop and with very poor pronunciation stated, "I want a cheap bike because I lost two bikes so far." So I purchased a bike for less than $30 along with a lock that appeared very flimsy. Upon asking the clerk if the lock was any good or not, he merely shrugged, which I should have taken as a sign. I think he was trying to say, "A lock is the last thing you need to worry about, because no thief will be stupid enough to steal this piece of trash."

And he was right, within hours I discovered my new bike was uncomfortable, practically without brakes, and that the nuts and bolts were loose (and not easily tightened). But as the attached picture shows, this was just the beginning of my problems (I'm no expert but I don't think pedals are ever supposed to look like that).

Oh, and did I mention the bike (and therefore, I) smelled like gasoline.

So with that bike very quickly becoming unrideable, a new bike seemed to be on the horizon. Luckily a friend here, decided that she was ready to upgrade her 7 year old bike and graciously offered me the use of her old bike. So now, here I am on bike number 4 and hoping I don't "lose" another . . . I've got a long ways to go before I hit seven, right?

Cha Bu Duo?

The name of this blog comes from a phrase that means "more or less." It is used almost all the time and we often like to say that this is a "cha bu duo culture." For example, "Is my car fixed?" "Cha bu duo." "Is this kung pao chicken?" "Cha bu duo." And on one unique occasion, "Is this chicken?" "Cha bu duo."

I hope you enjoy learning about my life here. The culture, the people, the smells, and so forth. It should be an entertaining ride.