nice and neat

who says the chinese don't trim their bushes?!

smells like fish...

i don't know about you, but besides some loose change, a used tissue, and a packet of warm gummy bears, i can't recall the last time i carried around some fishbones in my pocket...

mother, may i...?

hmmm...i wonder if i needed permission to take a picture of the sign that told me to ask for permission before taking pictures.

get 'em while it's hot!

warm beer i can barely accept, but HOT ORANGE JUICE?!

versace lives on!

i was told the official chinese translation of "versailles club" is HO LEE FUK.

black & blue

this post is dedicated to mia latina bonita, andrea.

one of the things you invariably do when you visit a foreign country is notice all the same things that you have back at home. a simple example is 'starbucks' - even the drink names are the same. but from time to time you see things that have a slight variation.

for example, this weekend i had the pleasure of taking a ride along the coastline here and noticed this:


cool! we have something similar back home in miami but its called:

road trip!

sorry for the long lapse since my last post - between all the business networking (pimping) and olympic torch hoopla (commie internet censorship), it's been hard finding the time to post and just accessing the blog site from here can be painfully slow. in order to make up for lost time, i'm offering you something i picked up on the way back from a two-day business trip up north.



may i suggest a simple little revision to get more locals to obey your seatbelt law? now chang and ming will know you're referring to them.



...and so is driving around with a bicycle spoke as a steering wheel while sticking your bleeding hand out the window, you stupid egghead!



...and DO NOT USE ADVERB WRONGLY.



apparently size does matter. if they really enforced this law, most guys here would be cruising in the left lane. who would have known driving in china could be this emasculating!

stop yer bitchin'!

this may just be my dumb-ass american logic at work, but maybe, just maybe if you tried a little harder to 'satisfy' your customers, you might not need the last 5 hotlines. but if that's too much to ask, may i suggest a 'grammar complain center' then?

lock up lassie!

i would like to preface this post with the fact that we're relatively close to north korea here, so don, this post is dedicated to you since you're a halfsie gook (yeah, you know where i'm going with this...)

i was having dinner last night with the gang, which consists of my aunt, uncle and a handful of employees that live on the premises with us. we all share the same table with a lazy susan full of 7 or 8 different dishes. as i quickly rotated past the congealed cubed pork collagen, i came up to this semi-familiar dish which i assumed was chicken. i took a bite and thought, "wow, this is some tender chicken!", not really paying attention to the fact that the bone structure was a little different. ten minutes later when everyone was about finished, the cook came out of the kitchen chuckling. so my aunt asked her, "what are you laughing about?". she replied sadistically,"i hope you guys liked the rabbit!"

my aunt went into apartment and within 60 seconds stormed out and said to the cook, "bitch, if i catch you serving dog to us, you're f**king fired!" (in chinese, of course)

(i apologize that there is no visual to go with today's post - and i don't mean of the rabbit...i mean of my aunt bitching at the cook! now that was exquisite.)

my "sentence" begins today

...and in "sentence" i mean, as in prison. this post marks my first full day in dalian (see my previous post for a location map). although i do have my own bedroom with a king size bed, bathroom (with a normal toilet), laundry service, and 3 meals a day cooked by a private chef, this place is nothing like shanghai! so why am i bitching? i'm living in a factory in the middle of an industrial park miles from the city with my aunt and uncle in the next room! i should just be lucky that there aren't any bars on my window and my bathroom breaks aren't supervised! so what size nike's do you all wear? make your requests now...

didn't the titanic sink already?

suzanne: this post is dedicated to you.
just what is it about celine dion that cracks me up everytime i see her? maybe it's this billboard! need i say more?

on a serious note though, i commend her for this strategic move towards self-preservation. when her vegas show back home starts to run dry (if it hasn't already), she'll have a backup base of 1.3 BILLION unsuspecting fans. i mean, would mariah carey have lasted this long had it not been for asians? don't pretend you didn't have her CD!

a pittsburgh connection

this one's really for the CMU crowd: so i was sitting at the communal table of my favorite fast food ramen noodle place, AJISEN RAMEN (see pic of napkin pak above -which consequently you have to pay for. here in china, napkins in restaurants aren't given out as freely as back at home. sometimes they automatically put them on your table, so you think it's free until you use it. next thing you know, there is a charge of 3RMB on your tab - which is really less than 50cents, but if the US dollar keeps on dropping, i might consider wiping my mouth on my sleeve next time.)

getting back to my original story...i was sitting at the communal table and in comes this kid that sits down in the seat in front of me. after we both get our food, he takes his jacket off and underneath was a PENN STATE t-shirt. being the nosy guy that i am, i asked him if he went there. he said he was a junior and that he was studying abroad for a semester in china. i told him i went to CMU and it turns out that his parents live in mount lebanon and own the szechuan house chinese restaurant up on murray avenue in squirrel hill. can the world be any smaller? do you remember how many studio all nighters were started with takeout delivery from szechuan house? kelly used to call for us all the time!

lost in translation, part 1

this topic is almost obligatory for any blog about china, so there will be more 'parts' to follow. i found this coming down an escalator from a local electronics superstore. what an awesome concept...a BEST BUY with happy endings! corporate management, take note!

follow the yellow jacket road?

i went to suzhou yesterday with some friends to tour the i.m. pei designed art museum. it's about an hour and a half hour drive from shanghai, but since the museum isn't really worth showing, i'm offering this little bit of sunshine (literally). call me crazy, but which white tour guide's decision was it to make all the 'asian' tourists wear 'yellow' jackets?


since we're on the topic, i've dug this up from my archives of a china trip past. poor guys, they probably had no idea they'd end up on my blog under these circumstances...

where's your asian friend?

some of you have asked me where i am. so for the geographically challenged, i'm posting a map of where i am and where i will be. for those who think all asians look the same, i've taken the liberty to post some of the well-known figures from the surrounding countries to help you make out the distinction.

the great leap...backward?

i was perusing my new shanghai travel book this evening and came upon this page which i believe has single-handedly set the entire chinese population back about another 20 years. seriously guys, is this necessary? i mean we get it already! now if you'll excuse me, i have to get back to my alegebra problems.