Platitudinous Rex
Jameson remains, as ever, both a catalyst and an excuse for speaking uncomfortable truths to strangers and friends; here I include myself, in a category rather nearer to the former -- particularly when I've awoken sober tomorrow.
Days before she died, my sister asked me to tell her a story. To my shame, I had none to tell. She turned away with a sigh, murmuring that I used to tell such good stories.
I may have gathered a few new stories since then, but I have discovered that any talent for telling them has since flown. My mind is too feral; so fractured and wandering that attempting to trace the paths it takes with spoken or written word is all too often an exercise in frustration, mirrored in the eyes -- real or imagined -- of my audience.
This, in part, is why meaningful or entertaining posts are infrequent, and meaningless 'status updates' are incessant. I write, delete, write, forget. It is a result of the way I have treated my consciousness as of late; injecting as much information simultaneously as possible, in order to push away thoughts and worries that should have been confronted.
I've been working, but too idle. I'm growing old, but not growing up. I'm broadening, rather than my horizons. I've come a long way while going nowhere; moved around without moving on; returned to where I found myself, only to slowly -- and perhaps willingly -- lose the trail.
It's been so long, sometimes I'm afraid I may not be able to relate to the real world anymore. Old habits die hard, and sometimes it's easier to let them survive than to seek a life of one's own. In light of recent developments, it has been all too easy to sink back into their welcoming arms, and let the world pass by in a comfortable blur.
I am fortunate in that my better half sees the world more clearly than I, even when suffering from some of the same problems. Luckily, she's also strong enough to haul both of us up to eye-level so I can see some of the hard truths.
I need to start moving, and learning, again. This I know, and readily accept.
I had to be shown, however, that the best place to do that, given my penchant for falling into ruts in the face of uncertainty, is where I know the systems.
I've spent a lot of time here, and I'm not quite sure what I've learned. I do know I've found meaningful things and people. I think I know what, and whom, I need to hold on to; and what I have to do in order to keep them.
I'm not yet sure precisely when, but this year -- accompanied at the very least by a few more failures and grey hairs -- I'm coming home.
Again.
New Year’s Screed
After a quiet morning's introspection, and a long talk with my girlfriend, I believe I have uncovered the not altogether pleasant face of what might be described as my basal existential rate.
That is, despite being in China, and having countless new opportunities and experiences available to me, I seem to have gathered many of my old habits and customs around me like an old, familiar, yet stifling coat. Is this something ingrained in me? Is it possible that there is a hulking, quasi-depressive and antisocial Internet junkie coded into my DNA?
Yeah... probably not.
But it says something about me, I think, that I can have upended my life to such a degree to get here, only to spend so much of my time with the same deliberately time-wasting occupations as before.
I've been taking some time to think about the various ways in which I can develop; while certainly I believe I have the capacity to do so, recently I appear to mostly have cultivated an improbable capacity for careless solitude.
I am reminded of a discussion with my mother not too long ago, when she complained that she was unhappy, but was unsure of how to go about becoming happy. My advice, ironically, was to simply go out and try new things. It doesn't matter what, I said; go bowling, invite some friends to lunch, talk to a stranger at the store, join a book club.
My hypocrisy struck me in full force today when JJ was telling me, essentially, to stop whining and do the exact same thing. There is an obvious difference in my behavior, she said, compared to when we first met. I am colder, less open to new people and experiences, and less friendly, even to my friends. Simply put, I am just not as interested in the world around me, and consequently -- though she is too nice to say this -- less interesting.
It is a hard truth to accept, but it is a truth nonetheless, and once voiced it was easy to see. I have slowly wound myself back into a state of general self-indulgence, yet I do not even have the dubious wisdom to indulge in pleasures. I indulge in nullities, small self-manufactured purgatories devoid of substantial thought, but which I can readily control. Minor triumphs in the kitchen, rediscovering the well loved but well-treaded pages of an old book, or the occasional victory in work are all well and good, but they all occur inside a hazy fog that separates me from the larger, brighter world that was so clear to me not long ago.
To examine the whys and hows of this would drag us even farther down that same path, and indeed would be an irrelevant train of thought; suffice it to say, examining the phenomenon is not so important as realizing it exists and taking measures against it. So I'll just say that I'm taking JJ's advice.
She also noted that I seem to be most alive when I'm on the move; once I get settled, I tend to slowly sink into a well-beaten path, until I'm uprooted again. I see the truth of this too, but I'm not entirely sure what I can do about it... I think better to try and fix the problem, than try to stay one step ahead of it.
Finally, it's most likely no coincidence that my happiest times in recent years were spent completely without a computer. So while obviously, given my line of work, there are limits in that regard, I'm cutting my online time as much as possible.
Expect more updates from my phone -- which, since it's such a pain in the ass to type on, I am going to consider generally exempt.
Happy New Year!
Phones, phones, everywhere, and they are all terrible.
I have fairly eclectic requirements for most every product I buy, particularly electronics. I am loath to part with my money unless I am faced with a product that does everything I expect it to do, or I can hack it apart to make it do everything I want it to.
This is the reason I don't have a "smart" phone yet. There are major problems with every single platform out there, and after a while I just get sick of running into roadblocks and give up in frustration.
My basic requirements for a phone are:
Communications:
Making phone calls is naturally of the first importance. But, as this is supposedly a "smart" phone, I also need access to all the methods of communication I normally associate with my computer, available over Wifi or cellular. That is:
- VOIP (Skype and/or Gizmo)
- Email (POP, IMAP, and web)
- IM (GChat, MSN Messenger, and AIm. QQ as a somewhat-necessary bonus).
- Web browsing, on a modern browser.
I also need well-implemented GPS, and the ability to tether my laptop to the phone, in case I need emergency net access somewhere I can't get a wifi signal.
+ Nobody.
- Everybody. Android is probably the closest on this one.
Languages:
Being in China, having developed a rudimentary proficiency with the language, and most importantly, being in regular contact with people who have essentially no grasp of the English language, I need to be able to write, receive, and get help translating between English and Chinese.
Over here, any $50 Nokia cell phone has this capability, and I find it shocking that so-called "smart" phones generally lack this capability. The only phone OS that has excellent built-in support for this is iOS, which includes Chinese character handwriting recognition. Android basically has nothing that I can find or care to investigate further (everything I've found has been on the order of, "Oh, this project looks promising, you should try it out"). Maemo5 (for the Nokia N900) support, much like the expected longevity of the entire ecosystem itself, is laughable.
I want supported, retail-release-quality, first-party software. Right now only the iPhone has this that I can tell. The iPhone, and the $100 phone from Nokia I'm currently using.
Pathetic.
In an excellent illustration of what drives me further and further away from FOSS communities on a daily basis, one article, entitled "Full Chinese Japanese Korean (CJK) input on Nokia N900," recommends installing GNU Emacs, a full-featured text editor, typing the Chinese text in there, and then copy-pasting it anywhere you need it to. That's not a solution, that's a workaround, and a terrible one.
+ Apple.
- Everyone else. There are about 3 million third-party apps "in progress." None of them are good.
Battery life:
I need a phone that can, at minimum, last a full day of heavy use on a single charge. What genius thought it was a great idea, in this day and age, to build a cell phone that only lasted 3.5 hours on a charge? When my 3-year-old dual core laptop with a 14" screen lasts longer on one charge than your cell phone, then you have made a TERRIBLE CELL PHONE. If you have a giant screen on your phone, put a bigger battery in it. Nobody cares that it's super-thin and sexy if you can't take it anywhere because it's constantly having to be charged.
I have a cell phone that lasts up to 3 days on a single charge, with regular voice and SMS use. It can also play and record videos, and plays MP3s with very nice sound quality. However, I still use my 5-year-old, AAA-using, Creative Zen Nano Plus MP3 player instead.
You know why?
Because, if I were to miss even the most trivial of phone calls, message, or meetings because my phone's battery was dead, I'd feel enough of an idiot without having to explain that it was because I was listening to an endless loop of Baby Got Back while looking at kitten pictures on Facebook.
My cell phone is an important communications tool. If the battery's dead, I can't reach people that I need to reach, particularly since I haven't memorized a single telephone number since the advent of the contact list.
So, seriously. If you put a 4" screen and a 1GHz processor in your phone, put in better than a 1500mAh battery or bundle an AA charger with it.
+ Nobody.
- Everybody.
User-serviceable battery:
If the battery in my phone craps out, I want to be able to put a new battery in it. I have three, count 'em, THREE, Nokia batteries for my current phone.
The reason I have three? The first one died on me, so I bought a second one. The second one worked fine, but was a cheap knock-off, and was dropping in capacity, so I bought a new branded retail unit. After some time, I found the original and decided to try it, for shits and giggles, and it works perfectly. So now I have three Nokia phone batteries, each of which is able to power my phone for 48-72 hours without a break or a charge. I carry the two spares fully charged in my bag. They each cost less than $10 US.
They are also usable with about 90% of the Nokia phones I run into on a daily basis, so for example, if a friend's battery dies, I can lend him/her one of mine.
If I owned an iPhone, in the above scenario I would now have two spare iPhones in my bag.
- Apple. Fuck Apple.
+ Everyone else.
Expandable memory:
If my phone's memory is full of Lady Gaga music videos and Snuffleupagus porn, I want to be able to throw in a microSD card so I can continue stockpiling digital perversions of questionable legality. When that card fills up with dolphin snuff films and movies painstakingly tailored to induce grand mal seizures in dogs and small children, I want to be able to swap another one in... and so on.
If I take a whole series of pictures of homeless people selling me a dead dog, and my subsequent Thanksgiving dinner spread, I want to be able to pop out the SD card, throw it in my laptop, and copy the files over at full USB speed instead of having to fuck around with idiotic proprietary software and wifi or Bluetooth transfer speeds.
Most people are pretty good about this. Of course, by "most people" what I really mean is some Android phone manufacturers, and Nokia.
Windows Phone 7 lets you add an SD card... once. It is then rolled into the internal memory as a single integral file system. If you take the card out, it won't work anywhere else. This is basically so the music and movies industry won't take their balls (tiny and withered that they are) and go home. Thanks, DRM.
+ Everybody but Apple, and Windows Phone 7, with some exceptions based on phone model and OS.
- Apple, and Windows Phone 7.
Finally, a word on functionality. Phone and mobile OS developers: right now you are doing everything you can to make cell phones into little portable computers and entertainment media centers.
This is fine.
It's also monumentally stupid.
I know that's what sells units; I understand your average consumer loves to see little shiny UI elements fly around on their screen, spends hours playing Plants vs. Zombies while calls go to voicemail, and uses their monthly data transfer quota more for downloading Youtube upskirt video archives than sending and receiving communications with actual people.
I'm just saying, enough is enough.
Your phones all play music and video through painstakingly thought-out, beautifully designed, and precisely tuned interfaces, and have giant glossy screens and slide-out surround-sound speakers. You've spent countless man-hours developing the absolute best-looking way to have a UI element fade off screen after being dismissed, and different algorithms to index and search MP3 files on a memory card.
Fine.
Wonderful.
Just please, please spend some time now working on stuff that actually lets people get things done.
Perspective
Recently, I have been considering how my perspective is so fundamentally changed on certain things, just by virtue of a change in location. Now, the snarkist in me will of course pipe up with the observation that this is all a change in perspective is. But that is beside the point, and that part of me is an insufferable ass.
Take Starbucks, for example.
In the States, I always felt slightly oppressed by Starbucks. They were everywhere, they all charged money for wifi, their environments were uniformly bland and sterile, and their coffee was -- more often than not -- just plain bad. This isn't referring to their cream-sugar-ice-coffee concoctions, which are probably just as tasty as the combination might suggest, but their plain black iced coffee, which is what I always drank. It was consistently bitter, sour, and served with way too much ice along with a bad attitude, as if I was being marginalized for not purchasing a double-caramel-pumpkin-chocolate-macchiato with an extra shot of some hideous candy syrup.
So I tended to avoid Starbucks, heading for the usual hipster hangouts and smaller chains, where the coffee was cheaper and arguably higher quality, and the atmosphere was friendlier.
Here in China, though, the situation is reversed. Starbucks is the single store I know where I can consistently get fast free wifi and a good cheap cup of coffee.
Yes, the iced coffee is still bitter and sour, but it's actually iced coffee, rather than the normal hot coffee poured over a couple ice cubes, resulting in a cup of warm coffee-flavored water.
Yes, the environment is bland and sterile, but here I don't have intermittent high pressure fronts of cigarette smoke drifting into my airspace from nearby tables, or sweaty waitresses hovering over me while I consider which of their overpriced drinks to buy.
At one notable joint, I ranged through half of their coffee menu, being told with each order that that particular drink was not available. When I finally asked what they did have available, I was helpfully informed that their coffee machine was, in fact, broken.
In a fit of unbridled optimism, they suggested I order tea.
This is the suggestion of someone who has absolutely misunderstood the nature of caffeine addiction.
I replied that, while I appreciated their enterprising nature, someone looking for a cheap cup of coffee would be hard pressed to order a 50RMB pot of tea. In despair, I finally ordered a Coke, which arrived in a warm can, and on leaving I was charged 15RMB… a fair price for a quick lunch (for example, a bbq pork set meal from the neighborhood Cantonese restaurant), but a far cry from the normal 4-5RMB price for a can of soda.
So. The only consistent factor in these shops is inconsistency. Thus, whereas the green medusa or mermaid or whatever it is of Starbucks in the States is a figure of cold, unbending corporate conformity, here it shines like a welcome beacon of reliability.
The fact that I can fill up my thermos with iced coffee for 13RMB (15, minus 2 for having my own cup -- something Chinese places aren't starting to do yet) doesn't hurt either. Normally a cup of coffee anywhere starts at 20, since they all tend to just make espresso even if you just want plain brew/drip.
And before I start sounding like an overly picky hobo with a slightly nicer version of a tin cup, let me just say it's not only about price.
This was confirmed a few days ago, when I discovered a Carl's Jr. in Shanghai by way of a giant ad placed on the elevators servicing my gym. I spent about 45 minutes on the elliptical with that goddamn Famous Star drifting in and out of my eyeline. Afterwards I showered, changed, and after a few minutes of internal debate, blew half a red bill (100/2 = 50RMB) on a Double-western Bacon Cheeseburger combo.
Oh... and go ahead and super size that, too.
The point, obviously, wasn't the price ( 50RMB is about how much I typically spend on food in 3 days ) or the food -- though the faint nausea I felt upon seeing the burger didn't stop me from eating it -- but the momentary sense of familiarity. In a surprising departure from the normal Chinese business model, Carl's Jr. even has the familiarly enormous paper buckets that masquerade as beverage cups, and a self-serve drinks fountain. They even have a little salsa bar with pickled banana peppers and salsa fresca.
In fact, it was almost like being at a Carl's Jr. in the U.S., except nobody there was openly weeping or picking at cold sores.
I think the fundamental reality is that I am, in fact… kinda homesick.
Not what I would normally call "homesick," really, but in a kind of low-level, almost unconscious sense of the word. I'm not depressed or forlorn, but put a little plastic tub of KFC mashed potatoes in front of me and there's a little rush of endorphins that might not have been triggered had I been offered a far superior Chinese meal.
And now, since my laptop battery's almost done and I may be off to some music pub in Xujiahui (å¾å®¶æ±‡), it's random picture time.
-------------------------
Friends Ellen and Roger; Ellen's been previously introduced, Roger is a fellow American here doing kind of similar work as I am, freelancing as a videographer. Also looking (or just got, I've forgotten which) teaching jobs. Also, how is it that my Nokia phone is better at exposing night pictures than my Casio digicam? Damn you, Hong Kong.
Jishnu, this one's for you… an entire store dedicated exclusively to selling frozen mochi. This is one of two display shelves with all kinds of flavors.
This sounds simultaneously like a delicious treat and an STD.
Bad day(s)
I've kind of had an off week. While coming back to China has been great in many ways, there have been a lot of peripheral issues and noise that really beat me down the last few days, some of them the usual minor annoyances, and some of them the more sweeping, unresolvable issues that my mind tends to dwell on when it's been beat down by the minor annoyances to a sort of angsty critical mass.
First: fuck you, Facebook. Seriously. You're kind of a handy way to keep track of some of my friends. I'm in China, which blocks it, but I have fairly decent access to my own server to use as a proxy for access.
So I deal with the slow access, the ads, the suggestions that I "reconnect" with people who only added me to increment their friend count, and the nonstop status updates from those same people.
But when I get a Facebook message from a (real) friend in my Gmail inbox, and instead of being able to reply from there you force me to load your goddamn home page and click through two more screens in order to reply, that's when I get irritated. I understand you're hungry for page views, but making me jump through hoops is not the way to keep me coming back.
So, Han: I liked the USP's style and handling better; the Glocks just looked and felt boxy and kind of… rattly. Hard to describe, just a general impression. I didn't have much time with any of the models, really. And just use Gmail from now on, please.
Second, more and more I just get the feeling that China, as a political entity, just plain doesn't like me.
It's no secret now that I'm thinking about buying a piece of property near Shanghai. I'd be more excited/optimistic about it if they weren't making it so goddamn hard. There are extra restrictions in place for purchasing property if you're a foreigner, new taxes being put in place, and I've been told it absolutely won't help me get better visas down the road.
Apparently the property and sales managers have limited English, and even though I can communicate pretty well in Chinese at this point, I want to be absolutely crystal clear on all fronts if I'm going to be blowing my life savings on a piece of property in a country that doesn't seem to be very fond of me, especially if I may have to rely on the political/legal institutions of that same country for conflict resolution. And this isn't just my personal impression here, I'm getting this all of my Chinese friends here.
Basically the reaction has been along the lines of: "Whew… it was an enormous pain in the ass for ME to buy a house, I'm surprised you have the balls to go through with it."
Third, it is also no secret that work is getting harder to find, and that goes just the same for me. I'm at the point where I'm trawling online classifieds to pick up contacts and contracts, and networking as best I can over here. It's a little encouraging to see that there are contracts floating around out there, but likewise depressing to see that (1) People want much more for much less these days, and (2) even when I'm willing to knuckle down and do the work -- which is any time I feel I could execute the project -- I'm competing with developers and development groups from places like India, who will work for much, much less than I can.
This is fine, and that's their competitive edge. In this environment, and with that kind of competition, I can only really compete on service. This has not, at least for the past week, held much appeal for potential clients when the alternative is outsourcing the job to someone with poor language skills who might get the job done for a tenth of the price.
So we'll see how that goes.
I'm pretty confident I can drum up enough work to keep me going for a little while, but it is growing increasingly clear to me that my market viability is waning pretty quickly. I'm therefore -- as always, and just like everyone else -- looking at my options, while trying to make a real go of this at the same time.
Fourth, don't do "real" business with friends. This was a pretty clear cut rule with me, and it's not like I hadn't heard it before, but I bent/broke it once because I liked the potential project and the partner.
It's coming back to bite me in the ass now, so I've renewed my determination to only trade my labor to friends who want it, like for baked goods and favors. After all, in the shitstorm formerly known as our global economy, returning to a barter economy makes as much sense as anything else.
Fifth, I lost my e-reader. Sniff. I really loved that thing. Now the only thing I can do while on the can is pick locks, which is really more of a visceral activity, and doesn't have any of the intellectual or emotional appeal.
Sixth, my ISP decided to move my site to another server without any notification, so access to my site and email has been crappy for the past couple of days, and my gallery may be broken to the extent I have to just scrap the whole damn thing and start over… won't know until the DNS propagates this way.
So I'm on a train to Shanghai tomorrow, where every cheap hotel room is booked because of the World Expo! At the very least, being on the move may help me get rid of some of this mental baggage.