Laid Back
Feb. 21st, 2007 | 05:17 pm
mood: Alone
music: Grateful Dead April 2, 1989
Kicking it at the pad this afternoon. Brewing up some medicinal tea A Heng's mom threw down. Listening to streaming Grateful Dead from archive.org. Met a 14 yr. old kid yesterday down at the running track. We went and climbed Purple Mountain this morning. At seven we're heading down to Confuscious Temple to see the red lanterns. It's five now. Anyway it brought back nice memories of when I kicked it with older mentors like Roger Clay and Chris Cagle. My Chinese is pretty bad so we didn't talk so much. He kept telling me to slow down and be careful. We had a nice climb up the mountain, then KFC for lunch. Anyway A Heng isn't a big Dead Head so I'm enjoying the space out time. Climbing the mountain today I really regretted that I bought a road bike for commuting speed instead of a mountain bike. I've been living a mile away from some really passable mountain biking for two years and only biked there twice. Lot's of mixed feelings about moving to Shang Hai. It'll be nice, culture, art, symphony vs. I don't want to go, I'll probably spend more time on the bus to get anywhere. A large crowded concrete jungle where my salary won't buy as much, and I'm leaving behind a mountain I never really took the chance to explore.
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bus hits car
Jul. 21st, 2006 | 12:25 pm
this is from my photo series Traffic in China
a crowd gathers to access the culpability of
bus driver vis a vis car who pulled in front and got hit
this is social justice
all will be settled out of court for about $36
no need to call the insurance company
oh and bloggers
get a zooomr pro account
http://blog.zooomr.com/2006/07/07/do-we-l
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coperion class
May. 12th, 2006 | 09:56 am
i have a nice group of students and can enjoy tcpmp movies on my palm in the taxi there and back, so what a nice escape from Xin Jie Kou.Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Art mirrors construction progress
May. 8th, 2006 | 07:49 pm
music: Diamonds are Forever, James Bond movie on Star Movies
So, the bricks are gone and he's mixing cement while the next generation reads a book. In the golden mirror digital zooms gives us a false prospective. And the beat goes on and it don't stop. Got 200 more pics of flickr space and good thing too, zooomr seems to be having problems today. So I'm back in business w/ my iphoto plugin. Great automator workflow for fast access to iphoto.Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
The Bricks of Chinese Development
Apr. 28th, 2006 | 10:37 am
The view from my apt. window this morning at 9:50 am. So, what does the great development look like in the back alleys? A pile of bricks on the ground. This is one shop left of the electronics repair shop that fixed my rice cooker for free. Looked like they started selling dvds there the other night. Listening to a lecture on Karamozov from UCAL Berkeley (the home of the free speech movement). So, listening to NPR Leonard Lopate beats VOA shortwave. But I do wish my minidisk radio hadn't broken, there's some immediacy and geographical affinity listening to local Chinese radio, and it would improve my Chinese, I guess I could just carry the shortwave on the bus, yeah, I can try that. But you know, like that gravity and barometric pressure at the soundbooth at WJNanjing is the same as the bus where I'm listening and that is. . . . I'm feeling much better, I had a rough 2 or 3 days, I let my back get overly irritated before I took the super tylenol to reduce the swelling. Need to become a better teacher so I don't end up wheelbarrowing bricks around.Tags: China, bricks, bicycle, back, backache, alley, window, development, construction, radio, nyc, wnyc, podcast, podcasting, nanjing, 南京, 中国
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Life in the 4 star toilet
Apr. 14th, 2006 | 11:24 am
location: my apartment
now, several of our readers he emailed me or sent faxing asking for my advice about attending the 2008 Olympic games to be held in Beijing. Not suprisingly, one issue comes up again and again, squat toilets. People aren't worried about speaking chinese or eating with chopsticks, what really bothers them is not having a pot to sit on, some are afraid that their decadent western lifestyle and accompanying girth of personal belly leaves them unable to squat for very long and they know of the lack of fiber in their own personal life, so as they say an apple a day does a world of good when one lacks the time to make fresh orange juice in a blender. So, a 4 star toilet means that it is cleaned regualarly, isn't that nice, and guess what there is a working sink and soap dispensers and hand dryers, i went to a 3 star in bei hai park just a block from the forbidden city, i don't remember the exact differnce, perhaps there were no hand dryers and though it appeared clean there was a smell, i'll be in contact with the proper cultural authorities and attempt to link to an english webpage listing the criteria and a map of the star-rated toilets in beijing, kunming is a wonderful city, but don't go there for the toilets. well, i really must be heading to lunch now, have to get some non-chametz food while there's any left, no noodles for me today, can't be too careful with one's wheatgerm you know, the talk about accountability in public schools was also interesting, any of our readers from nyc, be sure and comment on the npr story today, ok , appetite urges me to close this missive.
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camera boy
Apr. 14th, 2006 | 10:23 am
really enjoyed wnyc talking about oil today, real audio, lincoln douglas debate between a pro-oil guy and a pro-environmental guy talking about windfall profits and oil subsidies, drilling in alaska the traders on wall street that determine energy prices based on a future war with Iran &tc. nice nuanced view,
this is a kid with a digital camera, he is looking at a photo he has just snapped of me, he came across Beijing in the subway to visit the Forbidden City and snap pictures of the foreign tourists, I heard something else nice on wync yesterday, I said that readers shouldn't be subjected to whining and that any residual resentment you have about childhood should be handled by other means and not . . . . It's cold today and it was cold yesterday, I guess the groundhog saw his shadow or didn't and that we just had a little false spring here in Nanjing land. ok copy-pasted into textedit , but no wordcount feature that was visible to the naked eye, i guess that's another reason to use bbedit, but i did come up with a neat idea for a nest post, so that's cool.
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Eric Clapton Ben Champion Sonja Zrnic
Apr. 13th, 2006 | 11:46 pm
mood: 
tired
music: barking chinese dog
music:eric claptop torrent on minidisk, sounds great, just hit the flonase. Barrett used to call it fast powder. I found Ben today on myspace, I guess it is someone else imitating him, I can't believe he's really on the internet. I bought his whole story about not having a computer.
two links to my show on the local t.v. teaching english to the subway workers. xici bbs and njcanilx.com. 
the reporter in front of me in the blue dress used to work at my school. She's getting married soon and that's about all I know. We maintain a rigid colonial class structure the kind of thing I always tried for in America, but never could acheive. Part pariah, part well, what am I ? how would I know, anyway, I don't communicate with the locals, but that will change I will pop into the bbs discussion about myself and say hello. Won't that be interesting? Yeah, so i tried to blog this this morning and spent forever trying to find Ben again on myspace, but couldn't, he was on someone's list of buddies. My myspace.i went to the great wall in january so that's one less thing to worry about before i die
how's your army man?
my sister married an airforce boy in november and i got to come back for that
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paynito/713
how's life off the party circuit?
i wish i still had that sean nana i copied from you, but it's nowhere to be found, the enon i downloaded to emulate logan doesn't cut it
jim has msgd me too so i feel happy
but i'm sad that 40 mins of hell has like 23,000 friends it makes me feel inadequate
-brandon
i hope that's close enough to 50, why did i talk so long on the phone, why is msging people i haven't seen in a year more ____ insert word. aaaah! norman, maybe it's just the arsenic in the water i miss, couldn't be the people, no it's only being a lazy college kid, i couldn't possibly miss all those rich terrible american friends i had, no i'm not lonely in china, there are a billion people here.
Tags: china, nanjing, metro, subway, map, english, esl, paynito, brandon, brandon payne, 韩铭乐, myspace, friends, lonely, Ben Champion, poet, norman, oklahoma, norman oklahoma
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Pesach in Nanjing
Apr. 13th, 2006 | 08:19 am
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And we'll do it our way
Yes our way
Make all our dreams come true
And we'll do it our way
Yes our way
Make all our dreams come true
For me and you
So, there you have it, the ancient neural pathways are still intact which link me to my childhood, the past is with us, etc., etc. I'm not sure if. . . Like I said, what a Seder! I used this Haggadah. I wanted to go down to Shanghai Chabad, but hey Lashanah haba’ah bi Yerushalayim! Next Year in Jerusalem. A Heng and I had a nice celebration here. Really exciting our redemption from slavery and from sin and the second coming and all. Rabbi Motti Berger told me that Gog and Magog meant George Bush and Al Gore, well that was in 2001, but before, no after September 11th. Yeah. 9/11 Loose Change torrent I was working in the banana field at Kibbutz Yechiam, and after they kicked out all the volunteers I went to Aish HaTorah Yeshivah aish.com, is that the sequence? Anyway he had some spiel about how their names George and Gore sounded the same maybe it was one of those things where you skip letters. Like you read every 5th letter in the Torah and that also has a message. There were all kinds of word finds to tell you the date of Rabin's assasination.
So, amazon link, critique. Lots of dust. Incidentally, Yechiam was supposed to be one of the most hard-core Socialist kibbutzim, so that ties in with me sitting in China today.
Tags: Aish HaTorah, 9/11, September 11, September 11th, Babylon, kibbutz, yehiam, yechiam, Israel, rabbi, loose change, torrents, bittorrent, pesach, Jewish, Jewish Holidays paynito
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Teaching makes you stupid?
Apr. 12th, 2006 | 08:46 pm
I met a nice teacher from another school in Nanjing. I approached Ian in the China Merchant's Bank where he was going to pay his mortgage. He told me that a study of Education Graduates IQs at graduation and then after a year of teaching pre-schoolers revealed a tewlve point drop in IQ. Now I have something new to worry about. Ian suggested that I work only part time and do something more creative instead of the teaching grind. So, I'm pushing my students a little harder today to keep my vocabulary from diminishing to the point of imbecility. Here's one of my colleagues, Anna.Tags: china, nanjing, canilx, english, esl, teachers
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Me Working
Apr. 10th, 2006 | 11:29 pm
Tags: China, office, work, palm pilot, palm os, palm, nanjing, canilx, paynito, Zhivago, revolution, Russia, cinema, movies, students, esl, dilbert
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B.J.'s Quickstop
Apr. 9th, 2006 | 11:54 pm
Just got off the horn with B.J. herself of B.J.'s QuickStop, pictured above in daytime and nighttime. Sunday morning is about as slow in Ada, OK as it is here in Nanjing, China on my day off. Well, all this here blogging don't really bring me any closer to my family none, does it? That's what skype is for. Found some nice DIY plans for a microphone pre-amp sos I could record into the line-in on my minidisk. I'd like to podcast some of my English classes, why not, eh? Now, I guess I could go to sleep. Why doesn't this pick up the Itunes track that I'm never listening to? You see the one today that podcasting is stealing listeners who would give in to the pledge drives on public radio? Oh well. Yeah, I turned a dollar on the Bootcamp XP on apple hardware story. I want to start bloggin about stuff that happens in China instead of this pseudo English-based non-Carbon existence I have in cyberspace.
Tags: sunday, Ada OK, Oklahoma, nanjing, china, skype
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metroclass
Apr. 2nd, 2006 | 10:06 am
mood: Sunday 10 am
Nanjing Metro
