Working On Sunday Afternoon

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Bus Adventures With Chinese Grandma: Don't Forget Your Stockings!

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Last night I was taking the bus to a friend's campus and sat down next to a grandma. Now, in the words of my friend Patrick, "Chinese grandmas are the sh*t." It's true: they can do anything and exude a quiet confidence I aspire to. (Also, they can totally snake all the good veggies at the market before anyone realizes what's happening.) They rule with a silk fist. You don't mess with a Chinese grandma. And to a Chinese grandma, all the world's a grandchild, especially a lone foreign girl. I sat down next to grandma in my short skirt and knee-high boots, sans stockings, and she immediately began chastising me for being bare-legged. I explained I don't have stockings, and she started running her hands up and down the bare-showing parts of my thighs, trying to warm me up. After a year and a half here, this didn't faze me (haha, I first wrote "phase" me), but I still had to laugh at the image of a Chinese grandma feeling up a random foreig...
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By The Time We Got There, It Was Dinner At Tiffany’s*.

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There is a phenomenon of giving directions in China that I still don’t understand: people will only give you directions to the next block. For example, “Go straight ‘til the next intersection, then turn left.” Now, you as a Westerner might think that means that after you turn left, you’ll be there. Oh no, my friend. This is just the beginning. If you don’t see what you’re looking for after you turn left, you ask someone else, and get the next set of directions. You will keep doing this, block after block, until you arrive at your destination. This happened to V. and I when we were in Chengdu for training. I needed to get to Tiffany & Co.* to get some jewelry cleaned, and he came with me. I didn’t know where Tiffany was exactly, but I figured it was downtown near the other big shops. Turns out it was in a new shopping plaza built a little zig-zaggy ways away from where we were. It took four sets of directions to get us there. Yup, that’s about right. Also, be aware: you will alw...
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Gyllenhaal, Google, Guys You Never Forget

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Swear on the bible, earlier this week I saw a picture of Jake Gyllenhaal in internet-passing and thought, "I bet there's a good chance if he met me, he'd ask me out." This means one of three things: 1. My self-esteem is waaay out of control 2. I'm delusional 3. I'm delusional I don't ever think this about famous people, but you know what? I bet if I met Jake Gyllenhaal in person, he'd want to ask me out. He looks like a bunch of guys I went to college with, and they seemed to like me just fine. It could happen! Hehehe. _____ I've accepted that Google pretty much owns me; gchat, Google voice, gmail-- everything they do, I love. Except Buzz. That sucked. But everything else is great. I actually get disappointed when I have friends who use yahoo and hotmail because then we can't gchat. Which brings me to my second point: I've noticed lately that men kinda dislike email. One guy I know, he'll always answer my emails, but he...
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