Well, I Never!
The haze is back. I'm going to suppress all my urges to tell you that I told you so, but anyway, I told you so. I do declare that the Australians invented the boomerang under a fit of inspiration from the haze. So, it's now busily clogging up the view from my room--already the hills are turning gray-- and is now bringing a wonderful message of headaches and burnt smells. I'm going to look up rain dances shortly, try them out, and tell you which ones seem most effective.
My hostel block's washing machine broke down last... Thursday, I think it was. I only discovered it after lugging two buckets full of one week's worth of dirty laundry down two flights of stairs, and found out when I kicked the thing and bruised my toe. I decided to pray for a miracle and lugged the two buckets full of clothes and dirt back to my room while waiting for said miracle to take place.
My room mate looked askance at the smell I brought back in with me (usually, I take smells out, not the other way around) but thankfully, we both have a tacit agreement to treat the other as deaf and dumb, and he said nothing to me. When I left the room thirty minutes later to look and see how the miracle was progressing, I found that it wasn't progressing at all. So I had to hand wash my clothes for the first time ever in my college life.
It was a little difficult, because being the first time, I had no idea of how to do it. Previously, when some other guy hand washed his clothes, I never looked. It's not polite to stare, you know; so the result is that I approached the task with a large dose of apprehension. I didn't do much at all; it being a last-minute job, I simply dumped a random sample of dirty clothing into a bucket, added a generous amount of detergent, added water, and left it in the washing room to soak for an hour. (Please note that by this time it was nearly 9.30 pm.)
At 10.30 pm, I went to the washing room to check on my clothing, which had absorbed most of the soap water and consequently ballooned out to the size of a beluga whale. It had also somehow lost all semblance of warmth, and when I got the first item of clothing onto the washboard (I looked at the thing and I have decided that anybody who wants washboard abs is delusional. Who'd want their abdomen to look like a series of small, jagged mountain ridges?) it felt like I was trying to haul a full-grown, unhappy Dobermann to the butcher's. I looked again at the item, and found myself struggling with a pair of briefs.
In passing, I must note for future reference that it is unadvisable to scrub all manner of intimate garmentry with brushes of any sort. It's highly detrimental to the integrity of the cloth.
I finished the job in half an hour, hung the dripping wet clothes up, and went to sleep with an aching right arm. Since the washing machine is, at the time of typing, unrepaired, I had to repeat the process on Saturday; although since I knew what I was getting into, I mentally steeled myself and got it done. One week's laundry in one and a half hours. Not too shabby, isn't it? But I have a niggling feeling that if this keeps up, I'll be able to arm-wrestle the Pig and win by the end of the year. (I said as much to him, and he laughed. We'll see who's laughing when it occurs!)
I just finished reading a couple of books. One of them, from the library, is called Industrial Magic, and is written by Kelley Armstrong. She's a pretty good writer, and has a tendency to use heroines who have very, very sharp tongues. I like the sarcasm, and besides I like fantasy stories very much. In any case, her imagination and etymology are quite good, and I'd certainly say that I enjoyed it more than I did Harry Potter. I'll be looking out for her other books; the library, unfortunately, only had that one book.
The Prize Reader lent me A Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Marquez, and the book turned out quite interesting considering it was a prizewinner. (Usually, I don't equate prizes with interesting writing.) It details the lives of the members of one family, the males of which are either called Jose Arcadio or Aureliano, and are either hugely muscled all over (and I do mean all over) with wild streaks of mad behaviour, or bony and otherworldly and strongly devoted to some cause or other (one of them led an army solely to eradicate the Conservative party). The women, on the other hand, are portrayed as the glue that keeps the family together while the men go crazy. I liked it very much, but it's a depressing read, especially since most of the family dies tragically (tied to trees, shot down, execution by firing squad, madness, eaten by ants etc.).
My kid brother and kid sister just began school. They're in the Big S, where the school system follows that of the Western hemisphere--how's that for communism?--and so their school year began at the beginning of September. So far all I've heard is that they're under severe stress (the standards of Chinese and Math there are nothing short of terrifying) and that my kid sister wants to go back to home schooling.
My kid brother, on the other hand, has gleefully gone and antagonised a teacher. His English teacher, no less. From what I've been told, apparently he disagreed with teacher over some matter in English--it could've been anything, he'll argue for the sake of arguing--and when the teacher consulted the dictionary or some such impartial source, it turned out that my kid brother was right. Cue an elevation for my kid brother in status, a slight humiliation for the teacher, and--predictable in a place where status is everything-- the teacher is now jealous of my kid brother's English.
I should be glad, of course, that the linguistic power runs in the family, but I must say I'm guiltily glad that he's done this. You see, I sometimes get the impression that the Chinese Chinese (the repetition is deliberate!) are a little too snobbish at times, and what they really need is a plump little kid to turn up and prove that hey, they aren't the big shots they think they are. All the same I wouldn't have done it in this manner... but it's his life.
But if that teacher dares to touch a hair on my kid brother's head, I'm going to look her up and give her a verbal drubbing she'll never forget. She doesn't like that his English is better than hers? She's never met the grandmaster.
My hostel block's washing machine broke down last... Thursday, I think it was. I only discovered it after lugging two buckets full of one week's worth of dirty laundry down two flights of stairs, and found out when I kicked the thing and bruised my toe. I decided to pray for a miracle and lugged the two buckets full of clothes and dirt back to my room while waiting for said miracle to take place.
My room mate looked askance at the smell I brought back in with me (usually, I take smells out, not the other way around) but thankfully, we both have a tacit agreement to treat the other as deaf and dumb, and he said nothing to me. When I left the room thirty minutes later to look and see how the miracle was progressing, I found that it wasn't progressing at all. So I had to hand wash my clothes for the first time ever in my college life.
It was a little difficult, because being the first time, I had no idea of how to do it. Previously, when some other guy hand washed his clothes, I never looked. It's not polite to stare, you know; so the result is that I approached the task with a large dose of apprehension. I didn't do much at all; it being a last-minute job, I simply dumped a random sample of dirty clothing into a bucket, added a generous amount of detergent, added water, and left it in the washing room to soak for an hour. (Please note that by this time it was nearly 9.30 pm.)
At 10.30 pm, I went to the washing room to check on my clothing, which had absorbed most of the soap water and consequently ballooned out to the size of a beluga whale. It had also somehow lost all semblance of warmth, and when I got the first item of clothing onto the washboard (I looked at the thing and I have decided that anybody who wants washboard abs is delusional. Who'd want their abdomen to look like a series of small, jagged mountain ridges?) it felt like I was trying to haul a full-grown, unhappy Dobermann to the butcher's. I looked again at the item, and found myself struggling with a pair of briefs.
In passing, I must note for future reference that it is unadvisable to scrub all manner of intimate garmentry with brushes of any sort. It's highly detrimental to the integrity of the cloth.
I finished the job in half an hour, hung the dripping wet clothes up, and went to sleep with an aching right arm. Since the washing machine is, at the time of typing, unrepaired, I had to repeat the process on Saturday; although since I knew what I was getting into, I mentally steeled myself and got it done. One week's laundry in one and a half hours. Not too shabby, isn't it? But I have a niggling feeling that if this keeps up, I'll be able to arm-wrestle the Pig and win by the end of the year. (I said as much to him, and he laughed. We'll see who's laughing when it occurs!)
I just finished reading a couple of books. One of them, from the library, is called Industrial Magic, and is written by Kelley Armstrong. She's a pretty good writer, and has a tendency to use heroines who have very, very sharp tongues. I like the sarcasm, and besides I like fantasy stories very much. In any case, her imagination and etymology are quite good, and I'd certainly say that I enjoyed it more than I did Harry Potter. I'll be looking out for her other books; the library, unfortunately, only had that one book.
The Prize Reader lent me A Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Marquez, and the book turned out quite interesting considering it was a prizewinner. (Usually, I don't equate prizes with interesting writing.) It details the lives of the members of one family, the males of which are either called Jose Arcadio or Aureliano, and are either hugely muscled all over (and I do mean all over) with wild streaks of mad behaviour, or bony and otherworldly and strongly devoted to some cause or other (one of them led an army solely to eradicate the Conservative party). The women, on the other hand, are portrayed as the glue that keeps the family together while the men go crazy. I liked it very much, but it's a depressing read, especially since most of the family dies tragically (tied to trees, shot down, execution by firing squad, madness, eaten by ants etc.).
My kid brother and kid sister just began school. They're in the Big S, where the school system follows that of the Western hemisphere--how's that for communism?--and so their school year began at the beginning of September. So far all I've heard is that they're under severe stress (the standards of Chinese and Math there are nothing short of terrifying) and that my kid sister wants to go back to home schooling.
My kid brother, on the other hand, has gleefully gone and antagonised a teacher. His English teacher, no less. From what I've been told, apparently he disagreed with teacher over some matter in English--it could've been anything, he'll argue for the sake of arguing--and when the teacher consulted the dictionary or some such impartial source, it turned out that my kid brother was right. Cue an elevation for my kid brother in status, a slight humiliation for the teacher, and--predictable in a place where status is everything-- the teacher is now jealous of my kid brother's English.
I should be glad, of course, that the linguistic power runs in the family, but I must say I'm guiltily glad that he's done this. You see, I sometimes get the impression that the Chinese Chinese (the repetition is deliberate!) are a little too snobbish at times, and what they really need is a plump little kid to turn up and prove that hey, they aren't the big shots they think they are. All the same I wouldn't have done it in this manner... but it's his life.
But if that teacher dares to touch a hair on my kid brother's head, I'm going to look her up and give her a verbal drubbing she'll never forget. She doesn't like that his English is better than hers? She's never met the grandmaster.
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