Talk To My Chatterbot
So, this is the record of the Chinese New Year activities of myself, as well as the record of the few days before that and after, possibly up til today if I have that much time (or if I type fast enough); after all, I have another ummm 33 minutes until the next class starts, so let's see how great a wall of text I can make in that time!
Ready, set, going.
So the last entry was, hmmm, January 18. Chinese New Year, I think, fell a few days after that--actually the Monday after the last post, but the Gobbler and I decided that the weekend really begins the moment class ends on Friday so that's when we left--I was the limiting factor for that trip since my classes end later than his. Also I was a little later than expected since I misread my schedule and thought I should end one hour later than I really did--which then led to me prowling around the school for an hour waiting for classes to start. It was all rather annoying.
The travelling itself was nothing special apart from that we had to do it and it was inconvenient; fortunately I brought along the mp3 player and so amused myself during the one-hour-odd delays while waiting for buses, getting in line, going through places, etc. In fact I credit that little player and my headphones as the main reason for me not going quite mad with frustrated impatience during the whole affair: I like going places, but I don't like travelling. It's probably also the reason why I have lots and lots of photos of places I go, and the travelling sections (the folder is called Between Places) are sparse. Then again, it really isn't all that interesting to keep taking photographs of ourselves with assorted bags in assorted stations, buses, etc--even if the whole world is our backdrop.
Chinese New Year, this time 'round, was a rather muted thing; it's the first celebration since my uncle died and I think they're still getting used to the idea of celebration with one deceased member of the family; also, this being such, there were certain rituals and things to go through--presumably rituals to placate his spirit so they could celebrate without him getting jealous or something. I've no idea; I didn't ask and anyway nobody in my immediate family has any sort of knowledge pertaining to those matters. (The extended family might know, but be offended or something.) All the same there was lots of lovely food and we had the usual fireworks competition between the house's two nearest neighbours, who both had very flashy loads of fireworks even though (I think) they're not Chinese. It was very pretty; even if it was raining, those sparkly things popping in the air were quite nice to see. I didn't take any photographs of those though.
We spent most of the daytime going about, visiting old friends and relatives that we usually only see during this period. We also visited a church that we only go to once a year, in that area, and it's not changed--which, in my opinion, is deeply unfortunate because that church has... a few TVs all hooked up to a mixer and a video player or something, and those little devices run the service. The stage has enough space for a small band--drums and guitar, at least, or a synthesiser if they don't want a real piano--but some bright spark chose to make the entire thing more or less karaoke. Seriously. And the sermon, which was worse, because it more or less consisted of the preacher/pastor (I'm not sure what exactly he was) saying a sentence before 5 minutes of a video would play that was supposed to illustrate his point but distracted me with historical inaccuracies. (It must have been a very low-budget video.) Not the most illuminating sort of place, and quite frankly I wouldn't go if my parents didn't think it was something worth going to.
Other than that, we ate, talked, slept, woke--I should put in here that my father is still an early bird and I am not, and he likes to wake up and sing loud songs to the world at large. Unfortunately this usually wakes me up, and then I'm grumpy because the song goes on and on and on. I think, if I ever get a house of my own, I'm soundproofing my room for those special times when the parents come to visit. And I'm also getting a deadlock bolt for it. But the soundproofing comes first.--and went out on trips to people that I hardly know by sight, let alone name.
Two days after Chinese New Year (on a Tuesday--the CNY was on a Monday), we took the car and drove down to Spore to deliver the Gobbler and myself unto our various institutes of education. Unfortunately a great deal of people had the same idea, which really isn't all that surprising; CNY is a 14-day-long celebration in China, so naturally Spore (which is at least 90% Chinese) shrank it down to 2 days, which leads to people only returning after holidays at the very very last minute possible. We spent about 4 or 5 hours in that jam of cars, taking photos of the sun that went from high overhead to below-the-horizon in that duration and laughing at the odder bumper stickers and categorising cars according to what the occupants were eating (the ice-cream car, the Famous Amos car, the Nothing car...).
We arrived and went to the hotel, and the next day in the early morning, the Gobbler and I left the hotel for our schools. I was planning to have left the night before really, but couldn't since I hadn't had dinner and the hour meant that I would get either food or public transport--it was no contest, and so I stayed for supper with the family and went back to school the next day.
After classes the family decided to drive over to the University to meet me, upon which things went bad: because of the family's ability to get lost, I told them to tell me where they were upon arriving and I'd go to find them. They decided instead that I should tell them where I was and they'd find me, because they hate waiting, and so what happened (we couldn't call because of the insane roaming charges) was an entertaining series of SMSes saying "where r u? v r in X", "m on d way 2 Y", "m @ Z" and so on until our travel paths finally coincided and then we started heaping blame on each other for not staying in one fixed known location. Now the thing about my family arguments is that my father has an explosive sort of anger, and mine is somewhat less so; so when this sort of thing happens, he starts talking and talking and I simply wait for him to finish. Unfortunately this then proceeds to him yelling about how I should respond to his complaints of my behaviour and if I didn't like what he was saying then somebody had better take some unsavoury action.
I've decided that in future, when up against angry people who're saying unreasonable things or things that I cannot politely disagree with, I will simply ask them what sort of response they think they'd like. It's likely as not to make them blow up more, but then I can take that as their answer and the next time it happens I can blow up right back at them with no guilt. Of course in the rare occasion that it makes them give something resembling an answer, then the argument's over and we can proceed along with whatever's happening. Also I would like a miniature megaphone so I can overwhelm their tirade without too much effort on my part.
In any case CNY didn't end so well for me; but then (if you've seen the post below) it promises to be the general trend of my life, so ah well.
...and it's now three minutes to class, so that entire bunch up there was typed in more or less exactly 30 minutes. Yay me!
Ready, set, going.
So the last entry was, hmmm, January 18. Chinese New Year, I think, fell a few days after that--actually the Monday after the last post, but the Gobbler and I decided that the weekend really begins the moment class ends on Friday so that's when we left--I was the limiting factor for that trip since my classes end later than his. Also I was a little later than expected since I misread my schedule and thought I should end one hour later than I really did--which then led to me prowling around the school for an hour waiting for classes to start. It was all rather annoying.
The travelling itself was nothing special apart from that we had to do it and it was inconvenient; fortunately I brought along the mp3 player and so amused myself during the one-hour-odd delays while waiting for buses, getting in line, going through places, etc. In fact I credit that little player and my headphones as the main reason for me not going quite mad with frustrated impatience during the whole affair: I like going places, but I don't like travelling. It's probably also the reason why I have lots and lots of photos of places I go, and the travelling sections (the folder is called Between Places) are sparse. Then again, it really isn't all that interesting to keep taking photographs of ourselves with assorted bags in assorted stations, buses, etc--even if the whole world is our backdrop.
Chinese New Year, this time 'round, was a rather muted thing; it's the first celebration since my uncle died and I think they're still getting used to the idea of celebration with one deceased member of the family; also, this being such, there were certain rituals and things to go through--presumably rituals to placate his spirit so they could celebrate without him getting jealous or something. I've no idea; I didn't ask and anyway nobody in my immediate family has any sort of knowledge pertaining to those matters. (The extended family might know, but be offended or something.) All the same there was lots of lovely food and we had the usual fireworks competition between the house's two nearest neighbours, who both had very flashy loads of fireworks even though (I think) they're not Chinese. It was very pretty; even if it was raining, those sparkly things popping in the air were quite nice to see. I didn't take any photographs of those though.
We spent most of the daytime going about, visiting old friends and relatives that we usually only see during this period. We also visited a church that we only go to once a year, in that area, and it's not changed--which, in my opinion, is deeply unfortunate because that church has... a few TVs all hooked up to a mixer and a video player or something, and those little devices run the service. The stage has enough space for a small band--drums and guitar, at least, or a synthesiser if they don't want a real piano--but some bright spark chose to make the entire thing more or less karaoke. Seriously. And the sermon, which was worse, because it more or less consisted of the preacher/pastor (I'm not sure what exactly he was) saying a sentence before 5 minutes of a video would play that was supposed to illustrate his point but distracted me with historical inaccuracies. (It must have been a very low-budget video.) Not the most illuminating sort of place, and quite frankly I wouldn't go if my parents didn't think it was something worth going to.
Other than that, we ate, talked, slept, woke--I should put in here that my father is still an early bird and I am not, and he likes to wake up and sing loud songs to the world at large. Unfortunately this usually wakes me up, and then I'm grumpy because the song goes on and on and on. I think, if I ever get a house of my own, I'm soundproofing my room for those special times when the parents come to visit. And I'm also getting a deadlock bolt for it. But the soundproofing comes first.--and went out on trips to people that I hardly know by sight, let alone name.
Two days after Chinese New Year (on a Tuesday--the CNY was on a Monday), we took the car and drove down to Spore to deliver the Gobbler and myself unto our various institutes of education. Unfortunately a great deal of people had the same idea, which really isn't all that surprising; CNY is a 14-day-long celebration in China, so naturally Spore (which is at least 90% Chinese) shrank it down to 2 days, which leads to people only returning after holidays at the very very last minute possible. We spent about 4 or 5 hours in that jam of cars, taking photos of the sun that went from high overhead to below-the-horizon in that duration and laughing at the odder bumper stickers and categorising cars according to what the occupants were eating (the ice-cream car, the Famous Amos car, the Nothing car...).
We arrived and went to the hotel, and the next day in the early morning, the Gobbler and I left the hotel for our schools. I was planning to have left the night before really, but couldn't since I hadn't had dinner and the hour meant that I would get either food or public transport--it was no contest, and so I stayed for supper with the family and went back to school the next day.
After classes the family decided to drive over to the University to meet me, upon which things went bad: because of the family's ability to get lost, I told them to tell me where they were upon arriving and I'd go to find them. They decided instead that I should tell them where I was and they'd find me, because they hate waiting, and so what happened (we couldn't call because of the insane roaming charges) was an entertaining series of SMSes saying "where r u? v r in X", "m on d way 2 Y", "m @ Z" and so on until our travel paths finally coincided and then we started heaping blame on each other for not staying in one fixed known location. Now the thing about my family arguments is that my father has an explosive sort of anger, and mine is somewhat less so; so when this sort of thing happens, he starts talking and talking and I simply wait for him to finish. Unfortunately this then proceeds to him yelling about how I should respond to his complaints of my behaviour and if I didn't like what he was saying then somebody had better take some unsavoury action.
I've decided that in future, when up against angry people who're saying unreasonable things or things that I cannot politely disagree with, I will simply ask them what sort of response they think they'd like. It's likely as not to make them blow up more, but then I can take that as their answer and the next time it happens I can blow up right back at them with no guilt. Of course in the rare occasion that it makes them give something resembling an answer, then the argument's over and we can proceed along with whatever's happening. Also I would like a miniature megaphone so I can overwhelm their tirade without too much effort on my part.
In any case CNY didn't end so well for me; but then (if you've seen the post below) it promises to be the general trend of my life, so ah well.
...and it's now three minutes to class, so that entire bunch up there was typed in more or less exactly 30 minutes. Yay me!
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