College life/ most boring entry ever

extraverynude (8:58:52 PM): im so bored right now im drinking a red bull

Carrie8820 (8:59:29 PM): im so bored right now im watching the wedding singer
extraverynude (9:00:16 PM): im so bored right now im doing fucking homework at 9 on a saturday
Carrie8820 (9:00:36 PM): im so bored right now i just ate an omelet
extraverynude (9:02:43 PM): I'm so bored right now I just ate like 15 cookies, but then I felt fat so now I'm lunging back and forth across my room
Carrie8820 (9:05:30 PM): im so bored right now i'm watching some heavy metal documentary on vh1 while eating my omelet
extraverynude (9:06:10 PM): i'm so bored right now im making a mix cd for tim
Carrie8820 (9:06:31 PM): i'm so bored right now im listening to coldplay
extraverynude (9:07:54 PM): i'm so bored right now im having a competition over my boredom

nolan fox on the Shanghai entry

i failed to mention that nolan still doesn't believe those were whores...

nolan: I'd like you to register my protestations that those were, in my opinions, not engaged in prostitution

me: they were you idiot

nolan: were not and im no idiot

me: who else would ask you to go get "coffee" with them after you randomly approach them and insist on knowing what kind of work they do

nolan: one was a pharmacist and one worked at kinkos

being that the hooker really said that she makes photocopies of things, and nolan took that as working at kinkos, and that kinkos doesnt exist in China, I win.

buying milk

Tonight, my aunt had me perform the simple task of going over to the local grocery store to buy a gallon of milk.

The walk to the grocery store requires entering a shopping mall wherein exists many lovely and trendy Hong Kong shops, like Sasa a store/black hole with an awesome array of pretty cosmetics and beauty care products.

However, those of you who have ever been shopping with me know that I am probably one of the worst compulsive spenders alive.

Passing this store was very tempting, being a compulsive shopper and all, but I maintained strength as I struggled to walk pass without entering. "You're only here to buy milk. You're only here to buy milk." Unfortunately, I had yet to walk back in order to return home.

That's why the real title of this entry should be...

Excuses to tell my mother when she asks why I spent my entire week's allowance on 80 dollar facewash.

"Skin Care equals health equals very important?"

"The workers robbed me and replaced my money with really pretty facewash."

"Pretty face wash makes me happy and happiness is the key to life?"

ahhh... lame. that's all i've got.

my other option is to not tell her, not buy any more clothing this week, stay at home (as transportation in hk costs money), and starve myself for the rest of the week (ahhh its only monday!).

however... not buying clothes is hard...

any suggestions?

nightlife in shanghai

one thing that i definitly failed to learn before going to shanghai was the predominant amount of asian prostitutes located in the city.

a beautiful night walking around the famous People's Square cannot happen without seeing loads of ugly toothless asian women chasing the foreign white men. after having my cousin bring this phenomena to my attention and realizing i had a white person handy (thanks nolan fox), i had to see if these really were prostitutes. most travelers usually head thousands of miles to the famous People's Square at night to view the beautiful architecture, dazzling lights, and wonderful shopping. i head halfway across the globe to this area to make Nolan Fox stand on the corner of the street and watch the many toothless whores approach him. or who i thought would approach him. much to the contrary, Nolan Fox (being that he is nolan fox) disobeyed orders and decided to approach the hookers himself. however, the night still turned out very eventful as nolan successfully gained three offers: two for "coffee" and one woman asking him if he wanted "cheap and pretty girl for tonight."

but... making fun of shanghai prostitutes does have its price(no pun intended) and I soon found myself on the other side of the barnyard (ha pun intended)...

after many insistent (and almost annoying) phone calls from some sexy european man and his friend I had met the night before, me and nolan finally decided to meet up with them at some trendy expat club full of white people. after meeting up, the night was spent with these white european people club hopping, going to mcdonalds, riding lots of taxis, and going to more white clubs. during this time, i somehow failed to realize that although i may be from america and speak fluent english, i still have squinty eyes and look chinese. token asian women + 3 very caucasian men = i had perfectly fit the description of Shanghai whore. my very hazy memories of the night included some Asian man uttering to me in chinese that foreigners are stealing all the chinese girls because they have money and that he has money and that i should go home with him. other memories included sisterly "good work picking up the foreign guy" winks and head nods from my fellow asian prostitutes. the thought of me looking like an asian whore must've somehow came across my mind during the night as bits and pieces of my memory take me back to a conversation i had with sexy european man's friend:

my drunken self "haaha haha ha ha i must ha ha look like an shanghai prostitute ha ha hanging out with you guys ha hah aha ha"
friend "i'm not gonna lie, but im pretty sure everyone we pass thinks that you are."

despite the conclusive disclosure from the friend, me and the copious amount of alcohol i was fed throughout the night failed to acknowledge this thought any further.

lucky for me, the inevitable fact was finally shoved in my face the next morning when taking a cab back to my hotel. here's a tip: don't talk to shanghai people when you are hungover and don't know how to speak mandarin. trying to sober up i told the taxi driver to take me back to my hotel:

taxi driver "hmm... but the hotel you are staying at is much nicer than this one that you are leaving from"

unable to ask him what in the hell he was implying, i simply nodded and said yes.

taxi driver "were you visiting a friend?"

me trying to speak chinese"yes ... friend... from amsterdam... european man."

taxi driver "oh i see a white man..[long pause]... so you're staying at the Mayfair Hotel? that's a very nice hotel."

me "thanks... i like very much" (note to self: learn to speak mandarin asap)

driver "so when are you available today, maybe i can come visit you in your room later"

although, yes, that was when i realized that i was an asian prostitute (which is really the whole point of this story), the fact that a taxi driver was making me an offer seemed to bother me a whole lot more. i mean, whats far more worse than being a whore, is being a cheap whore that even shanghai taxi drivers can afford.

i know i kind of lost track of this prolonged blog entry when i changed the focus from the problem of me looking like a prostitute to how cheap whores suck (no pun intended), but alright heres the moral of my story:

nolan fox likes to approach prostitutes in Shanghai.

and

i look like a cheap hooker.

the end.

vacationing while on vacation

Two weeks of solitude, boredom and basically hell in Guangzhou will finally be paid off in T-minus 39 hours where me and my cousin will find ourselves in not only central Shanghai with Nolan Fox (yes very random but still very not-boring) but a beautiful five star hotel with no parents, no guidance, and a very loosely regulated 18 years and older drinking/clubbing age.

Tell me you are not jealous.

[edit: But if you really aren't, don't. (thanks anonymous jerk commenter)]

Day 3 in Guangzhou, China

Things I learned today:

• I am very fat for a Chinese person.
• I suck horribly at volleyball
• My confidence isn't that great when i try to play volleyball in the gym of one of the best sports schools in China where the girls there are 20 inches taller than me, 50 times better than me, and years younger than me.
• Never eat a huge bowl of rice before you practice unless you want to end up throwing up outside in the bushes.
• I suck at volleyball because I'm fat (i prefer phat)
• Chinese gyms don't have air conditioning and believe in making you sweat away your life when it's 100 degrees outside.
• Middle-aged Japanese men are very nice and let you stand in front of line after you get rejected off a bus with no seats left because crazy asian women who were originally behind you in line somehow managed to sneak through you and steal the last seat. (grr)
• when my chain-smoking friend says she is going to quit smoking soon it means that she is going to start smoking ultra lights.
• even though i'll never be good enough to play at a sports college where kids half your age get recruited halfway across the country and make you feel like a loser volleyball player/poser that's okay because the gyms have no air-conditioning and the chinese buildings are ugly and bootleg.

Tomorrow's big plans consist of washing my hair in a bucket so it won't clog the drain and my grandmother will not yell at me for having hair that sheds like a beast.

This boredom is extremely overwhelming.

When you have spent the past three weeks practically devoid of friends, watching hong kong television dramas like it was your religion (even though I can only partly understand them), running for Air Condition whereever it can be found (which is not very much as the Chinese actually believe in conserving energy(wtf is that?)), and reading every single entry of The Company Bitch from the beginning of August 2005 by sneaking online at the Law Office which I "work at" (I'll explain later), blogging becomes your best friend (as well as writing long and grammatically incorrect sentences).

Especially when internet has just been installed in the small, cramped, ultra miniature (the Chinese like it that way) apartment in which I live.

Anyways, as I was walking around waiting for my cousin to finish watching her crazy Hong Kong pop singers on the internet, i decided to have a quick chat with my aunt who was watching something completely of the contrary on TV.

Scene: Some D- American movie no one in America has probably ever heard of that could only find its profit by promoting it internationally to foreign middle aged Chinese women, who have no idea what the content of the movie is about but would rather stare at the funny looking white people and listen to them mutter English.

Our main actor is some Midwestern Heath Ledger look alike in a cowboy hat, tight jeans and a plaid button-up sleeveless shirtdriving his beat up 1992 Chevy around the bend of a dirt mountain to his farmer ranch complete with more rusty pickups and other, but far more older and uglier, cowboys. Heath Ledger look-alikeseems to have a really concerned look on his face as it seems that the ranch is about to be under extreme turmoil and all the ugly farmers will probably die.

Aunt "Ying, is this what America is like? Are there alot of these there?" as she points towards the ugly cowboys.

Me "Umm... Yeah well everyone is white if that what you mean." She couldn't seriously be asking me if I lived in a world of ugly cowboys and tacky leather boots.

Aunt "Well I mean do they all look like that? And does your city look like this too?" Wow my aunt thinks that i raise cattle in Texas because i live in America.

I want to tell her my city is very suburban-like and modern, but again my horrible Chinese, or lack of Chinese leaves me unable to translate these terms to Cantonese. Quickly I panic on how to convince my aunt that America isn't just cow pastures and red barns, but a land of democracy, freedom, and better dressed white people (well sometimes), but suddenly, I stop myself.

"Um yeah i guess you could say that."

14 years of being raised in America doesnt mean im an american!

I am chinese even if it takes 2 and a half months for me to realize.

(this ending was not because i wanted to bash on my american patriot readers, it was just written because i really couldnt think of any way else to end)

Despite the gloominess(or is it gloom? ahh i dont remember english) of my last entry I really have found Hong Kong to be pretty fun.

Despite the opinions of my Chinese homes in the homeland, I have found that being surrounded by people that have the same exact slanty eyes, flat face and dark hair as me to be actually quite more comfortable than the blonde hair fakely tanned hollister bitches of florida.

Something that has really quite amused me is the fact that my name is actually popular in Hong Kong. Note my conversation with my lifelong Asian friend:

me "So wait WHAT other people like actually have my name too?"
lifelong asian friend "yeah... its quite common"
me "Wait. so other people REALLY have my name for real!?!?"
laf "yeah"

she gives me the shut-up-why-the-hell-are-we-talking-about-this look.

I look around at the other asian people walking by, begin to like the fact that there could be a possible Ying walking right past me, and i am undeterred. "so like if you turned my name into like an American name what would be the equivalent? Like would I be like a Caitlin or Ashley, or would I be like a Claire or Sara? OR WAIT FUCK tell me I'm not like an Esther or Fran or anything like that!"

laf "Um I don't think you can really convert your name to English like that"

"Okay fine. Then how would you rate it on a popularity level? Am I like a 70 percent or am I only like a 10 percent?"

My friend continues to stare at me like I am crazy.

But seriously when you have spent the past 17 years of your life having idiot white people question everysingle aspect of your strange asian name, from "Ying Lo? How do you spell that?" to "Y-I-N-G L-O, how do you pronounce that?" you will understand my amazement.

For the past 18 days I have spent my life in a tiny country(?i dont even know what the hell this is) halfway across the world in a place you could call Hong Kong.

Life has been pretty great and I am relieved to have left my past troubles in the states, which I may again add, seem to be halfway across the world.

However going to your place of origin after being reared, fed and raised in steroid injected America also has its issues. Therefore for the past 18 days, which really feels like 18 months, I've received thousands of comments regarding my height, appearance, accent, fat and pretty much every single other superficial factor you can ponder.

Here are some examples:

"You don't look like you are from Hong Kong. Are you from another country?" FYI blog readers I am 100% Chinese. How the fuck do I look like I am from out of town??

"Don't worry its just baby fat." uhhh thanks I feel much more relieved now.

"You look strong." If there's something worse than telling someone she's big is to sugar coat it by telling them they are "strong."

"You are big!" But telling someone that they are big still sucks.

"Its not that you don't look Chinese, it's that you speak Chinese like an American." My first reaction is to casually laugh this comment off while I forcibly remind myself never to reveal the fact that Chinese is my first language, I've spoken it longer than English, and continue to speak the language daily in my household. With some multimillion Chinese poeople in Hong Kong, and only 1 in some 90 odd Asian being white, and the white person usually being some sunburnt British tourist, my second reaction is how the fuck do they know what an American Chinese accent sounds like and much less, an American that can speak Chinese?

"Are you really Chinese? Because you look Korean." How the hell can you tell the difference and what the hell is that supposed to mean?

Note to reader: All these quotes were spoken to me in Chinese. But heres my favorite quote which came from many street vendors, not even acknowledging the fact that I am chinese much less take the time to speak to me in the language.

"You likey? You buy many sherts ony fo' five dollas."

Hmm. If I can't even feel at home in my birthplace, where am I to go now????