The New Apartment and Such

You had me at hello.

  It's been a heck of a week and things have been just as busy as always. I moved into my new apartment after a few days of searching and my roommates and I are pretty happy with the place but it's going to take some work to get it to a point where we will be satisfied with it. Apparently the Chinese don't care about places they don't own because the family that moved out left behind a mess! It was pretty disgusting actually compared to when we saw it and signed the contract but I'll get into that later.

  I had a good time with my Chinese friends this week and we drove some go karts which were a blast! I also had my first experience as a street musician (even though I had to pay for the privilege), I jammed out with a new found friend, my Chinese mother told me I was fat, I went to see some parts of old Shanghai to scope out some places to buy some nice decorations for the new place, threw a ridiculous house-warming party and checked out some cool temples around town.

  Let's get into it but before we do, this is the longest I've ever been out of the country and the longest I've been away from my family. So I feel a little guilty asking this of you but if you have a spare second if you could just post some kind words on my blog, my facebook, my e-mail account, skype, wherever. I miss all of you guys so much and could use a little pick-me-up from my beloved friends and family. I tried remedying my homesickness by going to the local grocery store and buying some Coca Cola and Lays potato chips, but the only flavor they had was “Italian red meat flavor” so it just wasn't quite the same...

  I do have to say however that the other day I was reminded of Gramps, my grandfather on my dad's side. I was walking around in my new neighborhood scoping out restaurants and shops when I saw an older gentleman walking in front of me with a fish in a bag. The fish appeared to have already been cut up a bit (he had bought it at a market) but it was thrashing around wildly. The gentleman then walked up to the next tree he passed along the side of the road and proceeded to smash the fish's head against a tree and it promptly stopped wriggling about. I almost laughed out loud but I restrained myself. It was funny because there have been more than several occasions I can remember where I've seen Gramps do that when we caught fish in Grand Junction. Damn I miss fishing.

  I jammed out with a new guy this week at a pretty cool underground practice space near where I live. The guy's name is Bobby and he's a drummer so we rocked out for almost 2 hours telling stories along the way. It was a good time (Although it was no Seth 11 as I previously mentioned to my drummer from my Ft. Collins band days) we had a lot in common and he seemed like good people. We most likely won't be doing anything together musically in the future but I can definitely see a friendship coming of it.

  Well when we moved into our house like I mentioned before, it was rather gross. The people who moved out left all of their trash (including a used diaper in my room) and left so much stuff it was unreal. My roommate and a hired maid spent hours cleaning up to finally get the place looking pretty decent. It looks good now although we still need to put some work into it which will come slowly but surely. I tried taking some pictures of the views we have but the night shots don't look very good so I'll try to take some new ones during the day.

  We're on the 16^th floor of our building but in the picture above, besides the horrible glare, you might also notice there are a few numbers missing. Can you see which ones are missing? I'll give you 5 seconds, 5...4...3...2...1...0 the answer is 4, 13 and 14. I'm sure some of you can already guess why there's no floor 13, it's an unlucky Western number and the apartment complex I'm living in is definitely a little bit pricey in comparison to other places so it's catered a little bit more towards foreigners to suit their tastes. But what about the numbers 4 and 14? Why is that not there? Well the answer is simple to those of you who speak Chinese but considering most of you don't, allow me to explain. The number 4 in China is “si” (pronounced suh). The word for death is also “si” but with a different tone. So the Chinese therefore associate the number 4 with death hence being unlucky which then leads to the absence of the number 4 and 14 from the apartment complex. What a gip! So apparently we're only on the 13^th floor.... oh well, our patio is really cool and people loved it when we threw our house-warming party.

  We had about 30 people over (most of which I didn't know until that night when I met them) and just went crazy. We had guests from several different places of the world including Poland, Korea, Ireland, USA, the Netherlands, the UK and China. It was a great party and when all the beer was gone, we went to a club and paid 100RMB (15USD) for 5 hours of open bar and went home happy. To all of the people I've drank with before who are reading this, the Irish (from Ireland Irish) are crazy! They started drinking before they came to the party, then were the first ones at the party, then went to the club then came home and bought more beer and then slept a little, woke up and started doing it again. Holy wow they can drink. I'm going to take a break from drinking for the next few weeks or so because that's where most of my free time seems to be going and I need to rest more. (I can hear my mom cheering)

  I saw a couple of cool temples the other day while touring a little bit of what's considered “Old Shanghai.” It's kind of cool to contrast Old Shanghai with the new as you can see in the picture. That's the World Financial Center in the background which is the second tallest building in Asia. It's really cool to go up to the observation deck and look down at the city and on a clear day, it's quite majestic really. In the Old Shanghai area they also have a lot of good shopping so I think I'm going to go back on my weekend and buy some new decorations for the house as well as a Chinese chess board so I can start going to parks and playing with the locals. That'll be fun to see the looks on their faces when I sit down and bust out my board asking someone to play against me. I really want to learn how the Shanghai locals play Mahjong as well so that I can sit down with them and throw some money on the table and do a little bit of gambling! That'll be fun :)

  I've recently made a new friend at our local copying and printing center. It's actually a little shop that's about eight feet by eight feet that has a couple of computers and a printer/scanner/copier. We do a lot of printing with them and they know me by name now which is great. On top of that, the guy who owns the shop and his wife speak quite a good deal of English. They have a very young daughter as well and the owner and his wife want her to learn English. So in turn, we've reached a bit of an agreement. I go in there after work sometimes for an hour (if I work the earlier shift) and they help teach me Chinese as I help teach them English. I also speak English with their little girl who calls me “Shu shu Tony” which means Uncle Tony. They want me to give her an English name so I think I'm going to name her after my cousin Kelli down in Texas because she is obsessed with little Chinese babies. To sweeten the deal, Xu Ji Ning (shoo jee neeng, the owner of the shop) bought me a beer while we were practicing and it was really cool. It's like my dad says, “there are good people everywhere in the world.” He couldn't be more right and the friends I've made would be just like my really good friends back home if they had been born in the USA instead of China.

  I went to a formal tea ceremony the other day with a co-worker and it was quite a good time actually. I really enjoy drinking tea and it was really cool to see how the different teas were prepared right before us. All of them were really tasty and each one had it's own purpose (i.e. it's healthy for your skin or to help lose weight, they even had one to help your kidney and livers... I picked that one right off the bat). We had our fair share of tea and I wanted to buy some when we were done but it would just go to waste for right now since I lack a proper teapot and tea cups. As you can see in the picture, they had a LOT of teas which was really cool and I strongly recommend this to anyone who has the chance whether you can find it in the US or if you come visit me in China ;)

  Zoom zoom!!! It's like “Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” up in here! My Chinese friends got a group discount to ride some go karts on a track that is setup for drifting. It was really fun but actually pretty hard to control the go karts and I crashed a few times no doubt. I didn't do the worst out of my group though so I was pleased and regardless of the crashing, it was a blast. The picture is from the upstairs area where they had really nice couches and TV setups which was cool too because in between races, we could go relax upstairs. I'm so glad my Chinese friends take advantage of things like this because I would never have this opportunity on my own to find these deals. We're going to go see Kung Fu Panda 2 on Wednesday night which will be cool and again, the tickets are at a great discount price because of a group discount! It's good to know people.

  Alrighty then, I saved the best story (in my opinion) for last. It involves me being a street musician and it was quite fun to play a song or two for some Chinese locals. So the night started out a few weeks ago with my Chinese friends and I trying to see Kung Fu Panda 2 but when we got to the theater, it was already sold out. Bummer. What to do? Well the obvious choice was to buy a few beers and some peanuts and go sit around in public as we drank and had fun. Turns out we ended up in a nice little public square and it had a guy playing guitar and singing through a portable speaker. Well the guy wasn't half bad but after listening to him for 10 minutes, we realized he was only playing 2 songs. It's a smart move on his part because most people only linger for a couple minutes at the longest. Generally, people would just walk by and maybe drop a few RMB into his guitar case then keep moving on. Very few people actually stopped to listen to him playing. Well after a beer or two my Chinese friends told me I should go play a song. I told them I would love to, but they had to do the talking. We then started scheming...

  So the plan we formulated was this: my friends would give him 20RMB if he would let me and one of my Chinese friends play a song. Since he had probably only made 30-40RMB that night, he promptly agreed and we gave him the money. As soon as I started speaking Chinese into the mic an immediate crowd started gathering. “Foreigner, foreigner” I heard them say in Chinese as they all whipped out their cell phones to start taking pictures and videos of me. As I introduced myself and told them a bit about the song I was going to play (in Chinese of course) they just stared at me with puzzling looks. Well, I started rocking out “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd and my friends started cheering me on. Before I knew it, I had 30 random Chinese people in front of me either cheering me on or thinking they were high on opium. As I finished the song, my friends led the applause and most of the locals followed suit. Several people yelled out “Zai lai yi ge” (zigh lie e guh) “Play another one!” I looked at the musician whose equipment I was using and he gave me the nod. About 3 minutes later as I finished “The Wind Cries Mary” by Jimi Hendrix they cheered me on again and I thanked them and told them to give the musician lots of money as my friend stepped up to the plate. He rocked out a Chinese song as I cheered him along the whole entire way. It was fun to see him play and the best part about it was that the crowd stayed for the entire song so he got the audience as well which he told me was a really cool experience.

  After he finished, a really cute girl ran up and grabbed the guitar from him thinking it was some kind of open mic session and she started playing before the musician could say anything. I think he was okay with it though, we had paid him enough to cover one more song. The girl went on to play a really nice sounding song and singing along to it. I stayed there right front and center while she played and when she was done, as I was getting ready to go talk to her, I was dismayed to see her run to her boyfriend... Lame! After we finished playing we went back to sitting down and enjoying our beers and I got the occasional thumbs up from a local as they walked by which was cool. They love using their advanced English to say phrases like “very good”. Okay, so it's not advanced, but it's cool when they speak English to me. I felt kind of bad for the musician though because when he went back to singing and playing the whole crowd dispersed. He played for another 5 minutes or so then took off. I think we definitely still helped him out in the long run though. I can't wait to get out and play on my own in the very near future. Hopefully I'll meet some cool people and have some more great experiences to blog about. Who knows, maybe my street musicianship will land me a Chinese girlfriend haha. It remains to be seen.

  So in closing for this week I would just like to say that writing my blog has really helped me out with dealing with the fact that you are all so far away. I really can't wait until the first of my friends/family come visit me because we're going to have a blast and I want to show you all the good times I've had. I encourage you to drop me a line at munkyguitarist@gmail.com and tell me what's been new with YOU. I feel like I do all the talking and if this relationship is going to work, we're going to need communication :) Here's the link to my photo album for this week: http://s875.photobucket.com/albums/ab316/munkyguitarist/The%20new%20apartment%20and%20such/

Uhhhhhhhhhh ya that's it, soooooooooooo bye bye

Tony G.