1-29-06

Happy Dog year! Today we can start celebrating the year of the Dog in China.

This year, firecrackers were allowed inside Beijing, something new to me since I've only spent one Chinese New Year here in China. Last year five of us went to a small village outside Beijing where we spent the night with a Chinese family eating the famous 'jiaozi's' (or dumplings in english) as the tradition marks. This year we limited ourselves to a delicious pasta made by our friend Jeronimo, accompanied by two baguettes and some Philadelphia cream cheese (he thought it was butter at the time of purchase).

What happens here during New Year's? Contrary to what many might think, we do not get to witness the spectacular shows we usually see in Jackie Chan's movies where colored parades filled with dragons and music streaming down the streets of the city crying for attention. This kind of situation only happens in big chinatowns around the world such as New York's, San Francisco's, and I've hear it also happens in Hong Kong. In mainland China however, it is a time for chinese to 1. Travel back home and eat with their family 2. Spend all they savings on firecrackers and 3. Steal as much as they can in order to accumulate the necessary money to accomplish # 1 and 2. Okay, I'm not saying that ALL chinese steal, that would just be stupid of me, but there is an increase in stolen items during the week right before the Spring Festival starts.

As a result: Jeronimo's and Andres H's motorcycles were stolen. One right by the main entrance of my building, the other one was pulled straight out of the garage which has 24/7 surveillance. Makes you wonder. But, this is how things work. I've had 7 bicycles stolen from me (obviously not nearly as painful as having one motorcycle being stolen) but I can somehow share their feelings.

The exploding powder started about three days ago in small amounts and has been increasing with every hour that goes by. Last night it reached its climax needless to say. By the time the clock was striking midnight, this was like World War 2 (or the last Jack Bauer rescue mission at the end of a season in 24). Fireworks were off everywhere in the sky. Today is Sunday, New Year's, and I can still hear firecrackers.

It is not surprising to spot little 6 year olds setting these things on fire, and trust me, most of these firecrackers are made of a pretty dense concentration of powder. Every now and then a 'rocket' doesn't go off and you can see the flame trying to ignite but it simply doesn't work. Then you cover your eyes and head to shelter yourself from body parts when the 6 year old walks up to the 'rocket' and starts peeking into the hole!! What is wrong with them!?!? They are suicidal or just don't believe in 3rd degree burns, let alone, decapitation.

Last night we went to a bar/club downtown in Nu Ren Jie (The Women Street). There we danced the night away and enjoyed the firework spectacle from the place's bay window projected on a frozen lake. 'This is awesome' - I thought. Again, surrounded by every single possible nationality on earth, I think it's a real privilege to be here and enjoy these moments with such different people.

I wish I had taken my camera to show you some pictures but that did not happen. Well happy new year then!

1-24-06

Umm, spel-chek pleeze? We can all express our gratitude to Bill Gates for inventing a tool such as MS Word allowing us to type away without having to worry about spelling and even some grammatical errors. We can always count on those squiggly red lines that appear underneath our mistakes which will ultimately make a difference at the time of turning in a paper, project, or whatever it is we are writing.

Many Chinese have yet to discover this great gift that god has bestowed upon us and make no use of Microsoft Word spell-check (or any other word processor for that matter). Well here's something really interesting. Andres, my roommate and co-worker, took a trip less than a month ago and traveled down to the south of China with his girlfriend. During this trip, he decided to take a picture at all the misspelled words, incoherent, or simply humorous phrases on the signs he spotted during his journey. Click here and take a look at the ones he got.

Back home, again? When people ask me where my home is and I respond 'Beijing', I tend to get reactions such as - no seriously, like 'home home'- For the past two years, Beijing has indeed created in me the 'home sweet home' feeling one gets when returning home after a trip.

After visiting several countries during the past 30 days, including my dearest Colombia where I have my blood-relatives, I cannot deny the fact that I anxiously await with great anticipation my return to Beijing. It's not only my closet with all my clothes (not having to live out of a suitcase and wear a pair of jeans 6 days in a row), or my bed with my own two pillows. It's not that.

It's that shampoo bottle I bought still sitting in my bathroom which later on turned out to be body wash. It's the laundry detergent that not only cleans off all the dirt from our clothes but all the colors as well (tough way to learn how to say 'bleach' in chinese). It's the old woman spitting in the elevator at 8am as I am heading down to the tiny convenience store where the clerk is sleeping in between the watermelons and the bottled drinks impeding me from being able to reach across for an orange juice.

It's the masses of people walking everywhere at any given time of the day. It's going to McDonalds with my friends treating ourselves to a Big Mac as a 'fancy meal' after an entire week of eating fried chicken, pork and broccoli. It's walking out of my building complex and saying high to all the pirate cab-drivers standing outside the north gate. It's being greeted with a big hug by a cab driver whose trust I've earned over the past two years. It's watching all the people carefully slip underneath the closed railroad gates as the train approaches.

It's the guy behind BLCU's west gate selling small chocolate fish where we all go after eating at Sihaile despite the brain-penetrating Arctic temperatures during the winter days. It's the impossible traffic in Wudaokou (my neighborhood) at all times of day. It's the people cutting you off whether it's driving on a road, street, walking down the sidewalk, or standing in line at the bank. It's the obscure little room we go to where an old woman stores thousands and thousands of dollars and RMB and gives us the best exchange rate.

It's hating china and all chinese people with all my guts when my bicycle gets stolen (I've had 7) and then forgetting all about it a week later. It's looking around myself and being surrounded by a world that two years ago was as strange as Mars but has now become my life. It's being able not only to communicate but also to laugh and cry with the local chinese people in their own language.

All these little things and more are the ones that make home a home in any of us. It's not just the place you were physically born at, nor the place your mom, dad and siblings live. It's simply the place you're at in any given time that makes you feel like you have to go back there.

I am sitting against a wall at the JFK airport in New York right now, waiting for my delayed flight to start boarding. All around me in the waiting room are already about one-hundred chinese which I can actually understand and relate to. That's what made me think of this.

1-16-06

Secrets. Here's something really interesting I saw at a bookstore two days ago. It started as a website and is now a book: Post Secret. The idea is that you send these people a post-card made by yourself, and on it, you will write a secret of yours. You will be surprised to read them. While some can be cute and funny, others turn out to be quite malevolent. Check them out, maybe send one of your own. I highly recommend you take a look at the book if you see it in a bookstore. Here are a few examples that I liked: