At last, the long-awaited update that's been in the works for weeks!
Not really. This is just a short post to keep our eager readers satisfied even though we've been inactive for so long.
Last night, we had a gathering with some of our classmates. First, we ate at the Korean restaurant located on the first floor of the building of our apartment, the one we pass every day and sigh with delight at the pleasant fragrances it exudes. With a little help with ordering from our Korean classmates, it lived up to its expectations, every dish being delicious. Afterward, all seven of us (a few of our classmates were absent) went up to our apartment to watch a movie and munch on all kinds of snacks that we brought with us. The movie was a typical Hong Kong romantic comedy - a little predictable but still fun, and good Chinese practice for us all.
The other big news here is that our dear friend and nearby coffee shop owner Jinpeng is moving on Wednesday. He's heading to Yunnan province (which is southwest China, down near Vietnam) to train for 11 months with an organization that teaches the ropes to people looking to be involved with NGOs and non-profit organizations. Also, he's taking our other Chinese friend and chef extraordinaire Kevin and Swedish wanderer Bjorn with him. Basically, half of our friends here are leaving. We're glad for them and wish them luck, but all the while wishing they'd stay here with us for a little longer.
The other strange thing about Jinpeng & Co's move is how quickly it happened. A couple weeks ago, they were accepted into the program, and they decided that if they could sell the coffee shop, they'd head out. Well, they sold the place two days ago, at which point it immediately changed hands, and now they instead hold train tickets for the 40-hour ride to Yunnan. I suppose that's how things work here. We had to basically accept our apartment 5 minutes after we saw it or it would be rented to somebody else. In China, one must act quickly or be left in the dust. Well, it's good training for life, I hear.
Thus, you all can no longer send us mail via Jinpeng's coffee shop, and so here's a new address:
Tom/Lisa (Ma Tai Ming/Zu Li Sha, if you want to use our Chinese names)
c/o International Student Center
Harbin Institute of Technology
11 Si Ling Jie
Nan'gang District
Harbin, China 110004
We still encourage you to send us mail. It's cold and lonely here (actually, our apartment's pretty nicely heated, and we still do have a few friends), and we appreciate whatever you send us from back home.
The coming two weeks are the midway point in the semester and that means one thing: MIDTERMS! Hooray! So we must get back to the studying of hundreds of Chinese characters. I hope all is well back home. Send us emails, mails, packages, boxes, bags, toys, coffee, etc. We'll try to return the favor.
Editor's (which means Lisa's) note: Best not to send us packages at that address quite yet. We haven't made sure that the Student Center won't mind the deluge of mail. But we will check this week and let you know.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Some Observations
Here's the post I wrote on the 14th. I'm able to post it because we found (with Bjorn's help, but more about him in a minute) a cafe with Wifi! And not just a cafe, but just about the cutest cafe I've ever seen. The latte they brought me was almost too pretty to drink. But, with no further ado:
Back to school for us study bugs, which explains the recent lack of posts. Not only have we been busy with school, but nothing interesting has happened lately. I'll see if I can scavenge up a few tidbits. Here are three observations:
1. A recent phenomenon: everybody is buying ridiculous amounts of Chinese cabbage (bai cai - you may know it as bok choy) and Chinese onion (looks like a green onion, but about ten times bigger) - and also potatoes and other root vegetables, though it seems to a lesser extent. Stranger still is that they line them up in neat rows and columns and leave them to dry? air out? sun? in the cool autumn air. The hall of our apartment was stacked with cabbages, and people tie the onions by their green stalks and hang them on strings out their windows.
We asked our teacher about this and she told us that because vegetables are so expensive in the winter, people buy and stockpile vegetables. In case you were wondering, you apparently can leave a cabbage on your patio for months at a time and find it nearly as fresh as the day you bought it. Crazy, I know. The other thing they do with these cabbages is make sour cabbage. Each family has a large wooden cask outside of their door, and I've spied a neighbor filling hers up with whole cabbages and water, so my powers of assumption tell me that the hallway will be very odorous this winter as the cabbage sours.
2. Even more interesting - our friend Kyla was going through all of my pictures from home and school. We ran across a picture of my stomach after the worst sunburn of my life - i was covered in blisters (hence why I took the picture). But she couldn't figure out what was wrong; she thought I was covered in pimples. I said, no, it's a bad sunburn. Sunburn? You know, when you're out in the sun for too long... But then I realized that Chinese people, especially women, go to such great lengths to stay pale - we're talking SPF 100, parasols, gloves, UV shades, skin bleaching cream, the works - that Kyla had no idea what a sunburn actually was. Incredible.
3. In the same vein, we ran across the word "kou yin" in our text. Literally translated, it means "mouth sound" - accent. But she was quick to tell us that it only meant a local accent. Taking the US for example, you could have a Southern "kou yin," a Boston "kou yin," a Michigan "kou yin" - but you couldn't have a Spanish "kou yin" or a Chinese "kou yin." So we asked her how we could say "I speak Chinese with an American accent." She thought, puzzled, for at least a full minute before answering, "Well, foreigners really never learned to speak Chinese before, so we don't have a way to say that." Crazy!
The best part was that, after giving us many complicated and specific ways of explaining that we were foreigners from our respective countries studying Chinese and that that's the reason why our pronunciation isn't standard (as if it isn't obvious by looking at us), she ended the whole discussion by saying, "Oh well. You guys just need to start saying that you have an American/Russian/Korean 'kou yin,' and then it will catch on. That's how language works!" She's so cute.
In other, less interesting news, we had another couch surfer come through this week, a Swedish guy named Bjorn. He's actually settling down here for a little while to study Chinese (on his own, never having studied it before - don't ask me how), and we invited him to move in with us, but he decided to rent a room in a guest house instead. I think he's crazy, but to each his own I suppose... Anyway, he was quite nice, and it will be good to have another "CSer" around town.
The heat still hasn't come on in our apartment. In an attempt to control pollution and ration fuel, the government decides who gets heat and when they get it. According to Jinpeng, it should turn on by the 20th. Our patio gets toasty warm during the day and heats our apartment - and we're on the 7th floor, which helps - but it has been getting cooler and cooler at night, so I'm anxious for the radiator next to my bed to start keeping me warm.
Anyway, that's the news for now. Your turn to return the favor and update us on life at home!
Back to school for us study bugs, which explains the recent lack of posts. Not only have we been busy with school, but nothing interesting has happened lately. I'll see if I can scavenge up a few tidbits. Here are three observations:
1. A recent phenomenon: everybody is buying ridiculous amounts of Chinese cabbage (bai cai - you may know it as bok choy) and Chinese onion (looks like a green onion, but about ten times bigger) - and also potatoes and other root vegetables, though it seems to a lesser extent. Stranger still is that they line them up in neat rows and columns and leave them to dry? air out? sun? in the cool autumn air. The hall of our apartment was stacked with cabbages, and people tie the onions by their green stalks and hang them on strings out their windows.
We asked our teacher about this and she told us that because vegetables are so expensive in the winter, people buy and stockpile vegetables. In case you were wondering, you apparently can leave a cabbage on your patio for months at a time and find it nearly as fresh as the day you bought it. Crazy, I know. The other thing they do with these cabbages is make sour cabbage. Each family has a large wooden cask outside of their door, and I've spied a neighbor filling hers up with whole cabbages and water, so my powers of assumption tell me that the hallway will be very odorous this winter as the cabbage sours.
2. Even more interesting - our friend Kyla was going through all of my pictures from home and school. We ran across a picture of my stomach after the worst sunburn of my life - i was covered in blisters (hence why I took the picture). But she couldn't figure out what was wrong; she thought I was covered in pimples. I said, no, it's a bad sunburn. Sunburn? You know, when you're out in the sun for too long... But then I realized that Chinese people, especially women, go to such great lengths to stay pale - we're talking SPF 100, parasols, gloves, UV shades, skin bleaching cream, the works - that Kyla had no idea what a sunburn actually was. Incredible.
3. In the same vein, we ran across the word "kou yin" in our text. Literally translated, it means "mouth sound" - accent. But she was quick to tell us that it only meant a local accent. Taking the US for example, you could have a Southern "kou yin," a Boston "kou yin," a Michigan "kou yin" - but you couldn't have a Spanish "kou yin" or a Chinese "kou yin." So we asked her how we could say "I speak Chinese with an American accent." She thought, puzzled, for at least a full minute before answering, "Well, foreigners really never learned to speak Chinese before, so we don't have a way to say that." Crazy!
The best part was that, after giving us many complicated and specific ways of explaining that we were foreigners from our respective countries studying Chinese and that that's the reason why our pronunciation isn't standard (as if it isn't obvious by looking at us), she ended the whole discussion by saying, "Oh well. You guys just need to start saying that you have an American/Russian/Korean 'kou yin,' and then it will catch on. That's how language works!" She's so cute.
In other, less interesting news, we had another couch surfer come through this week, a Swedish guy named Bjorn. He's actually settling down here for a little while to study Chinese (on his own, never having studied it before - don't ask me how), and we invited him to move in with us, but he decided to rent a room in a guest house instead. I think he's crazy, but to each his own I suppose... Anyway, he was quite nice, and it will be good to have another "CSer" around town.
The heat still hasn't come on in our apartment. In an attempt to control pollution and ration fuel, the government decides who gets heat and when they get it. According to Jinpeng, it should turn on by the 20th. Our patio gets toasty warm during the day and heats our apartment - and we're on the 7th floor, which helps - but it has been getting cooler and cooler at night, so I'm anxious for the radiator next to my bed to start keeping me warm.
Anyway, that's the news for now. Your turn to return the favor and update us on life at home!
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Argh!
Well. I wrote a nice post a few days ago, and every time we head to the net bar I try to post them, but it appears that a faulty USB port on one of the computers fried my thumb drive and now, it won't work. Grr. So, I'm working on it.
But we miss you! And we hope everybody is doing well at home. We're doing well here.
But we miss you! And we hope everybody is doing well at home. We're doing well here.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Picture Update!
LOOOOONG picture post today, folks. This one gets us through September - expect another with our most recent happenings and an apartment tour! (And we still have that one to post about the Daoist temple - we haven't forgotten.)
Again, if the lettering is too small, you should be able to click on each panel to enlarge it in a new window. Also, if you haven't read Tom's post from yesterday, be sure to do that too! With no further ado:
Again, if the lettering is too small, you should be able to click on each panel to enlarge it in a new window. Also, if you haven't read Tom's post from yesterday, be sure to do that too! With no further ado:
P.S. For all of you who complain that we don't post enough, consider the fact that Tom's post yesterday took us about two hours and this one took over five! But we do it to keep you happy. (On that note, you should let us know that you read them. We're curious to know who's keeping up with the blog.)
Arrestin' A-Restin'
A Blogpost
By
Thomas J. Mask-on-neck
Edited By
Lisa A. Zoomy-yak
Table of Contents:
I. Confucius' 2558th Birthday Bash!
II. National Day (or is it Week?)
III. Book City
IV. Sloth: Our Favorite Deadly Sin
------
Chapter I:
Confucius' 2558th Birthday Bash!
*I promise this is the longest chapter*
Thursday afternoon, amidst the crooning saxophone solo of Kenny G that signifies "class dismissed," our teacher asked us to see her after class, a request that strikes fear into the heart of any schoolchild. As we perspired from the fear that our passports had been revoked or that CCP had finally come to take us away for good, she pulled out a newspaper clipping and explained to us that the next day, at the Harbin Confucian Temple, there was a ceremony for Confucius' birthday, with traditional music, costumes, etc., and that the school would like us to go. Being good Confucians in training, we were unable to say no to our teacher and thus planned to attend. Oh yeah, and we had to meet up at 8 AM on a day when we have afternoon classes.
That night, we cursed our filial piety and tried to hurriedly do all our homework in the few hours remaining before bedtime. We had planned to do this work Friday morning, but with our new plan, all hope was lost and we failed to finish all our homework on time for the first time. It's okay, though, because homework and in-class work and participation together is only worth 10% of our grade (not that the grade even matters).
So Friday morning, we loaded bus with our fellow exchange students, including a handful of Korean girls, a few fellow Americans, a kind Polish gent, a few African guys, a smarmy (and really short, ha ha ha) American guy who's been living in Harbin for 6 years and refuses to speak English, and, of course, faculty and staff. A guy from Portland told us that they asked us on such short notice because they needed more white faces for the pictures in the papers, and we laughed that all but one of the Russians had skipped out on the excursion.
The temple we found was beautifully restored and/or maintained, with newly-painted roofs, a red carpet, streamers, slogan-banners everywhere. Traditionally-robed Chinese people stood, lined in perfect formation like imperial steles, in preparation for the festival. Groups of schoolchildren in jumpsuits and businesspeople (or teachers?) in pantsuits waited at the sidelines with baskets of flowers. It was a beautiful sight to behold on first glance.
Yet, as the festival began and on a closer inspection, all the cracks in the surface became apparent. The people standing by ancient lutes (guqin) never moved the whole time; instead, cheesy synthesizer-lute music was blared through crackling speakers at a deafening volume. The traditionally-robed dancers wore barely-concealed tennis shoes beneath black cloth foot-coverings, and half of these dancers, once relieved of their duty, were finally allowed to put their glasses on. The bringing of baskets to the Confucian altar took more than 30 minutes, and all the while, no one besides the MC was actually paying attention.
So, the ceremony itself was quite boring, but what was more interesting to me was the fact that they still did it, even though the Communist government (in the Mao era) condemned Confucianism as feudalistic and reactionary, even though you'd be hard-pressed to find Chinese youths who can recite from the Analects, even though most people here know more about Bill Gates than about Mozi, even though no one really cared. Something about Confucianism has stuck with the Chinese people, and it seems at least the form, at least going through the motions is important. The toppling of the imperial system in 1911, the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the chaotic half-republic half-warlord era of the 1920s, the Japanese oppression of the 1930s, the civil war of the 1940s, the Communist overturning of life in the 1950s, the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s, the opening and reforms since the 1980s - none of these have been able to completely stamp out the Confucian tradition, thought now it may be burrowed in meaningless ceremonies and in the deep recesses of the Chinese subconscious.
[Editor's note: Yes, boring, and cold and irritating because people were constantly, shamelessly taking our pictures just because we're foreigners and did I mention boring? - EXCEPT for the performance of the cutest little boys and girls who did a little dance on a giant "ink bowl" and then danced with a seven foot long calligraphy "brush" to "paint" the characters for China on a giant poster. AWWW.]
Chapter II:
National Day (or is it Week?)
It seems this time of year has an abundance of celebrations: Moon Festival, Confucius' birthday, and National Day. To us, though, National Day is the only one that matters because it means we get a week off of school (this week). Also, we don't have to eat mooncakes again. National Day is a time when Chinese children carry around bright red-and-yellow flags and shops close early and students satisfy their wanderlust by traveling around. We, however, love Harbin so much that we're just hanging around the city and seeing the sites! We want to go to the siberian tiger park, some shopping areas, the temples, and just explore the city now that we have some free time.
Oh yeah, and we're almost broke. But that has nothing to do with why we're staying here. Absolutely nothing.
Chapter III:
Book City
So, we've been spending our mornings with slowly-cooked (due to our grogginess, not our culinary methods) diner-style breakfasts of hash browns or home fries or fried eggs or french toast or whatever and COFFEE. This is a wonderful little treat that reminds us of the good ol' US of A.
Sunday, we decided to go to the gigantic bookstore on Xue Fu Lu (Study-vicinity-road) that I had heard would have good English-language books. The place is a hub of all kinds of trade, including clothes, food, maps, footwear, school supplies, and more - the kind of hub that develops around any busy area in China. The bookstore consists of five giant floors, and is so large that it's not called a bookstore (shu dian) but a book city (shu cheng). The English-language stuff was on the fifth floor, so we made our climb through swarms of people, hoping for a little bit of paradise.
What we found was quite eclectic. There was a whole section of literary anthologies and books of literary criticism, which I'm guessing is a bunch of textbooks for college students majoring in English - they even had critical books on such difficult postmodern authors as Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo (neither of which I could imagine would be understandable to anyone without a near-native grasp of English). In another section, they had the entire Chicken Soup for the Soul series, plus many dozens more that were clear spin-offs from the original series (you should now be thinking, as we were, why? Regardless of how you feel about the books, weren't there plenty the first time around?), and a bunch of abridged classics. There were also poorly-translated books of Chinese poetry, shelves about Dale Carnegie and Bill Gates, and racks of books on American culture, customs, humor, etc.
After browsing though all of this, we finally found a few things that we really wanted: 1) several books by Lin Yutang, a Chinese author from the early 20th century who wrote in English about Chinese culture, 2) a table of fiction in English, from which we chose Kafka's The Castle, and 3) a series of comic books about traditional Chinese culture, from which we chose a book on Zen stories. It was a successful trip after all.
Chapter IV:Sloth: Our Favorite Deadly Sin
The downside of this trip to the book store is that it has practically immobilized us. We've become glued to our books, only getting up for the bathroom or the kitchen, and immediately re-immersing ourselves in those other worlds contained within softbound covers. Yesterday (Monday), we barely left the apartment all day, and today's not looking much better.
But I think we deserve this. We've been working hard at our Chinese language classes and have barely had time for good, creative, critical thinking. Besides, even God took a rest on his seventh day. I think I'll just consider this a good old-fashioned Sabbath.
------
About the Author
Thomas J. Mask-on-neck is a self-aggrandizing blogger who grew up in Northeast Ohio as a relatively normal child. One day, a bucket of toxic waste fell from the sky and onto Thomas, burning into his spinal column, just beneath his skull, super-powers of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Gradually, the arithmetic wore off, but what remained was the makings of a hopeful literary giant who would conceal the scar on his neck with his famous mask. Currently, he lives in Harbin, China, where he studies Chinese language.
About the Editor
Lisa A. Zoomy-yak is exasperated.
Acknowledgments
I'd like to thank Lisa for experiencing all of this with me and always being there. I'd also like to thank our wonderful families for their love and support, as well as you, the readers, who make this possible.
Critical Acclaim for Arrestin' A-Restin'
"The blogpost burst like a shell over the Western world." -The New York Times Blog Review
"It cured my cod!" -Billy Graham
"You're so weird!" -Zoomy-yak
"He's got the magic stick" -50 Cent
********************************
FACT-HAPPENING POST-SCRIPT
********************************
We're working on a long, photographic (dare I say, cinematic?) update in comic-book style. We will publish it in parts . . . whenever we feel like it! Aww, snap!
By
Thomas J. Mask-on-neck
Edited By
Lisa A. Zoomy-yak
Table of Contents:
I. Confucius' 2558th Birthday Bash!
II. National Day (or is it Week?)
III. Book City
IV. Sloth: Our Favorite Deadly Sin
------
Chapter I:
Confucius' 2558th Birthday Bash!
*I promise this is the longest chapter*
Thursday afternoon, amidst the crooning saxophone solo of Kenny G that signifies "class dismissed," our teacher asked us to see her after class, a request that strikes fear into the heart of any schoolchild. As we perspired from the fear that our passports had been revoked or that CCP had finally come to take us away for good, she pulled out a newspaper clipping and explained to us that the next day, at the Harbin Confucian Temple, there was a ceremony for Confucius' birthday, with traditional music, costumes, etc., and that the school would like us to go. Being good Confucians in training, we were unable to say no to our teacher and thus planned to attend. Oh yeah, and we had to meet up at 8 AM on a day when we have afternoon classes.
That night, we cursed our filial piety and tried to hurriedly do all our homework in the few hours remaining before bedtime. We had planned to do this work Friday morning, but with our new plan, all hope was lost and we failed to finish all our homework on time for the first time. It's okay, though, because homework and in-class work and participation together is only worth 10% of our grade (not that the grade even matters).
So Friday morning, we loaded bus with our fellow exchange students, including a handful of Korean girls, a few fellow Americans, a kind Polish gent, a few African guys, a smarmy (and really short, ha ha ha) American guy who's been living in Harbin for 6 years and refuses to speak English, and, of course, faculty and staff. A guy from Portland told us that they asked us on such short notice because they needed more white faces for the pictures in the papers, and we laughed that all but one of the Russians had skipped out on the excursion.
The temple we found was beautifully restored and/or maintained, with newly-painted roofs, a red carpet, streamers, slogan-banners everywhere. Traditionally-robed Chinese people stood, lined in perfect formation like imperial steles, in preparation for the festival. Groups of schoolchildren in jumpsuits and businesspeople (or teachers?) in pantsuits waited at the sidelines with baskets of flowers. It was a beautiful sight to behold on first glance.
Yet, as the festival began and on a closer inspection, all the cracks in the surface became apparent. The people standing by ancient lutes (guqin) never moved the whole time; instead, cheesy synthesizer-lute music was blared through crackling speakers at a deafening volume. The traditionally-robed dancers wore barely-concealed tennis shoes beneath black cloth foot-coverings, and half of these dancers, once relieved of their duty, were finally allowed to put their glasses on. The bringing of baskets to the Confucian altar took more than 30 minutes, and all the while, no one besides the MC was actually paying attention.
So, the ceremony itself was quite boring, but what was more interesting to me was the fact that they still did it, even though the Communist government (in the Mao era) condemned Confucianism as feudalistic and reactionary, even though you'd be hard-pressed to find Chinese youths who can recite from the Analects, even though most people here know more about Bill Gates than about Mozi, even though no one really cared. Something about Confucianism has stuck with the Chinese people, and it seems at least the form, at least going through the motions is important. The toppling of the imperial system in 1911, the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the chaotic half-republic half-warlord era of the 1920s, the Japanese oppression of the 1930s, the civil war of the 1940s, the Communist overturning of life in the 1950s, the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s, the opening and reforms since the 1980s - none of these have been able to completely stamp out the Confucian tradition, thought now it may be burrowed in meaningless ceremonies and in the deep recesses of the Chinese subconscious.
[Editor's note: Yes, boring, and cold and irritating because people were constantly, shamelessly taking our pictures just because we're foreigners and did I mention boring? - EXCEPT for the performance of the cutest little boys and girls who did a little dance on a giant "ink bowl" and then danced with a seven foot long calligraphy "brush" to "paint" the characters for China on a giant poster. AWWW.]
Chapter II:
National Day (or is it Week?)
It seems this time of year has an abundance of celebrations: Moon Festival, Confucius' birthday, and National Day. To us, though, National Day is the only one that matters because it means we get a week off of school (this week). Also, we don't have to eat mooncakes again. National Day is a time when Chinese children carry around bright red-and-yellow flags and shops close early and students satisfy their wanderlust by traveling around. We, however, love Harbin so much that we're just hanging around the city and seeing the sites! We want to go to the siberian tiger park, some shopping areas, the temples, and just explore the city now that we have some free time.
Oh yeah, and we're almost broke. But that has nothing to do with why we're staying here. Absolutely nothing.
Chapter III:
Book City
So, we've been spending our mornings with slowly-cooked (due to our grogginess, not our culinary methods) diner-style breakfasts of hash browns or home fries or fried eggs or french toast or whatever and COFFEE. This is a wonderful little treat that reminds us of the good ol' US of A.
Sunday, we decided to go to the gigantic bookstore on Xue Fu Lu (Study-vicinity-road) that I had heard would have good English-language books. The place is a hub of all kinds of trade, including clothes, food, maps, footwear, school supplies, and more - the kind of hub that develops around any busy area in China. The bookstore consists of five giant floors, and is so large that it's not called a bookstore (shu dian) but a book city (shu cheng). The English-language stuff was on the fifth floor, so we made our climb through swarms of people, hoping for a little bit of paradise.
What we found was quite eclectic. There was a whole section of literary anthologies and books of literary criticism, which I'm guessing is a bunch of textbooks for college students majoring in English - they even had critical books on such difficult postmodern authors as Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo (neither of which I could imagine would be understandable to anyone without a near-native grasp of English). In another section, they had the entire Chicken Soup for the Soul series, plus many dozens more that were clear spin-offs from the original series (you should now be thinking, as we were, why? Regardless of how you feel about the books, weren't there plenty the first time around?), and a bunch of abridged classics. There were also poorly-translated books of Chinese poetry, shelves about Dale Carnegie and Bill Gates, and racks of books on American culture, customs, humor, etc.
After browsing though all of this, we finally found a few things that we really wanted: 1) several books by Lin Yutang, a Chinese author from the early 20th century who wrote in English about Chinese culture, 2) a table of fiction in English, from which we chose Kafka's The Castle, and 3) a series of comic books about traditional Chinese culture, from which we chose a book on Zen stories. It was a successful trip after all.
Chapter IV:Sloth: Our Favorite Deadly Sin
The downside of this trip to the book store is that it has practically immobilized us. We've become glued to our books, only getting up for the bathroom or the kitchen, and immediately re-immersing ourselves in those other worlds contained within softbound covers. Yesterday (Monday), we barely left the apartment all day, and today's not looking much better.
But I think we deserve this. We've been working hard at our Chinese language classes and have barely had time for good, creative, critical thinking. Besides, even God took a rest on his seventh day. I think I'll just consider this a good old-fashioned Sabbath.
------
About the Author
Thomas J. Mask-on-neck is a self-aggrandizing blogger who grew up in Northeast Ohio as a relatively normal child. One day, a bucket of toxic waste fell from the sky and onto Thomas, burning into his spinal column, just beneath his skull, super-powers of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Gradually, the arithmetic wore off, but what remained was the makings of a hopeful literary giant who would conceal the scar on his neck with his famous mask. Currently, he lives in Harbin, China, where he studies Chinese language.
About the Editor
Lisa A. Zoomy-yak is exasperated.
Acknowledgments
I'd like to thank Lisa for experiencing all of this with me and always being there. I'd also like to thank our wonderful families for their love and support, as well as you, the readers, who make this possible.
Critical Acclaim for Arrestin' A-Restin'
"The blogpost burst like a shell over the Western world." -The New York Times Blog Review
"It cured my cod!" -Billy Graham
"You're so weird!" -Zoomy-yak
"He's got the magic stick" -50 Cent
********************************
FACT-HAPPENING POST-SCRIPT
********************************
We're working on a long, photographic (dare I say, cinematic?) update in comic-book style. We will publish it in parts . . . whenever we feel like it! Aww, snap!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)