Nice and easy.

I fear I may have destroyed my knee once and for all (or until I can afford some surgery), while running today. I've been limping around thinking that perhaps a cane will provide me with a professorial air. Every little helps. Due to my preoccupation with how the hell I'm going to get around, I've decided on a simple post with a few laughs from a couple classroom stories and some random pictures I've taken during my time here.

From the classroom:

Earlier in the semester I had a few basic Listening and Speaking classes for non-English majors. Not as engaging as my other classes, but they had their moments. These were large classes (80+), where I was just trying to get these kids chatting as much as possible. As it is a bit hard to document grades in a purely oral class of that size, I had them write down the name and student number at the end of the semester and bring it up to me. I was simply grading on attendance and participation, so this is how I recorded the grade. Some of the more observant students caught on to what I was doing, and decided to tag on some farewell thoughts in an attempt to sway my grading. Some of the highlights (remember, these aren't English majors, just kids in a required course):
"May happy! My dear teacher!"
"Thanks for your class, Seamus! Wish all of us find true love!"
"Thanks for your appearance and your time and the happiness you give us!"
And my personal favorite, written here as it was given to me: "May. Happy. In. China! become. Fat. and. Stronger! Like. Your. Humons." Fat and stronger, got it.

The next two are from one of my American culture courses. I gave a group pop quiz the other day, (The Snickers Challenge. Little do they know, but I end up eating half of the winnings before they get to the victors. It's ok, they're used to that in China. Zing!). They answer some questions from topics we have covered this semester: government, sport, families, media, music, etc. But two of the answers from the sports questions stood out. The question had them name the four major sports and gave them bonus points for naming the scandal that has plagued baseball for the past 15 years. One group said, "alcohol and call girls", which was incorrect, but I liked the thought that went into the answer (you can also tell the difference in command of the English language between English majors and non-English majors). Another group's answer was dripping with irony, because of course the answer is the steroids scandal, a blatant and widespread form of cheating that plagued MLB. Anyways, I'm not saying these kids are oblivious to American sports culture, but I doubt any of them would have come up with the following answer without googling "baseball scandal" in their phones right quick. As written: '1919 Blacksox scandal'. Cheating little bastards. I changed their team name to 'the Bondses' and moved on. No one got the joke.

On to the pictures.

Perhaps I would feel worse about taking candid pictures of people and posting them for a laugh if it weren't for the statistical evidence that assuages that guilt. Candid picture taking scoreboard: Seamus - a few dozen candid pics of average Chinese v. Average Chinese - several hundreds pics of Seamus. And the Chinese take it in a landslide victory. (All figures inexact, margin of error: +/- a few, but you get the point).

We will begin with a series of photos from back in September when it was still 100 degrees plus. To alleviate some of the heat's effects, guys like to employ the shirt roll. I give you my collection:

 The party-roll.

 The squat-n-roll.

 The accesso-roll, for the fashionable gent.

And the smoke-n-roll.

Ad on the side of a bus. And I wonder why students have misconceptions of westerners. I'd also be skeptical of a people if this is how they were portrayed to me.

This one greeted me as I got off the plane from Hong Kong.

Much better trained baby. She stared at me from this pose for two blocks. Gangster baby.

The questionable intellectual property protections and copyright laws in China are well known, but sometimes they clearly are not trying. "Planters' Mr. Peanut, eh? Slap a Hitler 'stache on him, no one will know the difference."

Forget if I posted this, but this is one of the German artists, Christof, I previously mentioned. His piece was a poster of Chairman Mao that he connected a blinking red light to. Right where Mao's mole should be. I thought it was a good laugh.

I didn't eat there.

Though it offered 'interlligent face tracking' and 'txcellent performance', I couldn't bring myself to pick up this Camera brand camera, no matter how low the price.

And the piece de resistance snapped at my local grocery store:

It has it all: a blatant ripoff of a classic brand, the fact that it is an ad for an eau de toilette, and the slogan is "from nature". If the person in charge of the name was in on the joke, then tip of the hat. If not, I cannot imagine there has been a finer bollocksing up of a western styled knock off than this. Unintentional comedy gold. I shall leave you to bask in the sublime. Adieu.