This Is My Life

The S.S. HNC / Nanjing Botanical Gardens

It was nice to finally take a breather and get off of what I call the S.S. HNC (Hopkins-Nanjing Center). It has thus been dubbed because I have found it in many respects to be similar to a cruise ship. Here's a quick explanation that will make sense if you have been on a cruise. First off, everything that is needed for living is on board, saving you from having to go off the ship. This doesn't mean that everything you want is on board, it just means that everything you need (living quarters, food, entertainment, sports, etc) is there. At first everyone is on cloud nine eating all the good food, playing the games they have, and doing what they came to do. Eventually, however, you start seeing the rotation of things going on: pancakes every Tue. and Fri., B-ball every Wed. afternoon, karaoke every Fri. night, and so on. Around this time you need to get off the ship, but the ship is moving, and you will get left behind if you don't wait until it docks to get off. In the case of the S.S. HNC, it is the academics/homeywork/papers that just keep on coming, and it is a dangerous move to get off the ship or out of the library.

Every once in a while though, you are able to stop the boat, and get your land legs back for a bit. Today I chose the quiet and well kept Nanjing Botanical Gardens. It was great to finally be able to look up! (I have realized how much time I spend looking down since coming out here, and it is kind of crazy. I look down to eat obviously, as well as read my books. However, because I am a bit taller than most of my colleagues, I have to look down when talking to them too. I have actually gotten a crick in my neck before as a result of it, and I am convinced that my vocal cords are shrinking because my head is always tilting forward pushes down my adam's apple--which is making my voice higher by the day.) The way the bamboo trees curved at the top to rest on the branches of a large maple tree was quite a sight . . . of course only for true geeks like yours truly. In fact, I even tried climbing up between two large bamboo trees like they do on kung fu movies. After getting down I figured that it was probably the most nerdy thing I've done in a very long while . . . and I don't know why I am even writing it down right now.
There was an amazing bonsai exhibit, with trees that have been passed down for literally hundreds of years. I made friends with one of their care takers. It has always been on of my dreams to work in a place like that; every day wake up, water some bonsai here, bend a twig there, prune some roots here, practice being an idiot by climbing up some bamboo there. I asked him how he liked working there, and he said, "Working here . . . life is tough. The pay is not good." Turns out he only gets paid 1000 RMB a month ($150), which would explain his humble appearance. I still think something is wrong when someone caring for living artifacts like that is getting paid so little.
I had a good time off the ship though, and should be able to keep my sanity on board now for another week. Here are some pics I took. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday

Although I feel a great importance to search out any and every opportunity to celebrate in this life, and although a birthday is one of those occasions, for certain reasons my last two B-days have been . . . well . . . unique.
Last year, Xiaoyu and KT had to dance practice for the Christmas With the Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert. Mom had to go to a Young Women's activity . . . where she broke her ankle and basically stole the spotlight from your's truly! (yeah, she's sneaky like that). I think Dad was on the computer doing some work. And I was locked up alone in the attic where I sang "I have a castle on a cloud" basically for the majority of the night.
This year was a lot better though. This year I got to do what I had always dreamed of doing for my birthday ever since I was a little kid: complete a 2,500 character (Chinese that is) long essay on the complications found within China's social strata that were brought about by the last 20 years of economic reform. Again, like last year, Xiaoyu wasn't able to be with me, although she made sure to call me numerous times and make sure I was having a good time . . . writing my essay. Actually she gave me the best possible gift I could have asked for that night, when she helped me correct my paper. She told me once that it was my birthday so I had to go buy a little cake and a candle. But the thought of me sitting in some little bread shop or in my room singing happy birthday to myself and blowing out a candle sounded basically like the most depressing thing I could think of. So I didn't.
Actually, although it sounds like I am really down about that fact that my last two birthdays have been very "special," I really have nothing to complain about. When I think about it, I have been given way more than I ever could have wanted. I could tell that Xiaoyu felt bad she couldn't be there with me, and was a little worried about me being sad during my birthday. However, even though of course I would love to be surrounded by family and friends during such an occasion, how could I be sad when I know that any separation during this life I experience with my family is only temporary. When all is said and done, the time will come that Xiaoyu and I will never have to be apart, neither will we have to be apart from the ones we love. No gift could be greater than that (no Fernando, not even that blender you've always wanted). So how could a birthday alone affect my attitude?! The thought of it is kind of ridiculous if you think about it.
That being said, I'm predicting that my B-day next year is going to be PANDA-MONIUM! Until then . . . happy birthday to me.

Its that time of year.

Halloween in China? You best be believin' it! I have proof!

Had to see it to believe it eh? Well here it is. The Halloween section of a Target-like store here in Nanjing. And although it isn't big, it does still do a good job of representing arguably the funnest holiday around. I'm sure there are many who have no idea what this little section is even about, and those who do celebrate Halloween do not actually trick-or-treat. Too bad.


This is a scary looking insect. Scary insect . . . Halloween . . . yes they do go together.



This is a better shot of its totally sweetnesses legs!


And, of course, a guy selling hand spun cotton candy. Candy . . . Halloween . . . yes. And also I thought that you would all like to see how read-deal-holyfield cotton candy is made. Watch and learn . . . and then watch again . . . and then realize that no I didn't take a video of him actually making cotton candy because it cost 3 RMB which I didn't have. But I did have 2 RMB which I gave him for being nice and letting me take the video.
So while Halloween might not be what it is back in the States, it still has its own Chinese style charm . . . if you know where to look for it.

The Beautiful Benefits of Being a Brother.

I just finished reading my sister Sharon's latest blog about how her son Sammy is all about whacking his older sister with various objects upon the head. It reminded me of some of the good ol' times when we were young, and when I could still make my sisters cry without feeling too guilty.
I actually don't think that I even inflicted a large amount of physical pain on either of my sisters. This is probably due to a couple reasons; physical abuse left marks and thus hard evidence, my little sister KT--although small--was quite dangerous when it came to hand-to-hand combat (i.e. the "sink my long fingernails into the flesh of your arm while gritting my teeth and bombarding you with an almost unholy evil stare" technique), and probably the biggest reason was that it was just too base a platform from which one can perform truly devious life-scaring deeds.
I think two examples should suffice. During our younger years (teen), my older sister and I did not spend the majority of our leisure time playing together. However, that did not mean that we didn't love each other, nor did it mean that she was exempt from my boredom-bred offensives. One of my assailments into her constant and otherwise sheltered boarders began when she received a heavenly down comforter for either Christmas or her birthday. She always got that kind of stuff as presents, and although her gifts were always utterly boring by nature, I was often able to find a much more exciting use . . . if the situation called for it.
During this time, for some reason I was really into the ability to move throughout the house and within the close vicinity of people without being detected. Naturally, at the completion of sneaking up behind someone while they are on the computer or underneath the kitchen table while they are eating or reading the news paper, the next natural step is to . . . well . . . for the lack of a better term . . . scare the crap out of them. For those of you who have tried this, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Eventually, my skills were becoming so finely tuned, that an even greater challenge was needed to test my real ninja-like potential. Sharon's down comforter provided the challenge.
At first, it seemed like each night, before going to sleep in her cloud of a bed, she would fluff up her comforter before gently laying back on it. But slowly she ended that ritual, and after reading her scriptures and saying her prayers, would just hit the hay and call it a night. After a couple nights of becoming familiar with the layout, and taking mental notes of her nightly routine, I made my move. While Sharon was in the bathroom getting ready for bed (approx. 15-20 min.) I snuck into her room, being careful not to disturb anything or leave any visible traces of my presence, and slid myself between the top of the mattress and the down comforter. I then shook my body in rapid succession, thus bringing the surface of the comforter to a more even plain, and made sure to leave a slight crease from which (as my head was resting sideways facing toward the nightstand) I could see out into the room. Then all I had to do was wait.
While waiting, it did occur to me that I could get in trouble for what I was about to do, and that it probably wouldn't make Sharon too incredibly happy, but any drawback was totally overshadowed by my curiosity. Could I actually pull it off? If I did, how would she react? Has anyone in the history of man ever been so skilled in their sneaking/scaring abilities?
When she came back into the room, it was almost too much not just to jump out and expose my hiding spot. However, I refrained, and even managed to keep completely still and silent as she read her scriptures and prayed right next to the side of the bed where I was laying. Now this comforter was not to be slept under, but to be slept upon. So it had originally been my plan to wait until she actually laid down before I scared the living daylights out of her. But as she got up from praying and began to pull back her blanket to climb into bed, I made the quick decision that doing so might actually scar her for life . . . and I refrained. Right before she started the movement to get into bed, I burst out in an awesome array of yelling, flailing my arms and legs, and (of course) laughing my head off. I know that most of you think that I am a horrible person by now, which I can totally understand, but even now as I am writing this here some 15 years later, I still can't help but laugh out loud like a gitty school boy when I think back on it. It was, in my book, the perfect scare. The only problem, was that it was too perfect. It actually made Sharon cry (should have thought of that one), and dad told me that if I ever scared anyone again that he would scare me. Truthfully, although I would like to say that it was Sharon's tears that touched my heart and ended my frightening antics, but that wouldn't be completely true. Dad had never scared anyone on purpose that I had known of, and the fact that I couldn't even draw up a mental image of what that would be like disturbed my stealthiness into a standstill. That isn't to say that I never scared anyone again after that, but I was definitely more careful about who, when, and how I did.

Again, although scaring my sisters is probably not the only trick up my sleeve, it is probably the best. For some reason, my once eccentric little sister Katie was always scared of the basement in our Orem house. She hated going down there, especially by herself, and even more so if the lights were off (you had to enter the dark before you got to the light switch and turned on the lights, and when it the lights were off down there, it was DARK.) On a certain occasion, mom and dad had to leave for some reason, leaving Sharon in charge of Katie and I. Whereas Sharon and I weren't always spending the majority of our time together, Katie and I were almost always either playing together or bugging each other. And while Katie is more reserved and laid back today, you wouldn't have believed it possible with the fiery attitude that once embodied so much about her (although I love the grown up KT, sometimes I do hope that the younger "I will freak out, throw a fit, and get you" KT would resurface . . . if not just every once in a while). She was the cutest little sister an older brother ever had, and our relationship was one of love and loving to bug and be bugged. I obviously did the bugging, but I think KT will agree that for some odd reason she often "asked" to be bugged.


At the very least, she knew me well enough that she knew well in advance what I was going to do, and more often than not, there was no way for her to avoid it.
This instance (which occurred some time around, but before the above "down comforter" incident) was no different. Sharon was in charge, and she asked KT to go downstairs and grab something. KT immediately opposed, but for some reason it needed to be KT to get it. Knowing her brother, she complained to Sharon that I was going to somehow scare her when she went down there. Sharon told her that I wouldn't (Sharon obviously had more faith in me that she should have), but KT was sure I would. (I should stop here to say that I can't remember if at that time I had really thought to scare KT or not. In all actuality, it could have been KT's bringing up the topic of me scaring her that actually caused me to do so!) Sharon insisted that I wouldn't but still made me promise, out loud, that I would not scare KT when she went downstairs, and then she even offered to go down there with her. I don't think that satisfied KT, but she had no more excuses to go.
In our Orem house, there was an intercom system with speakers in almost every room of the house (which is such a ridiculous and lazy thing now that I think about it. But anyway). It was an old system that had been put in way before we had been there, and each time you pressed down on the "talk" button it would give a quick and loud "pkhhh" sound. I can't tell you how many times mom or dad or whomever inadvertently scared the pants of whoever was in the basement. You'd be watching a scary movie, and then all of the sudden "pkhhh! Patrick can you come up stairs for a second?" Oh man. Or you are just thinking or doing something quietly when "pkhhh! Katie Winnerholm your mom just called and says that you need to go home."
After they had both descended into the dark abyss of our basement, my promise and all my normal thought processes stopped, and all I could think of was "Intercom! KT! Screaming!" Without too much hesitance I walked over to the intercom, pressed, and the next 10 seconds went a little something like this, (in my best deep devilish voice) "pkhhh! KATIEEEEEE!!!! AAHAAHHHKATIE! BLAHHHAH (and so on)!" then the highest/loudest little girl scream, "AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!" and finally Sharon's voice, "PAAATRIIIICK!!!!" That one, I think, really did scar KT for life. However afraid she was of the Orem house basement before, it has magnified at least 2 bizzagillion fold.


Oh the good ol' days. Sadly enough for some reason its not the same when I scared Xiaoyu (I say scared because up til now its only happened once, for good reasons), and I am afraid to say that for the most part I am past my prime. My only hope now is in my nephew Sammy and my own future offspring, who I'm sure will not let this old timer down.