FFXIAH Linkshell Ni

Captain Murphy has opinions.

Shake it.

'Old people in china don't follow the rules'

our driver's name was 'sam' and he spoke no english at all but he would communicate with us via google translate app on his phone while driving mario andretti style through the ruthless streets of jinan.

after several near death experiances he explained it away with the statement above...the google translate voice was female which made PARKER giggle and the statement became a rolling joke/punchline for the entire trip that we used to explain just about everything.

DAY ONE and TWO sunday 6am est - tuesday 12 30am 'china time' gmt+8

after a late start we land in new jersey and had to sprint for the next plane... a torturous fifteen hour haul over the north pole.
the sky waitresses wake you up every couple of hours to give you 'food' and drinks. beer and wine were free so I promptly got drunk and took a long nap... but something or someone or some baby crying is constantly waking you up. [bring some noise cancelling headphones and smuggle some little booze bottles next time] it's not the most restfull sleep. and we arrived 1pm MONDAY beijing time bleary eyed and half drunk

first you get scanned for fevers, then the id check, the bag claim, the bag check....you stand in line to get into other lines and people are constantly shoving you to cut past you...all you want to do is get to the exit sign and step outside for a smoke

but PARKER lost one of our bags in beijing. someone with an identical bag had picked ours up. so we hung back a couple hours to see if they returned the bag [splitting up, probably not the best idea]

one of the other guys, john was held up in 'train station jail' after boarding the wrong train and sitting in someone else's seat, he was reported to the train station cops who removed him from the train, took him to train jail and then mocked him non stop for a couple hours for being a stupid american.

we should have been in our rooms by 6pm but instead we spent another six and a half hours recovering our team and luggage... I had four hours to sleep so I slammed two double jim beams and passed the *** out

DAY THREE - 6am tuesday - 12am skip lunch = superhero
you are trying to focus on your job but everyone there has their own agenda and they constantly bother you to help them first.
you have to knock out a few easy ones to shut them up or the noise is deafening. I skipped lunch which promptly blew their minds and they began to worship my 'work ethic'...how do you say...you want to help me,... how about go *** off for a while and leave me alone....in chinese Between 12am and 6am I was up for two hours handling a problem in cincinatti... because apparantly when I am gone... nobody can do anything. it probably has something to do with magnets

DAY FOUR 6am wednesday - 2am thursday - Xavier quits
It didn't even register. I was so focused on my own sack of problems that I didn't even notice one of the guys quit.
*** him...it was somewhere around hour sixteen or eighteen on day three or four who the *** knows... ...Sam asked if I needed anything and I had him pick me up some smokes...xavier seized the oppertunity and had sam take him back to the hotel.

DAY FIVE 6am thursday - sometime on friday I think
it kinda goes on and on and on like this for a while....


DAY...WHO THE *** CARES ANYMORE...hope is abandoned we are never going home

what little i saw of beijing and jinan...parts looked like MEGA CITY ONE from Judge Dredd, parts looked like Vietnam in 1967, parts looked like a russian cold war communist ***hole and parts looked like they were from the Han dynasty but nobody had knocked them down yet...it was dirty...there was trash and cigarette butts everywhere..you weren't safe walking on the sidewalks because of all the motorcycles and mopeds and sometimes cars that drove down them...

our hotel, the sheraton in jinan, was lovely, they had an awesome breakfast buffet which was the best part of the trip. more on this later as time warrants

everywhere else there is a good chance the shitter is a hole in the floor, this includes nice looking restaurants, factories, etc.

everyone in china is a pushy, rude, self centered *** so we all felt right at home. they served us budwieser because obviously that's all americans ever drink.... they have a word for 'stupid americans', you hear it all the time. idioms do not translate at all and good luck explaining complex concepts like troubleshooting...

I lived to tell the tale...barely. I hate people anyways and after being herded like a man eating zoo animal for a week my mood was foul and I began screaming at little old ladies that tried to cut in front of me... it was hell....


more later

we flew back on Bring your assbackwards, country bumpkin, never rode in a airplane before, idiot parents to the USA from the old country....day....apparantly.... the kind that can't work an airplane bathroom door

holy ***... I was in the isle seat it was getting near main door closing time but then.... there they were.... and as soon as I saw these two goons and their twelve bags I knew for certain that one of them were sitting next to me. first they tried to get into their seats holding all their bags... then they opened all the closed and full overhead baggage compartments looking for space jamming one over sized bag into six seperate compartments, then they had to get out a third time because the old lady forgot her coat, trip four was to the bathroom, trip five they forgot something else in one of the bags that they absolutely had to have in their hands when the plane was taking off... maybe it was a blanket.... sometimes she got up just to stretch and jog in place for no apparant reason....

when one of these dumb *** got up, they all did. every single one.

she poked my arm, motioned to get out and then I took of my seatbelt, got up, let her out, sat down, waited for her to finish whatevering, got back up, let her in, sat back down, put the seat belt back on....four hundred and eighty seven times...

as we were landing... ok... not initial descent but actually landing... you can see the ground.... impact with wheels to ground in about one minute she is all /poke /poke /poke

I screamed NO about as loudly as the final horn that signals the apocolypse... should have done it a long time ago...

this isn't japan with courtesy and dignity and cautiously concealed mouths behind hankerchiefs anytime they make the slightest noise above whisper... no these are chinese people they coughed in my face, burped in my face, sneezed all over me... full force, no holding back... if you have to cough and it sounds like you are throwing up, just do it...

old people in china don't follow the rules.... manners, street laws, etiquette, common decency, personal space boundaries...none of it. they are all like *** YOU I stayed alive this long so obviously I am no one to be triffled with you dirty sons of ***....

oh god, the chinese streets covered in loogies. people walking down the street just snorting up snot from what appears to be their bowels then letting it rip through the air staining the pavement in a, 'looks like you need to see a doctor', shade of absolute terrifying *** it all.

welcome home.

welcome home

Welcome back Nik.

Mos...

It rained on monday as we were arriving, which was really nice. It knocked down the pollution quite a bit from what I am told. The advance team was complaining about how polluted and hot it was prior 90~95 but it was a breezy 70 degrees by the time I cracked open my evil tool cases...

But before that... I woke up at 5 or 6 am china time with... the hunger... normally I don't eat anything but coffee and cigar smoke for breakfast but holy ***was I hungry and the jinan sheraton came through with a buffet spread shipped straight over from vegas.

they had american breakfast like made to order omelets and crepes and bacon and sausage and hash-browns you name it, then they have japanese breakfast with sushi and everything and chinese breakfast with the congee and fresh fruits and then then they had a dude making noodle soup to order which was killer and dim sum and weird ***like roast duck and salmon heads and 1,000 year old eggs and lo mien and fried rice and the best nectarine I ever tasted.

so... I will probably spend the rest of my life trying to recreate that soup and the steamed buns that had the lemon curd filling.... but... having that anchor of a good breakfast every day made the never ending ***storm that followed it seem more bearable somehow....


but yeah the street trash was terrible and john, the guy that did time in train station jail, would do things like tell the chinese assistant Pàkè to go clean it all up....

Pàkè would start to move away and then realize his leg was being pulled...hey wait a second... and then john would narrow the cleaning detail to our immediate area and Pàkè would get cracking

it was mostly to keep him out of our hair... it was annoying having two guys staring at you while you were working... waiting for your every command... but on the other hand...our PARKER had taken a savage beating at the airport when he refused to give up the chocolate and he wasn't worth a ***.

Pàkè would run anywhere you told him to... so he was handy for fetching things like power converters and people. but he was an idiot like PARKER and if the instructions were too complicated he would shake his head no... like the go clean up all the trash in jinan bit...or when I asked him to fetch smokes he couldn't do it...apparently there are no stores that sell cigarettes in the high tech industrial zone.... so then john told him in chinese to get the driver Sam to take him to the store and then Pàkè was all happy to go do it...

the best part was when he would run away to go do something then sheepishly return unable to complete the task.... I told him to go find john one time and he came back sad and empty handed...

then I yelled at him.... he has to be somewhere in the goddamned plant... just keep looking until you find him!!! and then the translator yelled at him, probably the keep looking until you find him part and Pàkè scurried away

so eager....and always smiling... I'm starting to miss that little chink ***... PARKER I hope you learned something about service while you were there at least...




Chinese food in china tastes like you imagine it's supposed to taste like... fresher..like instead of dried schezwan peppers they use fresh ones. and the individual spices are each more pronounced having been added in at the proper time rather than as a mix and there is less sauce and no corn starch which is really nice.

our hosts were shocked that I knew how to use chopsticks...I thought you said this was your first time in china... and when I explained that my wife loved chinese food it blew their minds...so did the concept of each major US city having a china town...and my favorite chinese restaurant being run by Vietnamese immigrants....

they were shocked... how could a non chinese person open a chinese restaurant!?

apparently nobody ever told them that chinese food was popular in the US... I should have told them about chinese wednesday...
but that would have taken quite a while though...

It was hard enough trying to find analogies they would understand... Alexander the Great and the Gordian Knot?... never heard of it.... Rubik's Cube?....nope.... puzzles?....nupe...

wtf!? their brother in law probably makes the mother *** one town over but nope.... never heard of a puzzle.

>.<

even our translator put his hands up... the puzzle of finding the right word for puzzle was too puzzling for them to unpuzzle... it's a riddle wrapped in a mystery surrounded by an enigma...

google says Nanti but Nanti is problem so....wtf... we'll just ...skip that lesson... lol it wasn't important anyway... *** it!

帕克

Bring more Motrin and other notes on travel to china....

I asked the front desk at the hotel for Motrin or Advil or Tylenol..
after I ran out....

they understood me well enough...but you need a permit to go buy medicine and they could get me a permit and direct me to the closest pharmacy... but it would be faster to go to the hospital....

phuckdat

the mega zones thing is super annoying.... in any high tech industrial area in the united states there would be gas stations and mini marts and fast food restarants to serve the workers...

in china in the high tech industrial zone there is high tech industry and NOTHING ELSE no shops, no food, no gas, no nothing.

if you don't bring it in you aren't going to get it without hiring a driver to go find it.

you don't now where it is, how to read the signs and forget driving you wouldn't make it two miles unscathed

Important question we all thinking tho.
Any chinese waifus ?
Our chinese waifus ?

chinese actually sounds really good...

I have no clue what those characters mean but
For the heck of it I did a Google search for "帕克 tatoo" first thing I found was parker tatoo house.

i guess nik left parker in china to open up a parlor. maybe he'll put things like, "hope" and "love" just above the *** crack of a bunch of drunk chinese girls.

so hungry .-.

That looks so good. ;.;

starving ; ;

it's going to take a few more generations of solid nutrition...

if you look at pictures of people in the states before pre-natal vitamins and baby formula and well balanced meals... you'll see what I am talking about.

the chinese are starting to get some length of bone but they still have many of the asymmetrical hallmarks of poor fetal/early childhood development. which become more pronounced when suffer from psychotic hallucinations.

I would say that the least effected among them, and this is in the heavily polluted area that I was in, that I noticed...was coming out of the hotel dressed to kill at 2:00am... presumably either super late for dinner... or...and the far more likely possibility... wrapping up her shift.

I made no inquiries into her rates to avoid the appearance of an interested...shopper. since I'm not in the market. and that moment is typically not the best time to ask... even if you are just curious for a friend.

It's one of those... if you need to ask the price of something you probably can't afford it.... type deals.

Like rereading 'The Heart of Darkness'.

Bienvenue, mon ami!

Merci beaucoup

Well I'm not going to sugar coat it... It got pretty dark.

But then again we don't sell beach umbrellas to resorts....

although... somebody must have that job and we should at least look into the minimum job requirements in case we see an opening..

of course looking like a deranged giant killer penguin might work against me....

The "sightseeing" part of the trip was supposed to be the bullet train ride from beijing to jinan which...you guessed it...I slept all the way through... >.> like a baby.

those suckers as smooth as glass and it gently rocked me to sleep. I came awake angry and bewildered until a little old lady passenger inspected my ticket and said "next stop"

thank god because none of the squiggly lines at that train station stop looked familiar...

but the next one said 济南西 headless cheerleader/angry tv set/fat waiter holding tray overhead = Jinan West

My wife and I went to her cousins house sunday and she promptly asked if I saw any of the monkeys there that hang out at the shrines.....

no.

I didn't go to fun china... I don't know why it's such a difficult concept for people to understand...I went to ruthless china where the corporate villains who stole all our jobs are cleverly hiding them... in the zone where cameras aren't permitted...behind a mountain of garbage...

no monkeys no smiling golden buddhas no happy chinese pagodas no pandas no sunshine no dancing lions no kung fu monks nothing

it may as well of been the industrial part of indianapolis and I could of been drugged and blindfolded and taken there instead and if you hired a dozen actors to refuse to speak english I never would have known the difference....

Don't worry Nick. That'll never happen. I refuse to allow you to be forcibly taken to Indianapolis. That's a horror no one should have to endure.

unfortunately I was there two weeks ago and .. it looks the exact same....

Part of that is because it's the same company and all of their plants are the exact same... so that all the finished products are the same... type of thing.... and the other reason is

All of the places I go... are terrible.

"When you get to the train station head for the ticket windows next to the Burger King" - actual instructions received via email



I think the first thing I saw was the starbucks...



now I just have to find the burger king... >.>

let's see...mcdonalds...kfc...pizza hut... oh there it is!

oh yeah...it feels so exotic...I'm all wrapped up in the mystery and the magic now...so romantic!....especially with all the pushing and shoving and people trying to steal my wallet. >.< !@%$&!!

I've only been here three hours...someone stole my luggage off the carousel and I almost got in a fist fight with a pick pocket.

I body checked him too hard when he "bumped" me and I felt him touch my back pocket but he wound up to far away to get a hold of and choke to death...

*note to me* step on the foot next time

Inversely, I went to a different area of Pittsburgh where I normally don't hang and ate at a new place called Noodlehead that does Thai-influenced food.

Pad Thai was really good. So was the Kee Mao.

However these innocent-looking little things


Are pork belly steamed buns. They are nothing less than a mother-*** war crime. I was warned. I was told how good they were. I thought my good buddy was being his normal hyperbolic self.

I was wrong.

They're amazing. 11/10. Must nom again.

you may have gotten closer to thailand than I did to china...

/writes noodlehead down for next trip to pittsburg

stupid china. east texas sucked too. I actually have a lot to say, but no time lately. I will post some pics at some point.

cash onry... but the menu looks good and they are close to carnegie melon... /serious consideration

shadyside though... is that one of those hipster neighborhood rehabs where you have to step over junkies to get in the door?

IIRC squirrel hill north was kinda dicey...