Happy New Year's

Oof, almost forgot to blog before sleeping, it's almost 5AM here. Just got back from SanLiTun, the small bar and club street behind SanLiTun Village near the SOHO. Like usual, the baijiu hit the spot, but lately I've got my tolerance pegged down so I get myself to that perfect high and then drink only very cautiously.

The girls today were very very picky. I'd come across groups of girls, clearly bored, but that would still refuse to dance when asked. Of course a few said yes but today was not a day for the Guiness Book. There was a nice moment though which I haven't experienced before. Ever. A girl came up to me, a blonde foreign girl, and explained to me profusely how beautiful she found me. I was drunk enough not to blush or even feel awkward but I definitely felt good. I think I might have even thanked her as I nodded my head in agreement. Although I'm beginning to wonder how loud it was in that bar and what she really said. She was probably talking about the weather and I was hearing what my super-ego (a giant ego, not to be confused with the superego) wanted to hear.

Wrote a little New Year's song today but it won't be airing for a few days probably. Maybe I'll release it as B-side to the Christmas song. True to my resolutions this song is reasonably happy.

The Uni Knot:


image borrowed from animatedknots.com

Blah.

Gene: cool, mom still loves u
Mark: haha, new 30 day trial?
Gene: u r a shaman!

Happy New Year's Eve's Eve

Don't tell her parents but I saw Yuan Yuan today. We synced up our trips to the local supermarket, though I gave her a head start of course.

New Year's Eve starts in about 15 minutes here. I guess it's resolutions time:

1. Eat less sweets. Yasha the dentist is going to retire early if I continue my current habits.
2. Practice singing more. I've only scared half the people in my building so far with rock screams in the elevator (an effective 0.5 second elevator pitch by the way), so it's time to initiate the rest. If that elevator doesn't reek of urine by next year then I'll have failed.
3. Be more tolerant. I think I'm becoming more and more cranky by the day, it's a little scary. I'd attribute it to Pissy Male Syndrome but it seems a little too chronic. If I live to be old, I'm going to be the crotch in crotchety...whatever that means.
4. Lucid dream more than this year. Shouldn't be too hard as I've had 0.0 lucid dreams in the last 364 days. Maybe I can make the job a little harder for myself tonight. Reality check!...damn, that would have been a nice New Year's present.
5. Learn to draw better. I've been avoiding improving this skill my whole life, not including the last 30 days, but the more it irritates me to practice it the more it seems like a worthwhile skill to have.
6. Get better at guitar accompaniment. I haven't actually practiced guitar in over a year. Time to learn a 2nd strumming pattern.
7. Learn my own songs.
8. Say yes more. I've been becoming more of a no person by the minute since 1986.
9. Write more happy songs. My lyrics are currently set to cynical by default.
10. Exercise more. Run in the spring. I'm going to wish I didn't write this. I wish I didn't write that. Oof, that was quick.
11. Read more books, watch less shows. It'd be nice if they had some books in English in Chinese libraries, currently I can only read on my computer.
12. Do a bit of programming. Here's to setting the bar high.
13. Run more experiments on people.
14. Run more experiments on myself.
15. Finish my novel.
16. Visit America. I hear it's pretty different from China.
17. Lie more. I've been pissing people off a bit too much with the truth.
18. Blog more. This way I don't have to do all the lying to people's faces. Lower that psychological barrier a bit.
...I'm sure more'll come up during the next few days.

Steve Pavlina would roll over in his grave if he could see my list...and if he were dead...or just doing a test trial burial. None of the resolutions are specific in terms of time or quantity or anything. But my balls just aren't big enough for a 365 day trial. I'll think of these as guidelines for choosing my 30-day trials during the year.

The Surgeon Knot/Join:


image borrowed from animatedknots.com

The crazy thing is, being able to tie this knot is the only requirement for legally practicing surgery in 47 of the 48 states in the contiguous United States.

Restraining Order

Well, Yuan Yuan's parents are in town now so there's basically a restraining order against me. Yuan Yuan called me a few hours ago when her parents went to the bathroom, which was both hilarious and scary. How do we keep them going to the bathroom at the same time? If you have any ideas, by all means email me or comment.

Anyway, this might end up being a 30 day trial of the low-Yuan-Yuan diet, which is certainly something no-one's tried before...one of the very few things going for it. That is if I don't get broken up with instead, which seems to be in quite a high percentage of parallel universes at this juncture.

The rest of the world is still turning; I bought a chicken today and devoured half of it without even trying. Obviously there's a severe lack of genetic engineering going on this side of the Mississipi. I also made some pancakes for the first time in a year and a half. They turned out a little dense, and a couple didn't cook all the way through, which was pretty awesome actually. Pancake on the outside, creamy dough on the inside. Clap your hands if you believe in salmonella. You won't see any Chinese people clapping I can assure you.

New Year's is coming up, I might have to think of some good resolutions. Maybe my students will have some good ideas.

The Klemheist Knot:


image borrowed from animatedknots.com

I think after the 30 days are over I should review for a day or two.

Uh Oh

Things are moving fast around here. Yuan Yuan's parents are no longer arriving sometime soon. They're arriving now. Tomorrow. Yuan Yuan has gone totally berserk, which is way more tiring to endure than push-ups. Hopefully this is just pre-game jitters and not an indication of what the next month'll be like. Otherwise I might have to kill both her and her family and I really don't want to get back into that stuff. I'm so glad I wasn't born into a traditional Chinese family. I'd be so happily married right now that I wouldn't even realize how unhappy I was. Hmm...something about the grammar in that last sentence feels fishy.

I've given up drawing stuff in my room and downloaded a book on cartooning. Did the first lesson today. So far my cartoons all turn out looking like deflated beach balls with limbs and organs sticking out of them. Hope there's a demand for that in the world.

The knot of the day...and they're getting scarce on animatedknots.com...is the Prusik Knot:


image borrowed from animatedknots.com

Easy, simple and trivial (to be read with a strong Russian accent).

The Parents Are Coming!

Looks like an involuntary 30 day trial is coming up on the radar. Yuan Yuan's mom and (Yuan Yuan's) stepdad have indicated that they might be up for a short one-month visit to Beijing.

So far Yuan Yuan's parents have been on a need-to-know basis regarding our relationship...or more like we-need-them-not-to-know. Yuan Yuan fessed up to having a foreign boyfriend a while ago, though only to her mom, and only to a certain degree. As far as her mom knows, we're not living together, not doing anything that involves taking off our goose-feather jackets, hockey masks and strait-pants, and still we're being disapproved of, though mostly passively. As a relationship without a "result" (marriage, settling down in China and full-body deforeignation surgery), it's a waste of time. So says the Chinese village.

Yuan Yuan's stepdad is completely ignorant (of the relationship...though I hear the word applies pretty well in general as well), and Yuan Yuan plans to keep it that way. This means that I'm going to have a lot of one-on-one time with myself next month. Not to worry, I have my 30 day trials to keep me company. Yuan Yuan's worried though, specifically that if her stepdad finds out, she'll be sent back to the village to spend the rest of her life with 56K internet and a severe lack of sexy foreigners. I might have to practice my acting. If I can just channel Bill Murray from What About Bob?, we'll be rid of all her relatives in no time.

Tomorrow, my old bandmate Mr. Fantastechnique Butneverlearnsasongallthewaythrough is coming over. Usually I ignore his messages, phone calls, emails and tear-stained handwritten letters because he always has something "fun" for me to do, but I couldn't resist replying the other day when he commented on one of my song videos I posted on TuDou. Now I'm paying the price.

The knot of the day is the Dropper Loop:


image borrowed from animatedknots.com

It's pretty sexy. And easy. Kind of like some girls I've met here.

Heated Toilet Paper

Having studied quite a few languages, I figured it was time to learn to study them the right way. I researched a bit about effective methods and came across an interesting idea, that forgetting is an important part of the learning process, as relearning is a much more powerful process than learning for the first time. The guy who wrote the article was also studying French incidentally, and he recommended that you review your flashcards with an exponential backoff. So you learn some new words, then review two days later, again four days later, again eight days later, ____ sixteen ____ , etc. If you can fill in the blanks, you deserve to know this secret technique.

Since they turned the heat on a month or so ago, I've been spoiling myself silly: shivering only on account of nostalgia from rereading my old blog entries, doing pushups because of 30 day trial madness and not because I need blood in my fingers to blog, shaving and walking leisurely back to my room after taking a shower instead of taking a Chinese death taxi. The latest in this long line of comforts is heated toilet paper. We have these metal not-quite-radiators around the apartment--in the bedroom, in the kitchen and in the bathroom--that are never hot enough to burn you but are usually quite warm. Since the one in the bathroom is just opposite the toilet, I've taken to putting the toilet paper there when I evacuate the undigested sugar from my system, and then using it when it's nice and warm. Honestly, it's highly overrated; my butt is nowhere near sensitive enough to tell the difference. But just the idea of pampering myself makes me feel as jolly as a carton of eggnog.

Today's day 20. Having survived yesterday, I think I can handle pretty much anything. Overconfidence has inspired a wave of planning for the next 30 day supertrial. The candidates so far are: getting better at singing, finishing the novel, playing guitar more productively, being nice to Yuan Yuan, being mean to Yuan Yuan, and weaning myself off heated toilet paper.

It'll also be a chance to test if some new habits were formed. It's never happened in the past but I'm unfailingly optimistic. Pushups will probably go out the window. Drawing might stick around, it's a nice challenge. Knots are definitely out. Blogging will probably stay; I need my 15 minutes of narcissism a day. And I'm enjoying studying French so I'm pretty sure that'll keep happening. All points to my days getting busier and busier but one of my students has been teaching me Time Management so I'll be ready when it comes, unless the Time Management arsenal has the Uberman schedule as a prerequisite.

The knot of the day is the Monkey Braid / Chain Sinnet:


image borrowed from animatedknots.com

This is a good one for storing rope, to keep it from getting tangled. And it's way easier than any pie. I'd like to meet the guy who started the whole "easy as pie" thing and let him have a go with my rice-cooker.

Drunk

It's hard to fucus when you're drunk but I'm the most dedicated 30-day-trialer in the world. And today was a pretty good challenge. Let's see. I had class far away at 11, so I had to leave the house at ten. Before that, I managed 120 pushups and 20 minutes of drawing. During the trip to my student's house, I studied French with my helpful Frenchpod-filled Zune. I did that throughout the day during my many travels from class to class, and even comng back from the final drunkfest at 7:20 in the morning, though I can't say I absorbed too much. In any case, I definitely got in over an hour of studying.

The knot...unfortunately I don't know the name, but it is quite similar to the Icicle Knot in terms of purpose, though it's simpler to explain. Lucy taught it to me while I was drunk in the KTV, between push-up sets (which were really frustrating because it's really hard to count to ten more than once when you're drunk), and I repeated it twice to make sure I remembered it. It basically consists of winding the rope around the pole, making sure to go over the rope as you wind, and tying two overhandish knots after that. No picture courtesy of lucyknots.com but I'll try to figure out what the knot's technical name is one of these days.

Blah blah blah, I'm really tired and it's almost 8 in the morning and I have to go to class in about 4 hours so sayonara.