Everything is Smaller

I suppose since it's about midway through my stay in this fair country, I should update y'alls on what goin on.

Normally I wait until some extraordinary to blog about anything, but since my arrival here, everything's been that. I've just been waiting around for a few seconds of normalness so I had enough time to write a bit. Also, since giving you all the details of everything that's happened since I last blogged would take close to two weeks, I'll just give you a few highlights. I'll start with my main findings about the country in general:

Everything is smaller

Well, it's shorter at least, and that makes sense considering the majority of the population could legally be considered midgets. This is something I don't think my 5 foot-nothing sister ever really took notice of, but for normal sized Canadian people like me, it's been a little different to get used to. Most of the stuff that's been "downsized" hasn't bothered me so much as the kitchen sink in my sister's house. Every stinkin' time I go to do the dishes, I end up with a horrible back cramp for the next couple hours. Not sure if it's just me or not, but I seem to have that kinda crap happen to me when I take on the posture of the hunchback of Notre Dame for more than 20 minutes. And yes- it does take longer than 20 minutes to cleanse the ceramic aftermath of a Vanderberg/Fraser sustenance inhaling session. Much longer.

The traffic isn't traffic, it's chaos

I've heard it said that traffic in the Americas is as to wood, as china traffic is to water. We have traffic laws, and obey them. China has something more like "traffic guidelines" and they're in no way similar to ours. It's practically a requirement to cut people off pretty regularly in traffic if you want to make it any further than ten feet from whence you came. It's sort of a "eat or be eaten" driving culture here, although the phrase might more accurately be verbalized "drive, or be driven over".

You can get away with nearly anything if you smile, ignore people's Chinese ramblings and pretend you don't understand the universal hand signal for "STOP!".

It also helps that since I'm Caucasian, everything I do is more entertaining to the Asians simply because my skin color is different than theirs. If I were to try to limbo under a security gate in the US, I'd probably get yelled at, but here? Nope. I just get laughed at. I don't even mind that, because as I don't live here, I have no form of "self image" to try to keep up. I'm just the goofy white guy who plays ukulele and sings really loud in falsetto in public. Dignity, you have no power over me here. MWAHAHAHA!

Piracy is so common, I'm under the impression no one here even knows it's illegal. 

It's pretty basic knowledge here that any file you buy that's being held on a compact disc is going to cost around 10 RMB (just less than 2 bucks). I believe this is due to the fact that people don't actually pay to have movies, video games, various software install packages, or music albums shipped in from legitimate distributes  Everything here is illegally burned to a disc, and sold in strip malls all over the place. I now feel significantly less guilty about the various files I've torrented through the years. I know, two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.

The food is simply heavenly

I believe this is self explanatory  If you need further details about the amazingness of the food here, just imagine, like, deep fried goat ribs marinated in papaya juice. Are you imagining? Great, now imagine something even BETTER than that! That's Chinese food.

There's more, but I'll save it for some other time. Right now I'm super tired. I'm going to go get some sleep (and if you know me, you'd know that when I say this it actually means I'm going to go waste another hour or so browsing the internet and listening to music, and then end up watching a movie or something).

Anywho, 'night world.