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Saturday, January 27, 2007
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Moving Forward
I've been stuck by conflicting priorities lately. I've recently hooked up with a new girlfriend, Snow, who has also introduced me to a man that produces movies for CCTV (China's version of the BBC). The last month has been spent trying to put together some sort mutually beneficial business arrangement between us.
This has been both confusing and frustrating, as Chinese business arrangements tend to be a bit less structured than american, and it seems the Chinese have a tendancy to take issue with people who attempt to put too many clarifications in a contract. They see that as a lack of trust. They haven't had 200 years of litigation and lawsuits to whip their legal paperwork habits into shape. They much prefer to generalize things, then argue about it later. It's a matter of Chinese status to be able to argue and barter effectively in "after the fact" cases. As a Westerner, I take issue with this.
On top of that, I'm once again expanding my TechKnowlege. We're looking to redesign the FrogFaith Website into something a little easier on the eye, while at the same time giving it more structure so future updates don't require 2 days of graphical re-design to fit the new content. On top of that, I've got an idea for a new type of Media Distribution website that I hope I can roll out before Google beats me to the punch.
In short, I'm learning PHP.
So far, what I've learned is very similar to the earlier lessons of when I first started self-teaching HTML, CSS, Adobe Photoshop, and Apple Final Cut. This is a blanket lesson, not really involving any of the respective computer skills. Rather a life lesson that always seems to catch me off gaurd in the first few levels of my beginner self-courses;
Programmers are dicks.
I hate them. I hate them all. I hate them for assuming that the only reason I want to learn PHP is because I've already gotten bored with C++, and now I want to make a website that automatically emails random frames of my webcam to all the members of Parliament every 3.6 hours.
I'm sick of phrases like "is reqired for proper floating boolean output." I'm not an idiot, but I apparently made the unfortunate choice expanding my horizons with classes on Psychology and Anthropology when I was in college, and therefore had neither the time nor the money to attend the "1337 Codewords" seminar. A "floating boolean" sounds like something out of a Whitley Strieber novel.
Anyway...
I'm going to try and stop neglecting the blogs. It makes for a great escape when I'm wishing I could reach through the matrix and strangle whatever PHP Guru Hacker Dickwad that is self-righteous enough to call himself "ApOkOlIpTiCuS" for writing such a condescending "plain english" tutorial.
Besides, it seems the more I update the more my ad revenue goes up, so I'm going to be experimenting with that. In fact, I think I have an idea for a another new blog. And no, I haven't given up on that retarded podcasting idea. That's kindof what got this whole PHP thing started. After all, why should I try hosting my podcast on some other server site, when we already own a server in Arizona? All I need to do now is learn enough PHP to creat my own RSS feed.
Yeah...hold your breath.
TTFN
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Friday, January 26, 2007
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Arbitrary Measurements of Time, Part Two
Sorry about the long break before finishing the story. It's been a hell of a month. I'll get into that later. For now, on with the story...
As is true in america, when the cops arrived things got worse. Yelling, screaming, penis measuring; it was like watching an episode of Cops, really close up. Of course, in this case I have no clue what anyone is saying. So it was more like Cops: In Detroit.
Snow calmly told her side of the story, while The Landlord, the Truck Boss, and Fingers, yelled their sides. Fingers kept pointing at me. I suddenly realized that I was at a furniture factory, and there might be some sort of flame-thrower-like device that I could use somewhere on the premises. I didn't get a chance to look around. Any time I so much as shifted my weight, the whole lot of them would suddenly start yelling and pointing at me. This must be how Lindsay Lohan feels.
Through it all, the police decided that the best way to settle this was to caravan everyone down to the local station to file a report.
On the way there, I start to get a little nervous. "Have we been arrested?" I ask Snow.
"No," she says, "they just want us to file a report."
"I don't have any identification on me," I tell her, "is that going to be a problem."
She blinks at me. "Nothing?"
"I've got a little cash and my keys. That's all."
"Good," she says, "The less they know about you, the better."
The next few hours were spent in complete boredom. Sitting around in a cold police station (they refused to close the windows), waiting for the monkeys to put the colored blocks in the right order. Things were doubly delayed when the little shit security gaurd held to his story that I had been the one to kick open the gate, only to have it contradicted by the Moving Crew Boss.
And even though Fingers openly admitted to having been behind the collection of the office equipment as ransom for the workers pay, he still stood by the Landlord's accusation that we had been the ones to break the locks on all the doors in order to steal everything else out of the office. The fact that everything in the office belonged to the company and not to the landlord notwithstanding, the accusation continued even after Snow showed that she was carrying the keys to said locks in her pocket.
Hours and hours rolled by, until they finally decided to sit down with Snow to get her official statement. As I sat in the lobby alone, different members of this circus took turns walking up to me and saying some very pointed things to me in Mandarin. They would stand there and repeat themselves, expecting a response of some kind, until someone from across the room would finally say to them "Tim bu tong;" he doesn't understand. Landlord, Fingers, half the moving crew, and some other guy I'd never seen before all took a rotation trying to get something out of me. I just sat there and smoked, like the great white badass I am.
Finally, Snow came out of the interview room. Of course, there were discrepancies between her version of the story and the lies told by Landlord, Fingers, and the Little Shit. So, we had to sit there and wait while the cops stood around, holding there dicks, until a bright idea came to them.
Then, the Moving Crew Boss approached Snow. Apparently, because they had been held by the police for an extra 4 hours, they were demanding another 200 yuan for their time.
"Tell them that it was the Landlord's idea to waste everyone's time," I say to Snow, "so they should get their money from him."
"I don't think that'll work," she said to me.
"Would it hurt?" I ask.
She turns to them and repeats what I said. The moving crew did not see the humor. The police, however, did. Roars of laughter erupted from behind the main desk. After that, the cops seemed to think I was an okay guy. They even started offering me cigarettes.
Snow gets on her cell to report back to her boss' wife, who thus far has offered little help other than a "gee, that's unfortunate." Now, with the news of a suddenly uncooperative moving crew, she agreed to send a car to pick us up from the station.
As we waited for the car, we were also waiting for the okay from the cops that we were done and free to go. Landlord and Fingers seemed to still have a few things to say on the subject, and I was at a loss to what they could possibly expect to get out of this. I figured they probably had me pegged as someone with money, being a guelo and all, and were still holding on to their shakedown routine. But anyone with half a brain would figure that if I haven't shelled out by now, I'm never going to. But, half a brain is quite a lot of credit to give to these people, I'm learning.
After a few minutes, the cops say something to Snow who turns to me and says "Go out front, pretend you're talking on your cell phone. When my boss' car drives up, get in and wait for me."
Finally, I think. All we have to do is ditch the movers and we're good.
So, I do exactly as told. I stand out in the front of the building with the cell phone to my ear, speaking as loud as possible about how much I hate backwater, small-town, small-minded southerners; be they american or Chinese.
I saw the car pull up and I casually climbed in. A few seconds later, Snow looked out the doors, saw that I was in the car and began to calmly head toward us.
Then, Fingers saw her trying to leave and threw a shit-fit. Snow broke into a run and jumped into the car, yelling at the driver to go. The driver, seeing two dozen laborers and police tearing ass toward him from the station, stayed right where he was. From where I sat, I could have strangled him from behind. What pissed me off most was the fact that this had nothing to do with Fingers or the Landlord, they just wanted to be dicks.
So, back into the police station we go. I can't even figure out how this even concerns the cops. But I figure at some level I was glad they were there. At least this meant the movers weren't going to get too physical about their money.
The lot of us were ushered into an interview room, where the Moving Boss yelled at Snow while Landlord and Fingers yelled things to the cops while pointing at me.
"What the hell is everyone's problem?" I ask.
Snow sighs and confesses that she hadn't been telling me everything. It seems that Landlord and Fingers were telling the police that I'm the factory boss' son. Fingers was even going to far as to say that he had seen me at the factory before. The escape attempt wasn't to get around the moving crew, she was trying to get me out of there before they made me make a statement.
I told her flat out that it was a stupid idea, then planted a hot kiss on her as thanks...right in front of the whole crowd. I didn't even know asian girls could turn that red.
"If they want a statement they can have one," I say.
"But, they don't have an interpreter," she tells me.
"I was by your side the whole time. Tell them to copy down your statement, and I'll sign it."
She blinked, relayed my statement to the Police Clerk, who nodded and got to it.
As they asked for my personal info (name, address, etc), Snow rattled it all off to them. I was impressed that she was able to remember that much about me so quickly. That is, until it got to the part where they asked for my passport number. I never bothered to memorize the number, so I tried to guess it as best I could. Snow then said, "don't tell them the real number." She had no idea how much she was turning me on.
"I don't even know the real number," I say to her, "that's close enough."
She tells them the number I said, and I notice that in the section that says "Name" are three Chinese characters, rather than my legal name. Later I asked Snow what those characters were. The name on the report was "Zhang Na Shan," the closest Chinese phonetics to my first name. There is no way on god's green earth they'd be able to track me down (and, as of press time, haven’t).
While I applied signature-looking scribbles to the papers, Snow got on the phone with the main office of the moving company and smoothed things over with their supervisor. After which, the moving crew loaded up and drove away without us.
We were finally free to go. Only now, the driver of the car that was sent for us had chickened out and taken off. We had the money for a cab, but Fingers and three new guys I had not seen before were still hanging around just out front of the station.
Thankfully, the police were kind enough to give us ride to the main strip of town.
We caught a cab back home with long sigh of relief. Snow's boss had given her an extra couple of hundred yuan, just in case something came up with the moving crew. But, we decided that since she had been so damn helpful in our time of crisis, that we would spend that money on a very nice and relaxing dinner at very expensive Italian restaurant.
My only regret, is that I didn't have my camera with me. When will I learn?
TTFN |
