Oh The Weather Outside Is Awesome

Wercome wercome. It's been a hellacious couple of weeks here with intermittent spatterings of awesomeness, but I gotta say the bad has has most definitely outweighed the good as of late and I'm ready for that to turn around.

Let's get this out of the way:

Podcast: Made In China Vol. 16

Now, down to the business. It's snowing here as I type this. Most people here in China are not please about this but I absolutely love it. I've been jonesin for a little bit of home lately and this weather provided some much needed comfort.

I suppose I'll go back for a quick recap since the last post. A few weeks ago I had a rough week. Can't really say why, I was behind on sleep and it just seemed to drag on forever. This was also right when a quick bout of the flu swept through our school, and when you work at a boarding school something like that hits pretty much everyone. The kids were dropping like flies from a bug zapper, and this began a couple weeks straight of never having a complete attendance. So, not much sleep, unenthusiastic/sick kids, oh, and it got cold. Now, those of you back in MN may be saying to yourself, "But Ben, it's been cold here since like August". While this may be true, you also live in a free country, that is to say, a country where you are free to control the heating in your own home. I, however, live in a country where the government decides what date the rest of the country can turn on their heat, and the usual date is November 15th. That's right. If you check your calenders, you might notice that date still hasn't passed yet. And it's been cold here for about 3 weeks now. Not MN cold, but just above freezing at night cold, and when you don't have heat, that means it's barely warmer than that in your apartment, and that my friends sucks huge. So, well into a shitty week I went and saw DJ Kid Koala and that was pretty bangin.

Even though I was already tired as hell, I made it to the end of his show (around 1:30am) and still made it to school on time the next day. Dude's got some serious chops on the turntables. I've been a fan since around sophomore year of highschool and was pretty excited to see him. I dragged along a couple friends who said they liked it, but I'd say maybe a quarter of the audience could comprehend the turntablism they were seeing, the rest just got drunk and danced and had a good time.

That saturday we had an all day sports meet at our school with the kids. The weather turned around for pretty much that one day and we ended up with clear skies (a rarity in this smoggy city) and temps in the 60's. Perfect weather for some sports. This year was much better planned than last year and ended up being a lot of fun rather than tiring as shit. After the day was over I started up a game of touch football with the older international kids and a few teachers and played for about an hour. I hadn't played touch football since highschool so that was a blast. I highly recommend doing it if you haven't for a long while.

Oh, that saturday also happened to be the 31szt of October. Some of you may also know this date as Halloween.

Also, just to give you an idea of the work that went into that mustache, I present you with the following:

Also, that great weather I just spoke of lasted all of about 12 hours, because right around 9pm on the 31st of October it started to rain. Then it started to snow. That first picture up there is from the morning of November 1st. And I was wearing nothing more than what you see above.

Begin: shitty week #2

Following the night of running around in the rain and snow in short shorts and a tank top I did indeed pick up a cold. To make matters worse, my Grandma died. That tuesday was among the top worst tuesdays of my entire life, but I did discover that a quick cry will clear your sinuses out quite nicely. It wasn't entirely expected (complications from a surgery) and it was the first time I realized how far away I am from home. I usually feel like I could just hop a flight home if I ever really needed to, but in this case the worst happened and there was nothing I could do. At this point I'm doing fine. A few downs here and there, but what really gets to me now is being so far from the rest of my family. The best I can do is send emails or call, things that pale in comparison to a hug. Anyways, the dog's been extra snuggly lately which has been nice.

That friday I went and saw this dude.

"Clive Chin is a Chinese Jamaican record producer whose work includes seminal recordings by The Wailers, Dennis Brown, LeePerry and Black Uhuru, among others. "

He spun some classic Reggae jams all night after giving a short talk about his experience in the scene and growing up around all that music. I talked to him for a few minutes towards the end of the night It was pretty neat to a) meet a Chinese dude with a Jamaican accent b) meet someone who was around and played an integral part in the popularization of such an awesome genre of music and c) get to listen to it all night at a bar in Beijing.

It snowed again on monday, and this time around it wasn't just a dusting. Beijing got somewhere around 3 to 4 inches in a single night. That made getting to work something of an adventure. After taking 40 minutes to get a cab I made it school only 20 or so minutes late. After school I decided I'd show some of these kids who'd never before seen this much snow how to handle a snowball. Little did I know that as soon as I threw one, I opened up pandora's box in terms of a snowball war. Of course, every student wants to hit their teacher with a snowball. How could I have possibly overlooked that? Next thing I knew snowballs were flying from all directions, most coming from the older kids (who can throw pretty damn hard) and who are unaware that headshots are unsportsmanlike. After 4 lazerbeam shots to the head I retreated in doors. Not to be outdone, I ventured back out after a few minutes, recruited a few students and opened thigns back up. I like to believe that final outcome was a draw if you ignore that first lopsided massacre.

Oh, somewhere in there I tipped over on my bike and ended up with a fat lip and a banged up knee cap, but things seem to be healing well.

Now, this city doesn't have snow plows but they do have a shit load of people, so after only an afternoon of millions of peoples worth of shoveling power, most of the streets were clear and Beijing traffic resumed it's usual chaos. Now, two days later it's snowing again. I rode my bike this time. I made it with icy pants cuffs, glasses that I could barely see through and and a water stain on my carhartts that ran from my crotch and down the inside of each pant leg (my studetns still don't believe it was from the weather) and honestly I couldn't have been happier. I've had three relatively snowless winters in a row and without even realizing it, this was the little piece of home that I needed right now.

The view from my classroom

Check you later folks,

-Ben

How Many Purses?

Hello.

In sticking with my infrequent updates, here I am three (four?) weeks later to yet again update you on the going ons of my life here in Beijing and hopefully entice you to read the whole thing by providing you with music and visual entertainment. So without further ado:

PODCAST

If you've actually been keeping up to date on the podcasts over the last year you might notice that we jumped form I believe podcast 14 in the previous post to #17 here. This is because I've been putting them together in my spare time and numbering them as I go and it turned out that I liked #17 better than 15 or 16, so it's jumping a couple spots in line while I put 15 & 16 on the back burners for a few weeks.

Life stories

Things have been happening for the last few weeks on a pretty regular basis. This happened, in a big way. Fighter jets, tanks, people marching, fire works, China showing off just a what a huge communist country can do when they decide they want to put on one MFer of a parade. Unfortunately there were rules (see: laws) about foreigners not being down on the main route to see the parade, to the point where police went around to all the apartments that lined Jianguomen Rd (the main road that runs past Tianmen Square, which was the center of the parade route) and put up notices that no one is to be seen looking out their windows during the parade and if seen it is possible that they will get shot by a sniper. I figure it's just a rumor, but I heard this forma number of people from a lot of different running crews. I did watch it on tv though at a friends' apartment while he and his bride to be made breakfast burritos. Bangin? Indeed. I was even able to run down to Gongti Beilu (Worker's Stadium North Rd) and see the tanks making their way back to wherever they go after a parade (army base? Tibet?) and snapped a couple of bad photos on my iphone. Check it:

WOW! Tanks! Them shits were loud, lemme tell you what. The whole parade thing was to celebrate China's 60th Anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China (i.e. communism) and what says communism better than giving everyone a week off of work? Nothing as far as I know. So while everyone else was on vacation, worked because our school takes some kids on a trip during our fall break and after trying to move 60 kids around last year while the rest of China was on vacation sucked like so many shop vacs, which year we decided to push our break back a week in order to avoid the scramble. So on my vacation I had a whole lot of nothing to do. I ended up just bumming around the city, riding my bike a bit, playing ping pong, going to happy hours, hanging out with the dog, and generally being a huge load. However, the weather during that week was mostly beautiful and I managed to snap a few pictured during a couple rides with that handy dandy lil gadget I call iphone again. So, yes the pollution is pretty bad here, but once you get a bit out of the city and into Beijing's 'backyard' you get a little bit of this:

Yes, that is the Great Wall. (Of China).
Somewhere, about 60k in the distance, is my apartment.

I'll try to save the too-much-bike-talk for another post. Before I do though, I just want to bring to your attention something that has been bothering me for a while. There a criminal trial going on in California right now over a 60 year-old former ER medic who purposely braked in front of two cyclists to "teach them a lesson". One rider went over the car and into oncomming traffic, the other went face first into the rear windshield, breaking and nearly severing his nose off of his face. If you're curious you can read coverage here. Now this is all the talk on most of the bike blogs right now. The driver is being charged with assault with a deadly weapon. Obviously, the source I'm reading about this from is pretty biased, and lots of people have been writing in with their stories of being hit by angry drivers with not justice. It's really made me think though (hard to believe, I know). Here I am in a city with something like 9 million bicycle commuters, most of whom are not skilled riders at all, and somewhere around 3.5 million cars (not including trucks, buses, and other motorized vehicles) where most drivers of those cars didn't drive 2 years ago. Now, granted the bikes outnumber the cars here almost 3 to 1 and cars are used to dealing with driving AROUND bikes, but the drivers here are still pretty terrible, worse than most in the US I'd say since pretty much no one here obeys traffic laws, same with the cyclists. However, the rage is avoided here. Here in China, the bicycle is a necessary form of transportation and everyone understands that. In the US riding a bicycle is usually a choice, and understandably so since most things in the US are much more spread out than most other places in the world. Cities sprawl, towns are miles from the next, and the easiest way to get form one place to another is by a motorized vehicle simply because of distance. For some reason people in cars see that vehicle as their right and it's yours too, so why the hell would you choose to make your life more difficult and ride a bike? To some it seems to offend them by assuming that those pesky cyclists think they're better than those who drive. I'll stop trying to pick apart the why of the drivers vs. cyclist rage that exists in the US and get to my point: I feel much safer here. Even though people are worse drivers here, cars move slower. Hell, I'd say most cars top out on the highway at around 45 mph. I heard from a friend that the average speed of a car in Beijing is 19mph, meaning if you're a quick cyclist it takes you the same amount of time to get somewhere as it would in a car. People are also looking out for bikes here, while they most definitely are not in the states. Most importantly though, bikes belong here. I hear a lot of people in the US say bikes don't belong in the street (which is very much untrue since most states declare it illegal for bikes to ride on the sidewalk). I'm going to digress here since I'm probably preaching to the choir here since many of you do ride a bike at least for fun as much as for function and end with a couple requests. Please be careful. Both bikers and drivers. I'd like for drivers to be more careful around bikes, but a lot of the rage stems from bikers assuming the road belongs to them. It doesn't. You have to share it, and so do the drivers. Keep in mind that the way you ride reflects on all bikers and although you may get away with doing something stupid that pisses off some driver, he may take it out on someone competely innocent. My bottom line I guess is something my mom taught me a long time ago: It doesn't matter if you had the right of way if you're dead. Bikers are very exposed and it's easy to forget that on both sides. whew. I'm gonna cut that rant off since it's not keeping with my promise to avoid the too-much-bike-talk.

In other exciting me related news, I met this dude Rob last night who is a director and film editor. We got to talking and it turns out he's making a short film that has some funding from Sony and he asked if I'd like to do some music for it. I told him hell yes I do. The film will be starring Rick Stanning who you can see in the music video below filmed mostly in the Beijing subway system.

The Electric 6 will also be on the soundtrack. Rob also put together an unofficial music video to a Queens of the Stone Age song.

The Most Exalted Potentate of Love from terrible_apartment on Vimeo.

I hope this actually pans out. Rob says there isn't really money to be made, which is cool with me, but that he's gonna enter the film in a bunch of festivals and I gotta say, after watching the two videos above, I'm impressed. I'm pretty excited to hopefully be a part of this in the near future. I'll post updates as they progress.

To finish off here, I spent a good deal the last few weeks watching BMX films. Yes I love bikes. Yes I love going fast. But there's so much grace and beauty involved in bmx cycling, and when someone puts together a good film, well it's something worth watching. This first one I got the opportunity to see on a big screen at the Bicycle Film Festival this summer and after further searching found the second one by the same guys. The second one has made me decide that I'm moving to Spain after I leave China, because why not? Right?

Fox Bmx - Andalucia! from FoxHeadInc on Vimeo.

Last things lastly, My friend Maggie is in this band called Hildur Victoria. They're putting out an EP in a few weeks. They're playing a show with Halloween, Alaska and Haley Bonar on November 27th. You should go buy the album when it drops and go see that show cause they are sick live.

NORTHERN OUTPOST - Bonus #3 - Hildur Victoria from Northern Outpost on Vimeo.

I would probably be plugging them anyways since I've got a friend in the band, but I'm dead serious when I say they should be the next big thing to come out of the Twin Cities. After only two shows they're already bumping elbows with a couple of the big local names. Get in on the ground floor while you can cause I expect them to blow up soon.

That's all for this extended edition. Catch you on the flip side.

-B

WOO HAH

After a long hiatus, I am back in a big way (that's a terrible attempt a joke about me being tall and in China. Get it?).  Summer's been all kinds of done for quite some time now and I suppose it's about that time to throw another update out on the series of tubes known and the internets.

So:

What it do friends, family, and chumps of other various affiliations to myself?  I suppose it's been a while since I've put anything up here and it's getting to the point where some of you may be wondering what the hell I'm doing (probably not, but a guy can always pretend that people care about him).  Well, as most of you are aware I'm back in China.  I've been back now for about four weeks now and I guess I'll try to bang out a greatest hits post here of what it's like being back.  

First things firstly, since this is shaping up to be more of the informational type post I may as well entice you with some music which will then hopefully guilt you into reading the whole thing.  Or I suppose you could just download an hours worth of free music that I prepared for you (with love no less) and then get the funk out.  But then you would suck.  Don't be that dude.  (Kehoe, I'm looking in your direction).

Check it: FREE MUSIC

Now that you got some jams pleasuring your earholes, let's get to it.  Upon my arrival a few weeks ago everything went smoothly.  Both bikes made it without getting lost as did my luggage (first time that's happened in three trips over here).  The driver from my school picked me up form the airport (ballin) and drove me to my new apartment where my old friend (from the Stp) and new roommate Megan was waiting with Q-Tip the D-O-double-G.  I didn't really know where my new place was since Megan found it this summer while I was back home but once I found out where it was I was super excited to say the least.  It's right at a subway stop, around the corner from a bunch of restaurants and a short bike ride from some really great hutong (old chinese alley) neighborhoods.  It also turns out that I'm a 10 minute bike ride from the hutong where three of my friends just moved to also.  In short, I'm A LOT closer to everything I wanted to be closer to (friends, restaurants, bars, places to bike) and now only a 35 minute bike ride from work.  Also, that 35 minute bike ride includes about 10 minutes biking around and cutting through a very beautiful but largely abandoned olympic park.  I find this part of my commute pretty awesome just about everyday.  I'll try and put some pictures up of that soon too.

We got a bunch of new teachers this year and they all seem pretty cool.  All in all, the office just feels more comfortable this year than last year and also much more positive and professional.  Small world alert: the new nurse graduated with me from St. Olaf but we had never met.  Weird stuff.  

I spent the first couple weeks and weekend scoping out the new neighborhood and seeing friends I hadn't seen for a couple months or more.  I was introduced to a guy who suggested that we get together with the guitar player from his band and jam in their practice space.  I damn near wet my pants at this suggestion.  So hopefully that's gonna start soon.  

The weather's been bouncing back and forth between hot as bawlz and actually pretty nice.  It rained for about 4 days in a row a week ago, and in a place where rain is enough of an anomally, 4 days straight was pretty strange.  However, after it cleared, Beijing experienced that lovely post-rain chill that us Minnesotans know so well and we were hit with about a week straight of clear skies (again, weird stuff) and 70's, just perfect for my first long bike ride of the new school year. 

Saturday we embarked on our journey via bus at 6:30am in an attempt to beat traffic out of the city and get to the country side at a reasonable hour.  After a few hours in the bus (traffic hit us like a ton of shit bricks) we made it to the drop spot, got out, and started riding.  After a couple hours and about 80 kilometers of pretty hard pounding on the pedals we took a break to get more water, maybe a coke, and I opted for some white rice at this restaurant:

(check the shirtless dude in the back.  He may be reason #1 why I enjoy living here so much sometimes)  

It was around this time that Tom (the guy who organizes the rides) discovered that we had missed a turn/that turn didn't exist.  That meant that instead of having about 30 miles left, we instead had about 50 to go.  It also turned out that most of those 50 miles were false flat (gradual uphill) and into a head wind.  Fun stuff.  So last saturday I rode my first century (over 100 miles in a day) on accident. I got back home around 8:30pm, making it a 14-15 hour biking day.  Not too bad, but tough on my poor legs that had only done city biking and a carney sized handful of 40 mile rides this summer.  For those interested (which is most likely none of you) we did the whole 100 miles in almost exactly 5 hours with a couple substantial rest stops, making our average speed somewhere between 22-24 miles per hour.  Not super fast but definitely not slacking.  

Lastly, my dog is hella cute:

Peace & Hairgrease Homies

Does anyone else remember this?

Cause I do.  Watching Snoop get wheeled out in the wheel chair was a childhood memory I will cherish for the rest of my life.  Ah, to be young again.

When the bummer life get's you down.....

....Stand back up and kick it to the curb. This dude, Dan Caro, is perhaps one of the most awesome people I have ever heard about or witnessed in the medium of video. You can check out his bio here. If you want the long short of it, Dan got toasted by a water heater when he was 2, burning over 70 percent of his body. He lost his hands. Bummer, right? Well, yes. BUT, Dan said "F that noise, Ima play me some drums, dammit." And so he did. And did he ever. Check it:

Dan Caro is a new hero of mine. Dude can flat out play.

Secondly, it was the 20th anniversary of the Tienanmen protests yesterday. Now, while I may not know a whole lot about those, I've read a very minimal amount and I found this article very interesting and informative. It gives you a very quick idea of what's up with communism and capitalism in the place I am currently calling home. Also, surprisingly enough, it's not even that long. Bonus.

Happy friday. I land at MSP in 4 weeks. Hoo. F-ing. Ray.

Bill Withers is the man

Also, the drummer is a total G.

Technology!

(taken from awkwardfamilyphotos.com

So I believe I mentioned quite a while ago that youtube has been blocked by China. Well, a few weeks ago they did the same thing to blogger(dot)com. This explains my absence from the realm of this online journal as of late. That, and once again happenings have been happening. Since the last post the weather continued being hot but that provided ample excuse to get my sorry behind outside. So outside I ventured. Next thing that happened was when Ratatat came to town. I don't know why, but for some reason Beijing is getting hit with a slew of fairly decent acts from the US. So back to Ratatat: It was F-ing awesome. The club way oversold tickets, there was no air conditioning, putting the heat somewhere around 115 degrees for the entirety of the show. Although the heat was making some of the people cranky (myself included, bows were thrown) all the hostility melted away when Ratatat came out and rocked the funk out of the crowd. By the end of the show I was soaked completely through with mine and other peoples sweat, so much so that when I got out of the club I took off my shirt and wrung out probably close to a litre of liquid. Sweet, right? Anyways, here's some pictures of the show from rdx913's flickr page:

(Not Ratatat , not even close to the full crowd yet)

I know I wrote semi-excitedly about the race in the last post. Well, funny story, I set my alarm but forgot to turn it on so I didn't wake up in time to rush out to catch the bus., In fact I woke up well after the race had started a good 20k from my apartment. whoops. I have a chance for redemption though. Two weekends from now there is some sort of 'cycling weekend festival' out at the olympic cycling center & velodrome which includes a 40k road race and a 14k team time trial. They're both on sunday the 14th and I plan on riding in both. Here's the rub:

Ghostface is playing the night of the 13th. I will be going to this show. Dammit. I will the roll my sleep deprived, sore, probably a little hungover ass out of bed early on Sunday morning and go race 40k on my bicycle. I will then eat some lunch and power nap somewhere outside and then gear up for a 14k time trial with four other guys that I hope to finish in well under 20 minutes, the idea being this: the faster you go, the shorter the suffering.

Last weekend I went to a mixed martial arts event (think ultimate fighting with even less rules). 8 bucks to go see 12 fights and be surrounded by a whole lotta big dudes (total bro-fest) in small shirts. It was mildly entertaining, and became even more so when the jock jams guy came out to announce the last 6 fights. Hearing him say "Let's get ready to rumballllllllllllll!" was worth 8 bucks in itself (especially since I heard he makes a million everytime he says it, so I got a steal of a deal).

J-Rocc of the Beat Junkies is here this Saturday and I plan on going to that as well.

And to wrap up this pointlessness I'll leave you with a Podcast and a really awesome video inspired by my recent viewing (in the theaters no less) of the new Star Trek film. It was intense. This, not so much:


I'm home in a month. Get ready.

Mini Soda

Nee How Y'all. I have (of course) been slipping on the post front for a number of reasons:
1: I'm lazy
2: I've actually had some work to do
3: There really isn't a whole lot to report from the last few weeks.

So to make this easy on your eye-holes here's a short list of things that have happened over the last few weeks:

Uno: I rode my bike alot (again, of course). Spring here lasted for roughly two weeks and it has now been somewhere around 80 degrees since mid April. This means I've been riding around in a tshirt for over a month and now have a pretty sick (sick as in awesome) farmers tan going on on my arms. Also, it has become a normal thing for my weekend rides to go past a section of the great wall, something which I consider pretty F-ing rad. How often do you get to walk, ride, or drive past a world heritage monument? I get to do it every week.

Deux: I went to a city called Chengde a couple weeks ago. It wasn't anything too special, just another small Chinese city of 700,000. It used to be a summer get away for the emperors in the 1700's and has some parks and temples and stuff that we went and saw. It also has a giant rock standing on it's end on the edge of a cliff that honestly seems to defy physical and geological logic. There are pictures up on facebook and i'll throw them up on my picassa account soon. All in all though, it was nice pile into a van with 7 friends, drive 4 hours and get out of the city.

San:I started running

Vier: I found out I'll have a dog next year. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm real excited about this. My friend Megan (from St. Paul), whom I will be sharing an apartment come September was followed home by a puppy whom she decided to take to the vet and get checked out and cleaned up and junk, after which she decided she would find a new home for her. I quickly vetoed this idea and suggested she keep her for next year, something Megan had been hoping I would do, and so it was decided: we will have a third roomate in the fall. Her name is Q-Tip (as in "the Abstract got it goin on"). Here's a few pictures. Just try to not fall in love with that lazy eye.

Five: I bought a guitar. I'm pretty psyched to finally have a musical instrument to noodle around on in my apartment. My keyboard stays at school so I've been fiendin for some music whilst in my abode.

Roku: I've been getting all super geared up to come home. I know I touched on this last time, but now that the weather has turned into summer, it seems all I can think about is being home in MN for a couple months and doind al the things I like to do (eat, sleep, play music, see music, drink beer, ride bikes, travel, and more). I won't bother you any more with all that longful nonsense and instead I will direct you to a couple of podcasts. The first one which you can download here:
Made In China Vol. 11
is mostly inspired by things I want to listen to when I'm driving around the twin cities with the windows down this summer. It also begins with a little ode to the land that I hail from. So if you need something to get you in a more summerish mood, some tunes are only a few clicks away.
The second podcast, which you can download here:
Made In China Vol. 11 (The Chill Shit)
is something I put together with a similar idea as the first, but this one is more things I want to listen to with the windows down when I'm driving at night. It's also the first one I've put together that is ALL HIP HOP, so be forewarned. If you're not a hip hop fan, skip this one. That said, I'm pleased with how this one came together so give it a shot if you like music (plus it's free, so what do you have to lose?).

Last: This is awesome

That's all I can remember for the time being. As far as things coming up in the future, I'm gonna go see Ratatat next wednesday which WILL be awesome. It's been a while since I've been to a show (People Under That Stairs a few months ago) and I'm pretty excited to check these guys out. In Beijing no less. I also have another bike race next weekend (the 23rd). Who knows how that will go, but I plan on blowing up the field and claiming my first ever win in my second ever race (not really. There're some pretty fast guys around).

And I'm gonna finish up there and hope that this will kick start me into writing a bit more between now and when I get back to the home front.

-B

One, Two.....Get down

Not much to report this week. I haven't gotten around to a podcast, but I'll throw one up later this week for the 8 of you who are actually listening to them (thanks again for doing that). It's midterms week here at SPAS which means it's mostly a study week except for today (monday) and friday. Tue-thurs the kids have their exams and get to study during any class that doesn't have an exam that day. What this means for me is that this week I have very little to do, which I'm kind of looking forward to. I've got a pile of grading that's been growing the longer I ignore it (surprising, I know) that I'm hoping to tackle full on.

One of my co workers got in a car accident last week, hit his face on the windshield (he wasn't wearing his seat belt) and fractured a vertebrae in his neck. Apparently he's going to recover, but he's in the hospital, he's got one of those immobilizing halo's screwed into his skull and he'll be out of the office for a couple weeks. This was oddly surprising. I've seen more accidents here in the last 7 months than I probably have in my 22 years in the US, but I still haven't heard of any that involved anyone I know. Also, most of them are just minor fender benders with no injuries. So while it wasn't surprising to hear about another car crash, it WAS surprising to hear that the outcome was so severe.

I went for a pretty killer bike ride on saturday complete with over 2000 meters of climbing and a top elevation of 1200 meters. One climb was 20 kilometers long with the last 3k so steep that I had to be out of the saddle to pedal because even in my lightest gear I couldn't keep my pedals moving if I was sitting down. That said, the gearing on my bike is heavier than most (which means the mountains are harder for me because my easiest gear is harder than most others') and I made it to the top first with one other rider and a couple minutes ahead of the other 4 in our group. Another climb featured a section about 500 meters long at an 18% grade after already 5k of climbing. If you don't know gradients I'll just tell you that's pretty effing steep. All in all, it was a pretty brutal ride which made it all the more worthwhile, especially since I was supposed to be at an open house all morning and in to the afternoon on saturday for my school, but I managed to talk my way out of it. Apparently no more than 10 people showed up so I was much happier with my decision to go for a 100k bike ride instead of stand around my work on a saturday.

Speaking of bikes, I finally paid for mine which means I am now the proud owner of a 2008 Lemond 'tete de course' Triomph Ultimate. It is an all carbon frame with full Dura-Ace components. If you know anything about bikes, you'll understand that this is a REALLY sweet ride. If you don't know anything about bikes I'll make it easy for you: All put together the whole thing weighs 15 pounds and I can pick it up with just my pinky. The switch from a 20 year old steel frame with down tube shifters (which I still love and ride around town as my 'getting places' bike) to a almost brand new carbon racing bike was unbelievable. I'll stop being all bike nerdy and just say that I love it, I'm bringing it home for the summer and if anyone wants to go for a ride, let me know.

Since this post has been fairly bikecentric anyways, I'll close with this. I kind of dove head on into cycling this past year and it ahs been great. It's something I've really enjoyed and something I look forward to doing seriously for a long time. There are a lot of disciplines and one of my favorite is Cyclocross. It's something I want to pursue more and that part of me dreams of someday competing at a semi-pro level (I don't think I'll ever stop dreaming of competing at a pro level in a sport some day) Why? you may ask. Because if I ever won a race then this would be my trophy:

Photo ©: Bill McCarrick/www.buffalo2step.com


And like pale legs in the springtime, I'm out.

4 Mojitos is enough for a weeknight

Well a big hearty Ni Hao to the lot of ya.  It's been at least a week since last time and life continues to roll along at a rather lively pace.  Did I just say lively?  Apparently.  Deal with it.  It's been an odd week of sorts with one of our teachers gone, me with a bit of a head cold, nice weather, a short school week,  and I think that's about it.  I'm gonna try and keep this post not-so-wordy and just hit you with a few events of the last week.  

Also, here's a PODCAST

Tuesday I had my first REAL altercation with a student as a teacher.  After telling a student  politely to close a book she wasn't supposed to be reading in class 3 times, and then again two more times after she took it out again a couple minutes later,  I told her she would be getting a yellow card.  A yellow card is similar to what you would get in a soccer match.  It's a strong warning and isn't handled lightly.  I think I've given out one yellow card besides this one all year.  There is also an orange card, which is the same asa red card, but we changed it to orange because someone decided that the negative connotations that went along with a "red" card might not be appreciated in a communist country.  Later this student started cursing about me in Chinese under her breath and I told her she was working her way towards a yellow card if she kept it up.  Finally, as I was giving the rest of the class their assigment I said the sentence "what do you want to do?" to which she said under her breath in english "Kill teacher."  At this point I told her to leave the classroom.  When she didn't move I moved her backpack into the hall for her.  Still no movement, just glaring.  Now, this is an emotional girl.  She is very bright, and very passionate about learning, and some of us think she may be bi-polar.  At any rate, this was not the first time we've had a disagreement.  We usually get along well enough, but for some reason, tuesday was not a good day for either of us.  Eventually class ended with her not moving.  The rest of the students got up to leave and she didn't move.  Then she started yelling about how it was unfair for me to give her a card for swearing in Chinese when other students do it all the time.  She yelled about a lot of other things too.  She flung her books off the table and almost took out my keyboard and the school's amplifier.  In short, she threw one hell of a tantrum.  Crying and all.  While of course this wasn't fun at all, my favorite moment of the situation was when she yelled "SO JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE TEACHER I HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOU??!??!?!?" and I said, "Well, yes.  That's exactly how it works."  It all ended with her glaring at me and breathing really heavily, much like a small child would do, and telling me that she hated me and so did all of the students.  So that was tuesday. 

Sunday, I played basketball outside since it was about 78 degrees and sunny.  It was great.  I played with my friends from Cornell (side note: I realized recently that my core group of friends almost all went to Ivy league schools.  There are 4 from Cornell, two from Brown, and one from Yale.  Then there's a Korean American dude who went to some UC school.  Anyways, I every once in a while I think about it and it strikes me as odd.  Also, I'm the only one of us that hasn't studied any Chinese at all).  Highlights from basketball were playing against an all Chinese team who were pretty decent and had a guy on their team who was taller than me and at least 40 pounds heavier of all muscle.  This may be the biggest Chinese person I've ever seen.  Also, his Chinese name translates to english as Sea Breeze, so that's what we call him.  Anyways, the dude can post up like no bodies business, but I did manage to block the hell out of him a couple times, and it felt amazing.  Anyways, after playing, there was a really nerdy guy who had tried to join who honestly had no business being there.  I'm usually not one to judge to hard, and as a teacher part of me always wants to allow everyone to participate, but this guy was way out of his league.  He was terrible.  I felt bad for him......until we tried to leave.  As we were trying to leave he was holding my friend Hamm's ball and wouldn't give it back.  Apparently this other guy who had been playing with us took this Chinese guys ball, which of course had nothing to do with us because we hardly know the other guy, but since he's white like us this Chinese guy assumed we were in this theft together.  So, a conversation ensued along the lines of this:

Hamm: Give me my ball

Nerdy Chinese Dude: No, he took my ball

Hamm: I don't care, I did not steal your ball.  Give me MY ball.

NCD: No, he stole my ball

Hamm: Look, I'll give you Doug's number so you can call him and sort this out, but I havenothing to do with this so give me my ball

NCD: No, he took my ball

Hamm:  Give me my f****ng ball!

It went on like this for a while.  At some point Hamm took his ball from NCD and as we started to leave NCD threatened to call the police on us, so we told him to go right ahead.  He did.  As he was talking to the police and we kept walking her realized this wasn't going to turn out the way he wanted, so he finally had a rational thought and decided to take Doug's number.  In the end, he ended up going to Doug's apartment with a police officer to get his basketball back.  Fucking China.  

Ok, those were my couple hilarious/ridiculous/infuriating moments in China as of late.  I just loaded up some pictures taken over the last couple months from my sweet new camera.  So here's a few to give you an idea of what life is kind of like for me here in Beijing.  

Who can tell me the atomic weight of bolognium?

(Besides Ben Amel)
Yola Mi Amigos. I realize I am unscrupulously (that's a word, right?) late on the post front, but I'm not too worried about it. Most of you who are actually concerned with my more regular going-ons are hearing from me, and the rest of you don't seem to be too upset when I miss a week (or two) on this informational forum of my travels.

First things firstly, Download the PODCIZZAST (yuck). It's a pretty decent one if I do say so myself. Eclectic to the teeth.

Second things secondly, I've been in the news here lately. Check it out. If you look closely at the picture, might notice a not-Chinese dude in a St. Olaf jersey leading the pack. That dude just might be me. This, as far as I can tell, was the front page of the sports section on the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper's website. Dope? I sure think so.

I also managed to get a photograph from after the race put up on the popular (and quite funny) blog Bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com. Here's the picture on it's own:

To see it in it's published context click here and scroll to the bottom of the post. I can't tell you how many racers were puffin on cigs after the race waiting for the awards. It was actually a little hard to breath because of them, and we were outside. This guy though was outfitted in a full Rock Racing team kit, and for those who don't know (which is probably all of you) Rock Racing is this American professional cycling team that attempts to be the most badass team in the pro circuit, and do so by having skulls on their jerseys, showing up to races in team Cadillac Escalades, and signing riders who are known former dopers. They are also owned and run by Fancy-Jeans-Designer Michael Ball, CEO of Rock Denim Co. (or something like that). He's pretty much the Mark Cuban of the cycling world. So when I saw this dude in a complete team kit and skully suckin down a marb I grabbed my buddy Hiro's camera and snapped a couple pictures. Anyways, it got put up on the blog, and I'm pretty proud of myself.

As for the race itself, I think I got around 8th or 9th. It was a short race with about 7k of false flat (slight uphill that is kind of bitch to ride since you can never relax) and then a 6k climb up to 600m above sea level. It took about 31+ minutes. I helped set the pace with one other foriegn guy named Piers for the first 7k and then got dropped from the group when we hit the climb because I had over worked myself in the first half. Piers got beat out at the line by about 3 centimeters and took second. All in all though it was a lot of fun and I'm not too dissapointed with a top 10 finish in my first ever real bike race. Plus, I made the paper. If you're interested in seeing more pictures of me suffering up a mountain and looking pretty terrible and pasty in some spandexy biker clothes click through this album.

In other China news, youtube is down in the entire country because there's some video out there of Chinese police beating the shit out of bound, semi-consious/unconsious Tibetan monks from a few months ago. China says the video is edited to make it look worse than it is. I was able to watch the video on the BBC's website and, if you haven't seen it, I'll just say it's either WAY too real and really f-ed up, or it is indeed fake. Part of me wants it to be fake because of how terrible it is and makes me feel kind of dirty for living here and supporting a country in any way that is ok with stuff like that happening within its own borders. I'm not gonna try and post a link since if I do they might block me. Hell, they might block me just for writing that last bit. That's how China do. We'll just have to see.

Anyways, it's been a pretty busy last couple weeks for no reason in particular. Nothing too spectacular, just things going on, which is always a good thing because it means time is moving quickly from day to day and before I know it another week has passed and I'm smack dab in the middle of another weekend. Take this week for instance: it's already Thurday, and before I know it I'll be teaching my last lesson of the week and looking forward to my bike ride on saturday morning.

AH. Yes. I knew I had some big news to announce this week that I was forgetting. I know I told most of you that my plan was to spend a year teaching here and then move back to the Twin Cities (perhaps the greatest place on the planet (minus the cold)) and look for a teaching job there. Well, plans have changed. What with things the way they are (I hear there's some sort of trouble with the economy, or something) I've got myself a good job making good money here in China and I'll be staying another year. I know that makes me sound like a sell out, but while that is one big reason, perhaps the biggest reason I've decided to stay is because the music program I'm starting is just getting off the ground this semester and I'd hate to leave and have it come crashing down, so I've decided to stick around a little longer and see if I can't turn it into something bigger next year and hopefully help them hire someone else who will come in and do good things with it. Plus, while I do hear the Twin Cities calling my name daily, there's enough going on here to keep me entertained and when it gets down to it, that's good enough news for me to stay for the time being. I WILL be home this summer for July and most of August, and I do plan on making the most of my time at home. So those of you who I see on a regular basis in the land I call home, get ready for the most Radtarded Summer TM you've ever experienced. Expect hella bike rides, music shows, barbecues, and consumption of many sorts. Also, if any of you are at a loss for things to do next fall and after, there's always room for another person in Beijing. Think about it.

And like Mathew Mconeghey's shirt, I'm off

-B

Pure Fire

You probably thought Stevie could only play piano, harmonica, sing, and waggle his head.

Oh, Herro

Well folks, here we are at the business end of another week. In order to get it going on the right foot, or perhaps to get it back on track if you didn't have the best of mondays, just let lil Simeon warm your heart with the pose to end all poses. Also, go ahead and treat your ears to some tunes as well. If you haven't done so yet, please (if you please) go download my mixtape-of-sorts Mushy Bananas, which is all music made by me. It's almost up to 20 downloads, which means I appreciate at least 19 of you, but the rest of you are not pulling your weight as friends of mine. So do me a favor, and help me feel a little bit of love over here in China.

Not much to tell from the last week. I dropped another minute off of my time up that mountain on my bike, which is putting me close to the winning time in a race that took place on the very same road last year. Also, I realize it doesn't take much for something to become my new favorite thing, but I have another, and this will remain right up there until it causes me serious bodily harm. And even if it does, it will probably maintain it's spot. This thing is: bombing down a mountain on a 15 pound bicycle. There is absolutely nothing like it. After watching professional riders do it for a few years now, I now know what it feels like to hit highway speeds on a bike. I think I beat the rest of the group down the mountain this week by at least a minute. I can't wait to do it again next week.

I got knocked on my ass by a little bout of food poisoning this weekend which held over to yesterday. Not the best start to the week, but it seems to be subsiding.

The Men's D3 Nationals Swim Meet is this weekend at the U of M pool. Having competed in this meet 3 times, it's been oh so sad for me to miss it for the last 2 years, especially this one since it's being held once again 15 minutes from my house. My former teammates have been swimming out of their minds this year and I can't wait to see what they can do this weekend. Word on the street is they might break some national records. I sure hope they do. It still makes me proud to know that I once swam with these guys and was able to hold my own before they mutated into the monsters that they are today. Go Oles.

I promise I'll try to start talking about more things than bikes here, since many of you probably couldn't care less about them, but I don't know how anyone could NOT find this hilarious:



I think 90% of us were all there at one point. For me it was probably much later in life than Jake there. Once again, credit for that video goes to Stevil over at HTATBL. I'll try and get on this thing later in the week and put up some more stuff that I would like for you to read about on the internets. It feels like I've been living in a hole all week, and I'm not exactly sure what's happening in the rest of the world. Alls I know is Beijing pretty much skipped spring altogether. Last week it was below freezing a couple times, today the high is 79, and tomrorow it's supposed to hit 80's. So in that vein, life is pretty grood. I mean good. And great. Great and good.

I'm out like the vapors.

HOLYMOTHEROFGOD

My man, Gabe "Has-worn-adult-diapers-(that's right, plural diapers)/The-man-I-used-to-share-a-wall-with" The flying Norwegian sent me an email today that blew my socks right offa ma feet. Shoes too. This is perhaps the number one reason why youtube is great, and perhaps the best use anyone has ever put to it. Kutiman is a musician from Tel Aviv making big things happen in the realm sound. I gotta say, I've had his album queued up on eMusic for a while, and after I saw this video today I immediately got it. On the album, Kutiman writes, records, and plays all of his own music. This video is part of a different project he did called ThruYou where he raided the youtube library and made music using only the videos he found. Check it out, it's pretty f***ing rad. For now, here's the first track, the one that Gabe "it's 12 o'clock somewhere" H sent me today.



Thanks Gabe. You're the man.

In other news, it's almost the weekend. Allow this video carry you the rest of the way and let it prepare you to rock the funk out on the days that begin with an S.

-Ulysses "More Radtarted Than The Rest" Destructo

Lions are sweet

It's hump day! Hoo. Rar. I realized a while ago that the links for the old podcasts expire after a certain time and no longer work. So, if anyone wanted to listen to one that they didn't have, or is a new comer to the blog, or had their computer crash, or wanted to make an entire playlist of the same podcast over and over and over and over again, they would be unable to receieve these from the internets. But here comes Mr. DEstructo to the rescue with links to all of the past podcasts just incase you felt you needed them oh so bad. Check it:

First Podcast (made in India)
Made In China Vol. 1
Made In China Vol. 2
Made In China Vol. 3
Made In China Vol. 4
Made In China Vol. 5
Made In China Vol. 6
Made In China Vol. 7

Mushy Bananas - The Mixtape (my shit)

I sincerely suggest you spend a good amount of time here and also Radiohead remains awesome. Speaking of awesome, according to this kid, the new Watchmen movie is just that. Lastly, if you haven't figured it out by now, youtube is a great thing for reasons like this:



I must once again advise you to check out the fantastic blog that is How To Avoid The Bummer Life since I pretty much just regurgitate here the things that tickle my fancy the most there.  It pretty much is the largest crutch that gets me through my week and, of course, keeps the bummer life at bay. So check it out.  That's all for now folks. Have a great rest of your week.

Destructo: OUT

Double the pleasure!

Unfortunately another week is upon us, but in order to get it started right I have for you some music.  Today though, because I'm such a nice guy, I will give you good friend price.  Today you get twice the normal amount of music.  That's right, TWO podcasts.  "Why?"  you may ask.  Because it's March 8th, that's why.  You know what happened on March 8th?  Me neither.  Wow!!!!!!!  Amazing!!!!! how can he possibly afford to give up this much free music?  Because I am, as they say, rad to the power of sick.  The first podcast is just the run of the mill Made In China installment of whatever I've been listening to lately.  You can get that one here.  The second, BONUS podcast is kinda special.  As some of you may know, not only do I teach music, but occasionally I play some myself.  That's right folks, I am what some would call a musician (kind of, but not really).  The second special podcast is an EP/mixtape of sorts of some of my music.  It's pretty random, but it includes:

•  a mash-up I did when on the computer when I was about 15, before anyone even knew there was a hyphenated term for it
  
• The remixes I've done
• Some of the (phat) hip hop beats I've done
• Some attempted electronic music
• Three songs with real instruments (played by myself)
• The beat for the soon-to-be-club-hit of-the summer "Flop Yo Junk"

All the music on this one was made by me at some point over the last few years (except for the first track).  All of the instruments, where there are any, are played by me.  All of the songs were arranged and composed by me.  Any live instruments were recorded using no more than two microphones, an Mbox and my laptop.  They're not pristine, and are by no means finished products (any of them), but they're ideas that I've had, worked on and are at a point where I don't mind sharing them.   It's gotten to the point where I have a small handful of songs that I've been sharing with a small handful of people, and now I'm at the point where I'd like for more people to hear my music and perhaps even give me some feedback.  What (if anything) do you particularly like?  Like I said before, it's a pretty random assortment of tunes, so which are your favorite.  If I hear back from enough people I might even post links to download individual tracks, but for now, please, PLEASE download THIS, give it a listen and let me know what you think.  It would mean a lot to me.  Thanks in advance.  

Not a whole lot else here on the away front.  Things are already kind of turning into a 'same shit, different day' routine, but it's all good for the time being.  The weather is getting nicer here every day.  It was in the 60's this weekend, and 50's during the days most of last week.  I was able to get out on my bike for at a least a little every day after school last week.  On wednesday I rode into the middle of town and played some pick up 5 on 5 full court basketball for a couple hours, then got a burger and a beer and rode home.  

I saw this band last night called Super Smash Up from San Francisco, who played a bunch of rock music while the singers sang other songs over the music.  It was kind of alright.  I doubt I would've gone to see them in the states, but it was nice to see a decent american rock band.  And they were definitely going for the rock star look.  I think a friend of mine took pictures of them, or one of them will give me the flyer, but let's just say I had a hard time figuring out if'n one of the singers was a man or a woman for a long time (it was a man, yikes).  

I managed to lose my cell phone last weekend, and in doing so lost all of your numbers.  If you ever think about it, it'd be pretty cool if you sent me an email (warehamenator@gmail.com) with your number so I could put it in my new phone in case I want to call yas on the skype sometime.  Also, I was kind of bummed because I lost a couple of numbers that I had recently gotten and never had a chance to hang out with the people whom the numbers belonged to, but then in the last week I randomly ran into every person I thought I wouldn't see again.  Weird shit.  

I did that 90k ride with the huge climb again yesterday and topped my time from last week of 34:30 by doing the climb in 32 minutes flat.  That hurt.  A lot.  I also decided to take a little faster on the way down since I know the road a little better now and made it down the mountain in about 9 or 10 minutes.  So that's 10k up in 32 minutes (around 19kph average), 10k down in 9 (over 60kph average).  This is my new favorite thing.  

The band is getting better every day.  It's pretty cool.  And on that, I'm gonna peace the funk out and go plan my lessons for the week.  

-B