kismetism

This trip is one of them. Here’s a smattering of things that I would have Tweeted if I were into Tweeting and I had a direct hookup to my cerebral cortex.

There are too many freaking people in China. No, really. They are also insanely rude when it comes to public transportation. On BART at rush hour, people will still try to respect each others’ space and give up their seats to elders. None of that here… people just push and shove from behind to squish everyone into the car… and when seats open up, it’s a veritable musical-chairs fight to claim it.

And driving is, for what it’s worth, almost definitely worse. I should note that personal cars only make up a very small percentage of traffic that dominates Shanghai’s streets… most of it is taxis and buses, and pretty much one hundred percent of them are more impatient and more aggressive than the worst drivers I’ve ever encountered in LA.

… All right, those wouldn’t have fit in tweets (i don’t think), but here’s a few that would.

• The weather here is fairly temperate. It’s not humid hot, but the air feels wet and thick somehow.
• Shanghai basically reminds me of San Francisco (with a shit ton more people; like it’s Market Street everywhere) during the day and Las Vegas at night, with all the lights.
• Mmm, roasted water chestnuts. >__>
• God dammit, stupid smokers… freaking everywhere. Can’t really believe that LA’s air actually beats … anyone else’s out.
• In my memory, there are a couple odors that I associate specifically with China… and maybe Chinatown. I have no idea what exactly it is that I’m smelling, so it’s kind of disturbing… but there it is.
• Taking the metro is freaking cheap… like $0.30 cheap (in American dollars). Crazy.
• We had lunch with a ton of people I didn’t know and/or otherwise recognize, but they were my dad’s very good friends from when he went to college. So I was having a ton of those weird “zomg, my dad was young / my dad had best friends” flashes.
• My dad reading a sign for a movie theatre: “admission is half price every day”. Umm, yeeeaahh…

There is much suffering to be had by everyone involved. I have definitely been doing the whole rollercoaster of emotions in the past couple of days while trying to work with symfony.

I hesitate to say that I’m coming around the bend (because I’m sure I’ll just dip again not too far from now), but right at this moment I’m doing okay. XP

I really wish there were better documentation of reserved and/or pre-used function names… because it’s a pain to accidentally use something that was already being used for something else and then not getting a clear sign of how why what when where.

And I was super disappointed that the function “hydrate()” was already being used! I changed mine to “hydrateMe()”, but still. :(

Positive: WHOOOO!!! GOT A PERFECT SCORE ON TILT CITY ADVANCED!!! WHOOOO!!!

Negative: I sliced my pinky finger while heating up food and it stings like crazy. qq. inc band-aid.

Nowadays whenever I watch a movie for the first time, it seems like one of the first things I do after I finish is … wiki it. >_> And then read whatever’s written. And sometimes get caught in that Wikipedia feedback loop, depending on the topics I find therein.

I guess it’s to double-check and make sure I understood everything that I thought occurred… and maybe pick up on details that I missed, if the article is thorough enough for that. Mmph.

On a related note, watched both The Shawshank Redemption and Julie & Julia recently. Both were quite good, but I don’t really feel compelled to write anything special about either, so meh.

1. Be tired from physically moving around.

2. Downward stepping motion.

3. ???

4. … OW. ::whine::

The best part about evals is going through all the final journal entries and reading about how the student was totally not expecting to have fun this summer.

The fact that absolutely no one stated that they disliked the “quest” system is a plus, too.

It sucks to get a letter that is essentially full of praise, and yet all you can do is double or triple check every line and wonder if you’ve broken some kind of rule.

::sucks on a finger::

:(