Archives for February 2010
One Month After China
… and I’m ready to go back. Nah, just kidding. There are certainly things I miss about China (my girlfriend being first and foremost), but I really wasn’t getting much enjoyment out of teaching, and there are so many things about China that drive me crazy and would have continued to do so had I stayed. For the sake of my sanity, it was important to leave.
But being back in the US has been rather stressful. A lot of chores pile up while you’re away, and the job market ended up being considerably bleaker than I imagined. That’s a rude awakening. But there are some good things about being back, too. It’s nice to be around my family again, and it’s nice to have Mexican food and legitimate copies of video games readily available!
On the other hand, it’s hard to go from being a foreign teacher and being treated like a celebrity (for better or worse) to being just a plain, old US citizen again. I don’t stand out at all, and few people even bat an eye when they hear that I’ve been living overseas for 18 months. If that time has done anything for me, it’s just put me way out of the loop.
Part of the problem is that I’m from a small town in Utah. The population here has yet to break 10,000. Changzhou had a population of 3.5 million and enough shops and restaurants and fun things to do to support that many people. In a city that big and crazy (this is China, after all), every day was an adventure (again, for better or worse). Believe me, I’m hoping I can move soon, but for the time being, I really feel like I’m just treading water.
Mini Game Reviews 1: Beautiful Space
In China, I watched a lot of TV series and started writing short reviews to keep me busy. Now that I’m back in the US, my entertainment focus has shifted from TV back to good, old video games. I used to write in-depth reviews for gaming sites, but I don’t have the time to be in-depth anymore. I’m going to go mini for a while.
Beautiful Katamari (Xbox 360)
Six years ago, I thought the original Katamari Damacy was the most creative game ever. Today, it’s apparent the series has not progressed at all. As I played Beautiful Katamari (and grew increasingly angry with the stubborn controls), I kept asking myself, “Didn’t I already do this level in the first game?” It all pans out the same, anyway. You roll a little ball around, collecting bits of garbage or food or animals, until it grows bigger and bigger and starts engulfing ocean liners and entire cities. The idea is, admittedly, pretty amusing. If you haven’t seen a katamari ball roll up a herd of cows before, you really ought to get on that. But the biggest misgiving about the game is that watching it is actually more enjoyable than playing it. The controls, even after six years, suck. Rolling the ball requires the use of both analog sticks and maneuvers like a broken tank. If this series wants to keep going, the developers have got to reinvent the way you move, because I honestly can’t take another minute of it.
Dead Space: Extraction (Wii)
I’ve realized now that the Wii is only good for two things: Smash Bros. and on-rails shooters. Hey, on-rails shooters are awesome! But the enjoyment comes from playing with another player and seeing who can shoot those rascally space creatures faster. Dead Space has a nice, diverse selection of weapons and a satisfying limb dislocation system that lets you pin off a monster’s arms and legs one by one. The monsters make some really disturbing sounds when they die, though. I’d rather play Ghost Squad for that reason alone. Well… I also prefer Ghost Squad’s quick, skippable story. Dead Space lays on the dialogue and atmosphere a bit too thick, and there are times where several minutes have passed and nothing’s showed up to shoot. An on-rails shooter is not the medium to make me care about the characters! Granted, there is a challenge mode that’s all about shooting monsters, it just lacks any kind of purpose or reward. It wasn’t meant to be the game’s selling point.
Gears of War (Xbox 360)
I was always hesitant to try (and like) Gears of War. Maybe I was just tired of Cliff Bleszinski being the poster boy for game designers. But since the Gears clamor has finally died down, I’ve discovered that the game really is a fun experience. Its “duck and cover” gameplay is a nice change of pace from the usual “run in guns blazing” nature of shooters. The game’s even better in co-op, because you can coordinate strategies like having your friend be a decoy while you snipe from a safe distance. The enemy is doing the same thing, too, so there’s a lot of figuring out how to safely advance from one hiding spot to the next. Gears has an entire chapter, though, where you’re trudging through tight corridors, having to fight off monsters with a shotgun, because it’s too cramped to back up and aim at anything. And I kept thinking, “This is not what this game is good at.” What it is good at, however, are the open, epic battles against waves of monsters with plenty of walls to run and crouch behind. I’m definitely a fan of those.
Pinball Hall of Fame: Williams Collection (Xbox 360)
I don’t say this often enough. I love video pinball. But good pinball is hard to find, and I’ve often had to fall back on the Windows pack-in Space Cadet to get my fix. Pinball Hall of Fame, on the other hand, kicks ass… in more ways than one. This game is really tough. The problem with pinball (and Pinball Hall of Fame) is how the tables are designed so the ball always falls down the side holes. Every single time! But bumping the table is a legitimate strategy and actually feels like it does something in this game. It’s very rewarding when you can successfully nudge the ball away from the hole. It’s also very rewarding when you finally beat all the basic goals on one of the tables. Just don’t get me started on the wizard goals. Did I mention this game is hard? But that’s the beauty of pinball. For as frustrating as it is, it’s rarely the fault of crappy game design or physics. Yeah, some of the tables are just a little too unforgiving, but you’ve got 13 total to choose from. That’s a lot of tables for $10.
I Dream of Flying Pancakes
One of the great entrepreneur stories in our town was about a local guy who built a toy factory. What made his toy factory special (or rather… very peculiar) was how the toys dropped off a conveyor belt onto an audience of volunteers below. The people in the audience then made one adjustment to the toy and passed it back until it ended up in a bin at the back of the room. And people loved this! A few of my friends went there all the time and had a blast putting someone else’s toys together.
I decided to go talk to the owner and get some ideas on how to start a business. Today wasn’t a good day, though. He was freaking out, saying the world was going to flood, and everyone was going to die. But because he foresaw this, he had cooked a giant, flying pancake to protect himself. Unfortunately, he was right about the flood. Water crashed in through the windows and swept him away before he could get into the pancake. My girlfriend and I took it, instead, wiggling inside the dark, somewhat gooey center. Then we waited.
After 40 days, the pancake landed on dry ground. The flood was gone… and so were all the people. Well, they weren’t really gone, they had just turned into animals. Dogs. Cats. Other weird creatures. My girlfriend and I wanted to know what happened, so we started exploring some nearby caves. Underground, we came across more homes where the people had been replaced with animals. But then we found a fortress that belonged to a pale, little girl. Apparently, the girl was a witch, and the flood and the animals were her doing.
Naturally, I challenged to fight her. She set up an arena so all of her minions could watch her beat me. She also transformed into a giant octopus-like monster just to make things a little easier for her. I smacked one of her yellow eyes with my flashlight a few times, though, and that changed her mind. She sent all her minions to chase us away. By the time we got back outside, it was already 11:30 at night. We had something we were supposed to do at 12:00, but we decided to go back into the cave and take care of the witch. Whether or not we did, I don’t know. I woke up before we reached her again.
Making Sense of Chinese Bus Stop Signs
Riding the bus in China isn’t exactly a fun experience, especially when you’re trying to get on during the busy hours (also know as all hours of the day). Eventually, though, you’re going to need to figure out the bus system in your new Chinese city. I know many expats don’t like bothering with the bus stop signs, because they’re too confusing, so we’re going to walk through this together.
The big mass of characters above the word BUS are the names of the bus stops read from top to bottom. The red highlighted one is the stop you’re at right now. The two characters next to the bus stop number, 下站, refer to the next stop. The red numbers in the top-right corner tell us when the first and last bus run (frustratingly, most of the buses end before 9:00).
Don’t forget to look at the top of the sign, which displays the current stop in characters and pinyin. This is a great way to start tying the two together. If you can start recognizing simpler characters like 大 (da) or 中 (zhong) in the names of important bus stops, it makes it a lot easier traveling around town. But if you don’t care to learn how to read Chinese, at least copy the characters (the best you can) in your notebook so you can compare them with other bus signs when you’re ready to return.
But on the bus, none of this will do you much good, because the stops are announced (if at all) in Chinese, and the marquee (if there is one) doesn’t always work. The easiest thing to do is count how many stops are between you and your destination on the sign, then keep track of how many times the bus stops while you’re on it. I know all of this makes perfect sense already, but the first few times you get on a Chinese bus can be pretty scary. Good luck.
onmouseout of a Div Tag Successfully
The frustrating thing about being a web developer is when you’re trying to accomplish something as simple as a menu popping up when the mouse hovers over a link… but it just won’t work. The obvious solution is to use “onmouseover” on the link to make a div tag visible, then use “onmouseout” on the div to make it invisible. But this produces a very screwy menu:
The problem is that any time the mouse moves from one element to another (in this case, from the div tag to a link inside the div tag), it counts as an “onmouseout.” Thus, the menu closes. Every suggestion I found, however, wanted to use complex Javascript to follow the parent target of the mouse and blah, blah, blah. It’s not important, because it still doesn’t account for quick mouse movement. But here’s what you can do. Add “onmouseover” events to each of the links inside the div tag as well as the div tag itself that will continue to display it.
It may not be elegant code to repeat events that many times, but at least it works. And at least it makes sense! Well… if you have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s the Javascript function that shows and hides the menu:
function showlinks(x) {
if (x == 1)
document.getElementById('morelinks').style.visibility = 'visible';
else
document.getElementById('morelinks').style.visibility = 'hidden';
}
And here’s the HTML template. Notice how many times we end up calling the function with “onmouseover” and “onmouseout.” Passing a 1 means show it and a 0 means hide it. Right now, it will only hide when the mouse moves out of the div tag. You can also add this to the main link.
<a href=" " onmouseover="showlinks(1)">my website</a> <div id="morelinks" onmouseover="showlinks(1)" onmouseout="showlinks(0)"> <a href=" " onmouseover="showlinks(1)">characters</a> <a href=" " onmouseover="showlinks(1)">videos</a> <a href=" " onmouseover="showlinks(1)">music</a> <a href=" " onmouseover="showlinks(1)">writing</a> <a href=" " onmouseover="showlinks(1)">programming</a> </div>
Now go make some menus.
A Fat Chinese Person is a Normal American
On returning home, one of the first differences that struck me between the US and China was the size of the people. Americans are big. They’re taller, stronger, fatter, just… bigger all around. In China, you go to the store, and it’s packed with people who all look like super thin supermodels. There’s not a single fat person to be found anywhere.
Well, fat Chinese people do exist, they’re just very rare. I only saw one or two truly obese people the entire time I was there. Maybe it’s their diet (of KFC and ice cream) or all the walking they do, or maybe Asians just got lucky in that sense. But not everyone is scarily thin. Some of my students were obviously spoiled and well-fed, and, in the summer, the men do like to roll their shirts up to reveal their beer guts.
Because the majority of people are thin, though, they have a twisted view of what normal weight is. Anybody who has any bit of meat on them is labeled fat, and the only thing that garners more chuckling and pointing than a white person getting on the bus is an obese person. It’s sad how a beautiful Chinese girl by American standards faces constant ridicule for being “chunky,” and it’s sad how people have no qualms about informing said girl she needs to lose weight.
This is the part I will never understand about China. Why is it acceptable for people, even first acquaintances, to tell others they’re fat, that they need to lose weight, that they need to eat less, that their boyfriends will never love them if they continue to eat so much? Yes, these are all common jabs. Even more obnoxious is how my students would always refer to their slightly bigger classmate as “the fat one.” Those kids loved pointing out fat people. It was an obsession.
Apologists like to bring up that China is simply a more open society. And that’s definitely true. Frequent comments were made about my acne and my big nose and even my lack of weight. Open or not, though, if you call somebody fat, even a Chinese person, you run the risk of hurting their feelings. Nobody likes being reminded of their physical flaws. Remember the “chunky” but beautiful Chinese girl? Yeah, her feelings get hurt, too.
Chinese Marketing: Clapping for Customers
Another Youtube video. Sorry, China users.
Many of the clothing stores in China will have one or two employees standing in the doorway, clapping. That’s all they do. They clap. I gotta admit, though, when I hear the sound of two hands smacking against each other, I’m compelled to buy something. It gets me every time. Occasionally, these employees will yell out specials, but… their job is mostly clapping. And that’s the best job ever.
Haibao’s Expat Guide: Ordering Noodles
Youtube warning for those reading from China:
When my brother and I were in Changzhou, we wanted to do a series of videos about the Shanghai Expo mascot, Haibao, giving advice to new expats in China. The first (and only) one we did focused on breaking away from the McDonald’s habit and eating local food (”la mian” and “dao xiao mian” noodles).
Alas, the weather got too cold after we finished “ordering noodles” to do anymore filming. Going around town with a Haibao puppet garnered a frustrating amount of attention, anyway. It’s hard to film when everybody wants to stand in front of the camera to watch what you’re doing.
We had some help with the puppetry and voice acting, but all filming and post production was done by JR.
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