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My friend Mike got married yesterday to a chinese girl. I took some pictures and this is what happened. They went through the traditional rites of a chinese marriage, but added some western marriage flair. Hehe. Enjoy the photos.
alltogether
andyjia
car
carpose
carry
dumpling
gaowei
me
mikeflower
omen
poster
teacher
together
[Karma: 58 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 05.27.07 @ 06:01 PM China [link]
Martial art correction:
The master that I met my second night here in Kabukicho is actually an Yiquan or TaiKiKen master. What this means is this: he has transcended martial arts and will teach me how to do it as well.
The man who invented Yiquan was a master of a style called XingYiQuan. Xing meaning 'form' and Yi meaning 'mind'. He decided that people werent training XingYiQuan the correct way, so he decided to teach it the way it is supposed to be taught. He believed that movements arent what create martial power, but instead your philosophy and intentions create martial power. YiQuan isnt taught with movements. Yiquan training teaches you how to create explosive power, or FaLi, through any natural position. Yiquan's translation would be "Mind Boxing".
Martial skills break a new ground,
the muscles contain strength and the bones store the spirit,
stillness is like a tame panther jumping high in the air,
movement is like a dragon diving into the waves,
commanding the wind and thunder to move,
only a few people have broken through this barrier.
-Wang XiangZhai
Ron
[Karma: 66 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 08.16.06 @ 04:22 AM China [link]
Japan what a beautiful country. But with beauty comes price. Everything is so expensive here for Frugal Ron. Doing anything fun costs lots of money, so I just dont do anything. I woke up at 2, and surfed the internet until 6. At 6 I went outside and played video games at the arcade until 10 then came back to my hotel.
I really need to find things to do. Today was a wasted day. Tomorrow I will go to Shibura which is the fashion capital of japan. I will probably buy some clothes or something.
I did some thinking today and realized that I have picked up some bad habits from living amongst chinese peasants.
Some of the habits that I have picked up and hope to abolish while in japan:
Spitting everywhere
Crossing streets without waiting and without crosswalks
Throwing trash/food everywhere
Talking very loud
Showering only once per two weeks
Shoving people out of the way in a line
Walking to the front of a line without waiting
Eating sunflower seeds constantly and spitting them everywhere
Wanting to punch everyone who makes me angry
and a few more on the top of my head.
I realized that what I want in life is very simple compared to most people. I just want to survive the winter and train my mind/body/spirit.
I really need something to do in Japan. I want to go visit a Hakkyoku Ken school and I would like to see some sumo wrestlers and geisha. I wish I had some kind of guide to help because by myself I am a bit shy. Since I am pretty much bilingual now, it freaks me out that I cant understand japanese. I communicate with japanese people by writing characters. I will start learning the japanese language seriously now and maybe in the future I can find a job here. Japan is what I thought china was going to be.
[Karma: 59 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 08.15.06 @ 01:47 AM China [link]
Japan Day 3:
Woke up at 2pm and quickly got dressed and ready to go out. By 2:30 I was walking to the train station and quickly figured out how to take a subway across the city. The goal of today was to go to Akihabara and see as many cute school girls as possible. Akihabara is the electronic and videogame nerd center of tokyo. Arriving in akihabra we decided to keep track of how many school girls each of us had seen and have a little competition. We had only seen one from the day before and danny had spotted her, so he started with the first point. Andy forgot his glasses and wasnt able to see anyone today so it was just me versus danny. Right out of the train station, danny spots two girls in sailor outifts and jumps up to 3 points.
We first go to visit booktown where the most books are for sale in tokyo. The first store we went into looked like a book shop, but as we entered we realized it was a porn shop. Looking around a bit we decided that the whole section of town was just a bunch of porn shops. We also werent seeing anymore schoolgirls so we headed to musictown. At musictown I was interested in buying a trumpet so I went to look for one. Trumpet prices are skyhigh. Ukeleles cost 1500 US dollars, and trumpets are about 5000. Ridiculous. So i ended up not buying a trumpet.
Deciding musictown was lame, we headed to the electronics district and the main reason that we came to akihabara. In the electronics district I spotted at first 3 school girls and ended up tieing with danny. Then I spotted two more wearing very slutty outfits but realized that they were being filmed for porn. Since they were just actresses, I didnt get the points for that one and no one claimed it. We entered into a sword shop and realized it was a front for a child pornography store. I didnt realize that anyone took pictures of 8 year olds in swimsuits and sold it. Ridiculous.
We quickly left, feeling like scum and went to a video game store. This store had a bunch of cool stuff but everything was in japanese and I didnt want to buy a videogame in japanese, so I didnt. Amazing.
Akihabara was overrated and we left to go back to the hotel. Arriving back at the hotel, I spotted 5 more schoolgirls putting me at 9.
I love japanese food, I think I will get fat while I am here. In china I have no problem losing weight because the food sucks, but here I have been eating cheesecake with every meal :]
[Karma: 32 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 08.15.06 @ 01:39 AM China [link]
Day 2
Woke up at 2PM and went to buy some cheesecake and sandwiches at the AM-PM. Bummed around until 8 o'clock. At 8, we got picked up by my dads friend: Inanobe. He took us to a small chinese restaurant in Kobukicho. At this restaurant, we realized that Inanobe doesnt speak a word of english and we have no way to talk to him. So I ask if the people at this chinese restaurnt speak chinese, which of course they do. I used my chinese to talk to someone who would talk to Inanobe and then translate it back to chinese. I was actually utilizing my chinese to translate japanese. It was a weird feeling. I feel my fluency of chinese pretty good now :]
My dads friend asked what we wanted to do, and since we had no idea of what there is to do, thats what we answered back. He said okay then called my dad. I talked to my dad on the phone and he told me who Inonobe was. Excellent, we are with a celebrity.
After eating, Inonobe took us to a friendship bar. We sat down on stools and they gave us drinks and girls came and sat next to us. It is their job to pretend to be our friends. We talked for an hour and a half while sitting on some giant moving stage that did a full circle around the bar after some time. These girls did some cabaret dancing then talked some more. I spotted a girl wearing a schoolgirl sailor outfit and told inonobe that I like that outfit a lot. He then arranged for that girl to sit next to me and talk to me for the rest of the time that I was there.
Leaving this place, we went to a karaoke which gave us some refreshment and we sang two songs and left because it was boring.
Walking around kobukicho, we found an arcade that had a punching bag game to test how hard you punch. My punch is 350 pounds per square inch. It isnt that great, but we spent a lot of time at this game punching it over and over to get high scores.
Inonobe then took us back to the chinese restaurant and we were taken to a back room and told to sit down. The owner came out, and gave us tea then introduced a guy named Toshio to us.
This toshio was a martial artist and wanted to talk to us about taichi. He said that when he was younger, he was a japanese karate champion. After winning a major competition, an old man, 64 years old, came up to him and challenged him to a fight. Toshio being a young cocky fighter took the challenge. Toshio threw his strongest punch to the face of the oldman but was destroyed by the oldman's power. Toshio immediately bowed and called the old man, "master". This old man taught him fighting taichi.
Toshio said that being a boxer is only as good as long as you are youthful. You start losing your power as you become older. However with taichi, you only get stronger when you get older. You will continue to get stronger even until the day you die. He also said it doesnt matter what style you learn as long as you learn it from a real master.
He then offered to teach us real taichi and said he will take us to the mountains in a week for a 3 day camping trip to show us the secrets of taichi.
After talking with Toshio for a few hours, we came back to the hotel and I am writing this email now. It is 5am and the sun is up. Time for bed.
I cant wait to see what tomorrow brings. We have plans to go to alikahabra, which is electric town. It has all the coolest gadgets in Japan and is apparently where ALL the schoolgirls go.
[Karma: 18 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 08.15.06 @ 01:35 AM China [link]
Wake up at 4 am, and drink some coffee-coke. It tastes like crap just like I thought and was enough to wake me up. At 5 I get a taxi to the airport and pay 10 bucks for the hour and some minutes drive. At the airport we get news that some idiots tried to send some kind of liquid bomb on the airplanes in england the day before and we had to go through extra security to throw away our drinks, deoderant, cologne and even pills. Once through the security we board the plane and it had a TV built into every seat with video games. The plane ride went very smooth. Upon arriving in japan, me and my friends had a competition to see who would see the first school girl. We were all nervous about getting through customs and finally seeing some japanese people. However, once we get through customs, everyone looks just like chinese except for the way they talk. At the main airport terminal I had to take a piss and went to the toilet. Arriving at the toilet looked like I was entering a space ship. I pressed a button and the door opened by itself and I entered. There was a space toilet with a space urinal and a space drinking fountain with a spacey looking wash basin. Freaking weird i tell you.
Leaving the airport we get on a bus called the Airport Limosine and ride two hours to downtown tokyo. The whole car ride looked like I was in Washington again and traveling around Seattle. It was an enjoyable ride. The trees here look just like washington trees.
Pulling up to the bus stop in Shinjuku, I heard cries from my friend Dan. "Look look! LOOK! A real live school girl!!!" And boy did I look. It was made of dreams, that girl. She was wearing a perfect outfit and was so cute and had knock-knees and everything. And to make it better, the bus stopped right next to her and let us off at the station. Excellent. We take our bags and walk up to the girl and stare a few minutes then find our hotel.
The hotel was about a 10 minute walk from the bus station and very easy to find. On our way there we almost get hit by cars because we didnt realize that japanese people wait at every single crosswalk. I was used to china where it is Dog Eat Dog and everyone crosses the streets at any time. A bus almost hit us.
At the hotel, the staff was very super friendly and gave us excellent service. At that point in time I had an epiphany: "There is service in japan!", unlike china.
The toilet in the hotel room has buttons and shoots warm water at you when you finish. My friend andy wrote a haiku about the toilets:
Japanese Toilet
Really you are a robot
I love Tokyo
In the hotel, I hooked to the internet and checked my email and stuff then at 10pm explored the city. We got nowhere and returned by 11:30pm. My dad called me at midnight and said, "You know, you are in the skyscraper part of Tokyo, if you go down the street and cross the train tracks, you will be in the sleaziest part of tokyo." Upon hearing these magical words, I got up, called my friends and we all went exploring again but this time with a purpose.
We quickly crossed the train tracks and ended up in an area with no people. Eventually we saw some people and went towards them. It was a bunch of guys who looked like they were all having fun. Upon approaching them, we realized that they were all gay. We were in fag-town, tokyo. After hightailing it out of there, we quickly lost all bearing of where we were.
About 5 hours of wandering later, we come across the party town. We made it to Kobukicho! But it was 6 in the morning and we were tired as rabbits because of walking for 6 hours. We tried to get back to the hotel but realized that we had no information about where the hotel was. GREAT. No one spoke english. We walked into a convenient store and the guy spoke chinese. EXCELLENT! I asked directions in chinese and we made it back to the hotel by 6:30am. My chinese paid off.
End of day 1.
[Karma: 13 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 08.15.06 @ 01:26 AM China [link]
I never use a translator anymore to do any of my communicating with any chinese people. I can converse almost freely and understand tons.
The translators are shit. The master will talk for 10 minutes and the translator will say, "Breathe in".
Ron
[Karma: -23 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 03.21.06 @ 07:23 PM China [link]
Right now ill write quickly, but tomorrow I will expand. On a time limit here ;]
So busy.
Studying chinese every day.
Chinese improving exponentially as I am now able to learn words from just talking to people. I dont so much have to learn them out of books anymore.
Spending immense amount of time in the city just having random encounters with chinese people.
Studying in a learn chinese program now, but I already know almost most of the information for the first 10 chapters... spending most of my time learning characters.
More later, right now dieing of hunger.
Ron
[Karma: -4 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 03.13.06 @ 07:14 PM China [link]
Today I translated my favorite chinese song into english. Here is the pinyin (romanized chinese) followed by my translation.
The song is called "Hope"
kan tian kong piao de yun hai you meng
kan sheng min hui jia lu lu chang man man
kan yin tian de sui yue yue zou yue yuan
yuan fang de hui yi de ni de wei xiao
tian hei lu mang mang xin zhong de pang huang
mei you yu de fang xiang
xi wang de chi bang yi tian zhong zhan kai
fei xiang tian shang
kan tian kong fei de niao hai you meng
kan qing fend xiang dai lu chui san dan wu
kan dong tian bei de xue yue zou yue yuan
zuo tian de ceng jing de wo de wei xiao
tian hei lu mang mang xin zhong de pang hua
mei you yu de fang xiang
xin wang de chi bang yi tian zhong zhan kai
fei xiang tian shang
fen kai de gan shang xiang fei de pang tuang
you tian pao chu xiang xiang
xin zhong yi ge meng xiang yu hou cai hong
hua zai tian kong
I day dream while watching the fluttering clouds
And behold life as I slowly journey down the long road towards home.
Over the years I have watched the overcast skies move further and further away,
And even though I was far away, I could still remember your smile.
The dark horizon was so vast that the center of my heart hesitated
Hesitation about whether to stay or to return.
Hope spread her wings throughout the only sky
And flew up into the heavens.
I day dream while watching the fluttering birds
Listening to the quiet wind as it chases away the lazy fog.
Over the years I have watched the overcast skies move further and further away,
My smile has already been forgotten as tomorrow comes.
My bloom has withered and is inconsolable, but I am hesitating against flying away,
When I look up at the sky I imagine running as far away as possible
My only dream is to see the final rainbow
As it paints the empty sky.
[Karma: 14 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 02.23.06 @ 07:42 PM China [link]
Because I dont know characters very well:
Zuo tian shi qing ren jie.
Yin wei wo de nv peng you bu zai jar,
suo yi wo mei you qing ren wen wo.
Wo xiang he ta yi qi wen.
Zuo tian wan shang wo mang dao ta,
Hai you wo zhi dao ta fei chang xi huan wo.
Ke neng xia ge nian wo bu xi huan ta,
Ke shi mei wen ti yin wei tai duo le nv ren.
he he he
Ron
[Karma: -12 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 02.15.06 @ 06:28 PM China [link]
I noticed today that I am becoming a more aggressive person. A taxi driver tried to rip me off more than he already was and my mouth nearly caused it to turn into a fist fight.
I am beginning to be able to pick up jokes in chinese.
Yesterday I met some people with my two friends mike and andy. They asked for our names. Andy and mike promptly told them their real name but I gave a nickname that I thought up, "Mao Mao". For the rest of the night these people were calling me Mao Mao which is a common name for a chinese dog. It might be the equivelant of being called, "Fido".
My chinese is improving exponentially lately. I am now able to work on creating an accent. MY chinese now has the northern china accent instead of 'stupid foreigner accent'. I also fake my way through lots of conversations now by pretending to know what people are talking about and giving answers that I think they are looking for. PEople think that i have a fluency that is much higher than I actually have. In reality, I am guessing my way through everything... just like I did in school.
My english writing is getting worse every day because I hardly practice it anymore. My english sentance structure is also becoming worse and worse. Now I find it hard to create complex sentances because I've had to tone down my english so much since Ive come here. The only english speakers I talk to are non-fluent or non-native speakers, so I make my speech worse for their benefit. :]
Bah.
Ron
[Karma: -20 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 02.13.06 @ 12:58 PM China [link]
I am an asshole.
I talk to chinese people and tell them everything that they want to hear, just to get their reactions. I am trying to learn the culture first hand, so I am saying everything that puts these people into uncomfortable situations.
This is the best way to learn a culture at the expense of ruining some people.
An example:
I recently learned the word for mad cow disease, and ocassionaly I tell people that I have it then start tweaking out. It is funny to me to see their reactions, and I promptly tell them that I dont really have it.
I also learned the word for homosexual, and I try to figure out whether or not it is taboo. There are no good books on chinese taboos so I am trying to figure them out first hand.
When I go to restaurants I sometimes order DRAGON meat to see peoples reactions.
I tell people that I am japanese and see how they react. When someone is being nice to you and smiling, and they ask where you are from and you answer with, "Tokyo, Japan", their smile fades very fast.
Recently, I have been asking people how much they make at their jobs. The highest that I have been told is 700 yuan or about 90 US dollars a month. That person was a doctor.
Ron
[Karma: -4 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 02.10.06 @ 08:16 PM China [link]
The style of kungfu that I am learning is called Ba Ji Chuan.
It translates as, eight elemental fists.
This style is immensely powerful for in-fighting.
A typical Ba Ji fight would go like this: The ba ji fighter will sense danger as a punch is coming at him. He will use the hit to get close to his opponent and then use four different forces to tear his opponent's limbs off while also snapping the spinal cord. Fight is over within 2 seconds.
Ron
[Karma: 1 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 02.02.06 @ 10:31 AM China [link]
Hello everyone and happy new years.
I just had a blast.
So here I am spending my weekend at a computer cafe like always, and me and my friend are invited to a dinner celebration of the chinese new years with the owner of the computer cafe!
The owner is such a thug. We were all sitting around a big glass table. Almost everyone was about my age and the owner was some 50 year old fat man. No one was talking... As soon as he got up to leave and walked out the door, the whole room burst into a lively party.
There was a vinegar chugging contest, some girl beat up a boy who she kept calling rooster, my friend and i were asked if we were a gay couple, a fat kid was force fed 5 dumplings at once and we all ate until near explosion.... and to top it off no one was even drinking. It was a wonderful time.
I feel like my chinese skills jsut went up a level. My listening comprehension is getting better lately.
-Ron
[Karma: -24 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 01.29.06 @ 12:53 AM China [link]
mood: bahh
I am back in my city in china. After a GIANT hassle with the unorganized travel system in china.
I left manila on sunday morning and arrived in beijing on sunday afternoon and met my friends. My friends and I decided that the first thing we had to do was get a taxi and go to the train station to buy our tickets. We found a taxi driver at the airport who was being suspiciously nice to us, but decided to go with him anyways. When we got in his taxi, we found out that he had a 'rigged' taximeter, and was charging us four times the regular price. We told him to let us off and we got off on the beijing freeway between the airport and the city.
After getting off, we found another taxi and told him that we wanted to go to the train station to buy one ticket to zhang zhou and two tickets to si ping. He told us that there were two train stations and that those two tickets were at different train stations, and that we would drive us to both stations. We told him okay, and made sure his taximeter worked before we started off.
Two hours later, we arrive at the first station and my friend eric gets out of the taxi and heads into the trainstation... me and lennart dont see him again. We assumed he got his ticket and was on the way to zhang zhou.
We turned around after seeing him off and realized that our taxi had left. "Perfect," we were thinking as we tried to hail a new cab... but none of the cabs seemed to want to pick us up. We had to walk out of the train station and go some kilometers before we could find a cab to take us to the other station which, although was on the entire other side of the city, took only 20 minutes (as opposed to the first taxi that took 2 hours to go about the same distance).
Arriving at the train station, we had to find where to buy the tickets. We were scouting aruond when we saw a HUGE clump of people standing outside of 20 different windows. I decided that we werent going to stand in a four hour line, and used my 'ignorant foreigner' intution and just walked to the front of a line. At the front of the line, nothing was happening for a good ten minutes, so i decided to announce to everyone, using my chinese, that i was a foreigner and wanted to buy a ticket. Eventually a security guard came and took me and lennart to a VIP waiting room and told us that he would buy our tickets for us to take the train in two hours time. We were told to sit and relax until he came back with the tickets.
One and a half hours later... no tickets. We were bugging the official looking people and they finally told us that there werent any tickets for the next week. So we went and did what we didnt want to do and went to window #25.
Window 25 is the foreigner window and they mark up prices by about 300%, but they do offer the convenience of a semi-fluent english speaker. We show up at this window, which has no line, and tell the man that we wanted tickets. He told us that the only tickets available to siping are standing tickets. Up to this point in the trip, i havnt slept for 36 hours, and to me a standing ticket feels out of the question, but lennart told me that we could handle it. So we buy these tickets at 300% the normal price and go to the terminal to wait for the train.
At the terminal while waiting for the train, we were making sure that we watched the clock very carefully. 10 minutes to our departure, we asked the attendant to let us go to teh train, and for some reason he rushed us along without even checking to see we had tickets. When we got to the train docks, we couldnt find our train number anywhere due to lack of organization and there were no labels on anything. We asked a few people adn they told us that they would only tell us for some money, and we decided against that. When we fnially found our train, it was 2 minutes before departure, but the gate to go down to the train was closed and locked. We literally stood there, 20 feet away, as our train lurched forward and rode the rails out of sight.
In disbelief and sheer fatigure, we decide on impulse that the best idea is to take a taxi to siping which is 1300 kilometers... After we find out that the price of a taxi to siping costs the same as a roundtrip airplane ticket to manila, we both vetoed the idea and went to a cheap hotel.
We wake up at noon with cockroaches on our face and head down to the train station again. This time we are determined to get a train without messnig up. So we buy another set of standing tickets and are prompt at getting on the train and we settle in for a 12 hour standing ride to siping.
12 hours later with, many bruises, ruined shoes, much fatigue and extreme hunger we arrive in siping. We both decide that the best idea is to take a taxi in the -20 degree weather to the nearest computer cafe and to take a break before going to spend the night in a hotel.
As soon as we step out of the train terminal, there are 100 taxi drivers waiting for us. We one that we want to go to the computer cafe, but they are insisting that we go to our school. We tell them no and we want to go to the computer cafe. They tell us that it will cost 10 US dollars. We tell them no and start walking. For the whole kilometer that it took to walk to the computer cafe, we are followed by 100 taxi drivers pushing and shoving us in different directions trying to get us into their cabs. We eventually tell them that if dont stop touching us that we will beat them up, and they leave us alone. Arriving at the computer cafe, we are greeted by our friends that work here and we settle down for a good many hours sitting infront of a computer while reflecting on our horrendous trip that had so many mishaps.
Ron
This is perhaps the funniest image i have seen in a long time.
PS: Eric has such a good master. He is learning a secret kungfu style that less than 100 people in the world know. (It is really neat)
[Karma: -25 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 01.24.06 @ 04:02 AM China [link]
Life in the phillipines is kind of slow.
I havnt done much of anything worth talking about.
Yesterday i watched cock fighting on tv, and it was the most amazing thing i have ever seen. Roosters hopped up on steroids with razor blades attached to their feet fight inside a ring until one of them dies. The only bad thing about cock fighting is that none of the roosters seem very resilient, there is usually a winner after about 5 seconds of fighting... which was kind of lame, but it was fun to watch anyways.
[Karma: -19 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 01.10.06 @ 03:09 PM China [link]
I have been so very busy lately. Working 10 hours a day on my new website.
I am setting up a textile exporting company from china. I will be exporting custom tailored suits for men. If you want to see the work in progress head over to Suits by You!
I got a one year extension on my chinese visa. I started with one month, then a six month extension, now i am getting a one year extension. I believe the next extension is 5 years, then i am eligible for residency.
In a few weeks, i will be submitting applications to universities in china. I want to go to Beijing language and culture university, and will be submitting my application by hand when i am in beijing this month. I will most likely be accepted and go to this school. It is going to be a great school. Downtown beijing with a beautiful campus.
I have much to do with the website, please go there and watch the progress!
Ron
[Karma: -12 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 01.05.06 @ 12:01 PM China [link]
For every life as a business man, politician, lawyer, doctor, aristrocrat, or scholar... you spend seven lives as a beggar.
I am done with petty materialism. You are born into this world with nothing, and you will take nothing when you leave. There is no point in creating false securities with the illusion of wealth. You have to go beyond the human created idea of currency. We have to become humans, not machines.
Everyone seems to lead the same path or similar paths. Elementary school, middle school, high school, college, grad school, job, retire, die. No wonder everyone dies young... 6 out of 8 of these key points and times in someones life are filled with incredible stress. People wonder why they age so quickly... wrinkles, age spots, drooping skin, loss of eyesight, memory... It is all because of the stress. It is better to be a poor beggar than a dead king.
So you went to the best elementary school, you graduated from the best prep-school, you went to the best private high school. You get your undergrad degree from the best state university, and you receive a phd from harvard. Are you happy? You spent 25 years of your life to get this PHD. Now you go get a job as a lawyer, and you make millions a year, are you happy? You worked and stressed yourself for all this time to achieve your goal of becoming rich. Now you are rich, what do you want to do next? You work for 40 years, and retire. Now you are 65. Are you happy? You have all the money in the world, but you are still old. No amount of money can reverse aging (yet?), you are destined to croak within 20 years. What can you do now? You go get botox injections, face lifts, eye tucks, but you still walk with a cane. All of this for the illusion of being young. All you can do now is wait and die. For 20 years you sit in your nice villa on a beach coast wondering where your life went. Then just how you came from nothingness, you enter the nothingness again. Are you happy? Are you glad? Did you satisfy your petty desires in life? And the ultimate question, are you content with what you have done?
Ron
[Karma: 20 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 01.02.06 @ 10:25 AM China [link]
I dont have very many pictures of myself, because i am always the one taking the pictures. However, i finally buckled in and had someone take pictures of me. So here they are for viewing.
[Karma: 1 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 12.27.05 @ 09:35 AM China [link]
It does not feel like christmas eve. It is about 80 degrees farenheit and very humid. The sun is shining, and no one is wearing thick clothes. There are hardly any christmas lights around and there are barely any christmas decorations for sale. The only thing that reminds me of commercial christmas is the music and the christmas sales at the mall.
Cars in the phillipines dont slow down for anything. They will speed up and drive faster if they notice that you are walking across their lane. This makes crossing streets very difficult.
In china, the cars go on the 'dont see dont know' policy. If they think that you have seen them while you are crossing the street, then they will assume the right of way and you must yeild. However, if they dont think that you have seem them, they will slow down and allow you the right away. In china, you cross streets with your head down and make sure you dont see any cars if you want to make it safely across the street.
Manila feels like an American city. Big and bustling with lots of people. The only thing that makes it different from America is the lack of diversity amongt the people. Unlike America, everyone here is phillipino.
I have not yet seen any wild animals roaming the streets or pulling vehicles on manilla's streets, but even in the big cities of china, you will see these sights.
Manila is just like a tagalog-english speaking American city.
Ron
[Karma: -19 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 12.24.05 @ 02:21 PM China [link]
I feel moreso here than in china that i am a giant. I am taller than every phillipino. A few chinese are taller than me and a lot more are around my height, but phillipinos are not even close to my height and hardly any are taller than me.
reporting from the front lines,
ron
[Karma: 0 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 12.22.05 @ 02:28 PM China [link]
Hi my name is Ron, and I am currently studying in China. This is a weblog of my experiences. I am not a professional writer, nor do I strive to be one either, but if there are any problems with my entries, please drop a comment and I will try my best to fix it. I hope you enjoy what I post on here.
[Karma: 9 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 12.21.05 @ 10:43 AM China [link]
I have arrived in the Phillipines. The trip was long and filled with some fun experiences. I had the chance to explore the back alleys in Beijing, visit Tianamen square and the forbidden palace, go to a traditional chinese art gallery, and watch Beijing's Acrobatic Troupe perform.
The Phillipines is a very strange country. People build their own cars that look like tanks with grafitti on them, the weather is very humid and warm even during the coldest part of the year (late december), everyone is addressed as Sir or friend even if you dont know them, and most stores have a sign that says "Please deposit your firearms at the front desk".
Phillipino people are very nice. There is a lot of respect between them and they treat everyone really well. It is like one giant extended family, everyone is your cousin.
I uploaded some photos and movies for you to watch in this extended entry.
Ron
[Karma: 16 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 12.21.05 @ 10:29 AM China [link]
Today i start travelling.
My itinerary:
Leave academy at 8am to Si Ping (12-15-05)
Arrive at 9:30am in Si Ping
Wander around city for 12 hours
Board 9:30pm train at Si Ping train station for beijing
Arrive in beijing around 10am (12-16-05)
Find a youth hostel in beijing to drop off bags
Visit tiannamen square and forbidden palace and other touristy places
Go to sleep
Wake up and wander around for a few hours (12-17-05)
Leave beijing at 12pm for airport
Arrive at airport around 1pm?
Leave beijing via plane at 4:30pm
Arrive in Manilla at 9:30pm
Go to sleep
Ron
[Karma: 30 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 12.15.05 @ 07:44 PM China [link]
Everyone was sad about the quick departure of our master. However, he had to do what he did to fulfill what he wants in his life.
Last night, i requested to train with the hardest group in the academy. It is usually not for foreigners to join, because all of the students are chinese children. They range from 7 years old to 17 and none speak english. There is also no translator. My chinese was good enough to join this group without the need of a translator so they gave me the approval.
I showed up for training this morning at 5:30am, and although i was keeping up with everyone else, the master put me to the point of naseau and kept me there for the whole duration of the training. This morning was quite possibly the hardest, but most satisfying thing i have done since showing up here.
During the day the master fine tuned and tweaked the things that my last master had taught me, and i felt so much progress in a very short amount of time.
Nothing can explain how excellent my new master is. I hardly want to leave in two days.
Ron
[Karma: 43 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 12.13.05 @ 07:54 PM China [link]
The twists and turns of life are wonderful.
My master is leaving to go to canada today. He will never return. I helped him leave the academy and he will be on a train this afternoon. I am going to keep in touch with him and in the future perhaps meet with him again. I am so happy that he is one of the few chinese people to have the opportunity to enjoy western life. He will, with the help of one of his past students, become a canadian citizen and find good honest successful work. Not very many chinese have the chance to do this, so he is very special. I come to china to escape all the bullshit of life in the west, but he is going west to escape all the bullshit in the east. We are similar like that.
I have to go back to training now. No one knows that he is gone yet, and i will be spreading the news and also leading my group for the next few days, until we get a new assignment.
On the 15th, i am leaving for beijing. I finally got my train tickets today.
Content,
Ron 
[Karma: 3 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 12.12.05 @ 11:02 AM China [link]
They kept telling us, "dont use portable heaters, dont use heated blankets, please dont leave your computers plugged in all the time, because the electricity system cant handle it". But nooooooo, people still used their portable heaters, heated blankets, and left their laptops plugged in even though they didnt need to. The electricity system short circuited a few days ago. No one has any electricity in our building. The only power we have are two cables that bring power from the other building, and it is just enough energy to run the computer lab. There isnt even an estimated time for them to fix it, because no one here is an electrical engineer. The closest we have to an electrical engineer is a czech guy who studied it in highschool, but he doesnt speak good enough english to explain what is wrong. So until the electricity is fixed, everyone here is queueing up in the computer lab like moths to a light.
Someone gave me coffee flavored gum with caffeine in it, for when you cant get around to drinking a coffee, but chewing it is just making my jaw hurt.
My roomate got harry potter and the goblet of fire on dvd, but we cant watch it because both of our laptop batteries are dead! Yahh. I also aquired the pimsleur learn chinese set today, but i cant listen to it because my laptop battery is dead. Gahhhhhhh.
Ron
See extension for a photo.
[Karma: 40 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 12.09.05 @ 06:12 PM China [link]
I have never been so cold in my life.
Today i had to travel to the city to buy a train ticket for beijing next weekend. It is so cold that after I stepped out of the taxi, the mucous in my nose froze which raised a flag in my brain that said, "This is really really cold". So i ran a half mile to the computer cafe to thaw out before i run another mile to the train station. It is colder here than it is in most people's freezers. I would be happy if it was the temperature of the warm part of a refridgerator. Next week, i will be in 90 degree weather, and about two thousand miles away from this ice box.
My english is getting worse every day. I talk to all the foreigners by using simple english grammar and words (english is most of their second or third languages), and i talk to all of the chinese using either simple english or simple chinese. Yesterday, someone asked me if i had heard a certain song before and i answered them, "Yeah, chris listened to me that song". I caught myself immediatly after saying this, but how many times have i said something similar without catching it? Who nose? (hehe)
Ron
[Karma: 39 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 12.08.05 @ 10:20 AM China [link]
It snowed last night. Everyone woke up to the early morning training that consisted of... shoveling. Hoorah! Except it wasnt so much shoveling as it was pushing. Chinese shovels are made of a tree branch with a piece of old plywood nailed to the end. No one was allowed out of the mandatory shoveling, not even the old masters or the six year old girl who lives at the castle. A guy from my group claimed sickness as an excuse for sleeping instead of shoveling. I went to him and checked the integrity of his claim, and he showed no symptoms of anything. After an hour and a half of shoveling, everyone from my group questioned me about his whereabouts and i gave them the truth, "He is sleeping in today". This didnt make many people happy, so everyone grabbed a snowball or two and brought a camera to film his rude awakening. Shortly after amassing our army, we smothered him in snowballs while he lay in bed. He didnt quite understand what was going on at first, but eventually realized and screamed, "Get out!!!!" It was a spectacle.
My tiger fist wushu competition set is complete. It has many acrobatic moves including a front flip breakfall, multiple kick ups, butterfly kicks, a 540 kick, and a crazy rolling pounce attack among other things. I am quite satisfied with it, and i will post a video of it when i arrive in the phillipines.
Speaking of the phillipines, I am leaving on december the 16th for my flight on the 17th. I will arrive just in time for the western new years, and i will return to china on the 23rd of january, just in time for the chinese new years.
I am going to be purchasing a blackboard and chalk to practice my chinese characters. I am getting tired of paper and pen. Chalk is also more beautiful than thin pen ink.
Now i must go to view a chinese tv series on my laptop now, so until later, zai jien le!
Ron
[Karma: 58 (+/-)]
Kormiku on 12.05.05 @ 07:14 PM China [link]