Rei's gone! and other interational goings on..

[Ozero]

thought I'd start a new topic, instead of continuing the "rei's got a boyfriend" one.. caused confusion....

ANYWAY, today, rei left us for japan. The boyfriend, CPB (cell phone boy) came along to the airport.

Me, the wife, Rei, CPB, my disassembled wheelchair, and 2 ungodly huge suitcases. If CPB wasnt right there with us, I would have suspected she'd packed him.

She gave us cute little cards in cute little enveopes. Mine said I was 'just like a real dad', which, given that her dad passed away 2.. well now more like 3 years ago, I found touching and unsettling at the same time. But my wife's card has a similar comment, so then I felt like i got a form letter.

She also made a comment like "I was your first student, i was a bad student. Sorry." I made a point to tell her she wasn't, but that might be her way of apologizing about the unneccessary CPB moodiness and coverup fiasco.

Hugs went all around, and people started getting a case of the w33pi3s. My wife has this face she makes, where she's looking at the ceiling or something, trying not to cry.

CPB held it together pretty darn good, actually.. he better hope I dont see him with some other girl next year. (He's coming back next year, Rei isn't.)

My wife and i stepped away at the gate, and let Rei and CPB have thier final moments. My wife looked up suddenly and started waving.. i turn, and see Rei and CPB parting, and the 3 of us left watch rei get digested by the trudging line into airport oblivion. 10 months suddenly felt so short.




We had expected 2 shanghai students for a shot tim in the summer, but at the last minute the school board tells us we're getting 2 teachers.. my wife was quietly furious, looking forward to hanging out with 10 year olds. (wow, kidna young, but is IS a short stay, more like 1 month...) Anyway, it'll be a different experience.. they might be busier woith work than to interact much... who knows.. and they've probably done the trip before.. they arrive on the 2nd...

But in order to prep the rooms for them, we had to clean out whatever stuff rei left behind.. collossal suitcases aside, she had a lot to pack...




She left behind nearly every gift we ever got her.




Many of the items were clothes she got as gifts, never worn. and we told her a billion times, if you dont like it, we can do an exchange, but...

oh well.. kinda bitter to find them, and other such items like a cute stuffie neglected in a bag in the closet without so much as a "ohh, i just dont have the space!".. Just one more thing she could have handled with more maturity... as if we'd never come across them... oh well..

I still treasure the giant pikachu head she gave me when she first arrived... snif...

Anyway, near the end of july, these shanghai teachers leave, and our other student, 'ping' from china will come back form visits within north america, with some relatives with her, then sept means business as usual, ping in school again, and this round, the part of Rei will be played by a german girl.. who actually met the previous german girl we had...

as log as im mentioning household changes, we have new tenant moving in downstrairs tomorrow... this will be the first, and possibly LAST night this house will play host to only people sharing my last name... odd to think...

[Riinuka]

...That's terribly disrespectful, not taking the gifts AND hiding them. Perhaps she might have been embarrassed, but social etiquette called for her to do nothing that would cause another pain or suffering, and she offended that rule.

Sorry, that just made me cringe a bit...

I'm glad things are going well, and you seem to be really busy with housing exchange students. ^ ^

I hope you weren't hurt too much by what she did. Frankly, that surprises me. My cousins would have never done such a thing.. x x;

[kinned7261]

how come you never talk about ping, she seems like the bad-ass host-sister that steals the car for the night because she gets no attention (not literally speaking but you know what i mean).

lol, rei reminds me of my self when i was 5-ish. I would hide unwanted food behind the sofa until there was a line of ants from across the room...

[Riinuka]

I used to hide vitamin supplements, and stash food on top of my bed.

Wait. *notices bag of food on the top of her bunk bed* I think I still do that.

I, too, am curious about Ping. ^ ^

[seiji]

Pack all the unworn gift clothes in a big box and mail it to Rei's parents with a note that says she forgot them/asked you to send them on for her. Maybe they'll feel obliged to send back a gift for you! :D

[stsparky]

Heck! Assemble a huge bag - and sent CPB out with the goodies when he heads home.

You were a real dad! - Sparks

[Crowley]

Forgive me, but oh my god, what an ungrateful bitch!

I'm a little speechless.

[koku]

Maybe she really had a problem with all the sniffing and around and invasion of her privacy? Could just be a bigger insult to a Japanese person. I'm just guessing. Honestly, I think you guys had the right to ask/make sure of all the things you were concerned about.

Strange.

[Ozero]

Well, ive heard people mention about the forward "what they want you to see" side of japan behavior, and she hadn't probably wished to think about when we FOUND the items, just like she never really thought about it when she put a kraft slice on a peice of bread into the conventional toaster...

But yeah, I'm trying not to stress it. MY mother was just in here ranting about it. I cant get too upset.. after all the CPB-fuelled drama, I was jsut glad to see her off on good terms.

It's not that she SPECIFICALLY left the stuff we gave her, (I think she took a few things we gave her maybe), but there was also some other stuff lfet behind too. I now inherited a badass lil pikachu stuffie to go with my giant pikachu head.. and a useful hirigana chart with mocky mouse on the back.. whee!

I can't send the stuff to her VIA CPB, since CPB heads back to korea, not japan, and despite their undying teenage lust for each other, I wouldn't guarantee they'll ever see each other again.

PING! Ping ping ping. She's an oddball to be sure, but a good one. I haven't talked about her much, since there hasn't be a lot of well-definable drama around her, but when I have more time, I'll have to compress a lil writup on the whole "ping experience"...

i also plan to tanstraibe the note rei gave me at the airport, since it was kinda interesting..

and...The Shanghai teachers arrive tomorrow...! Suspense!

[mawande]

Might I suggest not buying clothes as presents, though?

[Firefly]

This reminds me of my Japanese Exchange student friend. We went out to lunch one day; she told me she has no idea how to turn anything down. Her host mother would always buy her things and take her shopping, even though she had no desire too. She asked me how to politely turn down inviations (I told her a nice "No thank you" is good enough) and afterwards I realized I was the one who had asked her to lunch...:meh:

[haterllnation]

Might I suggest not buying clothes as presents, though?

Good point. I wouldn't even let my parents buy me clothes. They never got it right and I accepted just to be nice. Then one day, I just broke it down to them. It was a waste of money. I say cash. :clap: and if you don't trust them with money, gift cards.

By the way, what is a stuffie? I have an idea in my head, but not quite sure if it's the right one.

[Ozero]

Well, sometimes there's no other real indication as to what they might want... especially if they don't have the will to ask for something specific..

Anyway, Ping...

Imagine a tall chinese girl, channelling the spirit of Shaggy from scoobie do.

She's kinda lanky, and moves a lot like shaggy, and usually has a sheepish expression on her face, with a smile lurking just beneath the surface. When she lets it out, the smile just takes over. Even if it's a 'mild' sort of smile, it just dominates.

Issue 1: Computers
When she first arrived, she had a problem that I, as a nerd, went red alert on. Shortly before coming, she had dropped her new laptop, and the mothboard was blown. Ever try to get a laptop from the chinese market fixed on warranty in canada?

toshiba: "OH, i can find you an authorized dealer, and blah blah.."

dealer:"I cant get these parts, tell em to ship it to ontario where the main canada office is."

toshiba: "Oh, that dealer sucks i guess, try this one."

dealer2:"I cant get these parts, tell em to ship it to ontario where the main canada office is."

toshiba: "Oh. Hey, did you say something about it coming from china?"

me: "Only a billion times or so."

toshiba: "Hmm. I think we're going to have to ship it to ontario."

me: "Oh for heavens tell me WHY?"

toshiba: "That's where our main office is."

me: "If only i had some way of anticipating this!"

Meanwhile, i'm stressing over this machine, Ping has an alternative route in mind. "Oh, I just buy new one. Not toshiba."

"But.. As soon as it gets back, it'll be fine...!" Though toshiba didnt seem to bother testing it after remplacing the mobo, and the HD would not keep a partition for any reliable amount of time.

mix in the new laptop, chinese laptop running english windows, english plaptop running on chinese windows, a billion little useless asian applicaiton she NEEDS, and a family friend of hers in the vancouver areas who managed to give good advice mixed with bad advice, in cantonese, so that I can't filter out the inaccurate tech mythology before ping absorbs it as gospel, various family members encouraging her to get rid of the new laptop and get a desktop, which I had already suggested long before, and a BILLION other little things....

Well, at this point, she was lucky not to be choked by a power cable. She can that her sheepish smile for providing enough comic releif to save her life.

Issue 2: STUDY!

Ambition! She aims to be a doctor, as there are many in her family. She also aims to graduate here, and eventually immigrate, as seems to be her grandfather's goal for the whole family. I'll be meeting this grandfather later in the summer, and that might be intereting, as the only other thing I know about hi is that he tells Ping she's fat and ugly. She HAS gained a little weight from a pic she showed me before, but really, it's just a little rounding of the chin... Can I help it if i'm a great cook? ... and the McD and 7-11 in walking distance? Oh well..

Anyway, she arrived wanting to take all the basic sciences. Bio, Chen, Phys.. and she had in her luggage TEXTBOOKS for all 3, in cantonese and another set in english. (Which are HILARIOUS on grounds of the translations, btw.)

Also add the entire set of bilingual shakespeare. Was her luggage heavy? Not for an oil tanker, no.

So, she wanted to take all these courses, but wasn't too interesting in english classes. GIven her english was almsot good enough to sommincate to pass the salt, I had my doubts about the sciences. She got pleabargained down to english-light courses like social studies/history....

Rei had the right idea.. first semeseter, 4 blocks of ASL, and the rest filled with 'fluff' courses like cooking and sewing. Oh, excuse me.. Foods, and textiles.

For SOME reason, Ping ended up auditing most of her course to avoid disasterous marks on her record. She got perfect in math of course.

HOWEVER, in her inital efforts to attack history, she asked if i could help. That's fine. I had been readinf newspapers with Rei, for her ponounciation, and that was fun. I assumed this would be similar.

I had offered ping to read with her like I was with Rei, and she accepted after a week of settling in or so. I didnt expect her to drop this textbook in front of me, and have to go through 20 pages or so, explaining every sentance as we go.

She eventually came to realize this was keeping my disabled butt out of bed way too long after dinner, and it just wasnt going wil in general. She gradiated into a 2nd strategy.

Scan the entire unti out of the textbook, and email it to her aunt, to translate for her. (I of course, was the scanning engineer, which was a lot less painful than the reading and explaining.) I'm not sure how long he raunt put up with this before it started to dawn on people that HEY! maybe she's trying to bite off more than she can chew!

She ended the year with almost all audits. We'll just see if she's figured out that knowing the language is important next year.

Issue 3: Not a spoiled bitch!

Keeping in mind that the computer issues and the studying stuff was happening at the same time, you might start to wonder why i dont just wanna strange her, and ship the body back to china.

Yes, she comes form a family with too much money for thier own good, and she's used to getting her way instantly, BUT, we've found that when she DOESN'T get her way.....

that's cool too. She's really good at adapting to that kind of thing. She's eager to help, and compassionate.

When we went shopping at the mall or whathaveyou, she would stick with me when we all split up, rei going with my wife. I figured Ping went with me just to steer clear of Rei, and that may have been part of it... BUT...

There we are in an EB.. i didnt know ping didnt realize these were all GAMES on the walls, and not movies...

"Which one you like?"

"Oh, that one was good, i have all of those, they were good.. this one's odd, but i like it.."

"Which one you like that you not have?"

"Um... I'm waiting for one called Kingdom hearts 2, but it's not out yet. The store will call me when it comes."

".... hm... but... anything here now you want?"

After a bit of that, it started to sink in. She was looking for something to buy ME, probably as a thanks for all the hassle she'd managed to be generating for me. Aw, i'm not gonna let her do that, despite her being seemingly made of money.. once i clued into her little plot, I engineered my answers to quietly end her quest. The thought was there, and that was enough for me.

Add onto that, the several accounts of her leap-hugging my wife, for instance when ping found my wife first after her spring break trip..

Also, it seems that people in wheelchairs arent as 'out there' in china... either it's just a social dark mark to be a gimp, or it's the lack of accessibility... but she was quite amazed at how much i get out and do stuff.

She hadnt gotten the letter we sent before she came with all the pictures, and telling about life here, so my wheelchair took her by suprise.

The second or thrid day, I was going down the hall, and there was ping, in the living room, looking kinda sad. I asked what's wrong..

"When i see you I..." she tapped her hand on her chest. "feel like.. like cry. Not cry, but like cry."

"Sad?"

"yes, sad."

"Because of the wheelchair?"

she furrowed her brow and nodded a small sharp nod. All i could do is give my soft 'that's ok' smile, and try to explain. "Dont worry. I dont worry about it. It'd a bad thing to have to do, but I dont waste time worrying about it. So don't worry! No need to be sad!"

she nods again, with a bit of a forced smile. "ok. But i still.."

So, all i could do really, is tell her it was ok, and just live life as normal, and show her that I'm not the cliche of the 'cripple in the corner' staring out the window all day. She was a little worried that I work too much on the computer, so I explaimed that I'm a nerd, and I was liek that before my injury. (I didnt bother shattering her illusion by telling her that a LOT of what I do isn't work..)


Issue 4: Japan bad! China good!

Ping arrived with the upbringing that japan was bad, maily due to ww2 era events. This flabbergasted rei... while chinese upbringing seems to pass a lot of baggage down the generations, japan.. not so much. In japan, they have j-pop to program their youth.

SO, ping was rather prejudicial towards Rei.. one day ping was going to cook us 'real chinese food' as opposed to the crap we get form most places these days, and ping's friend was over. Ping quietly said to my wife on the side that rei shouldnt eat "our food" (chinese). My wife insitsed that Rei is a part of this household, and she's always welcome at dinner. Which was quiet, and akward.

Next dinner, we opened up a can of whupass on that prejudice, and in the process, started to sound like an afterschool special.

"Funny how people can hold grudges for things that happen so long ago."

"Yeah! Like germany has this problem. You both remember Asuka?" (german student who was with us up unti the day after ping arrived) "She's nice as heck! And so was Claudius, the german we went to highschool with. THey're so far from the nazi movment, but lots of people think in the back of thier heads, oh, germany. yeah.. remember the nazis?"

etc, and we steered this towards other countries, and finally china/japan...

Rei had been in a semi-puzzled haze for most of the conversation, but when we too this corner, ping snapped to life.

"But japan did this! and japan did that! and that!"

My wife was ready, "And china did this! and that! and remember tiananmen sqaure?"

Ping sported the look invented by dogs hearing a new sound.

"Ah." I said, "The chinese government doesnt like that kind of information floating around." (as oppossed to japanese flavored historical ignorance, which is fuelled by distraction in the face of pop culture.)

"No, i never heard that." This quickly promted my wife's laptop onto the table. tiananmen square saw google image'd up, and shown to the girls.

"remember that guy?" , stadning defiantly in front of the tank. "Huge protest? Massacre?"

of course not. One was too busy swooning over Exile, and the other had been told all her life that china's all cheery happy. ("oh, in china, everyone have maid.")

We also brought up tibet, and the whole human rights thing, all of which was new to her, but she was getting this idea...

we summarized.. "Governments can do really bad things, but the people who live there usually arent to blame. Expecially not 60 years later."

That kinda sunk in...

BUT, the damage between Ping and Rei was done, and Rei was about to spiral into her CPB nonsense, so they never got much chummier than "This was in my laundry, is it yours?" "Oh thanks."


and THAT's the basics of ping. She's currenly with family in penn, luckily not evacuated for flooding, later to be in calgary with other family, then to come back here, with some family along to visit..

AND, any minute, the shanghai teachers will be rolling in.... a post of first impressions tomorrow, i guess....

(this post was too long. Just suffer with my typos, i'm too lazy now, and ran out of time..)

stuffie- stuffed animal. gift cards.. yeah, impersonal, but i guess it's parctical..

[Crowley]

You know what, I LOVE this stuff. It's really really interesting :)

[haterllnation]

You know what, I LOVE this stuff. It's really really interesting :)

Indeed. I agree with the quoted. Do you do this on another site or are you just doing this on the fly?

[Crowley]

He's got tons of stuff on http://www.ozero.ca/. Talented guy.

[haterllnation]

Thanks, I shall check it out right about..now.

[Ozero]

heh, well, my personal site http://www.ozero.ca has nothing to do with the international stuff, but by ALL MEANS, feel free to go there and buy my art, (Just got a cheap new dealer!) see my flash, become hyped up over my coming novel, whatever.. (only one or 2 flashes that are any good, and they're not THAT good..)

ANYWAY, the teachers are here. They're unpacking as I type. Dang, i need to come up with new aliases for em... well.. let's see...

one of them chose an 'english name' which by coinicidence is tha name of my dog.. so we'll have to call her.. snoopy.

Snoopy's english is very limited.. a word here or there. She's going to be relying on her buddy for a lot of communication, i guess. She's probably close in age to me and my wife. Attitude? Timid, a little 'edged out' by her buddy with the better english.

And what shall we call her.. she didnt grab an 'english name', as her chinese name is easy enough. Her english is about on par with Ping's, (maybe a bit less), and so far is pretty friendly, maybe a bit with the nervous giggles... also about the same age as us, maybe a bit younger than snoopy. Let's call her.. bubbles.. cuz she's bubbley.

They (and i use this term to mean they were both in the room, and snoopy may or may not have been telling bubbles things to say) say we seem to have a good life here, and we have more free time. This is appearently based on previous assumptions, as they'd known us for a whole 30 min when they said this. It may have also been aimed at my disability, I'm not sure. They (especially bubbles) seemed politely impressed by the various evidence of projects sitting around my office... it's just too bad they'll be gone before my novel sees a proper print. Not that they'd really get a lot out of it, but a shiney cover is neat when you can say "yeah, i did that."

Bubbles staked claim to the bigger room as soon as she saw them both. This room had previously been Rei's, and some sept, it will be Ping's. We already set it up with ping in mind, a bit, her desktop all plugged in, etc.

Snoopy was slower getting her luggage down the hall, and was stuck with the slightly smaller room with the less inspiring window. This room had previously hosted Ping, and Asuka.. and will have a new german in it in sept.

I was just inturrpted to go help find hot water.. Bubbles has a pack of instant noodles she wanted to cook.

I hope she doesnt fill up too much, because in an hour or so, I'll start cooking my best immitaiton of a cantonese stiry fry. (which isn't TOO laughable, according to ping)

I'm the house cook.. that's a story unto itself.

[gentlemanandscholar]

He's got tons of stuff on http://www.ozero.ca/. Talented guy.

Mammoth breasts seem to be a theme over there.

And keep with the stories! Very interesting stuff.

[Ozero]

Ok, i have a min, so i may as well fill in the cooking thing.

I'm a guy. Thta means i can do KD, and ice cubes. Once in jr high, they made me do a stirfry, and that worked out pretty good. So i kept that filed under "thing to mane to impress people that i can cook". THING to make, not things. Very small mental file folder.

When I got hit and became a paraplegic, and henceforth spent most of my time at home, (not a shut-in, just to clarify,) it seemed reasonable, and yet objectionable to me, that I start doing more cooking.

It started with little things.. "put this in at 400 degrees at 5:30, it'll be done when i get home."

and when we started hosting Rei, who reported enjoying helping cooking, my wife saw her chance. I was to spearhead most dinners from then on.

And she bestowed unto me.. THE COOKBOOK.

And i became it's unwilling slave. It's geared towards cooking fast, and i cut slow. Big source of stress. Some days, Rei took over a little, leavng me to set the table. Then again, at that point, it was usually just 'simmer n stir'.

Rei has a perfectionist streak, and everything had to be measured exactly, producing way more dishes than needed.

After much slavery to THE BOOK, i got brave. Out of onion? Let's hit it with garlic. Found the onion? Screw it, let's do both.

Magically one day, I caught rei eyeballing a measuement right form the bottle, it was a happy day.

Then the CPB fiasco began, and she seemed less eager to help cook. By this time, I was eagry to try ot on my own. A guy cooking something on thier own is accomplishment enough, but when you can't reach half the cupboards, it's a triumphant battle.

These days I get occasional 'guest assitants'... rei and ping not here anymore, that leavs my wife, and my mum, (who rents a lil suite form me in the house)

You know you're gone when you sort all of the spices in the house, and daydream having a cooling show.

AND! I've created officially my very own recipie.. my mum calls it 'sweetfire', tho i'm still hunting for a name that implies the color... here we go..

Ozero's Sweetfire 1.0

dice chicken breasts, throw om in the pan/wok, dpending on ho wmuch you're making....

splash some A-1 or similar on it as kinda a base.. not too much, this is basically to keep things moust while ya cook out the pink.

PAPRIKA! Bam it's the work i want, i'm looking for KABOOM. The first time i did this, i ended up with the coolest looking red chicken. That inspired the next step-

Chili powder...! As much as ya dare.

Here's about when i dump in my veggies. This usually means onions, green and/or red pepper, usually. I dice em TINY, cuz i like the taste of em a lot more than the texture..

Brown sugar. Start with like half a cup, and mix it in.

At this point, the veggies and the sugar react and create a lot of liquid. It starts to look a lot more like a stew for a while. Keep the heat up, we're gonna end up burning off most of the liquid.

Now's a good time for fine tuning, while the liquid's still here to help ya evenly distribute more chili, and paprika...

Add some ground cloves. "CLOVES?!" you say? "MADNESS! THAT'S FOR SUNDAY HAM!" But nay, give it a nice lil sprinkle. You'll notice it later and thank me.

Once you have all the gunk in ya want, enough chili to sufficiently burn your lips off, enough paprika to warn and dazzle unsuspecting victims, and maybe more brown sugar, just keep the heat on and boil of the water..

As it disappears, you'll get your last chance to get a good distribution of paprika....

if ya added anough sigar, it'll make it's own stick sauce, and nearly caramelize, if everything hit it's cylenders right.

options-

In the last couple mins, you can throw in some snow peas, but they will soften the blow of the chilis, which may not be the effect ya want.

served well beside, or on a bed of asian rice.

Sesame seeds sprinkled on top.... useless but interesting looking.

Well, now I have to go start cutting for dinner.. not sweetfire, since i dont want to injure these ladies on thier first night in canada... we'll wait for that.

[Crowley]

I'm not sure if you've answered this before - how did you get in to all this hosting business? And such a variety! Do you get financial recompense?

[Ozero]

Well, my aunt-in-law did it one year, and they hosted a mexican girl. As coincidence would have it, this girl's motherer was also the organizer on the mexican end of the program..

So she happened to be in the country,and came to check out our house.. she picked a couple girls who she thought was a good match, and it seemed locked that we would host these two... (We had 2 rooms doing nothing..)

We went to a seminar breifing about hosting... i thought it would be a screening process, but the turnout kinda showed that all varieties of folks were into this, some of which i would have been unsure about leaving my kids with.

BUT ANYWAY! Then the parents of these mexican girls heard from someone else that another school nearby was better. (It's bigger, and was recently expanded, but I can't really say it's so much BETTER...)

anyway, they wanted thier kids to go there, and THAT wouold mean a 10 minute bus ride form our place. Busses are different in mexico. You put your 17 year old daughter on a bus, and you may as well strat witing randsom cheques.

So i thought our chances of hosting were sunk. But by this time, our names were in the system at the school board, and I hadn't reckoned with how mch the school system needs to do these international hosting, and how much the money they bring to the system saves thier butts, in the face of provincial funding cuts, thankyou very much gordon "we dont need hospitals or schools, just olympics" campell. (Hehe.. i got to snub him at the last chinese newyear parade. hehe)

Oh, before i forget, the rate here is 700 a month per student. We expected to get ahead a little, but the truth is, we take them to all sorts of stuff, and trips, so we more or less break even. :P

So the school board calls us up and asks if we'd be interested in hosting a japanese girl. My mind reeled at the though of the sheer volumes of jokes I would endure as an anime fan with a japanese schoolgirl in my house.

"Better lock up the giant squid!" was a common one.

So, we got her paperwork, with included such things as a photo collage.. and we sent something similar, with shots of the 2 rooms she could choose from, and us, the pets, blah blah... and we emailed back and forth with anticipation.. (and she had spent a month in australia, so travelling away form home wasnt TOTALLY new to her..)

cut to the airport. A stream of japoanese coming out of the immigration/customs section, and there she is.

"Ah! Hello Rei!"

"hi!"

............... shy akward silence all around....

"HOw was your flight?"

"ok"

................

"Well, i guess we should get out of the way, and get going."

"ok."

we trod off, rei following us, looking pretty lost in general, and we kinda feel like we've kidnapped her, or are dragging her home from some intenational student petstore or something.

Her suitcase was almost as big as her, if you folder her over.. easily.. my wife offered to drag it for her. "No, i'm ok"

We piled into the car, and rei soon demonstrated the magical ability that the japanese (and i'm starting to think, most asians) have, to fall asleep anywhere. I would have accounted jetlag for this, but it kept popping up throughout her stay.

It was about amonth in or so, rei was getting in her groove kinda, when i got a call from the schoolboard. "Still have tha tother room? How do ya feel about hosting a german girl?"

blink blink...

But i'll save that adventure for the next post.

[Josayeee]

Might I suggest not buying clothes as presents, though?

hehe I 3rd that. Everytime someone over 30 has bought me clothes it ends up picking up dust in my closet. Maybe moreso for a girl from another country.

Anyways, nice stories I enjoy reading them!

[Riinuka]

The only time I would buy clothes is when I'd let the student go to the mall with me kinda hanging around in the back, and let them pick out a bunch of stuff.. Then I'd walk to the counter, and plop down the payment. I wouldn't think of buying something without them there, just because I've found that I'm horrible at determining what size someone is/what they would like.

Ping sounds very interesting... She seems really open-minded. I bet her stays in the U.S. are very beneficial to her as far as her country's history goes.

Be careful, though. You don't want her going back and telling everyone what she learned, as someone may decide to inquire why the Americans are trying to "take this poor child and taint their mind by destoying the perfect image of our wonderful country"...

Such an incident occured recently with a Chinese exchange student here in our town..

[Ozero]

that's ok, this is canada, they'll be wondering why canadians are trying to do this. :P

Ok, next story time.. the coming of Aksuka! (cue opening music and animation, finishing with flashy stupid logo...)


this is all paraphrasing of course...


"Rei?" I call out form where i now sit as she passes by, hme from school...

"Hm? Yes?" Chipper as i've come to know her..

"The school board called, they want us to take another student."

"Stay here? In other room?"

"Yes, she's from germany."

"when?"

"Next month. She'll be here for only 3 months."

She leans on the doorframe, and looks down .. after a bit.. "But.. I think is best, you (my wife) and me."

"welll... it'll only be 3 mionths..."

(keep in mind, to ACTUALLY get this far in the convo involved a LOT of time watching her kinda sawy, and try to use cute power to make me realize how much she needed her way, and was sad..)

I only got her to leave the doorway by saying we'll tlak about it more over dinner. Besides, then i have my wife for backup. She's good and keeping a momentum in the favor of the side of a discussion she's on.

By the end of dinner, Rei was.... ok with it, but nervous.. making things worse, we warned her (from experience with gerans in OUR highschool days) they they usually come equipped with really good english.

This idea made her really worried. And probably a little worried about not being our favorite when asuka came.

but there was acceptance.


Just to note.. I had been working really hard to not be loud or anything fitting into the 'loud brutish american' (canadian) image i was worried rei might have of me. This might have been overdone, and rei might have gotten the impression that i didnt like talking to her.



Then asuka arrived. She was a joyous boisterous force, which raised the conversation level in the whole house, a much needed effect. Rei's shyness was ignored entirely, and Asuka's friendliness made them pretty good friends, pretty quick.

And for a time, things were good.. as Akusa's time to go drew near, the school board phoned again......

"Hey, when does asuka leave? Do you think you could take a girl from china?"

DUN DUN DUN

to be continued.

[Riinuka]

Mwahah.

Interesting to know how things led up to having Ping there.

I await more tales, as this is very interesting. ^ ^

[Ozero]

k, i'll try to update later today.. no time right now.. in the meantime a lil update on the teachers, "snoopy and bubbles"

They seem quite amazed at the fresh strawberries we had. Seems such quality isnt seen in shanghai. They ran and got a camera.

Rei took pictures of food now and then, and i think ping and Asuka too, but those were more for celebratory cakes, or being proud of having cooked something...

but photos for produce.. wa new on me. The camera also was able to do vid, and they taped the construction of a strawberry short cake.. they seemed also blown away by whipped cream. "My son would like this very much."

And also heard was "we take pictures, other teaches home be...." i forget the word they used, but they meant jealous.

It sounds like they dont come from as posh as area as ping.. ping was never too amazed by 'basic' ingredients..

Thye also expressed how grateful they are that we cook (eastern style) rice for part of dinner so often. I dont think they believed us whan we told them that we do that anyway.

"I make fat!" snoopy, with her best display of english yet, said.

"But is ok!" bubbles answered, "we here short time. Ok to eat!"

smiles n giggles all around.. these ladies are a blast. And my wife was worried about hosting adults.

note to self- next post, the coming of ping.

[koku]

Hahaha. That's great. You got some good company.

[Riinuka]

Sounds like so much fun...

They sound so interesting and funny. I should keep tabs on this kind of exprerience... After I teach, I might very well find myself doing this, as I love working with people already. This seems like the sort of thing I'd do... *chuckles*

I hope you find some time for updating soon, but don't spend too much time away! It seems like that the more you look away, the more priceless moments would be lost. xP

[Ozero]

back to the arrival of ping.....

"but you say just 3 months...!.. you.. lie me...!" rei whined, all pathetic and cute, at dinner. "Its best just us 3."

"Well, asuka was 3 months, but the schoolboard phoned with a new student they want us to take. It's been good with asuka, right?"

"yes.. but you say 3 months. you lie me." (stick bottom lip out as far as possible here, looking down and poking dinner)

"We didnt lie, we didnt know about this new girl until now. The school board really wants us to take her. If we refused, it would be seen as.. rude."

she chewed on the word rude for a bit. "Hm."

"And besides!" my wife chimed in with the winning key, "With only one student, we cant afford trips like to victoria all the time!"

rei LOVED victoria. This galvanized her to put up with this new student.

"Where from, new girl?"

Unaware at the time of the tensions between those nations, i replied happily, "china"

rei: :eek:

me: :confused:

"not china. not ... not china."

"ummm... why?"

"just... not china."

"What's wrong with china?"

"No asian girl. Not just china."

Well, that kinda blew me away at the time.


Ping's arrival came one day before Asuka's leaving.

Contrary to all previous student pickups n drop offs.. (well, ok, 2 pickups), Asuka HAD TO go on a bus at the school board, and go with the other germans. She, my wife and i all wanted to take her to the airport ourselves, but it wasnt in the cards.

Asuka had really really grown on us. She and I could have discussons on choloate for an hour, then turn around next week and have the same talk all over again from scratch.

By the time we got to the school board, and saw those huge busses waiting, she was sobbing. Smiling, but sobbing. That got my wife going, and me a little.

One things that was worse in a way.. one of her friends was htere crying too.. she said "I'm only crying because my host family didnt stay and wait. they jsut dropped me off and left."

WHICH,.... sidestep....

i forgot to mention this earlier.... the first day my wife took rei to school, she went in with rei, and made sure she knew where she was going and such...

SO many other host parents just dropped em off at the curb, and took off, leaving them there stunned and lost, for kinder vounteers to notice, and point towards the office at least.. and some families are jsut like ther, they're in it for the money, and thats it... one even tried to use the girl as a maid until she complained and got trasferred.

Well anyway, mercifully, they finally loaded up the busses, and we stood by our car to wave as she left.

Amazing how much she impacted us in 3 months...

So, back into the car, and home to Rei and Ping, and then....! I went to bed, cuz it's too friggin late for me.

[h2orowe]

Moar stories plz.

[Ozero]

Moar stories plz.

Hmm.. I WAS kinda waiting for a specific question, cuz i've kinda run out of major events to cover...

well, me, my wife, snoopy and bubbles all went with our carpool partners to playland on sunday...

carppol partners= another hosting mom... add 2 of her own kids, and 2 chinese kids.. one of which is snoopy's son.

playland, in case the name diodnt imply, is vancouver's 'big' ride place, open over the summer, and then a bit more.. also partners up with the big fair, when IT happens... the PNE...

Despite the carpooling, the whole lot of us wasnt going to get to playland in one car, so it was me, the missus, snoopy and bubbles in our car.

Bubbles mentioned that traffic doesnt honk nerly as much as in china. (Ive also noticed, on ravelling the east US coast, they honk a lot...) But as we got furhter in downtown, we ran into more and more honking.

And screaming,

and yelling.

And italian flags.

Snoopy and bubbles had been following the world cup, but the game went into OT, and we had to meet up with our travelling companions to organize.. On the way, they asked to hear it on the radio, but we only found one station even concerned with it at all.. they broke in, and told s the result when it was time.. and the ladies missed it anyway...

BUT anyway, there we are, crossing from the parking lot to playland, across a steady trickle of italian flags flying from yell-filled cars, and a coupl eolder ladies on the corner waving a flag with all their hearts, probably taking turns.

I met the boys form the other half of our party, ages from 6 "I jsut turned 6! I'm 6! I'm tall enough for bumper cars now!!!!" to the chinese boys who were 9 and 10.

As I mentioned, I'm in a wheelchair, so the rides hold no real attraction for me.. for that matter, they didnt before i was in the chair, so no big whoop.

I was, however, designated packmule for water and snacks, (avoiding such deals as the $3 coke machines) and guardian of a stack of bags and purses when the ladies got on a ride with nowhere to hold them.

Such was the first ride. And Mr6 wasnt sure about it either.. so at the botom of this big swing things was me, Mr6, and a stack of packpacks and purses and such.

Mr6 realizes he's 'alone' with this odd person in the wheelchair. His focus soon moves back to the ride. "just wanted bumper cars. Big enough now" he mumbles to himself.. all the while starting to regret not going on the ride he's watching.

Fast forward 6 hours..

Me and bubbles were ready to go a LONG time ago. MY wife, and the other host mome are doing well enough...

Snoopy and the kids are having a blast... mr6 is going nuts.. thanks to the cloudy weather, lineups are short, at some times, nil.

My quest for a decent hot dog, which at this point was half a week in prograss was thwarted by the CLOSE smokie shack.

The eventual, merciful ride home was mostly quiet, except for my bod starting it's SCREAMING at me.

The other host mom mentioned what a 'good sport' i was.. and my wife knows she owes me. hehe.. big time.





kinda dull story overall.. but eh.. im kinda picking the bottom of the barrel now. It's fun having themn here, and having a convo with bubbles and her minimal english is a fun challenge.....

i think the next really GOOD story will be generated when ping gets back, and/or when the new german girl arrives... did i gibve her a name yet? hmmm....

(or if anyone asks me a Q, it might make me remember something...)

[Riinuka]

Hmm. I'm sorry I didn't ask earlier! I was in the lab that day, and wasn't able to do anything except read before it was time to go...

How about Ping's reaction to having a new German student? Does she know about it?

Hmm.. Names for the German student. I gathered that you named the other one from Asuka of Evangelion, but I can't seem to recall any other names ... Well, I'm sure she'll do something in the first day that will give you great ideas for a name. x3

So, let me get this straight... Asuk arrived.. before Ping left.. so you had Asuka, Ping, and Rei all in the house at the same time?!

...I would love to know how that went. o o

[Ozero]

there was one day of overlap. It went smooth and uninterestingly, though i have a feeling in retrospect that rei spent that time doing some pouting.

And yes, ping knows about the new german girl coming, and seems eager about it.

The new german girl is relly pretty and sounds nice.. (talked to her on the phone already)... Maybe i should call her helga or hilda, or something as kinda a satire on that fact that she's pretty.. or something....

[Ozero]

one thing that's been pretty consitant with all the chinese visitors,

-ping
-ping's family friend from downtown
-giggles n snoopy
-and to a lesser extent ping's school friends who are chinese..

they all REALLY make themselves at home in the kitchen.. they dont tend to bother asking things like

"Can i use this onion/side of ham/firstborn in this dish im making an hour before dinner, for no appearent reason, even though there's a good chance you were intending to use it for dinner?"

sigh...... but it's something ya kinda get used to.. always gotta have a plan B ready...

the thought occurred to me that it's maybe rooted n a communist philosphy.. the kitchen is everyone's, etc...

but that seems a little too cut n dry.. comic book logic..

[The Republic]

So IS Asuka's name actually asuka or is it from Neon Genesis? And at that, are the other girls really even named Rei and Ping?

[Riinuka]

I was under the impression that they were codenames.

Heh, I might be able to explain that one. As soon as I get in to a house that I'm comfortable in, I inspect the kitchen and start to ask whether I can make things and such. xD I thought that was a habit that was unique to me, but apparently not..

[羽之助]

Ping was the alias of Mulan, don't forget.

[Ozero]

yeah, the're all codenames, taking a cue from azrael.

rei and asuka are from yes, evangelion... Given that i suddenly had a pair of students who happened to be german and japanese, and i just finished my EVA platinum collection, it seemed obvious...

ping- didnt even think of mulan, but now i should say "of course!" because that's a much more fitting reason than the "ping" character in the webcomic Megatokyo... she's made by sony, anyway.. so technically, shes japanese...

snoopy- default cute dog name since her 'real' name (chosen 'english name') is the same as my dog

bubbles- due to her noticably upbeat attitude.

i think that's all of em... yup.

cept for the so far unnamed 2nd germal girl.

[kinned7261]

whos mr6 ?

this whole story is like the daytime soap operas of op9... he he he

[Riinuka]

Hah, I caught the Asuka reference, but didn't piece it together to include that you used Rei for that reason, too. I suppose it's because from what I hear, this Rei isn't similar in personality to the Rei in Eva, unless you're looking at Angelic Days.

[erbiumfiber]

whos mr6 ?

this whole story is like the daytime soap operas of op9... he he he

I think it's the kid who said he was six...just a guess...

[Ozero]

hehe, yeah mr6 was the newly 6 year old kid...

Who ALSO btw, tried whenever he could, to ride on 'car #6' or whatever on rides, when the different sections had numbers.

Rei and asuka do not match their EVA counterpart's personalities much... except that in a generalized way, my rei IS quiet and demure, generally, and my Asuka is outspoken... but in a freidnly way, not a "my way or the highway" way... oh, and sprinkle on that friednly kinda german accent...

(not a joke, for anyone thinking of the hitler yelling voice.. the german accent iin general is very friendly sounding, at risk of being comedicly so..)

for instance of ger way of getting alone with everyone, just look at this pic where whe's getting along great with a couple japanese girls in a lil club they started....

http://www.ozero.ca/temp/asukaclub.jpg

In a related story, I went shopping with my wife, snoopy and bubbles yesterday, at the biggest mall in the province (I think) metrotown. We arrive at like 5:00..

"So how long do y'all need?"

"hmm.. what time close?"

"9:00"

"ok! that good!"

so yeah.. spent a lotta time just haning out in a store fulla fellow nerds.

[Druid]

>.>
Evangelion will eat you and your dog.

[Ozero]

phonecall from ping today. She's in calgary. Plans to be back here on the 1st or 2nd of aug. I guess i wont have much time 'off' as a host dad, maybe a week. Owell, no biggie.

her grandfather had to go some some operation, but thanks to the bad english all around, I havent been able to find out how serious.l Bad enough to keep him from coming here with her on the 1st or 2nd...

Well, that's what he gets for calling her fat n ugly.

[Ozero]

ok, now it's the 29th. with her mum and an aunt, followed on the 3rd of aug by 2 other family members.

5 chinese folks running around the house, and only ping with workable english. (appearently her mum tries tho)....

"dont worry" ping says to my wife, "we buy you."

unsettling.

I may as well just be ready to not able to get anywhere near my kitchen.

[gentlemanandscholar]

I guess your only option left is for them to cook for you, and enjoy the food?

[Ozero]

well, form what ive seen so far... i dont especially like 'home made' chinese food...

western chinese food is ok, in a mcdonalds kinda way... but is laughable by any other measure...

then i was exposed to really high end fancy chinese stuff... peking duck and friends... i found it equally enjoyable, but in a different way... educational, anyway....

then we ran into a shechwan (sp) place... ping said it was "like we maybe make home, in china." And it was the best chinese ive had, easily.

then there's the stuff ping, snoopy and bubbles have made around here.... high points: chicken wings, which i find to be a waste of effort.. and.. um.. rice, which i make anyway... oh, and they made some sushi, too.. tho.. not so chinese....

low points... "Tof" as they say it, tofu tofu tofu.. gak..... rice porridge.... and the pre packaged pickled veggies....


we'll just have to see how ping's family are at cooking, cuz ping herself never did much, as part of her spoiled-ness.. so.. we'll see....

[Ozero]

Asuka has her equivilant to her learner's permit. yay! and she talked to me about the world cup as if no one outside of europe has heard of it. hehe.. I think I mentioned here about the flurry of italian celebration I ran into in vancouver...


The schoolboard emails me, notifying me about a meeting about the new batch of students coming in for august. This was the first I'd heard ANYTHING about august. If they've already inked us in as being able to host, ping and her 4 relatives might have an issue with that..

told the schoolboard thanks for the advance notice, and the usual plethora of information allowing us to plan our friggin LIVES, and told em "Hey, too bad."

They are so badly organized over there...

AND NOW, for something completely different.. just because i just found out i had the ability, here's a ad/link thing for one of many posters im selling...

hmmm.. i know, i know, advertising is bad n all, but it's not like i started a thread just for it... but anyway, this is my latest.. there's one of these (with a few others) in the mail coming my way as we speak.

(I setup posters at fotki cuz it led to wayyy cheaper consumer cost than deviant art, where i WAS set up...)

http://images17.fotki.com/v323/photos/9/931505/3661428/ozpalisiaglow-vi.jpg (http://public.fotki.com/OzeroAZU1/azu1lifehack_art/oz-p-alisiaglow-1.html)

[Crowley]

While that's very pretty, and WAY nicer than anything I've ever done or will be able to...


what the hell's wrong with her chest?!

[Ozero]

hehe, yeah, a bit too much cleaviness.. more than i intended.. might cut a bit off the bottom before i hang it in the office..

unless you mean the freckles.. she's got some on her face too, but i guess ya weren't lookin there.. :P

[Riinuka]

I've got it.

It looks like her shoulders are fused to her breasts. Altering the shading so that the brightness is focused only in the center of each should remedy it. Add some shading in on the outer side of each of them, possibly even adding in the line for the outer edge for anatomy's sake. They're slightly high, so "clipping" a section of the outer edge would help some.

Please don't take offense to my advice. ._.

[seiji]

She doesn't seem to have collarbones, but I'm not sure it's possible to add them without making the breasts look even more squished. The way she's built, her collarbones might not be so prominent anyway... :D I think trimming the poster off about halfway down the dogtags looks much better.

I love her freckles. <3

[Riinuka]

No, the collarbone is represented by highlights. Look at her necklace, and notice the two circular light orbs above it.. Now look at the top one (the larger one), and look underneath it. There's the collarbone highlight.

[Ozero]

oh no, i dont mind critique at all.. yeah, before i put the effects on top, the collarbones were more pronounced...

but yes, odd how clipping around half the height of the dog tag somehow takes away from the awkward aspect above... it's kinda hard to guage exactly what it is that isnt quite right.. a combination of small factors sneaking together... still, overall, im pretty happy with it...

OH! i think i know what it is...! The shading on the lower part of the pic comes off like it's expressing the curvature of her boobs, when it's way too high to be curving in that much at that point... cutting that off fixes it... maybe i should re-do the shading there, (quick fix) and re-post it on my site, and the poster site.... But not this moment, there's too much goin on right now....

oh, since the freckles got mentioned, i should maybe plug that that character, and her freckles have been one of my 2 regular characters for like.. 4 years now.. so she has a fair amont of works for her on my site. AND, she's one of the main charcaters for my book, which is curently being proofread one last time before being put out there.


international update.. tonight's the last dinner with the teachers, and we're gonna go out somewhere, then to a mall. It was important for them to go once more to this one mall. Tomorrow morning, my wife takes em back to the school board. No room for me and the wheelchair, with thier luggage there, so i'll be bidding them farewell at the house, i suppose. And my wife has to DASH out to work after the dropoff.

No re-runs of askua's departure expected, no watiing around for what felt like forever for things to get underway with the bus, no endless heart-ripping waterworks.

Bubbles was on the webcam with her husband last night, and she was lookin a lil weepy. They're ready to go home. It makes me appreciate the courage of these students that are more than a decade younger, and stay for 3 months to a year...

I suppose of the students so far, rei had the biggest cause for homesickness... aside from email, and her mother's spring break visit, she was very apart from home for 10 months, in a culture very different from hers.

Ping hadn't been here as long, and she has family all over the place, and a thriving chinese presence around vancouver.

Asuka was only 3 months, and the culture isn't so STARKLY different here than germany.. and her english allowed for much better communication.

I expect the new german girl (hmm.... im gonna go with helga for now) to have a similar experience as asuka. Asuka was very outgoing and made many friends easily. Helga may or may not be quite as outgoing (based mainly on my phone convo with her) but she's also verrry pretty.. although that can also be a hindrance when trying to be 'approachable'... but what do I know, I'm not pretty.

BUT! It seems that I would be a hit with the guys in asia! First, CPB calls me 'cute', and more recently bubble's hsuband, who caught a glipse of me on the webcam, called me handsome.

No doubt all the ladies that stay here are sheerly too intimidated, and speechless in awe of my overwealming canadian manliness! What would they say, if they could summon the courage? How to express their breathless worship of me, and still maintain the polite proitocol of host/guest?

Alas, I lament for them all, going home, and being scrutinized, no one believing them that they resisted my SHEER ANIMALISTIC MACHISMO! Their doubts must only be pushed back by the knowledge that someone of my immeasurable virtue would not dishonor the vow symbolized by the gold on my finger.

........ why did i just imagine myself as the male lead in one of those harem-animes?

[Vulcannis]

so yeah.. spent a lotta time just haning out in a store fulla fellow nerds.

Hmm.... EB? Games Workshop? The Sakura cart? Manga section of Chapters? I'm sure there's a few more I'm forgetting....

[mikem]

........ why did i just imagine myself as the male lead in one of those harem-animes?

Those guys never get the girl though! I don't think you have enough "bumbling idiot" in ya to be one. :innocent:

[seiji]

Win.
When's your autobiography due out? :D

[Ozero]

Hmm.... EB? Games Workshop? The Sakura cart? Manga section of Chapters? I'm sure there's a few more I'm forgetting....

a lil shop called 'ages 3 and up', in metrotown. An ok array of anime figurines, a pile of mcfrlane-type stuff, a friggin PILE of transformers, old n current, some RPG stuff, star wars, blah blah blah...

there's better sources in and around metrotown to get anime stuff, but this is the best place to just hang out while waiting for your females to finish shopping.

When's your autobiography due out?

ha.. tho actually, the homestay thing would be a pretty small portion so far.. somehow I think my growing up all over canada, and little things like my getting snapped in half by a ford mustang, might take up some space too. On that note, GRR on bush. (his first veto, and it was levied against stem cell research, which 75% of his citizens actualy support. Holy hell, the look on his face at that press confrence made me wanna rip his head off)

Ok, ok, fine, these little embryotic samples for stemcells might have the potential for life, fine.. but big deal... they can create a billion of em. As it is, i think many just get thrown out. They're not precious. If people are that desperate for a kid, try adopting, they're certainly out there. A lot of children getting left behind, and bush wants to make new ones from jars. My wife thinks we should crush bush's spinal cord, and see what he thinks about stemcells after a few years of close consideration. And if he's worried about the souls trapped in the frozen embryos, (Which, i think anything resembling a soul is built through life experience, not granted) I hope bush has been keepeing all his wife's eggs from month to month safely frozen, and all of his spern he doesnt use. They don't last forever in there, y'know. Be sure to jack em all off into the freezer before the pope comes and excommunicates you! How is bush going to be jesus's best buddy on the second coming, (which bush hears, is soon), if he doesn't have cases and cases of rescued frozen bush sperm ready for the rapture? I'm sure as soon as bush hears this idea, we'll be seeing republican circle jerks into a camping cooler on c-span... no wait.. we kinda already have that, don't we?

as long as im talking about books, and things bush hates, i'm sure ive mentioned before that the novel i almost have out soon features OMFG lesbians! I hope for the sake of the republican party that they dont get married.





AAAAAAAAAAnyway.. The teachers just left half an hour ago. Now, a week of 'vacation'. I'm tempted to throw a "We are not the goddam UN!" party, and get hammered, now that i dont have to worry about influencing minors, or giving canada a bad rep with china.

Sorted things out with the schoolboard, and (as close as it's ever gonna happen) got them to admit that the problem with the 'surprise' 2nd group was thier fault. IN a diplomatic way. You cant go in accusing in a situation like that...

"Oh, we didnt know you thought we were ready for a 2nd pair. When we learned the dates for bubbles and snoopy, we mentioned it to Ping, and she made her travel plans around that. I'm sorry, i should have been FUCKING PSYCHIC."

well.. not quite, but yeah..... I was hoping for a "Wow, we really suck at communicating what the heck's going on. We need to get our act together, and actually explain how we expect the summer program to happen to people, instead of assuming that one 'yes' means we can use you like a barn for 2 months, disregarding any lines hosts may have outside the homestay program."

instead i got "Oh, i see now how it might be confusing for you."

thanks.

She has bigger fish to fry tho. Seems i have a 'good reason' to only go one pair this summer, whereas several other selfish families thought they could get away with just having a month OFF. Those bastards. Who also probably had no idea that the school board intended more people for them past the first group.






OH! I keep meaning to bring up this think the teachers always say.. but now I have a conclusion to the concept....

when snoopy and bubbles talk to each other in chinese, there was one word that stood out..
"blah blah blah blah neega blah blah"
"oh! blah blah blah BLAH neega neega!"

um.. neega? Visions of that video with the japanese family all calling each other nigga popped into my head every time.

Finally i had the chance last night to ask, since conversaiton was a little slower than the usual mach 2349346723.

she's looking at a wedding photo, and says "hm, neega neega"

i grin. "Ok, i gotta ask, what does that mean?"

as it turns out, it's a very soft pronounciation of "linga" L ad n being very close in sound if you're sloppy, or fast, or pronounce it softly, or any combo of the 3...and means essentially 'very good'.

They seemed impressed at my first shot at pronouncing it.. "leenga", with the n and g very soft. So.. yay, I learnt.

[Ozero]

well, here's a bump, partly just to bump, and party just cuz i got a shipment of prints today, and am hyper about it... I got the one i posted before, and 2 new ones. HOLY CRAP they were well packed... short of an acme anvil falling on the box, it was gonna be pretty friggin difficult to damage em.... kinda surprising how much care was put into it all, given that these guys were nearly half the price of the previous guys...

anyway, here's the other 2 i got... they're surrounding me now.. yay...

http://images17.fotki.com/v319/photos/9/931505/3661428/ozpzki2-vi.jpg (http://public.fotki.com/OzeroAZU1/azu1lifehack_art/oz-p-zki2.html) http://images1.fotki.com/v6/photos/9/931505/3661428/ozpzki-vi.jpg (http://public.fotki.com/OzeroAZU1/azu1lifehack_art/oz-p-zki.html)

[羽之助]

I just read it for the articles.

[Crowley]

I just read it for the zombies.

[stsparky]

I could brag about the sheer number of figurines owned. Needless to say I live too frigging close to Puzzle Zoo.

http://static.flickr.com/68/198112827_d22fd33ef0_o.jpg


http://static.flickr.com/69/198112828_70e686e7bf_o.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/70/198112829_ef28d63351.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/70/198112830_79fc93a783.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/67/198112831_d6de5092a9.jpg

Things have changed since though ... :D

[Ozero]

oh, for a split second, i thought you had made the figurines or something.. want really gettin how it related to my posters.. heh.. (or didnt ya realize i drew those posters?)

[stsparky]

I recognized you made the posters - as you have a unique style. But I was referring further back to your tease pic of some dolls as Ping and Rei. The pics were a small sample of what I have. Are you active in the Megatokyo forums at all? - Sparky

[Ozero]

AH, i forgot those are posted in here too...

MT forums? Not me.. im already in deep enough with the various forums i go to.. heh... like i need to waste more time.. :P

maybe i should gater my whole collection and take a chot.. not as many as yours i dont think tho...

oh, international update..... ping comes back on saturday, with a couple family members. Till then, we're using the spare rooms to avoid each other in the heatwave...

[Ozero]

ping update.... she was expected on saturday...

last night, ping calls here while im out, and talks to my wife, sounding like ehs'e almost in tears. She'd changed her flight to today, and wanted to come back here ASAP.

a later phone call came that seemed to serve little purpose but to give my wife the impression that ping was mad at someone in calgary.

my wife, ever the fan of plans being changed, made lemonade form this lemon, and, while she was having to go out to the abbostford airport (way cheaper than dealing with vancouver airport), she would take her grandmother that lives nearby, out to dinner.

20 minutes ago, the phone rang. Allow me to weed out a lot of the engrish:

"hi." a male voice with a mud-thick chinese accent comes, "this ping's aunt...UNCLE. Ping go now. She coming vancouver (flight#, ETA)."

"Ok, got it."

assuming that was the plan all along, and he was playing things safe, I figured i'd call my wife, and confirm, just for kicks.

"Heya, i just got a call from Ping's auntUNCLE. Just confirming (flight#, time) at YVR." (yvr=vancouver airport)

"Yeah yeah, why are.... YVR???? I helped her set up that ticket, and it was for ABBOTSFORD!!! I'm in friggin abbostford, and i have to drave across the whole damn lower mainland?"

"Um.. maybe.. y'know, he's in calgary, he might kinda be lumping in the airport as being vancouver cuz it's basicly the same place from a flying perspective..."

"...... can you get on the airline website, and find out where this thing is landing?"

I haul my butt into the wheelchair, and start up the machine, and look it up... YV, there in black n white. I call my wife.

"hey."

"......well?"

"Bad news."

"........"

"YVR"

"........god dammit." In a voice that sounded like an impression of stan talking to cartman.

"Yeah."

"Do you have her uncle's number?"

"I can *69 it and call ya back."

beep beep beep , beep beep beep...

"Hey. i got the number."
"Well, im not calling him long distance on the cell."
"Well, what am i saying to him?"
"Check if it's YVR or abbostford."
"Well, the website... hhhhhhuhhhhh... kay. fine."

beepbeepbeep

<chinese greeting>
"Uh, hi, i'm looking for ping's uncle?"
"Ping gone now to vancouver."
"I know. I wanted to know about her flight."
"......??......"
"We thoughgt it was abbostford, but now it's vancouver?"
"OH! Flight cancel, take next one, go abbusfer."
"AH..... OKEE, thanks..!"


could..... SOMEONE have told us a bit sooner?


beep beep beep.
"Hi?"
"hey hon, the first flight got cancelled, so that's why.."
"ugh."
"yeah."
"OKAY, i'm going to yvr!"


10 min later, the phone rings.
"hello?"
"ummm." Female chinese voice. "You tell ping?"
"Tell ping what?
(batch of english mangled beyond recognition.) This ping mother. Tell ping"
"Ping isnt here yet."
(gibberish) tell ping (gibberish)

by now im clueing in that she wants to talk to ping, but that doesnt change my response. We share a giggle over tripping over english, and "Ping here later" finally got through ot her.

Just because i feel like keeping my wife informed, I ring her up. I'm also bad at forgetting this kinda thing, and want to spread the liability.

"hey, ping's mom called. I guess she should call her back when she gets the chance."
"Her mom? She's not calling china on my cell! And now I can't make it to duinner with my grandma, and she's all disappointed, and i'm gonna just hafta take the highway the whole way, and the traffic's gonna be murder, i'm NOT gonna make it on time. If she calls, tell her im on my way."

Later:
"Tell her if she calls, to wait outside."

or
"I'm here, it got delayed. They better not goddam drop people off at abbostford then continue on to yvr, i'm not driving back again. Your dad can get her."


.... and THAT'S the kind of day it's been, so far.. somehow, ping has a natural nack to make things complicated... not on purpose, it's just this aura of fuddling the world up, that she emminates... well.. ok, she directly causes much of it.. but whatever...

[Riinuka]

*twitch* Oh geez. That sounds like when I'm trying to deal with a friend's mother. xDD Talking to her is so difficult.. But, on rare occasions, I can write a kanji that I know the meaning for in Japanese, and it will actually make sense to her (she speaks Cantonese, Mandarin, and Taiwanese)... It's sad, though. It's fun to talk to her, though, because then I have an excuse to use English the way I think of it in my head.

-----
Me: Ben (friend) like time in goodfellow (base) for having friends and swim.

Her: *not having caught the last word...* Oh, that nice. You friend like that?

Me: Yes. I swim, too.

Her: *confused look* Swim... too...?

Me: Ah, *scribbles kanji for water, kanji for sun, and kanji for fire* *points to kanji for sun, then for hot, and points to the sky, then points to the kanji for water and writes the kanji for 'happy' afterwards*

Her: Ohhhhhhhh. I know now. Swim. Swim is*mutters in Chinese* I get.

Me: Yeah, exactly. o O;
------

....yeah. xD

[Ozero]

as long as people arent in a hurry, the language barrier can be kinda fun with the right attitude...

well, anyway, they finally come in last night, after my bod demanded i get to bed (8pm-ish)

Seems ping REALLY doesnt get along with her... step-grandmother, and that was the motivation for the early return.

As for the flight cancellation that had my wife driving all over the place- turns out there was 'something' wrong with the plane.

Ping didnt get one of her bits of luggage due to the various chaos, but the airport told her they'd deliver it today.

We got a call at 11:30pm "Hi, this is the vancouver airport. We can have your luggage there to ya by 3 am tonight, or by 11 am tomorrow" Shutup, pal, colbert's coming on. I wasnt staying up for luggage, so 11:25am here, and it came an hour ago. so yay on them. I guess...

Turns out the realtives want to stay for my majority of august. So .. yeah.. at least we know now... it's gonna be chaos around here.

But it's nice to have ping back. Missed her.

oh, and the 'complication radius' she generates is already in effect. She lost her glasses,:bang: so we're going for an exam later today for a new script, which we'll fax to her mom in china, cuz she can get them cheap, and she'll bring em when she comes... (sigh...)

OH! one other thing... when ping got off the plane yesterday, they offered her a bus ride to the abbostford airport, where she was originally going to be going. She didnt know at the time where my wife was, so it was only luck that she chose not to take it, cuz then michelle would have had to chase her all the way back to pick her up...

[Ozero]

grandparents are here. Seem nice. Through ping translating, her grandfather thanked me for taking care of ping, and said if i ever came to china, he would take care of me, and that he has drivers that can take me around. (did i MENTION ping's family is loaded? You dont wanna know how much cash he's walking around with...)

They might be staying in a bed&breakfast across town, closer to the touristy attractions, and near some family friend's house. The only downside to that, is they expect ping to bus across down in the mornings to join them.. it's not a short trip. I dont think they realize this yet.

Sounds like they'll only be staying in the area for a week or 2, with her parents arriving this coming thursday....

ping had quitly moody segments today, perhaps in anticipation of the step-granny's arrival. Seemed ok later on.

My wife, while fetching some jackets from ping's room, stumbled across a hilarious translation sheet of foul language.

I havent had much time to be around the grandparents yet, and from the looks of things, it might not happen a lot. He also said he plans to take us to dinner at some point. I was also hoping ot cook for them at some point, but I dont want to make a big deal out of it, in case my cooking is laughable by his standards. :P

[Riinuka]

I think that since you've gotten such good reception from your visitors before, that you should definitely try cooking for them, Ozero. xP

Hmm... I wonder why she's so skittish around her step-grandmother.

[Ozero]

Ya, I do want to cook for them, but I dont want to make an issue over it.. or for that matter, spoil any plans they're making, tourism wise... I made my fav recipie for just me and my wife last night, but sorely overestimated the chilie powder i put in... so it was pretty tame.. but still good... meh...

As for the step-grandmother thing.. yeah, I wonder that as well.. i could make theories, but they'd be wild speculation at best. For instance, maybe ping found out it's her ACTUAL grandmother, and this grandmother told ping that she was the 108th generation of the family line of devil hunters. If would explain ping's fondness of cruelly short skirts.

Just for example. I dont wanna pry, and overall, ping seems OK now, so... meh....

[Ozero]

well, dinner tonight was going to just be me, my wife, and my mum, so I was going to put my new huge bbq to work, and just sizzle up some chicken breasts, and my wife was going to throw together a salad...

when POOF! just as i was headed to the kitchen, Ping and her grandfather (no step-granny) showed up.

Change in plans for dinner then. Nuke-thaw a couple more chunks of chicken, and cut em up for stirfry. We remembered ping being a little daumnted by knife a fork at first, despite her assertions that she used them now and then at home....

So we thought to be on the safe side, we'd make a chopstick-friendly dinner.

My wife made tofu chopped n fried in a pan, and some panfried spinach- two things she learnt from the teachers last month, and that I dont care if i ever see again.

My stirfry was high in chicken, and low on veggies and noodles... it was ok overall, but not as good as the one that seemed to truely impress the teachers. The kitchen definitely took on a chinese kichen smell.

Ping grandfather isn't the gushing type, as you might well expect, but he did communicate a compliment to me, most likely sheerly for manners.. but he did have 2nds... and no tofu. A man after my own heart, I guess.

I noticed he didnt do the same 'open mouth chewing' thing that the teachers had done... but for the matter, neither did ping, ever.. I reasoned that out to knowledge of western manners, or teen negligence of eastern manners. Whatever. Could be a regional thing, generational, class... who knows...

Gramps did enlighten us to another expression of his appreciation however..

"BRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!!!!"

don't giggle, don't giggle, don't giggle. That goes for my wife and mother, too. don't giggle.

Conversation wandered about for another couple min, and...

"BRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!!!!"

At least when he lifted his place up to get those pesy last few noodles, it gave me licence to do the same.

[Riinuka]

She might seem 'okay' to keep up appearances. I know family members who can't stand to be around older relatives, but have no choice when it comes to social etiquette than to be nice when they are around.

Hah, devil-hunter, eh? Well, I'm sure people here could come up with some strange stories, too. xP

[Ozero]

i suppose devil hunter yoko is an obscure refrence these days... ahwell.... and no, that doesnt mean ping's real name is yoko. :P

And given some of the shoutfests on the phone with her grandfather that i've heard, I dont know how worried she is about appearances....

While i was wrestling with her scanner driver last night, she showed me some old photos.. one i recongized as her grandad, (who was snoring a few feet away) from 10+ years ago...

"Wow, he looks pretty much the same now!"

"ah. He have.." she puts 2 fingers to her forehead, "Less skin."

"........?"

"You know? You dont know. Less skin here."

"ah.. he had an operation to look young?"

"yes!" (giggle)

"I see. I think here, most men would not do that." I say in the most non-judgemental tone i could. Course, i could also just be wrong about that.. i dunno.. if you have too much money, maybe he felt.. why not....?

[Ozero]

for lack of better names, and for sake of simplicity, let's just say that Mr and Mrs ping just arrived a bit ago.

Neither of them know much english, next to zero, but that doesnt stop Mr ping, much to ping's embarrasment. Watching ping's face distort as Mr ping talks to me, and tried to pantamime kung fu is an amazing sight.

Upon coming up the stairs:
me: "hello!"
mrping, struggling- "Hello how old are you?"
my guess translation of ping: "awwwdad JEEZ! Daaaad!"
mrping, coming at me with a handshake "AH! how are you!"


He's a very outgoing friendly sort, but when he gave me a nicely boxed wall scroll he painted, the giving was done with a near-cerimonial handoff, and bow. He brought a pile of art, traditinal chinese painting, landscapes mostly. Ping told us to take a couple, and the rest were hers. They're done on a nearly rigid fabric, almost a shame to put one in a frame.

The wallscroll will hang free tho, maybe on the wall the stairs crawl up.. it's taller than a person.

He quickly sketched me a 'kung fu' picture, and ping was surprised that I'd heard of the shao lin monks. I was kinda surprised SHE'D heard of them.. I figured it was more of a guy thing to have heard about, regardless of country of origin.


http://www.ozero.ca/temp/kungfu.jpg

his ELABORATE signature is cropped, for the sake of ping's real ID. It looked harder to draw than the picture. This took him about.... 10 min maybe? No rough preportion sketch or anything, he just went at it. Started in pen (darker lines) and switched to pencil, presumably for the tactile aspect, since he didnt seem interested in an eraser.

They brought a suitcase full of food, mostly snacky things... strangely jerked beef, baked cookie-ish things, and some strange tiny packets of wonderfully hot, but othrwise repulsive.. meat.. stuffs.....

right now ping's room is a mess of explosive unpacking, and my dog's patrolling for anything she can get, be it a stray snack, gift shoe brought for ping, with it's tasty smelling leather, or one of my wife's socks.

my wife: "this is gonna be a long month.."


EDIT

earlier in the day, ping left to go meet up with my wife before heading to the airport...

an hour or so later, i'm still in bed, and my mum yelles up "HON, do you know if the pohone is working? I jsut get statis!"

"hmm? ping was using it jsut an hour or two ago.. lemmie see,... yeah.. it's messesd here too..."

"I think i hear someone speaking chinese!"

"Can you go into ping's room and make sure her phone is hung up?"

sure enough, she's left it off the hook. I imagine it wasnt a long sitance call, she's better hope....

The talking my mum was hearing, she reported, was ping's laptop siting on the bed, left on, playing music.

I got up and went into my office, and found the internet paralysed. I couldnt even get a browser to get to my router to cut ping off.

Imagine in a hoagan's heros voice.... "PiiiiIIIIIING!"

I dont liek to invade anyone's space, but the music she left on? Was video, straming, with a kazaa-like util running full steam. I cant read the interface, so i had an easy solution. HGold the power button for 4 seconds. Brutal, from my prespective, but reasonable. (she didnt seem to care much when i told her, so.. whee...)

still had to reset the modem, and the router to get things working again...

grr. ish. I had this issue with her once before, but during her travels, she forgot i guess.

anyway, time to plan dinner..... stirfy! beef today...

[Riinuka]

...I've never even heard of any male doing that. ._.;

Wow.

I ended up posting at the same time as you. xDD

[seiji]

Awesome sketch of a Shaolin monk kicking ass on some guy with a sword.
So what's the picture on the scroll? Please tell me it's more warrior monks. :D

[Ozero]

hehe, no, his specialty is landscapey sorts of things. We wont have the big one up for a while, but i'll see if i can get a snap of one of the smaller ones..

[Riinuka]

..>We posted at the same time again. I almost didn't read your update! xD

[Ozero]

"Make yourself at home"

-probably has no cantoneese equivilant.

Why? Because appearantly, this is assumed without saying anything.

Last night, we had Ping, Mr Ping, Mrs Ping, and grandpa. I thought we could accomodate this many people easily, but I had not factored in the chinese way of life.

Which is, seemingly, chaos.

It's not that they're loud, it's that it's constant. And with only ping as a translator, (who is more concerned with her own interests than playing translator-, she is, after all, a teenager in any language,) it becomes easier to mostly let them do their own thing, and stay out of the way.

On my honeymoon, one of the stops on our trip was newyork. I hated it. Noisy, busy, chaotic...

but in retrosect, tranquil compared to my house in the last 24 hours. Remind me never NEVER never to take a vacation to china, despite the grandfather's invite, if this is any indication of normal life there.

I would kerplode.

They're all out right now, visiting richmond, the area's nexus of chinese immigrants, and therefore, shopping.

at this moment, my nephew, poster child for ADHD, is exploring my precious office, and it's still relaxing by comparison.



Let's see... our guests also seem to be unfamiliar with the concept of a dish washing machine.. i dont know if this is because they simply arent as prominent in china, of because they have maids and whatnot for such things, but lacking any experience with them, it was no trouble to take cleandishes from it, use them, then put them back where they giot them, dirty, among the rest of the clean dishes. My wife was... impressed.

let's just skip the cooking topic for now, i dont have the time, or the serenity to attack it.

Food shopping... I wasnt there, thank god, but every aisle seemed to be a new battleground for them all to argue about, and grab things that... as we find out after, they didnt even know what they were FOR, but thought looked interesting. Again, my wife impressed.

On thing Midson grabbed that she DID know about was a durian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durian).

What is that you may ask, too lazy to read the wiki link i supplied? Well, allow my to paraphrase.

It's the pinapple's evil cousin. It has a hard outta shell with spikes, which required a handaxe to break open.

inside, it separates into sections of.. what might be mistaken for half-dried chunks of custard, wrapped around a pertrified olive. (the seed).

Except that no custard smells like this. I kd you not, this smell has inspired singapore transit officials to put durians on a sign of no-nos, nex tto flamable goods.

IF THEY DON'T ALLOW IT ON PUBLIC TRANSIT BECAUSE OF THE STENCH, WHY DO I WANT IT IN MY HOUSE!?

But the taste...! ooh! Wikipedia helped me find the perfect descrpition.... onions mixed with the dried vommit of a fruit-heavy diet.

why do they put this in stores?? This is the kind of thing you eat if you're STARVING, and have only your blood-painted volleyball to talk to.

on the 9th, the grandparents leave, and hopefully the chaos level will go down in the same manner as the exponential rise in chaos we've recently experienced.

this is day 3 of having them all in the area.... 4 more to go.....? I can make it, i can make it... just keep the knives out of sight, and i wont feel the need to do anymore cutting.

[RotoruaBoy]

"Make yourself at home"

-probably has no cantoneese equivilant.

Why? Because appearantly, this is assumed without saying anything.

Last night, we had Ping, Mr Ping, Mrs Ping, and grandpa. I thought we could accomodate this many people easily, but I had not factored in the chinese way of life.

Which is, seemingly, chaos.

It's not that they're loud, it's that it's constant. And with only ping as a translator, (who is more concerned with her own interests than playing translator-, she is, after all, a teenager in any language,) it becomes easier to mostly let them do their own thing, and stay out of the way.

On my honeymoon, one of the stops on our trip was newyork. I hated it. Noisy, busy, chaotic...

but in retrosect, tranquil compared to my house in the last 24 hours. Remind me never NEVER never to take a vacation to china, despite the grandfather's invite, if this is any indication of normal life there.

I would kerplode.

They're all out right now, visiting richmond, the area's nexus of chinese immigrants, and therefore, shopping.

at this moment, my nephew, poster child for ADHD, is exploring my precious office, and it's still relaxing by comparison.



Let's see... our guests also seem to be unfamiliar with the concept of a dish washing machine.. i dont know if this is because they simply arent as prominent in china, of because they have maids and whatnot for such things, but lacking any experience with them, it was no trouble to take cleandishes from it, use them, then put them back where they giot them, dirty, among the rest of the clean dishes. My wife was... impressed.

let's just skip the cooking topic for now, i dont have the time, or the serenity to attack it.

Food shopping... I wasnt there, thank god, but every aisle seemed to be a new battleground for them all to argue about, and grab things that... as we find out after, they didnt even know what they were FOR, but thought looked interesting. Again, my wife impressed.

On thing Midson grabbed that she DID know about was a durian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durian).

What is that you may ask, too lazy to read the wiki link i supplied? Well, allow my to paraphrase.

It's the pinapple's evil cousin. It has a hard outta shell with spikes, which required a handaxe to break open.

inside, it separates into sections of.. what might be mistaken for half-dried chunks of custard, wrapped around a pertrified olive. (the seed).

Except that no custard smells like this. I kd you not, this smell has inspired singapore transit officials to put durians on a sign of no-nos, nex tto flamable goods.

IF THEY DON'T ALLOW IT ON PUBLIC TRANSIT BECAUSE OF THE STENCH, WHY DO I WANT IT IN MY HOUSE!?

But the taste...! ooh! Wikipedia helped me find the perfect descrpition.... onions mixed with the dried vommit of a fruit-heavy diet.

why do they put this in stores?? This is the kind of thing you eat if you're STARVING, and have only your blood-painted volleyball to talk to.

on the 9th, the grandparents leave, and hopefully the chaos level will go down in the same manner as the exponential rise in chaos we've recently experienced.

this is day 3 of having them all in the area.... 4 more to go.....? I can make it, i can make it... just keep the knives out of sight, and i wont feel the need to do anymore cutting.
easy...easy *pats*

[seiji]

Oh, durian. :D They do stink to high heaven when raw, but when properly processed are quite tasty.

I prefer to let the dried-fruit-chip factory process them for me.

[Ozero]

this was too long to proofread, enjoy the typos!

Well, no new disasters as of today, nothing big. Yesterday when they left, they said they'd be back for dinner.... we didnt worry too much, cuz they have the unstoppable ability to cook whatever they want at the drop of a hat, regardless of whatever else i might be cooking.

So when the car salesmen (investigating getting a minivam and the accessible options for one) dragged our day out way longer than we expected, we didn't stress it.

In the process, i took a 'shortcut' which would save me getting into the car again, and out, just to cross the street to another dealership.... i'd meet my wife there....

well. no...

Escaping lot #1 proved more difficult than first imagined. First of all, keep in mind form my viewing height, in the wheelchair, I dont see over cars, so the cars in the lot may as well have been 1000 foot high walls, and of course, they're parked so close together, even a biped would have trouble getitng between them.

Rat in a maze, i hunted for the driveway, running into one blind dead end after another. By the time i found one, the trip to the next lot was noticably more than "across the street", but no matter...

but crossing the street at where i came out was not so easy, for the lack of a cutout on the other side, requiring me to wheel on the side edge of the street facing oncoming traffic for half a block. A tad unnerving.

Ok, a driveway, i can get off the friggin street, and... up a steep hill into this big store's parking lot.

At this point, I'm only guessing where car lot #2 is, but i was pretty sure it was still ahead of me, so PUMP up the hill. Yup, over the parking lot, i could see the carlot. And the half-block wide undeveloped property between us. How the frig did i get in this mess? Well, I'm not going back into that busy street and go around the long way, waiting to become road pizza. (again)

I trace around the back edge of the parking lot for some kind of back way.. no, no, and no. BUT, if i snuck between these 2 cars..just enough space... there was a dirt parth headed right where i was going. Not easy going in the chair, but managable.

The first part was the worst, a 7 or 8 foot patch of SAND. Dry sand. Good for not getting overly mucky, horrid for traction, but luckily, there was a bit of a downward slope, just a little, to assist me.

The front wheels dug in deep. This both set me pointing down a bit more than is comfortable, and made progress difficult. Several small 'wheelie'-like manuvers were needed to keep going, but landing from the wheelies felt like it was going to threaten to toss me out of the chair. There was also a large concrete block nearby with a metal bar sticking out the side. No real threat to me, except a fluke of misfortune, or my paint job, but getting snared on it while I struggled down would mess things up bad, having to maneuver in the sand which barely let me move at all.

It was now that i realized how out of the way i was, and how loud i'd have to yell to get help should anything happen.

Finally I cleared the sand trap, and had 'easier' dry, rough, but compartivly flat terrain ahead. As i progressed, i saw....

to get to the toyota lot, there was about 5 feet of 'down' involved, and there certainly wasnt any ramp. I got as close as i could to this little cliff. A VERY rough path led down the side, but it was uneven enough to put me on my side.. and even if i got down there, i'd still be stuck behind a 6 inch concrete barricade.

So much for the shortcut. I could have spit on a toyota from there. So close.

Turn around, take the path back.. As i struggled along, i paused to rest a little.

With major retailers all around, here i was in this undeveloped patch, just far enough away from everything to have silence, except the soft hiss of the highway traffic.

The ground was so dry, and the few plants around looked like they'd been living on very little water, given the recent weather... The sun pounded on me and my black wardrobe, giving me the red complexion i sport today. it felt a little like a desert.

I thought of the way the desert was seen back in the days before motorvehicles and modern survival gear. It was a place to get lost. And die.

Not that im religious, but I also thought of jesus wandering the desert, being tempted by the devil. No devils here, my enemy was the ground itself.

Yea, though I wheel through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Ninjas, maybe, but not evil, per se.

It'd suck to be mugged here. This was the kind of place they find bodies. Thankfully, it was 4pm, and very few muggings tend to happen in that timespan.

Mind having wandered far enough, I reeled it back in. Back to the path. Dang it would have been nice to have some of that rootbeer left, the bottle still in my backpack waiting to be recycled.

Now, I just need to get past that sand trap. Up the same slope that enabled me to get through in the first place.

Ramming it with some speed wasn't an option, since the 'friendly' terrain would enever allow for any meaningful momentum. It would also not be a wise move, as the front wheels would hit the sand, sink, and I'd find myself kissing that sand.

Wheelie, bam, wheelie forward, bam.. like an icebreaker boat. This was getting risky, since the slope added to the wheelie threatened to toss me on my BACK. Equally bad.

miniwheelie, miniwheelie, PUSH! HARD! BREATHE!

This was pride, this was war.

I heard metal scraping rock as my right wheel slipped into a useless spin. The push rim had lodged on a flat rock in the sand. Lean over, dig the rock out, toss it.

PUSH! GO!

stop, take a breather.

The cement barricade I took care to avoid earlier could now be my ally. I was close enough to grab the metal bar sticking out, and get some forward force.

Not much.. well, unless I wanted to pull myself out of the chair. Left hand on the bar, right hand working a wheel.... mini wheelie to get the front free again, just to see them instantly sink about as deep.

I'd gotten only a pathetic distance through the sand trap.

I was stuck, in the desert. I'd die here form some heat stroke, crows pecking out my eyeballs.

I was defeated. Pride, make room for the cellphone.

"Hi."

"Where are you, Im at the t-"

"Yeah, yeah. Hi, um, I'm stuck."


ANYWAY, wow that went on longer than i thought.

By the time we look at a few more minivans, and get home, i was destroyed, and was too late to go to a friend's movie night anyway. A home, i plopped into bed and moaned.

Ping and co werent back yet, and it was like 6pm.. so much for being back for dinner.. or calling us and letting us know.. ordered pizza for me and my wife.

Midnight or so, (having left richmond around 8 pm, and probably not the most efficient way to deal with the busses and skytrain) they get back, turning on every friggin light alone the way, the brightest of which is like a laser going from the guest bathroom, through the open gap in the bedroom door the dog enforces, and into my eyes. On, off, next person, on off.

Dammit, rei know enough to close the door before turning the light on. She has more ninja DNA than ping and her family, of course. Azreal's theory of japanese disappearing and appearing at will? Does NOT apply to chinese. in the slightest.

If i was worried about being the rude/loud gaijin when rei first arrived, well.. this fear was unfounded, next to ping's father and grandfather, the burpingest, cough-hack-flegm-ist loud people i've ever met.

Just reinforces the vast differences between japan and china, that i never before appreciated.

Today, they, and my wife, went to victoria. They planned to be back in time to take me to dinner. Screw that. 1- aside form my wife, they dont GET that travel takes TIME, and to enjoy victoria at all, there's no way in heck they're getting back for dinner. 2- OMFG i'm wrecked, i'm going NOWHERE today.

pass the morphine.

[RotoruaBoy]

guess it wouldn't hurt if you just ask them to keep it down alittle, technically they are still living under your roof.

[Ozero]

well, they did thier best last night.. it's not so much the night time, as the every day kinda... well, like i said, it's not volume so much as constant.. it's hard to describe...

[Riinuka]

...You've got to be careful. o O

[haterllnation]

*passes the morphine

[erbiumfiber]

passes some valium. don't take it with the morphine...

[Ozero]

I plan to just ride it out for now, and not say anything. This morning I was thinking about that made this grouping different than just ping, or the teachers..

ping's a youth, and a good girl, and therefore prone to taking her cues from us, which i thought might have accounted for the smoothness of things. Maybe it was that adults are more stuck in thier ways..

then i realized... snoopy and bubbles are adults, but they weren't bad at all, give or take a few little kitchen habbits...

it's MALES that are the problem.

Well, that, and being raised with servants.. I was making my mum and i dinner last night, and i see one of the knives in the black are upside down. (blade in the slot facing down), and i go to turn it over... when i pull out the knife there's dried spinach or something on the blade. One of them had used the knife, and put it away filthy.

Similar with the dishwasher... i might have mentioned before.. taking something out of a clean load, using it, then putting in back in the clean load dirty...

Let's just not get into the whole "meat left on the counter hiding behind the toaster for days" issue. In the middle of writing this post, i went to let the dog in, and halfway down the hall, i'm hit by this SMELL.... i have no idea what they cooked, but I'm darn glad they didnt offer me any.

[Ozero]

Mr Ping. I got the imperssion he was a little whipped.. i suppose that a bit of a symptom of being the lone male in a family with the mother and a daughter. You stand back and let the ladies do thier thing. I can empathize.

He's not super active. The ladies go out shopping or whatever, and he stays home and takes a nap. My mum and wife have commented that he doesnt seem like the sharpest tool in the shed, but not in any mean way..

I think he's just along for the ride. What else do ya do.. he's an artist married into money, so you could imagine him and gramps (the source of money) being an interesting relationship, in a sit-com kinda way, but they seem to genuinely get along.

Today, he got on his hands and knees, and scrubbed the hallway floor. That was unexpected. A way to chip in? They've got to know the incedible deal they're getting here in terms of room n board, so i guess it makes sense...

I start to get the feeling Mr Ping and I might share a similar stance in life. Try to make people happy, dont rock the boat, and when life gives ya a chance, hide in a corner, and do arty things.



in kitchen news... the other day, me and my mum decided to take initiative, and make a lasanga.. a hearty westerney dish that just about everyone likes... we assemble the thing, throw it in the oven, and wander off, to let it bake of an hour.

Meanwhile, TeamPing attacks the kitchen while our backs are turned, and makes dinner. Rice, with something that LOOKED like conventional stew, but smelt and tasted distinctly chinese. And a LOT of fat. Like wads. Eep? This ties into mrs ping's health philosophy, which ping doesnt seem to have a problem with on her diet. Again.. someone tells ping something's good for her, and poof, it is.

Not that she or her mum are anything near overweight... i dunno if i wanna know how mrs ping's arteries look tho..

Anyway, the lanagna was 5 min form nicely browning on top, so we took it out for another day.. blame miscommunicaiton today.

Next day was the grandparents' last night in the country, and gramps took as all to dinner, so the lasange waited it chance.. next day...

"Hey ping, we still have that lasanga, so tell your parents they dont have to cook, we'll just have that."

"oh. they... how to say... um.. not like..."

"Lasagna?"

"um... no, ah..."

"Western food?"

"ah! yes! That why my mother cook."

ohhhhhh. alllright. well, ok then, that makes things simple. TeamPing can cook n eat what they want, we'll do what we want. Not quite in the spirit of multiculturalism, but.... arrg....

The day the stew-like thing was served, my wife was having a late work night.. i told her about the dish, and how aside form the mostly-avoidable fat, it was pretty good. She kinda snaps back...

"I told you not to eat thier food!" I almost burst out laughing. Like it was going to turn me into a werewolf or something...

My wife is VERY foodsafe aware... paranoid even.. if something sits on the counter for more than an hour.. or even the fridge, uncovered, she mentally puts it into her "stuff im not eating" pile. Open chip bag? If it didnt have a bag clip on it overnight, it's too stale for her. A crumpled up open end isnt good enough.

This morning she put 3 plates of leftovers form thier dinner last night, into the fridge.. it had been out all night, to my wife's horror. They put up barricades to keep the cat from eating it, ever so careful, but dont consider sticking it in the fridge.

And they seem to like not really cooking meat... more like..warming raw meat.. and if it happens to cook a bit, fine. Chicken inclusive.

They bought some groceries in the morning one day, and left it in the car most of the day, unknown to my wife. It was a hot day, some was meat...

"Joe, if they cook something with ham, dont eat it!"

Know what...?

I'm thinking of siding with my wife here, I'm gonna aovid eating their food.. i still have my lasanga.

Being open minded to multiculturalism is easy. When you're dealing with students who you can 'control' in a 'i run the house, you're a minor' kinda way....

when you're almost outnumbered, with a huge commnications gap, and they take over the kitchen in a flurry of healthcode violations that would shut down any resturant... being open minded get harder and harder.

THIS JUST IN: (as i was writing this)
my wife: "There's dishes in the fridge."
me: "dishes? in the f..." Meanwhile, i'm thinking "As long as it's not snakes on a plane."...
wife: "uh huh! EMPTY."
remember i told you she'd put leftovers in the fridge this morning?
me: "Let me guess. He got them, nuked em, ate them, and put them back where he found them."
wife- nods, smiles, then a silent, room-trembling scream

it is currently aug 12?... they have to be gone before the 30th... hmmm... I like to be a gracious host and all, but things will get a lot saner around here when ping's parents are gone..

omg, that's what theyre getitng me for my bday on the 30th..! they're leaving!

I'm also getting a german girl on my bday. And here all i wanted were a few dvds...

[Riinuka]

....Wow.

I don't blame you on the food crisis, with you not wanting to eat it anymore.. That's extreme even for me.

[erbiumfiber]

An old office-mate of mine used to room with Chinese grad students- he said it was a bit difficult convincing them to use the refrigerator. He was always finding eggs and things in kitchen drawers...

[soyyo]

An ex of mine had Chinese roommates and they'd put chicken in the cupboard to eat another day, etc. The other roomies hated the smells. Talking to them about using the refridgerator never helped, nor putting their food in there for them.

[Ozero]

eggs in drawers.. heheh.. that's one i havent run into.. yet...

i shudder to think what my be revealed by smell a few months after they leave..

as for now.. i'm gonna stick to this 'grin n bear it' strategy. It's kinda stupid, really.. me and the wife find ourselves sneaking into our own kitchen to cook things WE want.. i dont think it's necessarry to sneak.. i mean... they're not worried about insulting us over western food, (despite the whole 2 times they've tried it), and i know _I_ve given thier cooking many chances.. and even liked it.. kinda.. sometimes...

the gross-out factors tho, arent necessarily culturally based per se, but health-based... if they didnt go out of thier wya to find cuts of meat with extra fat, and actually seem to aknowedge the existance of the little things like bacteria, it would go a long way....



.... eggs in drawers.....


sounds like a leslie neilson spoof on snakes on a plane.... or on a dr seuss book...


maybe dr seuss spent time living with a chinese family... it would explain the green eggs....

[4letterwords]

They do stuff like that in Japan though, too.

Mom cooks dinner, leaves leftovers on the table (except for veggies... but only if theyre raw) and then we eat them in the morning.

You get used to it.

[羽之助]

I am the king of leaving stuff out, and so is my family. Spaghetti sauce full of ground beef, we just leave it in the pot on the stove for a few days.

Still, Chinese relatives are interesting. For more, read here:
http://the88s.blogsome.com/2006/07/27/in-lawed/

[RandomPasserby]

Raw eggs don't spoil in cool room temperature(21 celsius or lower that is). In Finland shops have eggs in room temperature for weeks and they don't spoil (there would be no birds if eggs went bad in room temperature :P). Finnish recommendations for eggs storign temp is 10-14 celsius generally for example, fridge is too cool for them.

[Ozero]

although i'm sure it's not that unusual, yesterday, thier dinner stared at me.. it was horridly ugly, and yet cute as the same time. Some kind of fish. It's pretty rare i think, that a westerner will buy a whole fish in tact.

t'was a little disconcerting.

german girl arrives on the 30th still, but "the people's repuplic" dont plan to leave until sep2 or 3.. hopefully they realize they cant ALL stay in one room, and opt for a motel for a few days... eep.

[Riinuka]

...You realize of course that they probably won't figure that out...

[Ozero]

yah, ive been tyring to find the right moment and words to subtley and politely drop the idea on Ping..... yet hard enough that she bothers to bring it up with her parents.....

"OH, it's gonna be rough with the bathroom and all. We're going to have to put up a chart like when Rei was here... except you'll be sharing all your spots with your parents as well....!"

think that would speak to the self-centric primping teen in her enough?

[Riinuka]

Probably not. I'd assume that she'd be too scared to bring it up.

[Ozero]

oh, she is NOT scared of her parents. I have rarely seen ANY child open up and bitch/rant at thier parents like ping does..

If it wasnt for the fact that we'd heard similar conversations when she was on the phone, it would have been quite a shock, since she doesnt come off like that when talking to anyone other than family..

[Riinuka]

Hrm. Well, it looks like she'll make a good housewife then. xD

Maybe it would be benificial to bring it up to her, then...

[Ozero]

well i brought it up, but she didnt seem to concerned.

On the other hand, today the 3 of them went out, and since i'm having guests over today for a bbq, she attacked the guest bathroom to clean it..

she was horrified.

But then, she's never been a bachelor male.

Theoretically, it's up to ping to clean it, since she's it's only user right now.. and her parents...

Anyway, YES, it was very dirty, let's just leave it at that. They've been dislocated form thier maid, and it shows. The dirt in the bottom of the tub.. i just dont understand.. eep. ONE WEEK LEFT AS OF TODAY!!!

and the new german girl is wednesday...

"She's gonna hate it here.." my wife has heard to say, while scrubbing the guest bathroom counter.

[Ozero]

The german girl is here!

I had tentatively named her "Helga", in satire to how pretty she actually is, but I can't be that mean after meeting her in person.

I think I can live with the name "Ingrid".

Unlike Asuka, who looked very different from her punk-ish photo, Ingrid looks exactly like her picture. Pretty as heck. In a humble 'real person' kinda way... just to avoid any notion she's one of these blonde bimbo 'ya' girls..

Just now she ripped the doors off the cuboard in the base of the bed... everyone who's stayed in that room has done this. Slide sideways people, not OUT.

The people's republic has been sucessfully contained to one room, despite recommendations, but.. it is only for a few days now.

Ingrid's trip included a stopover in toronto, and the final leg of the journey failed to feed her in-flight, so..... she had some of my birthday icecream cake for dinner.

"We don't just eat junkfood" my wife says, "It's just ready now, and you're hungry now, so dont go telling your parents we just eat junk food"

Me, my wife, Ingrid, Ping, and Mrs Ping all standing in the kitchen.... Mrs ping looks confused.....

mrs ping points at ingrid and my wife, and talks to ping.

ping: OH ... gosh...

mrs ping and ping giggle.

my wife: "huh?"

ping: She say you look same.

They have the same color and length of hair.. and form a distance.. a LONG distance.. maybe..

me: Oh yeah, all us white folks look the same to you, huh?

ping giggles.



Well, Ingrid's been here a whole... hour and a half, and first impressions are good. She phoned home quickly to get them to call back, (so as not to run up out phone bill)...

I help her dial germany, and she waves for thanks as she wanders off across the hall to her room. Moments later, the phone rings, and she gets up from unpacking with 3 quick little claps. Kawaii.

wait.. what's german for kawaii....? owell.

It wont be super long now, it will be school photo time again, and we can add 2 new pics next to Asuka and Rei. Ping and Ingrid.

[mikem]

wait.. what's german for kawaii....? owell.


According to JDICT; all of the following:

niedlich
süß
reizend
entzückend
nett
schön

Six words for cute. The Japanese would be jealous.

[RandomPasserby]

Schön is pretty/beautiful iirc. I dropped german out in high school though :P

[mikem]

Schön is pretty/beautiful iirc. I dropped german out in high school though :P

I took German in high school, but I don't recognize any of them.

In any case kawaii is still pretty/beautiful. You just say: 超かわいい (chou kawaii) or メチャメチャかわいい (mecha mecha kawaii) instead. Calling a girl きれい (kirei) to her face is really too flattering. She's going to think you're making fun of her. BTW, everything I just said might be right out with older women.

[Ozero]

well, i was goin more for the innocent/playful side of cute, but.. whatever.. it's not like i was even seriously asking. :P

[Der Moe]

"niedlich" would be the right one, if you're aiming for the "playful side of cute". "süß" would work too, but its more like "sweet" is used in english, i think. Keep us updated, please. I'm quite interested in hearing how you americans respond to german culture etc. Although i'd like to know, where she's from, because every region in Germany has its own character traits(sp?) and behavioural differences. and its always nice to read your stories, btw.

[Ozero]

Ah, I'm no stranger to germans. I knew one in highschool quite well, and was visitied by him some time after, had asuka here last year for 3 months, and now ingrid.

She's near a place near frankfurt, i forget the exact name.

And for the record, I'm canadian, not 'merican. (Vancouver area)


Yesterday I took her on a little tour of the trip from here to the school, inside the school, which happend to be open.. then we went shopping for a voltage converter, (which one store's condecending prick of a salesman assured us we could get for using items HERE, just the other way around, and she should have gotten one in germany.. thanks a lot, dillweed! "Or just buy a new hair dryer, they're cheap" thanks for assuming what it was for.. which it isnt..)

Anyway, in the process, I got to know Ingrid a little, she seems very nice.

Today I hear she's gotten into my wife's SIMS2, which tickles my wife.

I was mentioning to her about how impressed I've been how the german people are educated about thier history, as opposed to japan and china..

She brought up the world cup, and how it was a rare occasion when germans could openly express patriotism, without the risk of being misiturpreted as something (as asuka put it) Reich-ish.

I dont see a lot of difference between us and the germans i've met... except maybe quicker to lean on polite fomalities.. but this could be a lot of the way english was taught, mixed with the need to give a good impression while travelling, and the fact that they've all been grade-a students, and as we all know, grade a students are always among the rowdiest...

i see the cultural differences spread out kinda like this right now:


Canada
--
USA (our sibling whom we dont always agree with, and roll our eyes at a lot)
--
Germany (hey, most canandians are brewed from a mix of euopean stock, so..)
--
--
--
--
--
Japan (from 'THE EAST', and yet in many ways 'americanized')
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
China (Undistilled asia. An area that evolved fairly seperate from european/western thought)
--
Mars (Filled with little green men.)



yesterday morning, I showed her around the kitchen for breakfast purposes... She opet for a bagel to toast, and I pointed out the various things she could have on it...

I go about other tasks in the kitchen, and turn to see her seated with her toasted bagel, staring down into the open jar of peanut butter.


"oh.. has it gone bad or something Ingrid?"

She looks up, surprised that i noticed her staring down into it. "Um, no, I think it is alright. It just.. smells like peanuts!"

"Wha?? What.. did you expect?"

"I didn't know it would be so strong like this. I've never had." She puts the lid on. "I want to try it." She puts in on the counter, pushes it away. "But not today."

I can't remember Asuka's reaction, but I remember she liked nuttella.. and as consequence, Rei's mother got hooked, and asked Rei to bring 2-3 jars home with her when it was her time to go. Rei misinturpreted that as "23 jars", and I had to sit her down and explain the logistics of packing 23 jars of nuttella.

She still wasnt sure, and had to phone home to confirm.

Right now they're (my wife, Ingrid, Ping, Pings parents) all at the PNE. (pacific national exhibition... big honking fair in vancouver, nestled in with the Playland amusement park)

Yesterday was my chance to get to know Ingrid a bit, today's everyone else's chance.

Things look good between Ping and Ingrid.. Ping had a little welcome present ready for Ingrid as soon as they met.

Another thing about yesterday is that Igrid got to see my ability a bit, as "not just some poor shmuch in a wheelchair", including such feats as 'long distance' travel (from the perspective of a manual wheelchair. i'm no rick hanson, by ANY means tho) dealing with public obstacles, and my skill with escillators.. hehe.. that tends to get everyone's attention tho..

Oh, and she knows a bit about anime.. I was looking for a title, and she decended on the anime rack. "ohh, i know this one. I read that one.. and this one.."

She points at the evangelion volume with Asuka on the cover. "I saw one of those."

"That girl is german, you know...?"

"Really?"

"Well, half german, half japanese. You know.."

"Anime."

"Yup."

[Crowley]

That's strange. I've known a few germans, and while I concur on the "similar to canadians" tack ;) none of them have ever mentioned world wars or german history unless prompted by someone else. The closest was my friend, who told me about the time when she was confronted by an 8-year-old on a bus who said "Hey.YOU killed my grandad". To which she replied "I most certainly did NOT!"

[Ozero]

Well, with ingrid, i did bring it up first, relating to.. no.. wait, she brought it up in relation to the world cup, i think.... then it reminded me of talkes with asuka, and it wetn from there.. i think...

As for asuka, i think it came up on 2 factors..

-american pledge of alligence read in schools, seeming a tad 'reich-ish' to her

-the willy wonak movie with the gloomy factory with the big smokestack that reminded her of concentration camps.


Ah, on another issue, my wifre reports than on the trip to the amusement part, Ingrist exhibited the .. um.. "niedlich-clap" a couple times... i guess it's gonna be her taunt when ported to a capcom fighting game..

In those situations, ping was reported to emit her signature sheepish laugh. It's an odd laugh, you migh expect someone to use when caught doing something embarrasing.. it's a cute laugh..

Tonight is the last night that ping's parents are here, and Mrs ping is cooking dinner at this moment. It smells ok... let us pray for luck.. she took out some ground beef, so no 50% fat surprises, i should hope..

Tomorrow afternoon, i re-build the kitchen to it's former state.

[The Republic]

Nett= nice
Soss= sweet
Schon= pretty
(and ive never heard the others)

Also, a good thing to note: Dont call her fraulein. Its quite offensive to girls, especially if they are unmarried/virgin.

[Ozero]

ya, i kinda gathered that frualein had certain connotations...

hmm, as long as im posting, how about a status report.. nuthin to report, really... all the ladies went to a lake today... paddle boating... tomorrow is the last free day before school, and it looks like shopping is the order of the day.. I'll be staying home to continue recovering from my brutal saturday, and a break before my brutal tuesday...

meh...

[Ozero]

A package arrived the other day from Rei. My wife, excited, ripped it open 0.3 seconds after she rended it form the mail box.

She failed to see- before our names was a "c/o" note.. it's for CPB. (Cellphone boy, rei's korean BF she made while here) My wife is now on a walk with the dog to deliver it to CPB's host home. Seems niether CPB or Rei knows CBP's host address....

My wife is hoping to cause a little discomfort for CPB while she delivers it.

But CPB was never squeemish about any of this stuff, that was all Rei.. BUT, no doubt CPB will talk to Rei, and Rei will cause herself mass teeney-humiliation, and that would satisfy my wife even more. Rei DID finally write to my wife, mainly to warn her about the coming package, but that was too late.

Maybe an update on that before i finish this post, if she gets back in time.

at dinner, which we just finished, we, (I, wife, Ingrid, Ping) talked about this and that..

My wife asked Ingrid if she's everbeen to the vatican. "The wha..?"
"Where the pop lives..."
"OH! We say different. Vatica. No, i havn't."

Which led to explaining to Ping who the heck this pope guy was.
me: "He's the leader of the roman catholics."
ping: "Romans?"
me "No, the religion called Roman Catholic"
ping "Oh. He bad?"
my wife "No, good."
ping (sheepish grin and giggle) "OH. hehe. Like Krys."
my wife "Christ? Same club."
me "Except the pope is alive. Wears a dress, rides around in a plastic car"
Ingrid "And a big funny hat"
ping: "HAT??" patting her head to confirm
Ingrid "Like the bishops, you know?" (Because if you dont know the pope, you MUST know a bishop....)

This led to a mention of the dali lama coming to vancouver again. This led to tibet.
Ping "Oh, I know, part of china!"
me "Yes, wellllll....."

This led to a grand convoluted conversation about territoies china has given up and taken over the centuries, and who's upset about it, and ping mentioned all on her own "I think things like that, goverment not want us know."

Which is a vast improvement over her blaming a heap of stuff on Rei over things japan did in ww2.. lets just hope she doesnt get mouthy when she's back home. :P

The last thing I need is a postcard of her standing in front of tanks.

INTERMISSION----
My book's coming out sooon! wheee!
now to talk to my wife who came back in a min ago, for an update...

Aww, there was a dog making a fuss on the property, and our dog doesnt always play nice with other dogs, (They PLAY nice, until ya try to separate em) so she decided to take it some other time, without our dog in tow.

[Riinuka]

o O;

..But you didn't say what was in the package.. I'm guessing she didn't open it all the way, then?

[Ozero]

from what i saw, some kinda clothes. Light blue. Manly stuff, you know.

The other day CPB did show up, i heard him talking with my wife down the hall, but it didnt sound like much of a convo.

hmmm... update status.. heh. everything's smooth, really. Ping, being a teenager, leaded so much crpa into her laptop that virii overcame her protection, and fuxored her system bad. Thankfully she knew where her system restore disk was. If i went to truely heroic measures, i could MAYBE saved her photos, but i wasnt feeling quite THAT heroic, especially when the memories of the first battle with that machine came back to me...

In unrelated news, my local Optimist club was officially ratified. http://www.optimist.org is the international site.

I'm a charter director on the board. Whee! Got me a cute lil pin from optimist international. whee! K, my cat's buggin me so i'm cuttin short... later..!

[Ozero]

Hmm.. havent had much to report lately. That's a good sign, really.. peace in general....

Both me and the wife have had 'passing in the streeet' encounters with cellphone boy. He seems well, and not cheating on Rei as far as such an encounter can tell... His smile reminds me of roxas towards the end of KH2.

Igrid cute-ism #2: Her first response when her mother called her, is "mumee??" This and the clap thing stand out a lot, because in general, ingrid composes herself in a very mature fashion. (not mature in a stuck up way, mind you... just really well balanced...)

and ping news.. other than running her laptop's system restore a few times recently, the comouter woes are 'under control'.. she's arguing with her parents now and then over her dropping her extra sunday class... as it is with normal classes, she's doing homework all the time trying to keep up....

her parents see her as working hard.. in canadian student terms... maybe OK in chinese terms, but they want her to work her ass off in chinese academic terms....

but, she perserveres.... all we can do is be supportive. She's really good humored abotu things except her yelling matches on the phone with her family. heh..

[Ozero]

im watching battlestar, and the phone rings...

"hello?"
ping's friend (female):"Hello. Is can you call ping?"
"Sorry, she's out shopping right now."
PF:"oh Okay."

click.

one whole second later.... riiiing....

".......hello?"
ping's not exactly friend, who's a guy:"Hello. Ping is there?"
"Nope. Out shopping."
guy: "....oh. Okay." click



fast forward, ping returns.
"Hey ping! You got two calls, one a girl, i think it was [PF] and some guy."
ping:"what they say?"
"not much. Didnt have a chance, just both asked for you."
ping: "uhhf. Okay thanks."

ping seals herself away and calls PF. fast forward to when the phone is free...

riiiing...

"hello?"
PF:"Hello, is there ping?"
"just a second I-"

at this moment ping emerges from her room, silent but waving her hands in the way you might when you're about to be hit by an elephant."

"I....'ll call her and see.... PIIIING....?" (half covering the phone, smiling right at her, "Are you home ping??"

ping still freaking out silently...

"Nope, I think she just left."
PF:"left?"
"yeah, she was out shopping, and she was home, but i guess she went out again."
PF:"Oh, okay!" click..

ping sighs in relief. "I not want to talk to [guy]."
"It was a girl.."
ping: "Girl? On phone??"
"yup."

Ping does a 180, and hurries back to her room voicing the rare but hilarious phrase, which I'm sure was the first english she ever learnt.

"oh shit!"

[羽之助]

You need call display.

[Ozero]

4 am. The alarm goes off. Today is the day Ingrid leaves us.

It's been 5 months, and I havent had much to post, simply because Ingrid's stay has been so smooth. She had some rough homesickness early on, but in the end, her and ping were really good freinds.

Ingrid and I were agreeing yesterday that 5 months seemed to short, and also so long. I made her a CD of photos, with a couple videos. I made sure there was a good helping of pictures of my cat, since that quiet little thing was a considerable comfort to her when she was homesick. My cat's probably going to miss her too.

she was a little surprised that at a 5-am drop off, I was going to come along too, (in addition to my wife, driving) My wife and I were surprised when Ping said she wanted to go too.

We had a going away present bag, but didn't expect her to take anything but the card, due to how tightly she was already packed.

I wrote something like "You're a considerate, lovely, and intelligent person. Never change, and the world will be yours." My wife wrote a friggin novel. We put in silly messages from the pets. Ping got in on the card too.

"Thank you for giving it to me, a wonderful time." or something. LOVELY. No day with ping is complete without a little engrish.

Once again, the school board is bussing a group to the airport, so we had little choice but to say our farewells on the street beside the bus, like we had to with asuka. Only this time, the organizers were.. organized.

So we didnt have a lot of time to get weepy. I didn't think it would turn into that... good lord, Last time we were there, I didn't think Asuka was going to make it through her departure. So much crying, and it was infectious.

Thankfully, Ingrid was called onto the bus while we were all still in the 'gettin misty' mode. Still, the notion that we'd probably never see her again was weighing down heavily, as I'm sure it was with eveyone there, and the other students. Hugs all around, assurances that she had our email addresses, (another pan pal...! And she wants pics of the baby when it's born) and she was off, with a little turn and wave half way to the bus door.

All the way home I had elenor rigby in my mind. It's been that kind of morning, with the fog, the darkness, the moon and the streetlights.

When we got home, there was a card on the kitchen counter that she'd managed to plant without us seeing. Her room had a message of thanks and such on the whiteboard.

that makes 4 students we've had here, counting ping, who's still going to be here for some time. (also the 2 teachers we had in the summer..) Today I'm left feeling all nostalgic for not just Igrid's time here, but Asuka's, and Rei's, even if Rei's stay was less than smooth, there were plenty of good times.

These girls arrive, nervous as heck, and we do our best to make them feel at home, part of our lives, show them around, try to have fun, and they all leave this lasting impression.

I pity the people who are in this program for the money, and miss out on the full experience of getting to know thier students.

[ZaichikArky]

Aw. I'm sure ingrid will keep in touch.

So how come you've never had a boy student before?

[Ozero]

well, the short answer is that when our house was first inspected by the school board rep, she observed that the rooms we had ready were prepared very nice, and one defintely has a girly tone to the paint job.. she said "Oh, we cant waste these rooms on boys..!"

The long answer is that with me being disabled, it's more likely that my wife would lead more extra-curricular activities and such... (not that I was into many stereotypical "guy things" before my injury either...)

so that suits me fine. I've always gotten along better with girls in general. Not that i don't get along with guys, but it's harder to make a connection.

It relates to the gals in HS declaring me an honorary female, and my ability to put the cap back on toothpaste, and put the seat back down..

so yeah.. i guess that's kinda 3 weak reasons that sum up to 1-ish good one...

besides, now ping practically lives here, and they're not gonna put a boy exchange student with a girl one.

-- though because of ping, i kinda hope we dont have another japanese girl.... that was a less than comfortable combo... and ping's been so much happier since rei left.

[Ozero]

ping tells me her korean friend in the homestay program wants to change homes... ping suggested our place, since it meets her primary criteria...

closer to the school, and an available room.

Ping also said she might not like the boy in her current home. This other home is a korean family... seems odd that the school board would place a korean girl there... the general policy is to place them somewhere they have to deal with english... if not as they home's primary language, then as a middleground language...

but.. the school board's #1 priority is to get as many international students as they can, i think...

anyway, if this move does happen, it'll be good... with my wife expecting soon, she'll be on mat-pay, which is less, and it wouldnt hurt to have the extra coin around..

and also, we havent had a korean yet...!

[stsparky]

Congratulations on the new baby; Ours is one now. She's heading to Japan with us to see her Japanese granny. Should be fun.

[Ozero]

This morning, I awoke to the smell of rotting garbage. But I guess I'd better skip back a bit.

Our 2nd german student had left, and we had a room free, with Ping (china) still here. It can be tricky to fill a room for any length of time mid-year if you cant take someone from china.. (the school board avoids pairing students from the same country, to they have to use english...)

Ping tells us she has this friend at school.

"she want move from homestay to closer to school. Is ok she want come here?"

Well, that suited us fine.. but we didnt want to be nabbing students form other homes... but I got the impression she has some good reasons. We told her it was ok if "Marge" (yes, a codename) mentioned our empty room to the school board.

Marge wasn't part of the same program that we're in, but that was overcome.

Marge's family was paying double at this other home, PLUS 200 a month for being driven to school, PLUS food. So they were getting ripped bad.

On top of that, she seems to be treated like a 2nd class citizen.

The family she was with was korean, and Marge is korean, (or as Ping says "she's korea") so some kind of cultural effect was at play I think.

maybe because she was the outsider, maybe because she's 'just a girl', I dont know. But once the homestay program gave the green light, she wasnt dawdling to get over here.

Her english tutor came by to check the house out. The tutor seems to really be involved in a good way, and said a few things to Marge while she was here that implied that the tutor was glad she'd moved too.

Ping has told us the tutor was "korea" the day before. I hope that was some kind of assumption, the tutor was a caucasian blonde. But I wouldnt put it past Ping to get mixed up somehow. She'd find a way.

Marge seems to be much more the social butterfly than Ping, and is at ease to invite friends over. The friend groups overlap with ping's, so when the # of teenage girls in the house reaches a mere 3, things get silly.

This last saturday, there was a mini-party, that I suppose was celebrating the new arrangements... as if they needed an excuse.

The last time I looked at my watch, it was 5:30 AM, and the giggling was going full steam. Normally i'd tell em to kepe it down, but it seemed to be a warranted fuss.

My wife knocked on Ping's door a little after 6, and found no one in there.

She peeked in Marge's room, and found Ping, Marge, and a friend all piled in one bed. Especially silly given Ping's room has an extra mattress on the floor for when a friend comes over.

The next morning I awoke.. well, not that I slept that well, so I actually awoke many times, but THIS time, the girls had made breakfast.


THIS was the smell of rotting garbage. My wife blamed vinegar, but ... this was inexplicable...

Later, ping mentions with a giggle... "oh, we very silly last night. we get beer."

"wha?? where did you get beer?"

"store. You know, beer store?"

"...yeeeesss, did you get someone to buy it for you?"

"....??? No....?"

"Did they ask to see ID?"

"ID? No, i just buy."

greeeeaaaat. Well, ping's 17, (18s legal here) it could be worse, and they did drink it at home, safely. It was a 6 pack of heineken. Thye wanted to try canadian beer.



HEINEKEN.


I guess the didnt see the Molson CANADIAN. Without playing the heavy too hard, (first offence) we did tell them we didnt really approve of that, it was illeagal, for them, AND the store, but if they HAD to do it, we're glad it happened at home.


monday arrives, and marge gets things going early, and managed to get ping to school ON TIME for a change.

YAY!

Just after dinner I get an email from Ping's math teacher. Kinda an automated thing, telling me she wasnt in class.

I rolled my eyes, and made a mental note to mention it soon. The phone rings. It's the teacher, asking for Ping.

Today was a major exam. Ping and 5 other chinese students skipped out of fear. Given ping's 100% math record, I can understand. Pfft.

My wife and I explained to her how nice it was that the teacher was understanding.

"Normally they would just give you a 0"

"what?!" THAT got her attention. It took a while to get her to realize that a 90% today beat the 0 she barely avoided.

then she also mentioned that people looked at her paper often during tests.

"Ping, you're not allowed to cheat!"

"But I not cheating! Just them!"

"But you let them. That can get oyu a 0 for the test. Sometimes, for the whole course."

".....!!!!!..... REALLY?" NOW THAT was FEAR!!


ohhhh ping. She really typifies the stereotype I seem to be getting about the asian students. Amazing academically, but in terms of common sense, hilarious.

Marge however seems to have a good deal of down to earth common sense, defying my stereotyping of asian female students. Her english is segnifigantly better too, due to that tutor. Ping's a little jealous, .... but not much.

Both of the girls are going ot be here though most of june, and will meet the baby... whee!

[mikem]

I cannot even imagine the patience you must have to constantly be dealing with new teenage girls every couple of months.

I don't think I could handle that. :)

(In Los Angeles one of my roommates was a Japanese girl who was in college. Most of the time it was great, but occasionally the sheer lack of common sense drove me near crazy. Luckily my other roommate was there to always calm things down.)

[Ozero]

well, it's not like it's "Always new girls".. Ping for example, has been here for a year more or less... and we've become accustomed to her way of thinking....

we call it 'ping-sense'.

"wtf was she thinking whan she did THAT?"

"Come now, it makes perfect Pingsense."

"...true."

Rei had a similar sort of reasoning, but she was so concrned with covering up her little plan to get (and hide) a korean boyfriend, that it took on a different tone.

As much as I thought early on I'd always have favoritism towards Rei because she was japanese, her individual traits and behaviors definitly shattered any risk I had of playng favorites based on nationality. Not to say she didnt have her shining aspects of course.

Ping can be difficult at times, but it's not by any intnetional fault on her part. Rei, on the otherhand, did things on purpose, and thought she was pulling things over our eyes.

Then there's Asuka and Helga, the german students. They were honest, mature, reasonable, and pleasant. A refreshing combo. They were also good influences on Rei and Ping, repsecively. Alas, the germans never stay long.

Rei was not honest very often, generally only at gunpoint, and even then, not so much. Mature? Nope. Reasonable? hmmm.... not TOO bad in that department. Pleasant? Yes. Wheever she wasnt being dishonoest or maniuplative.

Ping is dishoinest at times, but mostly to her family. She sees in our eyes when she's going into a lie, and ends up giggling at herself, and the truth bubbles out witout us saying a word. It's hilarious. Mature? Not even slightly, but with no apologies about it. She's too busy having fun, and enjoying life. (when she's not fighting with a family member) Pleasant? Sure! Other than the distatsers she creates in the kitchen.

We havent gotten to know Marge well enouh yet, but so far so good, despite the little misadventures on the weekend.

[Ozero]

The first few days Ping was here, she said "shit" or "ohshit" when something happened she didnt like.. like dropping something, forgetitng something, etc..

Seems she and her fellow students in china used it, since they wouldnt be reprimanded for it, even if a teacher who happened to KNOW english was around. MY fraconphone dad was the same way with english. It's not real swearing when it's a seocnd language, I guess.

I raised an eyebrow at her oe time when she said it, and she replied something to the effect- "Oh! English! Ohshit!" The ohshits more or less stopped after that.

Well, now a new phrase has found it's way into her venacular.

"jesus" Quiet and soft, with frustration.

"jesuuuuuus."

And when she's stressed about something upcoming, like an exam:

"jesus come"

or

"jesus come tomorrow"

She seems to think jesus is like some superhero who appears magically and solves little crisis....

Marge: "Do you believe in jesus?"
Ping: "No, i just want him come help me!"




So this morning, my wife and I are wathcing the news as we wake...
i catch a line form the anchor something about "UN to review 30 dead in (some country)"

i misheard, and shared what i thought i heard with my wife...
"UN to revive 30 dead? Wow, neat. How they doin' that?"

A moment later in unison, we both answer that question....

"JESUS COME TOMORROW!!"


.

[YukataNinja]

Hey, thanks for your postings about being a host family. They are quite entertaining. Maybe you should organize them onto your site?

[Ozero]

hehe, ive been thinking of copying all the posts down and tidying them up a bit... i'll have to do th other thread before it disappears, it hasnt had a post in some time...

I started kinda to get a little bit of a sounding board here for multicultural interactions... and it kinda turned into a "hey, check out the funny thing Asuka did" or "Ping's parents are driving me crazy" venting.

...... speaking of which, ping's mum might be coming out over the summer.. much easier to handle than both of them, and the grandparents...

[Ozero]

This last weekend was noted by 3 events.

Shortest story- went to 2 friends Bday party, (they're married, and bdays 1 day apart, so....) I had a LOT of rum, got royally silly, and had eto drive (my wheelchair) home. hehehe... I only drink when i'm there.. between my mother, and the girls, there's too many people i could influebnce negatively here.


2nd, and most important, a "4d" scan of my kid, revealing to us that it's gonna be a girl! Muahah. We were kinda hoping for a girl a bit, and were bracing ourselves for testosterone flavored news... so today my wife bought a bunch of tiny dresses.. (eye roll here...)


3rd- Ping and Marge had even MORE friends over on saturday night, and more booze. And some boys crashed over, including...

CPB! Yes, 'cell phone boy', the korean boyfriend of our first student, Rei, is back in the range of my radar.

He's dating a friend of marge's... or not, or off agan, and on again.... Ping doesnt seem to like him. I tend to agree. He's cute as a button, but seems to fancy himself a playa.

We kept tabs on things through the night, and made sure the right genders stayed seperate when things started to die down. There was also more booze around than we cared for.

The noise was OK, except for DOOR SLAMMING.... they kept doors (bedrooms and bathroom) closed to mute talking noise, but they were back and forth a lot, and in thier haste, EVERY FRIGGIN DOOR WAS SLAMMED...

finally my wife got into the fray to tell tham the doors were too much, and it was good for a while.. but they misinturpreted this a little... and some of the conversations were self-herded outside, (meaning a trip past OUR bedroom door, and down the stairs, then out)

and soon there was just one more door being slammed.

Some of this chaos was fuelled by drama, in terms of one of the guys having an unrequited crush on ping's friend, and ping seemed a LITTLE bit pleased to report the next day that "he cry."

The next day my wife felt the need to email our rep in the school board about some of the nonsense that seems to be escilating around here on weekends... I think mainly just so that it couldnt be said we were keeping it a secret... we DID place new rules in place after this latest incident, and it looks like ping has become disenchanted with alcohol experimentaiton.... Marge wasn't especally into it in the first place.

BUT, the School board rep, needing to take at least SOME kind of action, gathered Ping, Marge, and many of the other participants in school hours, and gave them a refresher about the rules that the program expects to be followed.

That's as much as I know now, having been told this by my wife on the phone an hour or 2 ago.

"I just wanted you to know what's gone down, if they come home and seem a little ...."

"Bitchy?"

"yeh."


Well, it's 3:21. Marge came home, and told me she was going to the grocery stroe for a bit. This is common enough, and she was smiling and pleasant, so she doesnt seem adversely affected.

Ping phoned a bit ago. She might have sounded a little meeker than usual, but seemed Ok, asking/telling that she wouldnt be hving dinner here tonight. I asked when she plans to be home. "uhh.... 8?" Dinner out of the house on a monday's not USUAL by any means, but not totally alien, so I'm guessing at this point that she's cool...


I kinda wish i'd been a fly on the wall when the school board rep was talking to them... was it heavy handed? was it just a reminder? Did she go into WHY she was talking to them about this? Was my wife mentioned as the informant?

Awell, entertainment on the horizon, one way or the other...