8:30 AM
Today’s been dry. Last night was the program official welcoming dinner (a week after our arrival!). The food was copious and fairly good, but I haven’t been feeling entirely well, so it was wasted on me a bit. I’m not worried, my roommate told me it was a very common side product of the heat and indeed it tends to go away when I sit in air conditioning for a while.
Afterwards, we kids decided to bike to Carrefour; Cuningham’s bike broke for the 6th or 7th time so he took it down the street to get it fixed while we waited. I’m going to buy a used bike elsewhere; I didn’t want to initially but it’s so much easier to get around with one, and they’re dirt cheap. Even a new bike, albeit a lousy one, is really affordable. On the other hand, I’m probably the only one who is comfortable riding on the back of someone else’s bike, probably because I’m the shortest. Shirley and Katherine both hate it.
Shirley is justified in disliking it though, since she was riding on Drew’s yesterday back from Carrefour and her skirt got sucked up into his back wheel and they took a spill. She scraped her knees, and her skirt was ruined. This morning was my second consecutive morning of long, long meetings. If I thought group meeting at UCLA was long, think again- yesterday’s meeting was two and a half hours without breaks in a room without AC and full of mosquitoes. Zang told me that the one this morning was going to be earlier and probably longer, since yesterday’s was the master’s students and today’s the Ph.D students’. I only understand like 8% of the Mandarin, and it's very difficult to not fall asleep in the heat. I came to work early today to be sure I’d be on time for this meeting, and no one was in the building! I waited outside until someone could let me in.
I’ve been spending a lot of time with getting to know my labmates, so I thought I might introduce the ones I know the best here:
Zang- you already know her, you have even seen a photograph of her. She’s very hardworking and fairly discreet, so I’ve been trying to learn from that.
Lei Lei- I’ve been calling her Lei Lai, which is wrong. We call her Lei Lei or Lei Lei Lei “because she is full of surprises!” She was introduced to me as ‘Lady GaGa,’ as well as by her actual name: “She is the most sexy girl in our lab.” Apparently, the Chinese name for Lady GaGa is ‘Leiren GaGa,’ which very loosely translates to ‘shocking person GaGa.’ So calling her Lei Lei is something like calling her “crazy crazy” or “surprising surprising.” I have yet to witness her saying anything particularly shocking; standards of shocking may differ from country to country.
CiCi- nicknamed this for her name; I first met her by meeting her desk. It is a shrine to the 90’s. Observe:
It’s piled high with all kinds of random stuff, like this, medicinal oils, other kitchy toys, books, an expandable sphere, and much more.
When I finally met her, Zang introduced her to me as “Snoopy,” “because she has a big head and is like a kid.” I like CiCi. She talks to me in Cantonese sometimes and she has a cynical streak a mile wide. We were walking past some bulletin boards and I asked her what was written on them and she said, very clearly, “Bull shit.” Zang: “Don’t listen to her!” I found out later that they were Communist propaganda boards. She and Zang keep up a dedicated stream of teasing one another: Zang: “What? I can’t hear you. Your big head is in the way.” She is also a dedicated environmentalist and the first vegetarian I’ve met here, for environmental reasons. She doesn’t get why I think everything she says, including the stuff I don’t understand, is hilarious. She tells me about every two minutes to “dàn dìn”(rough translation: curb your enthusiasm/CTFO) and has taught me all kinds of useful invective as well as just generally disrespectful phrases, like how to say “censorship.”
The rest of the people don’t have convenient nicknames, so I’m going to make them up for them, for some kind of limited privacy.
“Monkey” is very funny; a big joker. He is always singing very loud Chinese love ballads and practicing Chinglish with me; he is extremely entertaining company. He posts signs in English frequently; yesterday, Zang removed one from the sink that said “Please Hesitate a Moment!” and replaced it with one that said the more accurately phrased, “Sink is broken- please do not use.” His dream is to get his Ph.D in the US (he is a master’s student here) with his girlfriend. He studies for the GRE perpetually; he’s also a sharp student; hyper-critical Professor Cai rewarded his oral report with a begrudging “Not bad.” I helped him translate his report card for his classes; it included such scintillating classes as “Insights into Understanding Chairman Mao’s Thoughts.”
“Miao” lent me her bus card for while I am here; she dresses beautifully and is very graceful. She describes herself as “zhái,” a homebody; I rode on the back of her bike to the Szechuan place.
“Hua” always wears pretty frilly pink dresses and likes to talk to me about the US; she prefers to use Chinese so I like to practice speaking with her.
“Tuxedo Mask”(TM for short)—oh dear; I call him that because he is kind of like that guy from Sailor Moon (tall, thin, feminine); only I presume the actual Tuxedo Mask was popular in high school; this TM confided in me that he hated high school and hates soccer to this day because a soccer jock beat him up on a regular basis, way back when. He “loves fashion,” “wishes he were an architect,” and loves Glee: “I like Rachel; which do you like?” He seemed taken aback when I told him my favorite was Santana (the slutty one). He wears jewelry (rings, a studded belt type bracelet he made himself). CiCi dislikes him; I asked her why and she elucidated, “He’s weird. He has a poisonous fish for a pet.” (?!) He asked me to go with him to an antiques market, but Zang said not to: “Lei Lei went with him to buy glass, and afterwards she never wanted to go with him again. Miao went with him to fix her cell phone, and afterwards she never wanted to go with him again. Xin went with him to watch a movie, and afterwards she never wanted to go with him again.” Consider myself warned. I will not go with him, lest I never want to go with him again.
There are many more in the group, but I’ll tell about them as stuff happens.
So Zang is called universally by her full three word name (surname, 2-part 1st name). I didn’t get why, so I asked her, which proved very informative.
Apparently, the term for “sketchy” here is “JQ” (in English). This is very versatile, but frequently it’s used in terms of a sketchy relationship or like, “aì mĕi.” E.g., were I to go antiquing with Tuxedo Mask, it would be super JQ. So apparently it’s overly intimate for a dude who isn’t her boyfriend to call Zang by her first name, Xinyu, and that would be totally JQ. Who knew?
UPDATE: JQ can be a good thing! I’m not sure I understand, except I totally do.
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