China can be a really chaotic place. Forget about plans changing last minute; sometimes plans aren’t even made until the last minute. Just today, I was part of another surprise photo shoot at school. It’s a difficult way to get things done.
But you can wail against the flow, or gracefully bob along on the tide. One way is a heck of a lot more likely to be a pleasant journey. One way is also a lot more honest about how much control we actually have over our lives…
Uncle’s Shorts has been promoted to our flagship series, and as such will be the Thursday video until further notice. In this one, a pair of stories in which I consider my aging body and how weird it is, as well as the noises we all make at the gym and how liberating that is! Enjoy.
This week, after a brief hiatus, we welcome back Uncle’s Shorts with a vengeance! Or, at least a compendium. There’s a lot of ground to cover, a little complaining, a little explaining … you know, the vlog basics. Just remember, your suspicions are correct: All foreigners know each other. Noodles to you!
This was a fun one to make … Peter and I really let our imaginations fly as we virtually revisited our favorite place on earth. Lamma Island is one of the big-small islands of Hong Kong, I guess. We love it, and we gave it the green screen treatment here, because we aren’t traveling much these days.
It’s a double-edged sword (moreso, I’m sure for the people who actually live there), in that I think people should know about this magical place, but I don’t want to be a part of ruining the small-town charm with too much exposure, or badly behaving tourists. So, just promise me this: If you go, you’ll be cool.
Our weekly roundup is becoming a thing! We’ve got regular segments, catch phrases, banter, and a ukulele. Also, we seem to have figured out the chipmunk effect; YouTube says to use a sample rate of 44.1kHz, but 48kHz is what works for us. So, there.
This one’s a lighthearted exploration of what happens during the Luzhou summer. (SPOILER: It’s hot. People deal with it.) But on a more serious note, one of the most unsettling things for me to deal with in the chasm between my native culture and the one I live in, is the tendency — that I perceive, anyway — to dismiss one’s own self-reported feelings in favor of an authority’s judgement on the situation. Which for me, mostly manifests around temperature control. I’ve been in many situations over the years where someone has told me, “It’s not cold, you can’t turn the heater on.” Or, “The parents don’t want the windows open. We don’t believe in ‘stuffy’.” Or, “We have to have the windows open even though it’s freezing, because the parents don’t like the smell inside. Just wear your coat.”
We can do what we want at home, so at least there’s that. But it’s a little frustrating the degree to which other people have strong control over my environment. Like, I’m not allowed to decide for myself how I feel. Maybe I’ve just worked with jerks. But I’ve seen it happen to the children, too. It’s me and the babies, everywhere and always.
The live stream is starting to really take shape, with recurring segments and everything! It’s getting easier and easier to talk for a full hour — because I take notes all week of things I want to talk about.
This week, toward the end, we have a riveting discussion about Steely Dan and their presence in Barrytown and elsewhere. And, I tell the saga of our electric bill, including what it takes to run enough air conditioning during the Luzhou summer.
