Cooking Crab

I'm still feeling sick. I'm worried it's because I am too stressed out. I have been living in a constant state of stress. Any small noise makes me jump. I'm constantly bumping my head on projectors. I have no one to talk to. Maybe my illness is somewhat affected by being perpetually in fight or flight mode. It seems likely, but there is not much I can do about it.

I wash my sheets because I have heard that dirty sheets is the number one cause of illness (or I made it up in my head, but it makes sense to me.) I'm very worried about drying them, but I'm worried about not washing them more. I have been sweating a lot in my sleep, but nothing air dries well.

Feeling like the piece of shit I am, I start long walk to the only super market in town. I am still in my pajamas. Some parents make there little kid say hello to me in English. I'm not in the fucking mood, I'm in my pajamas. Just because I'm white doesn't mean your children need to practice saying "Hello" in English to me. Neither I nor your children appreciate it. My dad thinks that maybe its good for me to experience racism because it will make me more empathetic to people of other races. There's a large part of me that thinks that it is pretty reductive to think my experience with racism as a white man in China is at all similar to the problems minorities face in America, but there is a small part of me that thinks I am already empathetic enough to people of other races, so maybe he's kind of right. Either way, racism sucks and no one should have to go through it. I don't know if rounding up all the racists and sending them to be alone in China will fix the problems we have in our country, but I'm up for trying it.

Another girl stops me on the street and says "Hi Riley." I have no idea who this person is at all and they do not speak English. I'm still not in the mood for any of this. I take out my phone to use my translator app and she types in "Do you remember me?" I say "Yes," but I am lying. She then types "We are friends on WeChat." It then clicks. I don't recognize her, but she must have been one of Anne's friends from the mall. There were three other girls there who took pictures with me and got my number, but I really only paid attention to Anne. I'm such an asshole. She then typed "What are you doing here?" I said "I'm walking to the grocery store" and she said "Oh okay, bye." I kept walking.

I decided to play a meditation on my phone to try to calm me down, but I found myself getting so annoyed with the guide. She seemed like she was putting on a soothing calm voice and it's just, like, shut the fuck up that's not your real voice. All of these meditations tell you not to judge, but it seems to me like that's just how the gurus stop you from hurting their feelings. If I'm being non-judgemental, I will keep listening to your dumb meditation instead of saying you are fucking dumb and bad at this. My mood is not good, I guess the meditation didn't really work.

At the grocery store, I buy a butt load of things. Measuring cups, tape for my blackout curtains, mushrooms, peppers, rice, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, brown sugar, ginger, black pepper, oyster sauce, a plate, chopsticks, cooking oil, the whole works. It takes me over an hour and a half to find everything I am looking for and half the time I'm not sure if I'm even buying the right thing. Shopping in a language you don't know is very difficult. When I finally go to check out my food, the teller starts pointing at my vegetables and then pointing to the front of the store. I don't know what she is saying. She grabs the vegetables, puts them aside, and starts ringing up the rest of my food. I say, "But I need those!" The woman beside the counter starts laughing. Her friend at the next counter starts laughing and points at me and says something in Chinese. Next thing I know, the whole store is pointing at me and laughing. Old people, little kids, you name it. They are all pointing at me and laughing. I feel like an unrealistic loser from a bad middle school bully movie. This really fucking sucks. I grab my vegetables and walk back to the front of the store, where there is another little checkout counter. A woman scans my vegetables, puts a sticker on them, and hands them back. Then I go back to the front and buy the rest of my groceries. I am now down to my last 150 yuan (about $21)

Steamed Hairy Crab

I get home and check on the crabs. They are still alive, barely. I boil water in my steamer (which means I take the pot part and the steamer part of my steamer and put them on my stove because Josie gave me a broken steamer) and start steaming my crabs. I also make some tea with ginger and brown sugar and a dipping sauce with vinegar, ginger and brown sugar. Apparently, in China they consider the Hairy Crab a cooling dish because it is very heavy in cholesterol and recommend eating it with ginger, which is a hot ingredient. Cool and hot have nothing to do with spice level here.

While cooking my crab, I get a call from Josie. She tells me that I can no longer go to Bali because the Chinese government won't let me leave the country. I ask her to repeat herself and she says I can no longer go to Bali because the Chinese government won't let me leave the country. I tell her I will talk to her at work and hang up the phone.

Steamed Hairy Crab, sans shell

I try to eat my Hairy Crabs while I process what just happened. I'm not supposed to eat the gills, the heart or the lungs because those make you very sick, but I can't tell what any of those are. I pick a few parts of the crab that I'm pretty sure are meat, and dip them in the vinegar ginger dip. It is very good. I do the same with my second crab. I probably do that with a total of six bites of food. But I don't know what other parts I can eat, I watch videos on youtube but they don't make sense. They look different then my crabs. So I throw the rest away. All of that work for 6 tiny bites of food. And I'm still hungry.

I call my Mom to ask for advice. I just start venting about getting laughed at the grocery store and work and everything, but I mostly vent on spending all this money on this trip to going to Bali and now being told I can go. I tell her that Bali is the only thing I want anymore, that it is the reason I have been holding on. I want to see Shaya and monkeys and I want to learn to Scuba dive. Everything here has seemed so terrible, but Bali has been my beacon of hope. I tell my Mom I want to say fuck this job, go to Bali, and than come home. My mom says "Your father and I will support you in whatever you do and we love you but ..." and then goes on to explain how I need the money and should probably stay and try to make it work. I say okay and hang up.

Meanwhile, Josie starts texting me about how we might be able to get some tourist visa for me so I can go to Bali but then quickly revokes that, only further fueling the fire inside me.

I fucking lose it. I just start pacing around in my apartment muttering to myself imaginary conversations with Josie. These muttering are often interrupted with sudden out bursts of me screaming profanities. I don't know if I have ever been this mad in my whole life. I burst into my office, grab a chair, and began slamming it against the wall as hard as I can.

Good thing there is no deposit (it looks worse in real life)

I then go sit on my bed and try to meditate again. I listen to a meditation on dealing with anger and it works much better than the one I used this morning. I am still furious, but my fury is contained now. The fury is my power.

I burst into Josie's office and demand my passport back, which I get right away. I need my passport, because if I'm not happy with this conversation, I'm going to flee to Bali. I basically demand reimbursement for my entire trip. The school keeps saying its not there fault, it's the fault of the Chinese government. I calmly tell them that "its there job to know the rules of the Chinese Government because there is no way I can find out what those rules are because I don't speak fucking Chinese." (I think those were my exact words this time) Josie says again that they have never had someone try to leave the country so soon after showing up and I calmly slam my fists on the desk as I say, "you don't get it. You told me I could go. I wouldn't have bought the god damn tickets if you had told me I couldn't but you said I could. You now have to pay me or I am leaving. I want to go to Bali" They asked if I would get refunded and I said I don't know. They asked if they could see my refunds and reimburse me afterwards based on how much I am refunded and I said "it's none of your god damn business how much of a refund I get, you pay me what I lost." I quote them 12,000 RMB and they quote me 10,000 and ask for receipts. I tell them I will think about it.

Then Josie tells me get ready for class, and I say "No. I ain't working until I get my money." At this point, Josie is on the brink of tears. "Please Riley, you have to work. We have no one to cover for you. You can't cancel like last minute like this." "Well you shouldn't have cancelled my Bali trip last minute like this. (Good one Riley.) If I go home, you aren't going to pay me for the work I have done so far anyway. I haven't even gotten paid yet, why would I still keep working?" "Please Riley, please. We will pay you we promise. Even if you go home we will pay you, please work." I hadn't even brought my uniform to work, I was planning on going home, but I relented. "Fine, I'll work."

"Also, today we are filming videos for China's 70th birthday, can you stand next to the kids and wave these flags and say I love China. Happy 70th Birthday." I tell them today is really not the best day for this. They tell me today is the day we are doing it and hand me to flags. I barely wave the flags, try to keep eye contact with the kids so I don't have to look at the camera, don't smile and say "I love China Happy 70th Birthday" so it looks like I am helping the kids speak rather than expressing my own feelings. Than I storm out of the room before they can ask for a second take and throw some water on my face before coming back to class.

The kids are dancing to one of there little videos and one of the kids starts hitting my butt. I explode. "STOP! NO! NO! SIT DOWN!" All the kids are terrified and three teachers rush into the room. "This kid keeps hitting me," I say meekly and the other teachers scold him, but I know. This kid was just trying to have fun. It was me. I'm in no mood to be here and I'm doing a terrible job. It's not fair to them, but I just can't take anymore.

For the rest of my classes, I am too sick and angry to give out high fives, so I start giving out foot stomps, which is basically me and the children stomping our feet on the ground at the same time. These are way better than high fives and I highly recommend them. No gross physical contact so you don't have to worry about germs, the kid think it's fun, and if you are super pissed about not going to Bali, which seemed like the one and only think keeping you sane these passed weeks, you can take it out on the floor.

After work, I walked over to that shitty chicken place and started crying again. When I got into the restaurant, my face was red and still had tears running down. Everyone stared at me and one woman even started taking pictures. I ordered a pizza, but they were out of pizza so I ordered two hotdogs and a strawberry perfume.

While waiting for my food, I realized that China was now number three for things that have made me cry in my adult life. My number 2 was Mitchell, and my number 1 was some other woman. My 4 and 5 were probably other woman too. And I have spent less time with China than I did with any of them, but I'm supposed to stay here longer than any of them lasted too. This fucking sucks.

A side note for Chinese hot dog slash corn dog things. The first half of the hotdog is just filled with cheese, and the second half is just half a hot dog. Rather than having half a cheese bun and half a hot dog, slice your fucking hotdogs down the middle and put the cheese right in there so you get hot dog and cheese in every bite. That's cooking 101. You want your ingredients to mix, not sit in separate areas. Also get some fucking mustard, ketchup fucking sucks.

I stopped by the liquor store and got a handle of Beefeater and a bunch of lemon flavored chasers. I was done, I just wanted to get drunk and feel sorry for myself, which is exactly what I did.

Not a happy mans beverage of choice

I began to get very drunk as I blogged a bit and put up my blackout curtains with tape. I found no otherway to put them up, there was nothing to hand them from or with. It looks terrible and I can't open a window even if I want to, but at least I can sleep in now.

Lunatic

I washed my dishes in the sink, but my sink is way too small so I spilled water all over myself and the floor. Then, I took my sheets from my clothes line. They were all wrinkled and still a little damp, but there wasn't much I could do about it. Maybe if I drink more I won't notice it as much. Maybe if I drink more, I won't notice anything at all. I put my regular curtain down over my blackout curtains to make my room less insane. It sort of worked. But what the hell, who cares anymore. I kept drinking. And I kept drinking and drinking and drinking and drinking...

Regular, healthy guy

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. But what the hell do you do when life gives you crabs?