Sunday, July 30, 2006
G.I. Jason's Travelogue
G.I. Jason's Travelogue
This is my cousin's blog. He's at CENTCOM in Tampa right now, and it looks like he'll be heading for Afghanistan in February. He's a volunteer. The most committed, intelligent, honorable and clearsighted volunteer the Army could ask for, and the finest defender and representative a nation could want. I, like the rest of my family, find it a little wrenching, despite the indomitable good humor. I think we all read it with a catch in our throats. But read it. You need to know.
This is my cousin's blog. He's at CENTCOM in Tampa right now, and it looks like he'll be heading for Afghanistan in February. He's a volunteer. The most committed, intelligent, honorable and clearsighted volunteer the Army could ask for, and the finest defender and representative a nation could want. I, like the rest of my family, find it a little wrenching, despite the indomitable good humor. I think we all read it with a catch in our throats. But read it. You need to know.
Fangyangpi! ("Releasing Foreign Farts")
I'm going to regret having used that title now, without a good reason. By the end of this week, I'm sure, I'll have given myself a real reason to use it, and I'll have lost face. I just learned the phrase, though. It's a winner.
Anyhow I've got a job. I took over from Nick tutoring this 11-year old tornado in English. I met him yesterday and spent two hours with him, under Nick's auspices, and today I soloed. I go back tomorrow. Nick, you owe me Y130. Getting there involves spending an hour on a sweltering, dust-choked van called a "mianbaoche" (literally, "bread car"), which is apropos as it's hotter than a bread oven, but for Y130 an hour, six hours a week, I'm willing to put up with a lot. Do you know how many baozi that is? Plus the kid's wickedly clever, just not the way I want him to be. He's a goddamn jenga beast. Nick hit on the idea of trying to shoehorn English into the jenga game ("where are you taking that piece from, Roy? From inside? Roy? Roy? ROY!" Repeat as needed), so I end up playing a hell of a lot of jenga. Which I've never played before. The kid crushes me. His spatial faculties are phenomenal--he builds these Rube Goldberg-esque jenga towers out of which I am, with the aid of this really cool toy with these two plastic balls at either end of an elasticine rope, which open and then snap shut if you place them over a ball--I am supposed to knock down the tower and try to swallow the ping-pong balls he's placed inside. This game, as Nick, when he next sees a computer, will attest, is completely fucking impossible. But without thinking he whips together these unbelievably complicated towers with trigger-blocks which, if I hit them right (by swinging the wrecking ball), will ideally catapult a great number of pieces off the tower without damaging its essential structural integrity. He's ridiculously gifted with those blocks. I've told his brother Stephen he should consider becoming an architect, "jiazhushi." Getting him to do English, though, is tricky business. I'm learning I can't coax it out of him. I sort of have to make him want to tell me things. If I ask him a question, I usually get a shouted, "I don't know!" I've got to think of a way to penalize him everytime he says that. Saying, "every time you say 'I don't know,' the CCP kills a puppy" did not work. I'm not going to expect rigorous devotion from an 11-year old, of course. I just hope that after six hours of jenga a week, I'm some kind of champion.
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Last night, wow. Wow. What a shitshow. Ugh. All I know is there was a Uighur restaurant, belly dancing, a whole roast lamb, some girl with a place in Isle-Sur-La-Sorgue, more dancing, a very large and friendly snake, dancing with the snake, soju, Sprite and FIVE LITERS of baijiu. After that everything got a little fuzzy and when I woke up toxic with tintinnabulations of the brain, certain persons who will remain nameless and whom few of you know and who was not, regrettably, Mlle. Isle-Sur-la-Sorgue, had utterly laid waste to my room. I had mercifully taken the other bed, and therefore escaped the discharge. But not the odor, nor the sight of--I'll spare you. Ugh. Erguotou Baijiu. Literally "two-pot-head white spirit." I imagine the phrase originated when someone compared it, astutely, to being clouted in the head with two steel pots. Death in a green bottle. Nick, you fucker, I'll miss you.
Anyhow I've got a job. I took over from Nick tutoring this 11-year old tornado in English. I met him yesterday and spent two hours with him, under Nick's auspices, and today I soloed. I go back tomorrow. Nick, you owe me Y130. Getting there involves spending an hour on a sweltering, dust-choked van called a "mianbaoche" (literally, "bread car"), which is apropos as it's hotter than a bread oven, but for Y130 an hour, six hours a week, I'm willing to put up with a lot. Do you know how many baozi that is? Plus the kid's wickedly clever, just not the way I want him to be. He's a goddamn jenga beast. Nick hit on the idea of trying to shoehorn English into the jenga game ("where are you taking that piece from, Roy? From inside? Roy? Roy? ROY!" Repeat as needed), so I end up playing a hell of a lot of jenga. Which I've never played before. The kid crushes me. His spatial faculties are phenomenal--he builds these Rube Goldberg-esque jenga towers out of which I am, with the aid of this really cool toy with these two plastic balls at either end of an elasticine rope, which open and then snap shut if you place them over a ball--I am supposed to knock down the tower and try to swallow the ping-pong balls he's placed inside. This game, as Nick, when he next sees a computer, will attest, is completely fucking impossible. But without thinking he whips together these unbelievably complicated towers with trigger-blocks which, if I hit them right (by swinging the wrecking ball), will ideally catapult a great number of pieces off the tower without damaging its essential structural integrity. He's ridiculously gifted with those blocks. I've told his brother Stephen he should consider becoming an architect, "jiazhushi." Getting him to do English, though, is tricky business. I'm learning I can't coax it out of him. I sort of have to make him want to tell me things. If I ask him a question, I usually get a shouted, "I don't know!" I've got to think of a way to penalize him everytime he says that. Saying, "every time you say 'I don't know,' the CCP kills a puppy" did not work. I'm not going to expect rigorous devotion from an 11-year old, of course. I just hope that after six hours of jenga a week, I'm some kind of champion.
<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>
Last night, wow. Wow. What a shitshow. Ugh. All I know is there was a Uighur restaurant, belly dancing, a whole roast lamb, some girl with a place in Isle-Sur-La-Sorgue, more dancing, a very large and friendly snake, dancing with the snake, soju, Sprite and FIVE LITERS of baijiu. After that everything got a little fuzzy and when I woke up toxic with tintinnabulations of the brain, certain persons who will remain nameless and whom few of you know and who was not, regrettably, Mlle. Isle-Sur-la-Sorgue, had utterly laid waste to my room. I had mercifully taken the other bed, and therefore escaped the discharge. But not the odor, nor the sight of--I'll spare you. Ugh. Erguotou Baijiu. Literally "two-pot-head white spirit." I imagine the phrase originated when someone compared it, astutely, to being clouted in the head with two steel pots. Death in a green bottle. Nick, you fucker, I'll miss you.
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