a home away from home

Posted on September 27, 2017 by mrmakdeck

The Third Weekend…

I have been in China just over a 2 and half weeks and am finally feeling like the place that they have put me in, this spacious apartment, on the second floor in a compound full of similar buildings in a city I had never heard of before this job offer, this random, but warming place, is starting feel like a home. I don’t think it will ever be home home. It’s too empty. There is only one person in it. And I guess that could be a home to someone who was okay with single occupancy. And that might have been alright when I was of the single occupancy mind. But I am not that now. So a home away from home will do and I will make the best of these rooms and their four walls. I will adorn, I will garden, I will masturbate in every crevice. Kidding. I just have to keep you on your toes, right?

Because sometimes your school gifts you big boxes of pomelos pomegranates

Jiaxing is a lovely city of 7 million, which is considerably small for China and ridiculously big for most other parts of this weekend amusement park filled planet. Last weekend I walked around and explored the sites and by sites I refer to things I found via google maps that looked mildly historical and possibly entertaining. Being a smaller Chinese city means that it is more accessible by foot. I have set up my phone so that it can pay for the City Bikes…but just because a system is set up, does not mean I have any clue as to how to operate it. I tried a few times to set of the city’s two wheeled jalopies free, scanning the QR code from different angles, staring at the bicycle like a concerned parent, whispering a muted curse into it’s hypothetical ear and then moving on before a Westside Story-esque fight broke out. I ventured towards my destinations, the “sites” of Jiaxing, through through clusters of malls and overpasses, through glares and gawks, passed “waigerens and laowais”, through beeps and snot rockets and stenches and fragrances. The first on my list was a temple that shot up like a magnified wart near the side of one of the rivers, a cluster of smaller structures and towers, white and brown and moldy.

my office

The temple was currently inaccessible due to a ceremony going on within. I leaned up against the ancient welcoming post and peered in as the monks within the first inner shrine chanted, played instruments that echoed generations long dead, encircled by thick tornadoes of fragrant and blooming incense. After the ceremony I entered. The pictures say what I have no words to say. So I exited. Another temple down the way. This one, with a large inner courtyard. It was dedicated to a fallen General who had saved the Song Dynasty and was poisoned. More pictures.

More walking. The city’s greenness, almost obnoxious, with its abundance, but so welcoming and so unexpected. I walked through several of the touristy, made to look as if they were ancient sections of a long forgotten and abandoned Chinese water town, that lined one of the canals. Historical Disneyfication and commodification. Though, we do the same thing to actual history. The BC version of it, Barkerville, cashes in on that every summer. And why not? You learn a little, an impression is made and context is given to faded words and histories. It makes the past tangible and kinetic. I guess, in this particular instant, you learn nothing if you cannot read the Chinese signs. All I can surmise from areas such as these is that at some point something like this might have existed somewhere around here. I read that last sentence. Trust me, I got this.

shrimp pork dumplings from my local RT Market

I walk through a park lined with beautiful trees that rise like Tolken spires or war spears, their tips piercing the blue vastness that expands to horizons on all sides. The path ends at a wooden pagoda at the Beijing to Hangzhou Grand Canal. I have seen this canal in both Suzhou and Hangzhou. It felt as if I was reconnected with a cousin that my mother had told me about and who I had met at I point in my life where I didn’t tie anything down to memories. There wasn’t much to say, but still I felt I had a duty to stop and view it with wonderment and curiosity. It definitely was and is a technical marvel, the longest man made canal in the world and it was created over 700 years ago.

sounds interesting. tastes boring.

Before leaving the extensive greenway, I stop on a small island, accessible by a gate to have a glimpse over South West Lake. I peer down on it from an ancient bridge. Jiaxing is beautiful. I needed this. Having left things and people I didn’t want to leave behind, nature was a comfort to the barren feels inside.

At the edge of the park, old men, dressed like the Chinese version of Grumpy Old Men play polo on two, official looking polo courts. I stop, watch and snap a few pictures. People really take leisure time seriously and really do spend it with their friends, families and loved ones. It’s really quite nice.

Fishing on the canal

I stop into the house of a local resident who was one of the first people to translate Shakespeare into Chinese. He is long gone, but his house still stands, amongst modern constructions, byways and shlubbly dressed guards who wander aimlessly too and fro like poorly programmed baddies in an old school PC Shoot ‘Em Up . Today was a lot of walking. I peer through a small breach of a large, corroding fence that surrounds the Catholic Church that was partially destroyed by the Red Guard. It’s a beautiful structure is haunting; partially in part due to it’s dilapidated state. Renovations are on the table, right beside gay rights ;). Durian milk shake. Not sure about that. Kind of tastes like what, I imagine, an onion milkshake would taste like.

Delicious hot pot

Marking, marking, marking, teaching, teaching, teaching. Planning, planning. Dinners with bosses. Presents for teacher day. Pillow of my face. Originally I was like, this is so strange to own a pillow with my own image on it. It’s grown on me. I’ve had more than a few naps on it. I fear I am going to wake up from a nice slumber and feeling a bit disoriented, come face to face, eye to eye, with pillow Ira, his facial expression slightly altered from what I remember it to have been. In that regard, pillow Ira is not to be trusted.

Mark, mark, buy some stuff on Taobao. BOX comes from Canada! Only took a month. Coffee from Canada. Candies. Break bodum. DAMN. Order another off Taobao. To explain, Taobao is the place to get anything ever online in China. It’s better than Amazon and doesn’t generally charge for shipping and it usually shows up in a few days, unless it’s ginormous. I am obsessed.

big box of treats

Yesterday night, I went to see Planet of the War of the World of the City of the Planet Again of the Apes. It was fun and it was great to hang out with my new teacher friends. Went to Moon River after and my bike lock key broke. Nevermind. Had some drinks, 45 minute walk home. Rinse, repeat and return. Today I went to museums. Words. Sometimes no. Pictures. Yes. Those. More soon. Right after I get through this Tower of Babel of papers.

Mooncake full of meat. Yum!

The Happiness of Travel: Stability in Traditional Instability

Posted on December 8, 2015 by mrmakdeck

I see my reflection in dented metal siding. My face is the borscht pink. My limbs and spine tingle with the weight of exhaustion and anxiety. There is a small, undetectable grin on my face, that even a ruler is placed up against my face may miss. Am I sick? Delirious due to the situational stress? No. It’s perspective.

That is the extreme situation. I understand why many would respond to that description with a big WTF. Being trapped in Russia due to a Visa violation isn’t Mardi Gras, but it’s still raw adventure, a story for the bulging back-pocket, for attentive eyes, for inducing salivation. This is short and sweet. Happiness cannot be dictated from the higher ups. They can inspire us and implore us, but ultimately it is up to us to define our own happiness. Even then, it may be considered beyond decision, something deeper, involuntary, and uncontrollable like flowing blood. And they will try. They will try to get you to conform to their smiles. To their tears. To their boxes. Don’t check them. Don’t live in them. Don’t pass it on to your next akin, with the preamble of “that’s just the way we do things”.

All versions of happiness are valid and are form fitting. When you are sitting in your version of a tent, rippling with blistering gales and pelting rain, your drenched to the apple core, and all your electronic devices are gasping for a last bit of life, as their non-water compatible electronic components drown in small pools as you sleep in every piece of clothing you have with you, that is happiness. Typing away at a report in some 4 by 4 cubicle well into the weekend, while your boss spends his Saturday, spending time with his kids….that also can be happiness. Happiness cannot be argued and if it does no harm to others, it should not be prevented. This post reiterates the obvious, but something that sometimes we need to be reminded of, to set long list of duties into perspective.

Pause. Put down whatever it is you are burdened by, whether it is thoughts or a stapler. Ask yourself:

Are you happy?

What can you do right now that will make you so?

Keep Pedaling

Each Mile

Wide Eyed Prague – First Time Living Abroad

Posted on November 9, 2015 by mrmakdeck

Looking back to when I first got my taste of travel in 2008, I couldn’t have guessed the lifetime commitment I would make to cycling around the globe, seeing, smelling, tasting, spontaneously dancing in so many amazing, unique, exhilarating places. I thought I would share some of those first images, re-saturated and re-edited for your viewing pleasure. The first batch of photos come from that first trip. I had the lucky fortune of being invited to perform at play in Brno, Czech Republic, a place, that prior to being invited to this festival, I had no idea existed. After traveling around the Czech Republic, I landed a four month contract in Prague, teaching English.

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: Old Town Square, Prague.

: Church of St. Nicholas, Prague.

: Old Town Square, Prague

: One of the residence of Franz Kafka, near Old Town, Prague.

: Kebabs for the soccer game!

: Cloudy skies

: Church of Our Lady before Týn, Prague. The 15th Century Church dominates Prague’s centre square. During the Catholic Reformation, much of it’s interior was burnt, later to be restored in the 19th century. During the world cup for soccer, the Old Town becomes an area of convergence to drink beer, eat grilled meats and watch the game.

: Prague’s Astronomical Clock – Installed in 1410, makes it the oldest WORKING clock of it’s kind in the world. Formerly, it was believed that the Orloj was constructed in 1490 by clockmaster Jan Růže (also called Hanuš); this is now known to be a historical mistake. A legend, recounted by Alois Jirásek, has it that the clockmaker Hanuš was blinded on the order of the Prague Councillors so that he could not repeat his work; in turn, he broke down the clock, and no one was able to repair it for the next hundred years. The Clock suffered heavy damage on May 7 and especially May 8, 1945, during the Prague Uprising, when Germans set fire from several armoured vehicles and an anti-aircraft gun to the south-west side of the Old Town Square in an effort to silence the provocative broadcasting initiated by the National Committee on May 5. On the hour “shows” of the clocks moving components and figures are quite a let down, but still offer a little amusement when sitting at one of the outdoor cafes in the square.

: St. Nicholas Church in Old Town Square, Prague. Completed in 1755, built over a 13th century Gothic cathedral, during the communist era, the towers were used as observation decks for state security. Oh yah, and Mozart has composed on the organ here.