It's not for dinner.

I miss steak. A lot. I want a juicy 16oz medium-rare steak in front of me right now. I wrote about it last time, and it has gotten worse. I have decided not to eat steak here anymore, for 3 reasons. First, the steak I have upon returning to the US will taste that much better. Ripping into the tender flesh of a cow with a massive carbon footprint will be that much better. Second, steak here is expensive. I paid 108 kuai for a steak last night. Them there's some American pricing. Finally, the steak here really is genuinely bad. As noted earlier, it has peppered beyond all belief, perhaps in an effort to mask the not-so-steak-like taste of it. It is also cooked poorly, or just all awful cuts. The one I had last night was "medium rare" and it was basically medium well, if not well done. It is simply not an enjoyable experience over here.

Also last night while at the restaurant (饭馆) there was a meowing sound coming from somewhere next to or around our table. After looking around for it and trying to coax it out from wherever with food, I persuaded Shino to ask the waiter about the cat, whom calmly and quickly responded as if having been aware of this fact for some time, that the cat was in the wall. Yes, in the wall. I do not know why, nor how, but there you go. Cat's in walls, this country's got it all. Additionally at dinner, Shino presented me with a gift. It is a children's book (Complete with CD-ROM! I haven't popped it into my computer yet based on what I believe to be a well-founded fear of god knows what popping up.) of popular fairy tales, including Seven in One Stroke, one of my favorites from the Brother's Grimm, and more classic ones such as Snow White and Cinderella. It has basic-level characters and pinyin. Pinyin, for those wondering, is the name for the most common Romanization system for Chinese sounds. In Pinyin, the venerable Chairman Mao is Mao Zedong. In Wade-Giles Romanization, it is Mao Tse-tung. No one actually uses Wade-Giles anymore since 1980, and Chinese people type using pinyin. Pinyin also includes the tones of Chinese above vowels, which I may do a post on later. Anyhow, this book has the pinyin right above the characters and it is kind of exciting to read something other than the textbook and get around 80% comprehension. The title of the book is "Ge Lin's Stories." If I ever work up the courage to pop the CD into my computer, I will for sure take screenshots if there is any animation or whatnot.

Here it is in all its glory:

I took a walk a couple days ago with the intent to go to McDonalds then walk around a little. My plans were cut short quite abruptly when a bird took a liquidy dump on me. It was aimed quite perfectly, I must say. I noticed it only because I felt something slightly hit my hair, which I thought was nothing more than a blown leaf. Instinctively, I put my hand up to brush the offending vegetable matter out of the way. Instead, my fingers were met with just a smidgen of a bluish substance. Now, I had been walking by a lamp-post and had looked at the ground just prior to this and thought, "Wow, there is a lot of pigeon crap there." Well some annoying bird decided he didn't like me and let me know. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, this was not the first time a bird has done this to me. In cub scouts, must have been around 4th grade, I specifically remember setting out for a hike with Daniel and Mr. Smith and the rest of our pack. We had our uniforms on (meaning it couldn't have been too rough of a hike) and just set out from the parking lot. With the cars still in full view, a bird dropped a massive one right on my head. It made an audible sound, and basically felt like a massive raindrop. In a similar way, I put my hand up to feel what the hell had just hit me, and it was the same sticky substance. Daniel thought this was hilarious. So did the other scouts. I would wager the adults did too, but were too gracious to let on as such. I just remember trying to comb out what basically amounted to quick-drying glue out of my hair. The only reason I can fathom for someone to have a comb with them on a Scout hike is an over-zealous interpretation of the Boy Scout motto Be Prepared, but I guess it worked out well for me. Now, I tell you this even though the bird from yesterday was a quite superior marksfowl. It managed to not only graze my hair, but also to land the majority of it squarely on my shirt. Here I am, an American in a bright blue shirt, strolling through Tianjin with a disgusting stain squarely on the front my shirt, that no human not under the influence of hallucinogens could possibly miss. I debated what to do, and eventually decided to constantly tend to it to make sure no one though I was dumb enough to put it on in the morning and make it clear some shit went down (quite literally) that caused this blight. Getting back, I ran it under water for hours on end and used both regular soap and powdered detergent on it. With one true machine washing, it may be spotless. As it is now it's pretty good. And that was basically my Monday.

At McDonald's, I ordered what I think amounted to a Royale wit' Cheese. It had hamburger patty, cheese, cucumbers, and the special sauce. Cucumbers. The special sauce was not bad nor good really, just too much of it. The cucumbers, I guess, should not have surprised me. Lays does after all sell Cool Cucumber chips, and the picture showed cucumbers, but after seeing other people order other burgers from McDonald's with pickles on them, I thought it would we pickles. I was wrong. On the way back from McDonald's I saw a girl wearing a t-shirt in the same trendy font now popular on A&F and AE clothing nowadays, the somewhat imperfect block letters. Except the biggest word across the top of the shirt was COORSE which naturally is not a word. There was some stuff below it which I couldn't catch, but if you need any evidence how cool English is here, there you go. And this is common too. Horrible sentence fragments and spelling errors all over clothing here, sometimes just letters put together without any vowels to spice things up. They think that English sounds beautiful too.

On another walk a week or so ago that I don't think I mentioned, a little kid walked by me, turned around, pointed, and simply laughed. Now, I was used to the stares, the discreet glances, paranoia and little whispers. But he still managed to surprise me. Perhaps I should have stolen his soul, or at least pretended to. That would have been funny at least.


Finally, we saw an "acrobatics" show yesterday afternoon which was more like a carnival sideshow with magic and other entertainment. I took tons of pictures, including one of this girl doing crazy contortionist things. Seconds after taking this she let go of the ground and completely supported herself, in that stance, with her mouth. Yeah... kind of nuts.

There was also a couple magicians doing standard slight of hand tricks that while not too hard to understand looked pretty nonetheless. They cheated on some of the balancing things (The plates and the beginning bottles trick) by using a sort of interlocking thing so they didn't fall. One of the plates stopped spinning during their routine. Whatever, most of it was still cool.

Test tomorrow, and tutoring any minute now. I may be going for yet another massage tonight, not sure yet.