Elston’s Blog

So for some unknown reason, fighter jets fly directly over the city of Shanghai on random days for random periods of time at random intervals, and I wonder why.

It’s most likely some type of military exercise, but at the same time I believe that it’s a show of military strength, to remind the citizens of the People’s Republic that although there may be limited economic freedom, the government and the military still have a stronghold over the country.

Basically, the shopping carts in China are designed so that all four wheels can spin around in all directions rather than the shopping carts in America, where only the front two can do that, while the back two are set in a forward-backward direction only. Although this seemed like a very good idea at first, I realized that this design was only good for spinning shopping carts around in circles, not for shopping, because many times an attempt to push the cart forward will only spin it.

It seems to me that the Republican Party, at least on outer appearance (which is really all that the public cares about), has become more and more conservative after the ascendancy of Barack Obama and his implementation of programs that apparently scream government overreach. This type of reaction by the Republicans seems to have been solidified by the angry outbursts of Rush Limbaugh and his endorsement by Dick Cheney, who said that Limbaugh would be preferable to Colin Powell as the leader of the Republican Party.

Limbaugh is widely regarded as an angry, racist, jingoistic, and all-around idiot who takes joy in lambasting anything that he personally disagrees with in order to boost his radio show’s ratings and keep similarly-ignorant people angry. As a prominent talk show host, Limbaugh keeps a continual assault upon any foreign values that are not conservative mainstream American values, while failing to realize that culture and society only evolve through the assimilation of such extraneous factors.

The main fault with Limbaugh’s spouting is not what he says, for I believe that he can hold whatever personal beliefs he so desires, but rather on his impact on the Republican Party. The Republican Party is truly a respectable institution, just like the Democratic Party, and represents a coherent self of ideals. However, Limbaugh portrays the Republican Party as extremely conservative, and in doing so pushes many moderates away; this weakens the Republican Party and thus the ideals it stands for. Limbaugh, rather than helping the cause, is killing it.

Because I’m going to be teaching in Shanghai, where appearances, especially compared to the United States, are extremely important, I needed to go buy a few dress shirts, along with a pair of black pants and a pair of leather shoes. I ended up going to this mall, about ten stories, where there were a bunch of different little booths on each level, each selling a different brand, which is slightly different from the American version of a mall: there aren’t too many walls, i.e. it’s almost like a swap meet, with minimal amounts of separation, except inside a building. Also, the expectations that things are cheap in China really isn’t true: Wal-Mart FTW, to a certain extent. Two dress shirts were 150 yuan, a pair of black pants (which aren’t even that black because apparently it’s not in the fashion to do so – black pants convey waiter status) were over 300 yuan, and leather shoes over 300 yuan as well. And then this morning, I went to buy a cello; the cheapest set me back 1085 yuan for a cello, bow, soft case, set of extra strings, rosin, and a music stand.

In relative terms this stuff is pretty cheap, but I am highly suspicious of the quality of Chinese products, regardless of the price. And the thing is, wages really aren’t that high here; a college graduate, if he or she can land a job, will only be able to make about 2500 yuan a month. Of course, many jobs carry along extra perks that reduce the cost of living, so that 2500 yuan could equal about 5000-6000 yuan a month, but that’s really not that much; it’s just that there are so many college graduates and the competition for work is so high that wages do not have much room to grow. But at least it’s not taxed.

I believe the following says all:

Snakes and Boredom on a Plane

I am sitting on a plane

Hoping that it will rain

But the sun defies me

Or maybe it’s that the plane is above the clouds

7 PM and it’s bright as midday

Contrary to the laws of nature I’d say

The earth rotates towards the east

I fly towards the west

What’s the significance of this

Flying economy certainly isn’t bliss

But then again I brought Costco pizza

Which makes everything alright

I think about what this beast of metal, with wings and engines 

Does it make my soul and the plane like twins?

I think about certain humans

Whom I have left behind far too early

The guy behind me just said, “Please,

I’m going to wash my hands.” in Chinese

So I heard

“That’s what she said.” in English

The official test of boredom should be this:

Watching the iTunes Visualizer without thinking anything is amiss

The screen: two dark orbs, with glowing spots spouting solar flares

Some lashing out, tail hairs of untrimmed mares

This is airplane poetry

Una mezcla of ennui and cramped legs

Patronizing contempt for the fear-mongers wearing face-masks

Airplane poetry, boredom snaking through my mind

Although I don’t have many original thoughts on this topic, I would like to point out the fact that although James von Brunn was a white supremist who clearly hated Jews and minorities, he for some reason drove a red, 2002 Hyundai. Hyundai, a South Korean chaebo, does not appear by any means to be the car of choice of a white supremist. This clearly shows that von Brunn allowed economic concerns to take precendence over his hatred; this shows that sometimes economic concerns are really the most important. Otherwise he would have bought an American car.

This, to me, brings up an interesting point: what drives racism. To say pure hatred and complete corruption of the soul seems a bit extreme, for there are many people perfectly kind-hearted in every topic except race. Racism seems to be a deriative of fear, a fear of not only the unknown, but of one’s own character as well. Or perhaps those are the same. The reflection of flaws in another person, or within another race, are fears that such characteristics lie within oneself or one’s race as well; in order to alleviate these concerns, one unconsciously yet actively, in the form of racial discrimination, pushes all of those negative emotions off of oneself and onto another, seeking to segregate them within any group but themself.

Hopefully that makes sense.

On Saturday I shall be departing for a two-month sojourn to the country of my parents, China. In preparation for this move I have upgraded my laptop hard drive, by 1) dropping my laptop and ruining my hard drive, 2) reformatting my hard drive and creating a backup disk, 3) having my hard drive experience a fatal error, 4) buying a new hard drive, and 5) using my backup disk to reinstall Windows Vista. Sigh, Windows Vista.

As for other forms of preparation, I have read over half of Tolstoy’s famed Anna Karenina, while simultaneously realized that I completely wasted $35 buying the hardcover copy of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism - perhaps my literary tastes have changed a little bit. Besides that, I have done completely nothing; there’s still Saturday morning to pack.

First note: I’m looking at my website on IE 8 and the formatting is completely off, so please use Firefox 3 to view it.

Since I’ve leaving for China this Saturday, I was forced to take all my Harvard Placement Exams this week. Having just finished my English one, I feel relieved at actually having done something productive, unlike my past week and a half after graduation, which have basically consisted of my sitting at my computer, although I have made some pretty good progress on Anna Karenina and bike quite often now. Anyway, the placement exams for chemistry and biology were pretty difficult, considering the fact that I haven’t looked at them for several years now…surprisingly the calculus test was decent, even though I had forgotten how to find the radius of convergence using the series test. Sigh.

A story about biking: on Tuesday I rode for about 5 miles when my back tire popped a leak. Stranded, I had walked my bike back about 2 miles when my friend saw me and gave me a ride home. Friends are important.

Hopefully I shall be blogging more often in China, granted that the Chinese government doesn’t shut me down. In fact that sentence right there may have just alerted them. Oh well.