Adventures of a Vagabond

Getting “engaged” to Chloe on Facebook has created a bit of a flurry of congratulations, which is pretty awesome except for the fact it’s not true. With the intent of some kind of graceful redemption (Easter pun intended), here’s the story.

I get an e-mail from Chloe on the afternoon of April 1st.

From: Chloe Harris
Date: Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 3:39 PM
Subject: Fwd: boyfriend…

So…I kind of sent an April fool to some friends from home…and I kind of used your picture to attempt to make it more believable, because it is so cute…
please don’t hate me…I’m sorry for being racist…

I was just wondering if my friends would come out to china if i was to get engaged to a chinese guy…

see you later white mike

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Chloe Harris
Date: Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 3:21 PM
Subject: boyfriend…
To: [redacted]

Hey guys,
hope you’re well,

I’ve been meaning to tell you all for a while but I haven’t really known how to put it, and I really hope that you guys can support me in stuff that’s been going on here in China lately.

So I don’t have too much to say as I’m still not sure myself, but I met this guy a few months ago, and he is so great. We’ve prayed and talked about it and decided to give it a go and to try and make it work. Language is sometimes a problem but its working out, and there are alot of cultural differences but alot of the time i just forget about them.

So I think its going to get pretty serious pretty quickly, and I was wondering where you are at in terms of coming out to China if something were to happen in the next couple of months?

love you x

I’m pretty sure you could have heard me snort the Coke I was drinking all the way down across my office. I had to leave early to make a dinner thing and started SMS’ing Chloe from the car, which went something like…

Me: OMG on the email!!! I think I might have snorted my drink. We need to set FB status to in relationship with…

Chloe: And change my status to ‘Chloe Harris is happy’, but I don’t want people to know your name….michael is not Chinese enough!

Me: I’ll try to change it.

With the power of the iPhone, China Unicom’s 3G network, and the Freedur VPN service, 30 minutes later we ended up with this:

…which solicited a flurry of responses for Chloe.

The next morning in China, and still April 1 in most places in the world, on the suggestion of Matt Banker, we decide to up the ante a bit and go straight over to being “Engaged.”

And hells bells, the comments just start to FLOW!

Then the IMs…

Then the messages….

Thankfully, a little skepticism abounds…

But also a few takers!

Not to mention getting greeted at dinner with…

Congratulations on your engagement! …are you really engaged?

 

Chloe, on the other hand, had a few more choice statements from friends…

For those who were wondering what responses I got…

It was meant to just be a joke for people that I emailed, but seems to have got a little out of hand with facebook to the point of getting a message from my sister:

‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me you were going out with Mike Lu!’

April Fools Day is fun

Thanks to Mike for letting me be racist.

clo x

Responses:

Chloe……………are you getting to get married in a few months time?!?! xxx

but obviously, very happy for you and will be supporting you whatever happens! big love to you xx

Thanks for the email – crazy but exciting news! As long as you’re happy & feel it right God wise go for it.

Don’t quite understand the email: by serious you meaning proposal / marriage soon?! Is he Chinese / Asian?

So no big news going on your end, pretty dull stuff, nothing to report.  YOU HAVE A BOYFRIEND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  This is so cool.  Couple of months? 

Marriage? In China? I need details! Why not do it in Leeds with me and Rhiane?  Aaahhhhhhhh, too many questions, what’s he like, what does he do, etc etc.

Babe, what lovely news! I’m so glad to hear you’ve met someone who you really like. I would still definitely be on for coming to China – it would be lovely to meet this chap, he must be pretty special! How did you meet? What’s he like? I want to hear all about it!

THis is SO exciting!!! Wowowowowwwwwwwee! Yay! What is his name, how do you know him, where is he from??? Tell me everything! I want to come to china and meet him. When you say serious, in what terms are we talking?! How serious??! I have no doubt I would thoroughly approve. I am so happy for you cloclo!!!

Wow I wasn´t expecting that! So how did you meet him? Tell all! You guys look very happy I was planning on going out to Chile for the summer but were you thinking about marriage? Obviously I´m really happy for you and will support you no matter as long as you know this is what you and God want.

brilliant to hear from you and crazy but exciting news! Are you thinking about marriage then if you’re asking about China availability?!

Were you thinking before you’re back in the UK in the summer as well (or guess you’re not sure..)? I would have to check with work and look at flights etc as work fluctuates on a monthly basis depending on what meetings and events I have to be around for and organise…

This is so exciting and you both look so happy together- what’s his name though?!

And then there are a couple more comments on facebook. Particularly ridiculous as it says that I am in a relationship with 吕明克。One friend wrote: ‘how do you pronounce that?’

SO. Just to set the record straight… I am NOT engaged.

Happy April Fools! =)

This may sound a bit random: I’ve got a clothing label!

For the few months, I’ve been working with Matt Lu, Mark Guerrero, and other friends to create a clothing label here in Beijing. Matt, who’s an awesome graphic designer, has for 15 years wanted to create a way to give back and and wear cool stuff at the same time. We put in a some time and money to make this real and as a result:

short+savage is a non-profit clothing label for the urban, hip-hop, and skater communities.

Each shirt has a design that’s eye-catching, curious, and a conversation starter for increasingly cold urban societies.

Like: “Why is your shirt missing a sheep?” or “Wunder Bread and Tuna?”

Each shirt also has a little something extra on the flip in English and Chinese.

Last Friday, we got our first batch of shirts delivered. Saturday, at the Forbidden City, we did our first photo shoot. Sunday, with support from stage one productions, we launched our label here in Beijing, selling 110 shirts and donating 1063 RMB to the Oasis House!

We can’t be more thrilled—we’re out there, making an impact!

This is a side project, as all of us have day jobs. Anyone who’s ever done one of these knows that it’s a lot work, late nights, and pushing each other to keep going. Launching is a huge milestone. Our goal is to grow this thing and help the street youth of China—but that’s a future post. =)

Interested in being part of our story? Reach out!

[short+savage website / short+savage flickr]

David and Michael, originally uploaded by SlayerSeattle.

Pulling amazing shots on an incredible machine. More on this very soon.

I look like such a barista!!

South of the Columbia and north of California, scores of wild green rivers come tumbling down out of the evergreen, ever-west forests of the Coast Range. These rivers are short—twenty to sixty miles, most of them—but they carry a lot of water. They like to run fast through the woods, roaring and raising hell during rainstorms and run-offs, knocking down streamside cedars and alders now and again to show they know who it is dumping trashy leaves and branches in them all the time. But when they get within a few miles of the ocean, they aren’t so brash. They get cautious down there, start sidling back and forth digging letters in their valleys—C’s, S’s, U’s, L’s, and others from their secret alphabet—and they quit roaring and start mumbling to themselves, making odd sounds like jittery orators clearing their throats before addressing a mighty audience. Or sometimes they say nothing at all but just slip along in sullen silence, as though they thought that if they snuck up on the Pacific softly enough it might not notice them, might not swallow them whole the way it usually does.

- The River Why

I had a really magic moment when I read that passage sitting in Beijing last May. Slouched in an armchair on the sun room/balcony of my apartment, I was surrounded by natural light. It was a quiet Saturday afternoon and the sky was filled with voluminous gray clouds, with visibility clear to the mountains.

I started by reading the first two sentences of the chapter and awestruck, just had to stop. I shifted to sit up a little straighter and closed my eyes briefly for focus. This was going to be brilliant. I wanted to savor every word. I returned to the beginning and started again, reading it slowly, deliberately.

As my mind reached the last word and hung there, I leaned back and stared out the window. Almost imperceptibly, I felt a weird sense that the world was taking a deep breath. Without warning, the wind began to blow. Hard. Dust and leaves were whipped up from the streets below, flung up into the air and reaching above my ninth-floor eye level. It was a gift—suddenly seeing, hearing, and feeling the amazing power of nature I had just read about. I sat there for nearly an hour, motionless.

In the year I’ve lived in Beijing, I’ve often missed the people that made my life in Seattle so rich and blessed, but I’ve rarely missed the place itself. That day, for the first time, I felt an insatiable urge to go home, starting in the pit of my stomach and rising up to my throat. I needed to into those forests, I wanted to go camping and breathe in the magnificent air and listen to the roar of the rivers and admire the magnificence of each tree trunk.

As luck would have it, three weeks later I found myself on the trail to Annette Lake, less than an hour outside of Seattle, inhaling the wonderful smell of damp evergreens with a backpack slung on my back. It could not have been better. I found a campsite next to the still-partially frozen lake, the cool evening air filled with the sound of a medium-sized waterfall at the end of the lake. When I woke the next morning and unzipped my tent flap, I looked out to see a mystical forest shrouded in fog.

It was beautiful. It was perfect. It’s one of those amazing things you don’t realize how great it is until you don’t have it.

I can’t wait to get back.

Ebert called Transformers 2 “a horrible experience of unbearable length.” Dude, c’mon. No movie with Megan Fox can possibly be that bad.

It’s all about setting expectations. Robots, stuff getting blown to bits, and a thin plot—this is the sort of stuff that Transformers is made of. It’s a movie created to sell toys—friggin’ fantastic toys. The first gen Transformer toys of my childhood still adorn my shelf in my parent’s house and I still love ‘em whenever I make it back there.

I had to catch this movie in real IMAX (vs. faux IMAX) while I was in Seattle. Real IMAX—robots six-stories tall! And it delivered right up on expectations in 150 minutes of boyhood fantasy goodness.

OK—that doesn’t necessarily mean it was good. Right up to the end I was brought to the brink of utter annoyance: I wasn’t sure if Michael Bay had created a “movie” or just a 2.5 hour US military recruitment video.

Let’s replay a (likely incomplete) mental list.

• Army: Elite squad operations
• Army: Medics (complete with arrival via medic helicopter chariot)
• Army: M1A2 tank operations
• Army: Helicopters (Blackhawks and Longbows)
• Air Force/Army: C-17 air drops
• Air Force: Unmanned Arial Vehicle operators and MQ-9 Reapers UAVs
• Air Force: F-22s
• Air Force: A-10s
• Air Force: B-1 bomber operations (I think it was a B-1)
• Air Force: C-17 cargo plane operations
• Air Force: AWAC operations
• Marines: Arriving on Landing Craft Assault Craft (LCAC) hovercraft
• Navy: Aircraft carrier operations
• Navy: Destroyer with rail gun (near-future tech)
• Navy: Submarine operations (Los Angeles class?)
• Joint Command (sort of): Strategic command center operations
• Pentagon: High-ranking officer politics

Not to mention a glaringly deliberate distribution of men/women topped off with a little “we’re gonna do it our way” military vs. civilian government chauvinism. I’m not even going to get into how the military played the “world police” plot angle.

Also, in the product placement category, we still manage to fit in General Motors (lots) and WebEx. I’m sure I’m missing a few more. It’s egregious.

But you know what? I’m writing this on my flight back to Beijing in time to relax for the weekend and I can’t wait to chill out in a movie theater and watch it again. =)

A friend of mine sent me a link to a McSweeney’s article poking fun at Twitter, 140 character limits, staring blankly at handheld devices while others are talking, etc etc. It’s hilarious.

Prerequisites

Students must have completed at least two of the following.

ENG: 232WR—Advanced Tweeting: The Elements of Droll
LIT: 223—Early-21st-Century Literature: 140 Characters or Less
ENG: 102—Staring Blankly at Handheld Devices While Others Are Talking
ENG: 301—Advanced Blog and Book Skimming
ENG: 231WR—Facebook Wall Alliteration and Assonance
LIT: 202—The Literary Merits of Lolcats
LIT: 209—Internet-Age Surrealistic Narcissism and Self-Absorption

In response, I’ve combined my distaste of the insanity that is the Twlight series and composed the following. See if you can follow along. I think it’s better if you read it out loud.

The more things change stop
The more things stay same stop
The telegraph was amazing invention two hundred years ago stop
Costs calculated by word, no matter length stop

Some girl just died, over.
She was eaten by wolves, over.
She was delicious, over.

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! Bella wanted to scream, so desperately wanted to scream a scream that would flatten swaths of land, shatter windows, and cause sonar operators in the sea 200 miles away to abandon their stations with blood streaming from their ears. But she wasn’t scared. She wanted to scream because it would draw her Edward there to save her, but it was a bad idea, for the shooter had silver rounds infused with a garlic and wood concoction, which would rip through Edward’s dazzling skin, and kill him. So Bella ran inside, slamming the door behind her, but simultaneously making the fatal mistake of turning her head to make sure no one followed her as she ran full tilt into the house. And thusly she was promptly stopped short by the door separating the entry from the rest of the house. Full speed into a solid oak door with a resounding thud, snapping her head back with a dazzling series of pops, dazzled with stars exploding in her eyes, and knocking herself dazzlingly out cold. Now little more than dead weight, Bella’s body begins to topple over toward the ground. Without warning, defending her unusual home, a wolf jumps out of the shadows, sinking her teeth deeply into Bella’s throat. And the plain, uninteresting, and clumsy Isabella Swan, crashed on the floor, blood spraying from her jugular, finally dead.

OMG. It was a dark and stormy night. Fail! Suddenly, a shot rang out! Oh noes! i can haz edwaurd? Noe, bullts baad, i can not haz edwaurd. pwned! Must. Run. *BAM* DOOR? WTF? OW! Whoa. Wolf. NFW. Belleh haz died. (Haha! Friggin’ finally!!!!111one)

Im sry I hv died, etn by wlves.

Bella is dead.

Bella @edward Wasn’t scared, wanted to scream, ran and hit head, ended up getting ambushed by wolf who killed me. http://cli.gs/NDy4QY

Win.