Five Things I’m thinking about This Week:
My New Haircut-- Most of you know about my hatred for getting
haircuts. In 2009, I had my hair cut on
five occasions (which is one more than I had the previous year), and I notoriously
went a full year in high school without cutting my hair. A mere perusal through my Facebook albums
show fluctuations of my hair length that rival those of Mike Huckabee’s weight
and the quality of the Coen Brother’s films.
Essentially, my strategy when it
comes to haircuts (assuming I don’t have big events coming up like Graduation
or Spring Break in PCB, the reasons for extra haircuts in 2009) is to let my
hair grow out until ‘it’s time’. There’s
really no reasoning behind my determination of when ‘it’s time’; I just
know.
Usually, 2-3 weeks after people
start telling me that my hair does not look good—when it is mopped up under my
ND baseball hat—I know. Soon after one
of the other English teachers at our school made comments about my hair, I
figured that it was time to chop it off.
Last weekend, I went to the hair cutting place to get my fifth haircut
of 2009.
Knowing that I would have trouble
telling the person what I wanted my hair to look like, I took a picture off my
wall that depicted me about a week after a haircut. Gavin was going to the post office, so he
stopped at the hair cut place and helped me explain what I wanted. Figuring everything was going to be fine, he
left and they brought me over to a station where my hair was washed.
After my hair was properly
shampooed (the first time I’ve had my hair shampooed by somebody else in more
than a decade) I sat in a barber’s chair and a Chinese guy with WAY over-styled
hair began to work on mine.
He started by putting some clips
in the back of the mop that was probably two inches long at this point. I wasn’t too sure what he was clipping (since
all I really wanted was a quick buzz all the way around, that’s a little longer
on top) but he probably had six hair clips on the back of my head.
He then began to slowly and
methodically cut off a couple centimeters of hair at a time. This alone would have been frustrating, but
to make matters worse this guy had fingernails that were nearly an inch
long. Every time he pulled more hair
back and repositioned his clips, I would become squeamish as his claw-like
nails grazed the back of my neck. It was
one thing for me to be getting a haircut, but these nails were absolutely
terrifying to me (I’m the guy that cuts his fingernails more often then he
shaves).
Realizing that this guy had no
clue what I wanted him to do, and upset because of the nail situation, I started
to get frustrated. It wasn’t an
angry-frustrated though, but a laughing-frustrated though. Knowing that I was helpless to impact my
situation, and that there was really know way I could communicate to him that I
just wanted him to shave it all off, I just started laughing to myself.
About 15-20 minutes later, my
hair still looked about the same as it had when I walked into the store. There was nothing resembling the drastic
change that I was looking for, and I was quite irritated. I tried to show him the picture again, but he
clearly seemed to think that the picture depicted something different than I
did. Luckily, Gavin arrived, and after
much deliberation, was able to convince the hair cut guy what I wanted.
After a painful 45 minutes in the
barber’s chair (I’m not shy about the fact that I’d rather go to the dentist
then to the haircut), my haircut was complete, and actually looked better than
I thought it would.
I think I’ll try to do it myself
next time.
He Wasn’t What We Thought He Was—In the spring of 2008, there was a
shooting outside of a business that is owned by Marvin Harrison. As we all remember, the gun that was
apparently used was owned by the former Colts receiver, and Harrison was
actually identified by witnesses as the shooter.
With just one report, a man that
I thought was one of the more classy individuals in the NFL was embroiled in
controversy. My friends and I talked
about how he was secretly a gangster, and we even went so far as to swipe a
poster from the Notre Dame Library that depicted the receiver holding a book
and the word “READ” in big letters across the top.
When it happened, my friends and
I talked about how Marvin Harrison was probably one of the athletes we would
never expect to become embroiled in such a controversy. I wasn’t that surprised with Vick’s troubles,
or Plaxico’s, or Pacman’s; but Marvin Harrison secretly being a gangster was
completely unexpected. At the time I
thought about what athletes would really shock me if they turned out to not be
the classy individuals they come across as.
Tiger Woods would have probably
been at the top of that list.
Much has been written about Woods
in the past couple weeks, and I don’t really have anything to add right now, so
I’m just going to go ahead and list the top five athletes that would most
surprise me if they turned out to be less than the classy individuals I have
been meant to believe they are. In other
words, I would be most surprised if these five athletes were involved in an
unordinary incident involving guns, drugs, rampant sex, alcoholism, dog
fighting, or murder. We’ll call them my
Thanksgiving Tigers:
1)
Peyton Manning
2)
Phil Mickelson
3)
Derrek Lee
4)
Kurt Warner
5)
Tim Duncan
Here We Go Again—On Saturday morning I woke up like it was
Christmas morning [that simile will never get old] because I knew that the
Brian Kelly press conference would be ready for me. As I jumped out of bed and opened my laptop
like it was a gift on Christmas morning, I found something even more wonderful:
A Simmons Mailbag entirely about Tiger Woods!!!
Anyways, I spent most of Saturday
reading and listening about Brian Kelly and Tiger Woods. All I have to say right now about Kelly is
that I fully expect him to be a successful football coach. Will he win a championship within the next
five years? I don’t know, but I expect
that our boys will be competitive in BCS games very soon.
Sweet Home Alabama—I was really surprised when I found out that
Mark Ingram is the first Alabama player to win the Heisman Trophy. This was like when I found out that Bo
Schembechler never won a national championship.
Very surprising.
Goin’ Rogue, Yanji Style—One of the most difficult parts about
learning Chinese is actually working on talking to people. Since I am here as an English teacher, the expectation
is that at school I only speak English.
Seeing as I hardly know Chinese, this isn’t a problem, but as I attempt
to learn the language my speaking skills are lagging far behind my listening
skills.
Because of this, I took a gamble
on Thursday and went out to dinner by myself.
There is a small restaurant that
is in the building next to ours that Gavin and I have been going to at least
once a week for the past couple months.
Since the place is about as far from our apartment as Recker’s was from
Banana Quad, it is nice if we don’t want to cook dinner, but also don’t want to
walk very far in the cold.
The restaurant is owned by a
Chinese family that actually lives in the back room. The dad is the cook, his daughter (roughly 20
years old) is the server, and his wife sometimes helps out if she is
around. While there are sometimes people
in this restaurant, usually when we eat there it is just the two of us talking
with the family that runs the place.
Gavin talks to them, and I try my best to follow along (and am actually
starting to get good at it).
On Thursday, Gavin was going out
to dinner with his Chinese teacher, so I would have to eat on my own. As I briefly considered an easy dinner of
Ramen Noodles and scrambled eggs, I then realized that I could go to the
restaurant and attempt to talk to the Chinese family on my own.
So I did.
While I don’t know that many
words, I was able to talk to them quite a bit; and I even took out my books and
looked up some words to fill in blanks.
This amused them as they went through my notebooks and looked over all
of my futile attempts to draw (or write) Chinese characters. The daughter went through my book and
corrected some of my characters, and I was actually able to practice a little
bit.
It wasn’t much, but it was a
start; and probably much more beneficial to me than going rogue was for Sarah
Palin last fall.
Rising up My iTunes Play Count
Have I Got A Present For You: Toby Keith—The second album I
purchased this winter to beef up my Christmas selections was the soundtrack to
Stephen Colbert’s Christmas Special. While
the soundtrack has some misses (the songs by Feist and Willie Nelson) most of
the songs area actually pretty enjoyable.
I think this track by Toby Keith was pretty underrated last year when we
were all obsessing over John Legend’s ode to nutmeg.
I
know I’m not in America because . . .
. . .when the school had a
talent show this week, many of the girls did choreographed dances that were
more risqué than Marissa Tomeii’s performance in The Wrestler (except that the girls remained clothed). The Glenbrook North Pom Squad had nothing on
these dances the girls did, and I was truly shocked. At one point, a group of girls was on stage,
and actually ripped off a layer of shirts while thrusting their hips and what
not.
It was awkward.
Hypothetical
Question of the Week:
Suppose
that you are a top 5 O-Line prospect for the NFL Draft. You can sign a contract
with a team and make $40 million dollars for the next five years.
However, if you play these five years you also know that you will not
live to see your 50th birthday (as a result of the head trauma). Assume
you know this ahead of time; it WILL happen if you play these five years.
Do you
still play football for those five years knowing that you and your family will
always be financially secure, but that you will die 20-30 YEARS before your
wife, and you will not see your children graduate from college?
Meal
of the Week:
After we met a shocking number of
westerners on Thanksgiving, one of them invited us over to dinner at his place
later on. After a couple weeks passed by
and we hadn’t heard anything, we didn’t think much of it. Then, he invited us on Friday, so we figured
we had to go.
We entered his apartment (which
was far warmer than our own) and immediately met a Michigan grad, a Michigan
State grad, and a Boston College grad.
Not surprisingly, the college football talk began in earnest. For the next four hours we talked with seven
others about the topics that Chinese people just will never be able to
understand. We talked college sports,
pro sports, politics, the economy, and even hit on some movies. Despite the fact that some of these people
have been in China so long they are incapable of properly telling stories (I
never knew when their stories were over), it was great conversation.
While the rare conversation with
Westerners was great, the meal was better.
I don’t know where he found it here, but our host had grilled steaks
with baked potatoes. I happily used my
knife and fork for the second time in the past month, and cherished the
meal.
Quotation of the Week:
In my Second Year Class (the girls
are 17 year old students):
Jane: “Oh, new haircut, very
handsome.”
Annie: “You look like . . . uh .
. . Beckham . . . David Beckham.”
Picture of the Week:
This is a view out the window of one of my classrooms:
0 comments:
Post a Comment