Update in China 12

1. Get iron from Ludavich.

2. Prepare Andrology slides.

3. Get rid of rabbits.

4. Clean apartment and room.

5. Pack things up.

6. Write.

This is my current to do list. It’s been hanging for over a week, like the dried clothes in the balcony where I keep the pet rabbits. The buggers have expertise in littering. So much crap comes out of them adorable looking fluffy things.

I got them as a form of therapy but, not unlike people, they’ve acutely contributed to the tension orchestra.

The new semester began on the 29^th and we had to shift to the city campus. I did not move because distraction finds me there.

Currently having to balance between finding the appropriate apartment and dealing with other people’s problems. It’s three of us; two other Bahraini brothers and myself. I also have to attend lab class and study.

And because it was Ramadhan, and especially since the last ten days or laylat-al-qadr mandate salat al layl, my circadian rhythm has shifted to a very unhealthy cycle of just 4 hours of sleep.

And recently, had to travel back and forth between the international office and the police station with my Bahraini brothers to help them cope with the hefty fine taxed on them for missing the visa extension deadline. My plans of making video tutorials, learning mandarin, posting summaries and finding a wife are paused until further notice.

All the world’s philosophies, religions, mantras, sage and principles lead to one encompassing lesson- to do what you actually say you will do. And I’m not even talking about the grand ambitions and aspirations one dreams about.

If you do not have a system or a regular to-do list of varied tasks to prioritize and help prepare you to deal with the distractions, then you are not working on your life’s goal. You are, let me paraphrase Kevin Spacey, aimlessly meandering with desires in life. And this wandering will present you with cues to lead you to the lesson that you need to form one, firm, fixed goal because that will be the only correct way to channel the desires into accomplishments.

The etiquettes of social behavior entraps us in conformation to normalcy that we need to recover from before beginning to cull out the energy to add another slab of concrete on the solid structure of achievement we intend to build.

There’s enough man made distraction out there to handcuff the human race with a false sense of purposed living and because I empathize strongly, I drown more deeply. I adapt to people’s idiosyncrasies long enough to open them up to ideas and insinuate them in their minds.

As Imam Ali was kind enough to mention, a doctor mostly hangs around patients. I tried adopting that mantra but my year-long experiment has perhaps affected me more than it has improved either one of us.

We are usually sensitized to activity in the presence of an unchanging environment. But to accomplish something, we need to desensitize first, realign our goals and converge them into one fixed point. And then consistently engage in those sequenced steps that lead us to it.

I was pushed to the limits on the day I was helping friends move to the new campus. The movers just laid out everything on the ground floor when we specifically described to them, in our broken Mandarin, to place them on the fifth floor, which is where my friends are living. So after heaving, climbing, lifting, and tons of expiration, we walked to the metro to go back to the Jianling campus. We confused the way and walked a halfhour distance to another station.

I wasn’t angry then, I was amused. When I got back to the campus, my friend got a call that his package had arrived from Bahrain which was going to stock us up for Ramamdhan. We went to one post office in the campus and they told us to go to the other. The other told us to go back, so we called Christian so he could he use his Chinese skills to figure out just where in the world was the food.

It was in the city. Amusement turned into contempt and hope. We weren’t going back but we were desperate and fasting and the cafeteria had closed. So we decided to go anyway. On the way, the bicycle’s chain stuck and in the 20 minutes it took us to fix it, it began raining—pouring actually. I’m just typing the facts and will not comment.

After, the bicycle got fixed, heavy thunder storms made us confident that it was not going to be O.K. to leave the campus. Just as we got back to the dorm, Bilal (a Pakistani friend) called to tell me he got off at the wrong bus station and I had to pick him up from the North gate of our campus (our campus is humungous, see update 2). I needed to pray. I hadn’t because of the move earlier and it was approaching sunset.

I dashed upstairs to do a quick salat. Trying to open the lock to my bedroom door when the phone rang and distracted me for nanoseconds. I clumsily dropped the keys. My temper went with it and elbow smashed the door. I was lucky that this was China and the door was two boards of thin wood distanced from each other to give the frame hollow thickness. So I cracked one part in. The pain paralleled the intense discomfort I hoarded for the time I was wasting and was a momentary relief.

For as long as I have observed, one has to compromise relationships to be consistent. Most relationships rot quickly into confinements of social etiquette, especially if you want to maintain the ambassador of the “good muslim brother”.

If I’m not learning from you or helping you, then our time together is futile because I could be reading, studying, writing, exercising, cleaning, picking off dried laundry or at least getting enough sleep. But people never run out of problems. Why? Because that’s an important component of the distractions. If there is no higher purpose, there’s circumambulating around the status quo and getting fulfillment around the mundane.

The end result is to learn to diplomatically avoid them next time- people and their circumstance.

But then sometimes, people are worth it.

 

Two weeks into the summer break, I was offered a part-time English teaching job at Yenchung, a different city in Jiangsu province, almost four hours away by road.

The owner of the teaching institute, Cheng pa, can barely put two words together to speak English but is semi-successful enough to have paid for my accommodation, food, travel expenditure and two days-worth of services with 1000 renminbi (BHD60) exclusively (the math here is jumbled if you include the inconveniences of travel).

And boy did circumstance give me fodder to brood over: got under a car in an accident the first day when this total klutz of a driver very steadily and confidently collided with my rented electric bike. His car threw me over and continued to drag me along the direction he was determined to head towards. I only suffered a gash on my arm but poor Maggie, who was on another electric bike infront, fell hard on her face and badly bruised it.

Due to shock, I could feel nothing, just complete astonishment to have crawled out from under the bumper unscathed and witnessing poor Maggie, Pa’s girlfriend, under the weight of her bike still face-buried in tar, registered nothing.

The truth is I went into shock in the tenth-of-a-second after it bumped into the back of the bike. I immediately made the mental note that I am in an accident and that the driver didn’t stop and that I am in China and had made an inaccurate decision about the driver’s forethought.

We both saw the car inching forward and Maggie even warned me about it but judging by it’s drag, we both intuitively decided it would let us through and I followed Maggie’s suit.

Maggie lay still and helpless. I went up to the driver and just gawked at his face like I was expecting him to praise my deftness for riding in front of a moving vehicle. I was a bit upset that he did not hit the brakes immediately after the bump. No emotion emerged. I was as calm as I would have been if I had told a bad joke.

His reaction might’ve been one of shock perhaps but I couldn’t tell. His small eyes concealed it. He was expecting anger so I just altered the gawk a bit to scorn. I feared appearing abnormal and went to help Maggie up and klutz-o-man took us to the hospital. When Maggie called Pa to inform him about our misfortune, she began yelling at him in Mandarin with what sounded like my name, as if fuming at him for caring more about my safety than hers.

The following day had more surprises. Christian (my Chinese brother) called Cheng and told him that some guy called to inform him that he had found my phone on the road (perhaps because it fell off my bag when I was attempting to balance myself on the electric bike).

It was raining heavily earlier and the road was a bit clayish. On our way, a guy crossed the road right in front of us (as if to mimic my previous day’s catastrophic decision). Pa put on the brakes but the clay loosened the friction of the grips and we collided into him. It kind of sealed the fact that I should never ride on an electric bike again. I was on my nerves already so I intuitively saw it coming and adjusted just enough to avoid injury. A little skirmish and the klutz-o-driver-2 went away leaving us unwanting to ride an electric bike again.

We called the super cool Chinese to tell him that we were set-back and he agreed to meet us half-way to give my phone back to us. We waited with fruits to greet him and celebrate his kindness. He had actually called every Chinese name in my phonebook to tell them that he had found my phone. He even offered to give us a ride back to the city but we couldn’t ask so much of him and rode back again. The clouds seemed majestic and the kindness of this one individual seemed to mystically perpetuate in a hostile universe in reassurance that God wasn’t upset at me anymore.

The kid’s were surprised to see a foreigner and in the garage (ahem, one of the places I taught in), the parents would stop and stare dumbfounded, curious to observe how a wei guo ren (foreigner) acts in real life. The kids can read and write well, they just couldn’t form correct syntax and I was attempting to warm them up to it.

“Long time no see” for instance is grammatically incorrect in English but is perfectly acceptable syntax in Mandarin, and has, thanks to perhaps the Chinese living in New York and San Fransisco, established itself as a legit form of colloquial greeting.

After the rest of the three long days went by without melancholy, I was glad I was leaving. Something happened though that shook me more than anything I had experienced earlier there or in a while and validated relationships for me. On our way to the trans-city bus station, the inter-city bus was playing a Bruce Nash-reality-tv-esque program showing surveillance footage of a man at a station leaving behind a bag of chopped corpse. The show was aiming to identify the murderer by broadcasting the footage publicly. I was thinking this was just another omen to leave the place. Two bike accidents, dilapidated garage and no one to barely speak English filled my cup of chai already.

Cheng pa and I got off at the transit to walk to the trans-city station. We were taking memory photographs. Suddenly, he began telling me his heart was heavy that I was leaving and that in our short time together, we’ve bonded pretty well. I took no serious note and dismissively smiled and said the same. He kept repeating it and said he was feeling sad about my departure and hoped that I come back (not too soon, I thought).

He bought my return ticket, we enter the terminal and on the bus. We bid farewell and he leaves. In the time it took the other passengers to settle and for the bus to get on it’s way, I was sort of sliding through my thoughts to see if there was anything of value that I could muster from the experience.

Just as the buses were about to leave, I turned around to find Cheng pa waiting. He smiled, happy that I caught his sight and frantically waved. In his eyes I could see genuine grief and momentary satisfaction to get the opportunity to connect with me again for those few seconds.

He waited, waving till the last moment when the buses were leaving. I felt terrible guilt that throughout our time together, I perhaps gave him the strong impression that I was happy I was leaving and that the experience I had was a horrible one. I didn’t vocalize my real emotions but people have a way of picking these signals up. And he deeply appreciated my stay although it cost me a lot of trouble and him quite a sum of qian (money).

I cried.

Said a prayer for him and the rest of the team on the bus and cried some more.

It felt good and for the next couple of days and nights, every time I remembered his small act of kindness, compounded by the fact that I showed him very little in return, I sobbed like a baby.

He waited. He didn’t leave. His heart was indeed heavy with the burden that I might have him to blame for the wretched circumstances. He was happy I wasn’t fussy and nice enough to quietly do as told. And all he could do to patch things up was apologize. So in his little way, he wanted to stand there and make sure nothing happened to the bus, to me and that I at least depart safely.

He was busy holding the responsibility of the three business units, Maggie’s father, who came all the way from another city to be with his daughter after the accident, and the guilt-trip I was inadvertently putting him through. But in his own little way, he wanted to impress upon me that he cared.

He couldn’t guarantee anything but he could control his actions. And they conveyed much more than he could ever explain in his pieced English.

Sometimes people are worth it.

 

 

Later that week, I got a call from Aunt Shakufa. She was in Shanghai. I had to visit and stay till the end of their week holiday there.  They’d planned a family vacation and Fatima suggested China for the shopping. Their trip included site seeing in HongKong and Beijing first and planned to shop in their last ten days in Shanghai.

The kids, upon my arrival, began complaining about one of the fundamental problems of communication.

I thought about how I got lost in the railway station because of the incoherent signs and how midway in the train, I read my ticket carefully and it read Shanghaihongqiao which momentarily convinced me I bought the wrong ticket until Christian confirmed, but decided to leave it out our conversation.

They showed me pictures and described the lead ups to stories behind each. They were ripped off by tricycle drivers into paying approx 100 dinars to be taken to see the Great wall in Beijing and were left to walk almost halfway. Hongkong’s Disney land was so far the highlight of their vacation and this made me feel like I should safeguard China’s rep by redeeming their experience. After all, i do brag about it sometimes J

Their trip was up to now incomplete, they wanted to shop. The tourist map took us to some very expensive shopping roads like Nanjing lu and Hunan lu, so I contacted a friend who studies in Shanghai but had gone back to Bahrain for the break and he led us to Baoshan lu and Tiantong lu (Lu is pinyin for “road”, if you haven’t already…), for electronic and apparel shopping. They were magnanamous and just the place to bargain.

Tiantong had about eight 4-to-5-storey malls. It took us an entire day to go through every shop in one mall!

The negotiation was exhausting. I would ask for the price on behalf of my aunt or cousin sisters. As soon as I heard an amount, without rationalizing, I would blurt, “huh? tai gui le! Pian yi dianr.” Too expensive, make it cheaper. And if the shopkeeper refused, i’d retort with, “wei shen ma?” but why?.

We quickly learned that they always had a lengthy explanation for “why” they couldn’t discount. So instead of negotiating, we would estimate the garment’s worth and if there wasn’t a cosmic difference between it’s actual and our estimate price, we’d usually settle.

The stall girls did not shave their armpits. They are some of the most beautiful and feminine women in the world with the most grotesquely hairy pits. I’ve begun noticing the same in Nanjing.

One salesguy commented on how beautiful my hairy arms were and proceeded to stroke them like an eager kid. That was not a homosexual gesture. Just recently, this motorbike taxi driver began stroking my shin hair when I was his fare and expressed his desire to be a hairy dude. There’s something about motorbikes and bad karma.

Christian explained that since most people are hairless, having hairy anything is a sign of good health and beauty. I’ve witnessed some extremely beautiful women with the lushest tropics growing at their axilla. I’ve learned to accept it on them without associating hygienic issues because the Chinese, especially the Han, do not have body odour.

And of course, how can I travel and not suffer a bit of adventure at the hands of fate and my naivety.

My Aunt, cousin sisters and I (it was us most of the time. The guys did not shop or have the energy to shop as much) were exploring Suchan lu when the girls stopped to get some fruit juice.

I was holding the shopping bags and was a few steps ahead of them when I noticed that they had stopped behind at the beverage bar. So I place the shopping bags down in front of a restaurant neighbouring the beverage bar, walked back and sifted through the dictionary to find the word “cocktail” to tell the attender. Just then, I get a call from my uncle asking about our location. I directed him and saw that my cousins managed to point at the displayed fruits and express cocktail.

This event took no more than 1 minute.

I went ahead to discover that the bags were gone. I immediately asked my family if they had picked it up and dashed into the restaurant to see if they might’ve accidently thought it was trash since one of the bags looked exactly like a black Teflon bag used in canisters.

Nope, the restaurant owner thought I needed taobao deetze (doggy bags). Everyone in there seeing me panic about a bunch of doggy bags thought I was crazy.

I ran out to ask the passerbys if they had seen the bags but in vain. My aunt suggested that since one of the bags looked like a trash bag that someone might’ve mistakenly refused it. She immediately spotted the garbage collector with the other pink bag that obviously did not look like trash.

I rushed to the pink bag and asked her for the other Teflon one. It was trashed already and it’s contents upside down in Shanghai’s refuse. After dumpster diving for brand new clothing and shoes that took hours to search, bargain and buy, I could kill somebody.

My aunt and cousins threatened to call the police and Fatima transformed into an angry warrior about to send the lady to the 9^th level of hell after we found the broken skull souvenir she had purchased for her kid brother Ali.

I tried putting back some trash for the sake of the neighbourhood but managed only a few. I could not stand the stench. We walked away.

When the guys found us, we just laughed about it. But I understood.

To adapt to the abnormal relationship my parents had between each other, I would mentally shut down around them in the house and try not to engage with either for too long. I cannot write about this but can only hint at it. My mental absence was a mild defense-mechanism because it helped me through some rough patches. However, it became a factor for my failure in 9^th grade and the lack of interest afterwards.

Today, I struggle to be fully engaged in the present. The bad teaching system here does not help either. I’m through attending class for the sake of attendance because the mental disconnect often occurs there.

On my way back to Nanjing, on the train, my Aunt calls to tell me she slipped some money in my bag-pack as a gift. I went back to check that she placed BHD 500 or more than 8000 yuan in my bag, enough to last an entire year here. Let alone the fact that my friend from Bahrain Ali and I were both accommodated by their huge hotel room and that they were constantly paying for the food, travel expenditure and even some clothes I decided to send back to Bahrain for my siblings. They also gave me four branded perfumes and tons of hotel toothbrushes, shampoo, bath foams and other accessories. I cannot even begin to plan to repay them anytime soon.

I thought about getting an ipad with that money but I’m planning to shift out campus so I might need the extra funds.

 

And the last of my escapades involved renting a suit and going to Jiangyin, an hour and half away from Nanjing by road, to pretend I’m a highly esteemed American andrologist for a medical forum organized by Changjiang Hospital in Jiangyin.

“Their aim is to publicize the hospital.” said Modar on the phone.

“I can not lie” I told him.

“You don’t have to. The GM knows you’re a student, but the press doesn’t. They can’t even speak English so don’t worry. And if they ask you something, just say ‘Tim bu dong’ (I can’t understand).”

Modar was going to be in Syria on the 2^nd so he vouched for me. I was getting 500 renminbi (BHD 30) for giving a 20 minute presentation which was prepared by a real doctor, a hotel stay and all three meals paid for. Why not!

So I put on the suit at 06:50am. Followed tradition and got a bit lost on my way to the Grand Metro hotel. Found them, gynecologist and a saleslady (my pick up), at 08:40 am. We arrived in Jiangyin and the hospital at around 10:30am.

The team there greeted me with so much respect and excitement they made me fear the situation. I immediately SMSed Vanessa, Modar’s girlfriend, asking if whether the team in the hospital knew the truth.

They did. But their revered benevolence did not convince me.

Except for the gynecologist, no one else could speak English. She asked where I was from and I replied, “Ba-Lin”. She then turned to the saleslady and the others and told them, “Ta shi fa guo ren”. (He’s French)

“Oh Paris” They exclaimed and went on to revere me even more. Not wanting to be a gyp, I quietly fulfilled their expectations. One of the doctors told me her daughter studied in Paris and then married a French doctor and settled there. She reminded me of Molly ma’am, our headmistress at Asian School, a figure we simultaneously dreaded and obeyed. The fragile bubble of lies expanded in size and thinned in tautness.

“What are you studying, Doctors or Masters.”

“Doctor” I immediately responded, a few nanoseconds before I realized what the question was.

‘They meant Masters or PhD, graduate or post graduate! This is not going to turn out well’ I thought. The bubble was edging vulnerability. I countered with the fact that I would spend just a few hours there and leave and no one was going to get hurt by these white lies.

After our meeting, at around 11:40 am, they drove me to the hotel where the conference was going to be held. They had booked a business suite at the International Hotel and all the doctors who were going to be on the panel and give presentations that night gathered there.

The business suite had fluorescent-lighted art for walls, linoleum and expensive wood for flooring, fixtures and fittings. Chandeliers of course, a Tv projector, nude art sculptures and an electronic revolving-table set for 14 serious people. Ahem.

Chinese restaurants usually serve green tea or hot water or any other cheap hot beverage as a preliminary to the meal. There, we were served cinnamon-flavored dried oat balls in hot water and I could tell the food was going to be sophisticated.

I tried to keep with what I observed of table etiquette in movies- don’t place your elbows on the table, don’t slouch in your seat, try not to talk with your mouth full and whatever you do, don’t fart.

But I ended up the chief fool there. As the plates punctually arrived, as if to mimic the Chinese’s strict time observance, the chopsticks would never align on time to leverage the food. I would be chasing after every passing plate- the beans slipped off, the pickles lost grip, the tomatoes were too round, the mushrooms were mixed with the meat. It got so bad that the moment I showed interest in any plate, the Chief doctor beside me held the revolver to give me enough time to balance. The plates were now punctually mocking me at every turn.

The point behind these revolving tables is to share the food and provide the opportunity to eat a bit of everything. It becomes a social activity and is epitomized when, by taking turns, everyone gets up and salutes the other on the table.

They even compete on how low to bring the rim of their glass in a display of humility. If two people are close friends, their rims meet each other at similar level. If the toast is between a senior and their junior, the junior has to attempt to bring it lower. If the two are strangers, they must compete. I was already embarrassing myself with the chopsticks and my entire presence there was based on a lie. And now, had to stand up every once in a while to compete with somebody for humility. How ironic.

The conference was jam-packed with press. Once we entered the reception, people swarmed all over us doctors to take pictures and asked our autograph on the forum’s poster.

I had modified the presentation emailed to me earlier but unfortunately, they could not add it to the slides that were already set to be viewed. I had to prepare to simply read from the ppt. I skittered through them, making things up as I went because there were many abbreviations that I had not memorized, but written down in the modified version.

After my 20 minute presentation and the loud murmuring of the inapprehensive crowd, one of the press officers during the Q&A explained that he enjoyed my speech the most and that he wanted to ask me a question in Chinese, to which the hospital representative responded that I cannot understand Chinese and that he could ask one of the other doctors on the panel.

It was sad to note that I was the publicity stunt amongst the Chinese doctors, who I could tell, were great professionals.

I immediately excused myself to go to the washroom when on the way, the stewards clung to me requesting pictures. I could see they were excited about the Meiguo daifu (American Doctor) than about who I was as a person.

I know I shouldn’t have even entertained this thought but the idea that my Persian ethnicity and Bahraini education and stimulation has always naturally made me a second rate citizen-of-the-world even in my own country crossed over and linked with these girls’ (and world’s) shallowness.

I thought I glimpsed into the superficial reality of these women, which I could’ve justified and designate the benefit of the doubt to. For instance, I could’ve blamed the forum’s grand fabrications about my identity for wooing these susceptible young girls.

But I couldn’t help but remind myself about the harsh reality that the factors that make me who I am to others are out of my control. I have to work extra hard to find a place than if I was your Sunni Arab or had connections. I began wondering how easy it would become to propose to women after I graduate and unconsciously thoughts of vowing not to mention being a doctor to potential brides began springing. Perhaps I’ll say I’m a nurse or even just a cashier.

What am I expecting? I know there is some serious work to be done in our society with regards to educating women and empowering them to a higher level of self-worth and consciousness. And this deceptive test will only prove that point.

It’s easier for people to form stereotypes that may more often than not confirm reality rather than gain ability to look for features that distinguish a good spouse and parent from a bad one.

I might as well marry someone half my league and educate and empower her to my own level than to deliriously look for my equal. Just today, I asked one Chinese girl to spontaneously combust into an Orwellian literary classic for refusing to go out with me and then telling me she needs to improve her English and she messaged back thanking my encouragement and asked if “Orwellian” was a popular person in my country.

 

After it was over, everyone gathered into the banquet hall.

Just as the plates began their punctual humility, Molly ma’am doctor frantically passed me her cell phone and said, “Shou, shou” (Speak, Speak).

It was her daughter from Paris.

She was fluently describing in French her mother’s exuberance about my nationality and urged her to talk to me.

We took French in school but apart from a little self-introduction and a few syllables, I am obviously not a French speaker, let alone a native Parisian.

I tried to explain the misconception in English and attempted to blame it on communication misunderstanding. She continued to speak in a French one could only imagine came out of postmodern film noir. I even imagined her with a French haircut and a beret.

I quickly handed the mom her phone back and out of my periphery vision, saw a look of disappointed that equaled how the press might’ve reacted had they found I wasn’t American. Forget about not being a doctor, that might’ve not mattered as much.

The plates now animated into a Beauty and the Beast cartoon-esque Second-Rate-Citizen-Of-the-World chagrin.

I immediately explained to the gynecologist the misunderstanding, although it wouldn’t make a difference because at some point earlier, molly ma’am doctor told me her daughter went to study art in Ba-li (notice, without the “n” it becomes Paris). And any Bahraini will tell you, if you come to Bahrain to study Art then you are truly a miserable excuse for life.

No, I knew. And Molly ma’am knew I knew. I lied to her. I disappointed her. During lunch, she even came over to toast my Parisian nationality. The hospital hired an imposter. She knew I had come to lie. But this was personal.

And with perfect synchronicity, the doctors on the table decided that that was the appropriate time for them to toast my performance. Their nods, and salutes and words of appreciation were a thousand stokes of iron from “irony” piercing my bubble of lies.

Molly ma’am doctor excused herself from the table and went to socialize with the press. She left her cell on the table and it’s presence was enough to abase me. My family then called to wish me Eid Mubarak. I wished they had called a minute earlier to rescue me from this tremendous disgrace.

From that moment, I was forced to acknowledge that even a seemingly inconsequential lie can be destructive.

Update From China 11

It’s so crowded sometimes you have to share tables with strangers at family restaurants. And when it’s a family joint in the city, it’s more often than not that we share. I wonder how they can afford to install high-tech surveillance cameras and not expand space. As my Chinese friend Christian exclaimed once about sharing his room with three other tong xues (class mates),”It’s okay, we’re in China. We’re more than a billion people. If I wanted privacy, I’d go to America”.

Christian is full of valuable information. His bubbly accent accentuates his gait as a tour guide, which he aspired to be but switched to law after he didn’t make the entrance grades. This is something I haven’t fully grasped- if they score an average grade they can get into science but not in commerce, which requires really high grades (?)

On our trip to Zhushanlu’s flee market, he described the devastating poverty that the North-west, and generally the west, of Zhong Guo (China- literally means central country) suffer from through a popular anecdote: the people in some of those areas only wash their faces during occasions such as birth, first day they attend school, weddings and in death.

Essentially, Xinjiang (pronounced Shinkiang or Shinjian), an enormous autonomous region and almost 1/5 of China, contains the oil fields that helped develop the Eastern provinces like Shanghai, Jiangsu, etc. During Chairman Mao Zedong’s ten-year “cultural” revolution (1966 – 1976), China underwent a colossal economic upheaval resulting in severe rural poverty. But after the chairman’s death in 1976 and the collapse of petroleum exploitation in 1978, they had to abruptly move away from petroleum output trends and shift to semi-capitalism. Deng, his successor, did not support capitalism ideologically but believed China could improve its economy and reduce poverty by participating in the market system. During his reforms, Deng attempted to modernize China and introduce it to Western markets, while aiming to maintain political stability of the Communist Party, interpreted as “socialism with Chinese characteristics”: individuals don’t get richer, the people get richer.

The Eastern parts were heavily favored due to their access to the sea (plus it’s the birthplace of the Han people, who compromise 94% of the population, and civilization), they needed to be modernized quickly by the oil from the Northwest, mainly Xinjiang. Deng’s reforms proved very attractive to foreign investors and China’s cheap labor attracted a flood of investments. Of course, resentment among the Uyghurs (the ethnic people there comprised of Turkish, Mongolian and Tungunic descendants) is widespread and they’ve protested for more rights, which is why today they’re an autonomous region. Even as recent as 2009, Urumqi (Xinjiang’s capital) riots broke out in which over a hundred people got killed and over a thousand injured. Some blame criticism of China’s policies from the Turkish government which led to the severance of diplomatic ties between the two. But the discontent, shared by the Tibetans (remember the 2008 riots in Tibet) and the Hui’s (descendants of Arabs and Farsis from an asylum seeking King and who now mostly live in Ningxia, Guansu, Qinghai and some parts of Sichuan provinces) is perhaps sparked from the same root: utilization of their resources combined with the aloofness of the communist party towards them. Collectively they occupy half of China so the government can’t afford to lose so much territory. China has roughly the same land mass as the United States and is burdened with a fifth of the world’s population and insufficient resources.

There is this banned documentary about the lady-leader of the Uyghur people, Rabeeya who is living in exile in Virginia, called 10 condition of love which I haven’t seen but heard of. I can only eat meat at Ugyur or Hui people’s restaurants because they’re Muslim. The only Islamic Shitang (cafeteria) amongst the 70 or so at the University, even serves grilled kababs and fish, is a Uyghur run place. (The halal meat concept, in case you didn’t know because you take it for granted, is that we make sure the animal suffers minimum pain during the killing process. First, it is not allowed to see other animals getting killed in front of it so as to abate it’s anxiety and fear. We drink it water and cut it’s carotid artery to allow it to bleed to death. The animal initially loses consciousness and then dies; the only pain is that of the incision. And in order for it to qualify as edible meat, it needs to have lived a normal, healthy life in it’s natural habitat and not in a factory. Think of all these elements before you decide to discard the extra meat that was sacrificed for your protein requirements).

Another interesting thing that I’ve come to observe is the women here are some of the most beautiful. The lady public bus-driver (public bus in Mandarin is Gonggongchiche), the chaoshi (supermarket) counter-lady, the janitor, the cook, not all but a healthy sum of them are the most gorgeous women.

Since Nanjing was the capital and is still the Capital of Jiangsu province and part of the modernized areas, the people from other more rural parts have to immigrate to these urban places to make a living. In some cities the immigrants are so many that they’ve altered the demographics. For instance in Beijing, Beijing-hua (the local dialect in Beijing which is the root of simplified Chinese. Hua meaning dialect like Bastaki farsi and Tehrani Farsi) is becoming extinct and replaced by it’s simplified version due to the high immigrant population’s usage of the simplified form. Btw, think of the various districts, each with it’s own different hua. Thank God for the standard simplified form.

In some developed cities such as Shanghai, speaking any other Hua than Shanghai-Hua is viewed negatively (except if you’re a foreigner) because the local ethos is strong and Shanghai has a very important sea-port which has made it the nation’s economic capital. However, because the Ming and Qing dynasties had either chosen Beijing or Nanjing as previous capitals, Shanghai remains behind the curtain and is directly governed by the Communist Party of China (CPC) in Beijing (ironically, the CPC were first established in Shanghai) unlike the other provinces whose government is appointed by the CPC and they resent it.  If citizens have issues with their province’s government, they threaten to go to Beijing and in some rural areas, they still regard the President as an Emperor and it is common for travelling conmen to solicit sex or money under some scheme made credible by them claiming to be from the capital.

Anyway, back to the gorgeous women. I’m worried about spending Ramadhan here. Even worse was when we got to the market, they were mostly wearing really high skirts or shorts flaunting their silky legs. And many have very beautiful faces- not the Dr. Yang in Gray’s anatomy type (btw, Grey’s anatomy, with an “e”, is the most popular regional anatomy textbook in medicine written by Henry Grey which I think inspired the title to the TV drama).

Anyway, so their legs and their faces and their feminine demeanor. Christian told me that after the CPC took over from the Kuomintang (the socialist party founded by Dr. Sun Yetsen), women were empowered and today, most families are matriarchs. I think it explains their confident posture and aura. And my Syrian pengyou (friend) and tongxue Modhar, who also owns a modeling agency and works as a part-time English teacher (don’t ask me how he manages time and he’s really intelligent), explained that in the summers (Ramadhan), it’s safer for my bachelor-self if I stay inside. Kind of reminds me how I felt about breaking my wudhu’ (ablution) during winter season because the water was pierceyourskin-painfully cold. I would struggle with that tiny bit of flatulence dying to break wind.

One stall girl was so gorgeous I had to hand it to her, “Ni hen piaoliang” (you’re very beautiful). She embarrassedly responded with an overwhelmed “Xie Xie”. No seriously, I would’ve married that stall girl on the spot. In fact, even that beautiful bus driver or the dishwasher (she’s just 18 though).

Another fascinating thing is the fruit stalls have fresh cut fruits on wooden sticks that are sweeter than candy and only for 100 fils. There is fresh avocados, melons, sugar canes (which they make fresh juice out of) and my current favorite, coconuts. I wasn’t fully aware that coconuts are filled with juice. The ones I’ve seen in Bahrain are empty and they’re delicious.

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I’m really excited about the events in Bahrain, hope dictators are humbled by peoplepower. The situation has taken a life of it’s own and I can’t keep track because of my course. We managed to take advantage of the Spring Holidays and be productive and I’m really happy that I was part of that stream of work.

Heard some protests leaked to Beijing from the Middle-East but seen nothing in Nanjing. If it happens, it’ll happen regardless of our efforts. Also, an earthquake hit somewhere close to Myanmar and a tsunami hit Tokyo and the nuclear reactors exploded- Sun’s about to rise from the West! The only thing I chose to focus on is getting things done. Sometimes though, my libido keeps hammering at me and interrupts my thoughts. You understand, it’s difficult and I’m beginning to understand how a lop-sided society with too much graphic and not real avenue usurps this innate human condition (if not handled correctly).

But I’ll try to keep up with (or against) your impulse to defer from reading this since I’ve become apt in juxtaposing my autobiography along with some self-help and pop-psychology tips to try to dissuade that urge. The concoction I hope has been helpful.

When people have the time to pursue the leisure of browsing Facebook, they’ve managed to find just enough from the continuum to check updates and stuff. Not important stuff, just stuff, trivializing with the less-urgent in a therapeutic, cathartic effort to do something less intense.

I also intended to write about stress and how it decreases mental productivity due it’s evolutionary purposes but then contested against it, if it isn’t working for you, you’ll figure it out. I advise that you read up on mindful-meditation. I shared the link on my wall.

The teacher’s are extremely unintelligible. They do not, understandably, speak English even though manyatimes I am touched by the profound knowledge that they possess when they manage to transmit their intentions clearly.  I sit in class and my mind teleports into other dimensions.

I’m half convinced this philosophical mind of mine has partly been honed by the patience I endure towards others indelible flaws and their outright denial of it’s existance. I’ve probably made such an impact because of my ignorance in the past and this idea impels me to ask how I would deal with myself had I met me in the past. How would I convince me to become an intelligent being and have integrity? Honest not in my values but in my pursuit of those values, weighing them against each other in thorough evaluation. No one is born complete, there is nothing truly complete. We’re just transient and in it, we must find the leading quadrant that sprouts growth.

Why did I choose medicine? No one cared to really ask. The assumption is that I like medicine and that I can make alot of money.

It partly has to do with my situation right now. I’m hoping the class doesn’t get over because the recluse I get here is unmatched and I can type away at this update (I wrote the following part of it in class).

Life doesn’t present opportunities in the form of opportunities. It just randomly screws around and the onus is simply on the individual who wants to achieve. I rarely had encounters with educated people and reading the autobiographies of historic greats would be tantalizing but it never delineates how they actually became a tour de force except for maybe, by deduction, that they were motivated. No one could help me because it was out of their paradigm; being too wound up with the stratified details of their own lives and also limited by it. I tried explaining this limitation by connecting it with the deliberate faults in our society in the previous update.  I value Najeeb as the most precious gift in my intellectual journey, challenging my beliefs and exposing my consciousness to the truth that in a way, this is an existentialist existance and I shouldn’t rely on anyone for my own evolution. I miss conversing with this important person because the feedback was thoughtful.

I was motivated but my map wasn’t right and I wasn’t educated enough to distinguish this, partly why I took so long. But why medicine and how does ignoring class to write updates explain it?

I came to the conclusion that there aren’t any serious organisations dedicated to really educating one in the true sense of the word (think Stanford, Harvard) in Bahrain or one that I could afford at least. I had a deep curiosity to satisfy which meant having a strong penchant for organising and fully utilizing my time as an autodidact.

I’m in anatomy class oblivious to the Professor because he can’t speak intelligible English and I am still not very proficient in Chinese, so rather than bob my head aimlessly, I usually attend for attendance sake (contributes to my overall grade) and either read a Jonah Lehrer article, create my own notes or blog. On the hour journey to Di Jia Qiao, our medical campus which we’ll be moving to in June, I either read a book (right now it’s the Psychology of Interpersonal Behavior) or memorize Chinese characters.

Still, this doesn’t explain why I chose medicine.

Because the world is filled with information and people are impeded by the mundane activities of daily existence, and I’m going to emphasize on human interaction as the most impeding if abound by idiots, I wanted to engross in an environment where people share my view on time utilization, motivation to increase the input of information and maybe help me gain more insight into the factors that would facilitate my pursuit as a self-educated pedant.

And of course, there is so much history and culture here that even the Prophet (PBUH) stated for a Muslim to, “…seek knowledge even if in China”.

And here I am, struggling amongst these beautiful people.

Update From China 10

People suffering from myopia (short-sightedness) are constantly staring at groups of nerves juggling about as greyed silhouettes. After a while though, once the awareness is distracted by other immediate things, we tend to overlook and even completely ignore this fact.

The light falls short in front of the retina and therefore, not only distorting vision, but displaying some structural components of the optic nerves due to the angled refraction.

What’s interesting in this is how we learn to quickly filter it out of our visual-processes as we experience the world. This can be convenient and this can be dangerous.

It’s a reminder that we’re incapable of enduring focused and continuous rational thought / thought-processes, loosing ourselves to the auto-pilot of the subconscious at every whim.  And most importantly, where it may lack the ability to induce the opioids; that we’re all drug-addicts!

Three substances basically govern our lives; Endorphin, Dopamine and Oxytocin. They’re in the order of least to most potent. They give us the high we feel when we live life and are induced when people take drugs. They’re what inspires poetry, music, novels, stories, compassion, keeps us bonded as family units and most importantly, view our inevitable death with hope and courage. They’re the reason we do anything but commit suicide.

Endorphin’s a light-weight and gets released during a zip of the morning coffee, toast, newspaper reading and any other activity that slightly gives you that feel-good feeling. Just enough rush to make us hopeful that a larger rush is still available and that we should be in pursuit of it. Not that we know this consciously; that conscious wave we get of content, hope, desire and resulting anticipation when we read, enjoy sunrise or workout, is stirred by this substance for future similar sensations by the subconscious. We translate them into meaningful sentiments like using the carrot-stick technique to be under that illusion that we need to pursue something “diverse”, “fresh”, “exciting”, granted they’re conscious labels aimed by our unconscious desire for the opioids.

Clinically depressed people’s brains do not secrete this and they see no light, feel no anxiety, just ennui and indifference to continue entertaining the false notion that maybe someday something interesting and worth living for will occur to them. They have to, as a consequence,  be on constant suicide-watch. They do not have any validation because they lack the reward system that makes them “feel” right when they eat, sleep, brush, shower, read etc.

We’re regulated by the Endorphin most of the time. Second potent drug, and more potent than Endorphin, the brain deludes us with is Dopamine.

Listen to music, wait for that part you “enjoy” the most- a rush of dopamine. Watch a movie, wait for the climax- rush of, you guessed it, Dopamine. It feels great, our pupils dilate, our pulse and blood pressure rise and the cerebellum becomes strangely active. So much pleasure in hearing the overtures or witnessing the protagonist getting his last laugh, or even when we do the things we enjoy.

On a separate note, I understand how primal and limited it appears to smokestack and credit the entire science and achievement of our species on such banal substances.

Nevertheless, we could generally be happier individuals if we indulge in what we enjoy but that’s a simplistic statement. What would you enjoy? Many things, I thought it would be music for me but it always left me with an empty high. I was blank. Similarly, a good film, meal, superficial activity would also lie that way.

The ultimate question was always one of self-purpose and meaning. My fodder was the rage I felt at the blatant betrayal and abandonment of my society, then gradually realizing how intently the design operated a defunct system which served a very specific political purpose, that in order to sustain itself we need to be quacking ducks.

During my Citibank years as an MIS Executive, it was (still is) very conventional for everyone to work late and complexly monotonous jobs because we’d follow a strict working code. We did not have any creative space and were not encouraged to explore them either. That’s how American multinational corporations generally operate in third world countries where they’ve instilled a dictatorial regime and it’s citizens are subject to the tyranny of their (local) agents. I heard Canadian and other Western European countries that hosted American multinationals are allowed to operate under the condition they grant creative license.

Even my title, Management Information System Executive, was a euphemism! Infact, (and this is a phrase that curved my lips, resisting a LOL, every time I heard it in an Indian accent), every Tom, Dick and Harry is an executive in a corporation today. Wear a suit, borrow a car and slave. They’re demeaning, soul-sucking and mostly infested with South-East Asian politics whose cram education and poverty back home molds them into ideal candidacy for any lap-dog employment.

There’s this truism that Bahrainis are too cocky to work any job- a generic bourgeois reaction to justify the patronization and to rationalize not sharing wealth or unfairly distributing it and expecting people to suffer their ridiculous and exclusive work regiment -long hours and peanuts.

The agent, productive and poor on the other, built a BHD16.5 million formula 1 circuit. Now, granted we direly need an educational revamp, corporate regulations and more avenues for creative growth, they did what agents usually do- engineer a personal revenue generating scheme and further enslave and alienate their tamed population. The ones who refuse to subject themselves to these sorts of humiliations contribute to the unemployed statistics. And the West, whoa, they’re ecstatic- more drones!

My Ugandan and Bangladeshi apartment-mates discussed the kinds of evident circumductive cause-and-effect of a defunct leadership that are too obvious to ignore in their countries: the person at the top promotes personal ideas, companies and people and eventually everyone around them emanate the nepotistic values that they insinuate. The people in power form a corrupt force-field that reciprocates corruption until it spreads like a virus inside every house, every mind.

My contempt, when I was a yuppie, sprung from the idea that I was no more than a modern slave; did as told and self-medicated in activities that further empowered the entities and establishments that I’d grown to abhor. In this shallow orbit, it’s not how I’m innovatively applying what I know but where I spend, how I dress and what I drive that defines my social status. And these little things unfortunately secreted substantial quantities of Endorphin to patch the emotional and intellectual apertures that cleaved me into bits and pieces eventually till I flaked.

If alcohol wasn’t such a taboo, I would’ve permitted myself the conscience-license to drink it all away, beating at it and deserting. Bars and nightclubs materialize from this reactionary venting and those avenues are conveniently readily available to the frustrated Bahraini public.

What I did do was imagine; daydream my Dopamine. Sometimes, vainly, I was the soccer player that scored that final shot in the Bahrain VS where ever world-cup, and sometimes, blissfully, I was where I want to be, successful, productive and decision-making. I envied myself then and after every Dopamine ride follows the natural depressive bout. This is then cured by internet. And we all know how the internet replenishes Dopamine, right?

Point is, intellectually and creatively ostracized means spending a lot of time in one’s own head, thinking, vindicating and struggling without any acknowledgment can have serious mental impacts, which one would need to further defend.

And that is, I believe, the typical sequence to a yuppie’s life in Bahrain. Otherwise, the incompetent education system combined with the very efficient façade of a modern society, the artificial lights and shopping centers, have succeeded in disarming us.

Our void preoccupied me every night. Saturated by those avenues, I began seeking alternative channels of self-medication- introspection. Immediately realizing I had edged the peripheries of my core believes and value system, I was convinced my moving forwards in that direction would only produce destructive outcomes.

My absolution would come if I reverse my steps, trace the fault line to the source, eradicate it and then start over. So I unlearned and questioned everything leaving my career in abeyance and further adding to the statistics of the unemployed (and the uneducated)a que that has been on an ever-increasing trend until, hopefully, it tips over like Tunisia.

As we build on our past, we’re so predictable, at the core of it, we do what animals do; mate and move forward. The U-turn enlightened me to consider my own consciousness to be the most important thing in existence because it’s the only existence. This means that what we perceive from this unlimited universe is limited by our mental paradigms and so our objective in life is to maximize our awareness in order to maximize the quality of our experiences which is constrained by information mainly.

We assume we’re imposing measurement and speculation on an objective reality when it’s the mental constraints and filters of the unconscious world that creates our conscious world, something beyond our conscious-selves that determines the space in which we can make choices and also determines the structure of our self that creates those choices and therefore, sets up the conditions of our existence, albeit in a Dunning–Kruger effect.

In other words, the space in which we can make choices is determined by what we know, and we are what we know (and not who we know btw, but it’s the other way around in the land of Wasta) and we stubbornly try to push ourselves inside an abstract system, which in actuality is devised by the media and labeled “forward-thinking”, to describe ourselves. I chose to dissociate from this deterministic system because it constrained my potential and only distorted my intents in action.

The burden of life in Bahrain is our incapability to change anything or contribute in a meaningful way because (apart from it’s autocratic culture) the spectrum of our state of being is still a long way behind the spectrum of living our full potential. It became completely obvious that there was a growing relationship between my lower-self on that spectrum and the lifestyle that evolves from being commercially educated and then stifled in a corporation surrounded with ads that encouraged more consumption and hedonism. This is where all of our dark and sinful desires debases us from within as the brain involuntarily pursues fulfillment via rebellious activities.

Our left hemisphere’s interpreter allows us to construct theories about the relationship between perceived events, actions and feelings so we can, indeed, rationalize anything. It enabled me to think of my own motivations in a very simplified, reductive way, that as humans, by default, it is deeply rooted in our lives to operate by the pleasure principle so our basic motivations, even biologically, can be fundamentally flawed if not questioned.

Death is inherent and some think that there is no perfect path, just one that moves us forward, thus justifying their acquisitive practices; that in our short lives, we must narcissistically attain self-worth and earn a sense of primary value through our experience (of consumption), a psyche checked against misunderstood logic fragments and given emotional connotation through the spider webs of the mainstream endorsing their psychological egoism.

Furthermore, after realizing the primitive life-form that I had devolved into, I began observing some very interesting insights with credit to the countless scientific literature on cognition.

The key is to develop privileged access to the causes of our own thoughts and therefore behavior and common-sense psychology will not do. For instance, and this is just an example, one of the most tell-tale signs of a successful salesman is height, apparently, when people have to dorsally extend their necks, it activates certain traits of docility towards the individual that opens them up to ideas. A simple neck motion can cause you to change the way you perceive someone, similarly, even a forced smile activates Endorphin release!

There are multiple benefits that come from recognizing where on that spectrum one is by accepting the idea that our brains are almost always on the defensive and when we subjectively experience something we may have difficulty rationalizing, the autopilot does what it does best; hijack, erase, modify and misinterpret to give our experiences subjective value, unless, we’re educated enough to have a broader, more meaningful, yet still very subjective analysis.

Ok, before I completely trail off into an indistinct and cryptic explanation, consider this anology: What is the most appealing aspect of a movie? The red-herring. Why? It is a form whose entertainment value depends upon its distraction of where we think it’s going and then the surprise elements that make sense of it all. Now, all the whilst, our brains would constantly be conjuring story arcs to give meaning to the direction we perceive it going into and when we finally get to the climax, and we call it a climax because our brain rewards us with the Dopamine when, we see it all from a holistic POV and understand.

Numerous studies, have demonstrated that Dopamine neurons quickly adapt to predictable rewards. If we know what’s going to happen next, then we don’t get excited. This is why story tellers and composers introduce a concept or a note in the beginning and then thoughtfully avoid it until the end. The longer we are denied the pattern we expect, the greater the emotional release when the pattern returns, safe and sound. That is when we get doped.

However, what’s to say that during the suspenseful tension of living, we are clouded with unfulfilled expectations, and we’re constantly conjuring false notions to understand unfolding events, pooled from patterns of our experience because of our incapacity to live an ambiguous life.

Understandably, states of doubt and confusion are perplexing and when confronted with scenarios that we deem incomprehensive, the mind attempts to resolve them into certainty.

This uncertainty and nervous anticipation, as we struggle to figure out what will happen next is constantly framed with concepts, mainly because once we achieve some clarity and order, our neurons reward us with Dope!

We can decipher some aspects of our lives but not all and that is what keeps us listening, waiting expectantly for our reward, for the abstruse pattern to make sense and be complete. Now, let me paste what I mentioned earlier: We erase, modify and misinterpret events to give our experiences subjective value, unless, we’re educated enough to have a broader, more meaningful, yet still very subjective analysis.

An excerpt from Science Proves You’re Stupid, by Joe Quirk, “Clever experiments with memory recall show how we cast narratives back to justify what happened.  We think our lives have meaning to the extent we are able to look back and pick and chose the events that draw a coherent narrative, then we unconsciously alter all those events to confirm what we want to believe about ourselves.”

We’re constantly reconciling, and if we’re not educated, we’re doing it with faulty logic systems and our misinterpretation can be extremely misleading and disorienting in the long haul. We can’t just stop and rewire or unlearn and relearn everything, deviating from the automatic and establishing new belief and thinking systems.

But, as the article continues, it sheds some light onto how the process can be manipulated, “It looks like the brain has an automatic timer, a wound spring pushing an emotional impulse to choose.  We didn’t evolve to know the world, but to make the most statistically efficient decision given limited data and time.  Without impulse to close the deal, no decision is possible with pure reason. With enough thought, every possibility can be made to appear equally valid.  Reason is a tool to serve impulse, not the thing that provokes decision. You can reason your way to any conclusion you want. Wanting is the key.”

What Joe doesn’t explain here is that the part of the brain, Corpus Striatum, that’s involved in Dope release, is also implicated in the control of movement, cognition and habit learning. This gives us some leverage into reprograming our subconscious impulses and action. For instance, working out may initially be viewed as a negative experience due to the pain, since the Endorphins released are outweighed by the lactic acid that causes the agony. In time though, our pain receptors learn to reduce the shock as the body acclimatizes to the work-outs and therefore, the Endorphin rush is fully sensed and appreciated.

The conscious effort eventually progresses into a subconscious habit as it triggers the same nueral pathways involved and are associated with the satisfaction one feels from that particular action. Like the rocket that consumes most of the fuel just to escape Earth’s orbit, once outside though, it automatically propels due to inertia. So although habits like reading, learning, exercising may initially strike someone as effortful and hectic, in time, we can condition ourselves to replenish the opioids with these activities just as we did when we started smoking, drinking, escaping reality via music and movies etc.

The less automatic we become with following instinct and assumptions of value, the harder it is to be manipulated. And true happiness comes from moving up that state-spectrum, transcending preconditions and resisting impulse.

What first started for me as a priority to discard what I had become conditioned to desire, considering why they felt guilty and worked very hard emotionally and spiritually to “right” it, I gained, in the process, valuable insights into the religion of God which I majorly credit for my pragmatic improvements.

Although the principles in Islam are reductive, they’re universal and timeless. I won’t go astray if I align myself towards them. Prayer to empower my proactive impulse, fast to delay gratification and cleanse my body and expand my capacity to look beyond material and replenish my reward system by alternative rationale. Btw, the most potent drug is Oxytocin and they’re release when, but not exclusively, we fall in love.

Alas, an update in China with nothing about China. This is getting ridiculous. Luckily, my apartment-mate requested that I proof-read his project. Found this piece very informative:

“Snake-oil, called Sheyou in traditional Chinese medicine, is prepared out of the fat of the poisonous water snake, and used as a remedy for inflammation and pain in the joints. That’s because fats and oils from the poisonous water snakes have a high content of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). Chinese laborers, involved in building the Transcontinental Rail-road in North America gave snake-oil, which had then been patented, to people with joint pain.

In an effort to make a quick buck from the imported and effective Chinese sheyou in America, the fat from the rattle snake was used by conmen but this had very low EPA content and was not effective. All sorts of people tried to copy the Chinese elixirs but what resulted were unsatisfied customers still left with awful pains and shallower pockets. It was this which gave rise to Mark Twain’s descriptions of the snake-oil salesman and his shrills.”

In case you’re wondering how I got time to write, I’m on winter break now.

Update From China 9

To get time to write, I have to compromise food or sleep. This is medicine. But there are, I feel, ideas worth documenting that it’s worth the few pounds of weight or brain cells that I’m losing. Then when I sit down to write, I can’t think of an appropriate way to begin.

Thus I am beginning with the problem; addressing the problem is always the best initiation to solving procrastination. A white word document feels like my plug-in to this universe, I now have a remote and I will now switch to a channel that broadcasts what I’ve been experiencing in a more meaningful form.

My days are now one long span of anatomy interspersed with six hours of sleep, three 20 minute food breaks, one accumulated hour for hygiene and 5-5minute Salah times. I have one coming up in three minutes.

During the second req’at, I forgot to read the Fatihah, a symptom of a clogged mind. Safiyah, a dear friend who I study anatomy with and who has promised to teach me the Tajweed, reminded me of this after prayer and we’ve had to do the Salat Al-Qabiliyah.

In certain Muslim African countries, typical nine year olds have memorized the Qur’an and have progressed onto Tajweed. Safiyah’s hazy about some rules and sarcastically vouched to return my Tajweed book. Given that almost every Islamic related issue that I have assimilated has come knocking first and been severely scrutinized before being fused-in, and now that the occasion has arisen for me to be the Imam of our little study group, a Pakistani friend and a Bahraini also attend it, I think it’s about time I learn to recite the Quran correctly.

I’ve discovered that studying with a serious group is far more entertaining and productive than I’ve ever felt sketching diagrams, doodling articles of info or creating a visual map.

I’ve also discovered that my brain (our brain) responds in three general ways to incoming information; it first scans to find anything similar or relevant to conform it’s views; otherwise; it creates some extension to the fundamental premise it already has; and finally, if none of the above, then it outright rejects it.

I always wondered why it was so difficult to learn something quickly even though it made perfect sense. When I overcome and champion it, I am refreshed-  like a crack-addict, I’m constantly on that expedition.

So I reason here maybe because absolutely new information, like the Latin or Greek syllables that are used as scientific terms, requires neural memory cells which are metabolically expensive to build and maintain, like muscle-cells. And another reason might be that information is not pocketed like files in PC folders, rather, in a human brain, they’re integrated within a large framework of inter-related webs. Information is intertwined to help format a consistent viewpoint; a reliable reality.

When the second scenario of scanning for familiar memory cells when cross-referencing incoming information is run, the brain need not build a new neural cell or synapse, it simply needs to build the neural pathways or axioms that make the connection. This requires less effort and therefore is the second prioritized task.

Finally, if it’s perfectly new information, there’s a problem- no memory and nothing to cross-reference with, so the initial impulse is denial because to integrate this new piece of information will require remodeling of the entire existent neural complex.

Our RAM’s are called Hippocampus; a temporary and extremely malleable storage of all that filters through our senses. Here, anything and everything gets skimmed and makes a fleeting impression of what we experience during the day. For the sensory information that is emotionally charged or often repeated, they leave a deep imprint and are then mirrored within the neo-cortex and that’s when the information is stored in the hard-drive.

There are many conjectures for methods to help facilitate learning, some of which I have adopted are; familiarizing myself to the background of that which I am studying by briskly scouting the educational terrain and identifying the basic familiar terms and concepts which are the building blocks or the focal points. This will make exposure to the new terms around them easier to learn because it won’t drastically alter the consumed understanding of the premise and subsequently threaten my reality map.

After memorizing them, since what follows are extensions of this focal point, I create visual representations, or for concepts that are yet to be seen I use my imagination, which would then be pasted all around my room.

Thus, the brain’s task is reduced to simply synthesizing neural highways around those basic points which is reinforced by the diagrams as I view them on a daily basis. Simultaneously, I re-summarise the topic to wane-out the ideas and terms that have cemented themselves in my memory which funnels into a few revision post-its before the exam day.

This exercise keeps me engaged- as I break the task into writable or drawable points; and motivated to be consistent- the build-up of the visual representation indicates the advancement I am making and is a tremendous lifter during low times.

This is my approach now with medicine. Add to that the study group and I feel blessed. Weeks pass by and I don’t feel a thing as compared to my-pre-science/business-self, drowned by the lulled macro-waves of a defeated collective consciousness. And I was almost comfortable in my sunk-self (organism adapting to it’s environment) if not for the daring provocations of some intimate people.

Getting educated in Bahrain’s schools is like watching a movie; the experience the movie provides is a high because our brains cannot easily distinguish it from reality and so can barely veto the stimuli coming in from the visual cortex. You temporarily believe you are the character’s involved and become inflicted with the story as it unfolds.

Then you go back home and the only real residue is the gastric activity from the pop-corn. In our schools, the remains come from the chalk dust and so we have generations recollecting sound-bites and witty formulas; dialogues and holy moments. The red herring provided by the media but of course, hollow.

I saw the corpse of dead, decomposing humans for the first time last week and even though I have realistic sketches of every part of the unnerving human skeleton pasted all around my room, the cadavers will never make me the same. Right behind me in anatomy lab was the decapitated head of an infant and in another corner was a rotting head of an old man, the grooves and fissures of his carved cheeks exposing the sinews and bones and his empty cranium- very familiar. *hint*

I could not have lunch later that day of course but I do not have a shadow of a doubt about why I got into this field. We’re so more accustomed to hurting each other. After learning about Dr. Sun Yetsun’s (one of the founding fathers of modern China) disorientation with medicine because his realization was that it would only fix their bodies and not their souls and he pursued politics to achieve his ultimate goal of inculcating social justice, I’ve evolved a slightly different theory; I’ll do medicine to gain social status and blink on the social radar. This will make it somewhat inconvenient for our dictator to rid of me. That’ll help me gain time and momentum for my attempts at a corrupt social system.

I think the most profound lesson I am constantly learning here is that we’re almost all the same; a cerebrum, cerebellum and a medulla-oblongata in multi-coloured and sized skin and bones. We pretend to be unique individuals based on a few variances in our genetic code.  I am given cream-coloured skin, brown hair a male body and libido and a semi-dysfunctional optic nerve in the form of nystagmus and astigmatism. I’ve also inherited a few mental temperaments as a result of the genetic memory code and this means I tend to deviate towards peculiar influences.

Our distinctive selves are just a glitch, a ganglion, a group of neural cells that we’ve randomly inherited and then everything else is default. I am me, but I could’ve been you; a cerebrum in your body with your external influences believing to be at the center of this universe. Space is obsolete and minus the gatekeeping work to the external stimuli, we’re almost one and the same.

I am unplugging now but thanks for letting me in.

 

Update From China 8

I don’t have much to update about, part from a few mental notes I made.

You can’t find cologne or deodorants that easily around. I watched a documentary discussing, vaguely remember any of it now, how the underarm sticks made a loss in the Eastern countries, especially Japan because their sweat glands lack the pheromones that create the stench of sweat (or something like that). It’s correlated to those whose ear wax are powdery, not waxy and have small breasts.

Also, China, I heard, is going to declare itself the next superpower in 2012- it already owns American debt. I think of the spine that Mandarin is but I rationalize that soon I’ll be typing these updates in Mandarin, using QQ rather than Facebook and extoling the virtues of socialism without any hesitation.

It’s true, I had this conversation in a sort of revelatory fashion with my peers at English 101. I described how negative my perception of China was before arriving (skewed thanks to the media), and how, in my opinion, the United States practices almost none of the principles it aurally transmits (but militarily contradicts) to the world and it, in an ironic twist of fate, is the ‘China’ it smears; a cold, indifferent dystopia run by slave-workers with slums spread out. A disparaged Capitalist economy, a stunt civilization shrunk to admire image reconceptualizations of celebrities, Herp-derp and lol-cat humor and heavily propagating narcissism packaged in a progressive life-style.

A civilization established by exterminating another and setting reservations for the remaining specimens. Tyrannosaurs-Frog meme that you Epic-Failures!

Moreover, since I’m digressing between different topics, let me wander into something I’ve been stirring around in my head. It’s about Bahrain’s education. Think, rather than books, we can install tablet pcs like an ipad with limited features that can host books and access the dictionary connected to a group network. This way, we can save the trees, easily access any reference book at any time at any place within the school premises (devices have to be returned after school, which means no homework; a student completes education at school during study hours) and cut costs, especially in the long run.

And in order to avoid cramping of information, students should only do one specialized subject each semester (three to four months). And rather than have segregated systems such as high-school, under-graduate, graduate etc, there can be only one type of learning which combines various courses in a sort of relevant fashion; so for example; one needn’t do Citizenship or Math 101 for fields that’ll never find it necessary, but one can always go back and do them whenever they’d like. Subjects like philosophy, self-help, anatomy, how-to-overthrow a monarchy can also be available when one is as young as 15.

Teenagers act like teenagers because they aren’t taken seriously- 40 year olds will rebel if not taken seriously. Let’s give them something to be intellectually mature about and they will. If one is going to claim Kingship over thin air, then he’s bound to face dissidents.

I can sense skeptic opposition coming from you but it’ll probably take a couple of lip-service sessions with the resource allocator to be able to pull-off this kind of revamp. That’s what monarch’s ostensibly live for; lip-service and Majboos.

The idea struck me when I started doing anatomy. I feel I don’t need one whole year to do anatomy when three months should suffice in a supportive environment. That’s to say that I should have easy and instant access to educational resources and food. Like Google Inc.

Think of it, if you did not have to eat, would you work a tedious job to earn a living?

One more thing, there has to be many full-time Pshycs the entire time. Many people do not understand introspection or why they should do it- find closure for bad relationships or substantiate bad parenting for self-conscious insecurities. Almost everyone I think of needs some therapy, at least some. Everyone.

With no psychosomatic issues at bay pending reconciliation and no food to worry about, I believe we are naturally designed to be great. Psycho-cybernetics is the term. They use some form of the same disciplinary procedures at Norwegian jails which is why they have too many empty cells.

In Bahrain, our cells are our minds.

I’ve learned to be comfortable with it and now I am living my dream.

How many people can say that? Even with globalization spawning this information age; few enjoy this privilege.

I vividly remember the lull school days, the lack of ambition, the haze about the future then, naturally, the rock star dreams, the custom-shaped instruments and the fantasy groupies.

Where was I going? No where.

But it was such an exaggerated dream that I could forever delude myself and kill the endless time of every-unproductive-day. I’d funneled my reality to the end glory without really caring much for the details.

It escaped my imagination to question, like a movie skipping the boring, unglamorous details, the journey that one needs to endure to achieve the happy end.

Once in English class, I read a story with the word “Will” emphasized in it. Will as in inheritance. I was very young and felt immune to such a thing; I’d never have to write a will, not anytime soon anyway.

But now I think the healthiest thing we can do is write one, right now.

What kind of a legacy are you leaving?

Also once, in Econ 102, the Professor asked us how long we think the Gulf countries will need to develop along the lines of Western countries (of course, their biased media will always claim that countries with puppet regimes have developing economies due to the fact that we’re “open” to “their” markets, but I think we’re over that bull seeing as we can’t even manufacture toilet seats), I responded with fifteen and he was stunned. Everyone, including himself thought we were 200 years behind.

I look at China and think if we have the liberty to scheme a novel and pertinent education system, it’ll take us a lot less. Don’t you agree? I’d like to hear your criticisms please and thank you for sharing your time with me.

 

Funny how an update about China became an analysis of Bahrain.

Update From China 7

By the time I walked in English 101 this week, it had already begun so students were in close-knit groups. My friends and I were left out. I scouted the lecture room and noticed there was not a single international student present; they were all Chinese students conversing in Mandarin.

I calmly walked on stage, interrupted them and had a brief talk about Bahrain and myself. Pity of course I had almost nothing of real value to add. That’s not entirely true, but would they appreciate Majboos as our golden achievement? Majboos 2030 anyone?
At the end of it, I made many more Chinese friends. It’s amazing how lit up they get over a foreigner, especially one who speaks good English.
If only China had a better PR. This place is nothing like what I’d gathered through the media. In fact, it’s like nowhere else but an imagination- people are humble, place is beautiful, things are cheap, it has four seasons and a very efficient education and health system.

Apart from the snakes and giant frogs that I saw being sold at the Seugo, real China is so different from broadcasted China.
Sometimes, we can create the most obnoxious associations. I was listening to the mp3 my sis gifted me and the music I’ve flown thousands of kilometers with made me realize that I’ve developed a sense of identity in them. When I got to Mara Carlyle’s Pianni (the one they used for the Ikea commercial), I got emotionally flooded. I had to stop.

This is when I get motivated to seek new words and expand my vocabulary. I cannot find the words. I wanted to initially compare it with a jack-in-the-box; bottled emotions, whatever.
I don’t know the science of it but hearing my playlist again shook me deeply. Like the first time I read “The Harvest” by Hempel or “The Bet” by Chekhov.

I would listen to music in my room, nothing special. But the disseminating thoughts in those instances are now memories repeating themselves.

I know they’re plaintive because of being emotionally inflated by the amygdala and in death none of it will matter, but it matters now. It matters so much.

Maybe I should create a personality matrix where you can discern someone by their playlist. something like; Classical = sophisticated, warm and calculating and Rap = self-absorbed, victimized and angry etc. But we’re all somewhere in the middle I think. The lack of intimacy in my life means I have time to do it. Actually, the lack of intimacy makes writing this blog evermore relieving from my monotonous schedule.

Nowadays, I’m basically doing the same things over and over; study and workout.
Workouts have become so much fun. Kwali, the guy with the Katana, has a wealth of information about martial arts. I’m learning flying kicks and one-punch knockouts and teaching arm-bars and rear-naked chokes. Jujitsu for Judo – fair trade.
Walking past the activity center is always exciting. I heard the octaves of a piano roistering out which I tracked to a tiny room where a Chinese girl was performing to spectators of empty stools. I’ll try uploading the video on facebook.

Nowadays, I’m trying to cram as much Chinese characters and pinyin as I can. To learn Chinese, one must distinguish the pronunciations and enunciate the words with the proper pinyin tone, and then memorize the calligraphy. Letters like a, c, e, i, q, u, y and z have other pronunciations. And there are four tones / (ascending), \/(descending-ascending), \ (descending) and – (flat-high pitch).

Bahrain is Ba-lin, but since I missed the correct pinyin at first, people would think I’m saying Pa-ri, as in Paris. Like this taxi driver whom I had to agree with to play along but he then requested for translations. He asked for Hello(Como Sava), very good (Tres Bien) and teacher, which I don’t know so I told him the English word ‘master’. But he noticed my 10 second pause and so avoided any more inquiries, doubting my credibility.

The University had a sports event yesterday morning and international students were asked to do a march of respect and shout the slogan, “Dong Nan Jaio! Jaio Dong Nan!” . We complied and got to the stadium by around 8am. I met a whole lot of other international students from South East’s two other campuses.

I also met three Arabs; an Egyptian, a Syrian and a Sudanese. They were really friendly. Our discussion began with a bit about Arab politics and then one of them asked if I was Shi’a or Sunni; I said I was both. Then he explained about how they met one of the other guys from Bahrain who went rambling about Iran; I told them I am natively Persian. It wasn’t awkward, they were nice guys.

Being Shi’a or a Sunni is not a religious declaration, it’s a political subscription. Everyone’s cock-sure they know about the other’s exclusive dirty laundry and unwilling to extend to a middle ground, which if we ever get there will make us realize that, in Rick’s words, “All truth is God’s truth”. We can never lose if we seek it.

Update from China 6

“We got rid of the skulls” my Mizoram friend told me. “It’s not nice to have too many skulls in the family nowadays”.

Mizoram’s in the north east part of India, but one look at Theodore and you won’t think twice about labeling him a Tibetan Chinese. He spent the last hour giving me a virtual tour of the enchanting Indian state. It was traditionally respected of families to collect enemy skulls and if within one generation, a family had gathered three or more skulls, they’d be semi-worshipped. So an average 16 year old Mizo in the sixteen-hundreds would’ve been hyped up about decapitating whoever dares to tarnish his reputation.

Theodore’s already 22 and has never decapitated anyone. Yet, he also gives-off that humble and harmless aura that I get from the Chinese. What’s even more fascinating for me is his reference to his slanting eyes as Chink-eyes.

I feel more comfortable walking around Nanjing than I do in Manama. I haven’t been able to pin down a specific reason for this but even when a girl stopped right in front of me, took out her camera and snapped a picture or the guy in the bus quickly hid his phone when I suddenly turned around to look for my friends, I feel like there’s no threat at all. None. No one is judging me or is critical of my beard or sneers at my clothes or tries to stink-eye me if I lose thought and stare in their direction.

Speaking of newfound respect, I’ve grown tons for skater boys. I met a few on my way to the gym and with one look at my supermarket-bought one; they dismissed it as being a toy. See skateboards have three main quality features: deck, trucks and bearings. Trucks are metal plates that connect the wheels and the deck. The bearings, located in the hanger part of the trucks, are responsible for the wheel’s smooth circulation. Apparently, I need to change those if I want to use my skateboard for commuting purposes. The friction is strong when I ride it on tar and I have to put in more effort but it’s excellent cardio. However, if one day I develop the ambition of performing stunts, then the counterfeit one I have now won’t do altogether.

At present, I’m neck-deep in stunts. I’ve grown a small cult at the gym. The gym building contains around 10 tennis-tables, two large conference rooms, a multipurpose gymnasium and a weightlifting quarter. The multipurpose gymnasium is partly a dance ground with ballet railings and the other half has padded floors, gloves, shin pads, punch stands et all. I usually pass by and eye-ball the place on my way to the weightlifting quarter so last week, I decided to throw a few punches. I’ve never had any formal training but my love for the sport, a couple of amateur training sessions with friends at a park in Adliya and countless hours of Fedor and Crocop reverence on YouTube provided some familiarity.

It’s usually crowded with Kung-Fu trainees but it was empty by the time I got done lifting so I decided to indulge in the punch stand. Few people playing ping-pong paused and began noting this foreigner making a fool of himself. One guy approached and inquired about it so I advised him of the few basic punch moves and locomotor positions that I knew. The next day he was enthusiastically practicing when I arrived and in the hopes of not wanting to disappoint him, I started upping my consultation. Another guy exercising Iădo with his Katana took interest and joined in. Now this dude is a samurai warrior so the kick-boxing drills are child’s play. He was so quick and good at mimicking the offences and to engage them both, I churned out a few Jujitsu submission tricks I recalled from fights I saw. Jujitsu is popularly attributed to the Gracie brothers but by experimentally manipulating the body, I discovered that it isn’t difficult to innovate and doctor such moves. Nanjing hospital here we come.

For precaution, I’m browsing the net to gobble as much info about Jujitsu as I can. My tongxue (class-mates) also participated yesterday and now we’re a group of six under my patronage, “Ya feeha, ya fil tibbin.”

I’m also pressing my luck by taking my prayer mat everywhere. There’s a clear sentence in the guidelines for international students that we’re not allowed to have any religious gatherings in our dorms, so let alone publicly practicing it. But it’s such a hassle because the library and the gym are far from the international dorms so I’m bound to miss Asr and Maghrib prayers if I don’t. My route is class-cafeteria-library-gym-cafeteria-library-dorm.

I’m slowly getting the hang of Mandarin but there are kilometers of learning distance ahead. I also learned to characterize my Chinese name伊 萨.

And like the Jujitsu and the skate-boarding, I’m learning by chipping at it bit-by-bit. There won’t be any obvious sign of triumph until the accumulation gets to a tipping point.

 

Update From China 5

I was talking to my Nigerian friend yesterday and she asked about Bahrain. I had an epiphany, the font that label’s Bahrain on the map is almost always larger than the island. Nevertheless, it has a vibrant culture and population.

We can easily click with others because of the diversity and if it was the populous who were governing it, rather than some elite, then wow. I know people who can very easily awe the world but they’re stagnated by a survival routine and the leadership cannot be held accountable.

Never mind. I don’t want to be persecuted before getting a degree and for those of you out there struggling for what you believe in- kudos. And for pretty boy Nasser- fly a kite or something.

Back to Ch-ch-ch-ch-china. This autumn is already colder than the coldest winter I’ve experienced in Bahrain. It slumps down to 8 or even 6 degrees at night.

I needed running shoes so I took bus 16 to the Sugo (Supermarket). Luckily, the store had clearance sale and I found a couple of branded jackets for 79 Yuan (BHD4). I also found more branded winter clothes for no more than BHD 18 (it was a cardigan suit-the most expensive thing I saw in there). Diesel warmers for BHD 7, CK long sleeves for BHD 6, Addidas jumpers for BHD 4 and DKNY jeans for BHD 2. At one point, I felt it was worth (and going to be cheaper) to fly in, buy them all and go back for BHD 500, including the airfare, rather than buying three winter items for more than that at the department stores in Bahrain’s malls. Actually if you’re an avid shopper, you’ll probably get accidentally run over for paranoid-thumping the item on the streets because of the cost disparity with clothes back home.
The only disadvantage might be finding the right fit. Chinese are on-average slim. They did not have a size 45 shoes so I settled on getting a skate-board. An electric bike with a maximum speed of 60km/hr (don’t require a license for) cost around BHD 100.

A second year med-senior owns one and I was surprised to find out that even though his classes are in the Sipailou campus (more than an hour’s drive away), he prefers to live on this (Juilonghu) campus and travel back and forth. His justification was that the city campus was so distracting because of his friends and all the activities that he’d almost failed his semester so he decided that this was his best option.

The students committee is responsible for the entertainment activities in the Juilonghu campus. They’re limited to the weekends (Sat/Sun). On Saturday night, there was a party with live music from a group of students and then a Chinese celebrity whom I’ve never ever heard of. Btw, check out Olivia Ong, she’s got some really nice songs, especially “You and Me”. There was also a stage show in the other hall performed by the students. I don’t stay long because of prayer times. I usually attend them tired and sweaty because the activity halls are right next to the gym. I like the way they ask us to sign their banners to show support for their activities or randomly ask to take pictures.

Last night for Halloween, I went to the English 101 gathering. It was fun. The international students are spread out so that every group has at least one international student. Our Chinese laoshi (teacher) was also there because she wants to improve her English and she sat with our group. I was now, ironically, her laoshi.

The way it goes is every person in a group gets time to introduce themselves and once time’s up, they have to move on to other groups and try to win as much candy, yes candy, as possible by politely having a conversational exchange with other groups. Our group had an adorable 10 year old so she got all the sympathy candies but we still tied with another group. So the hosts decided that each group would have to choose a member to make a live performance of any sort and then allow other groups to vote for them. I was quickly chosen to do something so I went up there and rapped “Back to School”. It was repulsive. The other group had a ballet dancer but we still tied. So finally, we played rock, paper, scissors and won.

It was fun because of the experience of meeting all those people. I also made two new Chinese friends.

My buddy Charles wrote once explaining that every living organism is a product of their environment and the “most adaptive to change” are usually the ones that survive. A refined version of this Darwinian Theory for human beings today, since we’ve mastered our natural environment, is the most adaptive to other humans.

Other humans are now our environment, our situation, our circumstance, our struggle. They define us so it’s really important that we choose to be around adequate mirrors, otherwise, we could get severely disoriented.

I rarely threw light on this or questioned it. I had internalized the idea that proximity is a good indicator of the people I would talk to, accept and spend time with.

It seems like the most natural thing to do; befriend a colleague, a class mate, a cousin etc.

The reason we strongly crave interaction, no matter how introverted, is because of the mirror neurons. They developed as an adaptation mechanism to quicken the emulation process and make it easier from a Neanderthal to pick-up from where their friend left off trying to, say light a fire. With the help of those neurons, the Neanderthal could rapidly learn by observation.

It transformed our race so much so that 100’000 years’ worth of progress had been surpassed in a few thousand by this evolution. The other flip side is the compassion these neurons enable us.
To learn by imitation means to be able to empathize unless suffering from Capgras delusion.
So we are going to unconsciously pick-up from the people we surround ourselves with. Infact, we adapt to them. I try to adapt to books but it isn’t very efficient or fulfilling all the time.

Acclimatizing to others creates a palette of alternate brain functions that maps our reality. So when we’re disoriented, it isn’t the state of mind or the thinking about thinking or the will power, it’s the ecosystem- the human ecosystem.

The primal human partiality for connection and empathy can never be erased.

Our efforts are better spent fixing that ecosystem than trying to outsmart ourselves making empty promises or setting deadlines.

I tried skate boarding my way back to campus. I was making progress and halfway, I fell smack on my back. Good thing winter clothes cushioned the fall. And in a very long time, I fell adrenaline surging through. I take solace in knowing that the greater the stakes, the greater the reward. Cheesy? Maybe. Especially if you’re the one hurting.

Update From China 4

How much opportunity do we get to start over?

All things being equal= every one hour.

How I’m going to spend my next hour is determined by how I’ve spent my last hour. Automatically, if I want to control the ripple effect, I have to start my day well.

By deduction, therefore, sleep is the single most important factor in capitalizing on this cyclical opening to start anew.

I sometimes think about the other opportunities that I’ve taken for granted and I whine about it on my other blog.

This I’ve saved for Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-china. It’s c-c-c-c-c-c-old (10C) and it’s only autumn.

I should say Nanjing because China has two different time zones. So far, by explaining the little that I have, we’ve only tickled the epidermis. Imagine trying to explain Bahrain and Bahrainis by confining the discussion to Nuaidrat!?

Nanjing used to be the Capital of China in the 1920’s until the Nanking massacre. Now it’s just the capital of Jiangsu province.

According to Witch and her friend, Nan means South and Jing means Capital. So today, Beijing is the new North Capital of the [elite] People’s republic.

She also added to my info that there are over 20 different Chinese dialects and some maybe so different that a mandarin speaking Chinese would not understand them. Witch is from Annhui province and has difficulty speaking Mandarin herself.

Most of our time was spent platonically educating each other about our cultures. When I wrote in Arabic, they platonically sighed in amazement, and when they told me that the word ‘good’ is represented by the characters of girl and boy because in old China it was a sign of goodluck to have an equal gender balance in the family, I involuntarily applauded the pure absurdity.

Platonic absurdity.

I was also invited by the other Chinese friends I made at the party to a trek up Nanjing General Mountain. The scenery was exhilarating. But it wasn’t that, or the barbeque, or the boat-rafting, or the symbolic House of Intelligents, or the various stone artifacts, statues and engravings or the walking between tall Metasequoia trees, or the one dandelion that anomalously blossomed that I will relish: it’s the being saddled on the back of a bicycle in the pouring rain for the forty odd minutes that it took us dodging traffic to get back on campus. The journey was painful and spontaneously dangerous. It was truly an adventure.

It was a hands-on (or body-hurts, which ever) tour of the area and I found a new, relatively cheap route to access a shopping district.

The transportation system here is very efficient and convenient. For a meager one quai (.06 fils), the bus (which comes around every fifteen minutes) will journey around Juilonghu, that’s to say the entire country side. The metro (comes around every six minutes) will travel the entire city for a maximum of four quais (.24 fils) depending on the route. And to travel to Shanghai using a high speed train, the one hour 15 minute journey costs around 150 Yuan, (about 9 to 10 Dinars).

Better still, South East University provides buses to it’s Sipailou campus for four quais. Sipailou is in the heart of the city and by public bus and subway it usually takes around one hour to reach. This conveniently takes us there in forty minutes.

And sometimes, meandering in those public places captivates the young Chinese so much that they point and astonishingly shout “Foreigner”. Some say hello and try to resist wanting to start a conversation.

We have an English 101 class every weekend that is open to the international students. It encourages us to integrate with the Chinese students and helps them better understand other cultures and improves their English. I haven’t been to those yet but heard they can be very amusing.

In China, students start learning English at junior high. So an average 20 year old already has seven years exposure but they’re timid and shy when we approach them to ask for directions. When I say I’m from Ba-Lin (Chinese pinyin pronunciation), they usually confuse it with Bali-a something which means somewhere in France and I just play along.

Learning Chinese, however, is difficult. The word “ba” can mean the number seven or father or two other things depending on the tone. So if one accidentally yawns while speaking, it could take the conversation to a-whole-nother level.

Our Chinese class is a mockery of Mandarin. Pinyin, the English vocalization of Chinese symbols, makes us baaa like sheep, moooo like cows and meow like hoarse felines, until we go into spells of laughter.

My Chinese name is Yi Sa, which I can’t characterize yet. Occasionally, I regret not applying to a West European city, learning their simple language for a year first and then studying in their finest institutions.

But as the clouds are approaching and winter’s setting in, I’m beginning to feel comfortably at home here, especially with my dorm room and routine. I’ve also made many friends and every week, the University organizes some form of entertainment. There was a Jazz musical concert on the weekend that I went to last night, it was refreshingly good.

I’m at ease even when I travel alone. I also enjoy getting lost savoring every minute of it as I try to absorb it all.

In loneliness, we’re so helpless that I’m sure even adults crave quintessential affection like children, only in subtle doses.

It’s the validation; the invitation to living life as we are. As I write this, I’m eating expired bread and tasteless honey but nothing in the world can make me unfortunate right now.

I think, as I reflect on this good spirit that has brewed around that to be content, a human being needs some sincerely good considerations. One could embellish their life with unnecessary consumption and get others to marvel at them (which is prevalent thanks to a la capital) like a decomposer; bottom feeding on reflections that does not really belong to one’s human element.

I get mine by cultivating it first. I don’t care, I go out of my way and it becomes contagious. I guess exposure to altruism triggers the dormant switch that lies in all of us and invites others to just be, drawing their full potential out.

But my advice isn’t a simplistic “just be” because you’ll never make money and you’ll starve to death.

Life’s complicated so get some sleep.

Update from China 3

For some reason, a very old Persian song made famous by a wedding singer named Yusuf Hadi keeps resonating with me here. More specifically, the following lines:

Che tamasha khashee hast; che dasmal basee hast. / Such delightful show this is, such splendid dance.

Hamaykas sare kayfen bas del-e-mo na razi hast. / Everyone is merrymaking, but my heart isn’t content.

With all the facilities and perks of being here, I cannot connect with the place. Ironically, I should feel at home because everything is made in China but the language is a huge barrier.

There are a few things that have affirmed some prejudices I’ve acquired about them through the media.

Firstly, they’re very humble and polite. And in order to be a good pupil of education, like I tried to explain in my earlier post, humility is necessary. And by the pace at which China is developing, it’s evident that these people excel at it.

Second, the food is nasty- the tendencies of many living in poverty. I witnessed for the very first time in my life homeless people sleeping in subway stations; squandered endless potential.

And third, the government is autocratic. Sites like Facebook, Youtube, Vimeo, Tumblr, Blogspot are blocked. And the University, picking-up from the government, regulates how much internet access is permitted for undergrads. If the student account accesses the net for duration of more than a certain number of hours, the account gets temporarily closed for the day.

Solution: Hotspot shield for the ISP and an independent China telecom account for the access. But I haven’t been able to upload any video tutorials yet so have to figure that.

Since Huawei Technologies is a Chinese company, the internet speed here is three to four times as fast as Bahrain’s. But I heard, from an inside source, that Zain will introduce the new TCL techno boosting residence speeds up to 70 MB/s!

Speaking of scales, when I walked the entire campus, it took me all of three hours. I admired the enormity of it whilst contrasting with educational institutions in Bahrain. For one, they have two stadiums, each with twelve basket-ball courts, ten tennis courts, five football pitches, a race track, a gymnasium and indoor tennis-tables (didn’t count how many). On the other hand, think of the ones in Bahrain that actually have a court (not a stadium, that’ll piss the Sheikhs off- too much non-profit space), are overkilled with lines to indicate the multi-purpose use of the ground.

Let’s all take a second and thank the Al-Khalifa for their immense care of the public education system. Surely, they make their kids go to them rather than some St. Hearst in some UK, or open up the most expensive school in Bahrain just so someone’s son can study there.

On my wilderness trip (the University also has a lake, a rice paddy and a swamp), I overheard the echoes of a jam session which I traced to a room in the College of Architecture building. They were practicing for yesterday’s international get-together event where all the international students of South-East got the opportunity to intermingle.

One of the two vocalists slaughtering Linkin Park’s,“In The End” was a second year med student.  He was a Paki/American and offered to “hook-me-up” in case I needed some time-out prepping to be a medical doctor, if you get the gist.

My therapy is cleaning. Whenever I feel the need to shut down, I organize, dust and wash. The dorm room is more inhabitable now that my Mom and I cleansed every speck of dirt out of it.

I share the apartment with two Ugandans and a Bangladeshi. They’re really cool people. Each have a separate room. We’re on the sixth floor and there isn’t any elevator- a compromise we can make so long as we don’t share our boxes.

Contrariwise, the library is a landmark. Situated at the center of the campus designated to help recognize which side of the campus one is on, it is five stories of magnanimous. Nevertheless the one floor that hosts Foreign/English books is as big as Kingdom University.

I found Vincent Van Gogh’s impressionist paintings in an autobiographical book about him. Funny how he never knew he’d invented the art of post-modern impressionism while he was exploring ways to portray the stimuli his world was making on him and only after death was he recognized as a master.

Usually, artists, Yusuf Hadi included, sedate themselves not only to tame their boredom, but to revitalize their view of another day as they regain consciousness, implying that there’s too much brain -activity and not enough stimuli to keep up, thus the need to slow it down.

There are two forces at play here- the amount of satisfaction/dissatisfaction with your day which corresponds to the level of sedating activity. In fact, that’s true of everybody; your drug of choice can be a needle, a pill, a drink, a smoke or just a movie, depending on how high or low your productivity is which regulates the chemicals necessary to be at equilibrium or induces us to replenish it quickly elsewhere. I won’t go into the science of it, but yes, there is a scientific explanation for deadbeats and we shouldn’t be quick to judge.

In my humble opinion, being an artist as full-time job is undermining the full potential of a human being. Art can be a concrete or an abstract depiction of the strong impressions this world has left on the artist. Shouldn’t a scientist then be considered an artist? Or should it be reserved for the arbitrary interpretations of an eccentric?

I admire Van Gogh’s paintings, and I’d also like to shed light on why certain people may find affinity in certain expressions rather than others. Writing helps untangle and symbolize emotions for me acknowledging how and why I sense when I sense it. But should I spend all my life trying to force-typify my sentiments, be it authentic or fictious, just so I can pay the bills? Won’t that limit the numerous faculties of the brain and throw back the chemical evenness?

Expression of any form that we have come to accept as artistry can only interpret so much. What about rather than interpret, trying to really understand? This means filtering out the prejudice from the mind first and learning to accept the explanation of thing as they are.

Am I trying to analyze the human condition to compensate for the lack of events again? J

At the international get-together, out of the blue, a group of Chinese college kids gathered around asking me all sorts of questions. They were so excited talking to a foreigner. They also said they needed to practice their English skills. One girl whose English name was Witch (God knows why) thought my Mom was my wife. I think that was a moment my Mom will cherish for a while.

One Chinese couple patted me on the back and asked for my picture. They thought I was so handsome they needed to take a picture with me. I am not joking, that’s what they said. It felt vain, good and pathetic all at once.

I am having lunch with Witch tomorrow. Now that’s a sentence I never… I don’t even…