Brain-digging

There is a world of difference, as far as I can tell, between US and UK university experience. Doing some brain-digging, I think the language used in each country to describe the experience is revealing of the overall experience itself:


UK: "at university"
'At' refers to a place or a temporary stage of life--"I'm at work right now", or, "I'm at National and 1st street". The experience is temporary, transient, a one-way relationship. You can be 'at' something, but it can't be 'at' you.


US: "in college"
'In' is different--it refers to a physical placement as well, but the connotation is of enfolding, encircling, protecting--what you are 'in' has agency, in that *it* contains *you*. And it does contain--it becomes institutional, you are 'in', you can't just leave as if you were merely 'at'. But to be 'in' also implies entrance (exclusivity!) or membership--"I am *in*, they are out." And it comes with greater propriety and ownership: "I am *in* my house" versus "I am *at* home"."In college", you own it and it owns you, protects you, keeps others out but keeps you in. It is altogether a more infantile relationship than the autonomous "I am *at* university--I am here, for now, for my purposes. Tomorrow I may leave."


In the UK, most of the population goes to university, derailing its 'elitism', and schools themselves are government service institutions that are taken somewhat more for granted. The US does a better job of 'branding' and 'owning', one of the upsides of the common complaint that US schools are just businesses. Or is it an upside? It's been interesting speaking to Jason, who goes to Cornell--his freshman year has been absolutely harrowing, by the sounds of it, in terms of workload and expectations. I'm conflicted how to feel about this--I recognize the huge value of the leeway and free time or 'reading time' that St Andrews gives, but further structure and a comprehensive liberal arts agenda would actually probably have been more beneficial *for me*. The followup question, I guess, is about results: which of us winds up knowing more, or being able to think better? And how much of that can actually be attributed to whether or not we took a mandatory Writing 101 class?


One of the things I'm missing this summer is real academic interaction. I still read my blogs but it definitely is not the same--the lack of someone to have 'idea' talks with is dead depressing, and I can actually feel the scope of my thoughts shrinking. I've learnt a lot of specifics here, but the big-picture general stuff and the connections are lacking.

Swords and fauna

Yesterday in front of the fitness center there was a guy with a sword! Just with his buddy, out in the courtyard, practicing classical Chinese swordfighting (like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but with less flying!). Have also had some interesting observations about the fauna here--Mom commented when we were in China last summer that there are no birds. This is still true, though little birds in little cages (think Mulan!) are quite common (there is actually a 'market' where they are sold in a nearby park) and our neighbors have a pigeon coop. Tasty! These are no messenger birds...Where the skies fill up though is at dusk, where it seems like little sparrows suddenly appear everywhere--but watching their movements more closely, you realise that they are bats! Everywhere. There are a lot of mosquitoes around, so I guess it makes perfect sense, but its actually caught me by surprise a few times.

My medical experience...

I called Qi, who is the head of marketing at our company and just generally the sweetest woman you'll ever meet (she is sort of the go-to for all questions and advice) and she knew about a place nearby (10 minute cab ride). It looked like a university hospital, or at least one attached to a university, and there was a small upstairs area that was an 'international hospital'. Qi was actually slightly concerned making sure that the place I went would treat foreigners. At the international hospital the people who spoke english were the receptionist, pharmacist, and one nurse (not the other! though it meant i did a spectacular pantomime to tell the woman taking blood 'I faint sometimes with shots'...hooray for nonverbal communication, she took me to a big recliner right away, though I didn't faint in the end). The doctor was a much older woman who spoke very broken English--I understood her well but I often had to ask questions several times. The man who took me down to get x-rays and the x-ray people spoke no English. I paid at the end. Interestingly, at the beginning they did say 'the doctor fee is rmb500' but I wasn't told a price tag for any of the other tests or medication until the end...they just assumed, I guess, that I would have the money? When I paid, they presented me the entire bill at the pharmacy (the special little 'international' pharmacy) rather than paying just for medicine there. Because of the 'international pharmacy' I'm sure I got 'international prices'--seeing the doctor was 1/2 of the bill, and I'm sure if I'd gone downstairs the doctor visit would've been much cheaper. The staff were overall helpful and friendly, though, and I was pleased with pretty much everything, though a bit disappointed that the doctor didn't actually speak much English.

It was Bronchitis!

Of the acute bacterial variety, believe it or not. Oh joy, my first real adult illness.

Spent most of today at the hospital. Bill came to about RMB12500 (around US$180) for drop-in doctor, bloodwork, x-ray, and perscription (antibiotics, something for my sinuses, and "traditional Chinese cough syrup"[mostly honey and herbs]). Phew. Long day. Good to know what the crappiness was and have something to do about it. I've got records and a receipt if you think Kaiser will do anything about it, along with a nifty x-ray of my lung that looks like someone exploded a spider in it.

So...taking it easy for the weekend?
Though we may go see pandas tomorrow.

No more proxy

So, the proxy I got to get around the (Great) Firewall that actually worked....was also loaded with malicious spyware. Hah. Ah well. So that's deleted now, and I again facebook and blog-less.

I've been quite ill for the last few days--too little sleep and horribly polluted air is my guess. Took yesterday off from work, laid on the couch and slept or watched The Colbert Report and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. It was crap...great visuals, but somehow they decided that The Chronicles of Narnia was an appropriate story to tie that deliciously nonsensical mess to...and it didn't work. At all. A few really clever moments, but the film felt like a Burton flick constrained by the Alice mythos rather than something that gave it wings. Ah well. It was a bootleg Chinese copy and pretty good quality for that, though at 2 points the film went into black and white for a few minutes...odd.

What else? Earlier this week I went with Jason (who I'm living with) to get an hour massage for US$10, which was pretty good, especially for $10! Otherwise things have been pretty quiet here, Larry has honestly kinda run out of stuff for us to do...we've been doing "online marketing" for over a week now, just trolling forums and message boards and setting up pages, which is potentially useful, but Larry is distinctly NOT someone who does computers, so all the social networking/viral marketing stuff that is possible really isn't in this context because no one will ever go on the pages or update content....ah well. Hopefully next week will be busier, I'm going to ask if I can shadow someone...I've gotten a decent data analyst/marketing perspective, but still not seen any actual 'consulting', which is what the firm, yennow, does. Still fingers crossed about something green-tech-y, but I haven't heard anything about that in a while. Since Malinda (his niece) left Larry hasn't been around out of the office, where he is, understandably, furiously busy, so I haven't gotten much time to talk.

Going out for Karaoke with Jason and most of the marketing team tonight, though, which should be fun.

Proxies!

Trust the Chinese how to get around their own governments. A girl at the office today gave me a proxy to access facebook/blogspot/youtube, so I'm back online! Have had a really good couple of days at the office creating an online presence for Larry's company ('astroturfing' I believe is the term...a company spamming the internet while making it look like a grassroots movement), which is awesome and has had me learning how to use all sorts of encyclopedic and social networking sites that I wasn't on before. I should get back to work, but it's good to have social networking access again!