Last Place You Look

I have a confession to make. I am lazy.

I will be playing dead on the couch all day just in case a bear attacks. That's not lazy, that's proactive.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) September 28, 2013

I got called lazy today. I almost replied.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) August 19, 2013

Nothing says lazy like laying on the couch making today's responsibilities tomorrow's problem.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) April 24, 2012

You call it lazy, I call it selective participation..

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) September 12, 2013

If you've never tried to use "the force" to get a an out-of-reach remote control, you're probably not as lazy as me.

— GigaBrett (@brettminor) November 9, 2013

The oldest of these tweets is from 2012, so I think it is clear that I have known this about myself for quite some time.

I am also quite comfortable with it. Like inappropriately comfortable. My sloth knows no bounds.

However, occasionally, I have to get some stuff done. Earlier this week was one of those days.

Living in a foreign land, some things are quite different than back home. One of those things is our banking situation. I have never set foot in or spoken to a single person at our bank. I don't even know where it is. I do all my transactions through a third party designed for foreigners. It is called TIMO. And last month, TIMO and the bank that actually holds our money parted ways.

This means that my TIMO phone app and ATM card no longer work. I have no access to my money. I am going to actually have to go into a bank (30 miles away) and try to get all the new stuff (ATM card and actual bank app) without being able to speak the local language. I was not looking forward to this, but it is one of those things that has to be done. After all, they have all our money and we do not have any way to get it. We kind of need it. I tend to be hungry a lot.

Because we live in the tropics, the sun can be unforgiving. This is something that must be taken into account when you use a motorcycle to travel everywhere. Hours traveling on a motorcycle in the tropical sun has beaten me down on more than one occasion. So, these trips to Đà Nẵng require certain measures. Despite the temperature being close to 100, I wear long pants and often long sleeves.

But the most important measure for me is getting an early start. I try to be on the road by 7:30. That would get us to the bank when it opens and if there are no problems, we would hopefully be back home before 10 a.m. Safe from the treacherous satanball trying to kill us from the sky.

We popped out of bed early. Got our breakfast and showers out of the way and were headed out the door at about 7:15. We were doing great on time! The UV demons would not get us today.

I reached for the key bowl by the door and came up empty.

Although rare, this happens now and then. I popped into the backroom to see if I had tossed them on my desk the night before. I had not. I then checked the pockets of the shorts I had worn the previous night. They weren't there either. At this point, Red started helping me look. 

We checked the kitchen table, all the counters, around the motorcycle outside, under the bed, our nightstands, and the coffee table. We even looked in the freezer. Where could they be?

After spending over half an hour tearing the house apart, it occurred to me that I may have locked them in the seat of the motorcycle. It has a small storage compartment that can be opened using the ignition key. If I locked it in there, I wouldn't have the key to open it and check.

So, I did something I did not want to do. I went next door to my landlord's house. He is the sweetest man and takes very good care of us, but he is almost 70 and I do my best not to disturb him unless I really need to. Plus, he does not speak a word of English. We call him Dad.

I showed Dad my problem and hoped he had a way to get into the seat that I might not know about. He tried all the same things that I did. Nothing worked.

Through pantomime and exchanged grunting, he suggested we have the ignition changed out. I didn't see any other choice so I agreed. I pulled up my Google Maps so he could show me where to go, but he insisted on speaking into the translator on my phone. The words I got back from the phone were useless, but he would not show me on the map. I don't believe he understood how it worked.

I was already a little embarrassed for losing my keys, but it only got worse from here.

My well-meaning landlord was going to help me get my motorcycle to the mechanic. He backed my bike into the street and went to get his.

Dad motioned for me to get on his bike and he sat on mine. His intention was to have me push him like in the following video.

But it just didn't work. I couldn't even get him started. I don't know if my angle was wrong, but it wouldn't work. Plus, even if I had gotten him moving, I didn't have any clue where we were going. Negotiating turns would have been very awkward. Besides, we live on very narrow back-alley streets. Not much room to maneuver. 

Dad realized this was not going to work, so he hopped off and started pushing my bike. I tried to stop him because there is no reason a 70-year-old man needs to push my bike for me. I can push it myself. I just need to know where to go. He did not listen to me and just kept moving. So, I was riding his bike at 2 MPH behind him while he pushed in 100-degree heat.

When we got to the first corner, he had me get on my bike. Good! Now I won't feel like such a putz. He tried to push my bike with his foot while he was on his own bike. Like in the above video. Once again, it did not work. He had me hop off again and started pushing my bike down the road. I could not get him to stop and let me do it. I eventually went back and got on his bike and slowly followed him while the local Vietnamese people watched us go by and gave me dirty looks. I don't blame them. At this moment, I literally was the fat, lazy American.

About 1,500 feet later, we came to the end of this road and his adult daughter Hanh appeared from the other direction on foot. He told her what we were doing and she nodded. She then took my bike and yelled over her shoulder, "Brett, go home." 

Hanh knows a total of maybe 100 English words. I often get basic sentences like this one from her. 

Dad tried to get me on his bike with him so we could go back, but I really wanted to go with Hanh. If I knew where she was taking my bike, then this was something I could take care of on my own in the future. I like to be self-sufficient when it is possible. However, I was having great difficulty getting Dad to understand why I wanted to follow. And the last thing I wanted to do is be unintentionally insulting. He was going out of his way to help and I wanted to be appreciative. Plus, as I looked back over my shoulder, Hanh had gotten a passerby to start pushing her on the bike. I guess she was more coordinated than us. She was gone. So, I accepted the ride home and waited.

An hour later, Hanh showed up with my bike and told me how much it cost. I paid her and thanked her profusely. I was so thankful, but totally embarrassed and felt utterly helpless.

After she left, we opened the bike seat only to discover the key was not in the seat. That means it was somewhere in the house and would turn up eventually. The changing of the ignition was not necessary, but there was no way of knowing how long it would be before we came across it. We had done what we had to do.

At this point, it was about noon and it had been a stressful morning. Defeated, I turned to Red and suggested we take off to a nice restaurant and try to put the morning behind us. She wholeheartedly agreed. I grabbed my new key and we got our helmets to head outside.

FOUND IT!!!

The key was in a motorcycle helmet that never got picked up because we realized we had no key to go anywhere. I'm beginning to wonder if embarrassment has an upper limit.

We Call Them Melons In America

A few days ago, I was practicing my typical morning routine of sitting on the toilet with my phone catching up on the news. In the middle of reading the latest on Black Ariel and the Blue Bell Ice Cream Licker, I got a message from my wife.

I immediately knew who she was talking about. We've been dealing with this guy for the last few days. Right next door to us, a construction crew has been putting up a new building and we share a gate with that property. So, we cross paths with the workers daily. Every now and then, one of them comes to us to use our electricity or inform us of excess noise that day or the shutting off of our water. It is always a difficult conversation since we do not speak the local language and have to do everything through inadequate translation apps.

However, this particular guy is especially "friendly." He frequently wanders over to make small talk when he sees me outside. This usually involves lots of hand gestures and pointing at the construction site with a big smile. I never know what he is trying to convey, but it seems like it is not pertinent information. Just friendly banter. Until he stepped up his game a few days ago.

He sat on our porch one day, so I grabbed a Pepsi and my phone and went to join him. I like to be friendly most of the time. Through our translation apps, we tried to talk to each other. After a couple of minutes, he asked to borrow my motorcycle. I made an excuse about how we were about to leave so it wouldn't be available. So, he asked to use it at lunch the next day. As I was telling him no, I started closing up the house so Red and I could leave. He then asked me how I secure my doors when I leave.

What kind of creepy question is that?

This made me nervous because he basically lives right next to us until the house is built. They always know when we are coming and going. And now he wants to know how well I lock my doors.

Due to my inability to effectively communicate all we can really do is try to be aware.

Not being able to communicate has been a common theme in my life. When I lived in Puerto Rico twenty years ago, I saw a sign on a counter that said CUIDADO: CALIENTE.

This sign made no sense to me. CITY: HOT
What?

I leaned closer to contemplate the meaning and it occurred to me as soon as my arms contacted the metal counter. Cuidado does not mean 'city.' It means 'CAUTION.'

The Spanish word for 'city' is ciudad. They may look similar, but the meaning is quite different.

As I rubbed the aloe on my forearms, I knew I would never forget those words again.

Living in Beijing, I almost did not get my work permit due to a communication error. I was asked to send off for my official Master's Degree for the paperwork that had to be filed. They told me that it must be sealed when we turn it into authorities. I did as they asked and it arrived two weeks later. I handed the envelope to my boss and she immediately ripped it open. I yelled, "NO! It has to still be sealed when we give it to them." She gave me a confused look as I sat and put my face in my hands. I had dropped a significant amount of money to get this and have it specially shipped. She had just ruined it.

She looked the degree over and asked, "Where is the seal?"

After a frustrating back-and-forth, I learned when they told me it must be sealed, what they meant was it must have the official State of Illinois International Authentication Seal. This seal is what proves to foreign governments that this is an official document.

She thought she had communicated clearly and I thought that I had understood. We were both wrong.

I have hundreds of stories like this, but let's come back to the present.

That 'creepy little dude' is now talking to my wife when I am not present and chooses to comment on her 'grapes.' If you have met my wife then you are probably aware that she is quite gifted in the area under her shirt. And in a culture that is known for not possessing those assets, it is even more apparent. But that does not mean he needs to be commenting on her grapes.

I head downstairs to confront this man and in my head I am running how I should play this. Should I be firm or gentle? Should I confront him in front of the other workers (to help keep him on their side of the wall) or take him to the side in private? I don't want to create too big of an incident. We do have to live among these people and we are the foreigners.

We may be the foreigners here but this cannot be allowed to happen?

I get downstairs to discover that is has escalated to the point that another worker is now involved and talking to my wife in the doorway. I start to step in to put an end to this harassment and I hear her telling the new man (who speaks a little English), he said: "Chau grapes are very big." Everyone (including my wife) laughed.

What is happening?

It turns out the 'creepy little dude' was wanting to plug into our electricity because the work site was having some work done and would be without power for a few hours. He wasn't being inappropriate at all. The Google Translate app just sucks when dealing with Vietnamese.

I even learned the reason he was asking about how I secured my doors a few days earlier was because our water pump was being replaced. When he discovered we were leaving for the evening, he was wondering how they were going to test the pressure once the new one was installed. There was no ill intent. We just don't have the ability to fully communicate. The extra speculation and guesswork about intent was misguided…again.

I have been putting off receiving official language instruction, but I believe it may be time to change my stance.

R - Regret

Everyone has those things they regret. It may be words you wish you could take back, an action you did (or did not do), or a reaction you had to something. I know I have several of those. We've all had experiences that we may wish we didn't have to live through. However, there are always those people who like to say "Well, it is your experiences that made you into the person you are today." or "It was those things that led you to this place."

I don't really curse on this blog, but I have to call bullshit. I can't think of a better word today.

While it is true that the culmination of our choices lead us to our present and bad experiences can make us stronger (but just as often weaker), that does not mean we should have taken that path.

My biggest regret in life involved a five-month-long storm in my normally peaceful life. And while I can say that I definitely learned a lot from this experience, I will not claim that my life was improved because of it.

In my early twenties, I frequented a bar near my home almost every day. As a regular, I got to know one of the bartenders. With time, I got to hear more about her miserable life. She was in a relationship with a guy who was controlling and physically abusive. But if she left, she would have nowhere to go and with two small kids, she felt trapped.

Slowly over the course of a few months, her flirting with me began to work. I don't know how many guys she was feeding this line to, but I was the one who fell for it. I decided I was going to be the one to rescue her. I called a couple of my friends one day to get some help so we could show up at her house, pack all her stuff while her boyfriend was at work and get her out of there. She was coming to live with me.

The guys I called for help were the Crew. My closest group of friends. And all of them but one, said no. They would not help. They weren't busy, they just refused to be part of it. A couple of them even told me not to do this.

I did not heed their warnings. In fact, their reluctance to help ticked me off.

But it was more than that. One of them put his finger in my face and started rattling off all the crazy things we knew about this girl. He told me she would be a nightmare and the circumstances of our new relationship would make it ten times worse in the tiny town we lived in. Everything said was true, but it didn't make me any less angry. I would show him. This girl needed help and I would put up with the inevitable storm to be that man who protected her.

I brought her and her kids back to my house where I still had a roommate that I had not checked with first (he moved out within a month). He was one of the first casualties of collateral damage this decision caused.

The backlash was swift. She lost her job immediately since the bar was owned by the father of the man I had just "rescued" her from. Being a small town with barely a hundred people, it was also the only social gathering place around. And I was no longer welcome.

The gossip around town was in full force and we were the focus of all of it. To get ahead of it, she and I got married almost immediately. I married her despite the fact that she and I were having horrible arguments every day. However, I was determined to show everyone (and it was everyone) that they were wrong. And I chalked her moodiness up to the stress of what was happening around us. I told myself I was strong enough to do this.

I had no idea how bad it was going to get.

It turned out she was crazy. And I don't just say that because she is my ex. She was crazy. She would recount the story of an argument we had to her sister and lie about everything that happened. She would do this right in front of me. I learned quickly not to call her out on stuff in front of people because the scene that was caused was not worth it.

She would fly into rages and physically attack me. One time, while trying to deflect her punches, my finger must have caught her lip. Maybe. I really don't know what happened. She might have even hit herself. But she suddenly threw herself on the ground and started screaming about me hitting her. I couldn't see any mark, but I didn't get much of a chance to look before she locked herself in the bathroom. When she came out 30 minutes later, her lip was bloodied and swollen. I knew she had done something to herself in the bathroom.

The next day, I get a phone call from her sister. Her sister told me that my wife had shown up at her house in the morning to show what I had done to her. And the story was epic. It involved furniture flying around the house and the kids screaming to protect their mother while I locked them in their rooms. This story terrified me because I didn't know who else she was telling these stories to. But her sister assured me that she knew it wasn't true. She knew the kids had stayed with their aunt the night before and she didn't believe I would behave in such a way anyway. She told me that she had long suspected the stories she told about her ex were fabricated as well.

Oh, yeah. This whole thing started because I was rescuing her from an abusive relationship. And now she's running around telling people that I am doing those things to her. And I haven't touched her. I began to see her evil ex in a much more sympathetic light. I no longer knew what was true.

I have dozens more stories about psychological manipulation, complex webs of lies that she weaved through many people, enemies that she made for me, more physical abuse (she couldn't get upset without throwing a punch and she was always upset about something), her purposefully depriving me of sleep to punish me for something, and the loss of my friends who wouldn't come around the house if she was there.

It finally came to an end in the middle of one of those big fights. She loved to find what hurt you and focus all her attention on it. She fought dirty and never had mercy. She had pressed and pressed me since I got home from work and wasn't letting up. She had already thrown things and hit me several times and she started again with her cutting words. She stepped up to me with her fist cocked back and something snapped in my head.

I took a step forward reaching for her to put a stop to this. I can't honestly say what I was about to do, but it was not going to be good. I was in a rage and had had enough. But when I started to surge toward her, I saw a glint of glee in her eyes.

She had done it. She finally broke me and she knew it. I was seconds away from sealing the deal with whatever I was about to do to her. And once I did it, she would own me.

This entire realization came crashing down on me. Months of psychological and physical torture had worn me down. I couldn't take it anymore. She had pushed and pushed and pushed and was never going to stop. I knew that sooner or later, I would hurt her. A person can only take so much. I couldn't do this anymore.

I stepped back and felt this sense of relief wash over me. I was done.

Her anger stopped for a moment as she looked at me and I think she sensed what had just happened. Her face contorted into wrath I had not seen yet. She started throwing everything she could get her hands on. She tried to scratch out my eyes. She punched and bit me. I ran out the door and left in my car as the contents of our living room started getting thrown out on to the yard.

I didn't have a plan, but I knew I could never spend another unaccompanied minute with her. Who knows what she might try to claim I've done to her. Getting out of this relationship without further damage would require witnesses from this point forward.

I was driving around trying to figure out where I was going to spend the night when my phone rang. Since it was her, I wasn't going to answer and listen to her apologies. However, she left a voicemail saying that the excitement of the evening had sent her son into an asthma attack. She was going to the hospital. I suspected that this was not true. She loved using her kids as pawns for guilt.

I didn't know where she had gone, but I used the opportunity of her being out of the house to go change the locks. Before the night was over, she showed up with the man I had "rescued" her from. A few threats were thrown around (by her, not him) and just like that, she was living back in his house.

We were legally divorced a week later.

As bad as this situation was, believe it or not, I have not put the worst stuff in here. I have a limit to the darkness I will post on my blog. She is a deeply disturbed woman.

As with every other post I have done this month, I will wrap it up by telling how this person affected me and what I learned from it. Some of this is difficult to admit.

First, I severely damaged my reputation in that small town. That bar where I met her was the only place in town to hang out and meet people and it was permanently off-the-table for me. I don't live in that town anymore, but I'm not sure I would even be welcome there today and it's been over 25 years.

After coming out of such a one-sided controlling relationship, I over-compensated when I later got married. I was so determined to never be taken advantage of like that again. It took a few years to shake free of the baggage I brought into my second marriage. I was super-sensitive about any type of criticism toward me. I did not like to be questioned about anything. I almost wonder if it was a mild form of PTSD. It was a five-month nightmare and I did not come out unscathed.

My friends started coming back around once she was gone and they got to hear the stories about what went on behind closed doors. And I told them that I was hurt they abandoned me. They rightfully defended themselves. They hadn't abandoned me. I had abandoned them. And there was no reason they should be expected to have to sit in a room with a person they hated just to show loyalty to me. They were more than happy to hang out with me anytime she wasn't around. And it's not like I didn't know where they were. But she had worked to alienate me from my friends and I unknowingly let her do it.

They also reminded me that they had all told me to steer clear of her. None of them saw a happy ending to this and I had chosen to ignore them. That is the biggest part of what I take away from all this.

When everyone can see something except for you, you might want to accept that it is you who is blind.

I saw the warning signs before I got married. I saw a few of them before I even "rescued" her, but I decided I knew better than everyone else. And I mean EVERYONE. So many people were against us that I was determined to make it work just to "win" and shove it in their faces. I honestly believe that if no one had said anything, I would have backed out on my own before it was too late.

LIFE LESSON: If you have surrounded yourself with good people who you respect, then their guidance and opinions should carry some weight. Otherwise, why are they your friends?

Thank you to all of you who had my back. I am so sorry I did not listen.

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This month, I am participating in the A to Z Challenge. Each day this month, people around the world are writing blog posts and working their way through the alphabet. Each person decides their own personal theme. I am writing about people who have affected my life.

PSA: Stop Being Stupid! - (Take 2)

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an angry rant about the idiot lemmings on Facebook who just copy and paste everything they are told to. Click here for that rant.

That was about people posting that their timeline was missing people and this Facebook post could fix it.

Do you remember these posts floating around?

Well, now that I have educated the world about just how stupid that is everyone should know better, but apparently they don't.

Today, Facebook is flooded with these posts.

Now, before I get going, I want it known that I do not have a problem with any of the people who made these posts. They were told by one of their friends that they had received a bogus friend request and just chose to warn people that it was not them. They didn't know what was going on and just chose to share a warning. They got the same message the rest of us did and fell for it, but at least they didn't forward it on.

However, I DO have a problem with the people who sent out the private message to their friends that caused this panic.

I have received this message from 17 different people today.

SEVENTEEN!!!

And that is just so far. One of those came in while I was typing this post. It's not over yet.

Let's break this down a bit.

When I received the very first one this morning (before I knew this was going to be a big thing), I knew it wasn't true.

Now, I am not making this claim to say "Oh, look how smart I am." I am saying it because the message makes no sense.

The first line states that the sender received a friend request from me. So, at first, I thought they had. After all, that's what they claimed. However, as I continued to read the message, it was very obviously a message that they received and were told to forward. So, they did.

Now, it's bad enough that someone just forwards anything they are told to forward, but when I called the first person out on sending this thing, he responded in the same way as four other people responded later in the day.

ROUGH PARAPHRASE: I really don't know anything about computers, so…

Now, I'm sorry…but no.  You're not off the hook.

You may have told me you don't know anything about computers, but you are familiar with the English language. The message that these people sent to me and many of their friends includes the language "I actually got another friend request from you". This is not complicated computer lingo or industry technical jargon.

You may not know anything about computers or the internet or Facebook, but you DO know that you did NOT receive a friend request from me and you are sending me a message that states you did. That has nothing to do with your knowledge about computers. That has to do with your grasp of the English language. And I know you understand English because you followed all the directions included on how to copy and paste. However, you paid no attention to the content of what you were sending.

I said this in my last post about Facebook lunacy and I will say it again. Sending someone a message that contains content you know not to be true makes you a liar. Strong language, I know. But that is the definition of the word.

You did not receive a friend request from me, yet you sent me a message that claims you did. Why? Because someone told you to send it.

Let's put this in a real-world setting and try to imagine what the average person would do.

---

Let's say one of your co-workers walks up to you and says, "Hey, I have received three party invitations from you. I know they are not from you, but I thought you should know. Someone is throwing a party in your name. You need to let everyone else know so they don't fall for it."

You are shocked as to why someone would want to host a party and say it was your party. "OK. I'll let people know they should not accept invitations for my party since I am not throwing one."

Your co-worker says, "Wait. No. Don't tell people the invites from you are fake. Go tell someone you received an invitation from them and you know it was fake."

Now you are confused, "But I didn't get an invitation from them. You said you got one from me. When did you get it?"

The co-worker sighs. "Ugh. I didn't. Someone told me they received a fake one from me, so I'm trying to spread the word."

You cock your head, "So, why am I telling people invites came from me when they came from you?"

"Oh my goodness. Listen, they didn't actually come from me. They were fake. But Brenda told me that Charles had told her he had received some from her…for her party…that she is not actually having. Anyway, you better hurry. And be sure to tell everyone in the office individually to ignore any party requests from you. Also, they need to let everyone know to ignore any requests that are sent from them. Understand?"

"You are crazy."

---

That conversation seems more realistic. Why does logic and critical thinking just fly out the window as soon some people read it on Facebook?

 

PSA: Stop Being Stupid!

Today is my birthday.

Forty-seven years old.

And as someone reaching the justified "grumpy old man" status, I was met with something that made me grumpy as soon as I rolled out of bed and checked my Facebook. Although, honestly, this seems to happen more and more often lately.

It was one of these stupid Facebook posts. Maybe you've seen this one floating around.

I cropped out the owner of this account to save a little embarrassment

Here it is in text form in case you can't see the picture well.

I wondered where everybody had been!
This is good to know: It's ridiculous to have 200 friends and only 25 are allowed to see my post.
I ignored this post earlier, but It WORKS!! I have a whole new news feed. I’m seeing posts from people I haven’t seen in years.
Here’s how to bypass the system FB now has in place that limits posts on your news feed.
Their new algorithm chooses the same few people - about 25 - who will read your posts. Therefore,
Hold your finger down anywhere in this post and "copy" will pop up. Click "copy". Then go your page, start a new post and put your finger anywhere in the blank field. "Paste" will pop up and click paste.
This will bypass the system.
If you are reading this message, do me a favor and leave me a quick comment...a "hello," a sticker, whatever you want, so you will appear in my newsfeed! It WORKS!!

Please bring back my friend

I have been seeing this all over Facebook for the last weeks. I hadn't seen it for a few days, but it was back again this morning and now I have high cholesterol. It's time to speak up. Let's stop being stupid!

Before I get started here, if you are one of the people who has shared this status, let me take the time to personally apolog…nope. Nope. Nope. I can't do it. You should have known better. And this isn't about computer savvy. Pay attention.

Let me try to help some of you out there and maybe we can stop this lunacy.

Basically, this post states that the algorithm Facebook uses keeps you from seeing all the posts of your friends (or your friends from seeing you - there's a bit of discrepancy in the language used here).  There is some truth to this statement. Facebook does mess with your timeline a little. I understand that can be frustrating and wanting to fix it. This post claims to be the way to do so.

It is the people who actually believe the claims of this post who baffle me. Once again, no apology. Get a helmet.

Let's break this down a few sentences at a time.

I wondered where everybody had been!
This is good to know: It's ridiculous to have 200 friends and only 25 are allowed to see my post.
I ignored this post earlier, but It WORKS!! I have a whole new news feed. I’m seeing posts from people I haven’t seen in years.

The first thing that caught my attention was this claim that it works.

How do you know that it works? If you are just posting this on your page for the first time, you cannot honestly claim that it works. You have not seen the results yet. In fact, while you are pasting it in, you haven't even hit SEND yet and you are still telling all of your friends that this works when you actually have no idea or even the thinnest shred of evidence. That makes you a liar.

That may seem like harsh language, but it is what it is. Liar. How does it feel to have your britches constantly on fire?

I wondered where everybody had been!
This is good to know: It's ridiculous to have 200 friends and only 25 are allowed to see my post.
I ignored this post earlier, but It WORKS!! I have a whole new news feed. I’m seeing posts from people I haven’t seen in years.

For this section, let's look at the discrepancy in what this thing actually claims to do. The first bold statement claims that some people aren't able to see your post. However, the second bold statement uses language stating that you are not seeing other people's posts. Which is it? Is the problem with how you see your own wall restricting you from seeing other people or with how your posts go out to others and keeps them from seeing yours?

And if you think I'm being picky here, the writer mixes them up again a little further down.

Here’s how to bypass the system FB now has in place that limits posts on your news feed.
Their new algorithm chooses the same few people - about 25 - who will read your posts. Therefore,

Once again, does this algorithm limit what you see or limit what posts of yours your friends can see. These are not the same thing. Even if this thing did work (SPOILER ALERT: it doesn't), it would not fix both your's and your friends' walls.  The original author of this post couldn't even decide which lie he wanted to tell. But for some reason, many of you are willing to help him anyway.

Now, let's look at the most incredible part of this entire thing.

Hold your finger down anywhere in this post and "copy" will pop up. Click "copy". Then go your page, start a new post and put your finger anywhere in the blank field. "Paste" will pop up and click paste.
This will bypass the system.

The instructions direct you to copy this status and then paste it into your feed. And like a good sheep, many people did just as they were told. That is what is supposed to fix it. Let's look at this claim.

By the time you have done this and hit SEND, all you have really done is put up a Facebook status. Something you have done hundreds of times. You did not change any settings. You did not reset your account. You did not bypass the system (what system?). You did not rewrite any algorithm. You have done nothing but post a status. How, in the name of Sofía Vergara, could anyone possibly have believed that posting something on their wall would change their account settings.

Probably the same people who think sharing or liking a status will save a random baby who has cancer. 

I pointed this idiocy out to someone the other day and they told me I was wrong. He said I missed a key part of the message, but I said that I only missed that he was one of the idiots. He pointed out that the message asked the people who see it to leave a comment to get them added to the new list of people who will get to see their stuff (or you'll get to see their stuff - still some confusion there) in order for it to work.

Here is what he was talking about.

If you are reading this message, do me a favor and leave me a quick comment...a "hello," a sticker, whatever you want, so you will appear in my newsfeed! It WORKS!!

This is the same as the problem I pointed out above. How does someone leaving a comment approve them to be part of your feed in any different way than if they were leaving a comment before? In the end, you are still just posting a status and they are leaving a comment.

NOTHING DIFFERENT  OR SPECIAL  OR MAGICAL
HAS HAPPENED HERE!

…other than you are getting laughed at by the person who originally wrote this post to see how many people would fall for it.

STOP IT!

The only way to see certain people in your newsfeed more often is to be sure your settings are arranged the way you want them and interact with people on Facebook. Facebook does give precedence to the people you interact with more. But a one-time status, comment or like will have ZERO effect.

The people who believe and post this stuff are probably the same people who post the status claiming that Facebook has no legal right to the pictures they uploaded there. Despite the fact that using Facebook required agreeing to Zuckerberg's TERMS AND CONDITIONS (an actual legal document).

So, everyone, for the sake my happiness, don't be stupid. AND if you see someone else being stupid, please say something. They need to know…and be publicly shamed if you can arrange it.

Starting To Figure This Place Out

Last week, I returned from an English competition I participated in last year. It was four days of sitting under studio lights and listening to children showcase a talent they had prepared.

Some of the performances were great. Others were like listening to Gilbert Gottfried and Fran Drescher having sex with each other.

Despite the long days, I love working on this show. It's an opportunity to do something different and meet a bunch of new people. I make a lot of new Chinese friends and also meet many foreigners who are there doing the same thing. However, this year had one major difference from last year.

Last year, I had only been in China for a couple of months and was still in the "Crap! What have we gotten ourselves into?" mode. Now, I've been here for almost a year and a half and China doesn't seem scary anymore.

I was especially reminded of this when I got home and was reflecting on the week I just had. Each group of judges had two "native" English speakers along with several Chinese judges of differing talents. The other English speaker I was paired with was a Brazilian guy who had only arrived in China the month before and has not had a good experience so far. In fact, the company that brought him here really screwed him over, but he has gotten away from them.

While he enjoys working with children, he is acutely aware of everything around him that "just isn't right." He had a host of complaints over the course of the weekend.

• He was disgusted that some children had memorized answers instead of interacting with the judges.
• He hated that the breakfast they gave us was not what 'normal people' would eat.
• He told us stories of the management style he had to suffer with at his new job.
• The apartment he lived in was sub-standard.
• He didn't agree with the educational system he was working in
• He was having trouble making Chinese friends.
• The language barrier was ridiculous.

 After one of his stories about something he was not happy with, he walked away and another guy in the room (in China for 6 years) said: "He's a whiny little bitch."

While I couldn't disagree with the sentiment, I tried to remind the people in the room that this man had just arrived in the country and is still in freak out mode. Everyone nodded. Those first few months are difficult. It's like being on another planet.

Since I was paired with this guy, we spent a lot of time together and I did my best to help him understand some things, tell him where to buy certain items that he couldn't find and how to do some necessary tasks that seemed insurmountable. One conversation stood out in particular. It happened over breakfast.

James: Don't these people realize that breakfast is supposed to be a different meal? Why are they serving the same stuff we ate at lunch and dinner?

Me: This isn't the same.

James: Well, maybe not. But why don't they at least serve breakfast food?

Me: This is breakfast food. It's Chinese breakfast food. You do understand that we are in China, right?

James: Why can't they serve the food that normal people eat?

Me: Stop and think about this. There are over seven and a half billion people on this planet and almost one and a half billion live in this country. China, the country you are in now, makes up close to 20% of the entire world. Statistically, whatever they eat here is closer to 'normal' than whatever either of us eats in our own countries. This is normal. Everything that happens here is more 'normal' than what happens anywhere else.

He understood my point and let it rest for a moment, but as I scooped up a spoonful of my congee, it struck me. "Did I just say that? Where did that come from?"

As much as I was annoyed at how little this guy was willing to open his mind and try to bend to his surroundings, it occurred to me that this was me a year ago.

I wasn't happy about anything. I didn't know how to pay my bills. Grocery shopping was a disaster. We didn't know how to cook. There were strange smells in our apartment. We came dangerously close to getting hopelessly lost every time we went outside. I couldn't talk to anyone. Even the few people who try to help don't realize how clueless I was. It was horrible.

BUT...

What a difference a year makes. There is still so so so much about China that I don't understand, but the fear and anxiety is gone. I got this. I'm ready to tackle another country now.

The Chinese Language is All Greek to Me

The title of this post isn't really accurate because I took biblical Koine Greek in college. Saying something is "Greek to me" is supposed to mean that it makes no sense, but the fact that I actually know Greek takes away the punch of the statement. However, if I were to say "it's all Tagalog to me," the purpose of the idiom would be lost and some people may even have to pause to look up what Tagalog is which would sever the continuity of the thought and I would have to stop to explain everything. Which it looks like I may have to do anyway.

Maybe I should just say learning Chinese is like walking into your bedroom because you thought you heard a pygmy goat being strangled by a Mormon divorce attorney, but when you open the door the floor is covered in slimy eels wearing clown makeup and a naked Roseanne Barr is sitting on a beanbag in the corner asking if you brought any cheese. It just makes no sense. Especially since I don't own a beanbag.

Oh, and Tagalog is the language spoken in the Philippines.

I only say all this because after living in Beijing for 10 months, Red and I have finally started taking language lessons and it has been…um, challenging.

Chinese doesn't really have an alphabet. At least, not as we understand an alphabet. It is thousands of separate characters. And by thousands, I mean thousands. This is not an exaggeration.

We don't really have to know the characters in order to speak and understand the language, but that doesn't help when trying to read a menu, street signs, bus schedules, or apartment notices. This note is in our lobby right now.

Are they doing maintenance? Fumigating?
Evacuating the building?
I kind of need to know!

So, we are learning it all. We need to understand the language when we hear it. We want to speak it, read it and even be able to write it when the need arises. This means we have decades of memorizing seemingly obscure chicken scratch patterns ahead of us. As well as learning what they all mean and how to pronounce them while stringing them together into comprehensible sentences.

However, before we even get around to learning those characters, first we need to learn pinyin. Pinyin is the method for learning how to say the different characters.

Each of the thousands of characters is pronounced with a combination of the initial sound (pictured above to the left) and the final sound (pictured above to the right). And, as if that isn't already difficult, it is not enough to be able to recognize those apparent English-looking letters because the pronunciation is rarely what it appears to be.

The sounds of the letters have to be relearned to make the Chinese sound. And since I already have a background in not only English, but Greek, Hebrew and Spanish as well, it is often maddening to try to remember and produce the correct pronunciation since each of these languages use letters however they want without regard for what the rest of the world is doing with them. And let's not forget that Chinese has plenty of sounds that don't even exist in any of these other languages meaning I have to do 90 minutes of tongue yoga before every lesson to get it limbered up.

Then, once I feel like I might have a decent handle on pronunciation of a word, I am told that I used the wrong tone. A single sound can have up to five different tones and each tone gives the word an entirely different meaning.

For example, the above chart shows four of the five ways that the word 'ma' can be pronounced. These tones are important. Otherwise, you could end up calling your mother a horse or you might really confuse your weed dealer.

It also shows the two different ways that each word is written in Chinese. Yeah, that's right. When you learn Chinese characters, you have to decide which of their TWO alphabets you want to learn. Isn't this fun?

Using the word 'ma' from the chart above, I can just use that word several times, but with different tones to produce an entire sentence. Ma ma ma ma. That means "My mother scolded me for feeding her hemp to a horse." And if I tack the fifth use of the word 'ma' (neutral tone) to the end of the sentence, it becomes a question.

Simple enough, right?

For now, my goal is to be able to read my Frog and Toad books in their original Chinese by Christmas.

Cave Dwellers

When I was a kid, our family vacations often consisted of going camping at Rend Lake in Southern Illinois. Rend Lake is the lake that was a few miles from our house, but to make it feel like we were on a major journey, our parents would always take us to camp on the other side.

Now, we did have some fun times, but I would yearn for the times when we would go further than the next county over. And get to sleep in an actual bed. And didn't have to catch our food if we wanted to eat. And use a real shower.

I don't blame my parents. A trip to the lake was a low-cost vacation and we didn't have a lot of money. Plus, the main purpose for a vacation is to get away from the stress of work. My dad worked hard in a coal mine and just wanted to get away now and then. Planning a big trip often just causes more stress and my father was of the belief that encouraging man's careless eagerness to live indoors just exaggerated that stress.

Despite the desire to stay close to home and eat burnt potatoes dug out of a campfire, sometimes we had to venture further out because my mother's family lived on the other side of Missouri. On one of our trips to visit them, we made an unscheduled stop to visit Onondaga Cave. I don't know how our parents felt about it, but that cave blew my brothers and I away. It was awesome. From that day on, anytime we were in the St. Louis area, we would beg to go back and see the cave.

On one of these trips, as we saw the interstate sign advertising that the cave was 87 MILES AHEAD, we started our usual pleading and my mother pointed out that there other caves beside that one. Now, that may have been true, but we had not seen those other caves and as stupid children (you may have noticed this about your own children), we wanted to see the one we knew we loved.

Despite how adorable we were, my mother denied our request and forced us to go to Meramac Caverns instead. Once we stopped crying about how horrible our mother was being to us, we looked around and noticed that this cave was even better than Onondaga. It was amazing. From then on, we became cave people.

Wait. Not "cave people" like we quit school and started living naked in the caverns while eating the few bats we could knock off the ceiling and using their guano to protect our skin from the sun when we stepped outside, but "cave people" like people who really enjoy caves.

Every time we were on a road trip, we kept our eyes open for cave systems and since Missouri has over 6,000 chartered caves, there were plenty to find. Our vacations started to center around cavern systems instead of the local lake. One of our vacations even took us to Arkansas because of a large system of caverns we were eager to explore.

On one of these trips, Dad heard about a cave we could explore ourselves and we drove out in the middle of BFE to find it. We went down miles of dirt roads and eventually parked in a field and started walking. It was a long walk, but we eventually found the mouth of the cave and ventured in. I was in junior high and my brothers are 3 and 5 years younger than me. This means that we are significantly younger and more nimble than our parents and were able to move through the cave more quickly and easily.  As the ceiling of the cave got lower and lower, my brothers and I pulled further ahead.

Before long, it required crawling on our hands and knees to progress further. Our parents checked our lights and told us we could go a few yards up to see if it opened up on the other side. If it did, they would follow us through. We edged forward as the ceiling lowered and lowered and soon had to pull ourselves along on our bellies. We yelled back that we were fine every time we heard our parents voices calling for us and continued forward.

As the ceiling started scraping our backs when we moved forward, we decided to move over into the small stream that was flowing beside us. The water was freezing, but the erosion of flowing water gave a few more inches of space to work with. Unfortunately, the ceiling was still getting lower as we progressed. We eventually had to flip over onto our backs and just keep our faces above the water as we pulled ourselves through. Imagine lying on your back in about a foot of water unable raise your head out of the water because there is a slab of stone about two inches above the surface. This is what we were pulling ourselves through. Of course, now that our ears were underwater, we could no longer hear the cries of our parents screaming for us to answer them.

We slowly pushed forward with no regard as to how we would back out of this if the ceiling got so low we couldn't breathe or what our plan would be if the water started to rise. Remember my earlier statement about children being stupid? We inched along and began to notice that we had a little more space than before. We were soon able to flip back over to our stomachs and move much faster. And then, we found the opening. It opened up into a HUGE room. Stalactites, stalagmites and limestone columns were everywhere. It was beautiful.

As much as we wanted to see everything, we could see that there were several paths out of that room and did not want to get lost, so we needed to head back to let our parents know that there was a room back here and they could come on through. We went back into the hole we just came out of.

Using the same method of lying on our backs to breathe, we inched our way back to our parents and surprisingly found them much sooner than we expected. When they were no longer able to hear us, they had done their best to follow us and prayed we didn't all get lost in there forever. They stopped in one of the little rooms we had found not knowing where we had gone after that. They didn't realize there was a path deeper in if you were willing to submerge yourself in water and pull yourself through on your back. Who was being stupid now?

I think that was the first time I ever got grounded on a subterranean level.

My New Found Love for McDonald's

I have always seen myself as a happy-go-lucky type of guy. I am not someone who really gets depressed. Very few things actually upset me and I can recover very quickly from anything that somehow manages to get me down for a moment. Despite all of this, it does not mean I am stress-proof.

I do get stressed, but quite often I am not even aware that it is happening. My apathetic "hey, things could be worse" attitude is real, but that doesn't mean none of the crap happening in my life doesn't rattle around in my head sometimes. Stuff does get caught in there occasionally because, if I'm being honest with myself, there are some things that do require a little more thought than a simple shoulder shrug and cute smirk. Although, I've been told I have an adorable smirk.

Because the concept of stress is so foreign to me (this is not a joke - it's just not how my brain works), I don't always recognize the signs that I may actually be stressed. Whatever situation comes along, I just keep plugging along and do what I do. It is often later when I am exhausted or experiencing muscle tension that the events of the day occur to me.

Wow! That was really messed up! I hope tomorrow is easier.

Another way for me to discover that I was stressed is for something to happen to suddenly remove the stress. It's like when you are doing something outside in the winter and don't realize how cold you are until you step into the warmth of the house. At that point you feel your toes beginning to thaw and the color coming back into your face. Stress works the same way sometimes and I discovered that this happens to me here when I sit down at McDonald's. It just leaves because it is so familiar.

Fruit doesn't even look right.
What is this thing?

Since moving to China, there has been plenty to stress about. I can't read the signs. I don't recognize any of the food. I can't talk to anyone to even ask for directions. I don't know how to pay my bills. Nothing happens the way I expect it to. All the rules are different and I don't have a rule book. Plus, moving is generally considered to be pretty stressful anyway. My wife and I just added the culture and language barrier to the process.

This is why the McDonald's here is so great. It's familiar.

I'm lovin' it

Yeah, I do have to order off the picture menu because I'm basically illiterate. I can't order anything custom like extra pickles or no ketchup because…well, the language again. And they don't have everything on their menu that we have in the States (although they do have a lot of extra weird stuff), but the few items they have that coincide with the U.S. menu are identical in not only appearance but taste.

Now, please understand that I am not someone who always gravitates to the familiar. I love the food here. I've had my share of sheep intestine soup, millet pie, ji'angbing, and more rice than you could imagine. I visit the back-alley street vendors every day to eat some fantastic exotic foods, but every now and then, I need to step away from all the different and come back to the familiar just to refocus my brain. McDonald's provides that for me. It has become my once a week treat. Every Sunday morning, on my way to work, I stop in for a Sausage Egg McMuffin and a hash brown. It helps me reset myself for the coming week and gives me a break from tackling this new culture for a few minutes. For half an hour, I'm not in the new world of China. I'm just at McDonald's reading about the anti-Trump riots on my phone.

In a few months, this place can be my normal.