J - Jokes

If you know me personally, then you know that I like to be the funny guy. I love making people laugh. But it's more than that. I need it. I'm almost like an addict. If I haven't gotten a good laugh out of someone in a while, I tend to get a little stupid in public going for the cheap chuckles. This was not something I took into consideration when I moved to China.

The people here do not find me funny.

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you are well aware that just about everything I post is jokes. I make fun of everything and try to see the humor in any situation and figure out how to laugh at it. I am especially skilled at sarcasm. Unfortunately, sarcasm almost never translates well into Chinese. It is just not part of their culture.

My first week in China was mostly filled with meetings and training on the expectations of my job as an English teacher to small children. After a particularly lengthy speech from my trainer, I raised my hand and asked: "How many children are we allowed to choke each week?"

She looked confused, so I mimicked choking the person next to me to help her understand. She whispered something to her boss who shook her head and whispered something back. She then lowered her voice and looked me dead in the eye. "We don't do that here."

In the States, I'm used to laughter around me almost all the time, but here I almost never get it.

The Chinese do have senses of humor and love a good joke, but their jokes are very different from ours. Most of their humor seems to be based on puns. They love words that sound similar to other words. And since Chinese has a limited number of sound combinations, there are many many many words that are very similar if not exactly identical. And since my Chinese isn't strong enough to make the jokes they like, I generally just get a lot of awkward looks.

So, I put my jokes on social media. Now, China does not have Facebook or Twitter. They have other apps. The one I use is called WeChat. I thought having the written words in front of them would help, but it did not. Here are some screenshots.

I'm going to hire her to be my dietician.

---

I have tried many times to explain to my students what happened here.
The semantics of language sometimes cause confusion.
They understand that but fail to see why it's funny.

---

At least she has my best interests at heart.

---

Yeah, Peggy. We all do.

---

Violetta will not be fooled.

---

I have a Ukranian friend who takes my jokes and sends them to his Chinese friends and then sends me screenshots of their responses.

Her sense of justice has been triggered.

---

Yeah, Peggy, that's kind of the point.

---

Well, pretty much everything,
but that's not the point.

---

Are you sure? Maybe you need to meet more people.

---

As you may have already guessed,
Irving is not much fun at parties.

---

Violetta's a little girl,
so laughing at her makes me feel bad.

---

Well, technically no…that's where the joke part comes in.

I - Income Tax (as an American in China)

My wife and I just finished doing our taxes last week. Just like many of other people all across the States. However, ours were a little different this year.

No part of our income came from America. We live in China and were here for the entire 2017 calendar year. Nevertheless, we still have to file taxes in the States.

Didn't know that, did you?

I didn't.

Apparently, there are only two countries in the entire world that make you pay taxes to your home country even if you aren't living there.

The United States and Eritrea.

Eritrea is not one of the lands of Middle Earth or a planet from the Star Wars universe. It's a real place that agrees with America on bleeding its citizens regardless of where they live. For many expats around the world, this means double taxation since we are already paying taxes in the country we reside in.

Luckily, we do not fall in the double taxation group because of the FEIE (Foreign Earned Income Exclusion). It can get a little complicated, but if you qualify and we do it means you don't have to pay any taxes for money earned abroad unless your income is over $101,300. And I didn't even come close. But you still have to file. Income has to be reported regardless.

There are two ways to qualify to get this exclusion. There is the Physical Presence Test which typically applies to those people who are jumping from country to country all the time and don't really have a home base, but the paperwork can get quite complex. For us, we passed the Bona Fide Residence Test. This was easier because we were able to establish that we had been in China for most of the year. However, it took some proving that we weren't just traveling. Here's some things the U.S. looks favorably on when trying to get out of paying taxes:

• Establishment of a temporary home in a foreign country for an indefinite period (ie. by having a long term lease or owning a home there).
• General assimilation; participation in communities on the social and cultural level. So go ahead and get that library card and gym membership.
• Physical presence in the foreign country, meaning that you do have to be living there.
• Marital status and residence of the family — if you have a local spouse or family members there, it helps.
• Assumption of economic burdens and payment of local taxes.
• Other documentation such as health insurance, local bank account info or a drivers license.

 Since we could provide documentation for all of this except for the gym membership, we were good to go. No taxes to be paid to the U.S. The amount we paid here were plenty high enough. I was grateful to get out of paying more.

H - Hibernation

Spring is finally starting to raise its sexy beautiful head. I am so happy to see it. Living in China, the government decided when you do or do not need heat and this year there was a cold snap a week after the March 15 date of cutting the Beijing heat supply. It was a long week of being bundled up and wearing two pairs of wool socks. Luckily, the temperature has gotten above freezing today. I think the worst of it is behind us.

I'm not just happy to see spring because I live in the midst of communism and am not allowed to make my own personal care decisions. I have always been this way. I despise cold weather. Hate it. In fact, I'm not sure there is a strong enough word in the English language to accurately describe the way I feel about being cold.

I have written about this (click here) on numerous occasions. I hate it and react to it the same way every winter. I hole up inside my apartment and basically refuse to come out unless I have to go to work or my wife tricks me with food.

Plus, now I have gotten older which seems to make the cold even more difficult to tolerate and I have developed rheumatoid arthritis throughout most of the joints in my body and the cold really makes them ache. It also takes much longer in the morning to get my joints to loosen up each morning when it is cold. Getting old sucks. But the cold sucks anyway. Old or not.

G - Grandma

I got a message earlier this week that my grandmother had died. She was 97 years old and had been sick for a while, so it didn't come as a big surprise. However, it made me feel a little helpless being all the way on the other side of the world in China.

Grandma Mary Jane was my mother's mother. When I was very young, she lived in a mobile home behind our house. This was awesome because grandma (the lady with the cookies, the cool games, and the always running air conditioning) lived right next door. My father had a crippling fear of using any appliance that might raise the electric bill, so her house was a favorite in the summertime.

About the time I turned 10, she moved from behind our house in Illinois to Arizona. Like many old people, she felt the call to a warmer climate. However, instead of Florida, she opted for the desert. After that move, she really wasn't a part of my life anymore. I might see her once a year when she would come back to the Midwest in the wintertime to see all her kids, but that was about it.

Once she got significantly older, my mother and her siblings made the decision that grandma needed to come back to the Midwest to be closer to the family. She didn't want to come back, but there had been several medical scares and it was getting more and more difficult for her to care for herself.

She was in and out of the hospital and various nursing homes over the years. There were several years when we were told we needed to go to Missouri to spend Christmas with Grandma because this will be our last holiday with her, but somehow she always held on.

One year I came home from college to visit the family for the weekend and Mom suggested we all take a trip to see Grandma since I was home. My eyes got wide and I turned to my brother, "Grandma's still alive?!" I thought it was funny.

For a little more perspective on how this joke works let me mention that this happened in the mid-90's and we were already joking about how grandma would never die. She had been on her deathbed dozens of times and somehow always got well enough to even go back to her own home.

Look at that date again. The mid-90's!

That's over 20 years ago.

So, if we were already noticing the pattern back then, try to take a guess at how many more times this happened since then.

I know this sounds jaded, but she was a loved woman. She was just really good at teasing everyone, but 5 days ago the teasing came to an end. She met her end due to pneumonia that she just couldn't beat this time.

Fortunately, the last time I was in the States, I was flying out of St. Louis which is where my grandmother was in a nursing home. So, I got to see her last August.

She stomped me at cards.
Always did.

I'm glad I was able to get that last visit in. It was great to know that her mind stayed sharp right up until the end.

F - Firewall

I love the internet. LOVE IT! All those statistics about how much time people spend on their computers every day that sound so depressing can be tripled when applied to me. I read blogs, check the news, post on social media, watch YouTube videos, download movies, do my banking and tons of other stuff.

When I lived in the States, I used it for most of my shopping, booking tickets to anywhere, finding coupons, ordering food, etc. I love love love the internet and fully believe in using it to its full potential.

However, my usage of it has changed drastically in the last couple of years.

Now, I live in China and the internet is a totally different animal over here. It is highly restricted. Whereas using the internet in the States is like a massive orgy in the mud at a rock concert, the internet in China is like doing it with a comatose patient and you're triple wrapped with condoms.

The Chinese government is very proud of what they call the 'Golden Firewall.' The people of China cannot access any non-Chinese social media. Here are just a few of the banned sites:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pinterest
• tumblr
• Instagram

They also don't allow most non-Chinese news sites:

• Fox News
• CNN
• TIME
• Al Jazeera
• Huffington Post 

They don't allow anything Google:

• google.com
• Google maps
• Blogger
• YouTube
• Gmail

And no streaming video sites:

• Netflix
• Hulu
• Amazon Prime
• HBO Go

All of these services have their own Chinese version. However, they are all heavily monitored. Saying the wrong thing can get you in a lot of trouble. Don't ever say anything against the government or the Communist Party and as certain events happen they often add to the list of even specific words you cannot use. Here's a link to an article of new restrictions from the last month.

Click the picture to read the article

To even be able to access sites like this (or even my blog) a person in China needs to use a VPN which basically fools the internet provider into thinking you are accessing the internet from a server in another country. It's not legal, but it's the only way to get news from outside China. New laws are passed all the time to penalize people who are caught using them and people who provide them.

For those of you who are reading this and screaming at their screen "YOU IDIOT. YOU ARE POSTING RIGHT NOW ABOUT HOW YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW!!!" You can relax.

I am not breaking the law. I am writing this up in a Microsoft Word document and emailing it to my brother for him to upload to Blogspot since I do not have access to it.

I really miss Netflix.

E - Expat

My wife and I moved from America to Beijing China in September of 2016. This opened up an entirely new world to us. We became expats.

Being an expat has its definite hardships, but it's also a cool club to be in. We know people from all over the world and interact with them on a regular basis. Every expat has a fascinating story about how they ended up living in China. We have tons of Chinese friends here, but we also know people from Russia, Canada, Spain, France, Ukraine, Peru, Australia, South Africa, Jamaica, Antigua, Tasmania, Mongolia, Thailand, Brazil, Ghana, Serbia, Greece, Italy and many other places.

For the first few months after getting here, we obviously didn't have many friends yet and were trying to get to know people. After months of hearing only Chinese every time we stepped out of our apartment, it was exciting to see another Western face on the subway. There have been dozens of times I've approached someone on the street and initiated conversation (eager to speak some English) only to discover that they only speak German or French.

I have been asked many times by people back home in the States if I've made any American friends over here. And after 18 months of living here, I can honestly say "No. Not a single one."

I occasionally cross paths with another American, but I really don't meet that many. My friends are from all over the place. I don't know why none of them are American, but they aren't. And that's okay. In the States, I might have thought of someone as my Canadian friend or my British friend, but here, I'm just grateful to have a few people who I can speak my native language with. Even if it is not their native language.

However, regardless of how many friends we may make, we have chosen to live in a part of the world where we cannot pass for one of the locals. Had we moved to Germany, the Germans might think we were one of them…until we opened our mouths. However, we look distinctly different than a Chinese person.

Walking down the street, we get stared at a lot when we are not in an expat area. Children will actually point and we hear the word lǎowài (老外), which means foreigner.

There is some argument about whether this is a derogatory word, but it is clear what it means whether it is good or bad. "You are not one of us."

Not sure this applies, but I'm going with it.

In the States, the "melting pot", an Asian person is just one of the hundreds of different kinds of
people who make up the country. American prides itself on being a nation of immigrants. Therefore, almost any nationality doesn't really stand out. You can look like a person of any culture and still be distinctly American. However, in China everyone is Chinese. If you do not look Chinese, it is blatantly obvious that you are not from there. Which makes the word lǎowài very true. It is just a word that points out what is very obvious.

So then, it is up to the expat to decide just how foreign he wants to be. I may never look like a Chinese person, but I can decide if I want to learn to speak the language, embrace the culture and welcome their practices. With time, many expats really begin to change the way they think about and view the world.

In the expat community, you will find people on each end of the spectrum. Some expats totally dive into the culture of wherever they are living to become as much like the locals as possible. Others fight to stay true to exactly who they are and never give an inch. Most fall somewhere in between. Most of the time, it isn't really even a conscious choice. Each person is just who they are and are responding to their surrounding in the way that is most comfortable for them. Either way, it makes for a fascinating group of people to identify with.

D - Danang

I got started on the A to Z Challenge a little late this year and have had to play catch-up for the first few posts. This post will explain why my posts have been coming late. And if you know me, you know that I hate being late for anything. However, this time I think it was worth it.

---

I was in Vietnam!

The first day of the challenge (April 1^st), I was on a plane returning from Danang, Vietnam. I was on planes and in airports all day and just didn't feel like writing when I finally made it home. I had to immediately go to work the next day and that put me another day behind. But this post gets me all caught up and for the rest of this challenge, I can just write one post a day.

A few months ago, I decided I wanted to see Vietnam. I already live in China, so round-trip tickets are only about $400. My wife and I started making the plans and then my wife's work schedule changed. However, since I married well and have an incredible woman, she encouraged me to go ahead and take the trip anyway. I took her up on her offer.

SIDE NOTE: For any of you poor saps who are thinking "It's a trap", I feel sorry for you for not being smart enough to marry a woman who doesn't play those stupid games.

My wife grew up traveling all over the world, so she saw this as an opportunity for me to be able to go see someplace that she hasn't already been. So, I hopped on a plane and had a great weekend.

I rented an apartment in the back of a clothing store that cost me $11 a night and spent my days running all over the city, eating local food, and walking the beach.

Boardwalk along My Khe Beach in Danang

Water buffalo in the rice patties outside Danang

Boat repair on the Han River in Danang

Hoian - Ancient City

My Khe Beach in Danang

Night market in Ancient City Hoian

Boats docked under the Dragon Bridge
on the Han River in Danang

Wandering cattle outside Hoian

Fruit vendors in Ancient Town Hoian

Buddha statue in the middle of Danang

It was a whirlwind trip, so I didn't get to see nearly as much stuff as I wanted to. However, since it is really easy to get there from here, I am sure that I will be going back again.

C - Connected

As I was crawling into bed last night, I grabbed my phone to check social media real quick. This is a necessity in today's world where someone might have a stroke if something happens and they didn't learn about it within moments.

I know that I am guilty of this and spend much more time online and interacting with my social media profiles than is probably healthy, but I use my living on the other side of the world as an excuse. Doesn't matter if that is a legitimate excuse or not, I'm all about me being me. And if you know me at all, people's opinions of what I should be doing rarely come into play anyway.

OK…I'm getting a little off-track here. Back to social media.

Looking at my phone, I was excited to see that I had a private message from one of my brothers. It was to let me know that our grandmother had died.

Now, this was not a big shock. She has been sick for a long time and she was in her nineties. Personally, I haven't been close to her for decades. She moved from Illinois (where we lived) to Arizona over 30 years ago. I have some great memories of my grandmother from my childhood, but they are old memories. In my adult life, I very rarely ever saw her. Therefore, we weren't exactly close.

Although I am in no need of comforting, this does make me think about my situation. In 2016, my wife and I moved to Beijing. When we were leaving, we mentioned to our familes that we may have to miss some things. Living on the other side of the world means we may not make it to graduations, weddings or even funerals. We had to mentally prepare ourselves for the possiblity that one of our parents could die and we may not be able to make it home. However, knowing something is possible and actually having to do it are not the same thing.

I was not very close to my grandmother, but I would like to be able to be there for the family gathering that will be happening in the next few days. It's okay that I can't make it, but it has made me reflect on what sort of things I might not be okay with missing.

B - Book Migraine

Years ago, I wrote out my Bucket List. Number 4 on that list is to write and publish a book. For a long time, that was all that had happened. It was just an item on my list of things I would like to do before I die.

About two years ago, something snapped in my brain and I actually got started on it. I started developing a main character and putting a basic plot together. I made a basic outline and I could see the pieces starting to fall into place. However, I still let some time go by without actually haven written anything.

Not knowing how to actually get started, I called a friend of mine who has had some publishing success to find out "when exactly do you start the actual writing process?" I mean, I had the idea, but had never tackled fiction before. How much do I need before I start writing.

I now feel like this is a ridiculous question, but it seemed legitimate at the time. Just start writing.

However, it still wasn't getting done. I loved sitting and brainstorming and working out plot point, coming up with twists and giving different characters little personality quirks. But I wasn't getting around to sitting and writing the story. Which is the most important aspect of getting anything written. There is nothing to read that has never been written first.

Last November, I decided to participate in the National Novel Writing Month which encourages writers to crank out a 50,000 word novel in one month. And after almost two years of sitting on my ideas for a book, I actually sat down and wrote the entire story. All of it. I wrote the whole thing in 30 days. However, nothing has really happened since then.

I cranked it out and I am immensely proud of the story that fell out of MY brain, but I am smart enough to know that it is not ready to just be sent off to a publisher.

Now, I need to go back through it page by page and tighten it up, proofread, close any plot holes, check for consistency, and get all the wording just right. This part is SO SO SO SO SO much more difficult than the writing part. Plus, it is so slow.

I know that I have to get it done and I eventually will, but it is so easy to make excuses about why itisn't getting done. My wife and I live in a ridiculously tiny apartment. It is difficult to concentrate when there is someone right on top of you. My work schedule gets in the way. I'm always tired and just want to sit in front of the television.

I know these are all just excuses. They are not real reasons why I cannot get this finished, but I find them rattling around in my head all the time.

Part of my reasoning for doing this A to Z Challenge is to start the daily writing habit again. I'm ready to get this book finished so I can start working on my next one. Maybe I can get that one going a bit faster.

A - All Over the Place

All this month I will be participating in the A to Z Challenge and writing a post starting with the scheduled letter of the alphabet. The first post was supposed to go up on April 1st, but I was out of the country and just couldn't get to a computer. So, I will use this post to start catching up and letting my readers know my theme for the month.

It's pretty simple. I don't really have one.  My posts will be

All over the place.

Pretty simple really.

I tossed around a lot of ideas about what I should write about all month but just couldn't narrow it down to one topic. I just have too much going on in my life right now that I really really want to write about and I didn't want to leave anything out just because it didn't fit into my theme.

Plus, "all over the place" kind of describes my life.

• Went to college off and on for over 20 years before settling on and getting my degrees.
• I've had hundreds of different jobs.
• Founded a motorcycle club.
• Worked in a tattoo shop while pastoring a church.
• Aspired to be a stuntman.
• Currently live in China.
• Proposed to a woman online who I had never met (and married her)

It's just too difficult to pick one aspect and stick with it. So, let's just see where this goes.

I am Lazy on an International Level

This month marks 18 months since Red and I arrived in the Middle Kingdom. We've been here long enough that this is just where we live now. The adventure is gone. Having the adventure gone means that most of the stress that goes along with that adventure is gone also. Having the stress gone is a good thing, but I miss the adventure.

We have gotten settled to the point that we are shopping around for apartments. Something that is not fun to do in any culture and China is no exception. Now that we have this place a little better figured out, we know what we like. And, more importantly, we are very aware of what we don't like.

We've learned how to order food directly to our apartment instead of going out. That is really nice in the winter. However, when we do go out, we have the regular restaurants we enjoy visiting. Just like in the States, we try new places also, but you settle into your favorites.

I have received messages from so many people saying things like:

• "Wow! Your life is so exciting."
• "What's it like to live in Beijing?"
• "How do you know what you're eating is actually pork?"
• "Aren't you scared of all the pandas running around?"

When we first got here, it was adventure all the time. Confusion, cluelessness, abject terror when out of the apartment, but adventure. However, with time, it has just become the place that we live. Most of my life in the States, I would wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, go to work, come home and watch TV, eat dinner and hang around the house. Now I live in China and my typical daily routine is eat breakfast, go to work, come home and watch TV, eat dinner and hang around the house.

As you can see, it hasn't really changed much. The only real work I do here that I didn't do in the States is searching the internet for pirated TV shows to download since there is no Netflix in China.

If you know me at all, you are well aware that I am rather lazy. Now I do love to experience new things and enjoy being the center of attention, but I'm not too keen on either if it will require much effort. I am more than happy to do nothing. And I have quickly learned that I can do that literally anywhere in the world.

My new life goal is to take a nap on every continent.

 

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.

Maybe Society Should Have a Warning Label

Every now and then, something happens in America and I get to hold my smug head high and say "Not me, I don't live there." I may be from the States, but I've been safely on the other side of the world in China for the last 18 months. Therefore, I will accept no responsibility for the events that have prompted some of the recent headlines.

Tide Pod Challenge 

First, let's not even get into how stupid someone has to be to think that eating soap would be a good idea. For generations, parents washed kids' mouths out with soap as a punishment. Now, the kids are doing it willingly. There are plenty of jokes already written about this and a ton of memes. You've already seen everything floating around social media and can look them up for yourself if you wish.

Stop discouraging people from eating Tide Pods. It won't work. The whole reason the world's in the mess it's in goes back to the very first people being told NOT to eat something.

— Minor Character (@brettminor) January 23, 2018

People (especially young people whose brains haven't fully developed yet) doing stupid things is not really surprising. Still stupid. Feel free to shame them all you like (I know I do). But not surprising. A huge percentage of the world's population are idiots and always will be. What surprises me is the reactions that people have to the stupid trends.

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, Google and other sites started getting pressure to remove all videos featuring idiots eating Tide Pods. Some sites even started giving 'strikes' to people who uploaded content showing people eating Tide Pods. Some people have even suggested holding these companies liable for even having the videos. Click here for an article explaining it all.

Tide even hastily threw together a video to stop people from ingesting their non-food product.

What should Tide PODs be used for? DOING LAUNDRY. Nothing else.

Eating a Tide POD is a BAD IDEA, and we asked our friend @robgronkowski to help explain. pic.twitter.com/0JnFdhnsWZ

— Tide (@tide) January 12, 2018

I find it pathetic that pressure was put on them to have to say anything at all to the idiots who are well aware of what they are doing, but I respect the attitude that Tide took with their public service announcement.

They have been active in getting information out there about not eating laundry detergent and have helped to get internet videos removed, but they have stated that they will not change the appearance of their product. To read the article, click here. To summarize their stance: Stupid people are stupid people and we cannot change that. You're lucky we are even acknowledging these idiots. There's already a warning label on the box. That should be enough.

And I couldn't agree more.

It bothers me that pressure is being put on anyone to do something about this. No one is to blame for any idiot older than a toddler purposefully chewing on a Tide Pod. Not a website, not the manufacturer, not another person who did it, no one other than the person who made this choice. That person is a moron and YouTube cannot be blamed for that.

YouYube also has videos showing how to grow a garden, fix your car, ace an interview, etc. If you just have to do something you saw on the internet, have an honor student help you choose a better video.

---

Next topic, Crock-Pot Mania

SPOILER ALERT: If you are a watcher of the hit TV show This is Us and are not familiar with the big plot-twist that happened earlier this week, do not continue. You have been warned.

Now, I do not watch This is Us. I am not really even sure what it is about, but it is in the news this week because they killed off one of the main characters. Jack Pearson, the "world's greatest dad" dies in a house fire that was started by a crock pot.

Now, other than entertainment news, this doesn't seem like much of a news story. However, it has grown into something more. This sometimes happens when people are stupid. If you haven't noticed, this is the theme I am running with.

People all over the country are looking at their crock pots with suspicion and wondering if they are safe to have in their homes. It has gotten so bad that both the writers of the show and crock pot companies have had to issue statements explaining the safety of these devices.

Apparently, many of the fans of this show don't realize that this crockpot was a fictional item that was 20 years old and had a faulty switch that "had to be fiddled with a little" to get it to work. Emphasis on the word fictional. This was a literary device used to produce the outcome the writers were going for. They could have used an electric knife, a dishwasher, just faulty wiring, or had him stumble down the stairs and break his neck. That's it. But…as with the Tide Pod Challenge, people are stupid. Now, they're scared of their slow cookers. I don't even know what to say.

Maybe we could learn a lesson from Mexico where even their drug lords are more trustworthy.

Good. Nothing to worry about. If there's anything I know about international drug lords, it's that they're impeccably honest. pic.twitter.com/ZyvbgHN3Xa

— Minor Character (@brettminor) January 26, 2018

Life is Rough

Today is my first day of my six week vacation. SIX WEEKS! It's time to party.

I get these unplanned (but fortunately paid) breaks quite often due to the nature of my job. I am an English teacher in Beijing, but not the same kind of teacher as the local teachers. I am the "native English-speaking oral teacher" at my school. I have over 700 students spread out across 20 different classes in third through fifth grade. I meet with each class once a week for 40 minutes.

This means that I am not their actual English teacher. They have Chinese English teachers all week and I pop in once a week to play English-speaking games. I don't do typical English lessons. I just design my classes to get my students to talk. It gives them a chance to practice the language they have been learning without getting caught up in structure, grammar, and syntax. Those things are important, but it is not the purpose of my being there. Plus, they get exposure to a native English-speaker.

This makes my job different from the regular teachers in several ways:

• I don't give homework
• I don't grade papers
• I don't give tests
• I don't have progress reports
• I don't assign grades
• I am not responsible for any paperwork

Because of this, I also don't go to staff meetings, teacher's workshops, field trips, extra-curricular activities, after-school programs, etc. I don't even stay at school for the entire day. I show up in time to teach the first class I have for the day and leave as soon as I finish my last class. While the other teachers are there Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., I put in just under five hours and I only work four days a week. Take all these "perks" and add in that as the "professional expert" in my field, I get paid more than them. So you can imagine how popular I am with the rest of the staff.

Me being off work right now is one of those perks. School is still in session, but my services are not needed. This week is the semi-yearly progress test for all Chinese students. Because all students are taking this test, there are no classes for me to teach. So I get to stay home.

All next week, the students are out of school, but the teachers have meetings and training all week. However, it is all in Chinese and most of it doesn't apply to what I do. So I don't have to go in for that either. After that is the start of the Chinese Spring Festival which kicks off Chinese New Year. It lasts four weeks and everyone does get off for that. I just got to leave two weeks early. It's a pretty sweet gig. If I could just find a way to not have to deal with children, it would be the perfect job.

Now that I've got all this time off, I need to figure out what to do.