Party in Chenzhou

I've been thinking recently about drinking. I don't mean I'm considering it; I mean I've been thinking about how much I have consumed in the past and how much I'm currently drinking. In the past year, and I mean the pandemic here, I cut back drinking quite a bit for obvious reasons. I didn't go out so much. Because of my unique situation, I wasn't even close to friends or family who I might hang out. When the year started, I did do a good bit of drinking; I think everyone did, but as the months were on, it became less fun, and I became less interested in doing more of it. I just as soon continue forward with this pattern of only drinking on special occasions. That seems like the best policy to me. But this has got me thinking about how much I drank the first year I was in China. Now I'm not one to throw around the world alcoholic, but that year was pretty well soaked in alcohol, if I'm honest. And I don't think I'm the only one who feels that every Foreigner I knew in Chenzhou did precisely the same thing. I think there's a couple of reasons for this, only one of which applies to me: most foreigners who come to Asia to teach English are doing it their first year out of college. They don't have a career yet to abandon. They want to see the world, so it's actually a great thing to do at that point in their life. For that reason, many people end up doing this the first year out of college, so people are still doing a college level of drinking. Still, the other reason I think is the stress of a new culture; it's a little challenging to adjust to a new culture. It's made a lot easier by drinking because drinking socially anyway is a great way to meet people. You end up with a group that tends to go out and drink pretty constantly. And honestly, I don't think this is actually a bad thing. I wouldn't want to spend my whole life doing it but to have one year where you really cut loose and just party all year it's probably something everyone should do just once just one year by the end of that year you'll be finished with it and ready to move on to another part of life but that one year will be pretty fun

on the bus

Today I'm going to reveal to you a not-so-private interest of mine: Transit. All transportation is interesting to me, and it's something I pay attention to and focus on when I travel. but today, I'm going to talk about mass transportation systems. I'll talk about the Hanoi transit system. It's the system I've been using for the past year. Interestingly, Vietnam shares several things in common with the United States. one of those things is that there is a mass transportation system, but it's not heavily used. In Vietnam, the most prominent transportation option is motorcycles. People use their motorbikes everywhere in Vietnam, much like in the United States, where people will hop in their cars to cross the street. Of course, the effect motorbikes have on the development of a city and the behavior of its citizens is hugely different from the effect a car has.

For one thing: the mopeds and scooters that are most popular here don't travel much faster than bicycles. They're better for medium distances but not suitable for very long distances, so the city is still compact. The motorbikes are just an easy way to get around the city. This developed in a pretty traditional manner, whereas cars have changed the United States in a much different way. There is less suburbanization here than there is in the United States. As far as mass transportation in Vietnam goes: it's not great, but it's probably better than most cities in the US. But it's not on par with most places this large. It's a city of about 8 million people. There are two big cities here. Ho Chi Minh city is even bigger than Hanoi, and there are a couple of others that are also a substantial size. But most of the country doesn't really have mass transit systems.

Regional bus systems seem to be serviceable, and there's a national rail system. Still, for the most part, mass transit is not the most prominent option here. Next year the Metro system for Hanoi is supposed to open. I think HO Chi Minh city is on about the same schedule. That stands to change the transportation patterns here in Hanoi substantially; if it's a sound, usable system, there will be a lot of people using it to get around. However, I'm not sure it will substantially decrease the number of bikes on the road. What it might do is increase the number of rideshare apps and usages. It seems to me that people are more likely to call a bike to get to their nearest metro station than to pay to park their motorcycle there all day.

I hate everything

Sorry, but this post is going to be a bit negative. My neck hurts. I feel like it's a form of carpal tunnel from sitting in front of the computer cuz that's all I've been doing. I wonder if it's just from looking down at the computer, but really what it's making me think of is how pain affects your mood. Oh, there's no reason really for me to be in a bad mood. Nothing terrible has happened, but this pain is just making me hate everything. I don't, really, and I'm aware that this coming from pain is not changing the emotion. I'm just so angry about everything because this pain is just ever-present. It's not the worst pain I've ever felt by far. It's not. It's just that it won't go away.

Muscles at the base of my neck are just hurting, and I know it's from sitting in front of the computer. Maybe I should take a minute and talk about where the pain is coming from. God, I don't know. Oh yeah yeah: I think it was such a simple thing, and it's caused such a problem I had the screen adjusted so that I could sit up straight in my chair and look at the computer at an angle that was not painful, and I was using it for weeks, and it was fine, and then I started having to do online classes during the lockdown, and because of that, I have changed the angle because the camera in a laptop computer is built-in, not angled to a face that would be in front of the screen it's so you have to change the angle of the screen to get the camera to point at you okay so when you do this the screen points down at you. To look at the screen later, you slump in your chair because you don't think to readjust it. You put your head at a weird angle and kind of curl your spine in strange ways. You don't realize you're doing it. Still, once you sit there for hours because there are no real jobs anymore, everybody's just sitting at home, and you don't even go out during the lockdown. So you're in front of this computer all day doing this weird slumping and spine curling, and pretty soon, your neck and shoulders are in just this excruciating pain. Now I've got to sit away from the computer for a while so that it can heal up. I guess that's the thing, and that has, in turn, caused me to just be so angry, and I'm trying to meditate and do all these things to stop succumbing to this anger, but the pain just makes you.

As you can see, I've got a cooling thing for the laptop because I'm on it so much. Trying to plan, do my online classes, and do other things without succeeding. It angles the keyboards, which is a little better. It keeps me from putting too much pressure on something. So it's doing a little bit better. You have to angle the screen back, but you really need to angle the screen up towards your face. Of course, I'm using what's supposed to be kitchen furniture for an office desk. My tiny studio apartment here in Hanoi does not actually have an office or a desk. That's the setup that has caused me to have such pain, but I think it was the angle of the screen because I was just fine for months using this before the lockdown. Just in the past week, this pain has just been getting worse and worse, so I've got to find some way to adjust it. I may just have to spend less time on the computer. I mean, the lockdown ended this week, so I can actually get outside to exercise during the day.