What did the magical palm of Buddha say to the face?

I love this shirt. I bought it back in 2006 on the advice of Feifei, though I refused to wear it until she could tell me what it means. In Traditional Chinese (the language it's supposed to be read in) the red characters say "The Magical Palm of Buddha" and the characters at the bottom say "Kung fu." In Simplified Chinese, however, the characters read something to the effect of "Become an ascended spirit." I think both of those meanings are pretty cool, and the fact that it means two things at the same time is even cooler. Last night I was at a house party with a bunch of international students and a Japanese girl told me my shirt said something rather funny. Evidently, in Japanese the red characters read, "Bow to the divine, wild feminine." and the characters at the bottom read, "Smart husband/man." It's not unlike the time freshman year when I found out that one of my favorite shirts with the Chinese character for peace on it reads as "loose" in Japanese. Makes you wonder how entertaining it must be for Japanese tourists in China when they read all the street signs and billboards.

Social Capital

As predicted somewhat in my previous post, the continual temptation to go out and party with the international students has disrupted my study habits. Thankfully, reading is easier to catch up on than writing so for the moment I'm in the clear, but last week was rather ridiculous. Thursday night, after finishing a parkour class (more on that later) I was all set to get to my reading and research when someone down the hall says that people are going out to a bar, so I figured "what the hell" and went along with them. Similarly, on Friday night I was trying to make up for the work I didn't do the night before, and catching up on missing time due to waking up late, but was unable to do so because of another party. This was repeated Saturday night as well and were it not for the fact that nobody parties on Sundays I might not have gotten any work done. All that said, perhaps the fact that I did get it all done speaks to the fact that it was never as dire as I made it out to be. But the important thing to remember is that, while I was not doing work, I was by no means slacking off—I was, as one of my former professors would say, "accumulating social capital."

Specifically, we've (myself and a plethora of Germans) been going out to the clubs and pubs with a quartet of Danish girls (which is every bit as awesome as you would imagine). Now because Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are very similar, they are somewhat mutually intelligible as long as you speak clearly. Or conversely, if they can't quite hear what you said and they fill in a missing consonant or vowel as you shout above the club noise. However, as I learned this weekend they are not the same language. Right before we were going to go to another pub the Danes wrinkled their noses because someone had farted in the bar. I smelled it as I was walking up to them and so asked, "Fisa?" which is "fart" in Swedish. They looked at me rather shocked and said, "What did you say?" As it turns out, "fisa" (or however it's spelled in Danish) is the word for "cunt" or "pussy", related to the Swedish "fitta". The misunderstanding was resolved quickly enough but for that split second it appeared as if I just walked up and called one of the girls a cunt.
Tangentially, when I was in Sweden for Midsummer we were guests in the home of this one girl named Isa, whom her friends would jokingly call "Isa fisa". Given that Isa was a bigoted, lecherous, unfaithful, abusive woman I think the Danish fisa suits her much more appropriately.

The parkour class I mentioned above is one of the clubs at UMass that I stumbled upon by walking through a bunch of booths (there's a quiddich club and a freethinkers club too, whatever the hell the latter means) in the middle of campus during the first week. Most of the stuff is conditioning and simple exercises, but it requires a good amount of coordination and strength. Personally, my out of shape self was so sore after the first class I was achy for the next 5 days. Parkour is supposed to be about getting from point A to point B in the most efficient manner possible, a philosophy which is not quite manifested in our exercises, such as climbing along window sills on the entrances of buildings. Technically speaking, straight up bipedal walking is the most efficient form of locomotion (aside from wheels), but I can definitely appreciate the exercises. Regardless of whether or not I'll actually ever use parkour to jump off rooftops or scale walls, the conditioning will make me one strong, agile mo-fo.

UPDATE: One of my friends in the dorm evidently tore up his knee playing muggle quiddich. Evidently, it's a bit more hardcore than one would imagine a bunch of fanboys running around with brooms between their legs throwing deflated volleyballs at each other to be.

UMass

After my first week at UMass I think I can safely say that this place kicks ass. Aside from the very pleasing change in landscape from Tucson, the social atmosphere is a refreshing change from the U of A as well. I suppose it might be possible that it's less the fact that they're so awesome here (as at least one of my cohorts has mentioned the snootiness of "Massholes") and more the fact that anthro grad students earnestly give a damn about what you have to say. Another cool thing is that I'm living in the grad student dorm, which wouldn't seem to be very cool, especially having had a room of one's own for three years, but the people here are really awesome. The vast majority of students here are international students, probably precisely because few American grad students would want to go back to dorm life after years of houses and apartments. It's an anthropologist's dream; everyone is so interested in experiencing American college life and I get to be there alongside them as they do.
My classes thus far seem pretty cool, mostly discussing readings and writing papers. They're about three hours long so every one of the five to ten people in class gets plenty of opportunities to speak up. I'm also rather puzzled by the fact that there are so many redheads here. One or two in each class of less than a dozen people. I'd get the Irish thing what with it being Massachusetts but they can't all be from here. Probably just because they vaporize in Tucson that's why I haven't seen many before.
I've been in this strange mood all week where I feel like every second I'm not out meeting people I'm wasting my time. To the point where I feel like a total shut in for even being on the computer at all. Never mind the fact that I've been going out at night with people every single evening this week, going to all the luncheons and introductory meetings for grad students and generally being very social. Somehow, my mind thinks that every moment I spend not hanging out with people, like the time I set aside for class readings, is a waste of time. Hopefully this is some first week, new school distorted equilibrium thing or this will be one rough semester...

Down With O.T.B.

I'm writing this now before I forget to completely. I'm making it a tradition to review my previous employment on the blog in order to look back and put it into perspective. For those of you that were unaware, this summer I worked as a mutuel teller, employed by the Tucson Greyhound Park, at an Off-Track Betting site (OTB). Most of the OTBs are in bars, mine was Famous Sam's, but they do have them in bowling alleys too. This was a departure in many ways from my other jobs in that I was unsupervised and was not required to be pleasant to customers at all. I still was, to the best of my ability, but there were no smarmy comments from the boss telling us to smile more. When taken in the greater context of things, this job was very unfulfilling spiritually but when you take it at face value it was a really sweet gig. $7.30 an hour plus tips (ranging anywhere from $5 to $75 a day, but averaging about $20) made this the highest paying job I ever had, the slow morning shift and unsupervised work meant that I was essentially paid and tipped to read novels all day. Incredibly low stress and easy going, the job had some definite appeals and I wish I had discovered it in college, so I could have been paid to do homework.
Now, naturally, all jobs have a down side and depending on one's viewpoint, this one had some pretty severe ones. First off, you get to see the seedy side of humanity, angry people gambling all their money away, their souls poisoned by greed. I've never met such grouchy people in all my life; people yelling at me for giving them a losing ticket even if those were the numbers they wanted, people getting angry when they win but can't get the money right away, people who accuse me of trying to cheat them when they buy a racing form they later realize they don't want and I don't refund their marked up books. One guy, a crackhead (so I excuse his poor manners) will gamble his money to fund his habit, though lord knows where he gets the money in the first place. Another guy, who reminds me of Gil from the Simpsons inhis voice and demenor— he's always so convinced he's going to win every time and he always has to spend $20 every time he comes up to the teller and he loses almost every single time. In addition to the majority of the customers being ugly on the inside, they are also among the most physically repulsive people I've met as well. They're mostly old men who spend their days betting on horses and dogs, perhaps because they frighten small children when seen in daylight.
The other thing that people complain about is the fact that, as an employee of a dog track, I am supporting cruelty to animals. I counter this by pointing out that every industry has corruption. Period. So while some kennels at the dog track might be guilty of animal abuse, it doesn't necessarily reflect on the moral character of the entire organization. Secondly, by that logic someone working for a defense contracter is complicit in death and carnage and someone who works at a golf course or resort supports wasting water.
Whatever the larger scope of the job might have been, I found working as a bookie to be a decently paying, very low stress job that gave me the opportunity to catch up on my reading list. I would never want to work there forever, but the allure of being paid to read all day is compelling enough for some, apparently to spend decades there.