Donuthead

I wish you could transform tasks of equal difficulty amongst themselves, kind of like reduction of NP-complete problems. Like if you could practice guitar for a week but channel the progress to running. Or run but have the energy go towards improving your musical ear. Or do pushups and have that do your programming project for you. Scientists, you know what to do.

On an unrelated note, I now think of myself in a completely new way, all thanks to Yuan Yuan. She was talking about some cookies we bought earlier and I couldn't remember for the life of me what they were. When it turned out they were these little donuts, first I spanked Yuan Yuan for calling them cookies and then I explained the vast difference between the two.

"Donuts are roughly circular things with a hole in the middle," I said with infinite patience.
"Like your head?"
"No, silly, the holes in my head don't go all the way through."

At which point Yuan Yuan returned the spanking favor, threw in a bonus head/table slam and explained that my ear holes were exactly that - the hole in the donut of my head. It suddenly made perfect sense, not to mention giving a whole new meaning to "you are what you eat."

Happy New Year!

It's Chinese New Year today, the jury not yet out on whether the petition to rename it "Everything Gets Blown Up Or Set On Fire Day" has passed. This is supposed to be the most family-oriented holiday in Chinese culture, as in if you're not with your family, there's a strict quota of tears you have to shed in front of a licensed tear counting official. My tear ducts are a bit out of practice since it's been over a year and a half now that I left the few people that know those precious weak points in my ego and can therefore step on them at will. Yuan Yuan's younger sister's got us both covered though.

This is probably the biggest culture shock I've experienced in a few months. A few hours ago Yuan Yuan mentioned offhand that her sister is probably drowning in a puddle of tears. I asked why (being a good boyfriend means you're required to ask a certain amount of questions) and the answer was something straight out of a dystopian novel. Yuan Yuan has four sisters so you might have to draw a diagram, but this is the basic idea:

Yuan Yuan's two older sisters are married so her youngest sister is not allowed in their houses on New Year's. Since she's back home in the village and has no way of making it to Beijing, and since Yuan Yuan's parents are currently also here in Beijing, it means she's all alone in the house. With no heating. And no internet connection. That's right, NO INTERNET CONNECTION.

Scratch what I said earlier, I think my tear ducts just breezed past that coefficient of static tear duct friction and surface tension and whatever else physicists have discovered to keep burly hairy (at least three chest hairs since I last counted) manly men from letting the tear out of its socket. Good thing I'm an excellent touch typist because I can't see a word on the screen anymore.