Crouching Toilet, Hidden Shower: The China experience

I just couldn't help myself. The thought crossed my mind of such clever wording that I just couldn't let it pass by unrecorded.
So, yes, that is the only word there is for Chinese dorm bathrooms. It greatly added to the adventure of the month at QHNU and I was excited to learn new skills. Honest. My fear is that describing the difference in the respect between the two sides of the world would come across as complaining. I remember when someone affirmed my family group member, Tim, commending that he never once complained. Hearing that made me feel a surge of wanting to be that kind of person, who never even makes jokes which I assume many of my teammates mistook for complaints. So, in my assessment of Chinese bathrooms, I really appreciated them. I appreciated the opportunity to do things differently.
That may have been the best thing in the travel experience, that so many things that Americans take for granted as needing to be done a certain way were actually undertaken with a completely contrasting method. Things that I have always done differently tend to make me as a standout in a bad way and causes me to be perpetually and constantly misunderstood, but in China it was readily assumed that we would be so varied and so my unusual behaviors either escaped notice or simply failed to erect barriers the way they do here. Which is why I love China.

Arbitrary

Once again I am eagerly counting down the two months remaining before NaNoWriMo. It's going to be an interesting time.

letter writing has suddenly become easy

In the past couple of weeks I have written all manner of letter. I have sent out prayer/support letters. I have sent the follow up. Actually, there have also been a couple of hadnwritten letters I had to do, as well, even before that. I have done a resume and cover letters. I have done official statements. I am planning on starting to write press released soon, and I will also need to get ready to start sending letters to publishers. So much writing! So amazing.
I think one thing that I suffer greatly from missing every now and then is writing. I filled up a journal in the last couple of months. That was my goal. Last year I fell far short of my intention to record the summer. I really do miss out when I don't write. So I am eagerly awaiting November and the National Novel Writing Month. I can't think of anything better than feeling obligated to write for an hour a day. I wonder what the story will be this time around.
I haven't finished editing the last one. I have a couple of months.
It's amazing how it used to intimidate me to write. But now I have done speeches, sermons, newspaper articles, and this endless array of letters, it really isn't a challenge to write anything anymore. It just happens now.

Heinlein, or what I read now that Harry is out of the picture.

I doubt I could fully express my gratitude to Dave for introducing me to the genius of Heinlein during that fateful train ride. And I think that if the many others aboard the train--who were able to enjoy the silence they would have missed has I not been reading--knew that Dave was responsible for the fact that I was not talking for most of the ride, they would thank him, too. (See you can tell I've been reading and writing a lot because the more I do so, the more the use of run-on sentences gets out of hand.)
So, because of this incident, I have discovered another favorite Sci-fi author to go with Tepper and Butler.
Even though there are several cliches that have come up in all three of the novels I have read so far, I am still not disappointed by plot or the underlying message. The main-character stereotype is making me a little weary, but other than that and the inevitable denunciation of faith, I am happy.
But I miss Harry!
I am so glad that November is approaching. Slowly.

So much for Harry

So it's over, it's all over. I read the final installment of our dear Harry Potter. Now, how do I go about trying to write a decent review without any spoilers? Hmmm.
Well I am vey happy and impressed with the ending and the final wrapping up, although there are some things I had hoped to see at the end and that are absent, leaving me with the feeling that these small matters are a little unresolved. My comfort is from the fact that I can always turn to fanfic for a decently projected solution to these feelings of incomplete details.
But, overall, the ending was as it should be, the climax was cleanly set up, the finale was right. It wasn't that there needed to be surprise. Maybe the intention was to surprise and shock many of the readers, but the sense I got was that although I didn't predict much to turn out the way that it did, to solve things a certain way, there was a sense of familiarity to it all. While I may not have seen much of it coming, it slid along well with the attitude of, well of course Harry is doing that, that's the kind of think Harry does. The best way to say it is that the story stayed true to its character and its characters. Harry was himself, and so was the story.
And the treatment by the author of the final interplay between the protagonist and the antagonist? That, too, though no one really could have predicted it entirely, was as it should be.
When the hero and the villain come to the end of a very long series, it is a great author's responsibility to be real, to be reasonable, and to resolve. I think Rowling is a great author and I think she did her duty. The whole book is painful, never letting up and never being less than perfectly real. The interaction is reasonable, it is honest about humanity as the plot has always been. And it resolved. The most important questions were answered. Catharsis was pushed if not reached. We felt all the humor, what could be left of it at this point. We felt all the tragedy and cruelty. We saw heroic people at their best and we were crushed with them in their woes. We got angry when people did stupid or unfair things. And we celebrated whenever something went right, no matter how small and no matter how much more of the great journey remained.

I was able for the last time to slip into Harry's world and feel everything with him, and to wonder, as he did what would happen. Now that world is dead to me. With the closing of the story, I can no longer be part of it. I can no longer wonder about the many plot lines and predict what the next book will reveal, because there can be no next book. That is the truly sad thing. To those of you who haven't read it yet and don't know whether or not the boy lives, that actually isn't important. There is no way to follow him any further, nor any of the others. With the final words of the book they go their way and I go mine.
A story like this is once in a life time. There are other stories and many surpass this one in different ways. There will be more still, and some will bring me the same feelings of camraderie with the plot that Harry did. Some will be so rich as to engulf me in a world like the one I entered for seven books here. Some will be this well written and yet simply expressed enough that Children can access and understand even as Adults are drawn in and not bored.
I hope to write something like that. I have never thought before of writing a series. But such a thing is possible. All of my favorites wrote series, and I hope to be my best. Perhaps the greatest extent is among their lot.
Finally, the last connection I can have with my newly departed friends in Harry's world is that I can learn from them. I have learned the value of bravery, of doing what is right, of applying my education to a great adventure. And I have been charged to be myself. I hope that the climax of my life will be a moment in which I do my duty and stay true to my character. I hope that my own life will be real, reasonable and resolved.

Well, dang! Three months-

Well that's all there is to it, but with new Nanorwrimo on the way, this might not be so bad.

More Than a Little Frustrating

So, I have to wait at most three months and at least...I don't know how long before things get really interesting. I need to change my settings so facebook stops recieving everything.

why doesn't this work any other way?

I really Can't think of anything to say.

This concept of trying to write on demand isn't going so well.