Dragon Boats!

I spent my public holiday doing what everyone does on public holidays: chores and general laziness.

The laundry machine is, well, a little Chinese demon as far as I'm concerned. I deciphered my way to figure out which buttons control what and finally threw in my dirty clothes and Purex sheet.

Side promo: The best advice I ever received when moving to Florida and subsequently to Paris and back to Florida again were the Purex sheets. They're awesome if you have to carry your laundry anywhere. Instead of a jug of detergent, a jug of softener, and a box of dryer sheets all you have is the box. The dryer sheets have a coat of waxy detergent and a stripe of fabric softener. I can only find them at Wal-Mart, so for those of you that detest Wal-Mart, sorry. Great gift idea for future dorm residents. 

Within 15 minutes there's quite the commotion coming from my bathroom (The washer is in the bathroom as the draining pipe simply lays on the shower floor, I guess that makes for cheaper construction costs, who cares, I don't have to carry laundry anywhere or put a bra on to do it). I open the door and the thing is jumping all over the place as if it's Chinese New Year. 

So I shut the door and turned my music up. 

Ignorance is the best policy sometimes. 

Laundry was a full day ordeal. 

The dryer is in the kitchen (sorry, I have no idea on why it's where I cook food, well, I don't cook anyway, who cares?). And it is super energy efficient, which essentially makes it a clothes tumbler that blows air. 

As in, it doesn't really get that hot. 

Which means drying takes all day. At least 2 sessions. A 1 session is 235 minutes. I will save you the math, that's 4 hours. 

That also means I may actually have to start using the iron since I hate folding clothes and often use the dryer as an iron. 

Oh the woes of international living. 

Well, at least I finished Rejuvenile. It was a cool read about adults not really growing up and abandoning their play lives. The trends in how we're moving out later, getting married later or not at all, having babies later or not at all. 

Essentially, the story of my life. 

Well, some of it. Really just the last 3 sections. The previous ones are about toy collectors and basically hoarders. I just like being immature, it's too expensive to collect things I don't play with. 

A great rainy day reading, playing on the internet, and people watching. I watched 3 games of basketball go by and really wished I was at home in Memphis to go to a Grizzlies game and then hit up Cheesecake Corner afterwards. 

The night ended with Spaghetti. Grace orders and buys food through the kitchen and, being the food and beverage intern, she makes awesome meals. 

All in all, a great room mate for the girl that has no kitchen domestic skills unless it involves dessert - there's no oven here so I'm virtually useless. 

She cooks, I clean. 

It's a win-win. 

We made it an early night, she had work and I had an early morning run before the Asians got up to stare. 

Well, for whatever reason, they get up really early on Saturdays. 

They stared and a few tried to say something.  I wondered if I had something in my teeth and quickly checked my clothes for weird stains or a missing arm or something that would justify their looks. 

Nothing.

Well, on with it. 

I ran down the street and away from the complex. Just as I was turning my corner back around to the main entrance, I hit for my Powersong and, irony of all ironies, "Do Something" by Britney Spears came on. 

Can I have someone translate this and play it on a loud speaker as I run back through the stares, please? 

I couldn't help but use what little breath I had to laugh at it. 

Even though I was off, I still had to catch the 8:20 bus to the hotel. 

The Dragon Boat Races were being held on Jin Ji lake, the lake the hotel sits on, at 9. Alex and I were wondering if they were actually happening as we came upon the lake and only saw one boat. As we moved past the tree line I saw a mass of Chinese packed in around the lack as rowers carefully stepped on to the docks and into their Dragon boats. 

I regretted not bringing my bigger camera lens that zooms like a boss, but here are a few okay pictures I got. 

They were all pretty much the same. The rowers get in and are on beat by the front drummer and the boat was directed by the back person with the tiller. 

This is a very important job to guide the boat in the straight line that the course is. It doesn't seem difficult, but apparently it is. 

In the first race, two boat bumped and as they came off each other, the offending boat toppled over, sending all the participants in the water. 

It was hilarious. The entire crowd bursted into laughter. 

Toppled boat on the left

Bringing in the swimmies

And bringing back their boat

I should also mention to you that this particular boat had the highest number of lah-wei's (foreigners), as in white people. 

May I also add that the winning boat was the only boat that had Africans on it. And they were at least half of the boat. 

Yep. 

I couldn't help but wonder how these people got signed up for this. 

Four or five more races transpired, each just as exciting as the previous, but no more spills into the water, so none were as exciting as the first. 

You may not wonder what the pump-up music was for an event like this, but you should. 

I will give you a few lines to try and think to yourself what it could possibly be. 

Try not to cheat. 

Go on. 

Really think about it. 

You're cheating aren't you? 

Star Wars. 

Yep. 

The theme song for Star Wars was blasting over huge speakers to pump up people competing in one of the oldest races in the world. 

Oh, and Pirates of the Caribbean, too. 

I laughed every time it came on. 

Feeling quite American now, we decided to go American for lunch at Burger King. A burger, fries, and a Coke have never tasted so good in all my life. 

Since it had been raining all morning, we were tired of being drenched, so we headed to the bus to have some quality indoor time at home as I still had to run the dryer and catch up on some Breaking Bad. 

We have at least a 60% chance of rain and scattered thunderstorms for the next 10 days. Since all the attractions in Suzhou are gardens and streets, it puts a bit of a damper on our activities. 

Suffice it to say, I may just be getting a lot more reading in than I intended for the next month's worth of the rainy season.