I’m Working… I Swear

Well,

Last night me and Shreena attended something quite amazing. A San Pedro Fire Ceremony deep in the mountains of Medellin Columbia. There were only about 4 total foreigners there out of the 59 attendees, we counted ourselves quite lucky and in a unique place.

I hesitatingly decided to post this for several reasons.

I know that there’s a large number of my family out there that is going to read this and probably disapprove. As I’m sure you all know by now, I have stopped seeking the approval of others, even my close family. You might see this in how I openly admit my atheism despite coming from a very religious background. The reason I decided to post this is because although some people might things its simply a recount of someone taking drugs, to me it was much more, and I went into the experience with the intention of finding something meaningful, and I feel like I did.

The real reason I post this is because I hope that by reading things, it will open your mind to possibilities you hadn’t thought of before. Maybe a world of spirituality you didn’t think existed or was even worth conceiving. There are other avenues to spirituality besides the ones you’ve grown up with. This is just a small example, there are many societies around the world doing things like this, and if you find them you can join as well.

I ask you to read this with an open mind and not to judge something that you have never experienced, but to open your mind to the idea of spirituality in what may seem like an unnatural way to our culture:

We began the evening in a large tent type of building specialty built for this type of ceremony. There are three phases.
1) Smoke a tobacco cigar wrapped in a type of corn husk and think about the issue you want to resolve. This tobacco cigar turned out to be very important throughout the ceremony. They used it to blow smoke onto people and many other things. It was smoked often.
2) Then they said a prayer thanking the spirit for their ancestors showing them the medicine and its power for healing. We then drank the san pedro tea which actually tasted a great deal better than what I’ve had in the past. It was only about half a mug of very non-viscous fluid that had a bitter and lemon infused taste.

I haven’t eaten for many hours so the onset should be quite quick. There are about thirty people in the room and only four of us are foreigners. Many people look like indigenous people. I met a cool guy from LA named John Livingston (I wrote down his full name so I wouldn’t forget to find him on facebook). He goes to UCLA and majors in physics. Really interesting guy, his mother has spent a lot of time in the Amazon and he’s tried ayahuasca in the same city I am thinking of trying it in.

It’s about 11:30 pm and we just ingested the tea. Everyone is sitting… Basically in silence staring at the fire or meditating. We are basically the only people talking.

At around 12:15 am they started playing some songs with a drum and a shaker that are supposed to encourage the spirit of the plant. I tried to record a bit with my video camera.

They pass around the thing that has the beans in it or something… a shaker for making simple music. They accompany it with a drum with a constant beat that never changes. If you want to sing a song then you just start playing. If not then you just place it on your heart and pass it onto the next person.

The third step of the process is the cleansing ceremony, I would later find out that this would last from about 1 am to late into the morning, around 9 am. There were 59 people to “cleanse”.

I meant to skip the cleansing ceremony but me and Shreena were first in line and didn’t know how to say no. First we rubbed our pretty much naked bodies down with some wet plant material. We then washed ourselves in a similar way with a smoothed cold stone. Then they ran some plant all over our bodies that caused terrible pain, it was just bad enough to tolerate without freaking out and screaming. It felt like getting stung by a poisonous plant all over your body. To make it go away they gave us alcohol and had us rub it all over our bodies. This made the stinging subside a bit.

Then they sprayed us with alcohol and lit us on fire. I distinctly remember the back of my legs burning for a long time and someone having to blow them out. It hurt. Shreenas dress caught on fire for a few seconds.

I’m pretty sure its just some kind of pain/relief/weird sensation thing. Such a strange experience but I’m glad I did it.

They also had us put out these flaming alcohol soaked leaves with both our hands and our feet.

Things are definitely beginning to get weird. At first I wasn’t feeling much but before the cleansing they came around with “san pedro pasta” an awful tasting thing and had us wash down the tablespoon they gave us with another half cup of the same tea we started with.
As soon as I put that awful spoonful in my mouth things intensified.

Its now 2 am and my skin still stings in a weird way from the “cleansing” shreena has bumps all over her arm.

3am.. Or so..
They gave everyone another round of the tea. Me and Shreena both seemed to feel as if we’d had enough as we both declined any more of it. It’s so strange seeing people constantly in their underwear next to me getting sprayed with ignited alcohol. I’m not supposed to be able to see this but my seat happens to be halfway behind the black separator between the main area of the teepee and the area in which they are doing the cleansing. Me and Shreena still feel everything on our skin, stinging, from the plant.
I’m beginning to wonder (as I usually do with this type of substance) how much longer this will last. I don’t really feel like this situation is anything that will really allow me to get answers to the questions I set out to answer at the beginning.

All I’ve been able to really contemplate is how silly all these rituals and singing seem. Are these people really trying to make religion out of the drugs they are taking?

It’s strange because talking to these people before hand I know many of them are educated. But… You’re seriously just taking drugs and letting some glorified old man spit alcohol all over your half naked body.

Is this really what you believe in?

All the songs they sing talk about the plants and their souls… These plants evolved defense mechanisms to keep people from eating them. They aren’t a gift to you from mother earth or god. If they were a gift then why are you throwing up?
Why does it taste like shit when you drink it?

Please, stop trying to pretend like all the negative side effects of this poison are somehow designed by god to help you. Throwing up is not a good thing, you aren’t cleansing your body of any toxins (besides the ones you just ingested).

I feel so strange furiously typing on my phone with a blanket over it to hide what I’m doing. I’m assuming its against their rules since one of the assistant shaman dudes told me not to drink this bottle of water I had… idiot, its never a good idea to not drink water, are you trying to dehydrate me into well being?

It seems to me like every group of humanity finds something to be in awe of, or terrified of, and they worship it. These people just happened to choose entheogenic plants as something they could sing songs about, consume, and basically worship.

Wow…
Its six in the morning and there is still a bunch of “sinners” that need to be “cleansed”. The singers voices are beginning to strain with desperation and tiredness.

You have to admire their dedication to the community to continue on although the most noticeable effects of their “medicine” has long faded.

Its funny that I still seem to have some kind of contempt for what they’ve done with this plant. I can clearly see the positive aspects of their gatherings just like I do with other religions. Here there is a sense of community, the members grow close to one another through these ceremonies (probably closer than would be seen in other religions). But still I can’t help but feel any happiness this brings them is just as meaningless as other religions because it’s still based on falsehood, the belief that some kind of supernatural being exists.
Not only that but its based on false emotions as well, the I don’t really believe the plant or drug has a spirit, it just has certain psychological effects that make you feel open to forming deep emotional attachments to the people around you.

Ok 9 am:
Despite all the criticisms I made, the leader of this group speaks beautifully about the group as his family, as a group that comes together to help each other, talk to each other, and come together to seek their purpose in life and eliminate their ignorance. Very few other religions or spiritual practicies I’ve encountered have placed such an emphasis on eliminating ignorance, Buddhism excluded. It’s obvious that all these people come from different walks of life. He’s talking about how we need to be responsible for our own decisions in life and that we are walking a path that makes us happy. We should be doing work that brings truth and happiness to our life, and if you aren’t, that’s your own fault, don’t blame anyone. He’s saying we should always think the way we think now (not exactly possible but a nice thought).

This was a good night. He is proud that he cleansed 59 people (I had no idea there were so many people in here).
He is so thankful for this medicine, for this family, and that everyone loves and respects each other.

The speakers words, translated roughly by me:

“Learn to live well, learn to live true, leave the idiocy that’s in your mind. There’s nothing good and bad, things are how they are and that’s the end of it. There is only a man and a woman, not good and bad. That is the only duality.”

He said bring the water.

They brought a bucket, started chanting and singing. “Pajaro limpiando” were two words they kept repeating, I think the bird is the San Pedro.

I must admit I really respect the message they try to convey here, they focus so much on respecting their origins, respecting the love between a man and a woman. They pray that those brothers and sisters that haven’t found their match will find it soon, because they see that as the most valuable thing in life.

The leaders words:
“In the night you see clearly. In the daytime you see nothing. At night you see everyone is different. During the daylight everyone looks the same. People in his home town have said to him: ‘Be careful getting too much spirituality into your head, because you still have to live in the real world.’

Live isn’t just finding clarity and happiness, what this experience can give you is peace, not absolute happiness. When you have peace you can live with the good and bad and life and continue on with your life regardless of the positive and negative things that happen to you. Fiding peace will give you the clarity you are looking for, and sometimes… The darkness.
My family comes here to see well, to see with love.

This water closes everything we have opened. Finishes everything we have been looking for by coming here. This water is all we need at this moment and in this form we are just fine. We won’t hold anything or anyone responsible besides ourselves.”
Finally… After dragging it out ceremoniously…

They gave us water from a bucket to drink. It was supposed to be the first water we drank all night.
I can see on my legs the singed hair from the “cleansing” ceremony, AKA lighting me on fire.

Almost 10 am…
I think it’s remarkable that I never found any answers to my questions when I thought I was supposed to. But the talk the man gave this morning was beautiful and I feel like it gave me exactly what I needed right now. Funny how things do work themselves out when you’re looking for an answer.

_____________________________________________________________

Its funny for me to read this and see how drastically my view of the ceremony changed during the actual process. At first I had so much contempt for what they were doing, their methods, and their practice. Finally it ended up that I really respect what they do because, unlike what many people do with the same substances in our society, these people use drugs with a purpose. They unite a community and seem answers to their problems. Just the fact that they get together in this way as a community and discuss their problems to me is a positive thing.

I also have to admit that ever since I first tried these chemicals I had an idea that something like this would be a positive thing, and I always wanted to experience it and I’m glad I had. To me I feel like its one of the most real “spiritual” experiences someone could have. Some people might frown on the fact that they are basically accelerating their spirituality by artificial means but to them, this is part of their spirituality, and I can see why.

There are very few religious or spiritual practices that I have come to respect, but this is definitely one of them. In the end I’m very glad I participated, and I would do it again.

Besides the few photos I got I’m also putting up a video that is really more of an audio clip. I probably was not supposed to take any photos or these sounds clips but I wanted to so I could give people a better idea of what this was like. The sound clips blend together in a sharp way, sorry. There is one point towards the end where I was bold enough to video the ceremony once the sun came up, its short but can give you a small idea of what I saw for many hours. That’s Shreena coughing occasionally due to the insanely smoke filled room.

Thanks to Mike for the spare Blackberry battery, without which only half of this would have been possible.

San Pedro Fire Ceremony Chanting from Andrew Lang on Vimeo.

I came into my good Uncle Gerardo’s work today to get on the computer and do some work for my Dad as well as get caught up on emails and facebook. After much research I decided to book my return flight back from… Lima Peru. Mostly because it was the cheapest of all the airports in upper South America to return from. So I booked it.

Then I started looking at a map of South America and I realized the distance from Cartagena Columbia to Lima is about the distance of going from the north tip of California to Mexico, and back again. I need to do that in about 2 weeks, so I guess I got a little stressed about it. I asked my beautiful and kind cousin Karen to reserve me a seat on a bus from San Jose to Panama City. Should be good it’ll go overnight and I’ll be in Panama City on Friday morning.

From there I want to arrange to get on a yacht that can take me from Panama to Cartagena. Apparently you spend two days on the islands off the coast of Peru and its really beautiful and what not. Seems like fun right?

So that’s what’s been running through my head most of the day. I really love spending time with my family down here. Koke and Michael are hilarious and I at least had a great time going to the bar on Sunday and hitting on random girls with my 17 year old x-th cousin Jason who was hilarious. As we talked to girls he kept saying in Spanish “we really are family”. Cracked me up. I basically facilitated him making out with some cute blonde girl from Washington DC.

I stayed at my aunt Isabel’s house and got to eat amazing food for like 2 days, that was pretty fantastic. I had a great time chilling out and watching a football game at the square down the street with Michael and Koke.

Yesterday I came over to see grandma who doesn’t look any older and looks really good for 94. Not only that but she isn’t even crazy at all, super sweet, constantly asking me what I want to eat or drink. I mean, it does get a little annoying but that’s what grandmas do right? It’s kind of hilarious how she orders her maid around like some kind of slave.

The room I stayed in there is super cute, way nicer than any of the places I’ve been staying in at hostels, but maybe that’s just because there’s not 10 other people sleeping next to me.

I just hung out at the house, I met Karen’s daughter Kaylee who is super sweet. I thought she was 15 when I first met her but she’s ten. I helped her with her math homework and tried to teach her algebra, which is the only type of math I ever liked. She doesn’t really like math so it was a challenge but fun. I went to the barber with my uncle Gerardo and we both got our haircut and I got my hippy beard shaved a bit.

It was fun talking to him a little bit about business and stuff, I was talking to him a bit about how cheap programmers are in India and how he might be able to use that in the future if he wants. It sounds like he does really good business here in Central America working with some really large companies. I was surprised that he only has two programmers working for him.

Karen is a really sweet and smart girl, it was nice to speak with her and her daughter in english and I feel like we understand eachother, when I come back I would like to spend more time visiting with her or if her and her daughter came back to the states it would be nice to see them in California.

It’s so weird to me that I feel like I get along so well with my family down here that I haven’t seen in 10 years and the family in the US that I see everyday I barely have any connection with. I am thinking that I wish I had visited here more over the last decade but I guess its never too late to start. I think it would be so much fun to come down here with my mom for Christmas, the family here is just so huge and everyone is so funny and nice.

Oh funny thing happened today, I had lunch at Grandma’s house with Gerardo and as he went to drop me off he asked me if I wanted to go to church with him tonight. I plainly said “no” and “for what?” and he said “to become a better person?”. I jokingly said “But I’m already a good person”. He seemed a but upset when I told him I didn’t believe in God. I told Karen and my other cousin and they laughed. I think he’s a bit upset with me.

Oh well, if he asks more questions I’ll tell him more about why I don’t but I won’t get into it. Hopefully Grandma doesn’t ask me that question, I’ll probably have to lie so she doesn’t have a heart attack.

So instead of church last night a bunch of us went down to the stadium to watch Saprissa play some soccer team from Puerto Rico, the Islanders I think it was. It was a cool experience, football really isn’t that boring to watch, the goals are pretty sick when they happen. The fans are really freaking into and curse at the players if they make a single mistake, which I think is both hilarious and awesome.

On the walk there we had to turn and go a different way because there was a group of kids apparently mugging people under a bridge. My cousin Michael called the police on them. I kind of wanted to try walking right by them to see if they would do anything because I’d love to have to fend off 5 guys at once. But Michael said they might have guns so we just went the other way. People stealing things makes me upset.

I’m going to miss everyone down here and I wish I had more time to get to Lima but I really have to take off quite fast. My bus leaves at 1 this afternoon and I found a guy off couchsurfing.com to stay with when I get to Panama City. It should be interesting. He was really nice and he already reserved the boat trip that I wanted so everything is set for me to get to Colombia. The only thing I don’t currently have is a place to stay in Cartagena but I’m sure I will meet some people on the boat ride down that will be able to lead me in the right direction on that one.

I think of all the people I met while in San Jose my cousin Karen is the most interesting. She seems like the most down to earth person down here. Maybe its just because I can speak to her in English but she seems cool. I gave her my (probably worthless) opinions about her daughter and her decision to bring her here for school instead of letting her go to school in America with her dad. I mean my opinion shouldn’t matter much to her but I definitely think she’s doing the right thing and she should stick with her decision, Kaylee will eventually understand.

I just remember how much trouble I was for my mom growing up and how I thought everything she did was wrong and I never respected what she said. But now I realize she did the best she could with what she knew and although at the time I thought it was awful, I love her for it now. I feel bad sometimes for giving her such a problem but that’s what children are for right? Haha sorry mom! I love you!

Alright that’s all for now, no more adding to this post .

Here’s a video of us driving from Isabel’s house to Grandma’s house, note that every house in basically inside a cage, there’s a bit of crime here.

Driving through the suburbs of San Jose from Andrew Lang on Vimeo.

I really just needed to post something so I could put up this riduculously awesome video of our off roading adventure from Tamarindo to Montezuma. By the time we got to Montezuma the hostel owner was surprised at the route we took and said “wow you guys came that way? I didn’t even know that way was passable this time of year.”

So basically yeah we’re awesome, deal with it.

Driving THrough Costa Rica in an Uninsured Rental Car from Andrew Lang on Vimeo.

When we got to Montezuma we stayed at a quaint little place called the Luna Llena. It wasn’t too bad, they had nice little cabinas with mosquito nets and a separate outdoor bathroom. It was kind of a hassle in the middle of the night when my tiny bladder would get full but it wasn’t too bad. The town was pretty cool and tiny but there wasn’t too much to do. We did find the one awesome thing though. We hiked out to a waterfall that was about 20 meters high and jumped off a ledge into it. I actually dove off the highest point which I’ve always had a fear of doing but it was a lot of fun. You were also able to crawl up behind the waterfall and dive right into it and have it push you under which was fun. I think there are some cool photos of it on Sammy’s camera. Hopefully I’ll get them when he gets back to Switzerland.

From there we drove down Manuel Antonio and we took the ferry, that was pretty rad. We got down here and this random flight attendent girl came up to us and asked us if she could come with us while we found a hostel. We’re the friendliest group of two Swiss kids and one American on the planet so naturally we said yes. She was cool, nice flight attendent. We ended up staying at the Backpackers Manuel Antonio hostel (I mostly picked it because it sounded pretty nice but it also had Wifi). There’s some pretty sick places right across the street to eat that cost almost nothing and serve a crapload of food.

We met this hilarious Chinese kid in the hostel that is practicing his Spanish here. He refuses to speak to people in english even though he knows it. He also chats up pretty much every local or person that looks like they speak spanish he sees. I kind of find that annoying but I think its funny that he does it. He’s hilarious to watch at bars. Him and the flight attendant sang horible karaoke last night which definitely cracked me up. I think that was early in the evening before she started crying about her boyfriend (or something). We definitely drunkenly meandered around town last night. I’m surprised I’m not hungover due to the 10 minute consumption of a bottle of Flor de Cana at the hostel while playing “table football” and the subsequent drinking of the flight attendants free ladies night drinks at the first bar. Actually now that I think about it I didn’t pay for a single drink last night. Fucking win.

At some point we met some pretty cool girls from San Diego who are staying at the other hostel, Vista Serena, which is where our other buddies are staying. We also ended up being introduced to a couple of nice local girls who were really sweet. We went with them back to the ladies night bar and danced a little bit and talked, they gave me their phone numbers so I might call them? Why not right?

I’m fairly sure there’s some other stuff I’ve done lately but I’m probably way too hungover right now to think of it.

Now seems like as good of a time as any to be honest about the flight attendant girl. The first night we met we kind of got drunk and she was acting like kind of a whore, nothing happened really but the next day she really wanted to do this stupid visit of the Manuel Antonio park in the late morning despite how few animals everyone told her there would be. She “HAD TO SEE IT BECAUSE THIS IS HER LAST DAY HERE”. Anyway nobody wanted to go with her and I went with her since nobody else would. Worst decision ever, I was annoyed for literally 3 hours. I don’t know how someone who seems so normal and like a genuinely decent person could be so abrasive but she definitely pulled it off. After that I basically aimed to get the hell away from her as much as I possibly could until she left our hostel.

I found comfort in the fact that everyone else that met her seemed to be annoyed with her so it couldn’t possibly have just been me. She was constantly talking about volunteering in different places and how she wanted to travel to all these places and BLAH BLAH BLAH, I don’t know why it was so annoying but I wanted to decapitate her. Ok I’m done.

I’ve had a sore throat for like 4 days and I don’t know why.

I’m thinking of getting some breakfast and maybe going kayaking/snorkeling.

I’m also thinking of calling one of those Costa Rican girls… maybe its a bit early? It’s like 8 am here. They were heading back to San Jose and it would be cool to hop on the bus with them and have someone to talk to and make sure I didn’t get mugged. Or I could just see them later?

Definitely meeting some cool people, weird people, and shitty people on this trip. Which is cool.

That girl yesterday said something about some book called “The Secret” I immediately came to the conclusion that it sucked because I remember my mom tried to give it to me a few years back and I started reading it and it just seemed like total obvious bullshit. Anyways she started summarizing it and basically said that life is good when you think positively about what you want, then those things will come to you? Something like that. I prefer my method which is totally opposite… don’t think about what you want, want nothing, and you are never disappointed or unsatisfied. Anything good that happens is a pleasant surprise and you appreciate it more. I don’t know that just seems to be working out for me thus far.

I’m getting a little tired of the question “how long are you here for?” or, the one from back home “when are you coming back?”

Piss off?

PEACE.

This is stupid don’t watch this.

Ridin Dirty from Andrew Lang on Vimeo.

Ok so this happened a while back, and this video is pretty boring, but I just had to make a video with this song in the background.

Enjoy

Socalmartialarts.com

So, I recently had to think about what I would do in the future (something I generally despise). I had a tryst with an overly religious girl recently, shortly after she started questioning me about my thoughts on religion and how she wanted to raise her children Christian because of her strong belief in Jesus Christ. It got me thinking about my childhood and what effect Christianity had on me as a child. The most vivid memories I had were being forced to go to church and having my friends make me feel guilty for the things I did as a kid and not being a “better” kid. I remember being really concerned about what god thought about me and worrying that I would go to hell.

I always had a problem with the idea that saying a prayer one time suddenly would send me from hell to heaven, it didn’t seem like enough. Now I think about how much time I wasted being judged by my friends for the things I would do that were “unChristian-like” and being told that people belonging to other religions were bad people.

So, would I raise my kids Christian?

Lets imagine that for some reason I ended up married to a woman who was religious, Christian even. I wouldn’t have any problem at all with her taking them to church on Sunday. After church though I’d make sure to remind my kid that although they’re attending Christian church, there’s also Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, etc. that they haven’t heard about and all have an equal probability of being just as correct as Christianity. I’d probably give them a crash course in the beliefs of other religions and their stories. I’d make sure to point out how similar the story of Jesus Christ is to other religions saviours and dieties and make them think about where Christianity really originated. At the end of all that I’d also mention that there’s also one more option and that’s to not believe in a god at all.

I actually get a bit upset thinking about my childhood and being taught that no other religions could possibly be correct. I never even knew that there were other people that didn’t believe in the same god I did and never got a chance to hear their ideas or teachings. I think this kind of upbringing teaches a child to be close minded and teaches the child not to think for themselves or question what their told. Essentially I think it has all the makings for creating an ignorant person because of the unwillingness to listen to unfamiliar ideas. I don’t think its a good attitude that if something is hard to explain, its because only God knows. This attitude leads to the discouragement of new thought and discovery.

We’re getting to the point with modern science that we can explain almost all the things that were previously considered acts of God. Demonic possession – schizophrenia, A vision of angels or speaking with god – schizophrenia or ergot poisoning or hallucinations, the origin of humanity and conscious thought – Darwininian evolution.

Religion has existed for the last several thousand years due to a lack of understanding of how the world worked and because human beings needed something to comfort them because we’re the only beings capable of understanding our mortality. Do I like thinking that when I die my body goes into the ground and nothing happens? Well, I don’t think heaven really sounds that great either (well maybe Muslim Martyr heaven). Who wants to sit around for eternity and worship a god? BORING. I wanna play ping pong. Beyond that, I don’t recall what it felt like to not have been born, but I don’t remember being bothered by it, I suspect being dead will feel much the same way.

I believe and hope that as we learn more about how our world works that god and religion won’t even be necessary anymore to explain how this all came into being. Maybe religion is just a passing phase that will become extinct when people begin understanding that evolution and science can now explain much more than god’s existence does. Its a role reversal that has happened as we progressively learn more, the more scientific education we have, the less likely we will be to believe in a god.

I do understand why some people still choose to believe in god, its because they don’t understand science, and they don’t require something to be proved to them for them to believe it. I also realize why I changed from being a believer to a non-believer. I spent 4 years studying physics, biology, psychology, and chemistry. I have a much better understanding of human thought, human behavior, the rules by which our universe is governed, evolution, and human motivation than the average religious person does. There’s a reason why there’s a negative correlation between level of education and belief in god. I think not being educated in the areas I described above make it easy to say that god exists and not see the blaring contradictions that science has created in the last century. More than that I could expect that knowledge humanity has only had for 50 years to change 8000 years of belief, no matter how irrational it is.

So, to answer your question miss, I would want my children to think for themselves, question what their told instead, and not blindly believing what someone tells them. I don’t think only showing them one tiny of religious possibility is the way to do that.

So Lili invited me to come visit her in Macau today and I took her up on the offer. I’d heard it was basically the Chinese Vegas and it basically met all expectations. The Venetian here is 4x the size of the one in vegas. There aren’t as many hotels and they aren’t as concentrated but they are working on it. They’re building a strip and Lili and her husband James bought an apartment that’s on the hill overlooking the new strip, pretty good decision if you ask me.

Oh, the best part about it is the food. It was epic. I had some pretty fantastic curry and thai food. I love Chinese hospitality, Lili had invited me to sleep in her apartment and when I got here they were like “we decided to just get you a hotel room”. Of course they refuse to let me pay for it. That’s where I’m chilling right now, its pretty tight, I have this awesome view of the MGM Grand and the Wynn, and its only 100 bucks a night on a Saturday.

Here’s a random video from when we were just hanging listening to some music in a casino, all of the sudden this couple gets up and starts dancing like retards. They were totally serious too, you should have seen there expressions, it was like they were practicing for a competition, they weren’t even enjoying themselves:

Ok so here’s the entertaining parts, Lili cracks me up. We’re sitting on this sweet dock having dinner at this fantastic Thai place, and like 10 minutes ago I had already noticed these fine looking Russian girls sitting a few tables away. Lili goes “Did you see the russian girls?” and me and James are like “yeah like a year ago”. We didn’t actually say that but me and him were on the same page. Anyways she goes “I think they’re prostitutes”. At first I was like “damn, talkin shit much?” but no seriously, they probably were. I say this because about 30 minutes later they show me the last thing on the tour. We headed over to the Hotel Lisboa where apparently, prostitutes just hang out, and then walk around in this circle like some kind of meat market. There’s a bunch of dudes just standing around creepily stalking them. Eventually the’ll pick one up and do what they do for 100 bucks (I know seems like way too much right).

I found this video on youtube of it, this is exactly what it looked like.

And to answer your question, would I REALLY be posting about this if I actually did it? Plus I’m not into asians, not enough curves.

On a side, non traveling note, me and Clouse came up with some pretty sick inside jokes today that I want to make sure I don’t remember:

“I had sex with this girl and I couldn’t cum… that’s how I knew I loved you”

“I just wanted you to know… I’m having dinner right now on my date, but i’m thinking of your cock in my mouth, just thought you should know”

“Hey, I’m eating chocolate ice cream, I just thought I should tell you, I don’t know how you feel about it”

“I want to fuck”

NOBODY SAID YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO GET IT.

PICS:

Venetian in Macau

Proof I Was There, I know I'm Smiling, Don't Get Used To It

It’s a little exciting/nervewracking to be seeing the effects of what I’ve been doing at work. Ok so I’ve been pushing this new line of products because… customers keep e-mailing me about them, its pretty simple. Seems like there might be a market for it I guess. Then again… MY MAJOR WAS PSYCHOBIOLOGY… I’ve taken like two marketing classes in my life, why the hell are you listening to me?

So here I am, in China, in a design review meeting for the second connector we are tooling upon my recommendation, (this ones going to cost us 60k the last one was 40k) and I start thinking to myself… wow, we’re spending 100k dollars and a ton of our engineers time because of something I said?

CA China Design Review from Andrew Lang on Vimeo.

Ok, lets get passed the fact that my pretending that I know what I’m doing has worked way to well for me, I’m actually pretty sure this is going to workout for us, mostly because I’m going to make it work. If it doesn’t they pretty much have nobody to blame except for me so… yeah.

Nobody has any idea that I’m freaking out about this inside my head, because, somewhere along the line, I realized that for some reason I get a much better reaction out of people when I pretend to be 100% confident in what I’m doing and also pretend that I know exactly what I’m talking about always, couldn’t be further from the truth.

My job is to do internet marketing for a heavily engineering based company. What did I study in school? Biology and psychology, nuff’ said.

TTYL

Here's a random photo clouse liked, Lily, Mandy, and Me in Taiwan

Ok so, what I do here during the day really isn’t that interesting, besides the fact that I’m able to do everything I do at home just like I do there. Just give me an internet connection and my laptop and I’m at work.

Anyway besides that, the company here is pretty awesome, my good friends here are the outside sales guy, the head engineer, and the head fo the manufacturing department. Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays (if we don’t go out drinking) we play basketball and sometimes a little ping pong. Thankfully I’m not in this video because I suck pretty badly compared to them, although, I am getting better. My new strategy seems to work pretty well, (stand underneath the hoop and wait till someone passes me the ball… then miss a layup). I can get rebounds pretty well too, they’re short its true.

I rock at ping pong though, I can take most of them, I think its the unusually long arms.

CA China Playing Basketball and Ping Pong from Andrew Lang on Vimeo.

I think its kind of weird how easily I fit in here though, here’s a typical day for me:

Wake up (to my dad yelling at me to wake up), answer some e-mails, get some breakfast buffet at the hotel (by far the best meal of the day) fried rice, french toast, some boiled eggs, sometimes they even have fried potatoes. Anyways, from there we head over to the office, I “work” till noon, then grab some lunch at the circle table with the department heads and my dad. For me that’s usually a bowl or rice, maybe a couple vegetables, and if I’m lucky a couple pieces of meat.

“Work” for a few more hours after lunch. My dad heads back around 3 because his eyes are tired, most of the time I stay here and “work” till five thirty then have dinner with the crew (see description of lunch). After that I go change and play basketball and ping pong for a few hours. Get a car ride home from the driver, take a shower, have a small dinner at the hotel for a couple bucks. And then, if I’m feeling masochistic, i’ll go get a chinese massage at the hotel for 20 bucks. They do good work, its really painful but supposed to be good for you right?

Uh yeah anyway here’s some photos or something…

Getting off the airplane was an interesting experience, they were doing some screening for the H1N1 outbreak. I don’t really get what the big deal is, less people have died from it than die of the common flu each year. You get it, go to the doctor, what’s the big deal.

H1N1 Screening In Shenzhen, China from Andrew Lang on Vimeo.

The funnier thing was that they pulled my dad out of line to do a bunch of screening on him. I waited for him for a bit and then he finally came through customs looking like this:

Dad Gets Pwnd By H1N1 Screening at ShenZhen Airport

As sad as it is Shenzhen is a familiar place to me now. We’re staying in the same hotel we’ve stayed in the last few times we’ve been here and I kind of feel like I have the whole situation figured out. Ray and Anderson came by the hotel an hour or so after we arrived and took me to go get a bite to eat. I pretty much know the area around the hotel.

I had them help me negotiate a 2 week gym membership at the gym in walking distance from our hotel. I was hoping we could ge them down to 20 bucks for 2 weeks, seems reasonable to me. I guess the best they could do was 30 bucks, kind of a ripoff but its a lot better than doing pull ups on a tree and situps in grass.

“Work” starts tomorrow at the factory. I actually like working there since, even more than usual, nobody knows what my job really is so I basically get to do whatever I want. I’ll probably spend most of the day working on the website for Lightning MMA and talking with Bala on MSN and stuff. I love being here, the people are awesome, so much nicer than people are in Cali. I don’t know if its just this atmosphere that makes me friendlier or knowing that they wouldn’t understand my sarcasm but I feel like I’m a better person when I’m over here.