to play against Ghana. Oh well, I'm still proud of 'em. Movie on
Saturday and museum plus a walk around a lake on Sunday. Today, I
actually made progress on my project. After three or so weeks of
work, I think I finally realize that one of the papers that I was
reading had their equation published wrong.
Yeah... one thing I've decided I can't get used to is how a lot of
Chinese people do business. Everything has to be bargained for, and
if you don't do it, you get ripped off. Big time. Also, some people
are just downright dishonest. I hate having to always be on the
lookout for that stuff. Oh well, I guess if you're good doing
business this way, you can usually come out ahead.
My professor came back from the US last weekend, and he had some
pretty insightful things to say. None of which I'll really discuss
here. Ok, I lied, maybe you'll get a brief rundown. I think he
values the ability to speak English very much especially since he is
in a technical field, and I actually noticed this a while ago. He
loves to send his students overseas in order to expose them to
different cultures. He often asks me to speak to others in English
just so they can get used to a native English speaker. He's also a
little intimidating to talk to because he's the tallest in the lab,
has the deepest voice, and speaks very softly but damn fast. I rarely
understand when he speaks Chinese. That said, I always find it deeply
interesting to get the perspectives of intellectuals outside the US.
As Americans, we often consider the problems the rest of the world
faces, and where they are worse off than we are. The other side of
that coin is that so many others see the US through the exact same
paradigm. We certainly have problems other countries don't have
because of our values, government, and possibly our history.
Sometimes it's hard to objectively describe certain facets of US life
to others. Living for any period of time outside the US, any one can
tell you where we excel, and where we fall short. As long as we don't
forget that we do fall short in some regards, we should be ok. I will
admit, I was not expecting to have this conversation with my professor
when I woke up this morning. Weird.
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