This makes no sense. We worked on a six day week, were required to attend an eight hour Christmas party on our one day off then work a three day week up until Christmas eve. We then took a ten day holiday from Christmas day untile January 4th. Today we started back to work another 6 day exam week before going on another 3 week holiday. It’s like somebody and the top of Jiangsu education said, “Merry Christmas, have a good holiday … Psyche! Work six days!” So we will now spend the next six days powering through tests, grades, paperwork and trying not to get busted showing movies in class to bust across the holiday finish line next Sunday. Batman!!!

Wish you all were here!

According to me of course.

It dawned on me on Christmas eve, our last day of work before our Christmas holiday, that I hadn’t downloaded any new music in a long long time. I didn’t do anything about it until I was making a trip to the store and listened to NPR’s all songs considered Dec. 8th show, “The Year in Review: 2008″, where Bob Boilen had a few guests on and were discussing what had happened for the past year in music. As I listened to the show I realized that I had kept up with most everything that had happened (musically) in 2007 (which was a great year for music), but hadn’t really paid much attention to anything that had been going on in 2008.

So I immediately sought to remedy this situation by searching the net for top 10 lists in 2008 and acquiring the music they contained. I suppose I hadn’t been completely in the dark in 2008 but I had missed some good stuff. So let’s see what came out this year.

From bands you’ve probably heard of

Weezer hadn’t released an album since 2005 and hadn’t released a good album since 2002, and judging from the cover of the Red Album they released in June it was hard for me to seriously expect much. I was mildly amuzed by Troublemaker and I smiled when I heard The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived, but when I got to Pork and Beans I thought “now here’s the Weezer we all fell in love with!” The rest of the album had it’s ups and downs, but all said and done I’m glad Weezer is still making music but this was not a great album to me.

Much like Weezer other band’s with names released only mediocre albums this year, including Gnarls Barkley’s The Odd Couple. I did listen to this album and enjoy it, but it certainly didn’t have the impact that St. Elsewhere had. I don’t even remember the Beck Album and I never was into Death Cab the way most people were. But if you like Death Cab, I guess Narrow Stairs was ok.

Now Metallica on the other hand. I feel the same way about Metallica that you do. They are money grubbing sell outs who had our freedoms. Besides that their music has sucked since the black album. Well, for me it has. I’m not that into metal anymore. So I’ve listened politely since 1991, but not really been impressed. Then Death Magnetic came out this year, and I thought yeah right Metallica, why are you even trying anymore. But then I listened to it and I was pretty impressed. The seem to have made music with some heart, heart wrapped in furious growling metal! I don’t listen to this everyday, but sometimes when I’m pissed off and need to get to the gym and be a jock for a few hours this certainly provides a good soundtrack.

The winners of the year

Here are five albums that were on almost every top 10 list I could find: Bon Iver For Emma, Forever Ago, Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes, Santogold - Santogold, My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges, and Lil’ Wayne - Tha Carter 3. Now these were good albums that got due recognition, but I found them all to be a little blah. Except for Bon Iver. The first time I heard this album was on the NPR show I referred to earlier. I stopped dead in my tracks and thought “Wow, that is a beautiful sound”. It’s a little too sad for me to listen to it everyday, but I must say it was a very powerful album.

The winners I loved

If you don’t own these five albums then make your life better by going out and getting them. These 5 were talked about a lot and showed up on a ton of Top 10s and Top 25s and I also love them. They are TV on the Radio - Dear Science, MGMT - Oracular Spectacular, Son Lux - At War with Walls and Mazes, Mates of State - Re-arrange Us, Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly).

I had never hear of TV on the Radio until this year when I got Dear Science. This isn’t really music I usually listen to, of course I don’t really know if I can classify this music as anything (except good).

MGMT (formerly known as Management) are two guy from Brooklyn and I think this album is technically synth pop, but I find it a little more melancholy than that. The opening track, Time to Pretend, is easily the best. It is danceable and noisy and yet a little sad. It’s a song about being young and thinking you’re going to take on the world and be famous, but then you grow up and find out things aren’t going to work out and that you’re going to work in a boring job just like everybody else. I don’t think the song actually said that, but that’s what I got out of it. A beautiful song about the death of young optimism. Maybe I loved it so much because I’m turning 30 this year.

Son Lux is Ryan Lott, a musician from New York who (I think) used to write music for TV commercials. This album is dark and adventurous with all kinds of sounds and textures in every song. Certainly not danceable, but very beautiful if you want something to raise your intelligence level. I would classify this as “challenging music”.

Mates of State rock all the time!! They took a bit of a beating from the hosts of the All Songs podcast I listen to, but I’ve loved them from the first. They have certainly changed their sound a bit on this album. Well, I’ll say it’s grown up a bit, it’s cleaner and better produced. But the excessive amount of joy is still there, and I don’t care who you are you will be happy after listening to this album. You may be a mass murderer who steps on new born kittens for fun, but after listening to Mates of State your heart will burst for with human kindness and you will prance through the street kissing old ladies and blessing everyone you see. That is the power of this album.

And finally Sigur Ros. This album was beautiful. I can’t say much more than that. That’s how I feel about most of Sigur Ros’s music. It’s like looking at wonderful art. You just stare at it in amazement and wonder at its mystery. I mean just look at the name, “With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly”. Shock and awe people. I did make this one a daily listener more than most Sigur Ros though and I feel it was a more digestible album.

The Best Albums of 2008 you didn’t hear.

If you are still with me, here are my favorite albums of the year that nobody was talking about.

The unsung hero of 2008

I don’t remember exactly when I got this album, but I do remember Elizabeth told me about it saying that she thought’d it would be something I would like. I had never heard anything like it. Well, I guess I have. I’ve been following 8-bit music for about 4 or 5 years, but this wasn’t 8 bit it was something more. From the first time I heard Untrust Us I was in love. Before after the summer when I got my new phone, I made it my ring tone. It is still my ring tone, that’s means I’ve been listening to it everyday for the last 6 months (at least the first 12 seconds or so) and I can put the song on right now and still love it! I will readily admit that this album is not for everybody, but if there’s a little bit of a punk or a little bit of a geek in you (or a little of both) you NEED to have this album. NEED!!

8-bits of awesome!

Speaking of 8-bit here’s an album that took me by surprise. I know not everybody likes 8-bit music (but you all should), but this album takes 8-bit up a notch. This album is polished enough for everybody to love AND dance to! As much as I love the idea of 8-bit music I will have to admit in the last 3 years I can only think of maybe 4 albums that most regular people wouldn’t detest. This is one of those albums. Elizabeth still finds it generally annoying, but I think it sounds like the future and the past combined, wrapped in hope and joy, then dipped in the indomitable human spirit. Hey, want to know what the best part of 8-bit music is? It’s free!! In fact, stop reading right now and go here and download this album.

Music from China that doesn't suck

I saw this band at Castle Bar, but I don’t remember when. I had heard a few of their tracks on their myspace page and was certainly intrigued. Their live show was pretty intense but had been prefaced by Nanjing’s finest punk bands and so I guess since I hadn’t cleansed my musical pallet I felt they were just par musically. Later my friend Jason went to Beijing and picked up a copy of their CD and brought it home. There was a song on the CD that I had heard live, but isn’t available on the CD called Kiss! Kill! Bang! that was instantly one of my favorite songs and is one of the very few songs in my iTunes Library that has five stars. The thing that really makes this band and this album an accomplishment is that it doesn’t suffer from the lack of creativity that most Chinese music does. Queen Sea Big Shark has a confidence and power that most bands in China just don’t have. Independant music in China is still very immature and sound like bad copies of other bands, but there are a few bands coming out of Beijing that have found a sound that is original and Queen Sea Big Shark is one of them.

Well there you have it. There are a lot of bands, albums, and songs I didn’t mention (and I might try later), but I’ve been working on this post on and off for the last 7 hours and my head is too tired to write anymore. I’m really going to need to now wait until the end of the year to talk about all of this. But I hope I’ve given you some suggestions if you’ve hit a musical dry spell as I did. Happy New Year Everybody.

Well I’ve made a few changes to the site today as you have probably noticed. Something you may not notice is that I’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.7 from 2.6. And I must say, 2.7 is excellent. If you are not a wordpress user, I will once again highly suggest it. Something you may have noticed immediately is that I have changed the theme of whereisnathan.com, but for the first time since it’s creation I have chosen a theme that is not predominantly black. I started this site  in 2003 and have always designed my own themes and they have always been black, well it’s a new year and things are changing. The theme I am using is 10Pad2 - rising sun by Eric Crooks (Takteek), who I will probably need to credit at some point on the page. Nevermind, Takteedmedia gets a link down there at the bottom of the page. Elizabeth has also updated her page a little and has put up some Christmas pictures.

I’m mostly posting this in case I don’t get another post up today. Happy New Year everybody, I hope that 2009 will be a white background year instead of a black background one.

I’ve just spend the last few days sleeping, watching movies, drinking with friends, and reading over last years blog posts. Every year I seem to follow the same pattern. I start posting as much as possible early in the year and I slowly decrease the regularity of my posts until vacation times and by the end of the year I haven’t posted in two months. Well, here we are again dear friends. I haven’t posted since October, but I’ve been living life (as I’m sure you all have) just the same for the last two months. I have plans for up and coming posts, the post I’ve been meaning to put up for the last few days is my pick for top songs and albums of 2008. Reading through old posts and looking around my wordpress installation I’ve got a few chores to do (like upgrading to the latester version and updating plugins and stuff). But eventually you’ll notice that I’ve started posting again and we’ll repeat the cycle in a glorious new year, the year of our Lord 2009. Welcome back.

I’m back from my vacation. It was awesome. I took a 24 hour train. I rode in lots of boats over several bodies of water. I got a tattoo (yes, another one). My flight got delayed and I stayed in an airport hotel for 9 hours. I saw old friends. I ate Hunan food. I arrived home safely. It was great.

Here are some pictures.

So for the past week or so the sky has been hidden by clouds (smog?) and so I haven’t see the sun or the stars. This is not uncommon in Nanjing (or perhaps many cities around the world), but what is uncommon is the effect it has had in reflecting the city lights. The smogcloud cover has been so low that the sky lights up around 7:30 or 8 when the sun disappears completely. I first noticed this last night as I was coming out the gym and suddenly realized it was 9pm and yet looking at the sky it could have been 5:30 or 6. It is a very eerie effect as the twilight haze doesn’t give off shadows, but everything can be seen clearly in the darkest back alley. In fact this my be why I haven’t noticed it sooner is because living in a metropolitan area there are usually so many street lights that night time and darkness aren’t really related subjects.

On a completely separate subject, tomorrow begins one of China’s “Golden Weeks”. It is October holiday or National holiday and we will have a week off from work. As you can see from the wikipedia article, this year the holiday has been altered to start on Oct 1^rst (a Wednesday). But since the holidays were already written into our contract, we get a full 9 day holiday (on work week plus weekends) with a 5 day head start on the rest of China. Score! Elizabeth and I with some friends are returning to a place amongst picturesque hills that we haven’t been to in fours years. I am really really looking forward to it. I will tell you all about it when we return (and I have pictures).

Wow! Ok, I just finished watching Obama’s acceptance speech (yes, I had to download it so I’m a little behind) and I was moved to tears as I always am when I hear him speak. But I’m not moved to tears because he’s talking about really good political ideas. I’m moved to tears when he talks about how great America could be. I could launch off into a total political rant here, but I won’t. I’m in the same boat as many many other people. My voting history calls me a republican, but my time abroad has forced me to revisit those beliefs. I have no idea if I’m a democrat or not. But I know I like what Obama says. Some of it anyway. I like the idea of a president who is apalled by the idea that the United States isn’t a great country. Let me say that again, a GREAT country. Our history tells us we come from the strongest, most rugged adventurers the world had to offer. We pioneered the west! We went to the moon! It was so inspiring the Chinese are trying to repeat the effort 40 years later! We defended freedom in two world wars! Come on people, we are a strong proud capable people, let’s start acting like it. Oops, looks like I ranted a little anyway.

But that’s why I like what Obama says. He’s talking about not how great he is, but how great we all could be.

Anyway, I’m going on vacation in a few days. And I’m going to love it. Happy 59^th birthday China. Please elect Obama USA.

Life Update!

The Olympics are over and nothing terrible happened. Although will the great coming out for China, I think the world did get to see the personality of the Chinese a little clearer. There were also some very telling events, like the fake singing at the opening ceremonies and the 14 year old gymnists whose ages were concealed, that the world probably took as foul play but again shows us the kind of mindset of the country we are all dealing with here. Anyway, I’m glad it’s over. Now we can talk about something else. Or watch re-runs of it for the next four years.

I joined a gym. I joined the Wu Tai Shan fitness club for one year for the low low price of 3700元 with the decision to get back in shape. I haven’t been in terrible shape in a while, but I’ve been slightly overweight for a few years now and with me starting to knock on 30’s door I felt it was time to get back to it. Time to lost the fat and get my former beefy glory back. I’m only 3 weeks in, but so far so good.

I turned 29. I am in the last year of my 20’s and to celebrate this fact (or mourn it) we went to Burger King for dinner. I ate a bacon cheese whopper with a large meal and felt very satisfied, until I saw they were offering a hersey’s chocoloate icecream pie and decided I needed that. When I got to the counter to ask for it they told me it was only available free with the purchase of a chicken cordon bleu sandwich and meal. So I bravely devoured the enourmous sandwich and the delicious chocolate pie. We then went to Lost Pool Bar and played pool and drank beer until the wee hours of the morning. A fine birthday indeed.

I bought a coffee maker. Now I bought a drip coffee maker shortly after arriving in in Nanjing and have been using it happily ever since. But recently an Italian co-worker of mine asked me to try some “real” coffee and proceeded to give me a sample. It was delicious, since Italians have some sort of magical powers over things like coffee, wine, and clothing. But I had assumed he had brought the grounds over from Australia (his current country of residence), when in fact he has taken the coffee grounds I had given him from our local super market (Shanghai coffee, a local coffee grounds producer) and made using an espresso maker he had bought a block from our school. I was intrigued. So I went down and checked it out a few weeks ago and it turned out they had Italian made coffee makers (the metal kind that you screw apart in the middle) on sale for half price. I was a bit worried because we use a gas burner at our apartment, but the lady in the shop said open flame should not affect it. And besides a little discoloration, it was been working well. And as I said, some sort of Italian power is eminated from this machine as it is able to transform lowly Chinese coffee grounds into decent full bodied coffee. Yum.

And last but not least, we have a new shopping center in Nanjing. Now this may not sound like much, but this shopping center has single handedly insured that we no longer have to go to Shanghai to visit certain necessary stores. Enter Aqua City, the most western shopping mall I have ever seen in China (…this might not be true, but I can’t remember seeing one more western). Aqua city is a strange monstrocity made of two bizzarly shaped buildings that are joined by a walkway prominade sort of thing surrounding several pools and waterways that run through the middle. Besides the strange architecture, it’s holds treasures like H&M, Zara, Sephora, Uniqlo, Muji, Steve Madden, not to mention a Starbuck, Costa, Papa John’s, and Dairy Queen. I still haven’t seen all the stores it holds, and truth be told there are many stores that you would find in other Chinese malls like the obligitory San rio store that is packed full of Hello Kitty and the traditional Chinese tea store that sell tea sets for 5000元. But we’ve been there Saturdays in a row and still haven’t seen the half of it.

Well, that’s the end of my life update. I have my phone software working again, so hopefully I can keep posting pictures which I’m never very good at. Peace out. Happy Moon Festival!!!

Well the world hasn’t come to an end, and there haven’t even been that many fireworks. I must say I’m underwhelmed. Well I was at one of our local bars for the opening ceremonies and I was certainly not underwhelmed by them. I was actually very impressed.

China wisely stuck to its guns and delivered on what they do best. Massive crowds performing in perfect laser accurate synchronization. Acrobats in mind blowing costumes attached to strings and flying through the air. Larger than life calligraphy. And plenty of fireworks. I must say I was very proud of the opening ceremonies, I thought they were the perfect Chinese story. Like I said thousands in perfect harmony is what we’re about over here, and the synchronized lighted drumming made for a very impressive show. And then the hundreds of men and women in boxes rising and falling to form the the character for “peace” (和), in ancient forms and then in simplified told of the transfer from old to new that China has been experiencing in the last 30 years. But what did it for me was the crowd of children dressed as the 55 other ethnic groups of china carrying the national colors of China toward the massive flag posts at the other end of the field. At the very end of the field representatives from the PLA take it from them, hoist it high, and it perfect two step carry it the remaining 20 feet or so to run it up the pole. A sad beautiful poetry in that, but very very fitting.

I have been keeping up with the medal race, and it seems to be a battle between the ol’ USA and the great motherland. I love and respect China, but for my own sanity I hope everyday that ‘Merica will pull ahead and spank the crap out of China. Humility is something the China could always use more of. The only problem is that America could always use more humility also. But I guess I have to go with the lesser of two evils here. I’m not saying America or China are evil. Lets be clear on that. I don’t need this site blocked.

The very first day I started out by watching women’s 10 meter air rifle shooting and 48K women’s clean and jerk where (if you haven’t heard by now, I know I sure have) Chen Xiexia dominated the competition by putting up 117K. Think about that for a second. That girl wieghs 104 lbs and she lifted 257 lbs above her head. That’s like me lifting 435 lbs above my head. Much like Chen Yun, I’ll bet she likes weight lifting.

I’m watching right now as Zhang XiangXiang has just won China’s 4th gold medal in a weightlifting competition and I’m thinking to myself that the stem cells and gene therapy has really paid off for China this year.

We got mad amounts of rain this weekend. I was told it was due to the typhoon that tore through Taiwan and into the mainland. But in the wee hours of Saturday morning the manhole covers were blown off by the amount of water in the drains (I don’t have pictures of that). But we did get to play in it for a while.

So back a while ago my friend Leif had his phone stolen and was telling me about it in Castle bar after he noticed my Motorola L6. He said that he really like my L6 and wanted to know where he could get one. I told him I had bought it two years prior when I first arrived in Hangzhou but I had seen them around for about 500 or 600 yuan. Wanting to upgrade my phone I offered to sell him my phone for 300 yuan and he accepted.

The reason I sold it was because ever since I had seen the L7 I wanted to upgrade. With the mini-SD card for storage moving pictures, ring tones and other kinds of files was much easier. And my friend Jason had recently purchased an L7 for around 700 yuan. So I went to the phone market and found a used L7 in decent condition for 500 yuan, thus purchasing a phone for 200 yuan. As I suspected I was very happy with the L7, it worked just as well as my L6 but creating ring tones, wallpaper pictures and other stuff was much easier.

So when I lost the phone about a month ago I wasn’t very happy. I was on my way to a friends house in the back of a taxi and pulled my phone out to call him when we arrived and I thought I put the phone back into my pocket. About an hour later when I reached into my pocket to check the time I found out it was missing, and when we tried to call my number we got the “phone is powered off” signal. That could only mean one thing, and this is I would never the your phone again.

So over the break I had an important decision to make, do I sink some money and get a good phone or do I buy a crappy phone for $10 and wait until I get back to the US to buy a fancy phone? Well after 2 days without a phone my imagination began to get the best of me and I decided to have no limit and no budget and buy whatever phone I wanted.

I looked at a lot of phones. I won’t take you through the whole thing, but it was terrible. There are a lot of phones out there.

Anyway, I landed on a fantastic phone. The Nokia N82.

Let me just say this, 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash, 802.11b/g wireless card, 3.5 mm audio jack, stereo speakers, Symbian OS v9. Now I suppose you can find that stuff on lots of phones, but what surprises me every day the software. With my L7 I was using Motorola Phone tools and it kind of sucked. And wasn’t free for download. But Nokia PC Suite, Nokia Photos, and Nokia Maps are free from the Nokia site and so far work nearly flawless.

I’m probably going to talk about this later, but I’ve got to prepare for classes in the morning. Guess what? 5 days ’til the Olympics!!