Blogaround

1. Why Tech Alone Won’t Free Women From Their Chains (May 9) "Since smartphones allow for multitasking, women often perform a variety of decentralized, invisible digital tasks at the same time. It can therefore be difficult for family members, and even those completing the chores, to distinguish between housework, social communication, and leisure time, with the result that women’s work is often misinterpreted as play, which diminishes the effort they put in and generates new family conflicts." Oh this is SO REAL! I'm in China- and the article is about China- so I don't know if this is similar in other countries. Probably yes. I have an app for grocery shopping- every time I think of something we need, I go put it in the cart in the app. I have to think about what we're having for dinner, keep track of whether we need toilet paper and other infrequently-purchased things, and think about what time the groceries should be delivered. And my husband handles the communication with our kid's school. All of this is through apps on the phone.

Also from Sixth Tone: Chinese Detergent Brand in a Spin Over Sexist Ad Campaign (May 11) "'It’s Mother’s Day, and you still want moms to do housework?' one user wrote on microblogging platform Weibo. 'I suggest you run the campaign again on Father’s Day to make laundry easier for dad,' another posted."

2. “Unprecedented” Google Cloud event wipes out customer account and its backups (May 18, via) "But no, the actual worst-case scenario is 'Google deletes your account,' which means all those backups are gone, too."

3. An exercise in frustration (May 20) "For the image below I asked ChatGPT/DALLE3 to keep each detail exactly the same but to make it so that we can see it's raining outside the tent. Not only did it completely change the image, but it's not even raining."

4. The Case For Open Borders (May 17, via) "The difference between an invasion and migration, is that an army comes over the border with guns to seize territory, and migrants come over the border in order to, for example, take a job in a restaurant and send their kids to school."

This is an interview with John Washington, author of a new book, "The Case For Open Borders." Wow I am so interested in this! 

I am an immigrant- I am American and I've lived in China for 10 years. Back when I was thinking about moving to China, I totally believed that I could just move to whatever country I wanted to. My whole life, I had heard about American missionaries moving to so many different countries around the world (and my decision to move to China was very much influenced by Christian missions ideology), and about Americans going on vacation to beautiful and interesting places all around the world. 

And at some point- I think after I moved to China- I found out that many people, because of where they were born, can't just go galivanting around to whatever country they want. *I* can, because I'm American, but many citizens of other countries can't. That was shocking to me. Everyone should be allowed to live wherever they want!

That's what radicalized me. Support all immigrants- legal immigrants, undocumented immigrants, refugees, third-culture kids, etc etc etc. Support all immigrants.

I seem to have won some kind of Chinese boating contest

Behold:

You guys. You guys.

So let me tell you how "moving" works in China. When someone "moves out" of their apartment, they don't actually move out, they apparently just take the stuff they want and leave everything else. Which is why I just moved into an apartment full of somebody's random junk. Like, old shoes, toothbrushes, cables from some sort of TV perhaps, cigarette butts, etc etc.

Eww.

In America, you have to clean everything when you move out or you don't get your security deposit back. In China, not so! (If you're lucky, your landlord might hire someone to "clean" it before you move in.)

But, lucky for me, my new apartment also came with the item pictured above. Some kind of golden boat on a pedestal. It's 18 inches tall and looks like a trophy, right? Cool!

But it can't be a trophy, because it has a bunch of phrases like "一帆风顺" which means "smooth sailing."

So I don't really know what it is, but man that's cool. ^_^

Adventures in Laundry

So I just moved into a new apartment, and decided to take on the monumental task of doing laundry. You know, normally laundry is not a “monumental task.” Normally, you just start the washing machine and then forget about it for a few hours and everything is great. But this was not a normal day.

Okay. The washing machine in my new apartment has a hose sticking out of it, which presumably needs to be connected to the faucet sticking out of the wall above the laundry tub sink thing.

Right. Easier said than done.

So I stuck it on, and used a screwdriver to tighten the four screws as much as I could, but like, this is obviously not a good seal. Nothing here seems to be watertight.

So I turn on the faucet and SPEW SPEW SPEW WOW I MADE A FOUNTAIN! Okay. Turn off the faucet. Wrap a towel around the whole contraption, to direct the water down into the laundry tub, which has a drain. Perfect.

So I turn on the washing machine, and water’s kind of going into the washing machine, but about half of it is just running down the laundry tub drain. Well, close enough.

A few minutes later, I happened to look into the laundry room and discover there was water all over the floor. What?! How?! Oh look at this, the plastic pipe that comes out of the base of the laundry tub is connected to an opening in the floor, but that connection isn’t sealed or anything, and it’s overflowing. Because, China.

And the cat’s just sitting there looking at the water, studying it like cats do.

Okay. I grabbed a bucket and put it under the bad connection between the washing machine hose and the faucet. Once it filled, I ran through the bedroom, across the hall, and into the bathroom, where I dumped it into the shower.

Run back. Fill again. Run to the shower. Dump. Repeat.

And then I realized there was so much water gushing because the washing machine was not taking any. It was on the part where it spins the clothes. So ALL the water from the faucet was being directed into the laundry tub. Well, if the washing machine doesn’t need it, I think I’ll turn off the faucet. Or maybe turn it on just a trickle and keep an eye on the washing machine to see when it starts taking water in, then I can turn up the faucet more.

At this point I’m seriously questioning how the previous resident washed her clothes.

So I stood there and observed my washing machine, sometimes turning the water up or down, sometimes running to the shower to dump the bucket, etc. At some point I realized I could dump some into the washing machine instead, which worked well.

Longest 45 minutes of my life.

All right. The cycle is almost done. 5 minutes left. And that’s when the washing machine started jumping around everywhere. It was spinning the clothes so hard that the whole machine was rocking back and forth, walking across the floor, throwing itself this way and that way, and I’m just like “STOP STOP STOP” and trying to grab it and slow it down, which didn’t work.

Okay then. Then it was done. Finally.

I got my clothes out and hung them up. (We don’t have dryers in China.) Ah, they’re all covered with lint. Oh. I guess the inside of the washing machine wasn’t so clean to begin with. Whatever. I’ll just roll over them with the cat-hair-roller later.

And I’m talking to the landlord about that laundry hose thing as soon as possible.

Image source.

So I cleaned my shower...

When I moved into my apartment, the shower looked like this:

See that loofa hanging there? Yeah that belonged to the previous resident.

Then I cleaned it and scrubbed it to get rid of the nasty black mold, and now it looks like this: