Hangzhou

It's tropically warm when I arrive at the airport. The sweaty, moist air reminds me of gym class at primary school. I suspect there might be funghi growing above the ceiling panes. This being my first longhaul flight, I'm not quite sure how to detect signals of a jetlag. However, after having once again confirmed I cannot sleep in any sort of seated position, I'm leaving the plane with surprisingly much energy. This is not because of the food on the plane, by the way. The smell of the microwave food contaminated the entire cabin and the smell was a pretty good indicator for the taste of the mushy pasta, and later of what was supposed to be scrambled eggs. The city seemed to share an odd smell caused by a melange of food everywhere and, quite possibly, feases.

At the airport the first difficulties arise when I can find no one who can speak English (I expected a bit more at an international airport), no ATM that works and no cash to call my contact person, who was supposed to pick me up in the first place. It turned out she e-mailed me, but I was already at Schiphol at that moment. The last problems could've been prevented if I brought some cash money, but the guy at schiphol adviced me to just use the ATM in Hangzhou.

In any case, after nearly two hours I managed to withdraw some cash, call my contactperson and find a cabdriver who speaks two words of English so he can take me to the university campus where I would stay the first night (I thought we would stay there till June 30th but the revised plan means we're already taking the 33-hour train ride tomorrow). It became clear quite quickly that traffic, or any rules for that matter, were merely considered rough guidelines. Thus, I decided instead to focus on the city around me. I notied that literally the entire city was in the process of being build. Never before have I seen so many highrises in scaffolds. The city alters rapidly between these construction sites, poor areas and beautiful places.

My fellow EP's acknowledged me that the city has quite some amazing parts. It's a shame I don't have more time to discover this place myself. However, there is plenty of opportunity for new experiences. Starting tomorrow with the train ride tomorrow, and technically the day after as well. Apparently it's something you must experience. I'm just curious how broken I'll exit the train...

Qi Qǐng Píjiǔ

Might revive this old, first attempt at a blog to report updates from China, which is where I am heading tomorrow morning. I will fly to Hangzhou where I'll meet up with 10 to 15 people from AIESEC. Together with them, I'll be busy organizing and running a summercamp, in both Bazhong and Kunming, for Chinese students between the age of 12 and 17. If I can find the desire and time to write a blog in the meantime, I'll use this to post updates.

In any case, I'm very excited to take off for my first big trip. Ready to work hard, but definitely have a lot of fun on the side as well. Thanks to Jules I can even order a beer in the native language, although I can only do it in the quantity of seven at a time. Let's hope I'll meet a lot of amazing people during my time there. Qi Qǐng Píjiǔ!

The Super Bowl, a rookie's point of view

Up until this day, one of the biggest sport events in the world had slipped by me unnoticed. I am of course talking about the Super Bowl. American football never really had my interest, but I decided such a big sport event could not pass by unnoticed again. Thus, I decided to stay up to see “what the fuzz is about”, and boy what a show it was. As a complete novice to the game, basically all I knew was that team A had to run to one side and team B to the other side, I went in completely blank not knowing what to expect at all. Or well, that is not entirely true. Considering the fact it is American, I was quite sure it would be over the top spectacular.

My evening started off as any regular Sunday evening, I watched the Dutch football games, or soccer just to be clear, followed by a talkshow about those games and then onward to the BBC for the games in the English premier league. Up until that point I had no idea I would be up until 4:30 AM to watch a genuine, American testosterone fest (how they decided to match that up with an actress/singer of Glee is completely besides me by the way). Obviously a game doesn’t have quite the excitement if you don’t have a team to root for, so without any background knowledge of either club and their players, I went with the Packers.

With my throat aching, my balls tingling, and my fists clenched I sat down ready to shout at the television and throw my drink across the room. (Un)fortunately, because of the fact that everybody else in the house was sleeping, that didn’t happen. Nonetheless, the game was very exciting and without any reference material I dare to say this game had every ingredient to make it a real cracker. A dramatic build up of points, momentum shifts, injuries, foals, great passes, not so great passes, amazing rushes, basically everything to make it an exciting spectacle that won’t soon be forgotten.

However, during halftime, the Black Eyed Peas pulled off what was perhaps the biggest achievement of the entire evening. They messed up so bad…even autotune couldn’t cover up their cock ups. In fact, they were so horrific…that Janet Jackson was already running down the stands, trying to intervene by flashing her boobs, again. Luckily for them, she got lost.

As the game went onwards it became clear that this game would have me glued to the television until the end, even though my alarm was set for 7:30 AM. Amazingly, after four hours I was neither bored nor did I learn any of the rules. What I did learn, however, was that this sport event truly is an amazing experience  and it already got me excited for the next Super Bowl. Go Packers!

Welcome

The last couple of days I was playing around with the idea of creating a blog. The purpose I have in mind for this blog, is basically to create an outlet that I can use to write down my random thoughts about whatever I find interesting. This means the subject of my blogs will probably vary a lot, which I hope is a good thing.

The name of the blog, Clemenigans, is a combination of two words, namely my last name Clement and shenanigans. I've always been terrible with thinking of names, but I think this name grasps the essence of what I intend the content of my blog will be, lighthearted and entertaining but with a critical note as well.

Shenanigans: "a playful trick, mischievous prank, or other display of high spirits"

But first things first, this blog will be exclusively in English even though my native tongue is Dutch. This is because I intend to use this outlet in order to improve my (creative) writing skills. Criticism, therefore, is definitely appreciated. I obviously prefer constructive criticism, but please don't hold back. Any criticism is better than no criticism if I am to improve on my writing skills.

With that being said, I hope the people who will read my future blogs, if any at all, enjoy reading my completely random rambles about whatever crosses my mind.