Cinco de Mayo!

It's that deliciously Mexican day of the year. Unfortunately, Mexican food here isn't readily accessible, and thus, I don't get too much of it. Anyway, I wanted to start with a couple one-liners (not jokes, just punctuated thoughts).

My hair is way too long. I feel like I'm making sacrifices for the promise of my afro.

My mom is here visiting Shanghai to see her mom. My uncle on that side and his son are also going to be here soon, and two days later my cousin and aunt on my dad's side will also be here. It's like my first family reunion, but not really.

My mom, incidentally, hates my hair and its length.

I cleaned my bathtub today. I am quite happy with its cleanliness.

I hope the Rockets beat the Lakers (in six?).

With that aside, I just have two thoughts to share. This one is really overdue (it was meant to be shared before it got warm here). China, or at least southern China, or at least Fudan University in Shanghai and a lot of the surrounding buildings, have yet to embrace the glory that is building insulation. For some reason, buildings here are not insulated, which makes very little sense to me, considering during the winter the temperature can hang out around 5-10 degrees Celsius, and in the summer, get unbearably hot and humid. Apparently the WHO says ideal/manageable health indoor temperature is something like 18 or 15 or something. Anyway, it means during the winter you are freezing in class/inside, and during the summer you are either melting or wasting a ton of energy on air conditioning. Both are kind of annoyingly uncomfortable and inefficient. I don't know how you can build a building that looks like a five star hotel from the outside and neglect to insulate it. Pretty ridiculous.

The second thing is of a more mature nature. So I had heard that a lot of massage parlors in China were actually covers for brothels, and have seen a lot of fishy advertisements in magazines and such. A lot of them say things like "Beautiful girls" or "Two beautiful girls" or "Two beautiful girl happy ending massage". Anyway, not being particularly interested in brothels, I never really thought much about it besides making fun of the ads' grammar and picture choice. However, I recently found out that four places near my friend's apartment are actually those cover-up brothels, I think two or three as massage parlors and the rest as hair salons (just for washing hair I think...although they probably don't do a lot of that). I've passed by a lot of those places before late at night, assuming they were karaoke bars or small hotels, and it's weird thinking back and realizing those girls downstairs just kind of lounging around are probably prostitutes. What a weird thought. Kind of makes me want to go in and ask them both awkward and illumating questions about their profession (as massuesses and professional hair-washers of course). Anyway, those are my two random thoughts. I will write a more people-based post in a couple days.