Trip to China: Prologue

Legends tell of a legendary raider that was the stuff of legends. He traveled many a dungeon in search of a worthy foe. His DPS was so high in fact, that his enemies would go blind from exposure to pure awesomeness! He was summoned to China to destroy the 10,000 demons of the demon mountain. And to take pictures and to make an INTTERBLOG of it all.

Well, not quite. As you can see, I've done a lot of research in preparation for the tip. I realized I knew very little about China, apart from the pretty cool Wire Fu -movies (Hero, House of Flying Daggers etc are all very entertaining movies and visually just stunning). Instantly upon hearing about the invitation, I also came up with atleast half a dozen really poor gold farming jokes, enjoying the fact that I could embarrass us so badly that we'd probably get banned from China permanently. I shall try to restrain myself though.

So what did I actually learn? First of all, do not accept a challenge to a game of football. You will get destroyed. It's like challenging the Harlem Globetrotters to a casual game of basketball, Nestea for a practice match in SC2 or Swedes to a round of runkbulle. You're just gonna lose hardcore and it'll just leave a bad taste in your mouth about it. Also, the Chinese get a massive amount of Great Generals from winning battles in Civilization V and are easily one of the best nations if you play to win the game. Also the papermakers are extremely good. And Chu-Ko-Nus. Definitely want to destroy good old Montezuma ASAP.

So it went pretty much like all of my other research. It just ends up with me playing Civ 5. I do not know why that keeps happening. After a tight space race victory with my trusty taikonauts, I ended up reading a bunch of stuff on Wikipedia and on various travel guides. Then I found out that some really tall woman had lived at one point in Hunan, China and I obviously got distracted even further, ending up reading a lot about the tallest people who have ever lived and so on.

 

I've obviously been busy with the more practical stuff too, such as arranging a few things on-site and worked on the presentation we're going to have. Practiced a bit eating with chopsticks, hoping that a really cool training montage would kick in any second. I'd be punching pigs in a slaughterhouse, run up some stairs and kiss Adrian, suddenly learn how to box really bad. Afterwards I'd be eating with chopsticks like I was born with them in hand. It didn't happen, but I'm not completely hopeless - we're all going to be really embarrassing to look at, so I've got that to comfort me. Plus I practiced with the Japanese chopsticks on top of everything else. Maybe the Chinese ones are a lot easier? Maybe? Eh?

 

I figured everyone is going to be writing pretty much the same stuff before the trip. Of course everyone is really excited etc, but it must get boring reading how cold it is in Finland and how cool China is, how weird some of the questions on the visa application form were and so on several times in a row. I'll try to spare you from that, since I'm probably the slowest in adding my initial entry.

I do have one thing that's been bothering me about the trip though. I very much dislike flying in these massive commercial planes. I'm not sure why, it's just extremely uncomfortable. It's not being scared, it's just a very annoying feeling. I'm not afraid of flying though, even with more hazardous contraptions - trying to finish my quest of getting a paramotoring license sometime soon. I'm fine flying in small planes or helicopters as well. There's just something nervewracking flying in these sardine cans with wings with no control over anything.

Just in case we crash and burn, Jubeto will get my stuff. Also, I'm going to be pissed and gonna try to haunt someone.

 

I'm also going to have pretty much real-time updates as we start the trip on Friday, with pictures and all. I might even be really radical and edit some pictures into this entry as well.