Spring Festival Travels (Part 1)

One of the benefits of teaching for a university in China instead of a private tutoring service is the incredibly long vacation that one receives during the Spring Festival break.  And this year, we get about two months.  I’ve been back in Dalian for about a week now, and have started up a couple of part time jobs to make use of all of this free time.  But the first half of the break was spent travelling throughout China.  Well, perhaps not throughout, but we hit up a few cities.

The route:

Dalian -> Nanjing -> Zhang Jia Gang -> Shanghai -> Beijing -> Dalian  

(Kathleen’s brother is visiting, and they took an extra stop at the end to see the ice festival in Harbin.)

It felt like travelling a lot, but after looking at the path that we took around China, it actually looks as if we were on a pretty short leash.  But trust me, it felt like a lot.  We got fairly lucky and one my students helped us procure beds for the train from Dalian to Nanjing, a 21-hour ride.  We left at noon, played Magic and read our Kindles until we passed out at 10 (or at least tried to), and arrived at about 9:30 the next morning.  We promptly went to get xiao long bao (小笼包) from my favorite spot and then went to our hostel.  Xiao long bao are similar to other steamed dumplings, but they have a stickier skin and have soup broth inside of each dumpling.  They’re fantastic, and I can’t find them in Dalian.

We spent four nights in Nanjing:  one in a shitty hostel, one at Sam’s house, and two in this sweet converted-mansion hostel.  Nanjing was wonderful.  I got to see everyone that I wanted to and eat all of the food that I missed dearly.  Connor, Nick, Sam, and I got to play about 10 hours of League of Legends in a couple of different net bars around Nanjing in the three/four days that we were there.  Kathleen joined us for some of the gaming time, although it takes some fortitude to handle Chinese internet bars.  Shit.  Is.  Rough.

There were about 7 net bars, all about this size withing walking distance of my house last year.

After Nanjing, we stopped in Zhang Jia Gang to celebrate Spring Festival with one of my friends from last year.  He was quite insistent that we come to his hometown to have an authentic Chinese Spring Festival.  I was a bit worried at first about dragging Nick, Kathleen, and Connor with me to an old student’s house in (potentially) the middle of nowhere for a visit, but it all turned out wonderfully.  (Thanks to Nick and Kathleen for taking all the pictures on this trip.)

Jackie's neighborhood

The view from in front of his house

Hanging out with the fam

In front of his father's store.  Note that the store is named "正山商店" which is the Chinese equivalent of "David Smith's Store"

After refusing countless cigarettes...Nick and I begrudgingly accepted one.  (Not in front of the kids though.)

...feast.

Making dumplings with Kathleen.

I watch on as Jackie's mom packs me a tupperware of my favorite food from dinner.

"I hope they don't come back again, they smelled like cheese and bread.  Just smile and wave."

I felt pretty lucky to have the opportunity to have Spring Festival with a student from last year.  As a teacher, you makes tons of promises to tons of students that you'll see their hometown, visit their family, etc.  And it was nice to actually follow through on one of those and be able to share it with Kathleen, Nick, and Connor.

Our next stops were Shanghai and Beijing.  I'll post some pictures of that next.

Distinct Seasons (not Florida)

Since my last post was almost a year after my post before.  You can imagine a lot of things have changed.

I'm not in Nanjing.  I'm in Dalian with Kathleen and Nick.  We all teach at the Neusoft Institute of Information.  And I should change the secondary title of my blog to:  "a (somewhat spontaneous) year (or three) out east."

But either way, this place gets cold.  Not super Russia cold.  But pretty damn cold.  And to highlight that fact, I'll show you a shot of our school apartment buildings from when I got here and a couple of weeks ago.

This was taken from a tiny mountain that sits between the residential and the teaching portions of the campus.  It's a nice little walk (about 30 minutes up and down) and gives a nice view of the campus.

View of the construction site right to the east of our school...it's made disturbingly fast progress since the year started.

View from the roof of our apartment building, that hill in the distance is the one I was talking about earlier.

View of our part of town and the coast.

Those were all the happy pictures during the nice and warm summer.  Things done changed.

Snow-covered campus.

Our school has statues of famous scientists strewn about the campus every 100 meters or so.  This is a creepy Marie Curie.

I felt like I got quite lucky by taking two pictures of the campus in different seasons from almost the exact same point...so I decided to take advantage of this fact and make a little GIF showing the change.

...pretty sweet.

Convenient Never Looked So Good

Generally, one of the best parts of being an expat in China is the ability to eat out for every meal.  Eating at a restaurant is not considered a luxury here.  And it’s for this reason that I have never truly embraced cooking / eating in my apartment while living over here.  Aside from a brief stint of making scrambled eggs with soy sauce, I haven’t really explored cooking Chinese food.  I occasionally feel a twinge or regret for this decision, but I feel better when I recall my failed attempt at some 鱼香茄子 (fish fragrant eggplant).  I ended up spending more money on the eggplant and the sauce then I would have for a large, delicious plate of it prepared for me at a restaurant.

But…everything changed last week when I found myself somewhat alone in Dalian for about 5 days.  With no one to get food with on a regular basis, I knew I would have to take drastic measures.  The first drastic measure: purchase food.  The second drastic measure: cook the aforementioned purchased food.  The third and not-so-drastic measure: consume the aforementioned cooked purchased food.

I decided that perhaps I didn’t need to be so dramatic.  And considering I have no pan, no pot, no wok, and no oven; my options were quite limited.  All I had to work with is an electric kettle and a microwave.  I came to the conclusion that instant noodles were my only option.  However, choosing a type of instant noodle is not so easy in China.  The only way I can accurately describe the experience of choosing a brand of instant noodle in China is to draw up a scenario that you can relate to back in the States.   

Imagine, for one second, that you have never purchased cereal.  You decide to go to Publix or Walmart to purchase some of this cereal to enjoy in the comfort of your home.  You look down the aisle and are confronted with, as you well know, an overwhelming set of choices.  Do I want crunchy?  Or flaky?  Do I want healthy?  Or sugary?  Or healthy parading like it’s sugary?  Or sugary parading around like it’s healthy?  (I’m looking at your Raisin Bran Crunch.)

But anyway, you get it.  This is the equivalent of China’s instant noodle aisle.  And like most people, I relied on the advertising of multi-billion dollar conglomerates to make my decision for me.

I’m not sure if it’s the purple packaging.  Or the glasses.  Or the chic facial hair.  But I wanted some of that purple stuff.

 The packaging gets an A+ for sure, but I wasn't amazed until I laid eyes upon the contents.

Not one, not two, but THREE packages for maximum flavor potential.  The silver package contains bit of dried vegetables and the standard MSG mix that comes with most instant noodles.  The red package contains an oil and spice mixture.  And the purple package contains the secret ingredient for these particular noodles:  the pickled vegetables.

Added some boiling water using my fancy electric kettle, and allow them to sit for about 2 minutes.

...I added the sausage bits myself.  ::shhhh::

Absolutely, hands down, the best convenient noodles that I have ever had.  And upon consumption, I could completely relate to this commercial

I figure at some point in the future, when I’m in a country in which the financial balances are tipped in the favor of cooking at home, I’ll try my hand at Chinese cuisine.  But until then, I plan on staying true to restaurants near my house, and perhaps the occasionally bowl of the purple stuff.

Somewhat Of A Failure (and the cutest thing in the world)

The words "too little too late" come to mind as I write this entry.  In my fantasies, I imagined writing a post every day, and instead it has slowly petered out to once a month.  And with two months left, it seems futile.  But as much as I wanted to start a blog for family and friends, I also wanted to remind myself of this journey and experience.  The memories fade...they always do.  But I thought if I could at least write some of them down, it would jog my memory in the future.

Why didn't I keep it up?  There's a lot of things that I can blame, but perhaps the biggest contributor (aside from my own laziness) is the internet.  Connecting to Blogspot requires the use of a VPN which makes already painfully slow internet even worse.

I also like to think that it might be a reflection of how good of time I've been having out here...or how busy I've been.  However, this probably isn't the case since I've still managed to develop a slight (and I'd like to think perfectly healthy) obsession with League of Legends.

But I'm not going to let it die...even if I only make posts when I'm prodded by people on Facebook.

But check out the cutest thing that I've purchased in China.

I think the cuteness of it is compounded by its compete lack of necessity.  The space in which it occupies on the table is just as suited for a phone to sit.  But not nearly as cute.

Celebrity Status

What do all of these men have in common?

Well, there's two things they have in common.  The first being that none of them look anything like me.  And the second commonality is that a healthy portion of the Chinese population is convinced that I look like a grotesque hybrid of these three gentleman.

At one point I was even explaining to a group of Chinese people of how hilarious I think being compared to Brad Pitt and Chris Jericho is...and one cuts me off to say that I actually look more like David Beckham.

Do I find it flattering?  I think initially yes, but then the true absurdity of the situation turned my feeling of flattery...into one of  amusement.  And the types of attention certainly very in China, generally depending upon the age and gender of the person staring at you while you walk down the street.

It doesn't make me angry.  How could it?  I know that I stand out.  But, I think it bothers a lot of foreigners (particularly Americans) because we can't imagine staring at a foreigner in the same fashion back in the states.  But if you really think about it, we have absolutely no frame of reference considering our incredible amount of racial diversity.  Even the areas in the states many would consider to be virtually homogeneous are practically grand melting pots compared to any city in China.

Adorable kid that walked into the hair salon while Sarah was getting her hair did.

As for the stares...well...after dealing with it for a while I've noticed a pattern.  Everyone stares.  But those ages 10-60 will avert their eyes when you look back. Anyone younger or older just keeps that eye contact with a "what the fuck are you gonna do about it" look on their face.  Okay, well maybe just a look of innocent confusion.  It depends on what kind of mood I'm in at the time.

Perhaps my favorite moment of picture taking / staring occurred when I was working out in the gym with my Rwandan friend Felicien.  He's spotting me on the bench press when I finish and glance to my left.  Outside are probably 12 security guards (for the complex that we live near) just standing and watching.  A few of them have cameras out, but the rest just stand slack-jawed.  To them, it was like watching aliens from two different worlds helping each other in the equally foreign enterprise of picking heavy objects off of racks...just to put the back again.

But I digress.  In America...I'm not Brad Pitt.  I'm not even the homeliest of the Backstreet Boys.  So I have no qualms about soaking up the attention, because this is the closest I'll ever have to paparazzi.

Not staged...I just told them if they were going to take pictures of me...I could take one of them.

Kathleen In China - Part 4 (More Beijing!)

Kathleen In China - Part 3 (Beijing!)

Some videos of us in Beijing!!

Kathleen In China - Part 2

A brief glimpse at our continued travels around Nanjing before heading north!

Chinese New Years

I was attempting to capture the "Captain, we're completely surrounded!" aspect of the fireworks in China by doing a little sweep through the apartment...the inside look at the bare squalor in which we live was purely accidental.

Kathleen In China - Part 1

Cat Skirt

Kathleen was here for the month, and it was absolutely wonderful.

I'll start the trickle of our many pictures that we took, but I'll start you off with a sweet picture of this cat skirt.

School Play

I know I haven't updated in a while...so here's an actual video of one of the reasons I've been busy.

Sick in China

It had to happen at some point. 

And it happened in the form of a sinus infection that Sarah and I had been passing back and forth for a bit...and then to two of the other English teachers here...and probably to countless numbers of our students.  But that's neither here nor there.  It's my blog...soooo...let's focus on me!

I first tried to deal with it myself.  I looked up the Chinese word for Amoxicillin...which turned out to be:

阿莫西林 -  āmòxīlín     (pronounced  ah-moe-she-lean)

So yeah...pretty much a complete cognate.  But you can never be too safe, so I typed it out in my phone and headed off to the pharmacy.  And much to my suprise...it was a complete success.  I got the amoxicillin, took it for two weeks, and pretty much felt better.

Except this wasn't the end...and I started to feel a bit of a tickle in the back of my throat after a few days of feeling completely better.  And I knew it was back.  Fuck.

It was then that Sarah and I decided to kill it once and for all and took the first step to doing pretty much anything of this sorts in China.  In Anna we trust.  And she did not disappoint.  She met us at the hospital, conveyed our problems to the doctor, got us the drugs necessary, and paid for everything.  We were left with some antibiotics, some nose drops, and a bit of traditional Chinese medicinal tea.

Upon asking what was in the nose-drops, Anna responded "Army medicine! No side effects!"  I received a similar response to when I asked what was in the tea.

Anna added some helpful English directions.

Both the tea and the nose drops were making me feel gooooodddd.  The tea tasted awful, but it cleared out my sinuses like nothing ever has.  Since it was traditional Chinese medicine, I knew it had to be made of entirely natural ingredients.  I had to check it out, what was this wonder plant that was working about as well as Sudafed.

I looked up the name on the package and found a handful of websites with the following ingredients list:

"Magnolia, Xanthium (fried), ephedra, Angelica, Peppermint, Ligusticum, Scutellaria, Forsythia, wild chrysanthemum, TCS, to yellow, red sage root, Poria, licorice."

I wasn't aware of this, but the ephedra plant contains both ephedrine, the popular weight-loss drug, and pseudoephedrine, the most incredible cure for stuffy noses known to man kind.  Both of them being relatively difficult to procure in the United States due to fat people dropping dead and methamphetamine production, respectively.  I don't know what the problem is, it's all natural.  Nothing natural has every hurt anyone, that's a scientific fact.

Things cleared up after a week or so, and I fully utilized the secret teacher power of playing movies in class when you're not feeling well enough to lecture for 100 minutes straight.  And if my students weren't already too perfect/cute/wonderful...they go ahead and pull something like this.

And then upon hearing that I had a bit of a cough...they told me to delay eating the orange until it cleared up.

I tell them that I'm not feeling very well, and by the time I'm done checking everyone's homework, I have a little collection of goodies on my desk.  Keep your shiny apples.  I'll take candy and little french breads.

Okay Everyone...Break Time!

I'd be lying if I said this was a rare event in China.

It's a bit of a company exercise program, group break time, and customer attraction ploy all at the same time.

Love Is in the Air

It's that time of the year.  The air is getting crisp.  The leaves are turning nice autumn-y colors.  The smothering humidity is losing its grip over my happiness.  And it seems like every young couple in Nanjing is choosing this month as the time to get married.

I absolutely love how the groom is standing.

Pretty much every day I've seen the signs of at least one wedding.  The convoy of eight or so black BMWs with pink roses on the door handles.  The incessant fireworks (although that's pretty much every day in China).  And a slew of tacky wedding photo-ops.

Raise your hand if you don't mind weird foreigners taking pictures of you!

This coincided perfectly with the discussion of "divorce in China" that I had been having with a few of my classes.  The United States has a divorce rate that is...I want to say laughable.  Perhaps absurd?  Ridiculous?  Many reliable sources (a.k.a. Wikipedia) put the American divorce rate at almost 50%.  Almost half of the marriages in America end in divorce, and while the numbers are drastically different for those who marry after 26, it's still pretty depressing.

China doesn't even come close to the United States with their paltry 15%.  Seriously China, where's the spontaneity!?  We can lend you a few Las Vegas churches if that is what's holding you back.  I wanted to get to the bottom of this question, so I turned to the experts...my 183 sophomores.

It's hard to grade objectively when they turn it in on such cute paper.

The first reason that they gave was the same reason they give for every one of my "Why does China...?" questions.  China is a very traditional country.  Or.  China is a country founded on very traditional thoughts.  I get that sentence so often in the papers they write for me, I told them they could simply write CIAVTC and I would know exactly what they meant. 

The second main reason was parental control.  The Chinese society puts a heavy emphasis on the respect of one's parents.  And they don't just talk the talk.  Many of my students said that couples would simply ask their parents if they could get divorced, and the parents would forbid them from doing so.  I told them that this doesn't really happen in America.  I'm sure parents in the States have attempted to dissuade, and perhaps influenced many to not get divorced.  But I have a feeling it's not that common.

And the third was essentially what I feel to be the main contributing factor.  It has a huge social stigma.  It hasn't been accepted as a normal step in life as it has in America.  And I think as their divorce rate rises (as it does with a nation's development), it will hit a point and jump considerably higher as it stops being any bigger of a deal than a simple topic of neighborhood gossip.

I then told them my half-baked opinion regarding the high divorce rate of America (and the rest of the world).  I feel that the stipulation of "until death do us part" was written during an era in which it may not have meant as much.  The average human was living into their 40s.  Spending the rest of your life with someone wasn't nearly as big of a commitment as it is nowadays.

Stolen from HarkAVagrant.com

But in all seriousness, nothing is really to blame except the human nature to rush into things...or the assumption that if you've been happy for one year, you can be happy for 40.

Everyone should just have six-year long engagement periods.  (Love you Andrew and Naomi!)

Cute Kid Wearing BAPE Jeans

My Relationship With Chinese - Part 1

Part 1 - Summer Romance

My feelings towards the Chinese language have been a bit rocky since I arrived about 10 weeks ago, and I guess a little before that as well.  Our relationship started about a month before arrived...while I was working in Albuquerque. I started listening to the Pimsleur audio series.  I remember walking around the dirt path by our apartment complex repeating the same few phrases over and over again until they stuck.  I knew nothing about the rules of pinyin (the Latin transliteration of Chinese), so I was busy forming my own (and quite wrong) version of how all the words could be spelled out.

Chase's Brain Spelling:  Nee hway shwawhh yeeng-when mah?

Actual Pinyin Spelling:   Ni hui shuo ying wen ma?  (Can you speak English?)

This worked for me.  I certainly wasn't learning a lot, but it felt better than just sitting and waiting for my departure date.  And listening to the tapes while walking outside was perfect.  The only times it felt a bit awkward were those chance occasions in which I'd walk by some of Lovelace's Chinese employees.   I felt a bit weird about them hearing me walking alone, muttering to myself, "Are you able to speak English?" over and over.

This was the curious, honeymoon stage of my relationship with Chinese.  I hadn't been hit with the characters, tones, accents, or blank stares.  And yeah, things did kind of take a turn for the worse when I actually arrived in China.  It turns out that the knowledge of how to ask if someone speaks English, or how to ask someone if they want to eat something is certifiably worthless.  The only phrase that the audio series taught me that was worth anything was how to say, "My Chinese is bad."

However, in the several hundred times that I've employed this valuable phrase, it has yielded the same result.  "Oh no...your Chinese is very good, very good!"  If only I had learned how to say, "No, you are wrong.  This is the only sentence that I know."  And one must not forget that their compliments were most likely due to the fact that I got a lot of practice with that phrase.

Things have recently gotten much better, but there certainly was a dark period.  Which will be discussed in Part 2 of this mini-series!

Halloween

Let's take a minute to recognize the incredible coolness of Halloween.

Seriously.  When I think of very American customs and holidays, most of them (albeit charming) often make me roll my eyes.  Thanksgiving has a less-than-pretty historical aspect...and really just results in everyone eating until they're uncomfortable.  Independence day usually involves loud fireworks, obnoxious renditions of "Proud To Be An American," and pretty much results in the same gastrointestinal outcome as Thanksgiving.  Christmas...well...fuck Christmas.  (Hanukkah is alright though.) 

Halloween is one of those holidays that actually makes me beam with Amurrikan pride.  Eagles (or perhaps just really patriotic looking bats) soar in the red, white, and blue expanses of my consciousness.  Toby Keith starts playing in the background wherever I go.  And dammit...I want to share this with the world. 

Just take trick-or-treating for example. It might be the most incredible holiday tradition in any country, ever.  You dress up like whatever you want, walk around the neighborhood, and YOU GET CANDY!!  Well...most of the time...bar any run-ins with the ultra-religious that hand out bits of Corinthians in lieu of Snickers.  But I guess those types would probably just be giving out celery and tooth-brushes if they weren't handing out the divine word, so they're probably a lost cause anyway.

But back on topic, two of the English teachers here, Bill and Robin decided to host a little Halloween party for all the foreign teachers along with a few Chinese friends we've met in our time here.  They went all out, especially considering they packed Halloween decorations.  From the look of it, an entire suitcase was probably devoted to Halloween banners, jack-o-lanterns, and that sweet fake cobweb stuff.  The Chinese loved it, the Americans felt nostalgic, and Paolo (our Italian friend) looked like a bit confused in his zombie face paint.  But he was having a good time nonetheless.  I asked Paulo if they did the Halloween thing in Italy.  He said that they didn't when he was growing up (he's in his 50s), but the kids these days have been trying it out a little.

The though of little Italian and Chinese children walking around trick-or-treating is my kind of globalization.

"Okay China, we want KFC and McDonalds back.  But...we'll give you jack-o-lanterns, a few preschoolers wrapped in toilet paper, and this slutty witch.  Deal?"

As for me, I went as a realistic version of the very popular Chinese cartoon Xi Yang Yang, happy sheep sheep.  A very realistic version.  In the sense that I was just wearing a normal sheep mask.

I don't think most of the Chinese understood that I knew this mask looked nothing like the actual Xi Yang Yang.  But oh well, I thought it was amusing.  (And I couldn't actually find a Xi Yang Yang mask). 

Purchasing and walking around the shopping area wearing the mask was about as much fun as wearing it to the halloween party.  Here's what I imagine the thought process of those watching to be (translated into English):

"Oh...weird.  Look at that guy in a sheep costume and that absurd jacket.  I wonder why he's doing that.  Oh, he's taking off his mask.  WHAT THE FUCKKKKKK!!!!  Maybe it's another mask.  Wait for it...wait for it.  Nope, he's actually that pale."

The next post will be about my relationship with the Chinese language...so yeah.  Umm...get excited?

Laughing In The Face of Past-Chase and Gay Stuff

Hahahahaha....you...you really thought you could post every day.  You dumb bastard.

It turns out writing a blog post every day when you actually have stuff to do proves fairly difficult.  By no means do I have a full work week with 18 hours of classes to teach, but that doesn't count the commute, time between classes, and lesson planning. 

But it doesn't matter.  It's worth it.  For one simple reason.  I love my job.  Like actually enjoy it.  Not the type of enjoyment that comes from doing an easy job, in which you relish in the amount/lack of work you get away with doing.  But the type of enjoyment characterized by an excitement to ride the bus to school every morning.  A spring in my step as I leave the building knowing that I've given my students something that they'll probably take with them for the rest of their life.

This feeling has been pretty strong recently, especially in my newspaper reading classes in which we've been discussing gay marriage.  It's really something special.  Imagine having a conversation about gay marriage in which the topic of religion NEVER COMES UP.  Although the debate becomes infinitely more simple and quite less emotional, it becomes a bit more difficult to dismiss typical ignorant concerns as a symptom of religious zeal. 

The ignorance in China regarding gay marriage is rampant, by the books, run of the mill ignorance.  Most of these students do not know any (openly) gay people and have never really talked about the concept of homosexualtiy, let alone the legalization of gay marriage.  This true ignorance is of course in stark contrast to the "ignorance" that the liberal elite (myself sometimes included) like to use in the place of calling someone a stubborn bigot, religious drone, or right-wing nut job.

It's getting to sit down and talk with each student about what they know about homosexuality, what they know about gay marriage, and how they feel about gay marriage that is truly the best part of my job.  I'd by lying if I told you I wasn't also trying to sway some opinions while I'm at it, but I'm making sure to reward each student for simply stating their opinion.  Even if this opinion is firmly stating the homosexuality is strange and they don't want to be around it.

You should all be happy to hear that about 85% of my students are in support of gay rights. Before celebrating too much, I made sure to acknowledge the fact that I was only dealing with a small sample of the young and college-going population.  Not exactly the most conservative or traditional crew, but it is a start.

So I will try and perhaps post a little more than every two weeks.  I kind of got psyched out by not doing it for so long...but that ends now!  (For at least a couple of weeks.)

And I promised a long time ago to post the ocean-trifecta of Pringles.  And here they are:

Seaweed, crab, and shrimp.  All three at once is a mindfuck.

How Abouts I Sweeten This Here Deal

My first stroll through a Chinese supermarket was a wild combination of excitedness, timid curiosity, and a smattering of hunger.  It was new.  It was crazy, so I didn't notice a certain omnipresent (yet somehow subtle) hilarious detail about many of the products on the shelves.  Which brings me to the title of this entry.  Chinese supermarkets love to sweeten the deal.  Not with "buy one get one" or other common ploys, but they seem to throw in random items as a reward for picking a specific product.

Buy some yogurt, get a bag.  Buy some mayonnaise, get a spoon.  Need toilet paper, why not take a beautiful fan to go with it.  (Mind you, these are all real life examples that I have witnessed.)

It's everywhere, random small objects bound to larger ones with a zip tie or tape.  I hope this doesn't sound like a complaint, because as I type this, I'm drinking juice out of a cup that I only have because it sweetened my juice purchase.

As time went on, I began to notice more absurd pairings.  Buy this toilet cleaner...you want some chopsticks?  Because when you think of your disgusting toilet (note my projecting), please let the first thing that you think of be shoveling food into your mouth.  I began to fantasize about other wonderful pairings.  What objects would I staple together and sell as a pair to unsuspecting consumers?  I would certainly make mine a bit more imaginative, perhaps throwing in some true (and cheeky) utility.



Pasta Sauce...throw in some bleach.
Snoring Preventer...toss in a couple of earplugs as a plan B.
Banquet Individual Pot Pies...at least include a link to some job hunting websites.

But seriously, next time you're in Publix or Walmart.  Check around.  I feel like it won't be too long until we start to do the same.