Blue Monday

Earlier today while surfing through my twitter timeline I came across a tweet that referred to a day known as Blue Monday.  It said that in a case study that Monday was considered by most people in the world as the worst day of the week and that there is one Monday that is always the worst out of all other Mondays in the year.  The study also found that after polling a group of people that most people’s Blue Monday occurs on the third Monday of January.   Ironically that Monday happened to be today and I couldn’t agree more with that study since I spent most of my day in bed trying to get over a nasty cold I received in the past few days.

Since I haven’t done much in the past 24 hours since I’ve written I’ve decided to post a few pictures up of some photo miscues that have occurred as well as a couple that; one either show the difference in cultures; or two, show the influence western culture has over here.

The first picture below is one that I took while riding the metro to the YuYuan gardens.  If you look closely it shows the rules of the metro subway and one of them says no spitting.  For most of you it might seem like why would they have a rule such as this one, there possibly can’t be that much spitting.  I know I thought that but over here spitting is just a part of life everywhere you go there are people spitting and it’s not just in the open public spaces.  People spit here in restrooms, still on the trains, and even in restaurants and its seen as acceptable and part of everyday life.  Spitting is even acceptable at the dinner table due to the food on most occasions having bones in them.  Therefore, you will put the meat in your mouth get as much of the meat off the bones then spit the bones out back onto your plate and it is not seen as disrespectful.  In fact it would be more disrespectful for you to reach your hand into your mouth to take the bone out.

 

Sign on the Metro with the rules of no smoking, littering, begging, or spitting

The second photo I have for you was taken at Nanjing Road outside of a huge department store.  As you guys can see it is a GAP advertisement and shows to Caucasian people kissing each other.  While this might not seem unusual to us, it is very different from Chinese culture since PDA is a very big taboo here.  It is such a taboo that you will barely see couples who are dating or even married holding hands in public.  The only time you really can even tell if a couple is together is if the guy is caring the girls purse for her, and yes that is a tradition here and if you are dating and do not do this for the girl you are seen as a coward by others.  Knowing that information it just seemed weird to me that GAP was putting off this image that by wearing these clothes it was associated with love and passion in a public space, when in the Chinese culture is such a big no-no.  Kind of just makes you think what goes into those decisions and differences in Culture.

GAP advertisement outside of the huge department store

The third photo I have is one of me and my friends Elliot, Carlin, and Corbin trying to take selfies in the mirror at Yuyuan gardens and having an epic fail in our attempt.

Epic fail mirror pic at YuYuan gardens

The last photo I have was of my friends Elliot, Carlin, and Corbin again also with our friend Josh at Qibao this past weekend.  The story behind this photo was that we were on the bridge with all of us taking pictures of each other.  Finally this Chinese man came up to us and could speak English and asked us if we wanted him to take a picture of all of us, and of course we said yes and I handed him my camera.  He then took the picture and asked if it was good and after a look I realized that I was not in the picture at all.  Then when I looked up to say no he had already walked away which we were lucky enough to have another man pass by that understood enough English to take our picture.

Picture the guy took of my four friends and me barely in the picture to the far left

Also for those of you who requested the Full Story of Friday night I am currently working on typing it up on a Word document with a friend to make sure all the stuff is included and accurate.  It should be done in the next few days since we are busy with class and have a group project due Thursday.