Forget about ingredient lists, just follow these steps and if you don’t have what they call for, pretend you lost your eyesight in a fistfight with a toucan, and grab whatever powdery substance you can find. I know you’re worried about Chaos theory and where your cat is, but these things and making edibles go hand in hand.

STEP 1

Take the license plates off your car, head to the nearest Williams Sonoma, and pillage it like you’re the damn omega man. Don’t ask questions, just do it. In the apocalypse, survival is key, and you’ll need all the measuring cups, pots and waffle irons you can get to ward of those shitty mutants.

Step 2

Get home and get your shit straight son. Unpack that waffle iron, plug it in immediately and leave it on as long as possible. This prodigal use of electricity will help burn off any remnants of finger prints or booger grease from the third world kid who assembled it and might contribute to us having a warmer summer next year.

STEP 3

Get a big bowl and put it off camera. Then take a measuring cup and fill it with 1 CUP of perfect white flour. If you’re a real man, you’ll mill that grain yourself. Those who bring up the topic of whole wheat or organic flour will find themselves on the ingredient list. These are John Wayne’s waffles not Elton John’s. Oh and as you’ve already noticed, I’ll be using imperial units, so all you base ten metric lovin motherfuckers can learn to convert and use an anachronistic system of measurement with no discernable logic and grow some fuckin balls while your at it.

STEP 4

After you throw that flour into the bowl without making your work area look like a a Columbian drug lab, grab some baking powder, and add two teaspoons of that magic dust in. Once again we’re making waffles here, not crack cocaine, so use powder, NOT soda. If you do use soda to make them, I hope you do smoke crack, cause that’s the only way you’ll be able to handle the overpowering taste of pure ass that’ll make you loco.

STEP 5

Half a teaspoon of salt is what you want to drop in there next. At the risk of being labeled an anti-semite I’d advise to stay away from that Kosher variety, unless you like chunks of saltiness t-bagging your tongue. It’s best if you slide by McDonalds, jack a shaker or two and use that. Ronald won’t mind, that slut’s busy molesting your neighbor’s kids.

STEP 6

Now comes the tricky part. So it would be best to get some tricks to do it for you. You’ll need four large and crazy eggs. Get crackin, but separate the whites from the rest segregation style. The yolks can straight in with everything else. Hide the whites someplace where little insects and birds won’t be able to go for a swim.

STEP 7

For this step, take two tablespoons of the sweetest sugar you can find and half a teaspoon of purest vanilla extract ever to be extracted to the mix. Then quickly run to your local cow, grab up on those titties and milk yourself two cups of freshness. Get back before the farmer realizes you violated his cow and dump that in there too. I don’t care if you’re lactose intolerant and real milk will leave looking like a fucking hobbit. Don’t even think of putting any of soy based wank in there.

STEP 8

Take half a stick of butter, and using the power of modern science and technology, nuke that son of a bitch down to liquid form. Try as hard as you can NOT to drink the whole thing down because it smells so delicious, and pour it into the main bowl.

STEP 9

Go find those egg whites you hid, and using a blender, or a good ol fashioned beater, beat them like a punk ass bitch. This is essential to give the waffles that light airy feeling like they came straight from an oven in heaven with cute little flying kittens and puppies and harp music, and JESUS would you hurry up and just beat those bloody things!?!

STEP 10

Once again with the beater, but preferably your bare fist or maybe even a properly sequenced tornado of round house kicks, blend the contents of the main bowl into a mélange of magic. Then pour the egg whites in there and mix some more. MIX until your goddamn hand falls off, and rats come along and eat it, and then other rats come and eat those rats.

STEP 11

If you’re a conservative pour a conservative amount of waffle batter onto the waffle iron. If you’re a pussy ass liberal, pour a liberal amount. Then like a bleeding heart bitch, scurry off to cry or write poetry about pictures of dogs when this happens:

Keep cooking them waffles until the steam coming from the iron slows down. If the steam coming from the iron doesn’t slow down, but instead increases and turns black, return to step 2.

STEP 12

Waffles need syrup like a pimp needs hoes. Using anything other than 100% real maple syrup would be just plain…ridiculous. Any bottle of “syrup” emblazoned with a crude image of a negro that looks like it belongs in another era, probably does. Toss that ooze out the window and hope it falls through the time warp that it came from. Then for about half second bask in the golden irony that some megacorp manufactures fake food from subsidized corn and then uses the image of a group it oppresses as a brand name. Not too long now, them waffles gonna get cold.

STEP 13

Remove the waffle from the iron and sprinkle on some icing sugar to make it look like you know what you’re doing. Add the syrup. Then proceed to inhale that waffle with the power of some 23 inch spinners and a bottle of crystal. Because you’ve earned it; trying to figure out how to make waffles, while taking pictures along the way to show a bunch of randoms on the internet how to do something they probably would be better off doing without your wack advice.

[update march 09]
Check out this new map to see where everything is! Nightlife MAP

Welcome to the nightlife capital of Shandong Province. Oh god do I wish that really meant something.

The Western Bars

First and foremost, we’ve got LeBang. It’s one of the few places that I consistently go (too often). If you’re a noob in Qingdao, you are guaranteed to meet drunken expats here. It’s usually busy Fridays and Saturdays cause they have an all you can drink deal, and a DJ spinning the retarded love child of house and top40. It is acceptable the first time, but if you go as often as I do, it starts to smell of Vieux Boulogne. The highlight: Seeing drunken eurotrash try to get with Chinese girls and fail miserably, then get beaten up by said Chinese girls’ boyfriends.

Another popular place along the same lines is Corner Jazz Bar. I rarely step foot in there because I can’t stand the crowd of businessmen and Russian hookers that usually spawn after New York Bar shuts down. I don’t know what the deal is with their washrooms but I’m near certain that the mob’s choppin’ up bodies in there. It fucking reeks. Music is strictly top40 pop and some Korean tunes too because that group always has a presence. Doesn’t get busy till about 1am and during weekdays don’t even bother. It’s a given they sell fake booze. The highlight: Hourly catfights between drunk over possessive Korean girls.

Moving along, there’s the upscale Qbar and New York Bar on HK road, both of which are located in hotels. I avoid NY Bar for aforementioned reasons. Qbar has a ladies night on Wednesday that I used to frequent for the booze that I managed to sequester from lady friends. Besides that, it’s too expensive for Qingdao, and although the hip-hop cover band is better than average, they play the same music every night. Also the bartenders WILL try to jack your change; so don’t forget to get it. The highlight: The washrooms. I would hold my crap all day just so I could dump a load off in there. Seriously, it was nicer than my own damn bathroom, and you can high five the bathroom guy on the way out.

Then there’s also OldJack’s, New Jack’s and King’s Head. These three bars are virtually the same: dimly lit, not very large, and populated by old guys talking about, watching, or fantasizing about playing soccer. The pub style atmosphere if that’s your thing. I’m not into these places on account of four reasons: all older people, more expensive drinks, no music, and most importantly no girls. The highlight: Ordering sushi from the place next to Old Jack’s and getting them to serve it straight into bar, and watching as every other barfly looks at you like you’ve invented the wheel.

Finally there are two other western bars worth mentioning. Lennon Bar is a two-floor place that at one time was a full of hookers. The owner or more likely the police kicked out all the floozies and now all that remains is a big empty shell with the Beatles playing in perpetual rotation. On the weekends and possibly on the weekdays there are live cover bands, most likely there will be so few people that you’ll be able to get them to play songs for you instead of the 80’s-90’s bullshit that the musicians have been robotically programmed to play. Charlie’s Bar is across from Soho on Jiangxi Rd. and is similar atmosphere to Jack’s, but they have more reasonable prices, younger crowds, music and open bar on the weekends. The highlight: Watching the owner at Lennon slowly get drunk over the course of the night and then have to deal with the police showing up for the inevitable “noise complaint” a.k.a. the we need money to support our mistresses visit. Oh and Lennon has really good Chinese food.

The Chinese Bars

If you’ve ever wondered what working in the Chinese manufacturing industry is like, just go to one of the clubs. Big, loud, smoky environments await you. The product is you; the consumer and they want to “make” as many of you as possible. Hence you’ll be rushed to a table and pushed into buying only bottles of liquor, and they would prefer if you’d order 6 packs of warm beer instead of per bottle. You might wind up with a big gay plate of fruit on your table if you’re swindled into ordering your bottle in a combo or special.

On Jiangxi Rd. across from Charlie’s bar is Soho. This place used to be more Western/Korean, but was gradually overrun by locals and morphed into a Chinese bar. The music was once almost exclusively hip-hop, now it’s mostly Asian pop tunes. Some of the dancers are dudes in tight pants and makeup, if that’s what floats your boat (it sinks mine). Actually, it should be barred as counter-revolutionary activity. Drinks are cheap; but they really don’t know how to make anything other than bar rails. The interior is clearly steampunk inspired which I think is hilarious, although it is a franchise, so the owners probably had no idea what they were doing anyway. This is still somehow the best Chinese bar in town.

Right near LeBang, is the former Babyface, which has now become SOS. This bar is the newest of the big Chinese clubs in Qingdao. Take a shipping container full of LED lights, 2 hits of acid and really cheesy tastes you’ve got the interior design of this place. Upon entering you will be hounded by staff to sit at table and order drinks. Par for the course really. Music is sporadically hip-hop, which is why I’ve been there more than once. Almost always it’s garbage technopop though. Not often is it very busy, and the crowd thins out around 11pm.

Further up HK road towards the schools, you’ve got the massive Feelings. This is a large cavern of a dancehall, buried deep under an office building where it belongs. Same shit technopoop that never changes. Same annoying waiters. But this place for some reason or another is always RAMMED with people. I’m not sure why, maybe because it was the first on the block and the club kids here have rabid brand loyalty, or maybe they put crystal meth in the drinks. They do have one of those bouncy dance floors so maybe that’s the key.

Back down HK road, across from Carrefour is Feeling VIP. I only mention this place because people undoubtedly get it confused with Feelings. As far as I know the two are not connected in anyway. If you want to go to one of them (have mercy on your soul) it’s probably Feelings and not VIP. VIP is smaller and not as busy. Although I must confess I once knew someone who would give me a free bottle of vodka every time I went, so as you can imagine, I went often.

There’s other Chinese dance clubs scattered about the city, but those are the three main ones. I wouldn’t go to other ones, simply because they are going to be exactly the same as these three. What you should check out though, are the BEER GARDENS. Yes Qingdao is the home of Tsingtao Beer (captain obvious to the rescue!), and because of that we get some of the best draft beer in China. These places aren’t that hard to find. Just look for courtyards squished in between old apartment blocks, and then look for the giant stacks of kegs and you’ll know you’ve struck oil. You grab a small table, little chairs made for midgets and get your beer on. The price? 1.5RMB for a PINT. That’s 23 cents for 500ML of beer. And this is super-fresh, came from the brewery today beer. Far cheaper than what you pay in the stores for the crappy over carbonated junk, at half the price. You can also order to go, and take your beer home in a bag. Unfortunately these places are only open from late spring to early fall. Another downside? They often close up shop before midnight.

The Korean Bars

Korean bars are a different beast altogether. Thanks to the quarter million some odd Koreans in this town, they add another dimension to the nightlife. The people are mostly students and 20 somethings. They serve a few different brands of Soju (vodka-like liquor at 20%), maybe some sake, and big bottles of Tsingtao. All will be served ice cold. The deal is that you gotta buy a couple of dishes of food depending on how many people you’re with. Good news is the food is all pretty damn good. It ranges from the obvious nachos and nuggets to the more obscure live octopus tentacles that will still be squirming in your mouth as you chew away. Keep in mind that the menus will be in Korean and Chinese without English or pictures. The best bar I can recommend is Yakibar, it’s right next to the horrible sumo sushi in HK Garden. They have good servers who speak fluent Chinese and maybe a little English, but there will usually be someone who speaks English well. They also hook it up with free fried eggs and seaweed. Pure class.

Ok, for those who don’t know, in Japan they have these places called hostess bars/clubs. You go to them, you sit down and you drink with girls (the hostesses). Yep that’s it. There might be some really shady places that operate differently but that’s not par for the course. For some reason Qingdao and the neighboring Huangdao have a plethora of these places. I can’t really figure this out, because there just aren’t that many Japanese dudes lacking in balls to go to real bars.

Yes. I have been to one. When you walk in, you’re greeted by a bunch of girls who will escort you to a table usually surrounded by shoulder height walls to give you some kind of false sense of intimacy. You’ll then be given a menu which upon reading you’ll be shocked to see that all the prices are for glasses and not bottles as the numbers would have you believe. Oh yeah and you’re expected to buy the girls drinks too. You’re probably thinking why the hell wouldn’t you just go to a bar and pick up ladies the old fashion way… using a drink spiked with rohypnol?? Well, I suppose if you’re a cranky old Japanese man with lots of dough, and a shriveled wiener, it would be more fun to piss and moan about your boring salaryman job to some Chinese university students pretending to be classy Japanese babes while you try to get hammered on 12 dollar drinks.

So as I was saying before, there’s a whole whack of them in Qingdao, and for some reason beyond the comprehension of man, they intrigue me. There’s gotta be about 20 in my immediate neighborhood that I walk by every day, and I’m completely mesmerized by them and occasionally their contents. For me it’s like driving to work on the highway and seeing some massive signs with random objects like pogo sticks and turkey basters but with obscure subheadings like “Tomorrow is yesterday’s future” and “Magic trombones kill”. One neat thing about them is their exteriors. It makes them look like a secret ninja club. That is, if secret ninja clubs advertised their whereabouts by large booze adverts, gaudy colours and names like “Loves You”. I’ve thought way too much about them and I’ve come to the sociological conclusion that they look the way they do cause Japanese businesses here tend to get pooped on whenever Sino-Japanese relations go down the crapper (both literally and metaphorically). Windows sure make good target practice for all manner of projectiles hence the speakeasy look. It’s ironic that by trying to be low key, they actually stick out like a hot Scandinavian model at a sausage party. Part of the allure is not knowing what’s going on in there, so it’s a little annoying that nothing is what’s going on.

I went for a walk and took a bunch of pictures of them so that you have an idea, these were just the ones near my place in Hong Kong Garden, there’s lots more smattered about the city. The ones in Huangdao that I saw on my brief visit there a while back were on sketchy side streets, and also had much lower key look with peep windows and security cams. According to one of my Japanese friends, Qingdao and Huangdao have some of the most well known hostess bars outside of Japan. I can’t vouch for the veracity of this claim, but judging by the number of them and the fact that I’ve never seen them anywhere else in China to this degree, there must be some kind of funk going on in there.

I’ve asked my friends about them, and they don’t really seem to care or have an opinion on them other than the fact that their customers get robbed blind. I suppose if you use money for toilet paper, they would be worth checking out. Just know that if you don’t speak Japanese or Chinese, it’s not going to be a very conversational time and as such, I would recommend forgoing the destruction of the mystique and instead heading to nightclub, which coincidently I will be elaborating on next…dun dun Duuuuun….

I must apologize for a little post I wrote a while back about the medical test you need to take for your visa, and how it should be the first thing you do. As it turns out I was talking smack. The first thing you should you need to get on what will seem like an eternal quest to acquire legal status in China is the temporary residence permit. It may also be called simply the residence permit. I like to think of it as the legitamizer. Legally, you need get this within 24 hours of moving to your new residence in China. Illegally you don’t need to do a damn thing, hell you could go take a dump on a portrait of Mao if you’re the thrill seeking type.

My knowledge of this elusive little pink piece of papier chiffon was amiss, not unlike most of my other thoughts. I went to the university registrar to check out how my health examination went and forge ahead with the visa application. The test showed that I was healthy but in rapid decline as was normal for those new to mandarin air quality. They then told me I needed this so-called residence permit because I wasn’t living on campus. From what I’ve been told through highly unreliable sources, in normal cases your company or school get this done for you (although you may want to double check on that to be safe). So I had been presented with yet another mission. I set forth immediately to claim my queerly coloured proof of property proprietorship. Little did I know the lovely prizes that awaited those who had failed to get the form within the 24-hour window. Criminal charges, fingerprints, and a 1000RMB fine. Yes those can all be yours for not getting the form done right away.

Ironically (isn’t everything in China?) this is the easiest step of getting a visa, all you have to do is go to the local police station nearest your dwelling, bringing with you a copy of your tenancy agreement and passport (always make the photocopies yourself, never expect them to do it for you because they will only laugh at your pompousness for thinking that you could use the brand new photocopier that’s sitting behind them), as well as the originals and they fill a form out for you and stamp it. My case was different. It was special. Because I had been illegally residing in the city of Qingdao for a month now, I got to take a trip to the back of the office. The office had about two or three other officers sitting in the room all smoking like the chimneys outside and glaring at me just like I had walked into a scene of a John Woo flick. I then met what seemed to be the boss in charge of these types affairs, as he was sitting behind the largest desk at the end of the room. We proceeded to go through what I needed and what I did wrong. He also explained to me what the penalties were. Now I don’t know how things work normally, but I do know this is China, and I know that rules here are like turns on an F1 circuit. They may be tough, but you get points for getting around them as fast as you can.

I quickly reached into my invisible backpack I keep on me and put on my weepy ignorant foreigner hat, apologizing but also staying firm on the fact that I had no idea I needed to get this stuff right away. No one told me I needed to get it, not the rental agent, my landlord or even the school until now. This was the honest truth. I was doing this all in my broken “diligent Chinese student” Chinese. The boss seemed to appreciate this, and the fact that there was a cop who translated the few…Ok, FINE…everything I didn’t understand also helped out. Things seemed to be going well. Then he noticed I was Canadian. He was suddenly taken aback. “Oh you’re a Canadian are you? Well just hold on a minute there, I need to make a phone call.” After talking a bit on the phone much faster than I could understand, and his friend cared to translate, he told me to take the phone. On the other end was what I gather was either his wife or his friend’s wife. She explained to me that she really liked Canadians because her English teacher was one and he was just a swell guy. Saved. To make short this little experience, the boss told me not to do it again, not to have any wild parties in my apartment without inviting him and if I accommodated any other foreigners and they try and pull this same stunt they would wind up as organ donors.

To summarize, if you are moving to China, when you get here after getting your tenancy forms, make sure you get your temp residence permit right away. Yes things went well for me, but remember, I have a horseshoe stuck up my ass, and I killed the only man who could do that for you with my bare hands.

One of the first and most important things you will need to do, is get your residence permit, after you get this and want to apply for a long term visa (residence, work ( Z ) and study ( X ) 6 months or more), go get a medical test. While I can understand the very simple minded logic behind this rule, it really serves no purpose. People who come to China on short term visas don’t have to get them done, with the exception of a brief questionnaire on entry, which anyone with half a brain can lie on. Assuming you were sick with something contagious and you wanted to go to China, there would be nothing stopping you. The irony is that the people who do take the tests, are at a much higher risk of getting hit by a bus/birdflu/being forced to drink the awful beer, than Chinese being at risk from them. Despite this, rules are rules and today was examination day.

I arrived at the testing complex around 10am, and wandered around trying to find which building and which reception office to go to, after a little while I found it on the second floor of a main building. They quickly rush you through some paperwork, and then point you towards the gauntlet. I should note to anyone that is going to the exam for the first time, remember to bring a copy of your passport and a passport photo, or else you will have to go down the street like I did and get it done, which cost me about 25Y which I know isn’t much, but very inconvenient and pushes you back in the overall queue. At this medical clinic, they only doing testing for foreigners for the visa, because of this, they run a very tight ship, which puts you through five different tests in about an hour.

The first test I had was the blood pressure/heartbeat thing. Very simple, the doctor/nurse/random joe checked my pulse and then proceeded to quickly scribble down some numbers and sign a bunch of parts on the paper work they have you carry around. The next test, is some type of cardiological thing, where you lie on a table with your shirt off and they stick suction cups on your boobs while a machine makes a printout that looks like an polygraph. The following test is similar, only I believe it was an ultrasound. You lie on another table and take off your shirt, the guy rubs you up with some goo and then really grinds this plastic appendage all over your torso. It was hard not to laugh, especially because while the guy was doing this to me he was in a loud conversation with his significant other on the cell phone. After that, came the blood test. You stick your arm through a window, just like a drive through, and they take out a generous portion of blood. As a bonus I got to find out my blood type is O. They do take a damn lot of blood though, and I was feeling pretty dizzy. I somehow managed to make it to the next test where they did some kind of nuclear/x-ray type analysis with a giant machine, while i was crushed against part of it in a compromising position watching the person in the control room smile and give me the thumbs up.

There were dozens of other people going through these tests at the same time as me so it was either a highly efficient or really sloppy operation they have going on. You decide.

The costs of all the tests was 313 yuan plus 10Y for the shipping deal, because they ship the results right to the school in three days instead of me picking it up. Thats a pretty good deal considering it cost me 40Y taxi to get there and back. So I wound up paying about 388Y for the whole shebang. I’m of no authority to say whether the tests, procedures and equipment will even produce any worthwhile results (I’m not holding my breath), but if it lets me stay in the country without having to make a trip to Hong Kong every two months then I’m all for it. Plus I got to play hooky because they only do the exam in the morning…nice!