After the accident I figured there must be something wrong with the front engine, or something associated with it, I tried some things out and its just didn't move from any power, so we we took the whole helicopter to a big toy store nearby my place where we had seen a guy doing repairs on a RC helicopter before.
The guy working there didn't think it was the engine though, so I let him take apart the 4-in-1 controller part and we found that a small component that he claimed to be some kind of safety, might have been a lost in translation thing or just something he said so Jane would understand because it really was no such things as a safety but a power regulator, basically just a transistor. He would repair it with no charge though so it was all good.
They didn't have any of that component in the store though but he guided us to where would could probably find it, so Jane and I went out on further excursion, leaving the helicopter itself behind on the way past my place. We did find the place we were looking for but after looking around in the hundreds of stores there we found that the one that most likely had what we were looking for was already closed, so we gave up for then.
A few days later we were planning to go out there together in the morning, but I was feeling bad and too tired so Jane went alone, it was the right place but of course they didn't have any in so she had to order some, and of course she couldn't just order one so she had to order five, but it still only cost 25 yuan.
That day she gave me my Christmas gift too, a small helicopter, like the one dad bought last year, it is really fun and it is practically unbreakable, we will have competitions later between the big and the small.
Jane had the afternoon off on Christmas and the components had arrived so she went out to get them and drop them off in my mailbox, but until yesterday I didn't have time to take everything to the toy store again but I did some research of what it was more exactly; it's a capsule with only one transistor in it, using 3 pins for source, 1 pin for gate and 4 pins for drain, it should be quite powerful and not break very easily, still accidents happen.
I had kind of hoped that he would just do it when I came there, it was just a small 8-pin component after all and shouldn't take much more than a few minutes, I could actually have done it myself had I had the tools, I wish I did have the tools now, so I had to leave it with him overnight.
When I went back there today there was something wrong, so we called Jane and after some explanations this is what was wrong: the front engine still didn't spin even after the component was switched, and the back engine, that he for some reason also had switched the component for, was spinning full power when the battery was connected, so something was obviously wrong, I inquired a bit about it and soon I just guessed that he had messed up some of the solderings and short circuited something. I took it home anyway just a bit disappointed.
At home I started researching a bit, I took pictures of the solderings too see clearer with some high def zoom and I was looking for pictures to see how the components should be mounted, I suspected that he might have turned one or both of them around. I didn't have much time though but after my afternoon classes I went home and did some more research, I called that to see what he said and according to him it seemed very likely that the component that made the back engine spin uncontrollably might be on backwards, it was the one not working at all that I had suspected but at least it was partly right.
After some more tests; trying to switch the engines, which the repair guy had said was really dangerous (I couldn't really see how that made any sense since its just a two pin connection and the engines are exactly the same, just connected in opposite directions) and discovered that at least the component for the front engine was working as it should and that the front engine didn't work with either component, which kind of implies something wrong with the engine. That was confirmed when I tried to help the lower rotor (the one for the front engine) and felt that it was actually trying to move, quite forcefully even, but had something stopping it, I helped it along and soon it was spinning by itself, but not as fast as it should and something was smoking so I unplugged the battery.
So I called dad again and explained my new found discoveries and while I did I also found what had been smoking, the connection plug for the front engine was partly melted, indicating that there might have been a bit too high effect on that one. I tried to spin the lower rotor again and now it was clear that something in the engine was broken, it couldn't move at all in one direction and in the other there was a frequent clonking sound.
My conclusion is as follows: The engine broke in the accident, probably something inside it twisted when the rotor turned itself around the axle and stopped the engine from spinning as it should. This would probably short circuit the engine itself which led to a way too high effect for the transistor and it melted. The repair guy couldn't understand why the engine didn't work after he replaced the component, actually doing everything right so far, so he changed the other one too but mounting it backwards, he probably experimented a lot with how it should be mounted,not with the one he mounted wrong though, but finally gave up and handed it to me as it was, the component for the back engine mounted wrong and giving a constant full power and the component for the front engine mounted right but trying to feed an engine that didn't work.
Solution: Came from dad, saying, we take that one as spare parts and I send you money to buy a new one, make sure to buy the same one though, I'll buy one but I'll try to find a silver one.
I might add some photos later!
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Christmas in China
I don't really know where to begin actually but I guess it is, as they always say, to begin at the beginning. But if the beginning is Christmas itself I want to begin a bit earlier, on what we in Sweden call, dan före dopparedan (the day before Christmas eve):
Christmas spirit and feeling is something that is very alien to Chinese people, not in a way that they don't understand the feeling, because I assume this is almost the exact feeling they have for the Chinese New Year, but because they don't seem to associate it with Christmas at all, which is quite natural since they don't really have Christmas except in McDonald's, which is by the way the place you should go to if you want any Christmas feeling. A lot of places have Christmas decorations, including McDonald's, but it's less than one in twenty stores and usually only the hotels. I didn't come here to celebrate Christmas though and didn't have any expectations, but all this almost and close to attempts to create Christmas here just made me feel worse; so on the night before Christmas eve I was feeling really really low, with the only thing to look forward to for Christmas was work and not even a little; I was out from home for work from 7.30am to 7.30pm on Christmas eve and 8.15am to 4pm on Christmas day, and a long day on the day after too.
So to get my mind off too much Christmas things I had agreed to go to some kind of estate party that my friend Bella was helping her friend with, apparently it was some kind of scam where the estate owners wanted the estate to seem better so they hired foreigners to join the party to seem they lived there, not that I get why that would make it better, perhaps it's something about foreigners having more money, and they would have paid around 300 yuan for dancing for 30 minutes. When I was going there though, with no clue of where it was and my only way to get there was to have Bella talk to the taxi driver, her phone died and I couldn't contact her. It wasn't so bad though, I went over to see my American friends instead and had dinner with them for about an hour or two, then I went home to call home, which was really nice.
I did get loads of invitations though, people here party on Christmas and just everybody I know here called or messaged me to join them, with work and no mood at all to party away a non-existing Christmas I turned them all down.
On Christmas day I went to see my American friends again, this time according to plan even, but because they had stayed up all night drinking and had a really late breakfast they were just not up for dinner until around 10pm, by then I was pretty much starving and the place we went to Carol's, which is basically a bar/club/restaurant, managed to forget to tell us that the chef had left before we ordered our food, so we sat there waiting for about half an hour until someone braved up and told us, one of the waitresses nearly started crying over it.
So instead we went to another bar/club/restaurant not far from there and I had my life's first Christmas burger, two actually. For some reason we stayed there, probably because we had already started drinking and it is hard to stop once you have started, and we befriended the sister of the owner of the place and she hooked us up with wine and drinks and stuff. So even though we didn't really do anything I still didn't get back home until after 2am, and of course I had to get up by 8am the morning.
Christmas gifts:
A machete and a deck of cards with Chinese patriotic motifs from Aaron.
A tiny (lightest ever, like the one dad has I guess) Helicopter from Jane, because she is still feeling bad over the big helicopter accident.
The big helicopter from dad, which is still broken but will be replaced soon (more about that in another post).
A Swedish cook book from my little cousins, it is really nice and Jane has already drawled on half the pages.
Money from grandma, uncle Pär and aunt Gordana and from my parents too, that will be spent on travel quite soon (I'm pretty much buying my flight tickets today).
I am expecting gifts from two other friends as well and a package from my family, I don't know what anything is though.
I bought myself a set of magnets like the one I sent with dad for my siblings and cousins too, a bigger box for me, hehe, 520 pieces, more about that in another post too.
I gave Jane the lovika mittens and the bag with a green Julbock and I bought a bottle of Chilean Carmeniere for Aaron. Except for that I didn't give much, well except the magnets stuff for my siblings and cousins, but I wasn't really there to give them and I gave Kelly some Chocolate.
Christmas spirit and feeling is something that is very alien to Chinese people, not in a way that they don't understand the feeling, because I assume this is almost the exact feeling they have for the Chinese New Year, but because they don't seem to associate it with Christmas at all, which is quite natural since they don't really have Christmas except in McDonald's, which is by the way the place you should go to if you want any Christmas feeling. A lot of places have Christmas decorations, including McDonald's, but it's less than one in twenty stores and usually only the hotels. I didn't come here to celebrate Christmas though and didn't have any expectations, but all this almost and close to attempts to create Christmas here just made me feel worse; so on the night before Christmas eve I was feeling really really low, with the only thing to look forward to for Christmas was work and not even a little; I was out from home for work from 7.30am to 7.30pm on Christmas eve and 8.15am to 4pm on Christmas day, and a long day on the day after too.
So to get my mind off too much Christmas things I had agreed to go to some kind of estate party that my friend Bella was helping her friend with, apparently it was some kind of scam where the estate owners wanted the estate to seem better so they hired foreigners to join the party to seem they lived there, not that I get why that would make it better, perhaps it's something about foreigners having more money, and they would have paid around 300 yuan for dancing for 30 minutes. When I was going there though, with no clue of where it was and my only way to get there was to have Bella talk to the taxi driver, her phone died and I couldn't contact her. It wasn't so bad though, I went over to see my American friends instead and had dinner with them for about an hour or two, then I went home to call home, which was really nice.
I did get loads of invitations though, people here party on Christmas and just everybody I know here called or messaged me to join them, with work and no mood at all to party away a non-existing Christmas I turned them all down.
On Christmas day I went to see my American friends again, this time according to plan even, but because they had stayed up all night drinking and had a really late breakfast they were just not up for dinner until around 10pm, by then I was pretty much starving and the place we went to Carol's, which is basically a bar/club/restaurant, managed to forget to tell us that the chef had left before we ordered our food, so we sat there waiting for about half an hour until someone braved up and told us, one of the waitresses nearly started crying over it.
So instead we went to another bar/club/restaurant not far from there and I had my life's first Christmas burger, two actually. For some reason we stayed there, probably because we had already started drinking and it is hard to stop once you have started, and we befriended the sister of the owner of the place and she hooked us up with wine and drinks and stuff. So even though we didn't really do anything I still didn't get back home until after 2am, and of course I had to get up by 8am the morning.
Christmas gifts:
A machete and a deck of cards with Chinese patriotic motifs from Aaron.
A tiny (lightest ever, like the one dad has I guess) Helicopter from Jane, because she is still feeling bad over the big helicopter accident.
The big helicopter from dad, which is still broken but will be replaced soon (more about that in another post).
A Swedish cook book from my little cousins, it is really nice and Jane has already drawled on half the pages.
Money from grandma, uncle Pär and aunt Gordana and from my parents too, that will be spent on travel quite soon (I'm pretty much buying my flight tickets today).
I am expecting gifts from two other friends as well and a package from my family, I don't know what anything is though.
I bought myself a set of magnets like the one I sent with dad for my siblings and cousins too, a bigger box for me, hehe, 520 pieces, more about that in another post too.
I gave Jane the lovika mittens and the bag with a green Julbock and I bought a bottle of Chilean Carmeniere for Aaron. Except for that I didn't give much, well except the magnets stuff for my siblings and cousins, but I wasn't really there to give them and I gave Kelly some Chocolate.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Summary
5 new posts in a short order, first one about my trip to Leshan and the giant Buddha and then my four stories about Zhuhai.
Leshan and the giant Buddha
Zhuhai - Part 1 - Joyce and Almen
Zhuhai - Part 2 - The Helicopters
Zhuhai - Part 3 - Dad
Zhuhai - Part 4 - Ariel and Janice
Photos and a film or two will be added later.
Leshan and the giant Buddha
Zhuhai - Part 1 - Joyce and Almen
Zhuhai - Part 2 - The Helicopters
Zhuhai - Part 3 - Dad
Zhuhai - Part 4 - Ariel and Janice
Photos and a film or two will be added later.
Zhuhai - Part 4 - Ariel and Janice
I had hope that we could pick up Ariel before saying goodbye to Joyce and Almen since she was arriving with the boat they would leave with and about 20 minutes before that too, but because of check-in times, a slight delay and of course the migration process I had to wait alone for a few minutes between leaving Joyce and Almen at their gate and picking up Ariel at hers.
It was interesting to see Ariel, we have actually only met once before but we have talked so much online since then that I felt I have known her for a much longer time than I actually have. We went to her hotel first to check her in and wait for Kaj to come back so we could have dinner, it was already after 5pm after all so it shouldn't be too late. It wasn't very long after we had gotten her room that Kaj called that he was on his way back but we would still have to wait for his transport and getting ready, and after waiting in the room for a while we decided to take a walk instead. We took a taxi over to the shoreline and walked and talked along the coast for almost an hour, that is when I found the tandem and even weirder thri-seated tandems that I know Joyce would have loved to try if we had know about them earlier, for me and Ariel it was too late for that though so I quickly put it out of my mind and we just walked instead.
With the wait in the hotel and the walk it had already been around two hours when we decided that we were both really really hungry, but Kaj still hadn't called and he didn't reply messages, so we tried to get a taxi and just crash his room instead but we found out pretty quickly that the shoreline is not a commercial area in any way, it's is more like a transport route and the taxis driving there were all occupied and there were nowhere to stop anyway. So we had to keep walking and getting more and more hungry. We finally did get a taxi, by then it was already around 8pm so we were starved and when we finally got to Kaj's room he mostly seemed surprised.
Being so hungry and tired too we just had dinner at a Chinese restaurant at his hotel, it was pretty nice and not at all too expensive so it was totally fine. After dinner we where just all so tired so we only said goodnight and goodbye.
Of course I missed breakfast again on Saturday morning but we went out to have dim sum with Kaj in a place not far from his hotel when it was still quite early so I didn't feel starved at all. And dim sum is always nice. We had made a quite nice and flexible schedule for the day, dim sum in the morning (that is brunch), then go to some place where there is a nice statue in the water and after that we just walked, that is when we found the park with the kites and I bought the big one and it crashed into the tree and it was not windy enough etc.
Before we went to meet Janice at the boat we went back to dad's hotel for some rest, and dad had do do some unspeakable things too. Meeting Janice was as nice as meeting everybody else, we still had to wait for her a bit though but that was fine, just things you have to live with sometimes. I think all four of us were quite hungry when she came, or at least going to be soon, so we went off to have dinner immediately at a quite fancy Thai place that dad's colleagues had recommended. The food was real Thai-food, at least as real as I've had anywhere else and so much better than the not real stuff I found here in Chengdu. It was hot and curry and all good and nice, I just avoided the seafood that dad had to get like I always do. I really love those curry-coconut-milk dishes they have, mmmmhmmm.
After dinner we walked around a little in the area around there, it was close to the Macao border where Ariel and Janice would be going when they left and we were trying to find some kind of tea for grandma and would need some translation help with that so they stayed with us for a while there. The tea store we found was a bit too fancy so dad ended up buying tea for 180 kuai / 500g tea, he bought some other stuff too, candies and some weird jasmine flower and finally he payed up 400 kuai. It was fine though I guess, it seemed good enough and I think grandma might like it.
After that we went over to the border and said goodbye to Ariel and Janice, after the usual hugs and come to Chengdu and stuff it was once again just me and dad.
It was interesting to see Ariel, we have actually only met once before but we have talked so much online since then that I felt I have known her for a much longer time than I actually have. We went to her hotel first to check her in and wait for Kaj to come back so we could have dinner, it was already after 5pm after all so it shouldn't be too late. It wasn't very long after we had gotten her room that Kaj called that he was on his way back but we would still have to wait for his transport and getting ready, and after waiting in the room for a while we decided to take a walk instead. We took a taxi over to the shoreline and walked and talked along the coast for almost an hour, that is when I found the tandem and even weirder thri-seated tandems that I know Joyce would have loved to try if we had know about them earlier, for me and Ariel it was too late for that though so I quickly put it out of my mind and we just walked instead.
With the wait in the hotel and the walk it had already been around two hours when we decided that we were both really really hungry, but Kaj still hadn't called and he didn't reply messages, so we tried to get a taxi and just crash his room instead but we found out pretty quickly that the shoreline is not a commercial area in any way, it's is more like a transport route and the taxis driving there were all occupied and there were nowhere to stop anyway. So we had to keep walking and getting more and more hungry. We finally did get a taxi, by then it was already around 8pm so we were starved and when we finally got to Kaj's room he mostly seemed surprised.
Being so hungry and tired too we just had dinner at a Chinese restaurant at his hotel, it was pretty nice and not at all too expensive so it was totally fine. After dinner we where just all so tired so we only said goodnight and goodbye.
Of course I missed breakfast again on Saturday morning but we went out to have dim sum with Kaj in a place not far from his hotel when it was still quite early so I didn't feel starved at all. And dim sum is always nice. We had made a quite nice and flexible schedule for the day, dim sum in the morning (that is brunch), then go to some place where there is a nice statue in the water and after that we just walked, that is when we found the park with the kites and I bought the big one and it crashed into the tree and it was not windy enough etc.
Before we went to meet Janice at the boat we went back to dad's hotel for some rest, and dad had do do some unspeakable things too. Meeting Janice was as nice as meeting everybody else, we still had to wait for her a bit though but that was fine, just things you have to live with sometimes. I think all four of us were quite hungry when she came, or at least going to be soon, so we went off to have dinner immediately at a quite fancy Thai place that dad's colleagues had recommended. The food was real Thai-food, at least as real as I've had anywhere else and so much better than the not real stuff I found here in Chengdu. It was hot and curry and all good and nice, I just avoided the seafood that dad had to get like I always do. I really love those curry-coconut-milk dishes they have, mmmmhmmm.
After dinner we walked around a little in the area around there, it was close to the Macao border where Ariel and Janice would be going when they left and we were trying to find some kind of tea for grandma and would need some translation help with that so they stayed with us for a while there. The tea store we found was a bit too fancy so dad ended up buying tea for 180 kuai / 500g tea, he bought some other stuff too, candies and some weird jasmine flower and finally he payed up 400 kuai. It was fine though I guess, it seemed good enough and I think grandma might like it.
After that we went over to the border and said goodbye to Ariel and Janice, after the usual hugs and come to Chengdu and stuff it was once again just me and dad.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Zhuhai - Part 3 - Dad
Dad was, as always, mostly interested in food, and he was especially happy to have me there and even more happy about Joyce, Almen, Ariel and Janice since that offered him the much wanted chance of having loads of different kinds of weird food that his colleagues refuses to eat.
Dad's hotel room was really awesome; a bigger-than-king-size bed, a rather big area with a desk and all sorts of computer connection you can need, including VGA that I think is for the flat 32" (or perhaps a little larger but not much) HD-TV in front of the bed (I didn't manage to get that to work though), a really big bathroom with both shower, a nice bathtub and that I actually use the last day after my workout.
On Saturday when Ariel was there and before we went to pick up Janice at the ferry terminal we went out walking and found a big park where a lot of people flew kites and stuff, I wanted too much of the cake of course so dad bought me a really big kite, I felt like a little child again but I soon discovered that I had swam out to a little too deep for my comfort, the kite was heavier than the regular ones and the kind you steer around, but that also meant that it needed a lot more wind which there of course wasn't enough of, so after a tree crash we gave up and our instructor and sales man asked us to come back in the morning the day after when the wind is heavier to try it for real.
Of course the day after I was too tired, mostly because dad snores like a... well I don't know what to compare to, a yet engine doesn't really cover it, and there are no fully automatic 110mm cannons either so that doesn't work either, let's just say that its loud. So after three nights I had hardly gotten any rest at all but for once I manged to get up for breakfast at least. After that we just stayed in the hotel room for about half the day until the cleaning staff wanted to come in and then I went to the hotel gym and dad went out to find some kind of misshapen floor patterns he had seen and thought was really fun.
The workout was probably the best I've done in months, or even years, I know I've lost weight but still I was surprised how much energy I had despite my cold, that has been rather bad recently. I did a sitting bike for like 20 minutes, I want to say without breaking a sweat because it sounds cool but I sweated like a pig, it's just that I didn't die from it, after that I did an overall workout and it felt really great, the best part that after that my cold was nearly gone. When I got back to the room dad was already there, it was time for lunch and I was extremely hungry but I had set my mind to taking a long bath first, which I did and it was great. I am just a little over 90kg now by the way.
We finally got out for our lunch and for the first time we were without Chinese guide and of course we found a restaurant that didn't have any English speaking staff, we still managed to get some food and even though I didn't really fancy it dad was as happy as always. Time pressed though and I didn't dare letting dad finish it all, we went back to the hotel and I packed up my stuff, the kite had to go with dad, there is not much of a wind in Chengdu anyway. The hotel staff helped me get the taxi to the bus station but of course the taxi took me to the wrong station and after about 20 minutes of trouble I finally got, with the help of Jane on the phone, a woman to help me to the right station, just about 5 minutes walk for there, which was partly what had confused me in the first place, I thought it was basically the same station, but it wasn't.
The bus wouldn't leave yet though, and with that and the three hours bus ride I got to the airport about 60 minutes before departure, this is normally no problem in an airport but in this one where the structure is pretty much non-existent, it was actually hard to find any check-in desk and not any easier to find the right one. And after that it was hard to find the security check because there was no obvious connection between entrance, check-in and security, and add to that that I was pretty much starving so I ran off to a McDonald's and got two double cheeseburgers before I went through the security. Now I was in quite some hurry, the boarding had started before I even got the the security but I still managed to get on the plane. And to my surprise and happiness I found that I had been upgraded to business class! That made the flight home a wonder, it is freakishly much more comfortable to fly business class.
Back in Chengdu I just wanted to get home as fast as possible, I was tired and there were people; taxi drivers both real and fake, everywhere who wanted money to drive me home, I did a stupid mistake and agreed to have this pretty little girl, with a pink phone and that looked totally harmless, hook me up with a driver, that of course was fake and of course had two others in his car. The taxi ride home took little more than an hour and it should have taken about 30 minutes in that traffic, he basically drove around the whole city with the two other guys before getting me home, I came home and crashed! I had survived at least, hehe.
Dad's hotel room was really awesome; a bigger-than-king-size bed, a rather big area with a desk and all sorts of computer connection you can need, including VGA that I think is for the flat 32" (or perhaps a little larger but not much) HD-TV in front of the bed (I didn't manage to get that to work though), a really big bathroom with both shower, a nice bathtub and that I actually use the last day after my workout.
On Saturday when Ariel was there and before we went to pick up Janice at the ferry terminal we went out walking and found a big park where a lot of people flew kites and stuff, I wanted too much of the cake of course so dad bought me a really big kite, I felt like a little child again but I soon discovered that I had swam out to a little too deep for my comfort, the kite was heavier than the regular ones and the kind you steer around, but that also meant that it needed a lot more wind which there of course wasn't enough of, so after a tree crash we gave up and our instructor and sales man asked us to come back in the morning the day after when the wind is heavier to try it for real.
Of course the day after I was too tired, mostly because dad snores like a... well I don't know what to compare to, a yet engine doesn't really cover it, and there are no fully automatic 110mm cannons either so that doesn't work either, let's just say that its loud. So after three nights I had hardly gotten any rest at all but for once I manged to get up for breakfast at least. After that we just stayed in the hotel room for about half the day until the cleaning staff wanted to come in and then I went to the hotel gym and dad went out to find some kind of misshapen floor patterns he had seen and thought was really fun.
The workout was probably the best I've done in months, or even years, I know I've lost weight but still I was surprised how much energy I had despite my cold, that has been rather bad recently. I did a sitting bike for like 20 minutes, I want to say without breaking a sweat because it sounds cool but I sweated like a pig, it's just that I didn't die from it, after that I did an overall workout and it felt really great, the best part that after that my cold was nearly gone. When I got back to the room dad was already there, it was time for lunch and I was extremely hungry but I had set my mind to taking a long bath first, which I did and it was great. I am just a little over 90kg now by the way.
We finally got out for our lunch and for the first time we were without Chinese guide and of course we found a restaurant that didn't have any English speaking staff, we still managed to get some food and even though I didn't really fancy it dad was as happy as always. Time pressed though and I didn't dare letting dad finish it all, we went back to the hotel and I packed up my stuff, the kite had to go with dad, there is not much of a wind in Chengdu anyway. The hotel staff helped me get the taxi to the bus station but of course the taxi took me to the wrong station and after about 20 minutes of trouble I finally got, with the help of Jane on the phone, a woman to help me to the right station, just about 5 minutes walk for there, which was partly what had confused me in the first place, I thought it was basically the same station, but it wasn't.
The bus wouldn't leave yet though, and with that and the three hours bus ride I got to the airport about 60 minutes before departure, this is normally no problem in an airport but in this one where the structure is pretty much non-existent, it was actually hard to find any check-in desk and not any easier to find the right one. And after that it was hard to find the security check because there was no obvious connection between entrance, check-in and security, and add to that that I was pretty much starving so I ran off to a McDonald's and got two double cheeseburgers before I went through the security. Now I was in quite some hurry, the boarding had started before I even got the the security but I still managed to get on the plane. And to my surprise and happiness I found that I had been upgraded to business class! That made the flight home a wonder, it is freakishly much more comfortable to fly business class.
Back in Chengdu I just wanted to get home as fast as possible, I was tired and there were people; taxi drivers both real and fake, everywhere who wanted money to drive me home, I did a stupid mistake and agreed to have this pretty little girl, with a pink phone and that looked totally harmless, hook me up with a driver, that of course was fake and of course had two others in his car. The taxi ride home took little more than an hour and it should have taken about 30 minutes in that traffic, he basically drove around the whole city with the two other guys before getting me home, I came home and crashed! I had survived at least, hehe.
Zhuhai - Part 2 - The Helicopters
Finding the Gongbei market was not a very easy task, mostly because it's name is not Gongbei market but The Landmark. We did get to Gongbei street though, the same place where Joyce, Almen and I had been walking around the day before, and we did find some kind of shopping mall, the the one or even the kind we were looking for. After a few calls and a lot of questions of people around us we finally find it but that was not enough, the place was a maze and dad was utterly confused; he had apparently gotten in at the first floor and the helicopter should be on the third floor, the problem was really that there were only two floors and the whole complex is an underground thing where one entrance, the one dad got in through the first time, is in a tunnel, where as the one we came through was an escalator from above ground, so it took us quite a while before we found any helicopters.
We finally did find helicopters, even though it was not the same store as Kaj had seen before, and after a lot of bargaining Kaj bought three of them for 1200 yuan (400 yuan each for those of you who might have problems with math), they did not have any extra rotor blades though so we would have to find that somewhere else. And that issued another problem, going up to a store with three brand new helicopters and just wanting to buy the rotors might cause some problems, besides, dad didn't have enough space in his tiny suitcase for the extra luggage we had just bought, so he basically needed a new suitcase, again...
The bartering for the suitcase was fun, he started at around 350 yuan I think and after a lot of ups and down, with me almost speaking Chinese, we gave up at 220 yuan and left, he looked like he was about to cry when he came after us and offered 200 yuan, which was our limit so we got it. Packing down the helicopters we soon found another place where we could buy ten sets of rotors extra, so now with the including set and the one already mounted we had 16 sets of rotors to break between three helicopters. And I tell you one thing, it really is necessary!
On Saturday evening after we had left off Ariel and Janice at the Macao border we went back to Kaj's room and while he was writing emails and checking Internet stuff I started my first airtime with my helicopter, in about an hours time I had managed to get some real fly-time and of course already broken 3 rotors, all from the lower set. It was really fun though but flying in the bed made some stability complications, the helicopter basically has to start off from level ground, but crashing wasn't so bad since it was soft.
Once home I was rather eager to try out the helicopter too, but I didn't have much time and I really needed to clean up my place first, so not until Tuesday night when I had dinner with Jane first and then got back here to play I finally got to try it out. I played around a little first and had some minor crashes, no biggies, and then I let Jane try it out; it went quite well at first but then she lost control and flew it forcefully up in the ceiling and then just free fall down, crash - bang... When the noise had settled we picked up the pieces, the ones we found at least, and discovered that the damage was both less and more than we had expected, there was not really any visual damage except on the rotors and a small piece of plastic from the tail that had gotten smashed off and so far it was fine, but one of the rotors had bent around the axle in a really weird way.
I fixed it up as best as I could but I didn't have the tools to change the rotors that were broken so I just wanted to see if I could lift off with the too seriously damaged rotors, they were not broken off anywhere but the cracks in them were big and the bending had done its share to damage them too. That was one we found the real damaged; first the rotors wouldn't spin at all, then when it came around the lower set just died after a few revolutions and then it refused to start off again. After some research it seems that the front engine, the one for the lower rotor set, has been burnt out, or there could be some problem with the gyro.
Jane was feeling really bad about it and I was a bit sad, but it's not like it's unfixable, we will just take it the the toy store here and have it repaired, I doubt it will cost very much, a spare engine shouldn't cost much more than 50 yuan.
To be continued...
I will add photos and some of the videos later when I have changed them to a smaller format.
We finally did find helicopters, even though it was not the same store as Kaj had seen before, and after a lot of bargaining Kaj bought three of them for 1200 yuan (400 yuan each for those of you who might have problems with math), they did not have any extra rotor blades though so we would have to find that somewhere else. And that issued another problem, going up to a store with three brand new helicopters and just wanting to buy the rotors might cause some problems, besides, dad didn't have enough space in his tiny suitcase for the extra luggage we had just bought, so he basically needed a new suitcase, again...
The bartering for the suitcase was fun, he started at around 350 yuan I think and after a lot of ups and down, with me almost speaking Chinese, we gave up at 220 yuan and left, he looked like he was about to cry when he came after us and offered 200 yuan, which was our limit so we got it. Packing down the helicopters we soon found another place where we could buy ten sets of rotors extra, so now with the including set and the one already mounted we had 16 sets of rotors to break between three helicopters. And I tell you one thing, it really is necessary!
On Saturday evening after we had left off Ariel and Janice at the Macao border we went back to Kaj's room and while he was writing emails and checking Internet stuff I started my first airtime with my helicopter, in about an hours time I had managed to get some real fly-time and of course already broken 3 rotors, all from the lower set. It was really fun though but flying in the bed made some stability complications, the helicopter basically has to start off from level ground, but crashing wasn't so bad since it was soft.
Once home I was rather eager to try out the helicopter too, but I didn't have much time and I really needed to clean up my place first, so not until Tuesday night when I had dinner with Jane first and then got back here to play I finally got to try it out. I played around a little first and had some minor crashes, no biggies, and then I let Jane try it out; it went quite well at first but then she lost control and flew it forcefully up in the ceiling and then just free fall down, crash - bang... When the noise had settled we picked up the pieces, the ones we found at least, and discovered that the damage was both less and more than we had expected, there was not really any visual damage except on the rotors and a small piece of plastic from the tail that had gotten smashed off and so far it was fine, but one of the rotors had bent around the axle in a really weird way.
I fixed it up as best as I could but I didn't have the tools to change the rotors that were broken so I just wanted to see if I could lift off with the too seriously damaged rotors, they were not broken off anywhere but the cracks in them were big and the bending had done its share to damage them too. That was one we found the real damaged; first the rotors wouldn't spin at all, then when it came around the lower set just died after a few revolutions and then it refused to start off again. After some research it seems that the front engine, the one for the lower rotor set, has been burnt out, or there could be some problem with the gyro.
Jane was feeling really bad about it and I was a bit sad, but it's not like it's unfixable, we will just take it the the toy store here and have it repaired, I doubt it will cost very much, a spare engine shouldn't cost much more than 50 yuan.
To be continued...
I will add photos and some of the videos later when I have changed them to a smaller format.
Zhuhai - Part 1 - Joyce and Almen
A way too early start for my comfort, I had to get up at around 5.45am, I tried to catch the first bus to the airport. I found quite quickly that I could have slept at least half an hour longer though, the bus stop just outside my house also has a stop for the airport bus so I didn't have to walk the 15 minutes I had expected, and I was really early anyway. The bus never showed up though so finally I gave up and took a taxi, paid 80 kuai which is about twice of what it should have cost but I didn't care much. What surprised me mostly that morning was how sufficient my clothing was
, I only had jeans, t-shirt, a fleece sweater and my hat, gloves and scarf; it really wasn't cold at all. The reason was that I was going to some place really warm and couldn't really bring any thick clothes, and I figured that it would only be a short ride to the airport then it would all be fine so a little cold cold be survived, but there was no need even.
I hadn't had any breakfast, all places were still closed when I left, I did get a quite decent breakfast during the flight though, some kind of rice porridge that was quite ok. After being up from before 6am, waiting for nearly 45 minutes in the cold, airport businessing for 45 minutes, flying for about 2 hours, more airport business, a bus ride for 3 hours from the airport to Zhuhai and finally a 20 kuai taxi ride for the 500m from the bus station to Joyce's and Almen's so called five star hotel, that is nearly 7 hours of travel time, I was pretty starved. The hotel was rather nice actually but I still wouldn't call it five star, at least not if comparing to dad's. What was a lot nicer was seeing Joyce, well and Almen too of course but that is not really comparable.
The girls where hungry too so we went to one of the hotel's restaurants and had a really big lunch and basically just catching up. After lunch we went out to some small shopping street that seemed to be the city center for Zhuhai, also like 500 meters from the hotel and actually it turned out to be just where my bus stop was. We just walked around tiredly and didn't really do anything, finally we tried to localize ourselves and somehow found the way, after a whole lot of confusion, back to the hotel by foot.
We decided to rest a bit and then go to a park, but before our rest was done dad called us and we took a taxi to his, real five star, hotel and then went out with him for dinner. We went to some seafood restaurant, of course, and had loads of dishes, I actually don't remember half of it, damn I was tired.
The night was not over yet though, we went to find a shopping mall where dad wanted to buy helicopters, but that one is another story. After that we went back to Joyce's and Almen's hotel to drop off our newly acquired stuff and then went to a cafe near there to have some drinks and play with their weird fortune telling machine, apparently I have 5 stars in luck and 5 stars in love... Kaj and Joyce both had some weird jelly drink stuff that looked really fun but Joyce said it didn't taste that good, Almen had some other drink and I just had some ginger Coke. After that we went back to their hotel, took some funny pictures and tried to make a movie that I intend to upload here then we all went to our owns and slept.
The morning after I overslept breakfast but so did the girls, dad was working of course so it was just the three of us now. Again we had lunch at their hotel but in anther restaurant, much nicer in my opinion actually, we mostly had some dim sum and I really love the sweet bun dessert with some juicy mixture in them.
We pretty much stayed at the hotel the whole afternoon, first we went to play bowling, I think it was really fun despite the low scores we all got. Joyce had never played before but she caught up quite quickly, her low score was mostly because her concentration was just up and down all the time and after a few games I guess she got rather tired. My scores was probably also low because of concentration lack, it often like that for me when bowling, I can sometimes strike three or even four times in a row and then do total misses for two or three times. This time I managed to impress with a strike at the first throw and then not do anything good at all. Almen played quite steadily I think, both of them actually managed a strike or two, which is quite impressive for someone who has never played or only played once.
Once bowling was done we still had about an hour before going to the ferry terminal to leave off the girls and meet Ariel, so we went to the same café again and had some more weird drinks, or I had a weird one this time, I think it was watermelon juice, and Joyce and Almen just had mocca. We had some nice desserts too, some weird pancake things, one with peanut butter in that that was absolutely delusions and another sandwich thing with melted cheese and ham, goodie! We finally had to go to the ferry terminal but Ariel's boat was a bit late so they never go to meet her, we said our goodbyes and then they left.
, I only had jeans, t-shirt, a fleece sweater and my hat, gloves and scarf; it really wasn't cold at all. The reason was that I was going to some place really warm and couldn't really bring any thick clothes, and I figured that it would only be a short ride to the airport then it would all be fine so a little cold cold be survived, but there was no need even.
I hadn't had any breakfast, all places were still closed when I left, I did get a quite decent breakfast during the flight though, some kind of rice porridge that was quite ok. After being up from before 6am, waiting for nearly 45 minutes in the cold, airport businessing for 45 minutes, flying for about 2 hours, more airport business, a bus ride for 3 hours from the airport to Zhuhai and finally a 20 kuai taxi ride for the 500m from the bus station to Joyce's and Almen's so called five star hotel, that is nearly 7 hours of travel time, I was pretty starved. The hotel was rather nice actually but I still wouldn't call it five star, at least not if comparing to dad's. What was a lot nicer was seeing Joyce, well and Almen too of course but that is not really comparable.
The girls where hungry too so we went to one of the hotel's restaurants and had a really big lunch and basically just catching up. After lunch we went out to some small shopping street that seemed to be the city center for Zhuhai, also like 500 meters from the hotel and actually it turned out to be just where my bus stop was. We just walked around tiredly and didn't really do anything, finally we tried to localize ourselves and somehow found the way, after a whole lot of confusion, back to the hotel by foot.
We decided to rest a bit and then go to a park, but before our rest was done dad called us and we took a taxi to his, real five star, hotel and then went out with him for dinner. We went to some seafood restaurant, of course, and had loads of dishes, I actually don't remember half of it, damn I was tired.
The night was not over yet though, we went to find a shopping mall where dad wanted to buy helicopters, but that one is another story. After that we went back to Joyce's and Almen's hotel to drop off our newly acquired stuff and then went to a cafe near there to have some drinks and play with their weird fortune telling machine, apparently I have 5 stars in luck and 5 stars in love... Kaj and Joyce both had some weird jelly drink stuff that looked really fun but Joyce said it didn't taste that good, Almen had some other drink and I just had some ginger Coke. After that we went back to their hotel, took some funny pictures and tried to make a movie that I intend to upload here then we all went to our owns and slept.
The morning after I overslept breakfast but so did the girls, dad was working of course so it was just the three of us now. Again we had lunch at their hotel but in anther restaurant, much nicer in my opinion actually, we mostly had some dim sum and I really love the sweet bun dessert with some juicy mixture in them.
We pretty much stayed at the hotel the whole afternoon, first we went to play bowling, I think it was really fun despite the low scores we all got. Joyce had never played before but she caught up quite quickly, her low score was mostly because her concentration was just up and down all the time and after a few games I guess she got rather tired. My scores was probably also low because of concentration lack, it often like that for me when bowling, I can sometimes strike three or even four times in a row and then do total misses for two or three times. This time I managed to impress with a strike at the first throw and then not do anything good at all. Almen played quite steadily I think, both of them actually managed a strike or two, which is quite impressive for someone who has never played or only played once.
Once bowling was done we still had about an hour before going to the ferry terminal to leave off the girls and meet Ariel, so we went to the same café again and had some more weird drinks, or I had a weird one this time, I think it was watermelon juice, and Joyce and Almen just had mocca. We had some nice desserts too, some weird pancake things, one with peanut butter in that that was absolutely delusions and another sandwich thing with melted cheese and ham, goodie! We finally had to go to the ferry terminal but Ariel's boat was a bit late so they never go to meet her, we said our goodbyes and then they left.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Leshan and the giant Buddha
There is actually not much to say but I will upload some photos later.
I took a early bus, around 10am or something (ok maybe not so early but I was really tired), so I arrived in Leshan around noon, or 12.30 perhaps. Linger, who would be my guide for the day, should have met me at the bus stop but she thought I would arrive later so she didn't, instead she managed to guide me to the right local bus to the giant Buddha and she got on the bus two stops later, where her dormitory is.
At first it was a little bit stale and awkward but after a while, and a lunch, we both warmed up and started chatting more. We had the lunch just outside the Buddha area entrance and after that we went to another entrance for students and such to get a discount, so my ticket was only 70 yuan instead of 140 and Linger's was only 10 yuan, because she is a student there.
At first it was just walking around, well not only at first, basically all the time, but I stopped to take some photos once in a while, we finally found the Buddha, not so difficult as it sounds actually, and we walked around it, down and up again, and took some photos. We walked around some more there and looked at some other stuff and then we started our journey around the small mountain.
Linger is a walker and I like that too, as long is its not too much up and down like it was at mt. Emei, here it was better, and not very far either actually, so we walked around for an hour or two until we found our way out at the other end.
We took a bus back to a more central place of Leshan and there we walked along the river and got a glimpse of the Buddha from further away (not a good glimpse) but mostly we just walked and talked. At the end we sat and talked instead because Linger was getting tired.
It was getting later but I had realised that this was just about all I would get out of Leshan, so I decided to try my best to catch the last bus home (at 7pm) but before that we would have to have some dinner. Linger took me to Sue's favourite restaurant, a small hot pot place which was rather nice, and we spent the last our we had together eating and talking instead of walking and talking.
Finally she got me back to the bus stop and I got there just in time, 5 minutes before the departure, so we said our goodbyes and I left, rather happy about the whole day.
Photos will be added later!
I took a early bus, around 10am or something (ok maybe not so early but I was really tired), so I arrived in Leshan around noon, or 12.30 perhaps. Linger, who would be my guide for the day, should have met me at the bus stop but she thought I would arrive later so she didn't, instead she managed to guide me to the right local bus to the giant Buddha and she got on the bus two stops later, where her dormitory is.
At first it was a little bit stale and awkward but after a while, and a lunch, we both warmed up and started chatting more. We had the lunch just outside the Buddha area entrance and after that we went to another entrance for students and such to get a discount, so my ticket was only 70 yuan instead of 140 and Linger's was only 10 yuan, because she is a student there.
At first it was just walking around, well not only at first, basically all the time, but I stopped to take some photos once in a while, we finally found the Buddha, not so difficult as it sounds actually, and we walked around it, down and up again, and took some photos. We walked around some more there and looked at some other stuff and then we started our journey around the small mountain.
Linger is a walker and I like that too, as long is its not too much up and down like it was at mt. Emei, here it was better, and not very far either actually, so we walked around for an hour or two until we found our way out at the other end.
We took a bus back to a more central place of Leshan and there we walked along the river and got a glimpse of the Buddha from further away (not a good glimpse) but mostly we just walked and talked. At the end we sat and talked instead because Linger was getting tired.
It was getting later but I had realised that this was just about all I would get out of Leshan, so I decided to try my best to catch the last bus home (at 7pm) but before that we would have to have some dinner. Linger took me to Sue's favourite restaurant, a small hot pot place which was rather nice, and we spent the last our we had together eating and talking instead of walking and talking.
Finally she got me back to the bus stop and I got there just in time, 5 minutes before the departure, so we said our goodbyes and I left, rather happy about the whole day.
Photos will be added later!
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Cooking and baking and cooking
This one has been a week for food!
Well as like I ended my last post I made pancakes on Tuesday; Jane came here for our weekly, the second last one I'm afraid since the show ends for this autumn, Heroes night, and this time I had decided, she had forgotten of course, that we would make pancakes, which I say finally, it's been like two months or more since I made it last but that will change now. After a small mishap with a dl measure that was actually an oz = 2dl we accidental go about twice as much flour in the mixture that we should have, so nothing to do but to add more eggs and milk and plan for a week with pancakes for dinner, lunch and breakfast every day. It took to long too cook all of them though so when we were about half done, like two hours later, I came up with the brilliant idea that I could save it for later, and an even smarter idea that I could make an oven-pancake with the rest. So I saved the rest for Thursday (today that is). The pancakes were good of course but the problems of making them with an induction-cooker and a wok-pan made the cooking a slow and difficult task.
Last night I was too lazy to go out and since I had proper, err KFC, for brunch I figured I might have breakfast for dinner, so I baked scones and had them with tea, A Jiao came over too and shared my dinner-breakfast-thing and then we went out to look at her new apartment, she reminds me in many ways of Gui Mei Sun, who always tends to change jobs and apartment and plans. After like two hours of walking around in eastern part of central Chengdu, finding out more or less exactly where some clubs I've been to, that I had no idea of where before, are, and another side of Sichuan university, where I have also been before but not exactly from that direction, and everything in a place where I have actually been before, I finally took a taxi home and slept quite earl, just to get up not-so-early and take a bus to Jane's home to share the same scones for breakfast, or rather brunch, thanks to whoever invented of steaming: the way to make dry scones not so dry again, the question is why we don't use that in Sweden?
And the whole day today we have been on the move, first IKEA; where I spend about 400 yuan, first only planning to buy a new bowl, since I dropped one of my old ones and it broke into.. well maybe not a thousand or even a hundred but at least an unrepairable amount of pieces, but finally ending up buying stuff I hadn't really thought of before, at least not seriously, first among a few is a frying pan, and that one made my day, or probably my week, I can finally cook properly! Then of course I had to do my Christmas purchases; gingerbread, all sorts of glögg; "bloss vinglögg", "bloss starkvinsglögg spetsat med cognac" and "blossa starkvinsglögg spetsat med rom", more meatballs and I found a bunch of different Malaco sweets that I have been craving recently; more djungelvrål, gott & blandat and zoo.
Next stop, after a too long stop at home for recharging, was Metro, the place where you usually can find most of the western stuff you need my goal was: ham! I wanted some ham for my oven-pancake but ham is the one thing I couldn't find there, well not exactly the one, I wanted some cooking cream too, not for today's cooking, but had to be satisfied with the way too thick whipping cream. I bought, as I always do, some better-than-I-can-find-elsewhere beer too, this time I only bought Chimay, I usually buy some Newcastle too but they didn't have any today. What I did find though but didn't buy anything from was a tiny liquor store for imported stuff, they have just about everything you can want, I even found a bottle of Fernet Bianco and that made me rather happy, it is a bit expensive though, almost 200yuan, the other stuff like rum, gin and Absolut anything and most stronger wines and spirits like Malibu and Cointreau costs around 100 yuan, totally affordable, for later.
Going home without the needed ham I had already decided to improvise a little, I bought some paprika and onion and at home we fried up some chicken in my new pan, spiced it with curry, pepper, salt and soyasauce added that with the vegetables to the pancake mixture in a longpan and voilá, the result was great!!
Well as like I ended my last post I made pancakes on Tuesday; Jane came here for our weekly, the second last one I'm afraid since the show ends for this autumn, Heroes night, and this time I had decided, she had forgotten of course, that we would make pancakes, which I say finally, it's been like two months or more since I made it last but that will change now. After a small mishap with a dl measure that was actually an oz = 2dl we accidental go about twice as much flour in the mixture that we should have, so nothing to do but to add more eggs and milk and plan for a week with pancakes for dinner, lunch and breakfast every day. It took to long too cook all of them though so when we were about half done, like two hours later, I came up with the brilliant idea that I could save it for later, and an even smarter idea that I could make an oven-pancake with the rest. So I saved the rest for Thursday (today that is). The pancakes were good of course but the problems of making them with an induction-cooker and a wok-pan made the cooking a slow and difficult task.
Last night I was too lazy to go out and since I had proper, err KFC, for brunch I figured I might have breakfast for dinner, so I baked scones and had them with tea, A Jiao came over too and shared my dinner-breakfast-thing and then we went out to look at her new apartment, she reminds me in many ways of Gui Mei Sun, who always tends to change jobs and apartment and plans. After like two hours of walking around in eastern part of central Chengdu, finding out more or less exactly where some clubs I've been to, that I had no idea of where before, are, and another side of Sichuan university, where I have also been before but not exactly from that direction, and everything in a place where I have actually been before, I finally took a taxi home and slept quite earl, just to get up not-so-early and take a bus to Jane's home to share the same scones for breakfast, or rather brunch, thanks to whoever invented of steaming: the way to make dry scones not so dry again, the question is why we don't use that in Sweden?
And the whole day today we have been on the move, first IKEA; where I spend about 400 yuan, first only planning to buy a new bowl, since I dropped one of my old ones and it broke into.. well maybe not a thousand or even a hundred but at least an unrepairable amount of pieces, but finally ending up buying stuff I hadn't really thought of before, at least not seriously, first among a few is a frying pan, and that one made my day, or probably my week, I can finally cook properly! Then of course I had to do my Christmas purchases; gingerbread, all sorts of glögg; "bloss vinglögg", "bloss starkvinsglögg spetsat med cognac" and "blossa starkvinsglögg spetsat med rom", more meatballs and I found a bunch of different Malaco sweets that I have been craving recently; more djungelvrål, gott & blandat and zoo.
Next stop, after a too long stop at home for recharging, was Metro, the place where you usually can find most of the western stuff you need my goal was: ham! I wanted some ham for my oven-pancake but ham is the one thing I couldn't find there, well not exactly the one, I wanted some cooking cream too, not for today's cooking, but had to be satisfied with the way too thick whipping cream. I bought, as I always do, some better-than-I-can-find-elsewhere beer too, this time I only bought Chimay, I usually buy some Newcastle too but they didn't have any today. What I did find though but didn't buy anything from was a tiny liquor store for imported stuff, they have just about everything you can want, I even found a bottle of Fernet Bianco and that made me rather happy, it is a bit expensive though, almost 200yuan, the other stuff like rum, gin and Absolut anything and most stronger wines and spirits like Malibu and Cointreau costs around 100 yuan, totally affordable, for later.
Going home without the needed ham I had already decided to improvise a little, I bought some paprika and onion and at home we fried up some chicken in my new pan, spiced it with curry, pepper, salt and soyasauce added that with the vegetables to the pancake mixture in a longpan and voilá, the result was great!!
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Getting up to date with events!
I haven't had time to catch up with writing about everything that has happened recently, both because I have been too busy to write much and because it has been quite eventful. Let's see if I can remember everything though.
The beginning of last week was quite smooth, my horrible Tuesday afternoon classes were cancelled so I had a good rest and met with Jane for Heroes, we tried out one of those cheaper restaurants close to my home too, it feels good to be able to have quite decent food for almost no money and so close to home, I think we ended up paying 24yuan for barbecue for two.
Wednesday was more eventful, I had classes in Wenjiang in the morning and Aarons "sister", Aileen, came to check out the classes, and since I had the afternoon off we went together to Aaron's office, that is in Aileen's school where Aaron work, and found him sleeping there. Aileen had some kindergarten to go to in the afternoon to watch a class so Aaron and I went to an amusement-park, apparently the biggest one in the area around Chengdu, which is saying quite little, to catch up with Aileen there later. Of course first we waited for about an hour for Kelly, who is also working at that school, but she only came there that day to play volleyball with some students.
The park was kind of interesting, not more than once though, unless going there on a date or something I guess, the amusement part of the park was rather small, about 5-6 rides that were decent enough to ride so we saved those for last, the rest of the park was just theme and the theme was different countries, I didn't really get much of what was what but we still walked around there for a while and finally arrived at the rides. At first Aaron just wanted to do one so he bought a one ticket and I bought an infinite ticket, but when Aileen finally came I managed to convince them both to get the infinite ones too. Not much to say about the rides; they had some wannabe strange and very uncomfortable and slow roller-coaster, a few spinning things that my stomach didn't really like even though it was fun, a water splash ride thing that Aaron skipped because we had to buy raincoats for 5yuan (it wasn't much fun anyway and I have a feeling Aaron actually had more fun watching the splash from outside) and finally a up and down bouncy thing that is almost like a free-fall but not, and of course a Ferris-wheel. We were quite lucky with the crowd, a not too nice weathered weekday in November didn't call for a big crowd, but somehow I think they have fixed timings for the rides, or they waited to fill up all the seats in them before starting because even though we never really had to queue we still sat waiting for 5-10 minutes in every ride before they started.
I ended up taking a public bus home which took over an hour, and I still had to take a taxi after that, but since the park closed at around 6pm it still wasn't later then 9.30pm when I got back home, I must have fallen asleep quite soon after that, was totally exhausted.
I had no classes on Thursday afternoon either but in the evening we got some training, it was rather stupid actually; we got the training from a teacher who Ivy is rather impressed with, but the his conditions are much different from hours; he is working with a very small class, only 10 kids, on a very regular basis, I think twice a week, and with longer classes, he actually likes them to be loud and wild. Compare that to our classes; 40 kids at an average in every class and some of which we only see once per month, it is nearly impossible to teach the way he is teaching for us, but at least I got some fun ideas, I don't think it was worth 1½ hours training though, and I don't think he was that good; he is supposedly British, but that is only a passport; he is really born in Japan and has Chinese and Japanese parents, they moved to England when he was 12 and his accent is still not even close to native, it's fine anyway, I fail to be impressed with his teaching though. I made friend's with him anyway, seems to be a good idea to make more friend and he claims he is a club king, only working on afternoons and evening so he can go out clubbing every day of the week.
After the training I had to hurry to Peter's Tex-Mex, one of the more famous western restaurants in Chengdu, to meet up with Aaron, Kelly, and Jane and some of Aaron's and Kelly's other volunteer friends for a thanksgiving dinner, the dinner was really nice, I think it was quite close to the real American way with roasted turkey and stuff, 5 courses even with cider, soup, salad, turkey, dessert and tea, and someone bought a macaroni and cheese thing too while we were waiting for something, good times :). I couldn't stay out with the others though because I my Friday would be early and long, and besides, I had plans for Friday night too so might as well save up on my energy.
On Friday night I went to Paname and met up with Lily and again some of the volunteers, I guy named Peter was there already and I ended up not liking him; he started of bad with hitting on Lily, and now we are talking the creepy kind of guy that is hitting on a girl he should know she doesn't want him in a creepy kind of way, and he screwed up worse later, don't like him at all. Aaron and Kelly came over quite soon though and I met Luna there too. Lily had me buy a drink about 15 minutes before happy hour so I had to buy another quite soon for half the price, then the event of the night finally arrived, my American colleague Rick who would be celebrating birthday; I didn't really care much actually but he had asked us to go there, Lily has also been working with him a bit, and so we came and I gave him one of my precious Newcastle, which I appreciated more than I had expected.
Well Rick didn't stay long but neither did we, arguing about where we would go I called Kevin, the British teacher that had trained us to see what he was up to and it turned out he had some friends over at his place. Aaron, Kelly and Peter was coming with me but Aaron got a call from a girl at some place and they all left with him, I figured I might as well see what is up and make some new friends, which is basically what I did.
After two hours I joined Aaron at a bar instead, he had lost one or two girls and Peter was behaving bad and practically got thrown out from the place, me and Aaron stayed and could still have some fun even though it was pretty late, Chinese people don't stay out pretty late. It had evaded me how drunk Aaron was though but I found that out the hard way, suddenly a bit of vomit appeared on my hand just escaping my shirt with a centimeter, well I survived but Aaron feels quite bad about it. We left quite soon after that.
Saturday morning I had lunch, brunch, at my relatively new friend, A Jioa,'s place with some of her friends, I ended up going out shopping with her, her friend and her friend's boyfriend, that is she and her friend went shopping and me and the boyfriend tried to communicate, that was really not easy.
Later in the evening I had dinner with the company, Ivy brought her son and the driver his step-daughter, and of course it was Gosia and I. We had pizza and some pasta, life was good.
That's pretty much it, now I will make pancakes, yeay!
The beginning of last week was quite smooth, my horrible Tuesday afternoon classes were cancelled so I had a good rest and met with Jane for Heroes, we tried out one of those cheaper restaurants close to my home too, it feels good to be able to have quite decent food for almost no money and so close to home, I think we ended up paying 24yuan for barbecue for two.
Wednesday was more eventful, I had classes in Wenjiang in the morning and Aarons "sister", Aileen, came to check out the classes, and since I had the afternoon off we went together to Aaron's office, that is in Aileen's school where Aaron work, and found him sleeping there. Aileen had some kindergarten to go to in the afternoon to watch a class so Aaron and I went to an amusement-park, apparently the biggest one in the area around Chengdu, which is saying quite little, to catch up with Aileen there later. Of course first we waited for about an hour for Kelly, who is also working at that school, but she only came there that day to play volleyball with some students.
The park was kind of interesting, not more than once though, unless going there on a date or something I guess, the amusement part of the park was rather small, about 5-6 rides that were decent enough to ride so we saved those for last, the rest of the park was just theme and the theme was different countries, I didn't really get much of what was what but we still walked around there for a while and finally arrived at the rides. At first Aaron just wanted to do one so he bought a one ticket and I bought an infinite ticket, but when Aileen finally came I managed to convince them both to get the infinite ones too. Not much to say about the rides; they had some wannabe strange and very uncomfortable and slow roller-coaster, a few spinning things that my stomach didn't really like even though it was fun, a water splash ride thing that Aaron skipped because we had to buy raincoats for 5yuan (it wasn't much fun anyway and I have a feeling Aaron actually had more fun watching the splash from outside) and finally a up and down bouncy thing that is almost like a free-fall but not, and of course a Ferris-wheel. We were quite lucky with the crowd, a not too nice weathered weekday in November didn't call for a big crowd, but somehow I think they have fixed timings for the rides, or they waited to fill up all the seats in them before starting because even though we never really had to queue we still sat waiting for 5-10 minutes in every ride before they started.
I ended up taking a public bus home which took over an hour, and I still had to take a taxi after that, but since the park closed at around 6pm it still wasn't later then 9.30pm when I got back home, I must have fallen asleep quite soon after that, was totally exhausted.
I had no classes on Thursday afternoon either but in the evening we got some training, it was rather stupid actually; we got the training from a teacher who Ivy is rather impressed with, but the his conditions are much different from hours; he is working with a very small class, only 10 kids, on a very regular basis, I think twice a week, and with longer classes, he actually likes them to be loud and wild. Compare that to our classes; 40 kids at an average in every class and some of which we only see once per month, it is nearly impossible to teach the way he is teaching for us, but at least I got some fun ideas, I don't think it was worth 1½ hours training though, and I don't think he was that good; he is supposedly British, but that is only a passport; he is really born in Japan and has Chinese and Japanese parents, they moved to England when he was 12 and his accent is still not even close to native, it's fine anyway, I fail to be impressed with his teaching though. I made friend's with him anyway, seems to be a good idea to make more friend and he claims he is a club king, only working on afternoons and evening so he can go out clubbing every day of the week.
After the training I had to hurry to Peter's Tex-Mex, one of the more famous western restaurants in Chengdu, to meet up with Aaron, Kelly, and Jane and some of Aaron's and Kelly's other volunteer friends for a thanksgiving dinner, the dinner was really nice, I think it was quite close to the real American way with roasted turkey and stuff, 5 courses even with cider, soup, salad, turkey, dessert and tea, and someone bought a macaroni and cheese thing too while we were waiting for something, good times :). I couldn't stay out with the others though because I my Friday would be early and long, and besides, I had plans for Friday night too so might as well save up on my energy.
On Friday night I went to Paname and met up with Lily and again some of the volunteers, I guy named Peter was there already and I ended up not liking him; he started of bad with hitting on Lily, and now we are talking the creepy kind of guy that is hitting on a girl he should know she doesn't want him in a creepy kind of way, and he screwed up worse later, don't like him at all. Aaron and Kelly came over quite soon though and I met Luna there too. Lily had me buy a drink about 15 minutes before happy hour so I had to buy another quite soon for half the price, then the event of the night finally arrived, my American colleague Rick who would be celebrating birthday; I didn't really care much actually but he had asked us to go there, Lily has also been working with him a bit, and so we came and I gave him one of my precious Newcastle, which I appreciated more than I had expected.
Well Rick didn't stay long but neither did we, arguing about where we would go I called Kevin, the British teacher that had trained us to see what he was up to and it turned out he had some friends over at his place. Aaron, Kelly and Peter was coming with me but Aaron got a call from a girl at some place and they all left with him, I figured I might as well see what is up and make some new friends, which is basically what I did.
After two hours I joined Aaron at a bar instead, he had lost one or two girls and Peter was behaving bad and practically got thrown out from the place, me and Aaron stayed and could still have some fun even though it was pretty late, Chinese people don't stay out pretty late. It had evaded me how drunk Aaron was though but I found that out the hard way, suddenly a bit of vomit appeared on my hand just escaping my shirt with a centimeter, well I survived but Aaron feels quite bad about it. We left quite soon after that.
Saturday morning I had lunch, brunch, at my relatively new friend, A Jioa,'s place with some of her friends, I ended up going out shopping with her, her friend and her friend's boyfriend, that is she and her friend went shopping and me and the boyfriend tried to communicate, that was really not easy.
Later in the evening I had dinner with the company, Ivy brought her son and the driver his step-daughter, and of course it was Gosia and I. We had pizza and some pasta, life was good.
That's pretty much it, now I will make pancakes, yeay!
Saturday, November 24, 2007
How many and who?
I've been wondering for a while if I'm writing all of this for deaf ears, or rather blind eyes, or if anyone actually reads it. Well it does happen sometimes that someone tells me they have read it, or hints on it, but how many read without me ever knowing, a counter would have been nice I guess but it feels a bit excessive. Anyway, could you please if you read this take a few extra moments and leave a comment here, just to let me know. Thank you!
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Xi Chong
Uttalas ganska lustigt nog tjing tjong.
Well, I'll finally take my time to write about my last weekend; One of Jane's high school friends was getting married, which basically means that he has been married for about 6-12 months already but has finally decided to have the ceremony and celebrate it with friends and family, and she invited me and Aaron to go with her to her home town, Xi Chong. We started out early on Saturday morning, the wedding party would be at noon on Saturday and the bus there should take about 3-4 hours so we had to have an early start to see the firecrackers and stuff, but our first misfortune come soon with the first bus leaving at 9am. The bus was quite funny though, err at least to me; the clock in the bus was set to Swedish time, so I was kind of happy.
So we were, of course, late and missed the firecrackers, but it was still quite interesting, a lot of
people having dinner together, a few hundred at least, and balloons and a singer and stuff. Aaron and I still became a show by ourselves, a foreigner in a small town like Xi Chong seems to be a quite big thing, I so used to the staring now though so I hardly notice it at all. We got food and I tried to eat some of each, no matter how weird it was, but people still worried that both Aaron and me hadn't gotten enough to eat, truth is I really got enough. We got drinks too, a weaker form of the rice wine, that is only 38% Vol. and some bottles were water and I think others were watered, and the bride and groom toasted with us several times.
After the reception, like 30-45 minutes after we arrived, one of Jane's friends, who didn't drink, drove the groom's, or some of his family's, car to the hostel where Aaron and I would stay; Jane's father is a part owner of the hostel so we would stay there for free, thank you very much Jane's father. But when we came he wasn't there so we sat down and talked to Jane's uncle and aunt, that is Aaron and Jane talked and I sat there and tried my best to not look too stupid, we also spent about 30 minutes teaching me how to play Mahjong, which was really quite easy and fun once I got the hang of it, probably because I didn't lose any time.
The room we got was rather amazing, we are talking about a hostel after all but I still got a huge room, probably bigger than my current apartment, with an oversized bed, king size which is the name of one of the standards they use here probably according to the American bed standards, and a TV, AC and my own big bathroom with toilet and even a mahjong table, the automatic kind. This is all quite a lot for a hostel and it was the finest room they have, Aaron go the second finest, we got these two rooms because we are really cool, actually we got them because they are comparably expensive, mine is around 60 yuan per night and Aaron's about half, compared to something more around 5 yuan for a bed in a three bed room, so well I was happy.
As soon as we had gotten our rooms though we set out to explore the town, I still haven't really figured out how big buy my guess is around the same size as Lund, just that is the total opposite, wh
ere Lund has a majority of student's at an age around 20-25 Xi Chong doesn't have anyone at all that age, the city is a city for the young and the old, people in their primes leave either for university or for migration work in the east, where they can earn a lot more money to send home to their kids and parents, it is a cozy small town anyway, or maybe it is thanks to just that. We spent some time walking around, finding a square that seemed very central, but apparently it is quite newly built, on the shores of a tiny little lake where you normally could rent a small boat with a table on to play cards or mahjong, Xi Chong is even more leisurely than Chengdu, which is to say a lot compared to most Chines places that I've been to at least.
The non-drinking driver and his wife found us again now driving his own car, a small mini bus where the middle seat had been removed for him to transport the rice noodles he makes in his factory, with this car he drove us up the mountain at the verge of the
town to check out the Buddhist temple and get a full view of the town itself. The temple was just like all the other temples but it was still nice to get a good view of the town and some fresh air, but when we got back to the car it was gone so we had to walk all the way down, which was also kind of refreshing. Once we got down we went back to the hostel to take a rest and I even managed to fall asleep in the very comfortable and warm bed, warm is important; China is a very cold place, not because it's cold outside but because it is the same everywhere, there is no place where it is even a little bit warmer, except my apartment of course.
Extremely tired now that I had gotten a feel for napping I still managed to go on when we went out for dinner with Jane's relatives, the food we had was even weirder than at the wedding and I was very careful with what I put in my mouth, my stomach was already a little bit too active and there was probably not a single normal toilet in a 200km radius, so I took good care not to eat too strange stuff.
After dinner we met up with Jane's friend again and went with them to the groom's family's home to see what kind of prank they w
ould play on him, I'm not exactly sure I would call it a prank but it was still funny; they had the "newly"-weds doing all sort of embarrassing stuff, much like we do in middle school at times and high school when we are drunk enough, stuff that is not done in China except on occasions like this. For example they hid something inside the brides clothes and the groom had time find it, I think he was supposed to use only his mouth but I doubt he followed those rules, they were hidden under a blanket, next the groom did push-ups over his wife with a banana between his legs, and after that the bride ate the banana, funny funny.
Once all the fun was over we all went out and left the older and younger folks at home for their own entertainment and the younger crowd went to a KTV place close by, there we started drinking weak beer and sing. After about a hundred tiny glasses of weak beer I got unsober e
nough to make stupid decisions, the first was of course to sing, which was rather fun, the second to go find something stronger so I could make even more stupid decisions, which of course we did, we found a bottle of brandy and a bottle of Sprite and a local Supermarket across the street, or rather ally, and brought it back to share with our new friends. Drinking more of that stuff I started making several of the same bad decision and sung quite a few songs with both Jane and Aaron, never alone though.
People started dropping off in quite big numbers and somehow I managed to convince both Jane and Aaron that we should go to Nan Chong instead; a bigger city about 40km away that has clubs and Aaron has some friends.
What I didn't know was that most of those clubs close at 1 or 2am and it was already after 11pm when we left, so we took a taxi, and not any taxi, this was Jane's dad's, again, taxi, it seems everything is his, so we got a fixed price and a taxi that would wait for us and carry us around wherever we wanted. We did arrive at a Chinese bar called Babi, it has a sequel here in Chengdu actually, where Aaron and Jane had been a few times before. but Aaron left us immediately for an upset friend in another place and Jane and I were both getting really bored. Until Aaron had us join him and his friend at a small bar somewhere that is. Tiny place but our spirit was somehow raised to the roof by it and we had a really good time for about an hour or so. We pretty much all half slept the whole ride, drunk and/or tired as hell and when we got back I was about to crash but managed to crash my phone into the floor first and had the speaker broken somehow, now I can only use the speaker phone when I use it.
We slept away the whole morning, we had decided the night before that we would, or rather Aaron and Jane would, wake us all up around 11am but it turned out that all the three of us thought that the other two wanted to sleep longer so even though we all actually were awake before 11am we didn't really get up until after noon. Before leaving we had a really nice breakfast, some rice porridge thing with spices that made it really nice and that finally cost us 8 yuan, together, and really filling too.
In the evening we all went back to my place and I cooked lasagna for us and finally I didn't sleep until 1 in the morning, truly a long long weekend, but good times, lasagna was great, creds to Hellen for coming up with that idea before I left Sweden.
Well, I'll finally take my time to write about my last weekend; One of Jane's high school friends was getting married, which basically means that he has been married for about 6-12 months already but has finally decided to have the ceremony and celebrate it with friends and family, and she invited me and Aaron to go with her to her home town, Xi Chong. We started out early on Saturday morning, the wedding party would be at noon on Saturday and the bus there should take about 3-4 hours so we had to have an early start to see the firecrackers and stuff, but our first misfortune come soon with the first bus leaving at 9am. The bus was quite funny though, err at least to me; the clock in the bus was set to Swedish time, so I was kind of happy.So we were, of course, late and missed the firecrackers, but it was still quite interesting, a lot of
people having dinner together, a few hundred at least, and balloons and a singer and stuff. Aaron and I still became a show by ourselves, a foreigner in a small town like Xi Chong seems to be a quite big thing, I so used to the staring now though so I hardly notice it at all. We got food and I tried to eat some of each, no matter how weird it was, but people still worried that both Aaron and me hadn't gotten enough to eat, truth is I really got enough. We got drinks too, a weaker form of the rice wine, that is only 38% Vol. and some bottles were water and I think others were watered, and the bride and groom toasted with us several times.After the reception, like 30-45 minutes after we arrived, one of Jane's friends, who didn't drink, drove the groom's, or some of his family's, car to the hostel where Aaron and I would stay; Jane's father is a part owner of the hostel so we would stay there for free, thank you very much Jane's father. But when we came he wasn't there so we sat down and talked to Jane's uncle and aunt, that is Aaron and Jane talked and I sat there and tried my best to not look too stupid, we also spent about 30 minutes teaching me how to play Mahjong, which was really quite easy and fun once I got the hang of it, probably because I didn't lose any time.
The room we got was rather amazing, we are talking about a hostel after all but I still got a huge room, probably bigger than my current apartment, with an oversized bed, king size which is the name of one of the standards they use here probably according to the American bed standards, and a TV, AC and my own big bathroom with toilet and even a mahjong table, the automatic kind. This is all quite a lot for a hostel and it was the finest room they have, Aaron go the second finest, we got these two rooms because we are really cool, actually we got them because they are comparably expensive, mine is around 60 yuan per night and Aaron's about half, compared to something more around 5 yuan for a bed in a three bed room, so well I was happy.As soon as we had gotten our rooms though we set out to explore the town, I still haven't really figured out how big buy my guess is around the same size as Lund, just that is the total opposite, wh
ere Lund has a majority of student's at an age around 20-25 Xi Chong doesn't have anyone at all that age, the city is a city for the young and the old, people in their primes leave either for university or for migration work in the east, where they can earn a lot more money to send home to their kids and parents, it is a cozy small town anyway, or maybe it is thanks to just that. We spent some time walking around, finding a square that seemed very central, but apparently it is quite newly built, on the shores of a tiny little lake where you normally could rent a small boat with a table on to play cards or mahjong, Xi Chong is even more leisurely than Chengdu, which is to say a lot compared to most Chines places that I've been to at least.The non-drinking driver and his wife found us again now driving his own car, a small mini bus where the middle seat had been removed for him to transport the rice noodles he makes in his factory, with this car he drove us up the mountain at the verge of the
town to check out the Buddhist temple and get a full view of the town itself. The temple was just like all the other temples but it was still nice to get a good view of the town and some fresh air, but when we got back to the car it was gone so we had to walk all the way down, which was also kind of refreshing. Once we got down we went back to the hostel to take a rest and I even managed to fall asleep in the very comfortable and warm bed, warm is important; China is a very cold place, not because it's cold outside but because it is the same everywhere, there is no place where it is even a little bit warmer, except my apartment of course.
Extremely tired now that I had gotten a feel for napping I still managed to go on when we went out for dinner with Jane's relatives, the food we had was even weirder than at the wedding and I was very careful with what I put in my mouth, my stomach was already a little bit too active and there was probably not a single normal toilet in a 200km radius, so I took good care not to eat too strange stuff.After dinner we met up with Jane's friend again and went with them to the groom's family's home to see what kind of prank they w
ould play on him, I'm not exactly sure I would call it a prank but it was still funny; they had the "newly"-weds doing all sort of embarrassing stuff, much like we do in middle school at times and high school when we are drunk enough, stuff that is not done in China except on occasions like this. For example they hid something inside the brides clothes and the groom had time find it, I think he was supposed to use only his mouth but I doubt he followed those rules, they were hidden under a blanket, next the groom did push-ups over his wife with a banana between his legs, and after that the bride ate the banana, funny funny.Once all the fun was over we all went out and left the older and younger folks at home for their own entertainment and the younger crowd went to a KTV place close by, there we started drinking weak beer and sing. After about a hundred tiny glasses of weak beer I got unsober e
nough to make stupid decisions, the first was of course to sing, which was rather fun, the second to go find something stronger so I could make even more stupid decisions, which of course we did, we found a bottle of brandy and a bottle of Sprite and a local Supermarket across the street, or rather ally, and brought it back to share with our new friends. Drinking more of that stuff I started making several of the same bad decision and sung quite a few songs with both Jane and Aaron, never alone though.People started dropping off in quite big numbers and somehow I managed to convince both Jane and Aaron that we should go to Nan Chong instead; a bigger city about 40km away that has clubs and Aaron has some friends.
What I didn't know was that most of those clubs close at 1 or 2am and it was already after 11pm when we left, so we took a taxi, and not any taxi, this was Jane's dad's, again, taxi, it seems everything is his, so we got a fixed price and a taxi that would wait for us and carry us around wherever we wanted. We did arrive at a Chinese bar called Babi, it has a sequel here in Chengdu actually, where Aaron and Jane had been a few times before. but Aaron left us immediately for an upset friend in another place and Jane and I were both getting really bored. Until Aaron had us join him and his friend at a small bar somewhere that is. Tiny place but our spirit was somehow raised to the roof by it and we had a really good time for about an hour or so. We pretty much all half slept the whole ride, drunk and/or tired as hell and when we got back I was about to crash but managed to crash my phone into the floor first and had the speaker broken somehow, now I can only use the speaker phone when I use it.
We slept away the whole morning, we had decided the night before that we would, or rather Aaron and Jane would, wake us all up around 11am but it turned out that all the three of us thought that the other two wanted to sleep longer so even though we all actually were awake before 11am we didn't really get up until after noon. Before leaving we had a really nice breakfast, some rice porridge thing with spices that made it really nice and that finally cost us 8 yuan, together, and really filling too.In the evening we all went back to my place and I cooked lasagna for us and finally I didn't sleep until 1 in the morning, truly a long long weekend, but good times, lasagna was great, creds to Hellen for coming up with that idea before I left Sweden.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Sushi
Or whatever you might call it...
I went to my new friend A Jiao's, I think that could be her name, new apartment; a big place that she shares with some guy, overlooking the river in and was apparently about 1 minute walk from Hemp house, one of the bars I tend to frequent here. I brought my pre-made meatballs, some cream and lingon jam to cook and she made sushi, apparently taught to her by some Japanese girl in Shanghai, where she lived until just recently. We started off with going to some outdoor vegetable market, a new experience for me and a good one at that and after some minor purchases we went back home and started cooking. Well started to wait for the frying pan that someone had borrowed from them, so I just watched A Jiao doing her thing. After a long time of cutting cucumber, carrots and sausage, a sausage that looks disturbingly like a Swedish falukorv, and of mixing rice with wasabi and some other stuff she managed to make something that I could agree to call sushi. The food was quite ok and they were just overly impressed with my meatballs, they were good but a far shot from the home-made ones I made with Jane a few weeks ago.
I'm quite sure I can make korvostroganoff now, with the falukorv look-alike. Happy!
I went to my new friend A Jiao's, I think that could be her name, new apartment; a big place that she shares with some guy, overlooking the river in and was apparently about 1 minute walk from Hemp house, one of the bars I tend to frequent here. I brought my pre-made meatballs, some cream and lingon jam to cook and she made sushi, apparently taught to her by some Japanese girl in Shanghai, where she lived until just recently. We started off with going to some outdoor vegetable market, a new experience for me and a good one at that and after some minor purchases we went back home and started cooking. Well started to wait for the frying pan that someone had borrowed from them, so I just watched A Jiao doing her thing. After a long time of cutting cucumber, carrots and sausage, a sausage that looks disturbingly like a Swedish falukorv, and of mixing rice with wasabi and some other stuff she managed to make something that I could agree to call sushi. The food was quite ok and they were just overly impressed with my meatballs, they were good but a far shot from the home-made ones I made with Jane a few weeks ago.
I'm quite sure I can make korvostroganoff now, with the falukorv look-alike. Happy!
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Singles day.
They say here that the 11th November, or 11.11, is the singles day, I'm guess it's just another excuse to go out and drink or party and for once make sure that the one you are flirting with is not already taken. Unfortunately it's a Sunday this year and I've been sick so I'm avoiding going out anyway, I did run into a few suggestions from various girls that I know though. Instead our single group consisting of Jane, Aaron and me,and with the addition of Aarons "adopted" kid brother, a little Chinese boy of 10 with surprisingly good English skills, met up at Jane's place and made dumplings and watched Family guy. I guess I should have brought the camera but I didn't think much about it when I left home, they were really good anyway.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Sick in China
I had been feeling a bit under the weather for a few days already; some minor stomach problems and a cold, probably the flue, but on Thursday morning I woke up and had a stomach ache, I spent the time I had set for breakfast and showering on the toilet instead and entered the pick-up car hungry and in a really bad mood, this is of course when Ivy, totally unaware of the bad start of my day, decides to reveal that Goisa and I are not working too much, we are actually working so little so we won't get any overtime at all, I totally lacks out, with me that is I'm grumpy and start arguing about it a little and then decides to quit and tell her just that.
The morning just keeps getting worse, not for any other reason than that I'm in a bad state really (the classes I had was actually pretty good), and I feel like fainting at the end of the second class I had. When we return home I fetch my contract, read it through just to make certain I haven't missed anything and finds out that they should actually count by the hour instead of class as I had thought, and hoped, which really doesn't make it any better I still feel screwed. I arrived at the office feeling really dark; my mind set on handing in the needed written notification needed to quit in 3 weeks. I argue with Ivy for a while and finally agree to think on it for a week before I decide. But the arguing was really low, everything from pleading to threats and reasoning, and on every single argument I had, she was right that she has helped me out a lot though.
Then I went home, still pissed, and passed out.
It wasn't really that simple actually, between the time that I came home until Jane finally arrived my memory is a bit blurred, I was tired like hell but I went to the bathroom about once per hour, and I still hadn't eaten anything. Jane did come though, and she bought some medicine for my throat and some for my stomach, I managed to get down some blueberry soup and later she even got me two hamburgers from McDonald's, a few seconds after I ate anything I had to go to the toilet again though. I messaged Ivy that I would be sick the day after and she called me to see how I was.
It wasn't really bad actually it's just that whatever I got in my seemed to just sprint all the way through. And that is how the whole night was too; I didn't get much continuous sleep that night.
In the morning I was feeling slightly better, I guess the medicine worked quite well, but I was totally exhausted and there was nothing to eat at home. Luckily Jane came again at lunch, giving up her 4 hour break for me (thank you so much Jane if you read this) and we had lunch, the first real meal I had eaten in about 36 hours, and went to a doctor, basically to get an official diagnosis for work and for a general checkup, they took a damn blood-test too which I think I took rather well, I just hate it and then he agreed that the medicine was the right one and suggested, or prescribed or something, one more.
The rest of the day was just resting and the morning after I felt much better, I even went our for brunch and dinner and was around the area to take care of some minor tasks. I guess the medicine really is working, I'm still taking it though.
And I talked to Ivy again today, she says she talked to the boss and they will probably raise our salary a little, that and the fact that I don't really want to screw everybody over, like everybody else are doing here is probably enough for me to decide not to quit, it will only be for a month and a half anyway so it doesn't make much sense.
The morning just keeps getting worse, not for any other reason than that I'm in a bad state really (the classes I had was actually pretty good), and I feel like fainting at the end of the second class I had. When we return home I fetch my contract, read it through just to make certain I haven't missed anything and finds out that they should actually count by the hour instead of class as I had thought, and hoped, which really doesn't make it any better I still feel screwed. I arrived at the office feeling really dark; my mind set on handing in the needed written notification needed to quit in 3 weeks. I argue with Ivy for a while and finally agree to think on it for a week before I decide. But the arguing was really low, everything from pleading to threats and reasoning, and on every single argument I had, she was right that she has helped me out a lot though.
Then I went home, still pissed, and passed out.
It wasn't really that simple actually, between the time that I came home until Jane finally arrived my memory is a bit blurred, I was tired like hell but I went to the bathroom about once per hour, and I still hadn't eaten anything. Jane did come though, and she bought some medicine for my throat and some for my stomach, I managed to get down some blueberry soup and later she even got me two hamburgers from McDonald's, a few seconds after I ate anything I had to go to the toilet again though. I messaged Ivy that I would be sick the day after and she called me to see how I was.
It wasn't really bad actually it's just that whatever I got in my seemed to just sprint all the way through. And that is how the whole night was too; I didn't get much continuous sleep that night.
In the morning I was feeling slightly better, I guess the medicine worked quite well, but I was totally exhausted and there was nothing to eat at home. Luckily Jane came again at lunch, giving up her 4 hour break for me (thank you so much Jane if you read this) and we had lunch, the first real meal I had eaten in about 36 hours, and went to a doctor, basically to get an official diagnosis for work and for a general checkup, they took a damn blood-test too which I think I took rather well, I just hate it and then he agreed that the medicine was the right one and suggested, or prescribed or something, one more.
The rest of the day was just resting and the morning after I felt much better, I even went our for brunch and dinner and was around the area to take care of some minor tasks. I guess the medicine really is working, I'm still taking it though.
And I talked to Ivy again today, she says she talked to the boss and they will probably raise our salary a little, that and the fact that I don't really want to screw everybody over, like everybody else are doing here is probably enough for me to decide not to quit, it will only be for a month and a half anyway so it doesn't make much sense.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Chinese bars.
I hung out with Luna the whole afternoon on Saturday, we were actually supposed to go to an amusement park outside Chengdu but she was exhausted after a night out until 8am so we got delayed and there was just no point in going, I was supposed to meet Erin, a random girl that started talking to me because I was a foreigner a few weeks ago, but that too changed too and instead I ended up having hot pot with Luna and Bella, I guess I have to make it up to Erin later because I postponed our meeting on Friday too to go and watch a movie with Jane, I was actually too tired to to do anything really.
After dinner we met up with Aaron and some of his friends at Hemp House and while we lost Luna we gained 5 others and went to a Chinese bar called A+. Now Chinese bars and not really bars, I would like to call them venues, they are not clubs because they don't have dance floors even and they are not bars because they play loud enough music so that you can't hear anything but that, they are just a bunch of tables placed out in a way so that people can stand there and drink, dance or play dice games or whatever around them, it's quite fun really at least once you get drunk enough to communicate with people you can't talk to. Bella left to meet Luna at Paname instead, she just hated the place.
We were not drunk enough so we left for Shamrock, only 2 minutes walk from there. At Shamrock I met the American guy that speaks Swedish that I've heard about before, that was quite fun and what was even more fun was that a guy overheard us speaking Swedish and we ended up chatting with two Swedish backpackers for about 30 minutes, than two others actually, I might meet up with the first pair later this week, we'll see, I just got their facebook.
After that we decided to try A+ again, Shamrock isn't that fun and I wanted something more active. We still weren't drunk enough and I spent like the first hour there trying to get there, we found some drinks that weren't too fun, they always do this whiskey-ice tea thing but in this place they have already mixed the whiskey before they sell it, it's really weak. After that and some too expensive beers we tried out the center of the club, the closest thing you can come to a dance floor, I guess it is it's just that there are more tables than space to stand in, we made some new temporary friends there anyway.
A lot of people were leaving and those who stayed just got drunker, Aaron and Kelly, the last two of my entourage for the night, gave up and went home too but I wouldn't give in so easily, I made friends with the closest table that had drinks and started getting drunk. The table was actually a podium or stage or something and some people went up there to show off there dance "skills" once in a while, I just watched and moved around to another group. Not all groups were Chinese actually, I think 2 of the 4 groups I joined that night were Chinese and the others were western, this one was one of the western. I played dice with some guys and flirted with another guys girlfriend, which ended up with them arguing and everybody leaving and me going to another group.
By this time it was late, there was only that one group left in the place and most of them were too tired to stand, we all gave up quite soon and I tried to talk to some of them outside, that was only mildly successful but fun none the less. I took a taxi home and since I'm white the taxi drove a big circle around and because I can't speak Chinese I couldn't tell him I knew he was cheating me so I just paid up and left angrily.
It was a fun night out.
After dinner we met up with Aaron and some of his friends at Hemp House and while we lost Luna we gained 5 others and went to a Chinese bar called A+. Now Chinese bars and not really bars, I would like to call them venues, they are not clubs because they don't have dance floors even and they are not bars because they play loud enough music so that you can't hear anything but that, they are just a bunch of tables placed out in a way so that people can stand there and drink, dance or play dice games or whatever around them, it's quite fun really at least once you get drunk enough to communicate with people you can't talk to. Bella left to meet Luna at Paname instead, she just hated the place.
We were not drunk enough so we left for Shamrock, only 2 minutes walk from there. At Shamrock I met the American guy that speaks Swedish that I've heard about before, that was quite fun and what was even more fun was that a guy overheard us speaking Swedish and we ended up chatting with two Swedish backpackers for about 30 minutes, than two others actually, I might meet up with the first pair later this week, we'll see, I just got their facebook.
After that we decided to try A+ again, Shamrock isn't that fun and I wanted something more active. We still weren't drunk enough and I spent like the first hour there trying to get there, we found some drinks that weren't too fun, they always do this whiskey-ice tea thing but in this place they have already mixed the whiskey before they sell it, it's really weak. After that and some too expensive beers we tried out the center of the club, the closest thing you can come to a dance floor, I guess it is it's just that there are more tables than space to stand in, we made some new temporary friends there anyway.
A lot of people were leaving and those who stayed just got drunker, Aaron and Kelly, the last two of my entourage for the night, gave up and went home too but I wouldn't give in so easily, I made friends with the closest table that had drinks and started getting drunk. The table was actually a podium or stage or something and some people went up there to show off there dance "skills" once in a while, I just watched and moved around to another group. Not all groups were Chinese actually, I think 2 of the 4 groups I joined that night were Chinese and the others were western, this one was one of the western. I played dice with some guys and flirted with another guys girlfriend, which ended up with them arguing and everybody leaving and me going to another group.
By this time it was late, there was only that one group left in the place and most of them were too tired to stand, we all gave up quite soon and I tried to talk to some of them outside, that was only mildly successful but fun none the less. I took a taxi home and since I'm white the taxi drove a big circle around and because I can't speak Chinese I couldn't tell him I knew he was cheating me so I just paid up and left angrily.
It was a fun night out.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Halloween
A rather long day starting with me and my friend Luna going out shopping for costumes and we ended up finding a tiger costume each, or perhaps it was cat, I guess it looked kinda gay with a tail and all but it was fun anyway and I'm not really bothered by that. Luna and I had a pre-party after that, we bought some Absolut Raspberry at Carrefour and went back to my place to dress up, that is put on the ears and tail, and have a drink or too. Bella called a few times and was annoyied at us delaying so we finally gathered up and left, I brought a small bottle of drink the totally Swedish-going-to-nation-but-not-drunk-enough-yet-style.
We met Bella at a place called Bom Box, which kinda sucked, they had an offer of a free drink to anyone with costume but not many people cared or even came, so it was kinda empty and maybe only two or three others wore costume. So we went on and found Shamrock, a place that Luna hates for some reason and it was quite dull there, it's close to Carol's so we went there instead. Carol's was fun, a lot of people and not too few wore costume, we pretty much stayed there the whole night and I didn't get to sleep until around 5.30am.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Tibetan food and about two hours of biking in the rain
Somewhat of an exaggeration; the biking did take about two hours and it did rain, but far from all the time. It just started as a drizzle when we came to the restaurant, that was actually not the restaurant that we, that means Aaron, intended us to go to but we waited there for him to find the place he was looking for and when he found it closed we ate there anyway.
Tibetan food is quite nice; we had yak-butter tea (weird), potatoes that were pretty much the same as Swedish potato buns with meat in them (really good), some bread with jak-meat in it that reminded me of pita-bread back home and for once I got real bread in China which is rare (also good), a jak-yogurt with rice dish that tasted just like sourmilk (filmjölk), a pork and green pepper dish that only had pork fat so I wasn't too happy about it (not so good) and finally a jak meat curry dish that tasted ok but I think the meat was a bit over-cooked, it should probably be like that but I never really liked it that way. The potatoes was definitely the winners anyway, we Will try to make potato buns some day, should be too hard; just mashed potatoes that you fry in butter or something, put some meat in it or whatever and voila!
When we were going home it had really started raining more seriously, and it had gotten cooler, luckily I had brought both scarf and gloves and my rain poncho thing, so both me and Jane were pretty covered up (I was giving Jane a ride because the bike she was supposed to borrow from Aaron had a flat tyre).
Tibetan food is quite nice; we had yak-butter tea (weird), potatoes that were pretty much the same as Swedish potato buns with meat in them (really good), some bread with jak-meat in it that reminded me of pita-bread back home and for once I got real bread in China which is rare (also good), a jak-yogurt with rice dish that tasted just like sourmilk (filmjölk), a pork and green pepper dish that only had pork fat so I wasn't too happy about it (not so good) and finally a jak meat curry dish that tasted ok but I think the meat was a bit over-cooked, it should probably be like that but I never really liked it that way. The potatoes was definitely the winners anyway, we Will try to make potato buns some day, should be too hard; just mashed potatoes that you fry in butter or something, put some meat in it or whatever and voila!
When we were going home it had really started raining more seriously, and it had gotten cooler, luckily I had brought both scarf and gloves and my rain poncho thing, so both me and Jane were pretty covered up (I was giving Jane a ride because the bike she was supposed to borrow from Aaron had a flat tyre).
Friday, October 26, 2007
Fakking 93kg
So it has happened; I bought a scale at IKEA yesterday and when I came home and could weight myself without too much clothes I found it, I have now lost more than 10kg since I left Sweden, that is rather cool.
To prevent loosing too much, or actually it was more to impress my friends, I made meatballs and mashed potatoes, complete with lingon-berry jam, cream sauce and all, last night and with Jane's inexperienced help they turned out perfect. Aaron and Kelly came and ate them with us and then we watch the latest South Park, lots of balls humor, hehe.
I would post a meatball picture if I had remembered to take any but I didn't.
To prevent loosing too much, or actually it was more to impress my friends, I made meatballs and mashed potatoes, complete with lingon-berry jam, cream sauce and all, last night and with Jane's inexperienced help they turned out perfect. Aaron and Kelly came and ate them with us and then we watch the latest South Park, lots of balls humor, hehe.
I would post a meatball picture if I had remembered to take any but I didn't.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
A horrible day...
I had the worst day ever today,or at least the worst since I came to China; from the very start of the day I had problems, problems waking up, I wanted to sleep longer so I skipped breakfast, which I actually do way too often now, I did eat some buns with honey on on the way to Wen Jian where we worked today. The primary school we worked at today is one of the worst I have, the classes have really bad discipline, and today was worse than ever before, at least for those classes, I'm alternating between two sets of classes every week, and add to this I was really really tired and Betty, my assistant, was following Gosha, my co-worker, instead of me since her assistant (and our boss), Ivy, was late and missed the ride. The classes I had was close enough to impossible to control and I nearly started screaming at several points, damn horrible.
When I got home after lunch I basically just crashed, after starting the Heroes download of course, and took a 20 minutes nap. When I got up I had to hurry but for once I was sure I would be on time for the afternoon classes, it is usually very hard to be on time on Tuesdays because we get back from Wen Jian really late, at around 1pm, and with lunch and getting back home I don't have much time before we start in the afternoon at 2.45pm, but the second my door closed I realised my keys where still inside. Now this shouldn't really be a problem but it is because the door locks itself, for some damn stupid reason, but all the doors in China are like this, unfortunately my bike-keys are on the same ring as my house key and after spending about 5 minutes to contact Betty or Ivy to contact the landlord and 5 more minutes to find a taxi and of course taking the taxi there which takes about twice as much time as biking I got there late.
Tuesdays are always bad, the primary school in the morning is horrible and the kindergarten in the afternoon is possibly worse, maybe because I'm always exhausted after the morning classes, the kinds are difficult to start with and with time, like 1 minute, they lose the little concentration they have when we start, and after that it starts getting bad, sigh. I did survive though and Betty went with me to meet the landlord, who doesn't speak English of course, and to help me with some other things, a weird bill where it seems I use more water and electricity in 10 days than I used for a whole month before, among other things.
Add to this a phone that had to be recharged and a landlord that was 45 minutes late and me just getting more and more tired by the minute, ARGH!!!!
Oh, I'm in much better mood now, just sitting here for an hour writing about all the fun that have happened in the weekend helped a lot, I'm not coming home yet, haha.
When I got home after lunch I basically just crashed, after starting the Heroes download of course, and took a 20 minutes nap. When I got up I had to hurry but for once I was sure I would be on time for the afternoon classes, it is usually very hard to be on time on Tuesdays because we get back from Wen Jian really late, at around 1pm, and with lunch and getting back home I don't have much time before we start in the afternoon at 2.45pm, but the second my door closed I realised my keys where still inside. Now this shouldn't really be a problem but it is because the door locks itself, for some damn stupid reason, but all the doors in China are like this, unfortunately my bike-keys are on the same ring as my house key and after spending about 5 minutes to contact Betty or Ivy to contact the landlord and 5 more minutes to find a taxi and of course taking the taxi there which takes about twice as much time as biking I got there late.
Tuesdays are always bad, the primary school in the morning is horrible and the kindergarten in the afternoon is possibly worse, maybe because I'm always exhausted after the morning classes, the kinds are difficult to start with and with time, like 1 minute, they lose the little concentration they have when we start, and after that it starts getting bad, sigh. I did survive though and Betty went with me to meet the landlord, who doesn't speak English of course, and to help me with some other things, a weird bill where it seems I use more water and electricity in 10 days than I used for a whole month before, among other things.
Add to this a phone that had to be recharged and a landlord that was 45 minutes late and me just getting more and more tired by the minute, ARGH!!!!
Oh, I'm in much better mood now, just sitting here for an hour writing about all the fun that have happened in the weekend helped a lot, I'm not coming home yet, haha.
Kaj
Bad planning and misinformation led me to arrive at the airport about 15 minutes later than planned, and since Kaj had la
nded about 10 minutes ahead of time and gotten is luggage faster than you can imagine (my imagination cant handle fast and airport in the same sentence) I managed to let him wait for me about 30 minutes, it was good to see him anyway, and what was even better was to speak Swedish with someone you could actually see. We took a taxi back home and started with unloading all the stuff I had asked him to bring; shirts, warm sweaters, gloves and candy, a lot of candy, mostly liquorice and some chocolate that mom called about to remind me not to let Kaj eat it.
We went to have brunch, due to my bad planning I hadn't even had time to have breakfast and dad's flight was so early so he hadn't had any either, at my favourite close-by place, it's actually a hotel but they have a nice Chinese restaurant at the first floor, the restaurant actually covers two floors but it's not nice on the second. Of course dad wanted to have a lot of seafood but with some mistake from my side and quite a bit of reluctance to even order seafood we didn't get any, it was actually an honest mistake, the food was still really great, we managed to get some really nice stuff, and the service was better than it had ever been there before; I think they saw two Americans in us and with dad's age they probably expected a lot of money, not that it makes any difference since tipping doesn't exist here.
I had made some preliminary plans, just thoughts really, for the weekend, and when I laid them out for dad we changed them immediately, he figured if we took a taxi around instead we could shorten the times of my plans so we could actually manage to do something that afternoon, and so we did; I called Jane to help us around and from that point she was what everybody thought she was, our private translator, even though it was not really as professional as everybody thought. We went off to the Panda research base that is in the suburbs in the northeast of Chengdu, just about 20-30 minutes by taxi from my place. Now when I say suburbs I don't mean the American kind of suburb, I have been thinking about this a little and that association is just wrong, suburb just means something that lies around the city, not really part of the city c
ore but 
almost, and I think in most cities in the word that means some kind of semi-city, or almost-city, half city- or town- like buildings and half countryside. The Panda base was quite nice, I saw more pandas than I had expected, and especially more kinds of pandas than I knew there was, that is to say we saw two kinds of pandas; of course the traditional giant panda and also something that is called red panda. Now here is another misconception, the giant panda is not giant at all, it's actually not even big, it's like a larger size dog actually, or a tiny bear, so I was rather disappointed about that, and they are stupid and lazy, the only thing they do is eat and sleep, and one of the teenage ones was just scratching his balls all the time. The red pandas were much cuter, they look like bigger size red raccoons, or maybe something between a fox and a puma, with bear like ears and a long, thick tail.
When we came back we had a short rest back in my apartment and then we met Aaron close to my building and the four of us had dinner. This time got his share of seafood at least; we started with having some barbecue, shaokao (or however it should be written), and dad made his selection of weird fishes and an oyster, I just chose some normal pork, beef and vegetables, after that we had some Chinese dishes and dad got some seafood dish there too, I don't remember what it was and I don't care much either, I still don't like seafood.
After dinner we went to Paname and met Lily and Kelly, Bella was also there but she left quite soon, we had some drinks and shared a bottle of wine and then went home not too late, it had been a long exhausting day after all, especially for Kaj.
We had been considering some plan to go to a Leshan, a place that is quite close to Emeimountain where I went last weekend and that has a big Buddha statue, it's said to be VERY big, we changed our mind about that though, that trip would take about 9-10 hours in total and we simply didn't have any energy for it. Instead we stayed home resting just about the whole day, we actually didn't go out until after 5pm when dad had starting to complain about lunch, he probably thought it was around 2pm still. We went out to an area close to my home where there is a monastery and some old style Chinese buildings and a lot of small restaurants, old style and not old; they were actually celebrating the one year anniversary for that area this weekend. I think dad was very happy there, we walked around and tried all sorts of small cheap snacks that we could find, mostly barbecued stuff but also some deep fried dumplings and some fried minced meat in bamboo leafs. When we finally were done with that we went to another area in the south part of the city where they have some nice hot pot restaurants, I had to take dad to hot pot here, and there he got even more seafood, squids and seafood dumplings and I think some shrimp and other stuff, I gave up and just didn't eat it.
We finished our day at a big store where I could recover the so rare bread that I had given dad for breakfast, I got some cheese too and I guess it might be rather interesting for dad to compare prices of whatever and see what kind of weird stuff we have here, the store has lots of imported stuff, that's why we could find bread and cheese there, but of course also local stuff; I think what he found most exciting was, sigh, the seafood; they always sell it fresh here, that is it is still alive when you pick it out, so loads of aquariums with different kinds of weird looking fish and shellfish, dad got the pictures of those but I crashed when we came back home so we never uploaded them to my computer.
Remind me to cut and paste the movies I took with some nice music so I can upload it here.
nded about 10 minutes ahead of time and gotten is luggage faster than you can imagine (my imagination cant handle fast and airport in the same sentence) I managed to let him wait for me about 30 minutes, it was good to see him anyway, and what was even better was to speak Swedish with someone you could actually see. We took a taxi back home and started with unloading all the stuff I had asked him to bring; shirts, warm sweaters, gloves and candy, a lot of candy, mostly liquorice and some chocolate that mom called about to remind me not to let Kaj eat it.We went to have brunch, due to my bad planning I hadn't even had time to have breakfast and dad's flight was so early so he hadn't had any either, at my favourite close-by place, it's actually a hotel but they have a nice Chinese restaurant at the first floor, the restaurant actually covers two floors but it's not nice on the second. Of course dad wanted to have a lot of seafood but with some mistake from my side and quite a bit of reluctance to even order seafood we didn't get any, it was actually an honest mistake, the food was still really great, we managed to get some really nice stuff, and the service was better than it had ever been there before; I think they saw two Americans in us and with dad's age they probably expected a lot of money, not that it makes any difference since tipping doesn't exist here.
I had made some preliminary plans, just thoughts really, for the weekend, and when I laid them out for dad we changed them immediately, he figured if we took a taxi around instead we could shorten the times of my plans so we could actually manage to do something that afternoon, and so we did; I called Jane to help us around and from that point she was what everybody thought she was, our private translator, even though it was not really as professional as everybody thought. We went off to the Panda research base that is in the suburbs in the northeast of Chengdu, just about 20-30 minutes by taxi from my place. Now when I say suburbs I don't mean the American kind of suburb, I have been thinking about this a little and that association is just wrong, suburb just means something that lies around the city, not really part of the city c
ore but 
almost, and I think in most cities in the word that means some kind of semi-city, or almost-city, half city- or town- like buildings and half countryside. The Panda base was quite nice, I saw more pandas than I had expected, and especially more kinds of pandas than I knew there was, that is to say we saw two kinds of pandas; of course the traditional giant panda and also something that is called red panda. Now here is another misconception, the giant panda is not giant at all, it's actually not even big, it's like a larger size dog actually, or a tiny bear, so I was rather disappointed about that, and they are stupid and lazy, the only thing they do is eat and sleep, and one of the teenage ones was just scratching his balls all the time. The red pandas were much cuter, they look like bigger size red raccoons, or maybe something between a fox and a puma, with bear like ears and a long, thick tail.
When we came back we had a short rest back in my apartment and then we met Aaron close to my building and the four of us had dinner. This time got his share of seafood at least; we started with having some barbecue, shaokao (or however it should be written), and dad made his selection of weird fishes and an oyster, I just chose some normal pork, beef and vegetables, after that we had some Chinese dishes and dad got some seafood dish there too, I don't remember what it was and I don't care much either, I still don't like seafood.After dinner we went to Paname and met Lily and Kelly, Bella was also there but she left quite soon, we had some drinks and shared a bottle of wine and then went home not too late, it had been a long exhausting day after all, especially for Kaj.
We had been considering some plan to go to a Leshan, a place that is quite close to Emeimountain where I went last weekend and that has a big Buddha statue, it's said to be VERY big, we changed our mind about that though, that trip would take about 9-10 hours in total and we simply didn't have any energy for it. Instead we stayed home resting just about the whole day, we actually didn't go out until after 5pm when dad had starting to complain about lunch, he probably thought it was around 2pm still. We went out to an area close to my home where there is a monastery and some old style Chinese buildings and a lot of small restaurants, old style and not old; they were actually celebrating the one year anniversary for that area this weekend. I think dad was very happy there, we walked around and tried all sorts of small cheap snacks that we could find, mostly barbecued stuff but also some deep fried dumplings and some fried minced meat in bamboo leafs. When we finally were done with that we went to another area in the south part of the city where they have some nice hot pot restaurants, I had to take dad to hot pot here, and there he got even more seafood, squids and seafood dumplings and I think some shrimp and other stuff, I gave up and just didn't eat it.
We finished our day at a big store where I could recover the so rare bread that I had given dad for breakfast, I got some cheese too and I guess it might be rather interesting for dad to compare prices of whatever and see what kind of weird stuff we have here, the store has lots of imported stuff, that's why we could find bread and cheese there, but of course also local stuff; I think what he found most exciting was, sigh, the seafood; they always sell it fresh here, that is it is still alive when you pick it out, so loads of aquariums with different kinds of weird looking fish and shellfish, dad got the pictures of those but I crashed when we came back home so we never uploaded them to my computer.
Remind me to cut and paste the movies I took with some nice music so I can upload it here.
Snor
I've had some new kindergarten classes that I didn't have before, one is a kindergarten not far from where I live where I had two classes on Wednesday morning last week. There was a bogger incident, a small girl, apparently Korean so she didn't even understand Betty's, my assistant, instructions, she was running around a little bit too much and when she run up to me one time she ended up with her nose covering my thumb for a second, luckily she didn't get hurt and it only lasted for the blink of an eye, suddenly I just stood there with my thumb covered in bogger, NASTY.
I didn't have much on Thursday either, only two classes in the afternoon, so I went out to Paname on Wednesday night with Lily and Aaron, quite relaxing, but since both of them had work in the morning and I was rather exhausted we didn't stay out very late.
On Friday we went out to a city North of Chengdu, the same place where I had the Swedish boy in my class, but I didn't have that class this time. During lunch, of course the four hours long lunch, we went to a park in the city, it was rather nice so I took some pics with my mobile, it's not the best camera but it works quite well in daylight at least.
I didn't have much on Thursday either, only two classes in the afternoon, so I went out to Paname on Wednesday night with Lily and Aaron, quite relaxing, but since both of them had work in the morning and I was rather exhausted we didn't stay out very late.
On Friday we went out to a city North of Chengdu, the same place where I had the Swedish boy in my class, but I didn't have that class this time. During lunch, of course the four hours long lunch, we went to a park in the city, it was rather nice so I took some pics with my mobile, it's not the best camera but it works quite well in daylight at least.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Mt. Emei
Very early Saturday morning, around 6am (and that after biking home from The Bookworm at 11.30pm and not sleeping until around 1am the night before) I woke up and tried to force myself up. I actually managed to get myself out to where I would meet my friend at around 6.50, only 10 minutes late and Lily (not the same Lily that got me the job here) was even 5 minutes later. We took a taxi together to the Chengdu South train-station and arrived there about an hour before the train would leave - taking trains in China is much like flying I think, it's not exactly necessary to arrive like an hour before departure but close enough, and they have some kind of security check even though it feels totally unnecessary, they basically just put your bag through an x-ray and i doubt that anyone even looks at it, and no one checks your body anyway, it makes no sense but people do it anyway.
The train took 3 hours and was probably the least comfortable train ride I have ever taken, it only cost us 9kuai though, Imagine going to Göteborg (or rather Halmstad at that speed) for 8kr, and we arrived in Emei (the city/town/whatever) at around 10.30. A girl that got on the train two stations before Emei told Lily how to go around to get to the mountain so we could avoid the probably over-expensive tourist tricycles that attacked me the second we came out from the train-station. We took a bus instead, 1 kuai, to the center of the town and had our lunch there and bought some food in a super market, the girl told us that the food on the mountain was both bad and expensive. Another bus, this time from centre to mountain bus-terminal for 2.5 kuai each.The mountain bus was not that cheap though, and took a lot longer than we had though, we took a bus to what we though was the highest point we could, it is rather confusing there actually, a stop called Leshan I think and that cost us 40 kuai each. It was already after 12pm when we started off and the bus ride up the mountain took around 2 hours. It was a rather interesting ride though, with the vegetation changing the higher we got, not the way you would think though, mostly in color; from a green that came in an unnatural shade which you would only think you could find on an oil-painting but still with the exquisite detail of a pencil and turning to greens and browns that is m
ore like the crayons we played with when we were kids and finally showing some yellow and red at the higher points of the mountain, unfortunately the speed of the bus, really uncomfortable speed under those conditions, and the overall humidity and impossibility of taking photos through the dirty windows of the bus prevented me quite efficiently from taking photos of all the wonderful mountain views we passed by, and the few times we stopped for, I think, refilling the water in the bus there was no view at all. The only thing that was as expected was that there were more pines higher to the top, but where Swedish mountains change from trees to only undergrowth to nothing at under 2000m above the sea you could still find tall tress stretching for the sky even at the summit, 3077m above sea level, of this mountain.120kuai more to spend to even enter the higher areas of the mountain, a typical thing here actually, if there is something people likes to see, even if it is something totally natural like a mountain or a forest, they will charge you for it, and usually a lot, exploiting things seems to be second or even first nature to the people here. We still had to pay though, we couldn't well turn around and walk down at this point, which was probably why no one had told us about this fee before (I think Lily knew about it but she hadn't mentioned it either). By the time we reached Leshan it was already afte
r 3pm and beyond time to start climbing - climbing a mountain in China is not like what we think of as climbing, as every park in China comes paved and with "do not walk on the grass"-signs mountains comes with stairs, and so does mount Emei (of course) - and climbing we did, in the Chinese way of course. It took us nearly 3 hours to get to the top and through all that time the most interesting thing we saw was a monkey stealing Lily's coke bottle when she turned her back to it for me to take a picture of them, I suspect it was rather used to stealing bottles like that because it already knew how to get the drink out of it, it pretty much only bit a whole at the bottom of the bottle and drank through that, we only saw 3 monkeys on the whole way though so it was rather disappointing.
Our trip was probably really bad timed, I think that this time of year it is usually the same; the top of the mountain was covered in a cloud and no matter how marvelous view you could imagine at some points you still couldn't see much further than ten meters, so we basically just walked (climbed) further up. In total the climb was about 7km long and with about 500 meters elevation, but it felt much much more, I would have thought we were walking at a 45% degree all the time but that is impossible. I was still soaked with sweat when we finally reached the top, passing by two smaller temples on the way up and ignoring the cable-car ride they had, we still kept climbing the last bit to the main temple at the summit where you are supposed to have all these marvelous view that you can read about, I guess some of the pictures I took there turned out quite ok anyway, but as I said I was soaked to the bone and it was freezing cold so after a short time we tried our way down to where the hotel (rather hostel) was.
We managed to negotiate a two bed room for 60kuai but no private toilet, the room was pretty much just a walled in area with two beds and no heating, I'm guessing the insulation for our room was still comparably good since we didn't have any outer wall. We had dinner at the hotel, which cost us another 60kuai, which seemed to upset Lily, but it was actually quite good, really good even, it was freezing cold though. Later Lily made friends with two girls, Sue and Linger (probably the funniest name so for, except may miss About) who had been climbing the mountain the whole day, they could speak some English too. We planned to watch the sunrise together in the morning, apparently one of the things you have to do there even though we all had our doubts that we could see anything in the cloud.
We slept quite early, around 9pm already, but neither of us could sleep well, I went up to the toilet like three or four times, probably because of all the hot soup I had had for dinner, and Lily said she couldn't sleep because of my snoring, very likely since my nose was totally plugged, and that was one of the other reasons that I couldn't sleep. We managed to get up at around 6.30 and managed to miss the sunrise, it was even more cloudy in the morning than it had been the night before so I doubt we would have seen anything remotely like a sunrise anyway and that despite the freezing cold - cold is not like cold in Sweden, I'm guessing with the lower pressure and stuff it could have been as low as -5 degrees without forming much ice but it was humid, extremely humid, so you cold feel the cold in a way that is d
ifficult to describe, and well it is the top of a mountain so you can imagine that it's rather windy, it was COLD, I took it better than the girls though. We still did run around taking photos for a few hours though and then the 4 of us took the cable-care - also a funny thing, where normal people try to have the car running as often as possible with a normal amount of people (like the cars in Hong Kong where they have 8-10 people in each car and cars running constantly) the Chinese build ONE large car and press in ONE HUNDRED people in it, running only for 5 minutes down it was still ok, but I really don't get the packing.
We said goodbye to Sue and Linger and tried to find a bus to a middle of the mountain stop where Lily wanted to do some more "climbing" and see more monkeys, I was just hoping to catch a better view without a cloud in and around it but we found that we had to walk down the 15-30 minutes climb to Leshan again. This was the path where we had seen the monkey before and this time we saw a lot more of them, maybe 10-20 of them in total, and we fed them some crackers that only the smaller stupid ones accepted (they really tasted bad) and got some nice photos with us and them and everything. After the monkeys we caught up with Sue and Linger again and we walked down to the bus stop together and said our goodbyes again. We bought a bus ticket to mid mountain place but when Lily realised that we would have to buy another t
icket for the same price to get down from the mountain we gave up and used that ticket to go down instead, it seems they only have one ticket down and one up no matter where you are on the mountain, and this ticket cost us 30kuai each and that was about what Lily had left after paying 30kuai for the cable-car, besides we turned out to not have much time left. The cheap train we took only departed twice per day, once in the morning and once at night, 9.30pm I think, and we came to the train-station at around 3pm, we took a much more comfortable and expensive, 36kuai each, bus instead and ended our journey in central Chengdu at around 6pm.
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