My apartment in Chengdu

They said it would be a quite small place but I want to disagree, the whole apartment is about as big as our living room back in Sparta, maybe a little bit bigger but with some attached furniture; a large cupboard enclosing a small alcove for a bed area and a small desk for work space. I got a lot of furniture included in the rent, luckily because I have nearly spent all my savings on the stuff I didn't get, I got a bed mattress, a TV, a small sofa and a TV table and a washing machine and a refrigerator. It's located on the 20th floor, with a great view, of a totally new building, not even finished yet and I think less than 1/20 of the apartments are read so there are not many people around and this apartment has never been used before, which meant that I had to clean up a lot of construction dust. The construction is a lot less than perfect, but it's nice enough and I guess I'll just have to live with some minor faults that wouldn't really be acceptable in Sweden.

They also said it would be close to central and close to the school, but I didn't really know what to expect, some people's idea of close is sometimes very relative; but it is really close, I think I can walk to the central square of Chengdu in less than 10 minutes, my view is actually over then main central street of Chengdu and I have a large shopping street just 2 minutes walk away from home. Going to the office is a bit further though, maybe 30 minuets walk but my Ivy, my contact and employer, suggest that I should buy a bike, the office is not really the issue actually, I will work in several different kindergartens and to get to most of them I will probably need a bike.

I have bought a lot of minor attires, first what I needed to sleep and clean and today I was at IKEA and bought quite a lot of kitchen stuff, not yet my portable cooking platform though but that will come soon enough. I'm planning to buy a cupboard to put on top of the fridge too so I can keep my plates and bowls and other kitchen stuff somewhere, and then I'll use the glass shelves next to the sofa for liquor and wine. I'm sometimes feeling that I'm overdoing it, but if I'm to stay here for 5 months or even a year I will want it nice and comfortable.

Chengdu

I had to leave Beijing quite early in the morning because I had to, or more wanted to, leave when Mei went to work in the morning. To my great luck I got put on an earlier flight and hardly had to wait at all in the airport and arrived in Chengdu nearly an hour ahead of schedule. I was worried that this would mean that Ivy, my contact here, wouldn’t be there on time but she was and even found me without any hustle, she complained a bit that I had taken long to get my luggage but that’s not really my fault, it just takes long to get the luggage, my bag was actually one of the first to arrive on the band actually, she commented that I looked fatter than on the pictures she had seen though, small surprise, I think the picture I sent with the application was from last year’s travel.

We went straight to what is now my apartment and met with the net-owner (is that really what a landlord should be called?) and it took about half the day to go through the contract and everything that had to do with it, all in all I’m quite satisfied with the place, despite the lack of a kitchen but I plan to buy some portable stuff for that, I will make a post dedicated to the apartment too. Ivy had gotten too tired to take care of me and switched with a girl that apparently is my assistant in class for the next 2-3 months; I think her name is Betty. Betty took me to a super market much like Ica Maxi in Sweden for me to buy the most necessary things that I would need right away, which was a lot, probably more than she had thought, and I took the opportunity to buy some cleaning stuff too, the apartment is brand new but it wasn’t that clean, construction dust just about everywhere.

When Betty left I met up with Lily instead, my online friend that got me in contact with Ivy and the job in the first place. Lily as been a bit sick lately so she wasn’t too energetic but we went out for a dinner at a Sichuan hotpot place; a really interesting way were you have a pot that is divided in two halves, one with spicy soup and one with not so spicy, and dipping the food in oil with some garlic and stuffs mixed into it before eating. It was really quite good, despite the fact that I found a fish in the not spicy soup, I had actually tasted it when I drank the soup by itself but hadn’t bothered to care, and once I found the fish it was too late already.

Today I’ve been alone all day, I had planned to go to IKEA with Lily but she was feeling worse and I think she went to the hospital for a check-up, we will go there tomorrow instead. So I spent most of the day reading and I cleaned the apartment and went once again to the supermarket to buy some more stuff in the afternoon, plus had a lonely dinner at KFC where some kids seemed quite amazed to see me.

My biggest problem here these days has been cash: of course I haven’t gotten a single salary yet; that is something I get after working, not before, of course. But still I needed to pay 3 months of rent plus a deposit of one month’s rent; that’s 4210 Yuan for that, to that I had to buy quite a lot of stuff, spent around 700 yesterday and around 100 more today and to get internet, which will take 5 days from now anyway, I had better pay for 6 months, it would cost about one and a half month more if I paid per month, and that cost another 628 Yuan, and I still have my phone bill in Sweden that is was too much, next month will be nearly just as bad I fear and now I have to get a Chengdu phone-card too, that one is just around 100 Yuan though. It’s just luck that I just got my salary from Sony-Ericsson and didn’t pay mom back all the money that I’ve borrowed right away.

Added 2007-08-30
Now an added output of over 900Yuan was spent at IKEA and the company I work for wanted a deposit of 1000Yuan but we agreed that it would be enough if we just deducted that from the first salary. I’m planning to buy a portable stove for about 200Yuan and a rice cooker for about 100Yuan, in my plan for a kitchen there is also a oven/microwave-oven but those costs at least 600Yuan, so we will have to see about that.

Birthday dinner with Mei

After I left Annie and Eva I headed off to meet Mei for our annual birthday dinner at Pizza hut (I pretty much doubt that we will keep this tradition next year, but who knows). Arriving at Gongzhufen there was some confusion, I had sent a message to Mei that I was on the way there and she has taken it as that I was already there and asked me to get a table-queue-ticket and when I called her to say I was there and wondered where to go she was trying to figure out why I hadn’t gotten the ticket yet. Somehow I managed to find my way to pizza hut but she arrived before me and probably thought that I was really stupid to take 30-45 minutes to walk from the subway station to pizza hut.

She had already gotten a ticket and ordered a cake too so there was nothing to do but to wait, and wait we did. I think we waited for about one and a half hour before we got our table, and when there was about 10 minutes left Mei was about to give up totally. Dinner at Pizza hut is as always way too much, and for some reason we always do this when my stomach is at its least; last year it was the day after I had recovered from my illness and was hardy fit for anything and this year it was the hangover that got the best of me, and on top of it all we started with the cake, a cake that was 3 parts cream, 2 parts cake material (one those egg, flour and sugar bottoms) and one part fruits in 3 layers. I did try my best at least, even went to the toilet and stayed there for so long that Mei got worried that something had happened and call me, and during that time some poor kid needed to throw up but since there was only one toilet he had to do it in the pissing-booth, very poor kid.

Two pretty girls from Harbin

I met up with Gunglu's friend Annie this Sunday morning/afternoon. She is a small, pretty and talkative girl that was really easy to hang out and talk to, and she brought a friend too, another girl from Harbin that wasn't at all as talkative but just as pretty, and best of all, she call herself Eva, which makes me feel really comfortable. We met at Tiananmen east subway station, which was really perfect for me because I needed to buy something for Mei for our birthday party in the evening and I know of a small little soft-toy store close to there, the place where I bought just about all the stuff I brought home last year.

It was way after breakfast and after my long night of partying the night before I was nearly starving but not in the mood to eat anything, at least not anything that I didn't know exactly what it was. We went over to the other shopping street in central Beijing (e.g. not Xidan where I had met Nini the evening before), Wangfujing and found a McDonalds there. I think we spent more than an hour there, just relaxing and talking and avoiding the short rains and trying to decide what to really do, talk could almost have been enough really.

Finally we decided to go do some touristing at least, they are both nearly as strange to Beijing as me, if not even more when it comes to sightseeing and after discarding a few parks that were just too small and not nearly touristy enough we decided on going to Jingshan park, the park/mountain that is just north of and overlooking the forbidden city, and after a while we even managed to decide, rather I decided how to go there, they both wanted to take a bus or taxi but it was not really that far so we walked instead.

Walking was really nice, and gave us a lot more time to talk about everything and nothing, as always, and when we finally reached the park we started climbing the steepest hill immediately, it wasn't really that steep but my calves doesn't like climbing at all, and despite the coolness of rainy weather I got really sweaty really fast, but at least it wasn't very high. The view was a bit of a disappointment actually, the view was half covered by some tall trees and the closest building was covered in a big green construction shelter, much like the first and biggest one was last year when Joyce and I was in the forbidden city itself. The view to the other directions were better though, especially the one to the northwest where you could see BeiHai (The Northern sea) clearly, the north view was quite nice too, a long street ending at Zhong Lou (The Bell Tower), east was nothing at all, wasn't even worth a picture.

Mei's apartment in Beijing

Mei's place is actually quite interesting, it's a quite small building in west Beijing, I think just outside the third circle (they measure distances in Beijing, and I think in most of China in big circle roads on regular distances from the city center) and quite close to Beijing west railway station. The building is an old 5 story building, and the whole neighbourhood is really old and dirty, I think it's quite poor too; on the first night when I just got there I saw some old man sleeping in the entrance of a half wrecked building and many of the buildings where people lives there are little more than shelters. It still has a cozy feeling to it in some way. The most annoying part was the closeness to the railway track, and not only one but the whole train stalls for the train station about 20 or so track of which the closest one is less than 20m away.

Clubbing in Beijing

Finding Houhai was not as easy as I had hoped, I figured that I got off at the closest metro station and thought that I could walk from there, after about 20 minutes of walking through a street sided with ruins and reconstruction work I gave up, my friend (actually friends friend), Candy, got to talk to the taxi driver with my phone and after some argument, when Chinese people talk it always sounds like argument, he understood where to go and drove me there, and it was quite far. Once there I contacted Candy again but neither of us was really certain that I was at the right place, we did manage to find each other, or she found me, and we went off to find a bar. I didn’t really understand why it needed so much finding, there were tons of bars all around us, but Candy insisted that we should find a special one. I guess it was not so much finding the place as just walking there, it was a bit to walk to get there but I might have been worth it, we didn’t test any other place so I can’t be sure.

The place was small and had like nearly all the other places a singer, and he was actually pretty good. Candy seemed to fall half in sleep or in trance everything he was singing some sad love song, I figured that she must have some kind of love problem, which she later admitted too, so I didn’t disturb her. We had a few beers, she one and me two, at that place and they went on to another place that was more like a tiny club than a bar, or something in between, I think they call it dancing bar or something like that. It was not too crowded but since it had started raining everybody had gone inside and there were some cute girls around dancing, they had a hired dancer too and she was actually quite hot. And Candy is the kind of girl with too much energy that would dance alone without music, so I really didn’t have much choice unless I wanted to sit alone somewhere in the noise, it was too much noise to start random conversation and I was not in much mood for that anyway.

After that we took a taxi to somewhere a little bit more central where we met up with her friends for KTV, karaoke. To say friends might be an exaggeration, but I guess they are in a way, they are online friends forming a group in a messenger like network called QQ that is very common here in China, they only meet once in a while to go out clubbing, Candy said she only really knows one of them and this is only the third time they met. They were all pretty cool though, and it is a really good idea that people of the same mind go out together, all of them were out for drinking and partying, not a single one of them were reluctant to drink more than a sip like most other Chinese, especially girls, that I’ve met. They taught me a pretty cool dice drinking game that seems to be common here, and I tried to sing once too, that was quite a disaster though. We didn’t have much time at the KTV place, we arrived just when they were leaving, had we arrived earlier we would have had to pay our part for the room too, which might actually have been worth it, it was pretty fun.

A very long drive to somewhere where a girl that had broken her shoe and a very long drive from there to the club, the club was pretty cool too and it seems there was no entrance fee. I think it doesn’t work that way here actually, it seems there was no dance floor either actually, I think that there are just a lot of big tables, and every group will buy a table and drinks for the night that that, then everybody is just hanging around their own table. I’m not really certain of this, it looked like there was a dance floor when we arrived, but at around 5am when most people had left is seemed to have tables everywhere where people had been dancing too. And that’s what we had too, a big table for our group, a small wagon with Chiva’s Regal and Icetea, that seems to be the only thing they drink, it’s quite good though so I don’t mind. Clubbing music in China is what you expect from one of the smaller dance floors in any larger club in Sweden, or in a techno club, but the only techno club I’ve ever been to is Amnesia, Sydskånska nationen once in a while, It’s not really the kind of music I would like, it’s just too unchanging, but in general I like places where people are having fun, so this works as good as anything.

We stayed at the club until around 5am, with some fall outs along the way I guess, most of the guys stayed all the time and there were 4 girls left including Candy, she is one energetic girl, when we left. Most of us when for some food, breakfast of drunken food or whatever it can be called, at a noodle place, it’s not what I eat when I’ve been drinking so I didn’t have much, but having some hot soup, we all had noodle soup, was quite refreshing. After that Candy and I got dropped off at the closest metro station, and after about 20 minutes waiting we caught the first train back to where ever, Candy got off after only one stop so after that I was alone, trying my best to stay awake until my station.

I did manage to stay awake but once at the station I couldn’t find a single taxi to take me back to Mei’s place. After some time a guy in a small car stopped and offered me a ride though, I assumed it was a illegal taxi service and I paid him twice what a normal taxi would cost, I’m just too nice sometimes, especially when I’m drunk. Once home the next problem came up, the door was locked and I don’t have any key, Mei didn’t answer her mobile, she had left it in another room when she went to sleep, which is really bad since she had agreed to help me if I had any problems with taxi or anything on the way home, and no one seemed to hear me banging on the door. After about 20 minutes Mei’s boyfriend had woken up, partly by the banging and partly by the phone I guess, and opened for me.

Nini & the Sichuan resturant

On Saturday afternoon I met up with Nini, we just walked around in Xidan, one of the bigger shopping areas in Central Beijing, and looked at people. A crazy person on the 3rd floor of one shopping mall scared the shit out of everyone around and despite the think crowd no one dared to go within 3-4 meters of him, and when someone did get close is started screaming and touching his arm as if trying to brush something off. Outside a mall on a walkway that actually didn’t lead to anything but was nice to walk at because it was soft we saw a girl crying on the shoulder of someone, Nini and I, or rather I, made up a story of how they guy and just broken up with the girl and was now trying to comfort her for it, but the guy turned out to be a girl too, really manly looking though probably because of her clothing style, so we changed the story to either a lesbian couple or that she had lost something, possibly her boyfriend, and needed comforting by her friend, they stayed out there for a long time at anyway.


I won the now always occurring bet so Nini had to buy us ice cream at KFC and with the ice cream we walked around some more, found a little park where someone had just bought a helicopter like the one dad has but about 20 times larger, it only costs like 200yuen so I think I will buy one for myself later, they are pretty cool. For dinner we had, of course, Sichuan food, we didn’t go to the same place as last year though but found a place that I think was much nicer, I think it is a pretty newly built building and they had a whole floor for the restaurant. We had some vegetables and a tofu dish were you have a big pot of tofu and some small bowls of other stuff that you mix together in your own small bowl, it was really nice, despite the total lack of meat. After dinner Nini was off to the Beijing west railway station to see someone off and I was going to Houhai to meet a friend for a drink or two, we were going in the same direction though but I was off a few stations before her.

Sense of direction is back

I went out alone again to meet with Paris, Nancy or whatever she wants to be called, we had Hong Kong food, I had sweet and sour pork actually and it was really good, seems that's the only thing I'm eating sometime. It was a short meeting though and I was about to redeem myself after last night's total failure to find my way back home. I was quite worried to get lost again but wanted to try the bus, I didn't even find the bus stop, didn't make any sense at all. But I did find a taxi, and I did know which direction I should point him, so I safely arrived in the area where Mei lives, and found the way through all the dark allies to her building, and I feel redeemed.

A crazy day

Third day in Beijing, or maybe actually second since I really arrived after midnight (or landed at 23.50 so maybe it is third after all). I'm staying in Mei's room, she lives with an older girl and that girls 10 year old daughter and Mei is staying with them in their room. They have air conditioner and I don't, and it's really really hot, even at night, plus as a nice little bonus the is is just next to the train tracks, about 20 tracks or so with one really close that could wake up Skalman had he tried to sleep here and the others a bit more than annoying, I survive though and on the whole it's actually a nice place, a little better windows for sound and temperature insulation would have done the trick.

I was going to take my Hepatitis B shot today with Mei's help, but the nurses refused to do anything unless it was exactly one month after the first shot, which didn't bother me much since I don't like shots and had forgotten to bring my Vaccination chart anyway. And we were going to have lunch together but she had to meet a friend urgently so she helped me to a bus and got the driver and conductor to help me get off at a stop where they had both a metro station and a McDonalds close by. A young boy, highschool student he said, helped me find a straw for my drink and started talking to me, I guess he was just one of those people that are brave enough to start a conversation with a stranger just to practice the language, he was pretty good at it really.

Metroing to central where I'm much more familiar I walked around and found the area where Jocec's and my hotel were (still are actually) totally demolished, the hotel was still there and I walked around in the area for a while, it was on the way to my goal, Tiantan park, anyway. And on the way there, as everyhere else, there was a guy on a tricycle bike thingy that just couldn't let me walk, and after he got me to tell where I was going by pointing on a "menu" that he had he refused to give up. He actually started at 50 yuen, a taxi wouldn't cost more than 10 actually, and after a while lowered until 20 "still twice of the taxi, but probably smoother in the traffic", then after still a while 15, I actually wanted to walk though so haggling was not really a problem and finally he said one. I couldn't say no to that but once we had started riding he labeled me as a dollar man, even though I'm not, and a dollar man should pay dollars, I just gave up and agreed, and being as nice as I am sometimes I figured I might as well give him 10, so I did, and he had the nerve to take 5 more from my hand, that bastard. "Jävla svin" I said under my breath and walked away.

My park experience started off as a quite lonesome one, I just walked around alone and enjoyed the coolness end solitude of the park, it really is a tourist attraction more than a park and it costs 15 yuen to enter and 20 more for the temples, which I didn't buy at first but I bought a nice map with some information instead. And after walking around for some time, spending half the time sitting and just relaxing, I finally found the tourist attraction and decided I should pay the extra 20 to enter that after all. The temple of heaven is a quite nice circle thing on 3 level with a lot of stone circles, appearantly 9 circles which have n*9 stones in each, which I heard from a poorly english speaking guide (or friend of some Americans), to a total of 405 stones, which I hope I calculated correctly myself.

I did get rid of my lonelyness after a while though, inside the temple area I first talked to some American girls that I helped taking a few pictures for and I figured out that I can use that to find a friend, and after a short while I found a Chinese girl that looked as lonely as I was and did just that and she was as happy as me to find some company. We more or less gave up the touristing and just walked around talking and taking pictures for a while instead, at least until she realised I had been at the echo-wall without trying it; the echo-wall is a round wall that is supposed to carry sound very clearly all around the wall, we didn't manage to make it work perfectly but at least we could hear each other clearly over 20 meters or so.

We left the park together and shared a cab to central, said our goodbyes and I left of at a metro station to go to the silk market and meet a friend. I found the friend quite easily, or rather she found me and we went inside for me to buy new sleeping pants, I forgot the ones I brought to Asia in Hong Kong so I've felt kinda lacking in this. I think this is the first time I've actually bought pure silk boxers, and they are really nice.

After that we went to a restaurant close to there, my friend works at the American embassy close to there so she knows the area, and it was actually the restaurant on the opposite side of the one where we met dad last year and where I got sick (not from the restaurant food). The food was only ok and my friend hardly ate anything, she claimed she was on a diet and not hungry anyway. After that we walked around in the area to a nice little park and just walked around talking and taking some photos.

The way home started smoothly, I was even lucky enough to find a seat, the ride was about 30-45 minuets I think and I was really exhausted from all the walking today, and the metro train is always really crowded to that. But after I got off the metro the problems started, I kind of knew where I was but I was totally disoriented, so I tried to trust a taxi driver but he had no idea where the place that Mei's note mentions was, so instead I tried to direct him but managed to get us north instead of south or east or where ever we should have gone. I finally gave up after 5 minuets or so and managed to get him to drop me off in, well the middle of no where as it seemed to me. But there was a hotel in sight, a fancy one besides, and that means that I could find someone that speaks English. I did find a really helpful hotel clerk that after some minutes of asking around and calling managed to figure out where my notes pointed, and he helped me get a taxi and figure out together with the driver where we should go, which was quite far since I had managed to get myself about twice as far in the exact wrong direction.

We did finally find some place I could recognize, after about 10-15 minutes of driving, and I was happy enough to get back safely to tip the driver, I had tipped the clerk too actually. But the problems was not over yet, I knew where I was and approximately how to get to Mei's home from there, but the way I knew was through another small residential area and that way is blocked at night, so I finally had to call Mei, worried to wake her up or make her worry needlessly, I was actually worried that she had worried about me for some time. She hadn't worried at all, she wasn't even home actually, when I called she was out with the friend that she had had lunch with, and she had thought that I would come back much later.

She showed up after a few minutes though and I tried some barbecue goat or something that they were grilling and selling outside some stores, Mei bought some snails for the girl she lives with and we could finally walk home, safe and sound after all the troubles.

Shanghai

Forth night in Shanghai now, I spent most of the weekend with Wenying and Linna, mostly eating and talking about going to a club but never really doing anything. The second day we spent walking around Fudan’s campus, they have some nice Japanese gardens but I didn’t have any camera on me so no pictures. We had once again Italian food, and as usual it is American pan pizza instead of Italian pizza, some pasta dishes that actually seemed Italian and a rice dish that was no-where near Italian, we had some tiramisu too but it wasn’t as good as the one Francesca made in Sweden. We planned to go to a club after but it was “already” 9pm so they thought it was too late (I don’t think that is too late to go out clubbing but I wasn’t in much mood for clubbing, the pasta had made my stomach a bit weird and I wasn’t too energetic) so we just went back to my hotel room and talked for a while; mostly made some plans for the third day.

The third day we spent fulfilling those plans, that is we went bowling after breakfast (read brunch) and after that we went swimming (read bathing), Linna couldn’t find any nice enough bathing suit so she went home instead, Wenying and I had a really good time playing in the great and overly crowded pool though, I managed to teach her swimming under water and even brave the deepest part of the pool (2.2m) and dive down to touch the pool-floor there. After swimming we found Linna at her dorm and went out to have Korean food, which was bulgogi but wasn’t named so, a “Korean” sweet and sour pork which was just too much like the Hong Kong sweet and sour pork to be anything but that (but really very good) and some other quite tasty dishes. Like the second day we had talked about going out to a club but always jumping between decision we finally ended up back at the hotel room instead, we did find a club just 200m from the hotel on the way back though, so we had some plan of going there but in the end I was just so annoyed that I would rather go to bed, which of course ended in a lot of bad feelings before we said goodnight. Partly my fault for acting out when I was too tired which I know I shouldn’t but sometimes can’t help anyway.

Today I met Songsong, a Chinese girl that I know from online that I also met last year when I was here with Joyce, for lunch in central Shanghai. The trip there took about an hour and was really bothering, I had slept really bad last night because of a trouble stomach and a troubled mind (over the annoyance last night) but finally found Songsong at the place we had decided for meeting about 20 minutes too late (I was there on time but you know girls…). On the metro, or subway or underground or whatever they call it here, I saw something really unnerving; it was after an interchange, that meant about 5 minutes of walking, when I got on the train and the doors was just about to close a young mom with her daughter was trying to get on the train and the mother held the girls hand but leading her in front of herself and the train doors closed between them. The little girl, perhaps 5 years old or so, was trapped on the train and the mom outside, she started screaming of course but a man took charge of her, screaming something angrily to the mother, I would guess something about irresponsibility, and tried to sooth the child at the same time as he was scolding her too. I don’t know how it resolved, just that they didn’t get off at the next station and I forgot about them when I myself was getting off at the most crowded station in all of Shanghai.

Songsong and I spent about an hour walking up and down Nanjing road to find a nice restaurant to have lunch at; she had her mind set on some that she couldn’t found and then another that she couldn’t find either. We finally found a nice place though, seemed way too luxurious but we stayed there anyway and had a really good meal. I think Chinese people really can’t order food properly, they tend to order for about twice as many people as there are, we ended up with about half of the food left over and she took some fried dumplings in a doggy bag to give to some poor homeless guy later. After lunch we walked (took train) up and down Nanjing road again and went off to look at the famous Shanghai skyline of the Bund, where there always seems to be popping up new buildings, in the rain. It was raining quite heavily for a while and I was pretty much soaked when I met Wenying again and said goodbye to Songsong.

Wenying and I spend the first hours or so just killing time by walking around in a big shopping mall, raffles mall, and having some hot tea that wasn’t hot at all at a too expensive place. After that we tried to catch a bus to go back where at least one of us knew the restaurants but finally gave up and tried to find someplace where we were. This was all about a bet that I lost before, some of you might know of it as the 5 questions bet. We finally found a place that served Hong Kong food which at the point seemed as good as any, the food was quite ok actually, just a little bit too much flour on the deep fried pork in the sweet and sour pork and the dessert that on the picture looked like some piece of bread that you usually get in dim sum places in Hong Kong was just a flour coated whipped cream pie. All in all it was still good and we were satisfied, we took a taxi home instead of wasting time with the metro and busses, and it ended up being about the same price or even cheaper than it would have been taking the metro, the bus is not really comparable, it’s just a few (3) Yuen for a trip like that. Back at the hotel we tried to watch a movie that I have thought she would be interested in, but she had stayed up all night last night for some reason and just fell asleep after about 20-30 minutes, so we finally gave up and she just went back to her dorm, she is working tomorrow after all.

And now I sit here all alone without any internet, trying to cheery myself up by writing about the weekend’s events. I did have a good time here despite everything, and tomorrow night and leaving for other adventures in Beijing.

Shanghai

Up early and off to the airport, and I managed to forget my sleeping boxers in Hong Kong. Saying goodbye to Joyce at the airport I had just about 30 minutes to go trough all security and emigration procedures before I had to board the flight, I still managed to find the bookstore with maps that me and Joyce found but didn't buy last year, so I got one nice map of Beijing and one of Shanghai, which doesn't cover the area I'm in now anyway.

And of course my luck is as it has been during the trip, after sitting down in the airplane they called the message "Ching chong ching chong.... the flight is delayed for 2 hours due to construction on the runway", there was actually lots of those "ching chong" messages, many of which were never translated. In the end the delay was only about 40-50 minutes, but when we departed I was already feeling kinda woody, with 2½ more hours to come.

I did survive the flight though, and at the airport Wenying was waiting, she was as cute and sweet as ever and it was nice to see her again. We took a bus somewhere close to my hotel and then a taxi the rest of the way, the hotel is quite nice, a king size bed same as the one me and Joyce had last year in Shanghai and Internet in the room. After some time Linna came and Joined us and we all went out for dinner together. I actually tried some toad, white meat that almost taste like chicken, but that is just one part of it, the rest is way too bony and strange looking for me to even try, and some other strange food; spicy eggs and tiny potatoes that were really good.

After dinner we watched the Banquet, Wenying nearly fell asleep all the time but Linna and I watched properly, quite nice movie; made from Shakespeare's Hamlet with some Chinese twist.

Last night in Hong Kong

I had planned to do some more exploring in Tin Shui Wai or Tuen Mun, another close by residential town, but after brunch Joyce's second sister, Chu Chau, wanted to go with me and she suggested we should go to an off shore island instead of a boring place like Tuen Mun. So we started off towards Hong Kong island and after about 10 minutes I realised that I should probably have brought the recites for the flight ticket. It turned out that I only needed the reference number in the end so that was no big deal.

From Hong Kong we took a small bout out to Lamma island, not much to say about the place actually, seems a lot of foreigners live there, especially French. We just walked around for about 15-20 minutes then we had to hurry back to the ferry so we wouldn't be late for dinner; I had dinner plans with Joyce and Man and some others. Seems quite pointless, but at least I got to see a banana tree with some small green bananas, got a few mosquito bites and a really wet t-shirt, both from sweat and rain.



Off to Mong Kok I found the most crowded crowd I've ever seen, we arrived at the Central station in Hong Kong just after business hours and I think everybody in Hong Kong wanted to catch the same train, at least it felt like that. And I think everybody got off in Mong Kok, the only reason it wasn't more crowded than central is probably that it is a bigger space, I was actually feeling quite ill from the pressure of so many people.

We found the travel agency quite quickly and got the ticket, and after that we started searching for a new t-shirt for me, even though it wasn't that wet anymore it was not too nice to wear either. We found Joyce and Man soon after that but Man ran off to pay some phone bill, I tried to call Andreas to join us but he is quite difficult to get catch most of the time. After some time Man's and Joyce's ex classmate Angel, apparently she wants to go to Sweden some day, showed up too (Man was still gone).

Once Man was back I actually got hold of Andreas, and I decided we would have dinner at a Thai restaurant in one of the biggest shopping malls in Mong Kok, me and Joyce and dinner there with Elaine last year and I have really been craving it since I came here, I just love Thai-curry dishes, and Andreas knows the mall so he would be able to find us there too.

We went through quite a lot of trouble and floors to find the place though; the restaurant is at the 8th floor of 12 or 13, there is a long escalator from 2nd to 8th and one from 8th to 12th, for some reason we walked all the floors to 8th, then without seeing the restaurant we took the one to 12th, then found a map where it said where it was, talked to Andreas who was at the 8th floor at the time and he found it right away, then we walked down from 12th to 18th without using escalators. Then of course we had to wait for an hour or so to get a table, but at least I used the time to buy a big soft toy for Linna, who had helped me book room and get flight tickets in China, and one small for Wenying, without any particular reason.

Dinner was as great as it should be, nothing much more to say about that actually, lots of curry and other quite spicy food, I was happy.

On the way back the bus got stuck in a traffic jam, I think there had been some kind of accident on up ahead but didn't see much when we drove past it, still we didn't get back home until some time after midnight, and I still had some repacking to do, and needed to contact Wenying about meeting in Shanghai. Late sleep and had to get up early.

Searching in Yuen Long

On Tuesday I stayed in just about the whole day, but in the afternoon Joyce had finally booked flight tickets and I had about 30 minutes to pick the up somewhere in Yuen Long. Now this sounds a lot easier than it was, even if it sounds quite hard. I got some instructions of where to find the travel agency, but when I arrived I didn't see any of the signs I should have seen, after lulling about for over 30 minutes, spending a lot of really expensive phone time with a really annoyed Joyce I finally managed to find the place, about 45 minutes too late of course.

I still got the flight ticket but the adventure wasn't over yet; as soon as I had gotten on the light rail to go back Joyce called and said I had to change to pick-up place, it could be either there in Yuen Long or in Mong Kok, in Kowloon, and we had plans to go to Mong Kok the night after for dinner, and that's when the ticket was supposed to arrive. It wasn't too troublesome to go back now that I knew where it was though, and it finally turned out that we didn't have to change it, because the ticket arrived that same night, but it didn't matter much.

When I was done with all the ticketing I tried to go off exploring a bit in Tin Shui Wai, but since it was already so late I decided to head home quite soon after, the shopping mall I found wasn't too exciting anyway, it was one of the places we had been searching for a KFC at the other night. I wasn't even nearly so late as I had expected though, I got back around 7pm but no one had even started thinking of dinner then, and Joyce didn't show up until around 9ish either, and that's when we had dinner.

And of course as my name says I had to make pancakes on night, and this was the night. It was quite troublesome in the beginning, the pan was a bit higher in the middle so the pancakes got too thin there which made them all but impossible to turn over, and the stove is a gas stove which is all good and well, quite fun actually, but I'm not used to working with it, it is really different. After 2-3 pancakes I got the hang of it so finally we had at least one fine pancake each, and a few destroyed ones to that.

Night walk in IKEA in Hong Kong

I had dinner with Elaine last night, it was nice to see her even though she was a little depressed. We had Thai food for dinner of course, like last year, but even though it was good it wasn't even close to the one we had last year, and they actually didn't have some of the food that we ordered, so we had to order something else, not particularly good for a place in one of the most exclusive districts of Hong Kong.

After dinner we just walked around for some time, first in the rather nice shopping mall where the restaurant was, about 9 floors of escalators and a quite swindling view from the 9th floor. When we were done with the mall we kept walking around outside randomly and after a while I saw it, a big sign to a basement floor in a big building, looking kinda dark and closed which Elaine commented on, but we saw some people going out from there so it must still be open.

And of course IKEA is open at 10pm in Hong Kong, what else should we have expected. Walking around in IKEA had a kind of semi familiarity to it, things where the same as not, and at least the product names were still in Swedish, that made me happy. The beds were the strangest thing, instead of the normal 90,120,140 and 160 x200 they had sizes like 135x189, just too weird. And even though the store was about one fifth of the size of the one in Malmö it still managed to fit in all their products, which means it was kinda cramped together.

Green light streak

Today was a really nice day, it is Joyce's only whole day off while I'm here and we managed to make it worthwhile, despite sleeping half the day away. We started the day with a 2pm breakfast at the now so familiar dim sum restaurant in the Ginza mall close to where Joyce lives with nearly all her family (mom, dad, brother, sister three and the little cousin included). Dim sum is always nice, a lot of a lot and tea for ever, and I actually tried to eat a piece of deep fried octopus arm.

After the dinner we went to buy movie tickets to a film called Flash Point, the movie was quite good and had some really cool fighting scenes, that we went to see a bit later. After buying the tickets we walked around a bit and I found two pair of pants (same same but different color) and until the movie we just had some relax time.

After the movie we wanted to find a KFC to eat at, but the one in Ginza haven't opened yet so we started off on a KFC search excursion, we took a light rail to the other side of Tin Shui Wai to a mall where Joyce thought there would be a KFC, but there wasn't any so we asked some mall staff of where we could find one and she directed us to another mall a bit off. Walking around a bit we found the other mall and in there to our luck we finally found the KFC, yeay!

After eating we realised that we only had one octopus card (a magnetic paying card for all puplic transport and some more in Hong Kong) and no coins for a ticket we decided to walk back home (which isn't very far since Tin Shui Wai is actually not much larger in size than Bjärred, just 35 times or so higher), and it would be quite nice with a walk after eating.

We didn't really find a straight line back home, but the walk was nice none the less, and what we did find was a perfect green light streak, and now I really mean perfect, we crossed around 10-15 light guarded streets and we didn't have to stop at a single one of them, some actually turned green as we took the last step towards them and others turned red as we walked them, even at the end of our walk when we were to enter the building the entrance door in the building slowed down behind the person that had opened it so that we could walk trough without stopping, and finally the automatically opening elevator door, on an elevator that doesn't have any automatic doors, without any people in it was the final proof, we were green light blessed tonight!

A night out in Hong Kong

After hardly doing anything for a whole day, except trying to work on the TEFL course and being disturbed by Joyce’s little 5 year old cousin Kiukiu I met up with Joyce herself in TST (Tsim Sha Tsui or something, Kowloon side of Hong Kong) far a later meet up with Janice and some other friends. I was quite proud to get there all by myself; it has been quite a while since I was here so I was quite uncertain about a lot of things during the way. We walked around a little in the New Center and SOHO shopping mall a while and even went out in the rain (rain is still just a drizzle) to see the rain view of Victoria harbor, which is quite like the not rain view but with rain.

After some time we found ourselves waiting for Janice and the others at a Korean restaurant and after some time of waiting they finally arrived, and they were only two Janice and Happy (quite funny name), Man had canceled on us earlier with some strange emergency, my friend Andreas got called in to work with some translation thing he is doing as freelance and well, someone else(Ariel) had apparently overslept or something, she showed up a bit later when we had nearly finished the food already.

After dinner we went to a dessert place and had some really nice desserts, a watermelon ice-cream thing, a mango fruit-salad, a melted chocolate thingy with ice-cream and a waffle with mango, all very tasty. On the opposite side of the dessert place there was a trinket shop where I looked around a bit while we were waiting for the dessert, quite a lot of funny small things, but I think there was nothing there that can’t be found in Sweden too.

After the desserts with took a walk around in TST, I was totally lost already so for me it didn’t really matter where we walked, but after some time we finally ended up in a bar area and entered one of the bars. It was a quite cozy place, dimly lit with dark wooden tables and really nice waiters; you couldn’t even finish a drink before they came and ask if you wanted another one. But there was one huge drawback, now I don’t know how the rest of Hong Kong is but this was really expensive, a beer cost around 60-70 HKD, which is nearly the same in SEK, and the bottle of wine that the girl bought cost 300HKD, that is a lot. My beer glass was really huge though, I still don’t believe that it was only 50cl even though it said so on the glass.

Streets of umbrellas

The flight delay was actually because of typhoon warnings around Hong Kong; it is apparently typhoon season here now and lots of typhoons coming and going all the time, and with typhoons there comes wind and rain. Raining is not really that bad here, at least not from what I’ve seen, when it does rain it rains quite a lot, but not heavily and usually only for a short time, so on a rainy day it comes maybe less than 5mm (I got that from a weather report actually) in one day, compared to Sweden this summer where we had around 60mm in a day and in some places over 100mm, which is kinda sick.

And with rains comes the umbrellas, I think the outdoor crowd is halved when it’s bad weather, or even less, but it still seems more crowded, because every single person grows around to around 5 times their size when they unfold their umbrellas, so it is still just as crowded if not even worse, and with the shorter people the umbrellas are just high enough to hit me in the face.
No need to worry about the typhoon warning, even though it was a level 8 (which is like the second level after level 3), which gives most people leave of absence from work to go home and be safe, there was actually hardly even any rain, maybe the calm before the storm, that never came. This leave of absence gave us a bit more time to hang out together though, so after me and the second of Joyce’s sisters and the third of Joyce’s sister’s boyfriend had been playing snooker we met up with Joyce and her third sister at the cinema and watched the Bourne Ultimatum, a pretty cool movie.

A point of interest... perhaps not...

The skin around one of my vaccination shots has turned a bit yellowish, it could be the Hepatitis B shot actually, quite interesting I think, I guess it's just after the bandaid actually but still.

My mobile life...

Or at least semi mobile, in total it’s around 130kg, and I’m only 100 of them, the suitcase is not very mobile at all and I’m a bit worried about how I will manage in Shanghai and Beijing, where public transports are not the smoothes way, I guess I will have to use taxi service when I can.
The flight off was probably the best one I ever saw, we lifted off to the north east from Kastrup (Copenhagen airport) and flew so that I clearly saw Bjärred, could even make out the bridge, slowly drifting away to finally disappear behind a big white cloud. I thought it was rather illustrative.

So far it has been quite smooth, the check-in and security check went as fast as it could and with only some minor disturbance, something on my cotton and linen clad body somehow set the alarm off, probably the buttons in the pants and my jacket pockets contained too many coins for their liking.

Right now I’m sitting at Helsinki airport waiting for my flight and problems has started to show up. I just heard some callout that there has been some changes to my flight due to the weather in Hong Kong, but I don’t know what the changes are, I will check soon. And I think my laziness with paying my phone bill has struck back, my SIM is currently deactivated so I can’t contact anybody, I hope it will resolve before tomorrow.

It was actually quite cool to fly in over Helsinki, the suburbs seems to be part of the forest when watching it from above, great pine trees that towers even the 4-6 story buildings and houses just poping up seemingly at random.

As a late edition I say that the phone actually didn't have any problems, and the flight was finally 4 hours late, it sucked.

Saying goodbye...

...for now

I had my goodbye party for all my friends, it is always sad to say goodbye, but it is just for a year. And I think I have never gotten as many kisses as I got tonight, all the girls just showered me with kisses when we said the last goodbyes, it is nice to be liked :)

I still feel kinda sad now, I will hardly see any of them for over a year now, but I guess that is what I have to pay for the journey.

A really funny thing that happened when I was paying for everything that was left (which was a bit more than I had spent for some reason) was that the bartender was actually an old high school classmate of mine, and I really haven't seen him for like 8 years or something.

Goodbye relatives

We had our family goodbye/birthday dinner now, I made a terrific flygande Jakob (flying Jakob) and once again the wonderful super stick cake, after all this food and wine and mosquitoes I'm really tired and will sleep soon. 3 days left!

Internet is back!

Finally we managed to fix the Internet, and despite my prediction of the end of the world for being away for it for such a long time it actually was quite OK, I had only a few emails in my in-box.

Some worldly updates then: I have finished my summer job, it was a nearly tear dripping event with my marvelous chocolate cakes at the Friday fika and I actually got a farewell gift from my co-workers, a SWEDEN cap and a book about China, I was so touched; I think it was my mentors idea, even though he wasn't even there. The last few hours of the day I spent with my personal customization, it took way too long time, I have brought the file home now anyway, so dad can use it for his phones. Now the only thing left is to convince dad that I need the T650i more than he does, hehe.

I went to see the Simpsons movie with Rappe on Tuesday, it was fun but I think there is not really any point in seeing it in the cinema, it's a TV thing after all. Not much to say about that.

On Wednesday I had good bye dinner with the Chinese girls and Manuel, Qian joined too so she is now introduced to Hellen, Nana and Guanglu, I hope they will stay in touch, it would be fun if I can back next year and they are all close friends. We made (I made) korvstroganoff, the spiciest one I ever made actually, and we drank Portuguese wine that Manuel had brought and then some wine Nana had. Hellen and Guanglu made an apple-cake that we had for desert. Everything was really nice and I didn't get back home until after midnight, so Thursday was my tired day at work.

I didn't do much on Thursday except the cakes for Friday, one traditional kladdkaka (messy or sticky or gooey cake) and one even kladdigare-kaka, I actually made the kladdigare-kaka again today for my prebirthday and farewell family party tonight. And I watched StarWars, the original cinema screening from 1977, and felt childishly happy, I watched episode V today and will try to find time for episode VI tomorrow, I bought them all plus the new episode III when Rappe and I bought candy for the cinema on Tuesday. I will always feel those are the best movies ever. I made pancakes too, alone for once, but I did the most embarrassing mistake possible, I forgot to put in the eggs, it took 3 failed pancakes before I realized it.

Last night I went out clubbing with Rappe and his friend, Maja and Pellis (Ellenor) joined us too, it's been a while since I saw Pellis so that was really fun, and I had a generally good time. But mixing to much wine and beer gave me the worst hangover ever (or since last weekend), which was no fun at all. They will join my farewell dinner for friends that I will have on Monday, damn I'm starting to feel kinda appreciated.

Soon it's time to start cooking for family dinner, I will make the flying Jakob, I bet my relatives will be really surprised that I did nearly all the cooking.

I learnt how to make Lasagna too, me and Hellen made that last weekend, it was really really good, I hope I can find the ingredients for that in China, cooking always impresses people, hehe.

No internet

Writing from my last day at work now, I'm writing here becuase I don't have any internet connection at home, so I've had no possibilty to check emails or write here for a few day, I hope it will be back on again soon.