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.