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!!

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!

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!

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, where 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 would 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 enough 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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.