Drinking up vaccation

It is fun but rather stupid, I have been partying for 6 nights straight and my sleeping rhythm until this morning was basically 6am to 2 or 3pm, or even later, it is as I said fun though, a new social experience of staying in a hostel and getting along with just about any type of person, even managing to get a few out to clubs once in a while, and I have managed to keep the spending down after the water incident last Thursday and the Whiskey incident the night after. This has actually not been my fault, both on Saturday and Sunday I really wanted to just rest and go to bed early but one of the weird Manchester guys forced me to join them drinking (not that it's hard to force me to drink).

Today I'm in TianJin though and here is no partying, I forgot my camera when we went out so there are no pictures but I think I can get some tomorrow. Next week I will try to get to the Great Wall again, do the trekking this time to really make up for what I missed out the last and also the Summer Palace would be fun to visit in winter.

I went to the Silk Street market yesterday afternoon too and found my helicopter and finally bought it, I was hoping to get her down to 350 or even 300 and my hope grew when she started at 500, I said 200 and she said she knew that I knew how much it cost so she started reasonable and I gave up and gave her 400 for it, which was my budget for it anyway. I bought a pair of class A fake Diesel jeans too for 210kuai which I think is ok and I tried to find some nice silk underwear like some I bought last summer but I couldn't find anything like that at all.

90 kuai water

Yesterday I spent basically the whole day in bed and even after I got up I stayed in the hostel until evening, had dinner time breakfast here and a small dinner later. During dinner I started talking to and drinking with an American girl and a bit later we joined another group of people just drinking and talking. One of them is actually the owner of this hostel and with some help of one of the guys to translate (boss didn't speak any English at all) he managed to get us to complain about as much as possible, which wasn't easy because the hostel is actually really good, especially to this price.

We stayed in the Hostel Cafe drinking beer and shots until around 1.30am and then we were beyond the point of no return and just had to go out, so Zack, our American translator guy (who is also an IELTS examinator actually), who has been around here for some time took us to a small bar or bar area that should have been bustling with party people, in summer, where we got ourselves some more drinks. They did try to cheat us there, first we all got a rum and coke made of crap rum, for only 10 kuai though, so I ordered another one made with Bacardi black that cost 20 kuai, after that they tried to convince us that I only paid for the first one and they actually managed to confuse Zack so entirely that he believed them and apologized for us, it turned out that they had been trying to cheat us though.

That place was pretty boring so we walked over to one of the bigger clubs nearby and that was pretty fun, a lost more action like some guy being thrown out when we came and other stuff just going on all the time. People are not as friendly and open here as in Chengdu though, but it works out anyway because the clubs are set up more like western clubs so there is not the same kind of isolation. I lost both Mimi and Zack several times and just went around having fun, at the end of the night I was dancing with a girl that could speak a little (or probably a lot, she claimed to be fluent or at least very high level) Japanese, it was around 6am already and both of us were really thirsty so I went to the bar and said 水 and the bartender brought us three tiny bottles of water. I finished mine in about two seconds and as I was opening my second one the bartender squeezed out: "That will be 120 kuai", to which I exclaimed loudly "You gotta be kidding me!!!". Apparently he was and he probably got a bit scared of me, I wasn't really sure though so I stuck around and the girl I was with had found her boyfriend (she said it wasn't but it was something at least), finally he gathered his courage though and gave me a note saying 90 instead of 120. I guess I could actually have left before then but I didn't want to be an asshole so I paid up. That is really the most expensive water I've ever had, it was three bottles of Evian though, even though they were really tiny (20-25cl).

I finally had totally lost Zack and Mimi so I took taxi back to the hostel, to which Zack had luckily convinced me to take a calling card that I could show to the driver to get home safely.

Done!

I'm sitting here writing instead of packing now, I should have written this long time ago but it has been procrastinated over and over again until finally I only have a few hours until I have to leave.

I have finished all my classes at Star Point now since last Friday, and even though it wasn't very many hours I was still completely exhausted and I still haven't really recovered I think. And I never really had that accomplishment feeling that you usually get when you are about to finish something, I was just tired and sick of it, the last day was with the two worst kindergartens I have and as many as seven classes in one day and once I got home and wanted to celebrate my new found freedom I just didn't have any energy for it. I went out with Aaron and Jane on Saturday evening instead, first some cooking at home and then Aaron and I went around to a few bars (that I told you about already).

Thursday was kind of interesting though, the seemingly rich kindergarten had had some snow brought from a mountain or something and hand placed it in the playground so the kids could play with it, when the kids we were teaching saw it they went all crazy though (not my class luckily) so that was kind of a bother.

The last few days I've tried to finish up things around her, I've tried to fix my visa but there are so many stupid issues about that here that it's just crazy; the only visa I can actually get in China is a renewal of my current business visa, to get this I need to get a new invitation from a company (any company as long as it's in Chengdu, or whatever city I'm applying in, it doesn't really matter where I will be staying only where I apply) and then 5 working days to process it, and you will still only get 3 months more. I was actually considering to change my flight to be able to do all this but that meant losing some money and missing Mei before she gets married (which I will anyway because she is leaving Beijing 2 days earlier than she had told me). So it is not possible to change to a tourist visa without actually leaving China, all changes are actually impossible, I had considered for a while to sign up for some university course to get a student visa but since that doesn't work either I had to skip that idea. So the only other way to do it is to go outside China and apply for a new visa, preferably to Hong Kong where I'm luckily going already, but (of course there is a but), the Hong Kong visa is also a 4 day business and even though they have express services, there is no express service in China, it is really expensive, a 6 months multiple entry visa on express is HK$1400, but I will be there for only 4 days, probably, and that is during the national holidays, apparently they do have holiday service too though with an additional fee, and I will only get a 3 months dual entry visa so I'm hoping to get away with less than HK$800 instead.

Now here is the most stupid part of it all: all of these visa option are actually a bit less than legal to work on, and this is stupid because it is nearly impossible to get a working visa unless you are native speaker and have some university degree. I can understand the reasons for this, they are trying to get the quality of teacher higher but the problem for this is that there are not enough native speakers with a university degree available and wanting to go to China and teach to meet the demand of foreign teacher they have here, so they are preventing about 75-90% of everybody willing to help meeting this demand but still really needing them, us (since I'm one of those teachers now).

I've also been trying to finish my TEFL course and I made a pretty nice schedule that I kept to for about a week, then I had a module that wasn't corrected before a weekend and I couldn't even open the next module so I started looking at the endorsement modules and they are really really big so I figured I must change the schedule and start them earlier but it was really boring so I just put it off. When I finally could continue with the normal modules I was already 3 days behind schedule and then there was some connection problem so the site didn't register one of my mini quizzes and I couldn't finish the module and didn't understand why, it took a few days more to find out what was the problem with that and from there I just haven't done anything.

Cold

I've been to a few different cold places

Sweden is not warm in winter but it's very different depending on where you are; in the South where I've lived all my life it's cold went and windy (around 0 and as low as -10 centigrade not exactly humid but rainy or melted snowy, in the middle like Uppsala where some of my friends study it is more proper cold with snow and dry weather (I guess -5 to -10 centigrade and in the north it is very cold and very dry (I'm guess around -10 to -20 and as low as -30 centigrade or even lower at times). I've stayed out camping in a lean-to in -4 degrees in a thin sleeping bag in South Sweden, slept in the Ice Hotel in the most northern part of North Sweden and played around outdoors all day long and all year around when I was in army service.

In Hong Kong in January it is not exactly cold compared to Sweden but it's still cold, it has a cold feeling (around 10 centigrade at the lowest) and here in Chengdu it is as cold as in South Sweden, which I find rather strange since it is at a Latitude with Cairo (in Egypt) and Northern parts of Mexico, but I guess it's the inland climate and the basin that does it.

What I do get about all these places is that how ever warm or cold it actually is it is always a problem when it gets colder than it usually is it will feel really really cold, it has nothing to do with what people are used to, I was cold in the Hong Kong winter and it was actually not so bad in Kiruna. The thing is how it is treated, Hong Kong is warm 11 months out of 12 and Kiruna is freakishly cold for half a year, so in Hong Kong they don't have facilities to handle even the soft cold of 10 centigrade whereas in Kiruna they treat -30 as something regular.

Here in Chengdu this goes to an extreme though, it is basically cold for 6 months and it is close to zero for about 2 months and it is wet, humid, rainy and feeling very very cold. Still they don't have any kind of insulation and the windows might as well be non exiting for all the warmth they keep in, this is actually bad in summer too when it's extremely hot instead. My electricity bill last month was 600 yuan, this is for 30sqm apartment without kitchen (even though I do cook at home sometimes) and an electricity cost of 0,51 yuan per kWh, that is twice the electricity usage Kei and I had in our 87sqm apartment with three TV sets and two big computers basically on constantly and a big kitchen that we used every day...

More venues

We ended up going out to this bar street where we have been once before, but this time we tried out all of them; First was The Zoo Bar, a really cool place that almost reminded me of places back home, with "normal" club music, a dance floor (even though tiny, only about 10-20% of the whole place) but unfortunately not so many people. The next place, NO.88, was pretty much the opposite, a smaller place by itself but oh my god it was crowded, there was no room for us at all so we went outside to have our beers there, it was pretty cool with such a crowded place though, it would just have been more fun if you had been part of the crowd. The last place we went to was Fair club, the place I'd been to before but only for a short time, it was more like the normal Chinese venue but there were not many people at all, we stayed there for a while but finally gave up, just not our day. We went back to NO.88 but still stayed outside and since it was getting late, 2 am (is not late according to me but still), so we decided to head homeward. We went to Carol's which is not far from Aaron's place and actually spend more than an hour there playing pool, and left when there was no one else there. Interesting but rather boring night, I'm a bit disappointed actually; this was supposed to be my celebration of freedom.

Fakking <90kg

Yes, it has happened, I'm finally below the 90kg line! I discovered this last night at around 4-5am when I came back home from clubbing, I was pretty unsober and when I was about to take a shower I saw my scale and figured "why not?" So I stood up on it and lo, 89kg. I smiled happily to myself.

This I rather surprising actually because I have eaten quite a lot this last week, and rather irregularly too. Sunday last week I cooked and ate a lot of "flygande jakob" with A Jiao, on Tuesday I met with Li Min and we cooked potato buns (fried mashed potatoes), Wednesday I was with A Jiao again and this time she cooked loads of Chinese food, Thursday was the only day I was eating out; I went for Muslim food with Aaron and ended up having a few beers at Paname (and my bike stolen), Friday again with A Jiao, this time I cooked something Chinese style á la Johan and finally last night Aaron, Li Min and I made pizza that was absolutely awesome, then went out and met Kelly at Jah Bah.

It was a really funny night last night actually; I bought some wine (a nice Chilean Merlot) that we had with the pizza and a big bottle of Bailyes that we had after and some of the Xanté (pear cognac) too. After we met Kelly we mostly had beer, we played a game, a simplified version of King (the card game where you do different things for different cards) and that had us keeping our buzzes going for more than two hours. Finally when we left everybody just wanted to go out for barbecue but I somehow managed to convince them to go to a club instead, I think because it's really close to Aaron's and Kelly's homes. The first thing I managed to do there was to take a wrong step down a stair that I didn't notice and sprain my ankle, it is quite ok now but I have to be careful when I walk.

Again!!!!!!

It's basically my own fault this time, we did park our bikes at an unguarded bike stop and I just thought that two locks, locking the bikes together and locking the bike to the pole would be enough. I couldn't be more wrong. Aaron didn't have the keys for his bike lock so that's why we locked them together.

When we came back I noticed from a distance already that the bike stop looked strangely sparse, and I instinctively realised that my bike wasn't there anymore, when we came closer I saw Aaron's bike standing there alone, and the funny thing was that it was still locked to the pole, why my lock. My bike was as gone as it could be, they had actually broken up both my locks, then used the broken separate lock to lock Aaron's bike back to the pole.

The lost keys.

It was hard to wake up today, as usual, i snoozed and snoozed until i only had a few minutes to get up and brush and get dressed. I hadn't prepared my stuff though so it took longer than i had hoped and when i left i was already a few minutes late. When i came down the car wasn't there yet though so i went to buy some breakfast at the corner. When i was paying ivy called me, i was thinking that she would be angry that i was late and that the car was actually there but i just hadn't seen it, as i prepared to defend myself i realised that she must be calling to tell me the driver is late. Well even more, he couldn't find the car keys, so basically he couldn't drive. So we had to cancel the classes this morning. So I went up and back to sleep.

Flygande Jacob!

Just finished eating the best flygande Jacob I've ever made, at least in China. I decided to experiment a little because my friend complained that we didn't have enough vegetables, so I added a mix of red onion (yellow is not very easy to find here), some different peppers (red chili, green chili and some green paprika I think), tomato, ginger and garlic. I used a part of this to marinate with the chicken and then fried it all together (I think part of the success might be thanks to the extra time I've had, I had time to defrost the chicken and marinate it in oil, soy sauce, spices like curry (three different kinds of Swedish Thai-curries), black pepper, white pepper, paprika, salt, garlic and tabasco. And after that add some of the peppers and vegetables of course, I looked truly awesome when I started frying it.

The sauce was a problem actually, because I only have whipped milk which is too think and fat, so what I did was adding some skim milk (not that I know what skim is but it worked like magic), and once again basically all the spices I have and some chili sauce.

I also added curry to the rice, which actually gives it more smell and color than taste but it's cool anyway.

Finally after about 20 minutes at 175 degrees and about 10-15 more at 100 degrees (because I was making pancakes for our dessert) the marvel was done, we ate as much as we could and some more to that and there was still some over for me to have for lunch tomorrow! The pancakes wasn't that great but they were eatable, and there is always room for pancakes no matter how full you might be!

Whole sale market.

I haven't written much about New Years and I won't write much either, it wasn't very interesting so I don't have much to say, basically I just spent new years at a bar called Shamrocks where my American friend Kelly was involved in some kind of performance that was quite fun but not really my style, I did enjoy it though.

I also spent the night before with my friend A Jiao to celebrate her birthday, I don't really understand if she turned 24 or 25 but we had fun anyway, met her dad and some of her friend and we played UNO with weird rules. I also had a piece of fish for dinner, a very small piece.

So the main story here is about the whole sale market that Jane and I went to yesterday. After our breakfast at a kind of cheap and nice small Chinese restaurant I handed in my photos for hard copy, and during the two our wait we had we basically just chose a direction and went off. The chosen direction was north and we soon came close to a huge market where I heard you could find some things I want to buy for someone (a secret until later because I didn't find it) so we went there.

It is a huge market, covering several blocks and they sell everything there, we found ourselves walking through the clothes area first and that was not what I was looking for, but going through just that took so much time that when we finally found another place there was not much point in find the one place I was actually looking for, and I didn't exactly look for anything, I was just there to explore.

What I did find though was that they sold toys and stuff there, eg. helicopters, but unfortunately not a single store sold the Esky brand so I couldn't find the one I wanted. I guess I'll have to buy that when I come to Beijing instead.

Then we biked back and got the photos and I wanted to get boxes to send the stuff, but I found out that they don't allow to send fluids and glass things so I don't know what to do with the pear-cognac for WenYing now.

After that we went home and we cooked The last of my IKEA meatballs and potato wedges, it was quite fine but the potatoes got a bit burnt, hehe.