I feel it is time to take this debate now, to explain myself, argue my point and elaborate how I think: I don't believe in global warming! Or rather that global warming is due to human activity.
a. I don't believe that human activity affects the weather on a global scale. I find it narcissistic to believe that we can, no matter how much we try, affect something that big. I find the arguments of proof of this to be lacking; mainly the statistics of temperature change. The thing is that we only have widespread reliable measurements since the late 19th century, i.e. less than 150 years. And the temperature of the earth is something that varies on a geological and astronomical scale, i.e. in periods of thousands or even millions of years. People today often speak of how weird the weather is and that each year has some extreme; last year for example it was the coldest winter in like ever and this year it was the warmest winter in like the same ever. For me this is definitely true, I have in my lifetime never experienced a colder winter than last year and neither have I experienced a more temperate winter than this year.
But I’m only 30 years old and I remember when I was young how people talked about the wicked winter of 1979 when snow piled up so high you could ride your sledding from the rooftops of Bjärred (in Southern Sweden). Not to speak of the winter of 1658 (often spoken of as the little ice-age) when it was so cold that the Swedish armies of Karl X could walk over the straits between Scania and Denmark and took the Danish king Frederik III by surprise.
b. And then there is the supposed relation between human activity and geological activity. I’m talking about how some people draw parallels between pollution, global warming and earth quakes. How people as soon as there is news of a natural disaster comments that there are more natural disasters these days. The hint is actually in the name, they are natural! I found it ridiculous and again extremely narcissistic that someone could believe that we humans could actually affect how the continental platforms move. And I shouldn’t even have to argue that even on as short a period of time as a hundred years the average frequency of earth quakes of various powers is followed pretty accurately. And again these are geological effects which should be viewed in periods of hundreds of thousands of years rather than decades. The only thing that is more frequent is the information we get about these disasters.
c. Notice that I’ve completely left out the fact that the ice around the poles of the earth are melting. That is because I don’t see any proof of the relation between the melting of the global icecaps and human activity. Earth is getting warmer though; there is no doubt of that. The changes to the sea-ice in both the Arctic and Antarctic region affects mainly the local fauna which is not really noticed by us unless you watch nature shows. But the indirect effect of melting sea-ice is that it accelerates the warming; ice is white and reflects sunlight while water is dark and absorbs it, basically creating a vicious circle where the more ice that melts the warmer it will get and the more ice will melt.
Directly worse for us is the melting of the land-ice in these regions. Most prominent is the land-ice of Greenland which all in all would raise the sea level of the world seas by over 7m (which would probably put my family home underwater!). And this is nothing compared to the ice sheet on the Antarctic continent which is ten times as much as the Greenland ice sheet. The Greenland ice sheet is melting/flowing into the sea at a fairly fast rate, but this process will still take hundreds of years, by which time the trend might have changed (in either direction).
Another secondary effect of the melting ice is changes to the ocean currents. The only reason the area I live in, and actually most of Europe, is at all habitable is because of the Atlantic Gulfstream. Sweden is actually so far north that it far north the American border, way into Canada by comparison, or similarly in Russian Siberia, areas that are nearly completely inhabitable. Not to speak of the Swedish capital Stockholm which is already on level with the Northwest Territories in Canada, Alaska and, well still Siberia. And Europe is still habitable even far North of Stockholm and people live far into to Arctic Circle. Southern Europe is also affected; take Madrid for example, which is on the same Latitude as both Beijing and New York, both cities with cold winters (I’ve been in Beijing when the temperature was below -20 centigrade), while Madrid very rarely have temperatures below 0 (average temperature in Madrid in December and January is just below 10 centigrade).
So back to that secondary effect, how the warming up of the polar caps and the melting ice (both sea-ice and land-ice) could potentially change the ocean currents over time. This is also very much a geological phenomenon and will most likely be a gradual change over hundreds or even thousands of years, but even small changes to these currents can cause great changes to the local climate in some parts of the world, like for example here in Sweden.
d. Having said this I still believe pollution is bad and that we should be more environmentally concerned than we are. Pollution is bad and the way I see it there are more direct effects than global warming. For example there are local health problems; I’ve noticed while living in severely polluted areas that people seem sicker, they age faster and feel worse. There could of course be other factors to this, like overwork and stress, which seems to be coinciding with pollution more often than not.
I have a personal experience however; I seem to have contracted an allergy to some kind of pollution. I noticed a couple of years ago that I had a constant cough and runny nose that I at the time blamed on a cold. After seeing a doctor who stated that I did not have a cold, that it was probably an allergy and gave me antihistamines. The drugs worked and I got better. Now that is not much of an argument that it was caused by pollution, that argument is that while I needed to take the drugs daily while living in a polluted there is no effect at all where I’m living now. This could of course also be attributed to other factors.
My main argument is then that pollution feels bad. After living in an extremely polluted area for nearly a year, where the local geography and climate made it even worse, I could feel the harsh treatment of my throat and lungs and there were few things I craved more than fresh clean air.
Even in places that are not considered comparably polluted you can feel a difference. For example while going on skiing trips to northern Sweden the air feels cleaner than it does at home in the South. The South of Sweden is still like a polished white surface compared to the sooth-black air many other places in the world.
e. I don’t believe in global warming but I do believe in local warming; I have lived in a big city where in the city itself the temperature very rarely drops below 0 degrees centigrade, outside the city, only a couple of tens of kilometers, however the temperature seems to be several degrees lower. And this corresponds to historical readings, where only a few decades before it used to be that cold where the city is too.
Another very obvious effect of pollution is sooth. When you have to wash of a thick layer of sooth from your balcony at least once per month there is obviously a problem.
f. Having said all this I think there are things we can do about it. For example when it is cold in warm places (does that make sense?) it tends to “feel” much colder. I’ve discussed this with local people and argued that where I come from it is much colder but I will still be warmer, for which I’m always (yes always, every single time) counted with that we have central heating systems. Actually, we don’t. Apartment complexes often have, but not always. We do have heating though. But, to be honest I had eating in those warm places that were cold too. The difference is not about heating, it is about insulation. Warming up places with heat pumps, infrared heaters or various other heaters doesn’t help much if you don’t have any insulation to speak of. I still don’t understand the idea to build huge buildings without any insulation, sure it is more expensive to build but you must make up for that in reduced heating, and cooling, costs. Yes, cooling costs too. When the outdoors temperature is 35 centigrade and the humidity over 98% every single household will start blasting their air conditioners, and with poor insulation a lot of this cooling goes to waste. The best way to be warm is to stay warm, not to heat up.
Like I said in the beginning, I don’t believe in global warming from human activity. Earth is getting slightly warmer though and the polar caps are melting. And pollution is still bad and we should do all we can to not waste energy or materials.
Showing posts with label Beijing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beijing. Show all posts
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Monday, November 10, 2008
Swedes everywhere!
Saturday 8th November 2008:
First in the hostel, which is actually not so strange, I ran into three Swedes, two of them checking in and the last one using the phone for long distance call.
Later I had dinner with my friend Eva, we went to the same restaurant where Joyce and I met dad in Beijing the first time, which is where I got sick (not because of the restaurant) and threw up on the street outside two years ago. Anyway, we sat down there and ordered some food and I suddenly noticed a group of six slightly senior persons sitting at the table behind Eva that were conversing in Swedish, couldn't place the exact location though.
Later that night I had supper with another friend, Ying, that had come in from Tianjin to meet me, we just went to McDonald's actually and had a burgers when I noticed the crowd of five that seemed to be speaking in a very familiar way, I soon discovered that it was in fact also Swedish and to be more exact whiny Swedish, just like my good friend and former flat mate Kei! hoho
First in the hostel, which is actually not so strange, I ran into three Swedes, two of them checking in and the last one using the phone for long distance call.
Later I had dinner with my friend Eva, we went to the same restaurant where Joyce and I met dad in Beijing the first time, which is where I got sick (not because of the restaurant) and threw up on the street outside two years ago. Anyway, we sat down there and ordered some food and I suddenly noticed a group of six slightly senior persons sitting at the table behind Eva that were conversing in Swedish, couldn't place the exact location though.
Later that night I had supper with another friend, Ying, that had come in from Tianjin to meet me, we just went to McDonald's actually and had a burgers when I noticed the crowd of five that seemed to be speaking in a very familiar way, I soon discovered that it was in fact also Swedish and to be more exact whiny Swedish, just like my good friend and former flat mate Kei! hoho
Saturday, November 8, 2008
A funny wake-up call
Around 12.30pm on Friday "morning" my phone started ringing, since I was meeting my friend's friend Vivi at 1pm I had already woken up from my alarm but I was still only semi-conscious so this became really confusing for me. The conversation went something like this:
Girl on phone: Ni hao.
Me: eeeh, hello?
Girl on phone: Ni hui bu hui shou putonghua? (do you speak Chinese?)
Me: eeeh, bu hui shou (eeeh, no?!?)
Girl on phone: Wo shi Luqi de pengyou (I'm Luqi's friend)
Girl on phone: Tjing tjong tjing tjong (I couldn't understand)
Me: Ni hui bu hui shou yingyue? (do you speak English?)
Girl on phone: bu hui shou (no)
The conversation kept going for a bit with her speaking Chinese and me saying "tin bu dong" (I don't understand). After a while I tried to ask her to send me a message and I think she said the same thing in Chinese, something about gei ni which means give you, and a few minutes after I got a message in Chinese, which my phone can't even show and I wouldn't understand anyway. I replied with some mix English and pinying (Chinese written with western letters) and I never got any reply.
I asked Luqi about this and she confirmed it was her friend, first it seemed they didn't know each other that well but after the confusion lay down I understood that it was a close friend of hers, just that she didn't know she couldn't speak English.
I actually met the girl later when I was out with Luqi and she was a bit embarrassed about the whole thing, but it was really not that big a deal in the end.
Girl on phone: Ni hao.
Me: eeeh, hello?
Girl on phone: Ni hui bu hui shou putonghua? (do you speak Chinese?)
Me: eeeh, bu hui shou (eeeh, no?!?)
Girl on phone: Wo shi Luqi de pengyou (I'm Luqi's friend)
Girl on phone: Tjing tjong tjing tjong (I couldn't understand)
Me: Ni hui bu hui shou yingyue? (do you speak English?)
Girl on phone: bu hui shou (no)
The conversation kept going for a bit with her speaking Chinese and me saying "tin bu dong" (I don't understand). After a while I tried to ask her to send me a message and I think she said the same thing in Chinese, something about gei ni which means give you, and a few minutes after I got a message in Chinese, which my phone can't even show and I wouldn't understand anyway. I replied with some mix English and pinying (Chinese written with western letters) and I never got any reply.
I asked Luqi about this and she confirmed it was her friend, first it seemed they didn't know each other that well but after the confusion lay down I understood that it was a close friend of hers, just that she didn't know she couldn't speak English.
I actually met the girl later when I was out with Luqi and she was a bit embarrassed about the whole thing, but it was really not that big a deal in the end.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
The China probrem!
Quoting Southpark is fun but I really don't have the same problem with China as Cartman, my problem is more in the sense of my own planning this time; I arrived in Shenzhen in the afternoon and met my friend at the border we went to the train station together and she helped me buying tickets to Shanghai for Saturday. But oh see there are no tickets to Shanghai for Saturday, neither is there any for Sunday nor Tomorrow. SHIT!! Going on Monday would be too late since it takes a night and half a day to get there and I should leave on Wednesday anyway. DAMMIT!!!
Well fortunately for me when we found my hotel, which I by the way could never ever have managed without my friend's help either
* It's actually pretty amazing how much difference there is just walking those 200m across the border (YES THERE IS A BORDER BETWEEN HONG KONG AND mainland CHINA, doesn't that mean they are different countries?) suddenly no one can speak or understand English anymore. From being able to talk to most people and at least communicate with the rest to nothing at all; actually even my friend had a hard time understanding me. *
, I got online and found a cheap flight from Shenzhen to Shanghai on Sunday evening, all was relatively well again. I still started to worry about my other train tickets, would it be just as hard to get a ticket from Shanghai to Beijing and from Beijing to Chengdu? So I started to try to get hold of Wenying and Linna in Shanghai and Nini in Beijing. Beijing is actually not so urgent since its still nearly two weeks until I'm going there, but the Shanghai ticket should be in less than a week and I have hostel reservations in Beijing already so that might be a problem. But in the end that isn't the problem, the problem is instead Wenying and Linna, well not them themselves but their works; my main reason for going to Shanghai is to visit Wenying and Linna, I will see two other friends there but that is not why I'm going to Shanghai, and now it turns out that they are working really late next week, I mean REALLY late, we are talking home at midnight here. This basically means that I will be alone in their home from 7am to 12am for 2 days and from 7am until I leave on the third, great fun! - not.
So what I'm trying to figure out now is if A: I should leave sooner than Wednesday; call my hostel in Beijing and move the reservation forward one day (two won’t be possible), B: Leave later than planned; call and postpone the reservation so that I can stay in Shanghai until the weekend when Wenying and Linna are free to do something or C: leave it as it is and just live with it? Since my time in Beijing is pretty much fixed, due to the fact that I don't want to spend too much money staying in hostel and still want to have enough time to meet up with some friends in Beijing which makes 6 nights perfect, I will just move the arrival day in Chengdu, and since my departure date from Chengdu is fixed to the 21st, flight ticket already bought, I will shorten or lengthen the time there.
Well fortunately for me when we found my hotel, which I by the way could never ever have managed without my friend's help either
* It's actually pretty amazing how much difference there is just walking those 200m across the border (YES THERE IS A BORDER BETWEEN HONG KONG AND mainland CHINA, doesn't that mean they are different countries?) suddenly no one can speak or understand English anymore. From being able to talk to most people and at least communicate with the rest to nothing at all; actually even my friend had a hard time understanding me. *
, I got online and found a cheap flight from Shenzhen to Shanghai on Sunday evening, all was relatively well again. I still started to worry about my other train tickets, would it be just as hard to get a ticket from Shanghai to Beijing and from Beijing to Chengdu? So I started to try to get hold of Wenying and Linna in Shanghai and Nini in Beijing. Beijing is actually not so urgent since its still nearly two weeks until I'm going there, but the Shanghai ticket should be in less than a week and I have hostel reservations in Beijing already so that might be a problem. But in the end that isn't the problem, the problem is instead Wenying and Linna, well not them themselves but their works; my main reason for going to Shanghai is to visit Wenying and Linna, I will see two other friends there but that is not why I'm going to Shanghai, and now it turns out that they are working really late next week, I mean REALLY late, we are talking home at midnight here. This basically means that I will be alone in their home from 7am to 12am for 2 days and from 7am until I leave on the third, great fun! - not.
So what I'm trying to figure out now is if A: I should leave sooner than Wednesday; call my hostel in Beijing and move the reservation forward one day (two won’t be possible), B: Leave later than planned; call and postpone the reservation so that I can stay in Shanghai until the weekend when Wenying and Linna are free to do something or C: leave it as it is and just live with it? Since my time in Beijing is pretty much fixed, due to the fact that I don't want to spend too much money staying in hostel and still want to have enough time to meet up with some friends in Beijing which makes 6 nights perfect, I will just move the arrival day in Chengdu, and since my departure date from Chengdu is fixed to the 21st, flight ticket already bought, I will shorten or lengthen the time there.
Friday, October 24, 2008
China
So I have to wait for three to eight weeks to get my working permit and two birds with one stone I will save money and visit friends in China I have made a travel plan; for about 23 days I will travel around, mostly by train, and stay with friends, at least most of the time, in China.
First I will start off by going to Shenzhen, depending on any Halloween plans here, of which I think there are none for me, I will either go on Thursday, Friday or Saturday next week (29th, 30th or 31st) and stay there in a hostel until Saturday afternoon when I will take a train to Shanghai, it is probably best to be there at least a day early to make sure I can get a ticket, and I will try to meet up with an online friend there that I've missed every single time I've been to Shenzhen.
Train to Shanghai is ONLY about 13 hours so I will arrive sometime really early on Sunday morning. The plan is to stay with Wenying and Linna in Shanghai but it seems rather complicated, in worst case I will have to skip Shanghai completely. The plan though is to stay there for about 3-4 nights, hang out with the two of them and meet my other Shanghainese friend and finally catch a train in the afternoon on the 5th.
To Beijing it's a bit further and the train takes about 17 hours but arrival is also in early morning. There I will stay in hostel though for a few days, I might do a night in Tianjin too to visit two friends there, and I will try to meet up with Nini and Mei and possibly some other friends too. I will leave Beijing with a train to Chengdu on the 11th, spending six nights in the same hostel I was in January.
Chengdu is actually not much further from Beijing than Shanghai is, the problem is the mountain range that the train has to go around so that trip actually takes 25 hours, which is the fastest train they have where the slower ones take 30 and 35 hours, so I will arrive sometime in the evening in Chengdu and then I will probably stay with Li Min when I'm there, either with her or Aaron I guess but I haven't talked to him much and I like her place better actually. I will try to meet up with as many friends as possible and since I have about 10 nights there it shouldn't be that much of a problem. I might go out of Chengdu for one or two nights but we will see about that.
Finally on the 21st I decided to fly back to Shenzhen instead of taking another 30, or even 50 for the slower one, train to Guangzhou and spending another few hours and 250HKD to get back to Hong Kong, the flight ticket was only 700 Yuan including all costs so it actually turned to be almost the same price as the train ticket.
This date is set because Deming will come to Hong Kong that day too and I might go with him to Macau for a few day and stay with him and his parents there. After that I'm not sure what happens, I have been considering looking for some place to live but if the working permit application still have a long time running I might as well go back to China for another few weeks.
First I will start off by going to Shenzhen, depending on any Halloween plans here, of which I think there are none for me, I will either go on Thursday, Friday or Saturday next week (29th, 30th or 31st) and stay there in a hostel until Saturday afternoon when I will take a train to Shanghai, it is probably best to be there at least a day early to make sure I can get a ticket, and I will try to meet up with an online friend there that I've missed every single time I've been to Shenzhen.
Train to Shanghai is ONLY about 13 hours so I will arrive sometime really early on Sunday morning. The plan is to stay with Wenying and Linna in Shanghai but it seems rather complicated, in worst case I will have to skip Shanghai completely. The plan though is to stay there for about 3-4 nights, hang out with the two of them and meet my other Shanghainese friend and finally catch a train in the afternoon on the 5th.
To Beijing it's a bit further and the train takes about 17 hours but arrival is also in early morning. There I will stay in hostel though for a few days, I might do a night in Tianjin too to visit two friends there, and I will try to meet up with Nini and Mei and possibly some other friends too. I will leave Beijing with a train to Chengdu on the 11th, spending six nights in the same hostel I was in January.
Chengdu is actually not much further from Beijing than Shanghai is, the problem is the mountain range that the train has to go around so that trip actually takes 25 hours, which is the fastest train they have where the slower ones take 30 and 35 hours, so I will arrive sometime in the evening in Chengdu and then I will probably stay with Li Min when I'm there, either with her or Aaron I guess but I haven't talked to him much and I like her place better actually. I will try to meet up with as many friends as possible and since I have about 10 nights there it shouldn't be that much of a problem. I might go out of Chengdu for one or two nights but we will see about that.
Finally on the 21st I decided to fly back to Shenzhen instead of taking another 30, or even 50 for the slower one, train to Guangzhou and spending another few hours and 250HKD to get back to Hong Kong, the flight ticket was only 700 Yuan including all costs so it actually turned to be almost the same price as the train ticket.
This date is set because Deming will come to Hong Kong that day too and I might go with him to Macau for a few day and stay with him and his parents there. After that I'm not sure what happens, I have been considering looking for some place to live but if the working permit application still have a long time running I might as well go back to China for another few weeks.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Nini
Some photos with Nini, first from our Korean food dinner and then from Tian Tan Garden.
Korean BBQ
Me and Nini
Nini om bike
Me on bike
Charline on bike
Charline and Nini inside the Tian Tan Garden gate.
Nini is 大
Jumping Johan
Me and Nini
Bye bye Tian Tan Garden!
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Beijing
Just a brief photo update of my days in Beijing.
I had dinner with Guanglu's friend Annie and after that we took a weird subway ride to nowhere and back again. The dinner was a great version of hotpot. 
At least one day spent doing tourist stuff; some friends from the hostel, Saffron, Charline and JC, went out to the summare palace and walked on the ice.
And finally our last night together (Saffron left in the morning after and other people just started to disappear after that)
A shitty day
I was hangover and tried to calculate how much time I would need to get to the airport on time and go past the post office on the way to send the helicopter when I finally decided to get up at around 2pm. After I done my morning bathroom stuff and got back to the room the key didn't work anymore, of course it was check out overdue but I had told them I wanted to check out in the afternoon, it worked out when I got down to the front desk though.
I also found out that taxi was not an option, during the holidays it would cost me 180kuai to get from central Beijing to the airport and that is just about 180kuai too much, I did figure out that I would need about one hour before departure at the airport, that is around 6.30pm, about one hour from the train station to the airport, that is around 5.30pm, and around 30 minutes from the hostel to the train station, that is around 5pm. It was only 3pm by then so I figured I had around 1½ hours (to be on the safe side) to have breakfast and get to the post office, which fortunately was on the way to the subway station.
The next bad thing coming my way was a pizza that took one hour to make, so I suddenly only had half an hour to eat and post, the next thing was that despite telling them that I really don't want mushrooms on my pizza the pizza was basically mushrooms and cheese, so I pretty much had to remove all the topping and eat the bread, because even though they offered to make a new one I just didn't have time to wait for it. Next was the price of the pizza, I had ordered a small pizza but for some reason gotten a large, I only finished half of it and they still said I had ordered a large, they were nice though so I finally only had to pay for the small one.
Setting out on my way to the post office and the beginning of my journey to Hong Kong at 4pm I found my next problem pretty soon, of course the post office closes at 4pm and not 5pm because it was holiday, so I had to carry around the bulky helicopter for the rest of the day (and will have to keep doing that unless I can post it from Hong Kong, which I'm not totally sure I want to). The rest of the trip to the airport went quite smoothly though, I got on the subway and got myself to the train station and quickly found the airport shuttle busses and got on, and it wasn't even 5 yet.
More problems came my way once I got to the airport though, I managed to get off at the wrong terminal, not so easy for me to know because no one had ever told me which terminal I should go to and it did say domestic departures. So after some time of figuring this out, worrying like hell over not finding my flight on the screens, I had to do a 10 minute walk to the other terminal, where things again went rather smoothly, fortunately. But I was early and had an hour to kill; luckily I found a wireless connection that could be activated with an SMS so I spent the time on Facebook.
The liftoff was pretty cool; luckily I had gotten a window seat and as an early new years eve like it was there were fireworks all over the city and I could see them quite clearly for about 10-15 minutes, I did still see sparks on the ground most of the flight actually but it was the lift off that was coolest.
At Shenzhen airport I managed to find a "bus" that could take me to the China/Hong Kong border, it was actually just a mini bus but it seemed kind of legit with an official booth in the airport, and it wasn't TOO expensive. At the border I found more problem, the first and minor one was that they couldn't read my visa stamp clearly so they thought I might have overstayed my visit, they finally gave up on that though, next was the borderline, which I didn't realize was a borderline until it was too late, I was tired as hell and hadn't eaten anything the whole day except the crappy pizza bread and the crappier airplane food and I couldn't find where I should go. I finally did get on a coach to somewhere more central though and that's when I discovered that we hadn't entered Hong Kong yet.
And to enter Hong Kong presented more problems of course; the coach stopped and there was some information in Chinese or Cantonese and everybody got off, I did the same but left some of my luggage in the coach, which turned out to be a bad idea, and tried to figure out what to do. I did go through immigration without any problem but there was still the luggage problem, which I had realized would be a problem, and once I got out the coach just didn't show up. When it finally did some people came complaining at me over luggage and stuff and I had to go back to the immigration to get my luggage and when I got out again the coach had already left, of course.
There was another one though and it took me to the place I "wanted" to go, which was luckily just next to a subway station and from there I could make my way to Tin Shui Wai where Joyce lives, it was not the optimum place to be though and I basically had to backtrack six stations to get on the KCR West rail and then travel past the place I had just been only because I had no idea where in that area the train station was, only the subway, which are not connected in that area of course.
I finally did get to Joyce's place and after a shower I could almost fall asleep. Except Hong Kong is humid, cold (around 8 degrees) and there is no insulation whatsoever, the windows are actually open, but I have slept through worse, once or twice, hehe.
I also found out that taxi was not an option, during the holidays it would cost me 180kuai to get from central Beijing to the airport and that is just about 180kuai too much, I did figure out that I would need about one hour before departure at the airport, that is around 6.30pm, about one hour from the train station to the airport, that is around 5.30pm, and around 30 minutes from the hostel to the train station, that is around 5pm. It was only 3pm by then so I figured I had around 1½ hours (to be on the safe side) to have breakfast and get to the post office, which fortunately was on the way to the subway station.
The next bad thing coming my way was a pizza that took one hour to make, so I suddenly only had half an hour to eat and post, the next thing was that despite telling them that I really don't want mushrooms on my pizza the pizza was basically mushrooms and cheese, so I pretty much had to remove all the topping and eat the bread, because even though they offered to make a new one I just didn't have time to wait for it. Next was the price of the pizza, I had ordered a small pizza but for some reason gotten a large, I only finished half of it and they still said I had ordered a large, they were nice though so I finally only had to pay for the small one.
Setting out on my way to the post office and the beginning of my journey to Hong Kong at 4pm I found my next problem pretty soon, of course the post office closes at 4pm and not 5pm because it was holiday, so I had to carry around the bulky helicopter for the rest of the day (and will have to keep doing that unless I can post it from Hong Kong, which I'm not totally sure I want to). The rest of the trip to the airport went quite smoothly though, I got on the subway and got myself to the train station and quickly found the airport shuttle busses and got on, and it wasn't even 5 yet.
More problems came my way once I got to the airport though, I managed to get off at the wrong terminal, not so easy for me to know because no one had ever told me which terminal I should go to and it did say domestic departures. So after some time of figuring this out, worrying like hell over not finding my flight on the screens, I had to do a 10 minute walk to the other terminal, where things again went rather smoothly, fortunately. But I was early and had an hour to kill; luckily I found a wireless connection that could be activated with an SMS so I spent the time on Facebook.
The liftoff was pretty cool; luckily I had gotten a window seat and as an early new years eve like it was there were fireworks all over the city and I could see them quite clearly for about 10-15 minutes, I did still see sparks on the ground most of the flight actually but it was the lift off that was coolest.
At Shenzhen airport I managed to find a "bus" that could take me to the China/Hong Kong border, it was actually just a mini bus but it seemed kind of legit with an official booth in the airport, and it wasn't TOO expensive. At the border I found more problem, the first and minor one was that they couldn't read my visa stamp clearly so they thought I might have overstayed my visit, they finally gave up on that though, next was the borderline, which I didn't realize was a borderline until it was too late, I was tired as hell and hadn't eaten anything the whole day except the crappy pizza bread and the crappier airplane food and I couldn't find where I should go. I finally did get on a coach to somewhere more central though and that's when I discovered that we hadn't entered Hong Kong yet.
And to enter Hong Kong presented more problems of course; the coach stopped and there was some information in Chinese or Cantonese and everybody got off, I did the same but left some of my luggage in the coach, which turned out to be a bad idea, and tried to figure out what to do. I did go through immigration without any problem but there was still the luggage problem, which I had realized would be a problem, and once I got out the coach just didn't show up. When it finally did some people came complaining at me over luggage and stuff and I had to go back to the immigration to get my luggage and when I got out again the coach had already left, of course.
There was another one though and it took me to the place I "wanted" to go, which was luckily just next to a subway station and from there I could make my way to Tin Shui Wai where Joyce lives, it was not the optimum place to be though and I basically had to backtrack six stations to get on the KCR West rail and then travel past the place I had just been only because I had no idea where in that area the train station was, only the subway, which are not connected in that area of course.
I finally did get to Joyce's place and after a shower I could almost fall asleep. Except Hong Kong is humid, cold (around 8 degrees) and there is no insulation whatsoever, the windows are actually open, but I have slept through worse, once or twice, hehe.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Weekends in Beijing
Pretty much suck when it comes to night life. For some reason the clubs that are bustling with life on weekdays are totally dead on weekends, and the ones that actually have life on weekends are quite bad. There is some reasonable explanation though, at least for this weekend; this weekend is a "moved" weekend, the Chinese New Year starts next Friday, or Thursday, so to get a longer continuous holiday they move the weekend from Saturday and Sunday to Tuesday and Wednesday, so a lot of people are working now and can't go out. That does not explain why it was equally bad last weekend though.
I have a few theories about this, one is a matter of money, having money and wanting money; the clubs in Beijing are expensive, I would say there are the same price as clubs in Sweden actually, but in Sweden we have a salary that is at an average about 10 times higher than an average salary in Beijing, so how can people afford to go out? The answer is really quite simple: they just can't. But they still go out, not because it's culture but because it’s what you are supposed to do, it's modern. For the girls the solution is easy, they go out and get treated whatever drinks they want, entrance is often free for girl and it's not that hard to find one of the richer guys, those are the only ones who goes to clubs anyway, it seems. And on weekends it is not free for girls, at least not the place I've been to, so there are only a few guys going there and almost no girls.
Anyway, weekends suck so if you want to have a good time here you'd better go out on a Thursday.
I have a few theories about this, one is a matter of money, having money and wanting money; the clubs in Beijing are expensive, I would say there are the same price as clubs in Sweden actually, but in Sweden we have a salary that is at an average about 10 times higher than an average salary in Beijing, so how can people afford to go out? The answer is really quite simple: they just can't. But they still go out, not because it's culture but because it’s what you are supposed to do, it's modern. For the girls the solution is easy, they go out and get treated whatever drinks they want, entrance is often free for girl and it's not that hard to find one of the richer guys, those are the only ones who goes to clubs anyway, it seems. And on weekends it is not free for girls, at least not the place I've been to, so there are only a few guys going there and almost no girls.
Anyway, weekends suck so if you want to have a good time here you'd better go out on a Thursday.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, January 25, 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
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.
Monday, August 27, 2007
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
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.
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.
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.
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