Day #81
Funds: $4400
Location:
Fukuoka, Japan (near Hikata Station, pictured)
Michael is having trouble with these weird Japanese keyboards
I made it! After wanting to go for far too long and being knocked back everytime by random obstacles, I had resigned myself to the fact that the universe had some sort of issue with the idea of me being in Japan. It was all seeming far too easy this time round, as all I had to do was count down the days and check and recheck my ticket to make sure I knew the right times, it wasn't fake, etc.
So anyway I got food poisoning and in the airport suffered a pretty violent response in which I nearly passed out and turned completely pale. Joy said my skin had never been so cold. With nearly an hour to go I was sitting in the airport lounge mumbling about needing to see a doctor and accepting that I was not going to get on this plane. This pretty much confirmed my theory about the universe, me and Japan, since I've never had food poisoning or whatever (we suspect it was home-made cola that did me in, of all things). After a few deep breaths I drew on my spite towards the universe to force myself onto my feet and rapidly recovered or something. Of course, I was a little concerned that my plane was going to crash or something, since that was pretty much the universe's last shot at stopping me. There was turbulence and we had to keep our seatbelts for the whole hour and a half we were in the air, tell me that's not a little creepy at least.
So like always I'd memorised the directions I got from the internet as well as a few choice facts that were relevant (Japanese streets often don't have signs, etc) and it would have gone mostly without a hitch, except I was a little dazed and confused so I got sort of lost for a while. In fairness though, I've been out walking once or twice already and even just by turning one corner I seem to have trouble tracing my steps back. Landmarks and a vague recollection of what certain characters mean has gotten me back, though. (This is why the map shows the train station I got off rather than the hostel, my sense of direction is still scrambled somehow.) It's still a little confusing because I can understand what a lot of signs mean thanks to my experience in China but that also means I keep nearly speaking Chinese to people ... it's getting better pretty quickly though, in fact everytime I see/hear a word I once knew in Jap it hits me after a couple second's delay and then I've got it again. I can actually feel it recovering with every tiny exchange or attempt to communicate. Spoke to Miki from a pay phone, and that did wonders for my mood as well. She's excited to see me too, and after 4 years we will! Hooray etc!
Oh and in the not-even-24-hours I've been here so far, I've established that pretty much every stereotype about the Japanese is true! People are really courteous, bowing to eachother, not running over pedestrians in their cars, driving on the left side of the road like SANE people ... I walked into a 7/11 and they actually did yell "Irasshaimase!!!" (a sort of welcome, I THINK it means something along the lines of "come in!"), and I am reliably told by other people at this hostel that this happens everywhere. I opened the door to leave, saw a little old lady coming in so I held it open for her. She apologised to me and hurried to get out of my way. People wait for the green man before crossing the street, even when there don't seem to be any cars!!! And of course, everyone is really patient when I'm miming or butchering their language.
Not that the Chinese don't have their own way of being awesome too, (and I learned by hanging out with Joy's family that they definitely have an insane courtesy thing going for them) it's just here feels so much cleaner and safer and nobody's stared at me or gotten cross with me for being a stupid foreigner. Ah well, Fukuoka is one of the quieter big-scale cities, I never went to like Xi'an or Guangzhou, maybe it's more like this there. Maybe Tokyo will be filled with people who are sick of white people too and apply silly stereotypes ... Will get back to you on that.
My hostel is incredibly comfortable, incidentally, and at 2000yen a night it's probably the cheapest I will find. Everything is warm, we have kitchen appliances, fast internet and a lounge room. Also, the toilet is a future toilet. It knows when you're sitting down and the seat warms up right away. I was able to understand the instructions on the arm rest and had a little fiddle ... ahah maybe it's not appropriate to talk too much about the functions. Suffice to say, they involved sanitation and comfort xD
Going dictionary hunting today, wanna get myself all the way up to speed, can't wait to get my hands on that phrase book I insisted Shannon bring with her xD
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
HASAAM.
This is nuts. Everything is blowing up. I will not be able to sleep tonight. And my camera is too crummy to handle taking shots of fireworks. The explosions have not stopped since about 6ish and apparently everyone's pausing now to watch some tv show. Me and Joy just came back from a walk. I've never seen so many fire engines!
Everybody is sending stuff into the air, every couple of steps you go. It sounds like I'm in a warzone. I have a headache. I'm loving it. =D
Everybody is sending stuff into the air, every couple of steps you go. It sounds like I'm in a warzone. I have a headache. I'm loving it. =D
Saturday, January 24, 2009
De Ja Hasaam
Day #76
Funds: $4800ish (actually for a change I DID overestimate my funds - not a calculation error, I simply misread something. How embarrassing.)
Michael is back to where he was 3 years ago. And he brought some cool stuff with his brain!
Wowww I've been feeling pretty good lately ... Not a huge amount of stuff has been going on, and that's partly why I'm in this mood. (Oh yeah well we did go to the beer factory and that was ahah interesting.)
Things were crazy back home when I was working 2 or 3 jobs trying to keep my grades up and squeezing in a social life where possible while trying to plan this whole trip out like a Master Strategist. So far, absolutely everything has gone either exactly as planned, or better, so that part has worked out for me. Problem with micro-managing is of course that I didn't relax nearly enough, was too focused on my goal to really enjoy day-to-day stuff. (I did plan to relax, which worked out some of the time, haha.) I nearly missed out on way too many things, my 21st, for instance, just would not have happened if my family hadn't come together and done pretty much everything for me. I've been really lucky like that to have so many supportive and just generally kick-arse people in my life. And I've been really lucky to have met some more, too.
It's been really awesome to just kick back at a place knowing exactly where all my next meals are coming from, being able to sit back and watch tv, read books and go to sleep not knowing or wondering what'll happen the next day. It's a bizarre feeling, not even caring what day it is. I have vague memories of being like this before I started worrying about earning money so much. I have pretty distinct memories, actually, of swearing to always be like this and to not waste my life worrying about trivial things. I suppose at some point I started deciding way too many things weren't trivial anymore. Is this what growing up feels like? Eugh.
At any rate, in a mere four days I will have finally set foot on Japanese turf and my longest-standing irrational obsession will finally be realised. I am a little worried about my money, but I'll definitely be able to support the holiday phase, since I may not have to worry about accomodation again in March at least it will last through there as well, so that's the point where I will be on the look-out for any ways to get more. Right now the plan is to social network through the english-studying friends I have now to find students to tutor. That could work. Still have no idea if I'll be able to actually SAVE money, though, especially considering the fact I wanna buy so many presents! (Don't get your hopes up guys xD)
The fact I've graduated is starting to sink in. The fact that when I do come home, there'll be no more classes, no more getting up at 4 to deliver papers or sudden phone calls from the library asking me to come in, no assignments due, maybe even no big-deal end-of-the-year-month-long-or-so event ... just me and my family/friends and my books and my brain. I'm looking forward to that almost as much as Japan, actually. Don't worry, Dad, I'm not gonna become a parasite ... well at least, maybe not after the first 2 or 3 weeks back, hehe.
I'm thinking I may give a postgrad some serious thought, something to complement my degree in languages - and of course I'm going to have to put some serious effort into actually improving those languages. I know that sounds silly, but before with all the pressure all I could study was what was put in front of me, and most of it I found irritating or useless. I just wedged it in my head and passed the units. Now I got no excuses, so I really have to back up all of the crap I've been talking and get really good at Chi - oh hang on, I only have 4 days left. Okay, we'll see if I can actually improve my Japanese over the next couple months, and if stuff works out, I'll come back home and work on my Chinese XD If nothing encourages me, I suppose I'll just give up and bury myself in some aspect of linguistics that will confuse everyone to save face and seem smart. Oh well, I'm not gonna worry about that for a little while now anyway. All I have to do is figure out the best way to obtain and retain useful new words! Good luck to me!
Funds: $4800ish (actually for a change I DID overestimate my funds - not a calculation error, I simply misread something. How embarrassing.)
Michael is back to where he was 3 years ago. And he brought some cool stuff with his brain!
Wowww I've been feeling pretty good lately ... Not a huge amount of stuff has been going on, and that's partly why I'm in this mood. (Oh yeah well we did go to the beer factory and that was ahah interesting.)
Things were crazy back home when I was working 2 or 3 jobs trying to keep my grades up and squeezing in a social life where possible while trying to plan this whole trip out like a Master Strategist. So far, absolutely everything has gone either exactly as planned, or better, so that part has worked out for me. Problem with micro-managing is of course that I didn't relax nearly enough, was too focused on my goal to really enjoy day-to-day stuff. (I did plan to relax, which worked out some of the time, haha.) I nearly missed out on way too many things, my 21st, for instance, just would not have happened if my family hadn't come together and done pretty much everything for me. I've been really lucky like that to have so many supportive and just generally kick-arse people in my life. And I've been really lucky to have met some more, too.
It's been really awesome to just kick back at a place knowing exactly where all my next meals are coming from, being able to sit back and watch tv, read books and go to sleep not knowing or wondering what'll happen the next day. It's a bizarre feeling, not even caring what day it is. I have vague memories of being like this before I started worrying about earning money so much. I have pretty distinct memories, actually, of swearing to always be like this and to not waste my life worrying about trivial things. I suppose at some point I started deciding way too many things weren't trivial anymore. Is this what growing up feels like? Eugh.
At any rate, in a mere four days I will have finally set foot on Japanese turf and my longest-standing irrational obsession will finally be realised. I am a little worried about my money, but I'll definitely be able to support the holiday phase, since I may not have to worry about accomodation again in March at least it will last through there as well, so that's the point where I will be on the look-out for any ways to get more. Right now the plan is to social network through the english-studying friends I have now to find students to tutor. That could work. Still have no idea if I'll be able to actually SAVE money, though, especially considering the fact I wanna buy so many presents! (Don't get your hopes up guys xD)
The fact I've graduated is starting to sink in. The fact that when I do come home, there'll be no more classes, no more getting up at 4 to deliver papers or sudden phone calls from the library asking me to come in, no assignments due, maybe even no big-deal end-of-the-year-month-long-or-so event ... just me and my family/friends and my books and my brain. I'm looking forward to that almost as much as Japan, actually. Don't worry, Dad, I'm not gonna become a parasite ... well at least, maybe not after the first 2 or 3 weeks back, hehe.
I'm thinking I may give a postgrad some serious thought, something to complement my degree in languages - and of course I'm going to have to put some serious effort into actually improving those languages. I know that sounds silly, but before with all the pressure all I could study was what was put in front of me, and most of it I found irritating or useless. I just wedged it in my head and passed the units. Now I got no excuses, so I really have to back up all of the crap I've been talking and get really good at Chi - oh hang on, I only have 4 days left. Okay, we'll see if I can actually improve my Japanese over the next couple months, and if stuff works out, I'll come back home and work on my Chinese XD If nothing encourages me, I suppose I'll just give up and bury myself in some aspect of linguistics that will confuse everyone to save face and seem smart. Oh well, I'm not gonna worry about that for a little while now anyway. All I have to do is figure out the best way to obtain and retain useful new words! Good luck to me!
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Tubby Hasaam Wantsa Skinny
Day #72
Michael is getting SO FAT!!!
I noticed this fact and felt the extreme need to share it with you all. I have put on enough weight since I left to really bother me. No I did not manage to do the stairs every day like I hoped I would. And as always I refused to leave any plate with food scraps on it because I don't like to waste food. And Christmas/New Year's rolled past, I spent those with white people. It's okay to spoil yourself a little for the holidays! Classic fatty mentality.
Now I've been living with elderly Chinese people who spoil me and always cook more than you're supposed to eat cos that's how courtesy works here, not to mention our holiday season rolling straight into theirs (Chinese New Year next week, "Little Year", the warm-up to CNY, happened a couple days ago) ... I look at my belly everyday and meditate on self-control. The last two days have gone alright in that respect. But I'm still going to have a bigger gut than Miki remembers, and she knew me when I was still running around and riding my bike everywhere! She's gonna LAUGH at me ...
Oh yeah, I'll see Miki in less than 10 days! That's exciting!!! Gonna be in Japan on the 28th, hitting Fukuoka. Haven't seen Miki since Year 12, so a bit over 3 years I guess? Nearly 3 and a half I think ... It's a shame I'm seeing her first thing actually, because my Japanese needs a thorough warm-up and after a month in Japan with their brutal exchange rate/prices I will definitely lose some weight. And once I settle somewhere I hope to maybe get a bike or something.
Ahah, the plans for settling ... well complications have arisen since I decided to try and come back between the Uni semesters. This means that I get Febuary to muck around with Shannon and whoever else, then March-May I wanna be earning money. (At this point, if I can afford to go to Taiwan just for a month, that'd be awesome. If not, a couple more weeks in Japan through June'll do me.)
Most contracts for places I've seen advertised online require year-long contracts and Mr Conscience here doesn't wanna sign one of them knowing that he's gonna skimp out on it. So my new challenge is to see if I can survive working part-time jobs and such. A mate in Osaka says I can crash at his for an indeterminate amount of time, which is awesome, and my friend in Nara (less than an hour away from Osaka) might be able to help me as well. Having checked out couchsurfing.com I'm more than a little encouraged (I will always have a back-up place in the event of an emergency), and depending on how well I do tutoring English, and how quickly my Japanese recovers/improves, I may be able to find enough part-time work to at least survive in hostels and such.
I'm thinking I can definitely get enough for FOOD day to day just by tutoring English (according to my research if I do an hour a day I can afford food) and if I can stick to my plan I will have just enough cash in the bank for my ticket home in the event of an emergency. The challenge is to not touch my savings again after Feb is over.
Oh and another challenge for during Feb: I've decided I have to busk in every Japanese city I live in. Therefore, Marcello is coming with me =]
Can't wait to see Aoi either ^^
Michael is getting SO FAT!!!
I noticed this fact and felt the extreme need to share it with you all. I have put on enough weight since I left to really bother me. No I did not manage to do the stairs every day like I hoped I would. And as always I refused to leave any plate with food scraps on it because I don't like to waste food. And Christmas/New Year's rolled past, I spent those with white people. It's okay to spoil yourself a little for the holidays! Classic fatty mentality.
Now I've been living with elderly Chinese people who spoil me and always cook more than you're supposed to eat cos that's how courtesy works here, not to mention our holiday season rolling straight into theirs (Chinese New Year next week, "Little Year", the warm-up to CNY, happened a couple days ago) ... I look at my belly everyday and meditate on self-control. The last two days have gone alright in that respect. But I'm still going to have a bigger gut than Miki remembers, and she knew me when I was still running around and riding my bike everywhere! She's gonna LAUGH at me ...
Oh yeah, I'll see Miki in less than 10 days! That's exciting!!! Gonna be in Japan on the 28th, hitting Fukuoka. Haven't seen Miki since Year 12, so a bit over 3 years I guess? Nearly 3 and a half I think ... It's a shame I'm seeing her first thing actually, because my Japanese needs a thorough warm-up and after a month in Japan with their brutal exchange rate/prices I will definitely lose some weight. And once I settle somewhere I hope to maybe get a bike or something.
Ahah, the plans for settling ... well complications have arisen since I decided to try and come back between the Uni semesters. This means that I get Febuary to muck around with Shannon and whoever else, then March-May I wanna be earning money. (At this point, if I can afford to go to Taiwan just for a month, that'd be awesome. If not, a couple more weeks in Japan through June'll do me.)
Most contracts for places I've seen advertised online require year-long contracts and Mr Conscience here doesn't wanna sign one of them knowing that he's gonna skimp out on it. So my new challenge is to see if I can survive working part-time jobs and such. A mate in Osaka says I can crash at his for an indeterminate amount of time, which is awesome, and my friend in Nara (less than an hour away from Osaka) might be able to help me as well. Having checked out couchsurfing.com I'm more than a little encouraged (I will always have a back-up place in the event of an emergency), and depending on how well I do tutoring English, and how quickly my Japanese recovers/improves, I may be able to find enough part-time work to at least survive in hostels and such.
I'm thinking I can definitely get enough for FOOD day to day just by tutoring English (according to my research if I do an hour a day I can afford food) and if I can stick to my plan I will have just enough cash in the bank for my ticket home in the event of an emergency. The challenge is to not touch my savings again after Feb is over.
Oh and another challenge for during Feb: I've decided I have to busk in every Japanese city I live in. Therefore, Marcello is coming with me =]
Can't wait to see Aoi either ^^
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Hasaam And A Cup Of Tea =]
Day #69 [teehee]
Funds: $5300ish - tickets to Qingdao were paid for with the bond from SISU (400RMB) and the ticket to Japan was mostly sorted out by spare cash I had in my travelex account which I forgot to include last count. At least I never OVERestimate my funds, right?
Location: Close to Shandong Road, Qingdao. multimap.com doesn't have snaps of that area for some reason, but it's just a little east from this beautiful spot!
Michael is retarded in the presence of old Chinese people, Shanghainese or otherwise.
This blog wound up being a bit longer than I originally intended, so I've kindly divided it into two chunks based on content for your convenience.
Wow, just looking at the funds again. I've done pretty well in China, although to be fair I've done very little in China except for walking around and looking at stuff. Which has served me well, I felt. I've even got my ticket to Japan figured out! I was really looking forward to catching a ferry all the way, and having seen how beautiful the water looks in Qingdao (blue skies here are actually BLUE rather than a light greyish haze!) it's still a bit of a shame, but the fact is if I go to Japan too early I miss out on Chinese New Year in China, and this way I get to spend it with Joy too. Not to mention (as I have been a bit too much lately) the amount of money I save by flying. Most of the flights I could find were way too pricey (looking at like $AUS1000ish), but as usual Joy and her family fixed everything and just pointing out some Chinese travel people who fixed it for a mere 2000RMB (around $AUS500) after tax.
[The In-Laws]
So anyway my flight out of Shanghai left 7am Thursday morning, practical as I am I reasoned that this meant I would have to leave the city centre around 5am, when the only way is by taxi. I figured I didn't wanna spend that much or risk mucking something up, so instead I caught the maglev one more time into the airport at around 9pm and just crashed in the waiting area. It was very uncomfortable and a couple with the same idea brought their loud kids who did not think sleeping should be a priority over running around under the chairs screaming at the top of their lungs. Oh well, can't win em all I guess. So I fell asleep on the plane instead and dropped a bottle of water on myself, which woke me up again. The flight only took about an hour and a half and was relatively non-eventful, save for the fact that before we boarded I had a little chat with this Chinese guy who has been an International Student at Sydney for a year, so he was excited to meet somebody from Australia. When we got off the plane, he sort of insisted on driving me where I had to go, which was awesome considering the fact that I was totally knackered. He got Joy's phone number and her grandfather's phone number and before I knew it the three of them had called around to each other and figured everything out. I did absolutely nothing. I don't understand how it is that I always seem to be this lucky, but I'm starting to worry that I may be splurging all of my karma. One day I'm just not going to have any good luck left, and I'm sure that'll suck. Hopefully I can just be a really awesome person and try to keep earning it??? Um, Bob was that guy's English name, we swapped MSN details and might catch up in Aus one day, geez I gotta figure out a way to pay him back ...
He literally introduced me to Joy's grandfather, who I just refer to as "Ah Gong" cos that's what Joy does and then left us to it. I wasn't sure how to approach this guy but he was nice enough and just followed him home. They insisted I sit down gave me bread butter and jam and spent about a minute and a half trying to figure out if I wanted it toasted. Eventually I said something like "Oh do I want it more hotter? No thankyou, this is good." and quickly wrote down the new words. They pretty much don't speak English. They think I don't speak Chinese either, and can't get their heads around what I must have been doing the past year I was being taught. Basically, I'm not used to people speaking as fast as them, and they're not used to waiting for really slow responses, like mine, haha (have you HEARD Joy speaking? Chinese or English, when she goes, geez it's like wHOOOOOSH). Also, I'm forever in a state of being petrified of the idea of offending them somehow by doing something "white" or, worse yet, "Mykalesque". Joy seems to think common sense should see me through it all fine, but I'm not too sure what I have and what everyone calls "common" sense are really as compatible as all that sometimes =P
When I DO understand, it's kind of funny, because even then I don't seem to reply fast enough to convince them I know what's going on. Once her Ah Bu ("Nana", but this isn't good Chinese apparently, it's like Shanghainese baby talk) told me "when you're full you shouldn't keep eating, you should stop before you're full." I got most of that, partly because it's pretty straightforward but mostly cos Joy had already said she says this a lot. I nodded because I agreed, and don't really have much in my reportoire right now except for "yes, I agree." and saying that too much makes me feel stupid. Then Ah Bu was all "oh you don't understand!!!" "No no, sometimes I DO understand I just don't know what to say back!!!" She did seem to accept this. I think. Another time she was making soup, so she yelled at me "Soup! This is soup! Michael, do you know what 'soup' is??? SOUP. SOUP! SOUP!!!"
This morning I was offered toast again. I've been trying to write down all the new words I hear every day and revise the most useful ones here and there, so I was ready for the question, I was all "no thankyou, I don't really want toast, just like this is good." She seemed very impressed. "Oh sometimes he DOES speak Chinese!!!" she said, although I totally missed this and recieved it second-hand through Joy.
Ah Gong went on a sort of rant about how my future should go now that I'm a graduate (apparently he just does this sometimes, having been quite successful himself in life). It went on for a while and Joy says this was just the beginning. All I understood was, "First step, be as good as Joy at Chinese at least!!!" I agreed with this much, haha. Could be a little while though ...
Oh and Ah Bu still hasn't decided whether or not I can use chopsticks yet. Joy's Uncle's mates were all pretty impressed and told me no white people can use chopsticks like me. Joy kicked me under the table when I started to reply with "oh lots of Australians can use chopsticks, it's not that special!" I'm not quite sure what Ah Bu's criteria is yet, haha. She was very impressed at first when I picked them up, but when I had a little trouble with an egg of all things she was really quick to say (with what sounded to me like relief) "Oh, ok, he doesn't know how to do it!"
I'm pretty sure they think I'm really stupid and I am a little worried about how that'll affect their opinion of me being the guy chasing their granddaughter, but they're still super nice to me so that's good at least xD Why do I like old people so much? Maybe I look forward to being one of them one day or something, or maybe part of me already is a bit like that =P
They're so thoughtful, set up a bed for me, washed my clothes and making sure I eat properly etc. Ah Gong is such a thorough planner, he's compiled a list of all the things I have to do/see before I leave, and has even organised it into a day-to-day plan to make sure we get as much of it in as possible ... I hope we didn't offend him or anything by taking today off, we're still a bit knackered from getting here and all.
[First Day In Qingdao]
Yesterday was good, we checked out the beach, which is awesome by Chinese standards. Not nearly warm enough to go swimming though, the average temp has been around zero, and if I'm gonna get snow worth knowing about I want it even lower! Qingdao is a lot more like Melbourne than Shanghai though, it's a lot cleaner - the air actually feels safe to breathe, the people seem a lot less crazy about milking me for all my money, there are trees everywhere and yes, BIRDS everywhere ^^ Yesterday I was a little grumpy from lack of sleep though, and I was particullarly sensitive to the staring. There are not nearly as many tourists around here as in Shangy, so they are not as accustomed to white people I guess. There has been quite a bit of gawking.
The market with Joy was ok, but I did get more than a little impatient, her style and mine is so different (apparently I remind her of her mum when we're clothes-shopping). I think she's a bit too nice, she doesn't feel the need to be curt like I do. I just don't like to waste time or seem too keen (Ah Bu later made comments like mine about Joy too obviously wanting stuff and so not getting the best prices =P) Joy was very adamant about me getting a new jacket, as my favourite is literally falling apart at the seams. I argued that I kind of like that cos now I can hide stuff between the seams. But anyway yeah Joy copped a little bit of a snappy rant about how if we were shopping for me I would only do it my way so after arguing with one woman a bit too long about how her goods weren't quite as awesome as she said we marched around the corner, grabbed one without really looking at it after I mumbled in a thick grumbly accent "Yeah, whatever that one'sorite" and Joy told the woman "We're only paying 120, I'm not arguing, usually I only pay 100 but I'm being generous because I heard prices went up. If it's not 120 we'll just go somewhere else where it is." The woman immediately accepted without wasting our time or trying to play us for idiots and I was so proud of my Cutthroat Baby =P (Still though, damn market crash that's at least equal to what I would grudgingly pay for a non-op shop jacket back home!!!)
Oh and we randomly got on a boat and cruised around. Both of us, for 20 kuai! That made me feel a lot better =]
Funds: $5300ish - tickets to Qingdao were paid for with the bond from SISU (400RMB) and the ticket to Japan was mostly sorted out by spare cash I had in my travelex account which I forgot to include last count. At least I never OVERestimate my funds, right?
Location: Close to Shandong Road, Qingdao. multimap.com doesn't have snaps of that area for some reason, but it's just a little east from this beautiful spot!
Michael is retarded in the presence of old Chinese people, Shanghainese or otherwise.
This blog wound up being a bit longer than I originally intended, so I've kindly divided it into two chunks based on content for your convenience.
Wow, just looking at the funds again. I've done pretty well in China, although to be fair I've done very little in China except for walking around and looking at stuff. Which has served me well, I felt. I've even got my ticket to Japan figured out! I was really looking forward to catching a ferry all the way, and having seen how beautiful the water looks in Qingdao (blue skies here are actually BLUE rather than a light greyish haze!) it's still a bit of a shame, but the fact is if I go to Japan too early I miss out on Chinese New Year in China, and this way I get to spend it with Joy too. Not to mention (as I have been a bit too much lately) the amount of money I save by flying. Most of the flights I could find were way too pricey (looking at like $AUS1000ish), but as usual Joy and her family fixed everything and just pointing out some Chinese travel people who fixed it for a mere 2000RMB (around $AUS500) after tax.
[The In-Laws]
So anyway my flight out of Shanghai left 7am Thursday morning, practical as I am I reasoned that this meant I would have to leave the city centre around 5am, when the only way is by taxi. I figured I didn't wanna spend that much or risk mucking something up, so instead I caught the maglev one more time into the airport at around 9pm and just crashed in the waiting area. It was very uncomfortable and a couple with the same idea brought their loud kids who did not think sleeping should be a priority over running around under the chairs screaming at the top of their lungs. Oh well, can't win em all I guess. So I fell asleep on the plane instead and dropped a bottle of water on myself, which woke me up again. The flight only took about an hour and a half and was relatively non-eventful, save for the fact that before we boarded I had a little chat with this Chinese guy who has been an International Student at Sydney for a year, so he was excited to meet somebody from Australia. When we got off the plane, he sort of insisted on driving me where I had to go, which was awesome considering the fact that I was totally knackered. He got Joy's phone number and her grandfather's phone number and before I knew it the three of them had called around to each other and figured everything out. I did absolutely nothing. I don't understand how it is that I always seem to be this lucky, but I'm starting to worry that I may be splurging all of my karma. One day I'm just not going to have any good luck left, and I'm sure that'll suck. Hopefully I can just be a really awesome person and try to keep earning it??? Um, Bob was that guy's English name, we swapped MSN details and might catch up in Aus one day, geez I gotta figure out a way to pay him back ...
He literally introduced me to Joy's grandfather, who I just refer to as "Ah Gong" cos that's what Joy does and then left us to it. I wasn't sure how to approach this guy but he was nice enough and just followed him home. They insisted I sit down gave me bread butter and jam and spent about a minute and a half trying to figure out if I wanted it toasted. Eventually I said something like "Oh do I want it more hotter? No thankyou, this is good." and quickly wrote down the new words. They pretty much don't speak English. They think I don't speak Chinese either, and can't get their heads around what I must have been doing the past year I was being taught. Basically, I'm not used to people speaking as fast as them, and they're not used to waiting for really slow responses, like mine, haha (have you HEARD Joy speaking? Chinese or English, when she goes, geez it's like wHOOOOOSH). Also, I'm forever in a state of being petrified of the idea of offending them somehow by doing something "white" or, worse yet, "Mykalesque". Joy seems to think common sense should see me through it all fine, but I'm not too sure what I have and what everyone calls "common" sense are really as compatible as all that sometimes =P
When I DO understand, it's kind of funny, because even then I don't seem to reply fast enough to convince them I know what's going on. Once her Ah Bu ("Nana", but this isn't good Chinese apparently, it's like Shanghainese baby talk) told me "when you're full you shouldn't keep eating, you should stop before you're full." I got most of that, partly because it's pretty straightforward but mostly cos Joy had already said she says this a lot. I nodded because I agreed, and don't really have much in my reportoire right now except for "yes, I agree." and saying that too much makes me feel stupid. Then Ah Bu was all "oh you don't understand!!!" "No no, sometimes I DO understand I just don't know what to say back!!!" She did seem to accept this. I think. Another time she was making soup, so she yelled at me "Soup! This is soup! Michael, do you know what 'soup' is??? SOUP. SOUP! SOUP!!!"
This morning I was offered toast again. I've been trying to write down all the new words I hear every day and revise the most useful ones here and there, so I was ready for the question, I was all "no thankyou, I don't really want toast, just like this is good." She seemed very impressed. "Oh sometimes he DOES speak Chinese!!!" she said, although I totally missed this and recieved it second-hand through Joy.
Ah Gong went on a sort of rant about how my future should go now that I'm a graduate (apparently he just does this sometimes, having been quite successful himself in life). It went on for a while and Joy says this was just the beginning. All I understood was, "First step, be as good as Joy at Chinese at least!!!" I agreed with this much, haha. Could be a little while though ...
Oh and Ah Bu still hasn't decided whether or not I can use chopsticks yet. Joy's Uncle's mates were all pretty impressed and told me no white people can use chopsticks like me. Joy kicked me under the table when I started to reply with "oh lots of Australians can use chopsticks, it's not that special!" I'm not quite sure what Ah Bu's criteria is yet, haha. She was very impressed at first when I picked them up, but when I had a little trouble with an egg of all things she was really quick to say (with what sounded to me like relief) "Oh, ok, he doesn't know how to do it!"
I'm pretty sure they think I'm really stupid and I am a little worried about how that'll affect their opinion of me being the guy chasing their granddaughter, but they're still super nice to me so that's good at least xD Why do I like old people so much? Maybe I look forward to being one of them one day or something, or maybe part of me already is a bit like that =P
They're so thoughtful, set up a bed for me, washed my clothes and making sure I eat properly etc. Ah Gong is such a thorough planner, he's compiled a list of all the things I have to do/see before I leave, and has even organised it into a day-to-day plan to make sure we get as much of it in as possible ... I hope we didn't offend him or anything by taking today off, we're still a bit knackered from getting here and all.
[First Day In Qingdao]
Yesterday was good, we checked out the beach, which is awesome by Chinese standards. Not nearly warm enough to go swimming though, the average temp has been around zero, and if I'm gonna get snow worth knowing about I want it even lower! Qingdao is a lot more like Melbourne than Shanghai though, it's a lot cleaner - the air actually feels safe to breathe, the people seem a lot less crazy about milking me for all my money, there are trees everywhere and yes, BIRDS everywhere ^^ Yesterday I was a little grumpy from lack of sleep though, and I was particullarly sensitive to the staring. There are not nearly as many tourists around here as in Shangy, so they are not as accustomed to white people I guess. There has been quite a bit of gawking.
The market with Joy was ok, but I did get more than a little impatient, her style and mine is so different (apparently I remind her of her mum when we're clothes-shopping). I think she's a bit too nice, she doesn't feel the need to be curt like I do. I just don't like to waste time or seem too keen (Ah Bu later made comments like mine about Joy too obviously wanting stuff and so not getting the best prices =P) Joy was very adamant about me getting a new jacket, as my favourite is literally falling apart at the seams. I argued that I kind of like that cos now I can hide stuff between the seams. But anyway yeah Joy copped a little bit of a snappy rant about how if we were shopping for me I would only do it my way so after arguing with one woman a bit too long about how her goods weren't quite as awesome as she said we marched around the corner, grabbed one without really looking at it after I mumbled in a thick grumbly accent "Yeah, whatever that one'sorite" and Joy told the woman "We're only paying 120, I'm not arguing, usually I only pay 100 but I'm being generous because I heard prices went up. If it's not 120 we'll just go somewhere else where it is." The woman immediately accepted without wasting our time or trying to play us for idiots and I was so proud of my Cutthroat Baby =P (Still though, damn market crash that's at least equal to what I would grudgingly pay for a non-op shop jacket back home!!!)
Oh and we randomly got on a boat and cruised around. Both of us, for 20 kuai! That made me feel a lot better =]
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
A Let-Down For My Loyal Hasaam?
Day #66
Michael considered returning that empty-shelled peanut and demanding his money back but then realised to his dismay that this wouldn't work - once it's opened, how can I prove I didn't eat or lose the contents?!
This is the last day in Shanghai ... just been chillin', it's been pretty good for relaxing by myself, totally different vibe living basically in the dead centre of the city as opposed to the outskirts where SISU was ... honestly I'm not sure I prefer it though. Near the university locals tended to only speak Chinese and were sort of used to foreigners being able to speak a little bit, since we were all students and such. Here, they're far more used to tourists, so those who don't feel like they can speak English well just do all these weird hand signals and it takes a little effort to convince them that I can speak any Mandarin at all, haha. Far more Leather Jacket Men offering the usual - "Hello friend! Socks-watches-DVDs-ladies-hasheesh hasheesh!? BEAUTIFUL ladies, very nice sock!!! Friend, just come a-have-a-look look!", but then I have been wandering Nanjing Road (think Burke Street times 100) a bit so I shouldn't expect much else =P
Hung out with Eugene Saturday eve and Sunday arvo. Eugene is the Indian guy from the HK train who spent a year learning Chinese in Taiwan. He's pretty cool and may actually someday wind up living in Sydney, so it's possible I may see him again, which would be awesome. Anyway his gf Rui is Japanese, speaks less English than I do Jap so as a result the two of them converse pretty much exclusively in Mandarin. Saturday they also brought along a Chinese friend called Jin who'd spent 4 years in Japan and spoke superb English to boot, as well as HER friend visiting from Japan who spoke no English or Chinese. So across the table we had me and Eugene chatting in English, which would then be translated into Chinese for one Jap girl and then into Japanese for the other one, or directly from English to Japanese by the Chinese girl. Confused yet? =P My Chinese has definitely overtaken my Japanese, and I found it incredible how I couldn't even remember the most basic of stuff - although some words came back to me when I tried to listen to them, there was no way of predicting what I was gonna understand. They seemed to think it was really funny to watch me trying to say anything, but at least they were nice about it haha. I think after a week or so of practising certain things will come back to me. Anyway it was a fun night. Jin's friend Mikako will be in Tokyo when I go there with Shannon, I may find her again and that could be pretty fun, they were all nice people, just depends whether she has time and if I didn't scare her off =P
Sunday we went to Yu Yuan ("Yu Gardens") which is a massive tourist hotspot where the "Most Famous Shao (Xiao?) Long Bao Restaurant" is located. Shao Long Bao is basically a sort of dumpling that also has soup in it with the food. You dip it in vinegar and try not to pop the fragile skin before you put it in your mouth. (Not too different to wontons, but they're shaped slightly differently and are a lot more delicate.) I'd been told they were awesome, but pretty much all of them have meat in them so I'd never been able to see for myself. This place happened to have vegetarian options, and I am very happy to say that they pretty much did live up to the hype. Then I suddenly remembered a Japanese song and Rui knew it too so we sang a little bit in the street and I think we sorta confused Eugene xD
Monday was a total write-off, and I was glad for it. Barely spoke to anyone or did anything, just read a chapter of this Chinese comic book I bought, wrote down all the new vocab I didn't know (a bit over a hundred words XO) and wrote the last blog while eating far too many peanuts. Oh and possibly pissed Joy off by being half asleep and quite unresponsive when she called, but as far as I can tell we're ok now!
Tuesday was my last chance to see Miranda for a while. If all goes well for her, she may be off to Ireland soon to study there, which I'm very excited about and I really hope things do work out. There's nobody more deserving than her for an opportunity like this, she's just such an awesome person. We were going to try and record a song together but the cold meant that my flute was way out of tune (the metal contracts and expands very slightly depending on temperature) and by the time I'd warmed the bloody thing up my fingers had gone numb from the cold so I couldn't cover the holes properly. Instead she secretly recorded me singing the Arabian Nights theme from Aladdin after I was so surprised she'd never seen that movie. I sounded terrible xD Sat there listening to her playing a few of her original songs, they're sooo good I can't wait til she gets them recorded and online so I can share them with you guys. Don't ask me why, but there's one I really want Nana Joyce to hear ... I'm really gonna miss Miranda. For a little while, neither of us is going to have a permanent address so we won't be able to write eachother for a couple months either. We don't even know what country we'll see eachother in next, but I hope she can find her way to Australia someday, even though there's very little reason for her to come since our Student VISA conditions suck.
So I found my way back to the same hostel I lived in last time I was here, awesome! I planned to look it up on the internet but couldn't understand the map or recognise any street names, so instead I got off the train at People's Square (sort of like Melbourne Central I guess, but again, bigger and more densely packed) and let my feet show me the way. It was pretty weird, just like how I knew how to get back to the Uni after the first time and knew that area so well. Funny how some things are still hiding in the old grey matter somewhere. The place is as cool as it was last time, and most of the staff speak above average English relative to outside, as well as being really friendly awesome people who started speaking to me in Chinese once they realised I preferred to practise. Except for this one girl who was here last time and remembered me. When I tried to speak Chinese I got two words out before she just interupted me and said "You can speak English, I'm not a very patient person" haha. Maybe I should try and work in a Youth Hostel in Japan ... ?
Oh yeah and some of you may remember me ranting about how I discovered my allergy to cats once I became very attached to a cat in China. That cat lives here. And had babies. Not quite 500, only 3 or 4, but geez they still love me. My whole face pretty much flared up in hives last night, very unattractive, but that TINY KITTEN IS SO CUTE WITH ITS ITSY BITSY MEWLING - *cough cough, AHEM*.
Uhhhhh see you in Qingdao???
Michael considered returning that empty-shelled peanut and demanding his money back but then realised to his dismay that this wouldn't work - once it's opened, how can I prove I didn't eat or lose the contents?!
This is the last day in Shanghai ... just been chillin', it's been pretty good for relaxing by myself, totally different vibe living basically in the dead centre of the city as opposed to the outskirts where SISU was ... honestly I'm not sure I prefer it though. Near the university locals tended to only speak Chinese and were sort of used to foreigners being able to speak a little bit, since we were all students and such. Here, they're far more used to tourists, so those who don't feel like they can speak English well just do all these weird hand signals and it takes a little effort to convince them that I can speak any Mandarin at all, haha. Far more Leather Jacket Men offering the usual - "Hello friend! Socks-watches-DVDs-ladies-hasheesh hasheesh!? BEAUTIFUL ladies, very nice sock!!! Friend, just come a-have-a-look look!", but then I have been wandering Nanjing Road (think Burke Street times 100) a bit so I shouldn't expect much else =P
Hung out with Eugene Saturday eve and Sunday arvo. Eugene is the Indian guy from the HK train who spent a year learning Chinese in Taiwan. He's pretty cool and may actually someday wind up living in Sydney, so it's possible I may see him again, which would be awesome. Anyway his gf Rui is Japanese, speaks less English than I do Jap so as a result the two of them converse pretty much exclusively in Mandarin. Saturday they also brought along a Chinese friend called Jin who'd spent 4 years in Japan and spoke superb English to boot, as well as HER friend visiting from Japan who spoke no English or Chinese. So across the table we had me and Eugene chatting in English, which would then be translated into Chinese for one Jap girl and then into Japanese for the other one, or directly from English to Japanese by the Chinese girl. Confused yet? =P My Chinese has definitely overtaken my Japanese, and I found it incredible how I couldn't even remember the most basic of stuff - although some words came back to me when I tried to listen to them, there was no way of predicting what I was gonna understand. They seemed to think it was really funny to watch me trying to say anything, but at least they were nice about it haha. I think after a week or so of practising certain things will come back to me. Anyway it was a fun night. Jin's friend Mikako will be in Tokyo when I go there with Shannon, I may find her again and that could be pretty fun, they were all nice people, just depends whether she has time and if I didn't scare her off =P
Sunday we went to Yu Yuan ("Yu Gardens") which is a massive tourist hotspot where the "Most Famous Shao (Xiao?) Long Bao Restaurant" is located. Shao Long Bao is basically a sort of dumpling that also has soup in it with the food. You dip it in vinegar and try not to pop the fragile skin before you put it in your mouth. (Not too different to wontons, but they're shaped slightly differently and are a lot more delicate.) I'd been told they were awesome, but pretty much all of them have meat in them so I'd never been able to see for myself. This place happened to have vegetarian options, and I am very happy to say that they pretty much did live up to the hype. Then I suddenly remembered a Japanese song and Rui knew it too so we sang a little bit in the street and I think we sorta confused Eugene xD
Monday was a total write-off, and I was glad for it. Barely spoke to anyone or did anything, just read a chapter of this Chinese comic book I bought, wrote down all the new vocab I didn't know (a bit over a hundred words XO) and wrote the last blog while eating far too many peanuts. Oh and possibly pissed Joy off by being half asleep and quite unresponsive when she called, but as far as I can tell we're ok now!
Tuesday was my last chance to see Miranda for a while. If all goes well for her, she may be off to Ireland soon to study there, which I'm very excited about and I really hope things do work out. There's nobody more deserving than her for an opportunity like this, she's just such an awesome person. We were going to try and record a song together but the cold meant that my flute was way out of tune (the metal contracts and expands very slightly depending on temperature) and by the time I'd warmed the bloody thing up my fingers had gone numb from the cold so I couldn't cover the holes properly. Instead she secretly recorded me singing the Arabian Nights theme from Aladdin after I was so surprised she'd never seen that movie. I sounded terrible xD Sat there listening to her playing a few of her original songs, they're sooo good I can't wait til she gets them recorded and online so I can share them with you guys. Don't ask me why, but there's one I really want Nana Joyce to hear ... I'm really gonna miss Miranda. For a little while, neither of us is going to have a permanent address so we won't be able to write eachother for a couple months either. We don't even know what country we'll see eachother in next, but I hope she can find her way to Australia someday, even though there's very little reason for her to come since our Student VISA conditions suck.
So I found my way back to the same hostel I lived in last time I was here, awesome! I planned to look it up on the internet but couldn't understand the map or recognise any street names, so instead I got off the train at People's Square (sort of like Melbourne Central I guess, but again, bigger and more densely packed) and let my feet show me the way. It was pretty weird, just like how I knew how to get back to the Uni after the first time and knew that area so well. Funny how some things are still hiding in the old grey matter somewhere. The place is as cool as it was last time, and most of the staff speak above average English relative to outside, as well as being really friendly awesome people who started speaking to me in Chinese once they realised I preferred to practise. Except for this one girl who was here last time and remembered me. When I tried to speak Chinese I got two words out before she just interupted me and said "You can speak English, I'm not a very patient person" haha. Maybe I should try and work in a Youth Hostel in Japan ... ?
Oh yeah and some of you may remember me ranting about how I discovered my allergy to cats once I became very attached to a cat in China. That cat lives here. And had babies. Not quite 500, only 3 or 4, but geez they still love me. My whole face pretty much flared up in hives last night, very unattractive, but that TINY KITTEN IS SO CUTE WITH ITS ITSY BITSY MEWLING - *cough cough, AHEM*.
Uhhhhh see you in Qingdao???
Monday, January 12, 2009
Two Hasaam In As Many Days. Woah.
Day #64
Funds: $5500
Michael has replaced numerous vices with gross over-consumption of peanuts, and regrets nothing. Except for that one that was completely empty. I am NOT getting over that anytime soon.
Hmmm lessee here ... ok we'll do it this way: a 3in1 package for your reading pleasure!
[Trip to Zhu Jia Jiao]
(___________ = 15km, apparently)
So me and Joy decided to stick with the SISU Guesthouse until the 10th cos with the student discount things weren't so bad, and anyway I'd paid for the internet all of January so it would have been silly to walk away. (Then of course as I'm sure you're well aware by now my laptop died nice and proper within 2 days.) We could have easily spent all the time hanging out watching movies or whatever but - oh yeah, the disc drive had morphed into a smart-arse. So we decided we should do something touristy, originally we were thinking Su Zhou, but then Joy remembered some place she'd been when she was little which she assured me was very pretty, and I'd already been to Su Zhou last time I was here, so we went to this other place slightly closer instead. Pretty standard "Picturesque Chinese Tourist Site" meaning lots of photo ops and people trying to sell you reeeeeeeeally souvenir-type goods which might have made good presents if I could have been bothered stopping to really look at them properly. Sorry guys ^^" We rode on a boat and Joy took a couple videos which hopefully we'll find a way to put up somehow, including one or two of Crazy Turtle Lady, who we bought Presumably Sane If Possibly Traumatised Turtles from. Hmmm I could have said all that better huh? Well anyway yes, that was the bottom line. We have turtles now, terrapins if you wanna get anal about it. They are called Red-Eared Sliders (although we call them Bowser and Eddy) are very cute, and surprisingly lively at completely sporadic intervals. They are also, it turns out, so extremely illegal in Australia that if you are caught with them, you cop a $100,000 fine and/or 5 years jail time. So sorry Cameron, I did originally plan to sneak you one home but I'm thinking it's not really worth the trouble ^^" The plan now is to have Joy's Ah Gong (maternal Grandfather) adopt them and we'll visit them when we can.
So Crazy Turtle Lady did explain in great detail how lots of people get away with smuggling her turtles, she was in fact quite manic about the whole thing and all but threw her turtles at us. She insisted we never feed them or put them in very deep water until it gets warmer. I'm not really doing her justice, which is a shame because she had NOTHING on Insane Lizard Man, a merchant with similar wares and a similar sales pitch, only he was insisting we hide the tiny things in our mouths when we walked through. He demonstrated this once or twice. When it became apparent that we were quite happy with the turtles we'd already purchased he then asked us how we felt about "long", which I thought meant "dragon", and so did Joy. Next thing I know he's reached into a hidden bag, pulled this sinister-looking lizard out and thrown it on my scarf. Man that thing was awesome, could crawl upside-down on my arms and everything. They looked fast and pointy, so overall a sort of cross between Sonic the Hedgehog and Spiderman, I think. Awesome. Oh yeah and Zhu Jia Jiao is famous for its rice dumplings (sticky rice mixed with stuff molded into a triangular prism-shape and wrapped in a leaf of some sort). They have lots of different kinds, some with meat, eggs, red bean, pretty much everything. All the ones I sampled were pretty good. =D
[Brief Rundown of Booktown!]
THIS is a bookstore. The sign reads "Shanghai Shu Cheng" or "Shanghai Book City", Fuzhou Road has a couple little ones here and there, then suddenly here it is. The place is 7 floors, each floor specialising in a category or theme and in my opinion, this is something we could really do with back home. I mean, what have we got, a 2-storey Angus and Robertson? Is it A&R again or some other place that has the mini-Gloria Jeans sometimes? This place has an actual proper Starbucks somewhere in it (not that I'm saying we need Starbucks in Melbourne, I was quite proud of us for holding that off as well as we did). They also sell a huge variety of clearly burned PC games, probably legit CDs and a few nifty little gizmos as well as DVDs. But ... unlike some uhh, OTHER book places I may have encountered it doesn't allow itself to become a Timezone clone, hehe. Ohhh and this random pair of adorable Chinese girls came up to me and Joy and asked us if we could sign a book filled with random messages they were compiling from strangers as a birthday present for their friend. We thought this was a really cute idea, hope it wasn't some sort of scam, ahah. They'd gotten a few people to write in their native tongues so I figured rather than bastardise the birthday girl's native tongue I'd just write a heartfelt mini-essay about how crazy I thought her friends were. When I asked what their friend's name was, they said "Rabbit". AWWWWWW.
[The Impromptu Trip To Nanjing]
(___________ = 100km)
On the 10th Joy had to leave Shanghai to go see her Dad's side of the family, who live someplace whose name I forgot but is close-ish to Qingdao, I think. At any rate she wanted to go it alone, I think because she doesn't know them as well as her maternal Grandparents so bringing me might have been weirder. That ultimately suited me just fine as it gave me these 5 days to be alone and do pretty much nothing, something I haven't been able to do for quite a while. Can't remember if I mentioned it or not, but Thursday I'll get on a plane to Qingdao and she'll meet me there in the afternoon. So we got up relatively early to catch a taxi to her uncle's place, he was supposed to see her off at Shanghai Railway Station and saw no harm in me coming along too. The place was packed, apparently lots of people are flooding the long-distance trains as Chinese New Year is coming up and everyone wants to go back to their hometowns to be with their families and everything, it's basically Christmas and New Years rolled into one. So the place was busier than anywhere I've ever seen, and that includes my stint in HK (come to think of it, HK's probably even worse right now ... hmmm). Joy's Uncle kept trying to get something called "Platform Tickets", which for all I know could be the done thing everywhere else too but the point is you need to get em if you wanna accompany somebody all the way to the train itself. They wouldn't sell them to him. Then he sent me and Joy there to act like I was a lost foreigner who needed my Chinese friend's help to find the right train. That didn't work either. So at this stage I wasn't sure what was going on, I just knew that Joy was getting scared she was going to miss her train, and considering the time of year another ticket might be tricky. Joy's Uncle disappeared and this time promptly returned with a man in a leather jacket. We were fairly sure they'd never met before and suspected he'd been slipped a bit of cash or something. Next thing I knew we were following this guy through the train station acting natural and nobody was trying to stop us. I had no idea why. Joy asked her Uncle, "who is this guy?" he just laughed and said "it doesn't matter!" and I laughed too =P "See, Joy? This is the way to get things done!" I chuckled, and probably went off on some sort of rant about how clever and resourceful her Uncle was if memory serves.
We found Joy's train with 15mins to go, and the three of us hopped on, me and her Uncle carrying her luggage. We had a quick look around to figure out where to put everything down and ... well by now you've probably guessed that at this point the doors slammed shut and the train started to move 10mins early. A train lady walked past and Joy's Uncle explained that we didn't have tickets and needed to get off. She politely explained that the train wouldn't stop until the next station, and since this was an express that would be Nanjing. In two hours (as seen in the above map). Joy's Uncle tried to be outraged but then she also politely pointed out that there was no such thing as an express train platform ticket, so it made no sense that we should have even been there. I tried to contain my excitement since after all, for him this was a massive inconvenience whereas for me, I was going to Nanjing! I would see a bit more of China after all! I wondered if it would be possible for me to sneak off, crash at a hostel for a little bit and return to Shangy in a couple of days but then it occurred to me that given the whole Chinese New Year crazy train situation, I couldn't be sure that tickets back would be easy enough to come by and/or affordable. Oh and all my luggage was waiting for me in the lobby of SISU Guesthouse, not sure what they would do with it after a couple days of me not coming to pick it up, so I gave that plan a miss. [Sigh] It would have been awesome though. I did get some nice pictures of Chinese countryside for a change though, as well as some not-so-nice pictures of some demolished houses or some sort of rubble. Perhaps I will show them to you all some day, when I have access to a computer that doesn't have facebook issues. For the moment, they sit on my nifty USB stick. Oh and I have a picture of a sign that says "Nanjing Station"!!! That PROVES I was in Nanjing! Sadly, we didn't even leave the platform, our train going back was already there for us. In case the map doesn't put it into perspective, this is probably the same as accidentally getting on the wrong train at Spencer Street Station (oh, I'm sorry, "Southern Cross" Station) finding yourself in Sydney, and then just coming straight home.
Phew, okay so I think I've covered most eventy-type goodness, at least I got all the Joy-content done for the moment, things have been kinda slow since she left so look forward to a relatively shorter entry about the last couple of days! Ahh who am I kidding, Japan stuff and arrangements have advanced, I'll probably wind up going on some sort of rant about my money situation, exchange rates and how I look forward to going like nothing else. Oh well, you wouldn't be reading this if you didn't enjoy it, right? I mean, it's not like I'm putting a gun to anyone's head, am I???
Funds: $5500
Michael has replaced numerous vices with gross over-consumption of peanuts, and regrets nothing. Except for that one that was completely empty. I am NOT getting over that anytime soon.
Hmmm lessee here ... ok we'll do it this way: a 3in1 package for your reading pleasure!
[Trip to Zhu Jia Jiao]
(___________ = 15km, apparently)
So me and Joy decided to stick with the SISU Guesthouse until the 10th cos with the student discount things weren't so bad, and anyway I'd paid for the internet all of January so it would have been silly to walk away. (Then of course as I'm sure you're well aware by now my laptop died nice and proper within 2 days.) We could have easily spent all the time hanging out watching movies or whatever but - oh yeah, the disc drive had morphed into a smart-arse. So we decided we should do something touristy, originally we were thinking Su Zhou, but then Joy remembered some place she'd been when she was little which she assured me was very pretty, and I'd already been to Su Zhou last time I was here, so we went to this other place slightly closer instead. Pretty standard "Picturesque Chinese Tourist Site" meaning lots of photo ops and people trying to sell you reeeeeeeeally souvenir-type goods which might have made good presents if I could have been bothered stopping to really look at them properly. Sorry guys ^^" We rode on a boat and Joy took a couple videos which hopefully we'll find a way to put up somehow, including one or two of Crazy Turtle Lady, who we bought Presumably Sane If Possibly Traumatised Turtles from. Hmmm I could have said all that better huh? Well anyway yes, that was the bottom line. We have turtles now, terrapins if you wanna get anal about it. They are called Red-Eared Sliders (although we call them Bowser and Eddy) are very cute, and surprisingly lively at completely sporadic intervals. They are also, it turns out, so extremely illegal in Australia that if you are caught with them, you cop a $100,000 fine and/or 5 years jail time. So sorry Cameron, I did originally plan to sneak you one home but I'm thinking it's not really worth the trouble ^^" The plan now is to have Joy's Ah Gong (maternal Grandfather) adopt them and we'll visit them when we can.
So Crazy Turtle Lady did explain in great detail how lots of people get away with smuggling her turtles, she was in fact quite manic about the whole thing and all but threw her turtles at us. She insisted we never feed them or put them in very deep water until it gets warmer. I'm not really doing her justice, which is a shame because she had NOTHING on Insane Lizard Man, a merchant with similar wares and a similar sales pitch, only he was insisting we hide the tiny things in our mouths when we walked through. He demonstrated this once or twice. When it became apparent that we were quite happy with the turtles we'd already purchased he then asked us how we felt about "long", which I thought meant "dragon", and so did Joy. Next thing I know he's reached into a hidden bag, pulled this sinister-looking lizard out and thrown it on my scarf. Man that thing was awesome, could crawl upside-down on my arms and everything. They looked fast and pointy, so overall a sort of cross between Sonic the Hedgehog and Spiderman, I think. Awesome. Oh yeah and Zhu Jia Jiao is famous for its rice dumplings (sticky rice mixed with stuff molded into a triangular prism-shape and wrapped in a leaf of some sort). They have lots of different kinds, some with meat, eggs, red bean, pretty much everything. All the ones I sampled were pretty good. =D
[Brief Rundown of Booktown!]
THIS is a bookstore. The sign reads "Shanghai Shu Cheng" or "Shanghai Book City", Fuzhou Road has a couple little ones here and there, then suddenly here it is. The place is 7 floors, each floor specialising in a category or theme and in my opinion, this is something we could really do with back home. I mean, what have we got, a 2-storey Angus and Robertson? Is it A&R again or some other place that has the mini-Gloria Jeans sometimes? This place has an actual proper Starbucks somewhere in it (not that I'm saying we need Starbucks in Melbourne, I was quite proud of us for holding that off as well as we did). They also sell a huge variety of clearly burned PC games, probably legit CDs and a few nifty little gizmos as well as DVDs. But ... unlike some uhh, OTHER book places I may have encountered it doesn't allow itself to become a Timezone clone, hehe. Ohhh and this random pair of adorable Chinese girls came up to me and Joy and asked us if we could sign a book filled with random messages they were compiling from strangers as a birthday present for their friend. We thought this was a really cute idea, hope it wasn't some sort of scam, ahah. They'd gotten a few people to write in their native tongues so I figured rather than bastardise the birthday girl's native tongue I'd just write a heartfelt mini-essay about how crazy I thought her friends were. When I asked what their friend's name was, they said "Rabbit". AWWWWWW.[The Impromptu Trip To Nanjing]
(___________ = 100km)
On the 10th Joy had to leave Shanghai to go see her Dad's side of the family, who live someplace whose name I forgot but is close-ish to Qingdao, I think. At any rate she wanted to go it alone, I think because she doesn't know them as well as her maternal Grandparents so bringing me might have been weirder. That ultimately suited me just fine as it gave me these 5 days to be alone and do pretty much nothing, something I haven't been able to do for quite a while. Can't remember if I mentioned it or not, but Thursday I'll get on a plane to Qingdao and she'll meet me there in the afternoon. So we got up relatively early to catch a taxi to her uncle's place, he was supposed to see her off at Shanghai Railway Station and saw no harm in me coming along too. The place was packed, apparently lots of people are flooding the long-distance trains as Chinese New Year is coming up and everyone wants to go back to their hometowns to be with their families and everything, it's basically Christmas and New Years rolled into one. So the place was busier than anywhere I've ever seen, and that includes my stint in HK (come to think of it, HK's probably even worse right now ... hmmm). Joy's Uncle kept trying to get something called "Platform Tickets", which for all I know could be the done thing everywhere else too but the point is you need to get em if you wanna accompany somebody all the way to the train itself. They wouldn't sell them to him. Then he sent me and Joy there to act like I was a lost foreigner who needed my Chinese friend's help to find the right train. That didn't work either. So at this stage I wasn't sure what was going on, I just knew that Joy was getting scared she was going to miss her train, and considering the time of year another ticket might be tricky. Joy's Uncle disappeared and this time promptly returned with a man in a leather jacket. We were fairly sure they'd never met before and suspected he'd been slipped a bit of cash or something. Next thing I knew we were following this guy through the train station acting natural and nobody was trying to stop us. I had no idea why. Joy asked her Uncle, "who is this guy?" he just laughed and said "it doesn't matter!" and I laughed too =P "See, Joy? This is the way to get things done!" I chuckled, and probably went off on some sort of rant about how clever and resourceful her Uncle was if memory serves.
We found Joy's train with 15mins to go, and the three of us hopped on, me and her Uncle carrying her luggage. We had a quick look around to figure out where to put everything down and ... well by now you've probably guessed that at this point the doors slammed shut and the train started to move 10mins early. A train lady walked past and Joy's Uncle explained that we didn't have tickets and needed to get off. She politely explained that the train wouldn't stop until the next station, and since this was an express that would be Nanjing. In two hours (as seen in the above map). Joy's Uncle tried to be outraged but then she also politely pointed out that there was no such thing as an express train platform ticket, so it made no sense that we should have even been there. I tried to contain my excitement since after all, for him this was a massive inconvenience whereas for me, I was going to Nanjing! I would see a bit more of China after all! I wondered if it would be possible for me to sneak off, crash at a hostel for a little bit and return to Shangy in a couple of days but then it occurred to me that given the whole Chinese New Year crazy train situation, I couldn't be sure that tickets back would be easy enough to come by and/or affordable. Oh and all my luggage was waiting for me in the lobby of SISU Guesthouse, not sure what they would do with it after a couple days of me not coming to pick it up, so I gave that plan a miss. [Sigh] It would have been awesome though. I did get some nice pictures of Chinese countryside for a change though, as well as some not-so-nice pictures of some demolished houses or some sort of rubble. Perhaps I will show them to you all some day, when I have access to a computer that doesn't have facebook issues. For the moment, they sit on my nifty USB stick. Oh and I have a picture of a sign that says "Nanjing Station"!!! That PROVES I was in Nanjing! Sadly, we didn't even leave the platform, our train going back was already there for us. In case the map doesn't put it into perspective, this is probably the same as accidentally getting on the wrong train at Spencer Street Station (oh, I'm sorry, "Southern Cross" Station) finding yourself in Sydney, and then just coming straight home.
Phew, okay so I think I've covered most eventy-type goodness, at least I got all the Joy-content done for the moment, things have been kinda slow since she left so look forward to a relatively shorter entry about the last couple of days! Ahh who am I kidding, Japan stuff and arrangements have advanced, I'll probably wind up going on some sort of rant about my money situation, exchange rates and how I look forward to going like nothing else. Oh well, you wouldn't be reading this if you didn't enjoy it, right? I mean, it's not like I'm putting a gun to anyone's head, am I???
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Fried Hasaam And Eggs
Day #63
(rough location of my hostel)
Location: Some Internet Cafe on Nanjing Road, near People's Square (still Shanghai but)
Michael has come to terms with the death of his laptop, Simon.
Oh man the amount of getting up tos I've been doing since I last saw my blog has been crazy!!! If I could have, I would have posted about 3 blogs since the last one, I even had the time to do it occasionally, but unfortunately my laptop no longer wants to load windows. All it will do is spit the DVD drive in and out at me, quite disrespectfully, I feel. As usual when I have a crisis which turns my life upside-down for stupid reasons, Joy came to the rescue and together we went and bought a usb that contains 16gb - Simon could hold 20. I also now have a USB that can accept any camera memory card, which saves a lot of hassle loading photos. All up this cost me about $AUS30, it is unclear how the guy on the street obtained these goods =[
The reason photos have not been going up is because for some reason the computers at these net cafes seem to despise facebook for some reason. In fact, my laptop was unusual in that I could access facebook at all, in hindsight a couple other Monash people had similar problems, so I may have to investigate a new means of getting them across the pond. Hmmm I'm thinking I may do a couple entries tonight just to make it more readable for my loyal viewers ... oh who am I kidding, hi Mum and Nana =P (jk I know there's a couple more ^^)
So Joy's Uncle and his lot are the real deal, crazy Chinese politeness is not restricted to religious nuts like my experience may have led me to believe. Before last week, the treatment I've been used to in Shanghai as a foreigner has generally been a sort of attitude that I'm basically a walking cash machine with no brains. I've taken this on board as a half-truth. In all fairness though, some taxi drivers and waiters have been awesome patient with my terrible directions, and in the market if I tell people I'm just following my friends but have no money they'll hang out for a chat too here and there. But anyway!
Joy knew her Uncle, Aunty and cousin. Everyone else was as random to her as they were to me. I struggled terribly following their Shanghai accents - most people put on a standard sort of accent for dealings with anyone but these guys were just hanging out. We had dinner at a restaurant and then a couple nights later her Aunty cooked, but the food was equally good. I've never had such good food in China. They made a point of ensuring there was plenty of vego stuff for me, which is a massive deal because even though Chinese cuisine has more diverse vegetarian (su de) dishes, they seem to be more freaked out by the notion of vegetarianism than Australians (case in point, after I explained that I don't eat meat, one waitress stared for 5 seconds before asking "is lamb or dog ok then?"). Joy whispered tips in English here and there to make sure I didn't commit any horrible manners, and made me promise not to finish every last grain of rice like usual - this makes the host feel like they haven't given you enough, and they WILL keep offering you food until they're sure you've been satisfied.
I decided that one couple at the table were basically the Shanghainese version of Rat and Jenny. Most of you have no idea who that is. If you were at my 21st, you may recall me singing in Chinese. If you're still with me, you may remember somebody yelling, "oy! Speak English!" That was Rat. Anyway this Shangy guy was hilarious but his accent was so strong I had no hope of understanding even basic stuff. Joy can follow Shanghainese but still had trouble because he loved his slangso much. He kept interupting people with bizarre statements that they all seemed to find hilarious and some of the younger guys kept laughing and saying stuff like "shut up none of us can understand you!" Heheheh. He insisted I drink as much as possible and mistakenly assumed I was holding back because of Joy, which wound up with her being labelled "Lao Hu" (= "Old Tiger", apparently what you call a wife who won't let her husband have any fun cos she's too naggy and dominating, kinda like "The Old Ball and Chain" in English I suppose). But he told me not to worry because "And old tiger is just a sick cat when she's weak", so the solution to my "problem" was to hit her, apparently xD His wife was very nice, spoke really carefully and slowly, we had a nice little chat =]
Aw man this blog-stuff is wearing me out. From the top of my memory, here's a list of stuff I wanna get people up to speed on:
Trip to Zhu Jia Jiao
The Impromptu Trip To Nanjing
Brief Rundown of Booktown!
Kicking it with Eugene and Co. (a.k.a. "Trilingual Conversations That Fried My Brain And Exposed Just How Much Japanese I Really Have Forgotten")
Comments On Living in The Same Hostel As Last Time
(rough location of my hostel)
Location: Some Internet Cafe on Nanjing Road, near People's Square (still Shanghai but)
Michael has come to terms with the death of his laptop, Simon.
Oh man the amount of getting up tos I've been doing since I last saw my blog has been crazy!!! If I could have, I would have posted about 3 blogs since the last one, I even had the time to do it occasionally, but unfortunately my laptop no longer wants to load windows. All it will do is spit the DVD drive in and out at me, quite disrespectfully, I feel. As usual when I have a crisis which turns my life upside-down for stupid reasons, Joy came to the rescue and together we went and bought a usb that contains 16gb - Simon could hold 20. I also now have a USB that can accept any camera memory card, which saves a lot of hassle loading photos. All up this cost me about $AUS30, it is unclear how the guy on the street obtained these goods =[
The reason photos have not been going up is because for some reason the computers at these net cafes seem to despise facebook for some reason. In fact, my laptop was unusual in that I could access facebook at all, in hindsight a couple other Monash people had similar problems, so I may have to investigate a new means of getting them across the pond. Hmmm I'm thinking I may do a couple entries tonight just to make it more readable for my loyal viewers ... oh who am I kidding, hi Mum and Nana =P (jk I know there's a couple more ^^)
So Joy's Uncle and his lot are the real deal, crazy Chinese politeness is not restricted to religious nuts like my experience may have led me to believe. Before last week, the treatment I've been used to in Shanghai as a foreigner has generally been a sort of attitude that I'm basically a walking cash machine with no brains. I've taken this on board as a half-truth. In all fairness though, some taxi drivers and waiters have been awesome patient with my terrible directions, and in the market if I tell people I'm just following my friends but have no money they'll hang out for a chat too here and there. But anyway!
Joy knew her Uncle, Aunty and cousin. Everyone else was as random to her as they were to me. I struggled terribly following their Shanghai accents - most people put on a standard sort of accent for dealings with anyone but these guys were just hanging out. We had dinner at a restaurant and then a couple nights later her Aunty cooked, but the food was equally good. I've never had such good food in China. They made a point of ensuring there was plenty of vego stuff for me, which is a massive deal because even though Chinese cuisine has more diverse vegetarian (su de) dishes, they seem to be more freaked out by the notion of vegetarianism than Australians (case in point, after I explained that I don't eat meat, one waitress stared for 5 seconds before asking "is lamb or dog ok then?"). Joy whispered tips in English here and there to make sure I didn't commit any horrible manners, and made me promise not to finish every last grain of rice like usual - this makes the host feel like they haven't given you enough, and they WILL keep offering you food until they're sure you've been satisfied.
I decided that one couple at the table were basically the Shanghainese version of Rat and Jenny. Most of you have no idea who that is. If you were at my 21st, you may recall me singing in Chinese. If you're still with me, you may remember somebody yelling, "oy! Speak English!" That was Rat. Anyway this Shangy guy was hilarious but his accent was so strong I had no hope of understanding even basic stuff. Joy can follow Shanghainese but still had trouble because he loved his slangso much. He kept interupting people with bizarre statements that they all seemed to find hilarious and some of the younger guys kept laughing and saying stuff like "shut up none of us can understand you!" Heheheh. He insisted I drink as much as possible and mistakenly assumed I was holding back because of Joy, which wound up with her being labelled "Lao Hu" (= "Old Tiger", apparently what you call a wife who won't let her husband have any fun cos she's too naggy and dominating, kinda like "The Old Ball and Chain" in English I suppose). But he told me not to worry because "And old tiger is just a sick cat when she's weak", so the solution to my "problem" was to hit her, apparently xD His wife was very nice, spoke really carefully and slowly, we had a nice little chat =]
Aw man this blog-stuff is wearing me out. From the top of my memory, here's a list of stuff I wanna get people up to speed on:
Trip to Zhu Jia Jiao
The Impromptu Trip To Nanjing
Brief Rundown of Booktown!
Kicking it with Eugene and Co. (a.k.a. "Trilingual Conversations That Fried My Brain And Exposed Just How Much Japanese I Really Have Forgotten")
Comments On Living in The Same Hostel As Last Time
Saturday, January 3, 2009
6 Hasaams Go So Fast
Day #55
Location: SISU Guesthouse, Countdown!!!
Michael is done. Ball's in Monash's court now. Gimme Graduation!!!
Gotta clean up ... geez this room is in an awful state ... finished the course yesterday. Because we were allowed dictionaries this time the exam was much easier. Although, to be fair, there were no ridiculous surprises in this one so it's possible I could have done nearly this well even without one (ok who am I kidding the mini-essay q's at the end worth 30% featured a bunch of words I didn't know I couldn't have begun answering them without it!!!"
So today's the last day in the SISU Guesthouse. Everyone's bailing really quickly and really abruptly, we've labelled it the Mass Exodus because this place is gonna feel like a ghost house for those 2 or 3 of us who choose to stay here after the student discount is gone. Lots of people are hopping on a train to Beijing today, a handful of others are heading west to find some mountains so they can get some peace and quiet and breathe some fresh air before they head on to Xin Jiang, which is where our favourite Chinese Ethnic minority habituate, the wegar food here is kick-arse so I can't imagine what it's like over there. One or two people are actually just going home in the next two days.
As for me, still one of the least-travelled in the lot of us, I'm leaving the guesthouse with Joy but I'm not leaving Shanghai. Lenny, Sue Kim, Eric and Lian will all be around somewhere over the next couple days and so will I. Joy's family insisted on figuring out my plane ticket to Qingdao and it's less than $AUS100, so I certainly can't complain about that. Depending on how cheap a place me and Joy end up staying in in Shanghai, I may not be online until the 15th, when I rock up in Qingdao. Hopefully I'll have at least another entry in by then though. I just caught a spare moment, Dylan hasn't packed his laptop yet, Joy's in the shower, in an hour and a half the guesthouse people will be checking out our room so I better get a wriggle on.
Oh and today's Miranda's birthday! I'll send her a text soon. (Eric's bday in a couple days too, we'll have to dinner with him)
I'm really glad this course is over. I'll miss the people, I'll miss my teachers and definitely my tutor, who would have been such a great teacher if it weren't for the fact that we had that silly silly curricullum. My Chinese level has barely improved at all. Even my confidence hasn't risen that much because I've actually spent way too much time relying on other students who were better than me, and trying so hard to remember all the useless crap seemed to leave little space in my head for the stuff I wanted to learn. No more though, no more whinging, course is over. I can already feel my Chinese ability improving!!!
Last night I saw a Broadway musical with Joy's family, it was pretty good! I like her Mum, hadn't met her before, and I get a good feeling from her Dad too. Kayson, the 4-year-old brother, is the best. Why can I relate to 4-year-olds so well??? Anyway as a result I missed out on the craziness of the last night, having already missed the craziness of new year's eve. My understanding is, both involved a lot of people randomly hooking up drinking far too much and dancing like crazy. Some of those things I'm not allowed to do, and others I'm not really much good at =P We're all gonna do a brunch thing to see ourselves off though. That'll be soon after we all suddenly lose our rooms.
New Year's Eve me and Joy walked to the Bund from the Guesthouse, that was pretty nice ^^
________ = 1kmish
So I have officially completed all of my prescribed learning. Even if I go back to uni it'll be for a postgrad that'll be something I can finally study in my own way. From now on I can relax and properly enjoy this holiday, without too much pressure beyond the stress that might come from having to survive. On the other hand, it'll be an adventure!!! Yayyyyyyyy! Charrrrrrlieeeeeee!!!
Love you all, will send out new postcards soon I hope.
Location: SISU Guesthouse, Countdown!!!
Michael is done. Ball's in Monash's court now. Gimme Graduation!!!
Gotta clean up ... geez this room is in an awful state ... finished the course yesterday. Because we were allowed dictionaries this time the exam was much easier. Although, to be fair, there were no ridiculous surprises in this one so it's possible I could have done nearly this well even without one (ok who am I kidding the mini-essay q's at the end worth 30% featured a bunch of words I didn't know I couldn't have begun answering them without it!!!"
So today's the last day in the SISU Guesthouse. Everyone's bailing really quickly and really abruptly, we've labelled it the Mass Exodus because this place is gonna feel like a ghost house for those 2 or 3 of us who choose to stay here after the student discount is gone. Lots of people are hopping on a train to Beijing today, a handful of others are heading west to find some mountains so they can get some peace and quiet and breathe some fresh air before they head on to Xin Jiang, which is where our favourite Chinese Ethnic minority habituate, the wegar food here is kick-arse so I can't imagine what it's like over there. One or two people are actually just going home in the next two days.
As for me, still one of the least-travelled in the lot of us, I'm leaving the guesthouse with Joy but I'm not leaving Shanghai. Lenny, Sue Kim, Eric and Lian will all be around somewhere over the next couple days and so will I. Joy's family insisted on figuring out my plane ticket to Qingdao and it's less than $AUS100, so I certainly can't complain about that. Depending on how cheap a place me and Joy end up staying in in Shanghai, I may not be online until the 15th, when I rock up in Qingdao. Hopefully I'll have at least another entry in by then though. I just caught a spare moment, Dylan hasn't packed his laptop yet, Joy's in the shower, in an hour and a half the guesthouse people will be checking out our room so I better get a wriggle on.
Oh and today's Miranda's birthday! I'll send her a text soon. (Eric's bday in a couple days too, we'll have to dinner with him)
I'm really glad this course is over. I'll miss the people, I'll miss my teachers and definitely my tutor, who would have been such a great teacher if it weren't for the fact that we had that silly silly curricullum. My Chinese level has barely improved at all. Even my confidence hasn't risen that much because I've actually spent way too much time relying on other students who were better than me, and trying so hard to remember all the useless crap seemed to leave little space in my head for the stuff I wanted to learn. No more though, no more whinging, course is over. I can already feel my Chinese ability improving!!!
Last night I saw a Broadway musical with Joy's family, it was pretty good! I like her Mum, hadn't met her before, and I get a good feeling from her Dad too. Kayson, the 4-year-old brother, is the best. Why can I relate to 4-year-olds so well??? Anyway as a result I missed out on the craziness of the last night, having already missed the craziness of new year's eve. My understanding is, both involved a lot of people randomly hooking up drinking far too much and dancing like crazy. Some of those things I'm not allowed to do, and others I'm not really much good at =P We're all gonna do a brunch thing to see ourselves off though. That'll be soon after we all suddenly lose our rooms.
New Year's Eve me and Joy walked to the Bund from the Guesthouse, that was pretty nice ^^
________ = 1kmish
So I have officially completed all of my prescribed learning. Even if I go back to uni it'll be for a postgrad that'll be something I can finally study in my own way. From now on I can relax and properly enjoy this holiday, without too much pressure beyond the stress that might come from having to survive. On the other hand, it'll be an adventure!!! Yayyyyyyyy! Charrrrrrlieeeeeee!!!
Love you all, will send out new postcards soon I hope.
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