But I think the parents would not agree with cannibalism very much so need to exercise some restraint there. Of course it’s just a figure of speech, and besides, they’ve got too many poly-saturated fats in them. Anyway, the other day I took my camera down during the PE class and snapped some pictures of one of my classes.
Aren’t they just adorable? And if you thought that’s all the pictures you’re getting you’re wrong. Just click on the title to see more. And don’t say I never post any pictures!
(more…)
October, 2009
so cute you just wanna eat ‘em up
October 23rd, 2009
disconnected
October 22nd, 2009
The other day I figured it might be nice to ring up my brother via Skype and ask if I was an uncle yet. So, after starting up the computer, plugging in the headphones and firing up Skype I just couldn’t figure out why the call button was greyed out. I had enough money on my Skype account and everything seemed to be in working order.
Then, as it has multiple times over the last few days, it struck me again. I have no Internet.
It hasn’t been all that long since I moved into my new apartment and if I want an Internet connection I have to pay for the full year in advance. Which is rather cheap admittedly, but I’ll wait for next months paycheck regardless. Buying dozens of pots and pans, odds and ends, gizmos and whatchamecallems doesn’t come all that cheap.
But this new disconnectedness has made me see being connected in a new – somewhat more negative – light. Because for all the fantastic benefits the Internet brings – live updates, bookings, wikipedia, Google, translation, networking, e-mail, movies, music – there is a price. And that price is time. Being online is something I would almost compare to a drug (not that I have any experience I hasten to add).
Every now and then it has you wondering: do I have new e-mail? (3 minutes) Is there something new on the BBC website? (5 minutes) Is that new movie out yet? (4 minutes) Oh, I like that song I’ll give that a download. (5 minutes) Ah, there’s someone talking to me on MSN. (10 minutes) Facebook has already been lost for quite a while so that already dropped from my routine. But still, add this up and you’re just short of 30 minutes. Do that twice a day and there goes a good chunk of your free time. Without really realising it I think it is (hopefully was) some sort of addiction for me.
But I’ll also admit it’s not easy to fill up the free time once it’s back. There’s no video stores in China (not to mention I don’t have a TV) because the whole video market here didn’t exist until Internet already existed so it’s all digital here, no thick newspapers with 60 odd pages (10 at most in English) and no English bookstores nearby.
So what do you do? Explore the neighbourhood, go shopping, cook food, picture-read magazines (Chinese National Geographic), eat sushi, go throw a frisbee in the park with Linda and buy a gun that blows bubbles and take pictures of it and in the same park with the same person buy a Chinese balloon and try to get it airborne only to have a security guard come and rip the thing to pieces without saying a single thing as to why (and the 2009 longest sentence award goes to…), write your diary, clean house, socialize, sleep early, study some Chinese, listen to music (and radio podcasts, love those things), Photoshop some pictures you want to develop and much, much more. It’s incredible the time that you’ve really got.
But I want my Internet back now.
Anyway, hopefully I’ll actually be able to upload this somewhere.
welcome to hellbank how may we help you
October 11th, 2009
A few days ago was the Moon Cake Festival. Now, I must honestly admit that I still don’t know the details of it. To me it looked kind of like Christmas and New Year getting together and having babies. It’s got the family togetherness of Christmas and the strange concert/talking shows of New Year’s Eve.
On this so-called Moon Cake Festival day you get together with family and eat moon cakes. It’s always on a day with a full moon and all through the evening you can see the moon on TV (for those that cannot be bothered to open the window and curtain or when you have some pesky clouds in the way).
How to describe the taste of a moon cake. First of all, it looks gorgeous. All dolled up with elaborate decoration and beautiful colour. You think to yourself ‘oh, man, this thing is going to taste GOOD!’. Unfortunately, as the moon cake nears your facial orifices your opinion quickly changes. The smell is reminiscent of peanut butter mixed with a hint of rice. It’s filled with lotus seed paste which tastes like eating, hmm, butter. Also, the whole thing has the consistency of cement. And just as you think eating this moon cake you’ve been offered out of politeness cannot get any worse you hit the jackpot. A semi-hardboiled egg yolk.
Now I suppose I sound all negative so let’s go to a more positive note. The day itself is quite nice and the television shows in the evening kind of put you in mind of the Eurovision Song Contest. Me, Linda and Linda’s friend Sunny visited the market near Linda’s house and bought some ingredients to make some food for that evening (note: cannot make apple crumble without oven). They have all kinds of things here. From watermelon to chicken heads/legs/guts/livers/hearts/necks to shoes. And that’s just in one shop!
Between meat, vegetables, fruits and USO’s (Unidentified Smelly Objects) I found something else too. I read about it in the Lonely Planet but hadn’t actually seen it yet. Ghost money. It’s cheaply printed paper which is currency for your ancestors. Instead of going to Western Union you just set it on fire, how convenient is that? It’s issued by what is called the Hell Bank in notes of 50.000.000. Looks to me like this currency is pegged to the Zimbabwean dollar because for only 35 cents I bought two stacks of it. I thought of burning some of it for my own ancestors but realized that the exchange rate is probably awful. I’d have my ancestors coming to complain if I couldn’t have burned a blank cheque or a credit card instead. I wonder if they accept Mastercard where they’re at.
cribs
October 9th, 2009
I‘ve just been having a heck of a time figuring out how to put something on the Chinese version of Youtube; Youku. I’d never tried it before and it actually turned out to be much harder than I thought. I certainly hope the result is going to be worth it.
While it’s finishing the upload process (or at least that’s what I think it’s doing) I’ll give you the history.
Last week was an 8 day holiday for Moon Cake festival and Mid-Autumn Day (though with 30 degrees it doesn’t feel like autumn is here just yet) and me and Linda went house hunting. On the first day we looked at about six apartments close to my work in a nice area. The first one we saw was quite nice but you can’t go and take the first one without looking at some more for comparison. However, I never really found the win-win situation. Either it had a really nice view and balcony but a crappy inside (one was so bad it didn’t even have a kitchen, the house I lived in as a student looked better than that one) or inside was quite nice but outside was so-so. In the end though I realized I wasn’t gonna have it all anyway so we went back to number one and got all the details worked out.
The nice thing was that it wasn’t furnished yet and the landlord said he needed to buy everything new. So we negotiated going to IKEA (yes, it’s even here and thank god for it, Chinese furniture is either tacky, expensive, ugly or crappy) together. I got pretty much all the things I wanted and liked so I am definitely not complaining.
Anyway, I’m afraid I can’t stick around any longer because during this almost two-hour adventure I’ve run out of battery.
Oh, and I forgot to mention my house doesn’t have internet yet so I can’t check back here. At least not soon. Maybe at school tomorrow. I hope it works, enjoy!
so cute you just wanna eat ‘em up
October 23rd, 2009
disconnected
October 22nd, 2009
The other day I figured it might be nice to ring up my brother via Skype and ask if I was an uncle yet. So, after starting up the computer, plugging in the headphones and firing up Skype I just couldn’t figure out why the call button was greyed out. I had enough money on my Skype account and everything seemed to be in working order.
Then, as it has multiple times over the last few days, it struck me again. I have no Internet.
It hasn’t been all that long since I moved into my new apartment and if I want an Internet connection I have to pay for the full year in advance. Which is rather cheap admittedly, but I’ll wait for next months paycheck regardless. Buying dozens of pots and pans, odds and ends, gizmos and whatchamecallems doesn’t come all that cheap.
But this new disconnectedness has made me see being connected in a new – somewhat more negative – light. Because for all the fantastic benefits the Internet brings – live updates, bookings, wikipedia, Google, translation, networking, e-mail, movies, music – there is a price. And that price is time. Being online is something I would almost compare to a drug (not that I have any experience I hasten to add).
Every now and then it has you wondering: do I have new e-mail? (3 minutes) Is there something new on the BBC website? (5 minutes) Is that new movie out yet? (4 minutes) Oh, I like that song I’ll give that a download. (5 minutes) Ah, there’s someone talking to me on MSN. (10 minutes) Facebook has already been lost for quite a while so that already dropped from my routine. But still, add this up and you’re just short of 30 minutes. Do that twice a day and there goes a good chunk of your free time. Without really realising it I think it is (hopefully was) some sort of addiction for me.
But I’ll also admit it’s not easy to fill up the free time once it’s back. There’s no video stores in China (not to mention I don’t have a TV) because the whole video market here didn’t exist until Internet already existed so it’s all digital here, no thick newspapers with 60 odd pages (10 at most in English) and no English bookstores nearby.
So what do you do? Explore the neighbourhood, go shopping, cook food, picture-read magazines (Chinese National Geographic), eat sushi, go throw a frisbee in the park with Linda and buy a gun that blows bubbles and take pictures of it and in the same park with the same person buy a Chinese balloon and try to get it airborne only to have a security guard come and rip the thing to pieces without saying a single thing as to why (and the 2009 longest sentence award goes to…), write your diary, clean house, socialize, sleep early, study some Chinese, listen to music (and radio podcasts, love those things), Photoshop some pictures you want to develop and much, much more. It’s incredible the time that you’ve really got.
But I want my Internet back now.
Anyway, hopefully I’ll actually be able to upload this somewhere.
welcome to hellbank how may we help you
October 11th, 2009
A few days ago was the Moon Cake Festival. Now, I must honestly admit that I still don’t know the details of it. To me it looked kind of like Christmas and New Year getting together and having babies. It’s got the family togetherness of Christmas and the strange concert/talking shows of New Year’s Eve.
On this so-called Moon Cake Festival day you get together with family and eat moon cakes. It’s always on a day with a full moon and all through the evening you can see the moon on TV (for those that cannot be bothered to open the window and curtain or when you have some pesky clouds in the way).
How to describe the taste of a moon cake. First of all, it looks gorgeous. All dolled up with elaborate decoration and beautiful colour. You think to yourself ‘oh, man, this thing is going to taste GOOD!’. Unfortunately, as the moon cake nears your facial orifices your opinion quickly changes. The smell is reminiscent of peanut butter mixed with a hint of rice. It’s filled with lotus seed paste which tastes like eating, hmm, butter. Also, the whole thing has the consistency of cement. And just as you think eating this moon cake you’ve been offered out of politeness cannot get any worse you hit the jackpot. A semi-hardboiled egg yolk.
Now I suppose I sound all negative so let’s go to a more positive note. The day itself is quite nice and the television shows in the evening kind of put you in mind of the Eurovision Song Contest. Me, Linda and Linda’s friend Sunny visited the market near Linda’s house and bought some ingredients to make some food for that evening (note: cannot make apple crumble without oven). They have all kinds of things here. From watermelon to chicken heads/legs/guts/livers/hearts/necks to shoes. And that’s just in one shop!
Between meat, vegetables, fruits and USO’s (Unidentified Smelly Objects) I found something else too. I read about it in the Lonely Planet but hadn’t actually seen it yet. Ghost money. It’s cheaply printed paper which is currency for your ancestors. Instead of going to Western Union you just set it on fire, how convenient is that? It’s issued by what is called the Hell Bank in notes of 50.000.000. Looks to me like this currency is pegged to the Zimbabwean dollar because for only 35 cents I bought two stacks of it. I thought of burning some of it for my own ancestors but realized that the exchange rate is probably awful. I’d have my ancestors coming to complain if I couldn’t have burned a blank cheque or a credit card instead. I wonder if they accept Mastercard where they’re at.
cribs
October 9th, 2009
I‘ve just been having a heck of a time figuring out how to put something on the Chinese version of Youtube; Youku. I’d never tried it before and it actually turned out to be much harder than I thought. I certainly hope the result is going to be worth it.
While it’s finishing the upload process (or at least that’s what I think it’s doing) I’ll give you the history.
Last week was an 8 day holiday for Moon Cake festival and Mid-Autumn Day (though with 30 degrees it doesn’t feel like autumn is here just yet) and me and Linda went house hunting. On the first day we looked at about six apartments close to my work in a nice area. The first one we saw was quite nice but you can’t go and take the first one without looking at some more for comparison. However, I never really found the win-win situation. Either it had a really nice view and balcony but a crappy inside (one was so bad it didn’t even have a kitchen, the house I lived in as a student looked better than that one) or inside was quite nice but outside was so-so. In the end though I realized I wasn’t gonna have it all anyway so we went back to number one and got all the details worked out.
The nice thing was that it wasn’t furnished yet and the landlord said he needed to buy everything new. So we negotiated going to IKEA (yes, it’s even here and thank god for it, Chinese furniture is either tacky, expensive, ugly or crappy) together. I got pretty much all the things I wanted and liked so I am definitely not complaining.
Anyway, I’m afraid I can’t stick around any longer because during this almost two-hour adventure I’ve run out of battery.
Oh, and I forgot to mention my house doesn’t have internet yet so I can’t check back here. At least not soon. Maybe at school tomorrow. I hope it works, enjoy!