chinapies

2.54657 years later...

chinapies — Mon, 2 Aug 2010 11:13:00 GMT

Two and a half years is a loooong time between blog posts, holy hector...

I'm back in China! Sort of. I'm in Chengdu for 2 weeks, then rollin the UK for some PhD research action. Yes, a lot has happened in the last 2-and-a-half flangdang years. Lemme give you a brief rundown.

In 2008 and 2009 I was teaching English at Sichuan Normal University. Woo. I also moonlighted as a part-time teacher at a private English teaching centre in Chengdu (with semi-official approval, I must add... Although at one stage, when the police raided- em, er, yeah.) There was an earthquake (May 12, 2008), an Olympic Games (approx. 9 on the Richter Scale), and a not-much-else. Anyhow, about mid-2009, I was gettin pretty sick of teaching English, and, as one is prone to be, suddenly realized it was time to do my PhD. So I wrote to UWA in Perth, Oz, and yeah, Bob is your uncle, coz he's certainly not mine.

So why am I back in Chengdu? Well, part of my scholarliness involves doin' some stuff in the UK, so this blog technically becomes Chinaukameripies, but it doesn't quite have the same ring to it. And you are right, Chengdu is not in the UK, so I am avoiding the question. The Chengdu bit is coz an acquaintance of mine is getting married here, which is a fantastic excuse to roll on back for one more assault on the infamous hot pot while watching a motorcycle drive into oncoming traffic. I should've taken a photo.

In the two and a half years since using blogging software like Worldnomads, uploading pictures has not gotten any easier nor user-friendly. I finally got some photos onto Picasa, and Worldnomads refuses to display them. Instead I get the broken little box above. Here's the link for the first photo... Yes it's the "Get Oxided" Shirt.

Second photo - This is what happens when hot-pot gets oxided. Actually, those things are delicious and totally un-hot-pot related.

Okay, I'ma rollin out for some 糖醋排骨 at the SNU's cafeteria, spot you's all inna bit!

PandapandapandaMUSHROOMMUSHROOM

chinapies — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:13:00 GMT

Gawsh. Well, the last blog-related thing I did was move back to Worldnomads, which was last week. Since then I've dumped all my old bloggathons, and it's turned out whack coz I don't know why.

Anyhow. You're probably wondering about the title of this blog, right? Well, click on this and prepare for annoyance! Er, unless you work at the WDC in which case coz those useless dumb terminals they give you don't have sound or flash, so don't bother.

Well, dang near two weeks ago (!!!) 林月欣 and I went to check out some 大熊猫 at the 大熊猫 centre in norther - ah woops. Okay if you don't have Chinese fonts set up, all you gonna see is a bunch of weird boxes and shtuff. If you do have Chinese fonts installed, then you will still be screwed coz unless your 普通话是很好, 你不看这是写的. Anyhow, back to the 大熊猫.

Whee! Okay what the hell is that thing? Yes this was an actual photo taken by me and not from like National Geographic or Wikiopedia. You can tell I took the photo coz I waited for the panda to do something embarrassing, which is how I take all of my photographs, and not just with pandas either. So to prove it even further:

As you can see, that is me to the right. You can tell it's me from the size of my forehead, which grows larger with every passing day. In the background is a 大熊猫, yes a real live panda bear. And yes, it is eating bamboo. Somehow these dudes made bamboo seem so goshdarn tasty that I was awful tempted to try some myself. I didn't though, but one day I will.

So you're not too impressed so far, coz it's just one panda? Okay, try two.

How about three?

Geez, STILL not impressed?? Let's keep upping the numbers then, shall we!

Yes that's right, four.

WHAT? You saw four pandas on some nature prog last week> Well then, take THIS.

And THIS!

Waaaait a second, I hear you say. There's only five pluddy pandas in this photo! Where the flang is number six??? Well, look again, buddy. Go up from the centre of the photo and then slightly to the right. You will see an interesting fruit dangling from a tree there, above the playground. A closer look at this so-called "fruit" reveals THIS...

WHAT THE HELL.

This is actually stage two of panda-fruiting, known as "pillowing". As the panda-flower unfurls, it goes into a more mature version known as "chillin", as demonstrated below.

Now, much of a pandas life is spent in the "chillin" phase. It is either doing this:

Or it's doing this:

There is no variation between these forms of panda-fruit. Er, with the exception of the first photo I showed you's all.

Well. Impressed? Good. The next episode of "PandaMUSHROOM" will feature 3-month old panda cubs. You will say "cuuuuuuuute!" so many times during this future episode that you will annoy your co-workers or co-inhabitors. Be prepared.

Pies. Out.

Back! Possibly...

chinapies — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:44:00 GMT

Hey y'all, I'm thinkin' about comin back to Worldnomads coz gouglge groups ain't all it was cracked out to be... So I'll try to transfer all my googlegroups stuff over dis way, and if it's not too painful, I shall from henceforth cease use of evilgoogle and continue with Worldnomads. See you all soon!

Dingers

chinapies — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:12:00 GMT

Whooooah! The last time I posted a blog on this blog (?) was the freakin' 16th of October! What the heck has happened to me???

Oh. That's right. I've become used to this place. Seeing a bicycooter trundle past with a 4-metre-high load of crap is now not out of the ordinary. Seeing cute little babies bundled up for the cold but having their bottoms exposed for, er, do-I-need-to-explain, is nothing new. Not seeing the sun for weeks on end is just a part of life. Spending an afternoon hugging the toilet bowl during a huoguover is what you do around here. Need I say any more? So of course, I haven't been taking any photos, I haven't written any bloggles, and I've been pretty bad with emails. Sigh. The life of Pies in China.

BUT. Now, things are about to change. Why you ask? Well, for the first time since arriving in Chengdu, I have finally done the unimaginable. I have gone on a vacation. Out of Chengas (pronounced: Ch-ung-uhzz). Away from my safe hidey hole and into the big wide world that is the rest of China (or a part of the rest of China... and a small part at that.). Why should this be such a big deal? Surely I have all this time on my hands, so why didn't I go, like, 2 months ago or something?

Well, the answer is quite simple. Imagine this - you are a spaceman and you have landed on the moon. You want to get to the local moon-restaurant coz it's been a while since you've had anything to eat. So you ask the nearest moon-man how to get to a restaurant. Of course, he speaks moon-ish, so a) how the*%#&@ is he supposed to know what you've just said, and b) even if he could barely understand you, how the *^%^% are you supposed to know what he says when he gives you directions? He's speaks moon-ish, for Pete's sake!

Replace the word "moon" with "China", and you have an idea how daunting it was for us to leave the safe hidey-hole of Chengas, a city in which we had finally begun to feel quite comfortable. Fortunately we have been learning Chinese, and I must say, 我门说的不错! However, 我觉得学习汉语很难! Consequently, 我们将要学习汉语很久...

No, I am not very good at Chinese. Yes, it took me about half an hour to write the above sentences. No I have not checked them with a native Chinese speaker. Yes, they might be rubbish.

So we split from Chengas, and we went to a fantastic city called...

Kangding.

Páo mǎ liūliū de shǎnshang, yìduǒ liūliū de yún yo

(The horse rides around the mountain, below the mountain is a cloud...)

So what the hell am I on about now?

This is a real picture, and was not taken from National Geographic nor wikipedia (although you may see a striking resemblance to the wikipedia photo... or you may not, because you are not an uber-nerd like I am, and actually have a life and spend your days doing fun things instead of sitting on the couch reading wikipedia. Back to Kangding). Dingers is a small-large town that is a *%#^$%# 7-hour bus ride from Chengas. It is the coolest place in the universe. As you can see, it is nestled in a valley and is surrounded by mountains which are just awesome. Here is a mountain or two for you:

Notice something else? Well, probably not, because it's been so long since I've blogged, but here is what I want you to notice. This is a Chengas sky:

Yes that faintly glowing circle just left of the top middle is the sun. Aaaah, a beautiful day in Chengas, where one can feel the air that you breathe clogging your lung-pores. Here is a Dingers sky (pardon the power lines):

Spot the difference? Yes, that's right. That is a cloud. Now for those of you that live in places which have "clouds", we who live in Chengas do not believe in such fictional inventions of the human imagination. Until, that is, we go to Dingers, and we see that "clouds", like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, do exist. I love Dingers. Dingers is also home to a whole bunch of buddhist monasteries. Check this one out for cool:

While we didn't visit that one per se, we did go to one right next to the Dog-Turd Cafe, but I forgot to take a pic of the front of it because - what? Oh, the Dog-Turd Cafe? It's where we stayed during our visit. Huh? Why do I call it the Dog-Turd Cafe? I'll let you work that one out. Here's a monastery pic I did take, though:

Those streamer-looking things are actually prayers, of all things, printed out on colourful sheets and dangled just about anywhere you can think of. Like a power pylon, for instance:

Or, er, whatever this thing is:

Pretty neat, huh? We took these phots on the way down from Paoma Shan, which is the mountain made famous in the Kāngdìng Qínggē song which everyone in the whole of China knows.

Arright, well I have a bunch of other pictures which I'll put up in the next post (I know what you're thinking... how many times has Chinapies promised to do something in the next post, and then never done it? Ten times? Fifteen times? Every time? Well I am sorry, but tough bickies said the kitty. Now you'll want to know what that means. Well I'm not gonna tell you.)

Speaking of tough bickies, Dingers is also home to the notoriously ferocious Ding-Dang Attack Dog. This one nearly took my leg off when we passed by:

KootchiSCHMOOSHIpootchypoooh!!!

Pies out, fer now.

Bin a while

chinapies — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:10:00 GMT

Heyo folks, one thousand of apologies for the immense delay. There is no excuse. There has just been nothing going on! Seriously! Life's hit the day-to-day monotony of life as an English teacher in China (!!!), and if there were something interesting to say, I would have said it. Flang. And I've said enough about the flang-dang bicycooter to bore anyone to tears. Hmm.

Maybe I could turn this group into a philosophical discussion on something random like "Why would someone plant belladonna outside the Foreign Experts accommodation?" or "Is Grease 2 better than Grease, and does anyone give a dang?" Okay, the answer to the second question is obviously a resounding "WHO GIVES A *%%#$@!", but the belladonna has us all miffed. I do believe our employers want to kill us... slowly. Sigh.

Oh yeah, the other reason I ain't written in ages is lack of footage. And who the heck wants to read a blog without pix? No, I refuse to become one of those 2-hits-a-month ding-dongs who writes about how cool their electric bicycle is. This is a photo-journal, and you can't have a photo-journal without any photos. Flang.

Enough moaning from me. I will post something more substantial in the near future, but for now, argh, this is all I can manage! Btw, interesting to hear good ol' SS himself has become the new mayor of Whangazville. If anyone in the Monitoring Team needs a job in China in the very near future, start up a discussion!

Pies out.

Sorry.

National Day Week Part II - The Two 'cycooters

chinapies — Sat, 6 Oct 2007 15:02:00 GMT

I will start today's blog by generating some hate-mail with the following statement:

FRANCE - 20 ALL BLACKS - 18

Let the hate-mail flow!

Riiight, anyhow, lemme continue the National Day story from the last post. (It is still National Day Week, btw... just... we have to go back to school tomorrow, and there ain't no more holidays til January!! :-( ). After wandering through town eating disgusting glop and not watching any parade, we decided to high-tail it to Sabrina's, a foreign goods store in the south of Chengdu. Lan Ya and Hu Wen Bo wanted to pick up various stuff so they could cook up some curry. Lin Yue Xin and I tagged along, but I don't recall if we bought anything. They do sell Pop-Tarts at Sabrina's, and we have stocked up, but that was much later (like, Friday or something).

Blah blah blah I'm getting to the main story. Lan Ya and Hu Wen Bo headed off, leaving Lin Yue Xin and I to look for bicycle helmets, which we were told could be purchased from a Giant store nearby (Giant the bicycle, not the adjective, duh...). We go into said Giant store and find some helmets, yay. And then........... (wow, a lot of full stops)

We saw this:

Whaoh. Or is it Whoah? Either way, I mean, whoha! That thing got some style! So we leave the Giant store... yes, that's right, we walked out. Twenty seconds later and we were straight back in. Wossa price tag? 1990yuan. Hmmm. Shall we? No, we should give it some thou - okay, why not. We have helmets now, so we won't die.

And then there were two:

Man do these need theme music. I'd go with the Knight Rider music, coz it was cool, but not as cool as these things. This photo was taken in our allocated "bicycooter testing area", which is about 15 mins away from the south gate of SNU and is, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere. Very strange that we'd find a massive vacant street just down the road, but it makes a great place for driving-lesson practice. I, on the other hand, am in no need of practice, for I can do THIS cool stunt:

And this:

AND this:

Notice the aerodynamic shape of my torso and posterior? It ensures maximum airflow over the surface of the bicycooter and minimum drag. High speeds can be attained using this method. You can almost hear the cycooter going 'eee-eee-eeescrraOOUOOURRRRWHAAOAOSSsssss' as it flies past, achieving super-sonic speeds without use of afterburner. Not bad for an electric bicycle.

So if you are unable to posture yourself in the necessary manner, you may resort to assuming the following position:

Notice the upright position of Lin Yue Xin. Both hands place firmly on the handle-bars. Reflector lights turned on for maximum visibility prior to departure. Undercarriage lowered for maximum stability (in this case, Lindsay is using the non-conventional one-carriage retracted form, in order to ensure minimum effort is required prior to take-off. Not recommended, unless you have flown a bicycooter before (which Lin Yue Xin has (man, there's a lot of parentheses going on at the moment (lol, bet you lost count (there's now 5 btw))))).

After rotation, Lin Yue Xin demonstrates level flight, with all controls trimmed up quite nicely.

Note that the aircraft - er, bicycooter, I mean - is holding a steady compass heading. However, she is also heading straight towards me. That's okay, I am an expert in bicycooter avoidance policy. Consequently, I was not killed after this picture was taken.

The very next day after purchasing Lin Yue Xin's fighter jet , we went on a grand adventure around Chengdu and, of course, forgot to take photos. Sorry. We will repeat the excursion at some stage and clickety-pix for you's all. Stay tuned!

Pies tip of the day: If you are traveling, take lots of pictures! I had a fun time ushering Ernesto out of the bathroom yesterday (after he had disappeared for some time, and my, had he grown!) and into the garden, but didn't take any pictures. I've seen vehicles and bicycooters lumbering past us on the 'cycooter lanes encumbered with the most incredible things (so far, the best have been: 1) a refrigerator and air-conditioner, with a repairman fixing both of them, on the back of a scooter; and 2) a full-sized scooter on the back of a bicycle (the rider was very well-balanced!)) and didn't take a pic. Sigh.

Pies pic of the day: Yes, today you get not one but two "Pies .... of the day". And you didn't even have to pay extra! Anyhow, the pic.

After purchasing the bicycooter, I was feeling pretty happy, and so was Lin Yue Xin. In fact, we were feeling more than just happy. We were feeling purky. Yes, that's right. Purky. In order to celebrate our purkiness, we went here:

This is where you can feel as purky as you want, and not get arrested by the purk-police. Awesome.

National Day Week Part I - Fellowship of the Flang

chinapies — Thu, 4 Oct 2007 14:59:00 GMT

Monday the first of October is National Day in China. Therefore, this place being the coolness that it is, they give you the week off. Now, why on Earth couldn't they think of something as cool as that in New Zealand/Australia/everywhere else? Instead, in NZ, they just give you the day off, and we go ooh aah, we have a 3-day weekend coming up soon, yay!...

How lame. National Day Week is where it's at!

As a consequence of having such a long and nice holiday, people like to travel, so we decided that we would travel too. At that stage of our planning, however we neglected a little, er, sticking point. A holiday in China does not result in a mere 30,000 people driving up to their batches in Oakura (or Dalian, the Chinese version of such idylicness... idylliality... woteva). Instead we're talking, like, 300-400+ million people on the go. For some reason the word "swarms" comes to mind. So, instead of headin' off to someplace random like Kanding or Beijing, we decided that we would roam around Chengdu on our bicycooters and get a feel for the place. (Did you note the plural use of the word "bicycooter"? More on that inna minute.)

And we had also neglected yet another important fact. As a consequence of having a lovely long holiday, SNU decided that the students would have to study during the weekend prior. Which meant that they must have teachers to teach them, which in turn meant that - hey presto! - our weekend was instantly ruined. Well, it wasn't too bad, but Linds had an 8am class last Sunday, and that had to suck. I, on the other hand, had only one class on Saturday, and therefore I spent Sunday morning snoozing until, like, 10 or something. Sigh.

Anyhow, back to Monday. Hmm, maybe I should Chapterise this thing, like I did with the other one about the bicycooter. Hey, is anyone gettin' sick of hearing about the bicycooter yet? If so, please start up a discussion or something. I don't wanna bore anyone by continued blogging (read: ceaseless-garbaging) about a Chinese-manufactured electric bicycle. As cool as it might be. Dang do I love bicycooters!

The Previous Friday

There, that's better. Chapters are where it's at!

Okay, sorry, I was supposed to write about Monday. If you hadn't noticed, the title of this chapter is "The Previous Friday". I knew you didn't notice. Monday'll be next, promise! It's just that I noticed some photos from Friday's goodness that I gotta show ya's. We got invited to the Sichuan People's Government official party hooplah, and it was a lovely evenin' of just hangin' out and eatin' food. Some pix for you!

Woo, I can add centred text! Niiice. I'm beginning to like ol' googlie groups again. What? Oh yeah, the picture. Sorry. This fancy-schmancy hotel above is where the party was at. Pretty impressive huh? Yeeeaah. Sichuan Peoples Government of the Peoples Republic of China FTW!!! Woops, sorry folks, an inside joke which only Craig and Leon will understand... my sincere apologies.

Hokay, this one is so cool I can't even begin to tell you how cool it is. I can, however, begin to tell you what it is. To begin with, the entire thing is made out of root vegetables. Well, the middle bit we're not sure about, and we're not sure exactly which root vegetables the rest is made out of, but pumpkins and taro come to mind. What you have is a pumpkin dragon snaking around some thing, and as for the four little dudes on each corner? Why, they're the mascots for the upcoming Beijing Olympics 2008! And you could cook them and eat them if you want! Nutritious, delicious and representative of the nation's Olympic hopes and dreams! Awesome...

Hu Wen Bo, Lan Ya, and Lin Yue Xin! Don't Lin Yue Xin look spectacular? :-)

Feelin' hungry now? Those things on the bottom left are cream puffs in the shape of swans. Calico's could learn a thing or two, eh Jan? Btw folks, the pandas are not edible, and it took me hours to pick the fluffy stuffing outta my teeth. That'll teach Lin Yue Xin to take me out in public!

Ok, that's Friday outta the way. Nothin' much else in'eresting happened, we just did TEFL all night. BOOOOOOOrring.

Monday

It's National Day. The day that celebrates the beginning of the People's Republic of China. Cool. Surely they gotta have a parade or something in town? They sure do in places like Beijing and stuff! So we roll into Tian Fu square, armed with cameras, ready for some serious parade action. The place is packed. There's, like, uniformed dudes standing in places, and the fountains are doing cool things. There's gotta be a parade comin' in soon! Kiddies are waving flags. Rat-onna-stick is being sold by the bushel. We wandered around the square...

And then I was I hungry. This tends to put a full stop to any action which I might be entertaining, as eating becomes priority. No wonder I'm fat. Fortunately, we had Lan Ya and Hu Wen Bo with us, so they said we should head to some little hole-in-the-wall place they knew about. So we went. Er, what should I order? Lan Ya tells me what to order. By the time I get to the counter, I've forgotten most of what she said. I say something random. The lady repeats what I just said. Phew! Maybe I did remember? My mandarin is become so elite, I can make up stuff to order and get by. I'll take two of them, thanks, one for Lindsay and one for me. Five minutes later and this turns up:

After spending so much time discussing the merits of Sichuan food, I can now present to you what not to order. This here is the most disgusting thing I have ever eaten in China. I managed about 2 spoonfuls before my stomach gave up entirely. Lin Yue Xin tried one spoonful only, and then stood up rather quickly. If I could say one good thing about this, I would, but I can't, so I'm gonna move on. However, my appetite had disappeared for now, along with my stomach and the rest of my digestive system. Moving along!

The middle of Tian Fu Square, kind of. I don't know what this middle bit is, but (I am about to repeat myself) it's in the middle of Tian Fu Square. There are people milling around down the bottom, and about a quarter of a bazillion people standing around the edge looking at the millers. Oh yeah, and taking photos. Like us. Hmm, maybe it isn't so strange... wait, no, it's more like were strange, and everyone else knows what is actually going on. Hmmmm...

Close up of the cool snake-thing fountain. Er, yeah. Nothing more I can say about this, except... cooool...

Dr. Lurve can tell you who the dude is in the middle there. Pretty impressive, huh. The Chairman is standing outside the Sichuan Science and Technology Museum, which we must visit someday... Er, like a lot of places. Well, at least we can get to this place via bicycooter.

Lin Yue Xin and Idiot. My what a lovely couple! But what the hell is up with that guy's grin? Oh yeah, we know. He rides a bicycooter. Figures.

Flang, this post is getting enormous. And I haven't even gotten to the new bicycooter yet! Humph and sigh. Needless to say, we discovered there was no parade. So why were there so many people around? Well, simply put, Chengduans are either head outta town for National Day Week, or they board up their doors and wait for it to be over. Why? you ask. Because Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan, and it's where every man and his dog (and his wife and family and bicycooter and grandparents) from the province wants to be, coz it's cool. So, essentially, we were surrounded by tourists. And we thought we were the out-o'-towners. Gee.

To be continued, er, next post folks? Sorry...

Pies advice of the day: Not all that looks disgusting is inedible. The following picture may disturb you, and may cause you to lose your lunch and, possibly, some sleep. However, it is absolutely delicious, and I'd recommend it to any of you. It was purchased from a street vendor on Monday, and it's Thursday now, and I'm still alive. Therefore, it passes the test of being able to live after consumption. It also managed to pass through my digestive system without doing what that hot-pot did. Mmmmm. What I cannot tell you, though, is what it is exactly. Your guess is as good as mine. Bon apetit!

P.S. Number of times the word "bicycooter" is used in this post: 9.

Number of times it's used in the next post: I lost count after 40. Uh oh.

Ernesto and The Crickets.

chinapies — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 15:08:00 GMT

Intrigued by the title? Yeersss.

Well, nothing much has happened this week. So I decided to spend some of this post discussing the menagerie that is becoming our apartments. Hmm, where to start...

Ah yes, giant spiders. Once upon a time, in a land of Macau... wait, I mean, in the land of Macau... there lived some people who were hanging out in Coloane. Coloane was a beautiful land (feel the alliteration... er, or maybe not. Linds pointed out that it is, in fact, just rhyme. Poor rhyme at that. Anyhow, back to the story) inhabited by the biggest *%^#$*&% spider I have ever seen in my LIFE. This thing had a span of about 6 inches, and was black and yellow, and shiny, and looked meaner than Robert DeNiro in Cape Fear. Four "and"'s used in that sentence. I suck. I think I took a picture of said booger-being, but I musta deleted it. I really suck.

Anyhow, after departure from Coloane, the people who lived there went to go to live a place a little further in the distance in Chengdu. There are about 15 mistakes in the previous sentence, and I can't be flanged fixing them right now, coz this is a spider-story, and no-one will give a damn about sentence structure when they get a glimpse of Ernesto. Back to the story. Upon arriving in Chengdu, the people who once lived in Coloane thought they would be free from the giant spiders of Coloane and Macau, but they would be wrong because they weren't.

Okay, I'm gonna give up on writing crap sentences, 'cause it looks like I'm good at it. Dang. Apologies if it got annoying. I'm gonna skip all the niceties and start with the blurry pic of Ernesto. Hold onto your stomachs, folks.

Ernesto meet world. World meet Ernesto. World, change underpants.

We first came across Ernesto's younger brother hanging outside the door. One of our neighbours jumped out of her skin when she saw him. I, being the arachnophile, gently ushered Ernesto's brother (or cousin, I wasn't sure... anyway, he was a lot teenier than Ernesto) out the door and into the discarded washing machine. Ernesto's cousin/brother was never seen nor heard of again.

Then came another one of Ernesto's relatives, this time hangin' out in Lindsay's kitchen. Of course, Lindsay is not an arachnophile such as myself (what a poncy way of saying she doesn't like spiders), so I had to usher this one out the window. Piece of cake.

Then came the dead crickets.

For the last week or so, I've been noticing an unusual change in my apartment. Instead of having crickets hangin' out in the shower enjoying a nice cup of Chengdu-scum mixed with shaving foam (or alternatively, crawling up my legs after I've finished drying myself off, just for kicks), the crickets appear to be, er, a little legless, and I'm not meaning in the metaphorical "we just spent a night at Pete's Tex-Mex drinking Heinies" way, I mean, their legs were (pardon the pun) two or three feet away from their torsos. Poor crickets. How could this be happening?

And that was when I decided to have some milk. Wow, that sounds really disjointed... and you thought I had given up on writing crappy sentences. Well, guess what... the milk is integral to the plot! Hah! So I wander into the kitchen, and a fleeting shadow catches my eye. It didn't look very large, whatever it was. Hmm, let's just have a peek under the sink -

Ernesto. There he was. Awesome!

So I usher him out of the kitchen, and seeing as he ate all the crickets there anyhow, he was only too happy to oblige. But boy, talk about greased-lightning! This puppy went from standstill to about 150 miles an hour in 0.13 seconds. Ferrari could learn a lesson or two here... try eight legs instead of four wheels, hah. So instead, Ernie set up home near my laundry, probably because my laundry tends to smell like cricket-food (see above). And this is where I took the blurry pic shown previously, and then this pic here:

Now if only I'd taken a pic of Lindsay and Andy (our new fishies), I continue yakkin' about the menagerie, but maybe next time. Hold your horse-sized spiders, will yah?

Pies out.

Pies hot-pot pic of the day!

As promise folks, here you go:

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmm!

That there is some taaaaaaasty goodness! And, just to prove I was there (kind of),

That's Lin Yue Xin on the right, and our Migwuoren friends Lan Ya (centre) and Hu Wen Bo (left). Not their real names, btw, but close enough to be embarrassing. All three will kill me when they read this.

Arrright!

chinapies — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 14:57:00 GMT

WARNING: This post contains facts (mostly), unlike other posts, which have been over-inflated reports of misdemeanours which, in their original forms, hardly qualified as newsworthy articles. However, this post contains no lies.

Ok, that was a lie. BUT, more importantly, no animals were harmed in the making of this post. Well, no animals that we know of, anyhow. I think I saw a kitten run under the wheels at one stage, but it seemed to be doing just fine. Kind of. I'm sure it can still catch prey with only three functional legs.... so long as the prey has three legs too. Maybe kitty can see a feline prosthetics dude or something later.

To begin with, I need to make an apology to you's all for taking so long to write this dang thing. You may have noticed a couple changes. For one, this is now hosted on a google group. There are many reasons for this. Google works at light speed in China. For those that are in the techno-know, you will know why this is so, bro, so go wit da flow. Wow, that is lame. Must be a bit rusty. Secondly, I can host video on this site. However, if you work at WDC, you prob won't be able to download the videos coz WDC's firewall is almost Chinese in it's tightness. So I recommend you check it out at home, a) if you have broadband, and b) if you can be bothered.

Humph, so to bring you up to speed. Coz it's been a while, I'll have to chapterise this whole thang, and I'll also try to write lots to make up for my slackness.

Chapter 0 - Shout-outs

Gazza, good to hear about WDC goodness! How's the two-horse race coming along? I like ol' Newmannz comment about how the other contenders don't seem to be doin' very much, coz they're cocky about their chances, lol. Has Paisley even put up any posters, or does he reckon he'll just shout and swear at everybody, and somehow he'll win? Lolz0r. Btw, this google group thing should be real good to have regular yaks on, so sorry I've been inattentive with worldnomads, it runs like a *%#&%# at the best of times, so I don't check it every day, and posting comments is paaaaiinful. Just ensure the good Doctor doesn't post any of his *%&#@* three-chief question things on here or it'll have to disappear faster than a hotpot pork-ball in a Sichuan mall.

Paloma! Yes, what have you gotten yourself into. Hmm, lemme see... imagine Colorado. Imagine all the neat things you can do there, like go to Safeway an' Chipotle an' sushi parlours an' late night movies and stuff. Mmmmmmm. Now imagine you could do all of those things, except your in China instead. Still sound good? Okay, now go a little further, and imagine that you can't actually do any of those things I mentioned before. AND, not only that, but you can't even ask the person next to you what the time is, or where the bathroom is. Instead, all you can say is "Wo shuo da bu hao" and point at what could be the lavatory, but is, in fact, the local market. Welcome to Chengdu.

Annejo! This place is awesome! We even managed to order hotpot tonight BY OURSELVES. Whoah. And we're learning Chinese at a pace, man, I can even ask things like "What season is your father?" and "Is your birthday difficult?" Man, the locals here are AWESOME :-) We're makin' friends at a reasonable pace, so soon we will be able to do more than just dream about eating food other than gung bao jiding and mei fen. And you can drive on the wrong side of the road and wherever you want, whenever! I'll get to that later :-)

Er, I want to see who else has sent me messages, but worldnomads is as dead as a dodo at the moment... it's Friday night, you see, and for some reason, the internet dies on a Friday (except for google... man I shoulda thought of this aaages ago!). It may be because the internet is flooded with people looking for remedies for hotpot after-effects. I am one of them. Back in five minutes.

Ok back!

Chapter 1 - A New Hope

BLAAAAAAAAAAbladablaaaa bladadabladadaba daaa?

Okay, sorry, that's supposed to be the opening music for Star Wars. Flang, I must be rusty if I'm reverting to using Star Wars to be funny (which it's not). Sorry folks. Anyhow, I was trying to convey a sense of drama beecaaaause, I am about to inform you thaaaaat....

I bought a bicycooter. That's right, a freakin' bicycooter. An' boy, have we had some fun since then! But (of course!) I have some photos of the occasion, yeeerrss, for your viewing pleasure!

Hey wow, I can type on the side! Man, google groups rocks. Anyhow, there you see fat ol' me grinning like the bad dude off Scream, watching as the shop attendants doctor the bicycooter so it doesn't have a speed govenor any more. Notice they are looking away from the camera. Nuff said.

If you look closely at this bad boy, you can see it has padding on the back. This is so Lindsay does not have to sit on cold, hard tray. Or rather, I don't have to sit on cold, hard tray, because Lindsay is a lady, and I am chivalrous. You can tell I'm chivalrous because I bought a bicycooter with padding. Okay, shuttup already.

Ho flang, how do I get back to a normal paragraph? Maybe I don't. I'll put another pic up and see wot happens.

Ok where the *%$#& is the cursor now? Hmm maybe google docs doesn't rock. This is just bizarre. I'm gonna hit enter a lot of times to see wot happens.

Okay! Yooohoo, over here now! I think it's back to normal.... maybe. The photo on the right shows what the store attendants are actually doing in the photo above. I was wrong about the whole speed govenor thing, as you can see, they are actually attaching my wing mirrors. These turned out to be completely useless (to begin with... hold fire for more story later), because they move independently of everything else. In fact, I do believe they are most useful for oncoming bicycooter riders to check their hair. Or, alternatively, for me to check whether I needed to clip my toenails soon. As for traffic coming up from behind, I'll talk about this in a bit.

Hmm, lemme see wot happens when I attach another photo. Whoah I'm now sandwiched between two photos. The new photo is on the left, btw. Flang, I'm not sure about this whole googlie group thing now. Kinda hilarious, but nowhere nearly as hilarious as the expression on my face (see left). This is an expression that says many things, for instance "I'm going to eat your children", or perhaps "I'm going to run over your kittens because I am an EVIL BICYCOOTOR, HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA." Note the way I'm clutching at my bottle? It's as if I am trying to strangle it. The bicycooter is taking over my brain.

Arright, time to attach another photo. God knows where this one is gonna end up. I'll draw some arrows if it starts gettin' weird (which it already has, but not coz of the photos, right?)

Aaaaaah, that's not too bad. New photo has appeared left, immediately below the psychopath clutching the bottle like it's his precious... I think I'll entitle this new photo "fat *%&#%&@# onna bicycooter". Fitting description.

I haven't actually said anything about how we went about purchasing THE MACHINE OF DETH. Well, not too much of a story, except that we went back to the place where I took the photo of the mean machine in "Ode to a bicycooter". The mean machine was a whopping 2400yuan, and it looked too nice (i.e. it was gonna be stolen in about 10 seconds flat), so we decided to get something a li'l cheaper and a li'l less flash. This bad boy cost 1780yuan, so not too bad. Btw, I'm starting to think in yuan now instead of NZ or USD, which is an interesting transition... you see, 2400yuan is only $320USD, but I used the adjective "whopping", which makes 2400yuan sound like a lot. Which it is! Er, now, anyhow. Blah blah blah this is getting boring, back to the bicycooter.

So let me continue the saga by posting the following photo below. The story leading up to the photo is a chronicle that needs it's own chapter. Hold fire while I post the photo...

Flang, now I got all this white space to deal with. Maybe I should actually write a little sonata devoted to the bicycooter. Or how about I just press [Enter] lots until I get to a point where I can write something meaningful.

Chapter 2 - Lost! Season 5, The Empire Strikes Back

I'll cut it with the Star Wars jokes from now on, promise! The "Lost" reference is also completely unfunny, especially as I've never watched an episode from start to finish, so I have no idea what it's about except that it has the dude off "The Matrix" on it. Meh, whatever.

Okay, so here's what happened. We buy the bicycooter. That'll be blahblah yuan. Thank you very much. Lindsay hops on the back, and we head off. But this says very little. By "head off", I mean straight into a pedestrian. Even "straight" is the wrong word. It was more like left-straight-straight-left-right-leftleftleftrightleftrightPOTHOLEleftleftrightrightPEDESTRI - flang. Anyhow, we make it back to SNU, and it is a very happy time for everyone. Especially those who traveled in the same lane as we did, because we are no longer in it. I even honked at a taxi on the way back (I use the word "honk" here, because it sounds way more masculine than what the bicycooter actually does when you press the horn button. I've spent days trying to think of analogies for the sound, and here's the latest list:

1. Mosquito with a bad case of gas (hotpot related, of course).

2. Mariah Carey in that song where she sings really high.

3. A faulty whoopie cushion.

Meh, check out the video when we upload it. It says everything.)

About a quarter of an hour after we've arrived back at SNU, I say to Lindsay "Le's go onna another bicycooter trip!"

She goes (quite sensibly, I might add): "It's getting dark, we should eat!"

So we eat.

"Le's go onna bicycooter trip!" I say once we have devoured our gung bao jiding and sizzling rice pork (not as good as it sounds, btw).

"But it's dar - "

"Mnemenehuhemnenenemne!" I say. This loosely translates to: "Well, true, but we won't go far, and I'll drive safely, and if anything happens, we can catch a taxi back!"

"Okay," says Lindsay. So we head off. Out of the North Gate. You probably have no idea what this signifies, because I probably haven't discussed the layout of SNU yet. Hmm, well, let me put it like this. There are two main gates, the South and the North. The South gate is normality, safety, and friendly restaurants with a carnival atmosphere. Here is a pic of the daily South gate carnival that happens on a daily basis. It appears I used daily twice in that sentence. Anyhow, the pic:

Wow, I'm actually at the bottom of the photo now! This was taken tonight before we hit up the hotpot restaurant. It's been 2 hours since we ate, and I'm still sitting here typing this blog, so maybe I'll be okay tomorrow.

Anyhow, back to the story. South gate - nice and normal. The North gate, on the other hand... if only there were a way I could embed music so that when you read this, you heard something like "bum buum baaaam", or something like that. Feel the tension. The North gate is plain weird. I'll take some photos and maybe you can see why. Linds and I ventured out the North gate (on foot) during our first exploration of SNU many moons ago, and we got about 50 metres before it got too weird to continue. Oh yeah, on the way back we bought a mop and some milk, but I've already told that story.

So now we were venturing out the North gate, but this time, on a good-ol', safe-as-houses bicycooter! It's safer on a bicycooter because, although it may look like it has a mere basket on the front, the basket is actually the equivalent of outback-strength bull bars. i.e. Mean. i.e. Nasty. And it can carry stuff. Cool. Don't you want a bicycooter? Yeeesss, I think you do, don't you? Well git your flang-dang beady eyes offa mine!

Back to the North gate. Somehow we travel back in time, and we're riding down some street with houses that look about a thousand years old. It's quite likely that they are a thousand years old. We turn around. Now we're at some sort of bazaar, only it's the main entrance to the North gate. And I mean the bazaar is on the actual entrance, not like on either side or something. Any vehicle wanting to get in has to buy some candy floss and rat-onna-stick in order to pass. Kinda handy really, if you think about it... what better way to make money than to stop cars on a road and solicit money from them? And if you can eliminate vermin too, all the better!

We turn right, and keep going. This is where things go wrong. Somewhere along the way, I make a turn. I don't remember where or why, and neither does Lindsay. You know in horror movies, when the hero would do something dumb like turn left down some corridor, and you, the viewer, knew full well that the re-animated corpse of Michael Jackson or whatever was waiting nearby, and you think "What an idiot! Don't turn left! What kind of a dumbass turns left?"... you know what I'm talking about? Well now I don't think the hero is a dumbass, coz it's very probable. You see, I made a turn, and we were *&^$#%ed.

Twenty minutes have passed, and we decide to turn around. It's been a pleasant journey traveling against the traffic down the Chinese equivalent of the motorway on the bicycooter (yes you read that right, we were on the motorway, complete with slow, medium and fast lanes... and bicycooter lane. In the bicycooter lane, you can travel in either direction. I kid you not. Tip: at night, keep your lights on.).

Chapter 3 - Two *%#&*%# hours later...

Zhong Lai has had a hard day. He's standing there, smoking a cigarette, waiting for something to happen tonight that will help him feel better about the impending weekend.

"Head into town?" he asks Hu. Hu too has also had a hard day, working at the cement factory. Not nice, but it pays the bills.

"No, not yet," Hu replies. "Cheng said he'd meet us here at 9, and it's just on, so let's wait a couple - "

"Excuse me octopus bus," comes this voice out of nowhere. Both Hu and Zhong turn. Two foreigners are there, and - can you believe it - they're both riding on a bicycooter! They're not meant to have two people on them, let alone a fat-ass foreigner like the one steering the thing!

"Sister octopus working hard?" says the fat-ass.

Hu and Zhong look at each other. "What the heck did he just say?" Hu asks, perplexed.

Zhong shrugs. "Sounds like he's hungry. But what does your sister have to do with it?"

The female foreigner speaks: "Excuse me, we look for Sichuan Normal University."

"Hmm, her pronunciation is terrible," Hu says to Zhong, "but at least we can understand what she's saying." He turns to the female. "I'm sorry ma'am, but we have no idea where SNU is."

The female communicates with the male. The male grins. "Who is The City of A Hundred Flowers with you," he says, and they turn and ride away.

A minute passes.

"Why are they driving away," Zhong asks at last, breaking the silence, "when they have a tyre that is flatter than an overcooked egg fu yong?"

Chapter 4 - Okay this is turning into a long post. I'll stop shortly.

Let me re-direct your attention to the last picture posted. I reproduce it here again for your convenience.

I'd like to point out a few things, for your information. 1) I am climbing into a tuk-tuk. 2) I am climbing into the tuk-tuk by climbing over the bicycooter. 3) Lindsay is taking the picture, and has not climbed into the tuk-tuk. 4) A normal tuk-tuk can barely fit one reasonably-sized foreigner, let alone two foreigners - one of whom is not reasonably-sized - and a 60-kilo bicycooter.

Fifteen minutes later and we were at this place. Our wallets were also 15yuan lighter, not bad considering the cargo this guy had to carry. Flang. Woops, sorry, here's the picture:

This is a bicycooter repair shop. That is the bicycooter with it's puncture being repaired. Cost: 2yuan. Being able to ride without the embarrassment of being tuk-tuk cargo: priceless. This place is awesome. So we're mobile again... but where the heck do we go?

"Chuan si da?" we ask these people. Chuan si da is an abbreviation for Sichuan Sifon Dashue, or Sichuan Normal University. They point down the road, and we're off! Woohoo! We're heading home! Only.... not.

SNU has two campuses, separate by quite a few miles. There is the main campus where we live, which is south-east Chengdu, and then there is the eastern campus, where we don't live. Guess which one we turned up at. Gee, now who's well and truly lost as *^&^%$#$%^. AT LAST, however, there was a saving grace... we run into someone who can barely speak English! Okay while saying something like that in NZ would be an insult, in China it's like the biggest relief ever, trust me! Which way to SNU's main campus? we ask. The dude laughs. You have to catch the bus there, he says, and next one leaves tomorrow morning. But we have a bicycooter, we say. Oh, that changes everything, he replies. Just ride in that direction for the next 300 years and you'll get there.

And off we go.

We get to the North gate 25 minutes later, and man are we happy! Well, kinda... you see, while getting lost in China is, like, super-daunting, we were actually a li'l disappointed that our adventure had come to an end...

So the next day we went for a great ride, took some photos, blah blah blah I'll save it for the next post. But as a preview, the result was that I blew the tyre big time, got sworn at by a bicycooter repair man who refused to fix it after trying twice, and, er, that was just the beginning.

Sorry for the long post!

Pies out.

Pies spelling mistake of the day:

We started working at SNU a little earlier than our contracts stipulated, so our boss told us to write him a note. So I did.

From henceforth, I will cease with any derogatory remarks about Chinese misuse of the English language. Six years with the WDC under the tutelage of Dr. Love, and I can't even get a letter right. Just goes to show.

Helloooo!

chinapies — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 02:26:00 GMT

Hey y'all, I'm splitting from worldnomads coz it's a li'l too painful to use in China... so instead I've switched to the only thing that works at speed around here, and it's google! So, if you want more action than a sock full of mung beans, go to:

http://groups.google.com/group/piesinchina/

Au reserviour, world nomad!

Slow tango of the hotpot bot trot

chinapies — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 12:56:00 GMT

6:30am, and would you believe it, I'm awake. Yesterday we started Chinese classes with our teacher, Liz (named changed to prevent severe embarrassment.) She's awesome. This chick has been Peace Corps trained, and we have heard that Peace Corps Chinese teachers are the best in town. She pretty-much doesn't speak English in the classroom, so we gotta be shar –

graaroohuhuuuu...

Okay, what the hell was that?

Meh, whatever. Ooo and I got myself a Chinese name too, courtesy of Liz. It's Lou An, with the “Lou” pronounce like “lounge”, and that is my surname (the Chinese go by surname first, then first name last). I gotta get used to this name, too, coz that's what she gonna call me from now on. Lou A –

GRRAAAhaahaahoohuhuuuu...

What the *%&#*% was THAT? Sounds like someone's let a flanging baby tiger loose in my lounge, and it's found my stash of yak jerky. Well, I don't feel like getting up just yet, and the poor thing is gonna be dead in about 15 minutes (the yak jerky, you see), so I'll just have to get the maintenance guy in to deal with the corpse. Maybe turn it into a new milkshake or something.

So Liz has got us doing these pretty hilarious exercises, right? She's got us moving our mouths around like we have chronic gum disease while mooing like cows to get our pronunciation right, and it seems to be working. I can almost say “Ni hao” now without sounding like it's the only thing I know how to say (which it still is, really... my “Sai jien” sounds more like “Say hi to Jen” at the moment. Which may explain why most shopkeepers look at me like they're thinking “Who the heck is Jen?”). So I'm going “niiiiiiii,” with lips tighte –

G-g-g-u-h-u-GR-GR-A-W-ROR-AOR-AROAGOAROFLAARP-G-g-u-g-u-u-uuuu...

Ah *%#%&!! The tiger must've found my flanging stash of delicious Chinese twinkies! (Well, they're not that delicious, and they're not very twinkie-like, but still, in China, you gotta make do with what you can get. And it appears that the tiger in my lounge also knows this.) Right, time to deal with YOU, mister. I get out of bed -

– and fall to the floor. I've been punched in the gut, just above the groin, and it hurts like flang.

g-g-flarp-if-fo-fu-u-u-uuuuuuu...

The noise, it seems, is not a tiger in my lounge. And the pain is not due to going ten-rounds with David Tua taking kidney shots. It is (as you will have no doubt correctly surmised) my stomach, and there is only one culprit.

Last night's hotpot.

.... - flarp...

I gotta get to the bathroom. NOW.

Okay so I get to the bathroom and (CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED) stopped breathing for a second. And, after looking myself in a mirror I (CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED) twelve minutes past eight already.

I'd better explain how this came to be. Let me start by getting to the end of the Chinese lesson.

“Liz, I just have one more question before we break,” I say.

“Lou An?”

“Do you know how to order hotpot?”

“'Wo yao hong wei huo guo.'”

“Ah, okay.”

“If you want,” she continues in perfect English, knowing full well that I have no idea what she just said, “we could all go to a hotpot restaurant tonight?”

Awesome! See? Peace Corps Chinese teachers are the best!

Fast-forward to the end of the day. We're all heading to the South Gate mall, where many such hotpot restaurants are situated. Ah, woops. I just realised I have neglected to advise you about what exactly a hotpot entails. A very good question! Picture this: A small basin, such as one used for bathing babies. In fact, if it has been recently used for bathing babies, even better. Remove the baby, but don't throw out the bathwater (i.e. the opposite of the famous saying (which the Chinese invented)). Fill this basin with 1) hot sauce; 2) hotter sauce; 3) hottest sauce; 4) chillies that were too hot to be made into hottest sauce; 5) 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene; 6) yesterday's hotpot sauce, and 7) of course, coarse horse sauce (isn't the English language dumb?). Cook said saucy pot until it is boiling.

Now for the fun part. Imagine an animal. Any animal, it doesn't matter. Dissect it. Remove any bits which you might consider actually eating (e.g. flesh, tongue, eyeball, etc.) Throw these bits out, but keep the rest (i.e. skin, bones, mysterious organs which seem to have no use but look squishy, and, er, the entire digestive system from start to finish). Place these at your leisure into the hotpot, which should be going at a real pace now. Wait a few moments. Eat, and do your best not to die.

Unfortunately, while we did have a camera for the occasion, it was impossible to retrieve from Lindsay's bag because her cognitive ability was, er, impaired (as was everybody else's). However, here's a good enough approximation:

(Please forgive me, I will have a picture of a real hotpot next time, I promise!)

So, an hour or two later, after the detox teams have made sure we weren't glowing in the dark still, we head home. I am feeling fine and dandy. I even manage to get to sleep. But the true effect of hotpot is time-delayed, so that its consequences cannot, er, hinder the functions of the restaurant lavatory. So, sure enough, I find myself awake eight hours later, completely unaware that I am approaching what the United State Department of Homeland Security would aptly call “Threat Level Red”.

Despite all this, I have to admit that I can't wait to have hotpot again!

Pies out.

Pies noodle of the day:

This one is called “square-orange-box-with-deceitful-contents”.

In our quest for the perfect noodle, Linds and I decided to forego our normal “round-box” and settle for an unusual “square-box” instead. Upon opening said square-box, we were delighted to find a) a sachet of soy sauce (a very good sign); b) a sachet of dried, shrimpy vegetables (also a good sign); and c) black, non-descript goop (uh oh...). The black goop turned out to be iron filings sautéed in tar, and it completely ruined what could have been the closest thing to the perfect noodle to date. Square-orange-box-with-deceitful-contents gets three thumbs down.

Ode to a bicycooter

chinapies — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 23:48:00 GMT

I am getting slower with these posts. Flang. It's not coz there's nothing happening. There is a-plenty a-happening! No, the reason for my reduced drivel-output is quite simple... I am busy trying to learn how to teach English! I have 16 units of our TEFL course due in four weeks, as well as two hour-and-a-half lessons to plan per week (which are then deployed over 12 periods of 45-minutes each... confused yet? I thought so), as well as six hours of Chinese classes to attend with homework. Added to this, I have to teach English in a manner which results in improved English for our kiddies. So I have to work my butt off, or else there will be trouble... the kind of trouble which sounds like “shmunemployed” and “schmeeportation” (joke stolen directly from Knocked Up, an awesome movie, I'd give it three thumbs up if I could. Give me a few more years in China and having three thumbs will be the least of my worries, I'm sure).

Anyhow not much happening, except for a certain... temptation. Let me start from the beginning...

It was a dark and stormy night. Wait, am I missing punctuation? It was a dark, and stormy, night. No that's not it. It's a dark and stormy night. Wrong tense. %#*%$*. Maybe I don't need the article? It was a dark, stormy night. Not bad, but not good either. It was a darkening night with storminess nearby. Oh for &%#*%'s sake. The night was darkie and stormy. Wait that sounds like Paul Holmes. I HATE THE STOOPID *%#%&*$ ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Can you believe I'm an English teacher??

Anyhow, it was raining, and Lindsay and I were standing outside of Carrefour, and it was, like, 8:00 or something. At night. Capiche? We had at least two buckets of stuff. Literally. We needed the buckets for the apartments. We were also encumbered with at least four supermarket bags filled with lead bricks. Lindsay was standing under the umbrella (very chivalrous of me, I know) while I stood out in the traffic trying to wave down a taxi. Please note that when I say that I stood out in the traffic, I am not meaning figuratively, like I'm standing nearby from the safety of the sidewalk or something, I mean I am standing in the middle of the flang-dang road, with traffic going either side of me, trying to wave down a flang-dang taxi which will not get stolen by someone else. It is seriously cutthroat. You slow, you lose, homie.

Taxi turns up. Okay, here we go! I run. 8 metres. 5 metres. 3 metres. 1 metr – an umbrella flies out in front of me and cuts me short. “*%#%&*$%!” yells the young lady who gets to the taxi before I do. She does not speak English, of course – but I, for one, understand asterisk-percent-hash-percent-ampersand perfectly well. The taxi is hers. If I tried to negotiate, she would not be going home with her umbrella, because she would put it in a place where it could not be retrieved, and I would not be able to sit down until it is removed.

“Oh ampersand-exclamation-asterisk!” I say to Lindsay. She, too, speaks this language.

“Well,” she says meekly, “we could always go home on a bicycooter?”
And this one sentence stops me dead in my tracks.

Look at it. Sleek. Smart. Sexy. Mine. Well, maybe, if I buy it, anyhow. But I mean, seriously, look at it. It has a basket. Oooo. For carrying stuff. It has a tray on the back. For carrying more stuff. Or for carrying Lindsay... or for carrying Lindsay who's carrying stuff. Awesome. It has an electric motor, so no CO2 emissions to make Chengdu hotter than it already is, which is technically “hotter than hell” (but getting better). Also no pollution, so visibility in Chengdu won't be reduced to 15 feet (from it's current 20) due to me. And it has pedals, in case the batteries explode (which is fine, unless the batteries explode all over your legs, in which case the pedals might be a tad useless).

Needless to say, I want one.

Back to our dilemma. “Hmm,” I say in reply to Lindsay, doing my best to remain calm, “do you reckon?” OF COURSE SHE RECKONS! says the little voice inside of me which has resulted in so, so much trouble.

“Yeah, we could,” she says.

“Well, those ones over there are pretty cheap - ” I WANNA BYCICOTOOR - “but we should really talk to someone who knows something about - ” I WANNA *%#&%*% BYCICOOOTOR!!! - “- them.”

“Yes, that's what I said before,” says Lindsay, a common refrain of hers which is consistently true, I will concede. Geez, where the heck did that sentence come from?? It's like I actually can, like, speak English or something.

“Sigh,” I say. “Okay, but we should wait a bit longer for a taxi. If one doesn't turn up, bicycooter it is.” Unfortunately, if I were to repeat here what my little voice said at this point, it's quite likely that a) I would get into a lot of trouble – I'm talking what-does-this-little-red-button-do kinda trouble; and b) Worldjournals would drop my account like a radioactive hot potato (which is an obscure reference to the joke I made in a), which is also an obscure, and remarkably unfunny, joke. I should not write this blog at 1:30 in the morning, please accept my apologies folks).

Five minutes later, and three taxis have driven past. All occupied. The rain has not stopped. This is starting to get a little thin.
I turn to Lindsay. “Bicycooter?”

She nods.

And just then (!!!) an empty taxi turns up. Just like that. I look around. There is no competition. It's all ours. The taxi driver, who looks like a friendly guy, smiles at me and waves. Who me? Yes you. Couldn't be! Please, my taxi is warm and dry, and you look like you need warmth and dryth (stoopid English language). By the way, this mental telepathy is not actually occurring, but needless to say, I can spot a sign a mile away. No bicycooter for us tonight. It's too dang wet anyhow, what the flang were we thinking?

Pies out.

P.s. I'll provide some real content when something actually happens. Stay tuned.

Pies menu of the day:

Ah, yes, there's nothing like a tasty milkshake from (name of coffee shop censored) when the day is hot. Hmm, let's see... would you like a strawberry milkshake, little boy? No? How about a choclate one? Don't like choclate milkshake either? Well, that is too bad, but I think I know what you like... yeeesss, you want a minced pork milkshake don't you? Now that's a good boy. Maybe with some fava beans and a nice Chianti, mmmnUmNUMs.

Ok, I thought Wikipedia was blocked in China. What a numbskull! Little did I realise that all I had to do was go up and order my favourite minced pork milkshake and a side order of Wikipedia, and hey presto! Nourishing AND intellectually stimulating. This place rocks.

This is a what.

chinapies — Thu, 6 Sep 2007 12:23:00 GMT

Sorry for the long post folks! It's day three now, and my first class is only two and a half hours away. Am I nervous? *%#* yes. Why am I nervous? Here's the story to date.

Day #1 (Monday)

Okay so I wander into the classroom at 1:30. There's nobody there. Apparently class starts at 2:00. Flang. Well, that's cool, I can write some stuff up on the blackboard (that's right, a blackboard. I haven't seen a blackboard since I was in primary school in Fiji. Serious deja-vu goin' on here.) So I scribble some stuff on the board, and include a smiley face for good measure.

As you might be able to surmise, I have no idea what I am doing.

But that's cool too. I will admit, I had put together a lesson plan, but it went along the lines of 'Go to class, teach some English, come back home.' I like to keep things simple, you see.

Today was going to just be an introductions day, plus something random like “What you do you like about learning English?” I am assuming of course that the kiddies will have already spent some time learning English in high school. (And, can you believe it, they have! Prior to taking English at SNU, they have all studied our crazy language for 6 years or more already! And, I was to discover, they can tell their verbs and adverbs apart! So who the heck was gonna be teaching who here?)

I twiddle my thumbs for a bit longer. Then I pace up and down the classroom. Then I make an adjustment to the smiley face (I gave him some hair, so that he wouldn't look like me). Pace up and down again. Look at my watch. 1:32. Somehow, when you are nervous, time doesn't actually, like, go any more.

At about 1:50 (which easily felt like three hours later), the first student came in. “Hullo?” she says. “Yo, howsit goin'?” I reply. Real smooth. She smiles nervously, then runs to the back of the classroom so she can be as far away from me as possible.

The next victim wanders in. This time I reply with a “Hello. How are you?” He doesn't seem too scared by my response. I'll stick with being normal from now on, I think.

The classroom fills up. There's a grand total of 35 kids, which is a lot, man... Suddenly a bell rings. How many Universities do you know of have bells for Pete's sake?? First a blackboard, then a bell. When I was at primary school, Mom used to make me tinned-mushroom-and-vegemite sandwiches for lunch. I had quite deliberately forgotten about these abominations, until now. Stupid bell.

“Well I guess we better get started!” I say. However, I will soon learn that what the students probably heard was: “W'llagessw'b'trgusstar dead”. The students turn to one another and whisper furiously. I do believe they were wondering whether I was their teacher, or just a funny-looking student who spoke very poor Mandarin.

“Hi everybody,” I say. “My name is Andy and I - “

“Excuse me!” comes a voice from the back of the class.

“ - come from yes?”

Laughter. Apparently I now come from Yes. Flang.

“Can you pl-ease eh-speak slow?” the student asks haltingly.

Ah, right. This I can do.

“Sure. Thing.” I reply. “My. Apologies. You. See. Where. I. Come. From. People. Speak. Very. Quickly. (pausepause) And. I. Speak. Very. Quickly. Even. For. A. New. Zealander. (pausepausepause) Many. People. Think. I. Am. A. Retard. Because. I. Speak. Too. Fast.”

No laughter from the class.

Great.

Day #2 (Tuesday)

Lesson plan – check. Water bottle – check. Keeping-my-stoopid-jokes-to-myself – check.

Today was going to be a little bit of a challenge. Yesterday's classes were easy to deal with, because introductions ain't too difficult, and consume lots of time. Today, however, I had to create some actual content. So I made up some stuff about how to have a conversation (I really, really have no idea what I am doing), and threw in some pronunciation and grammar exercises as well. My “Elements of conversation” section of the class had things like “statements, questions, opinions, facts”, plus a bunch of other stuff which I truly am an expert on. Like hell.

And it was during this section where things turned fun.

“Okay, Glacier... can you give me an example of a question?”

Glacier stood up. Glacier is not her real name, by the way. One of these days I will be able to pronounce her real name, and maybe then everyone won't laugh when I do. (Additionally, 'Glacier' is not the most interesting name in my class. I also have a Fox, Tiger, Fly, Deity, and good ol' Stonk. And although these may seem strange to you, please remember that my nickname is Pies, and to some people (Doctor Love), Pies is actually my real name. So I ain't fazed by no 'Stonk' in my classroom.)

Back to Glacier.

“Do you think she is very pretty?” Glacier asked, pointing at the girl in front of her. Remarkably, the girl in front retained her composure.

“Er, very good, that's a great example of a question, Glaci - ”

“Answer the question!” said Glacier, and this was an order.

“ - huh?” Okay, what the heck was I supposed to do? “Er, sure! Yes, I think you all look very pretty - ”

“Do you have a wife?” asked someone else.

“That's also an excellent example of a question! And to answer it, no, I don't have a - ”

“Do you have girlfriend?” “How old are you?” “When are you get married?” “Where are you get married?” “Why are you not get married yet?” “If you are not married yet, what kind of girl you will marry?” “Why you not married your girlfriend?” “Can I marry you?”

Flang. Okay, if that wasn't bad enough, where things really turned to custard was when I decided to play the 'this-is-a-what' game. For those of you who have no idea what this game entails, let me fill you in:

Take an item, say, a pencil. Pass it on to the person next to you and say “This is a pencil.” The person next to you replies, “A what?” You repeat: “A pencil”. The person next to you then says, “Oh, a pencil,” and then relieves you of said object. You can then add more items in order to turn this fun and exciting game into something even more fun and exciting.

So I hand a packet of Pringles to Harry (Potter, by the way, in case you were curious...). “This is some Pringles,” I say.

Harry looks at me blankly.

“Okay, now you say, 'a what?'”

“Pringles!” he says excitedly.

“No no, you say 'a what?'”

“Pringles!”

Needless to say, after watching these items get bandied about the room at random to cries of “A what!” and “a Pringletowelpenumbrella, ahahahahaha!”, I decided that this game a) sucked, and b) sucked hard. I won't even mention the “Nuclear Bunker” debate that followed.

Day #3 (Wednesday)

(This bit was written well after I began the post... apologies for the discrepancy!)

In theory, today was gonna be good. I had learned many lessons from yesterday's debacle (those poor, poor kids) and was set to improve on them all.

And guess what! The day actually worked out really well! I actually sounded like I knew what I was talking about, and the kids seemed to have a blast! We even managed to play Pictionary for a bit, although the large-group Chinese whispers fell apart real fast when the kiddies discovered they could just yell the answer to the person up the front. Oh well.

Pies out.

Pies noodles of the day: In keeping with my time-honoured tradition of assessing food quality (in particular, pastries), I have transferred my vast ability in this area to the equivalent staple of China. That's right, I am referring to the packet of instant noodles. (The Chinese, unfortunately, do not have a taste for mince-and-cheese-packed pastry... yet.)

Today's choice is called “Green-and-yellow-with-blurry-chicken”.

These noodles had a texture that reminded me of chewing cardboard as a child. This would be fine, if it weren't for the fact that the flavour of these noodles also resembled that of said childhood cardboard. I give these noodles two thumbs down.

I also had the opportunity to review some instant vermicelli, however I forgot to take a photograph before consumption. Be thankful. This vermicelli was so bad that we couldn't even convince the crickets that live in Lindsay's bathroom to consume any. Which was a bad sign, considering that these crickets consumed everything from Lindsay's washing machine hose to the, er, stuff that was under her bathmat.

Sacre Blieu!

chinapies — Mon, 3 Sep 2007 13:21:00 GMT

Sorry for being a bit delayed with posting stuff, peoples... Linds and I have been doing our TEFL course in anticipation of starting work pretty dang soon. In fact, I start work this afternoon! And believe me, having to face a hectic schedule of three hours a day, three days a week, has me shaking in my boots. Truth be told, I can't believe I'm gonna get paid for slacking off. This is almost as good as working at the WDC.

Apart from TEFLing, we did manage to have a leetle bit of an adventure yesterday... that's right, we bought a printer! A brand-spanking new HP F388 for a grand total of 460yuan (approx $70USD), and it is a scanner and photocopier too. Not bad, eh? Of course, the instruction manual is in Chinese, but we got it to go, and it hasn't exploded yet, so it's money well-spent.

The journey to get this thing was, er, fun, of course, as with most journeys around here... and we added to the danger by catching the bus into town. Ok, I exaggerate a little, the bus is probably the safest way to travel, unless you happen to have a T-80 tank handy, in which case the bus is second only to the tank. You can tell the buses are safe because of all the bicycooters and pedestrian body parts collected under their rear grill.

So we get to Tian-Fu square, which is effectively the centre of town, and is overshadowed by a impressively large statue of Chairman Mao. I have to apologise here, folks, 'cause I didn't take my camera with me on this sojourn - the batteries went flat on me the night before, and Linds was hogging all the charger slots, so you can blame her. Her email is lindsayhoggedallthebatteries@dangit.com if you want to send blame-notes directly to her inbox, and expletives are acceptable currency of blame. She is gonna kill me when she reads this post.

We wandered around the town square for a bit, trying our darndest to look like locals, which mainly involved pretending that traffic didn't exist. Unfortunately, traffic does exist, and even worse, it pretends that you don't, so crossing the road truly becomes an exciting experience, much like base-jumping without a parachute or hunting Kodiaks with a knitting needle. Ok, so I don't have experience in either of these activities, but crossing the road in Chendgu makes one very much alive... albeit somewhat briefly. Especially if a bus is coming (see above).

Anyhow we returned via taxi and hung loose for a bit, which was nice. However, our friendly neighbours upstairs were gonna get dinner and catch a movie after, so we decided to join them. It turned out to be a great idea, 'cause we wound up at this trendy little plaza next to Sichuan University (which is different to Sichuan Normal University in that it doesn't have the word “Normal” in it). After din-dins was done, we headed up to this Parisian cafe that was a little taste of home away from home. (Er, although I'm not from Paris, but these days even a Ukrainian snail stroganoff would seem more homely than some of the things we've been eating... not that I'm complaining, mind (see below)).

The “movie”, it turned out, was being shown at this cafe, and it was a Croatian story about some random dude who buries his brother for 20 years. The movie was kinda entertaining to begin with, but when we hit Part 3 some four hours in, we realised that this was a movie that did not end. The highlight was when the protagonist dived under water to save his son, and callously blatted some random fish away before being caught in an underwater net (presumably to drown). The movie then went on to detail some monkey-man's life 30 years after the protagonist met his untimely demise, and we went on to get the hell outta there because a) the movie was CRAP, and b) the sun was getting up soon.

Anyhow, I'm now finishing off this post, and it has been several hours since I taught my freshman students their first English lesson. These kiddies are screwed. (see below)

Completely screwed.

I'll write about all this tomorrow, so please stay tuned.

Pies out.

Pies tip of the day: If you want to teach English in China, please learn English first. You see, I didn't, and now 105 students of the grorious Sichuan Normal University will wind up with “Flang” and “you's guys” in their newly acquired vocabulary. Flang.

The goodness, and then some

chinapies — Sat, 1 Sep 2007 21:24:00 GMT

Upon reviewing some of the garbage I've been writing so far, I've noticed that I have been a bit negative in describing my experience in China, and therefore give the impression I ain't having fun. This is entirely untrue. This place has been more fun than a circus carnival full of bearded ladies. Where else can you find a traffic cop blowing seven whistles at once while pointing, shouting and herniating at the nearest cab driver? (I could hear seven whistles, but let's see... two whistles in his mouth, one in each nostril, and one in each ear... I'm not sure where a seventh could go...?)

Arright, I'll shush now with my derogatory comments. Instead let me laud the praiseworthy traits that this place has (for it truly has many).

Trait #1: Our boss

I will, for the sake of anonymity, call our boss Mr. Flang. He is a humble and generous fellow with a mild and meek manner, and (can you believe it) he understands my jokes. In fact, his sense of humour is immaculate. When escorting us to the bank the other day to help us with setting up our accounts, he advised us that he actually had no idea how a bank worked, even though his wife was employed by one. In fact, she was an important employee, whereas he was a lowly University professor earning a meagre wage that she not only snapped up, but redistributed to him what she thought he would need for living. Consequently (he said), he hadn't eaten since last year (he was still saving up for a Snickers at the grocery store (7yuan)). Well, I said, this sounds like many marriages in the West. "Yes", he replied, "but remember that the Chinese invented husband-pecking and Westerners stole the idea, as they did with our other inventions." (Such as the Internet (it wasn't Al Gore) and floor-cleaner (see previous post)).

Trait #2: Our bosses boss

Again, for anonymity's sake, I will call him Professor Truth. This guy is super-meek, uber-polite and also very humble. Considering he's the Dean of the IT Department and quite likely the guy who fast-tracked our jobs here, his humility and manner is just plain awesome.

Trait #3: The fooooood!

Okay, I'm gonna try to be as descriptive as possible here, 'cause this place truly has amazing food. Firstly, gung bao ji-ding. This translates to "chicken with peanuts". Of course, this description is incomplete. This dish also contains chillies the size of small chihuahuas and a spice call wou-jiao, a word which may translate to something, but I suspect is actually onomatopoeic. This little %#*&#* of a spice is akin to concentrated novocaine, and trying to order water afterwards results in one (that is, me) making noises like a flatulent walrus. (The water is required in order to douse the remarkably visible flames coming from one's ears after eating one of the chihuahuas).

Next, tie ban niu rou, or "sizzling beef". This one is some taaasty goodness. It isn't spicy in the Mexican sense, but I have no idea what they put in the super-heated sauce that it comes in to make it so dang flavourable.

Mapo doufu. This is tofu that has been mapo'd. The versions we have tried of this have all been awesome, including the (gasp!) vegetarian version (i.e. the pig from which the minced pork is made consumed vegetables instead of its close relatives).

Packet noodles. Okay, how boring does this sound? In Fiji, we got packet noodles. In New Zealand, we got packet noodles. Hell, even in CO, USA, we got packet noodles. But, to those who live in these areas, ask yourself this question: does your packet noodle come with a) flaked shavings from a nearby sewer grate? b) a packet containing what was under said sewer grate? c) the dust of somebody's grandfather from the nearby crematorium? or d) all of the above? That's right, Chengdu noodles are an adventure in themselves. And they so goshdarn tasty! In fact, Linds and I are about to consume some shortly, so I'll put this post on hold for a sec and enjoy consuming someone's ancestor and his progeny's by-products.

Ok finished eating, and next time we aren't buying blue-noodles-in-round-bowl or red-noodles-in-square-box (well it's not like we can read whats on the side of the packet now, is it... sheesh.) Hmm it feels like it's time for some photos. I have one photo of two dishes, so I'll start with this one in order to make you envious and wish that you, too, could be in a Chengduan restaurant picking menu items at random 'cause they're all in Chinese.

These are (from left to right) yao-guo ji-ding and tie ban niu rou. Hungry yet? Well too bad coz you ain't in China, you ain't in Chengdu, and you ain't gettin' no yao-guo ji-ding tie ban nui rou. However, if you can pronounce this, I will airmail you a leftover cashew nut.

A pix of Lindsay's living room, where much hanging happens. Note the nerdiness of the laptops. We really should get out more.

And out we went! This is the path to our apartment - not bad eh? The fellow on the bicycle by the trashcan is our caretaker and he speaks no English. This is also the guy that turned purple when I told him I'd borrowed Lindsay's washing machine hose. As you can see, he is no longer purple, but it may be he does not recognise me yet because I am too far away.

This is a badminton court. If you look close, you can see dried blood on the concrete, and I believe there is a severed limb in the garden. The Chinese take their badminton rather seriously, you see.

This here is the forecourt for the Foreign Experts area. The path leading to our apartments is just past the stairs on the left. This place feels a little surreal compared to the rest of the campus coz there's no random pieces of trash on the ground. And people spit in the gardens here instead of on the nearest foreigner's foot.

The most unique thing about this photo is that you can actually see the buildings in the distance. Normally they are shrouded in an insubstantial fog the composition of which, if you think about it (which I refuse to do), you are inhaling every few seconds. Yay for air pollution. At the end of each day it is possible to scrape this crap off your skin with a spatula, so I'm going to give up on my woosy bathroom soap and move to conc. hydrochloric acid baths from now on.

Trees! This pretty little spot is just up the road from the apartments. It might pay to hang out here more often, but it's obvious the park doesn't have airconditioning. Or wireless. Hmmmmm... I'll have to think about this whole "outside" business, it just doesn't seem natural any more.

This is the south gate entrance to SNU. I have no idea what the red banners say, but I'm guessing it'll be "GET YUOR PINAPPRE, VAHUILLA AND APPIE FRNDPPE TURN YOUR BEHIND". Why do I think the signs say this? This is why:

Cooi mate! This menu can be found in a cute little Fndppe shppe in this mall just outside the south gate:

Like a scene out of Bladerunner, this mall is mostly inhabited by faithful bicycooters (bicycle scooter, the coolest things ever invented. I am so getting one soon!), as below:

You know, I reckon that locals don't even bother to make sure they leave on the same bicycooter that they came on. For one, it'd take about 3 hours to find it in this mess, and two, nobody would notice. I might be able to save myself about 1,000yuan (the price of a bicycooter at Wal-Mart) and just bugger off home on one of these.

The sign to SNU. I do believe the Chinese characters above the English say "Enter at your risk, and enjoy for a refreshing Fndppe while you are stay here".

Pies out.

Pies advice of ze day: Geez, where to start... okay, for one, taking photos by "shooting from the hip" can get you in trouble with your girlfriend, lolz0r. Please don't ask me to explain why!

Disabiliry Sigh

chinapies — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 16:51:00 GMT

It's Thursday now, and Linds and I are gettin' nicely settled into out apartments. Heck, Linds has even managed to clean hers. I like to think that apartments self-clean every few weeks or so, kinda like hair does. Of course, I am no longer speaking from experience (regarding hair, that is).

First up, cheers for the comments peoples! Gaz, sounds like WDC is suffering from SSDD (same *%#&, different day). I'll be keepin' an eye on the elections from here, thanks to Franz Van der Laars' continued rantings. Doclurve, OOS my AAS. We all know the real reason you call in sick. Docrock, thanks for keeping my ego inflated... if I win a Blookers prize for this rambling and incoherent travelogue, I'll dedicate it to you (but keep all the money, of course). And as for my wayward (but beloved) sister-in-law, I do my best to keep y'all entertained, so siddown, shaddap and keep reading. I even have a phot or two too for you's today.

Right, so what's happened to date? Well today's been pretty active... Linds and I met a Miguryen (American) couple who will also be workin' at SNU. The wife asked us if we wanted to go for a couple beers later on, and I said yeah, sweet as, but we don't drink so it'll have to be a couple cokes for us. Take note, Dr Lurve: she did not then go "You don't drink? What the *%#%* is wrong with you?" or "HAHAHAHAHAAHAAAA a couple cokes, you must be *%&#%*#g me!" She instead said: "Sure thing! We're in apartment 301, come on up sometime!" Go suck a lemon, Dr Lurve.

Oh yeah, we also hit up Carrefour yesterday. For those of you who are not in the know (which I certainly wasn't), Carrefour is French for "Wal-Mart". HOWEVER, I'm not sure if I've described grocery stores in general in Chengdu, so to say that Carrefour was just another grocery store but bigger will mean absolutely nothing to you. So let me describe a Chengdu grocery store:

To begin with, they do not sell groceries. They sell everything but groceries. How many coat-hangers do you go through in a lifetime? 20, maybe? 30 even? Well, every grocery store we've been to here has a whole aisle devoted to coat-hangers. Next, tea towels. I gotta admit, I like tea towels, I'll buy maybe a new set every year or so. Not every time I stop for a carton of milk (speaking of which, milk is almost non-existent here. I managed to track some down in a larger version of these tit-useless shops, and of course you find the milk in the mops aisle! It starts with an "m", right? Idiot...). How about some yak jerky with your tea towel while you're at it? I always wanted yak jerky, it gives me energy as I mop my re-saturated bathroom floor!

Cereal, cheese, floor cleaner, bread, deodorant - why on Earth would you want any of these? Oh wait, that's right - they can all be found in your newly purchased yak jerky. So dip the jerky in a bucket of water: floor cleaner. Wait around for a bit: cheese (yak flavoured). Wait even longer: bread. Even longer still: cereal. I'm working on the deodorant aspect, but I might be able to crack it if I wrap the jerky in a tea towel and hang it up in my cupboard.

Anyhow, back to Carrefour. Dr Lurve, I now know where your toxic-waste shoes originated from - Carrefour, Chengdu. You could smell these shoes from four aisles away. Speaking of scents, they even had durian in the fruit aisle. For those of you who don't know what durian is, it is a large spiky fruit that smells like absolute crap. Afficianados will tell you to ignore the smell because the fruit tastes so good, but I have tried this before, and it is a lie. I recommend you ignore the smell by ignoring the fruit and the country in which it grows (probably Macau).

Ah flang, sorry folks, just discovered I took only one photo yesterday. However, it says many things about this place. Please note that seconds after I took this photo, an angry-looking store attendant advised me that photos were not allowed in the store. Well, actually, she just said "aboruntueyshingwenhah!" and waved her hands in the air, but I got the message nonetheless.

Pies out.

Pies advisory of the day: Apparently sharing washing machine hoses is akin to sharing toothbrushes around here. I've never seen a maintenance man turn purple before. This guy went four shades of maroon when I told him I'd swapped Linds' hose for mine ('cause mine was leaking).

Day 2 Chendu

chinapies — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:48:00 GMT

Ho flang, quite a lot has happened since the end of the taxi saga. I'll have to do a one-two-skip-a-few here and just say that we made it to Chengdu safe an' sound, no issues with luggage, and our SNU (Sichuan Normal University) contact was there at the airport to pick us up. Sweet as.

So now it's two days later, and I'm sitting in my butt-numbing chair typing this blog while drinking a cup of super-*%#%&#ing-strong green tea. I took a few phots of my new homestead, which I'll post inna sec. First, I gotta tell you about Chengdu.

There's 11-point-something million peoples in this city i.e. almost three times the size of the whole population of New Zealand. That's a lot of people. And, by jove, it feels like there's 11 million people here. In fact, it feels like there's 11 million people just outside my bedroom window. And this place is hot, man... but admittedly, not Macau or Zhuhai hot, the temp here is only low 30s (celcius), and the evenings ain't too bad.

Anyhow, our contact picked us up and jousted us from the airport to SNU. I use the word "jousted" because a) traffic rules? What traffic rules? b) go in the same direction as everyone else? Why? c) Traffic lights? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA! d) other vehicles weren't so much "vehicles" as they were "targets". Pedestrians, like everywhere else in the world, are worth 50 points, only here they literally are. The older and slower-moving, the higher the score. But if they're in the middle of the road, they're only worth 25 points (it's more common for pedestrians to be in the middle of the road, you see). Footpaths are overtaking lanes, and not just for scooters either, but buses, 18-wheelers, and hearses.

So we get to SNU. There are approximately 11 million people hanging out at the University's gates alone (first day back at Uni, you see...). The guard at the gate salutes us as we enter. The salute is possibly an acknowledgement that our contact made it back in the same vehicle she left in (as opposed to returning in a taxi or requiring a pick-up from the nearest hospital (which is likely in Japan or Baghdad, I haven't worked out which is closer yet)).

The Foreign Experts area (that's us, you see, we're foreign experts by virtue of the fact that we're foreign. Expertise has nothing to do with it) is quite nice, and definitely a refuge from the rest of the campus. Our apartments are also nice, although I will, in my next post, tell you about the bathroom. The title of my next post is "Round #5 with the mop", for reasons which will become obvious.

Surprisingly, there is wireless internet here, but it is very strange. While you can watch youtube videos real-time (indicating high-bandwidth), nzherald.co.nz is as slow as flang, and I have a theory about this, which I may or may not disclose to you later.

Anyhow, enough yik-yak, I'll post some phots now and maybe in my next post I'll tell you's all about things so far. I'll also grab more phots for you's all of the outside of this place. You might notice that the next sequence of photos has omitted the bathroom. Again, the reasons will become obvious. Stay tuned.

Here is the living room with Lindsay sitting in one of the butt-numbing chairs. It truly is a curious sensation which I recommend to anyone who enjoys losing feeling to key parts of their body (however, excessive usage may have a laxative effect. More on this later).

Le kitchen les minaturenes. The fridge is nice and cold, the floor is nice and hard, and the electrical-switchboard is nice and close to the sink. No splashing while doing the dishes.

Ok, so I lied about not having any photos of the bathroom. Here is my tub, complete with giant crickets. My washing machine is camera-shy, so much so that after this picture was taken, it wet the bathroom floor with nervousness. I think that was Round #2. More later.

Apologies for the face-obscuring flash. The one thing this bathroom has going for it is it's oversized mirror. It's so you can see the bathroom floor flooding from anywhere inside the house.

Door and television and other stuff. The door is decorated with a picture of an elephant and a flying mouse. I'm sure a joke could be made about this, but I am not clever enuff to come up with one.

When I was working at WDC, I used to think that a view of a petrol station and a busy intersection was pretty lousy. For some strange reason, I now no longer think so...

Some trees. Chengdu has a lot of trees, but they don't seem to make too much difference. I'll take some photos later of the city, and you will see why living in China is equivalent to smoking three packs of cigarettes a day. In Chengdu, it's more like eight.

Pies out.

Pies tip of day: Washing machines can be your friend, or your enemy. Treat them well, and they won't widdle all over your bathroom floor.

Taxi!

chinapies — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 14:39:00 GMT

Ok, so we take the taxi to the Macau/Zhouhai border. No sweat. As soon as we hop outta the taxi, we are beset by a very demanding porter, who insist he takes our luggage for him. This dude is at least 120 years old. Of course, such a service is not free of charge, so we say no, which leaves us to negotiate through Macau immigration (or is it emigration? Hmm...), through some indeterminable line which separates China from Macau, then into Chinese immigration. No probs so far.

Next, we step out into this massive courtyard and officially commence our journey into China. Which is to say, we take no more than five steps before we are (literally!) besieged by porters and taxi solicitations. The instructions we were given in Macau by one of our friends there were that we should go to some department store building, take two flights of escalators down, then catch a cab from the lowest level. BUT Lindsay's luggage weighed a tonne, and my own luggage was giving me blisters by this stage, so we pressed on through the throng of taxi dudes and kept on going.

Mistake #1: Succumbing to a taxi dude

We were almost at the end of the courtyard when a reasonable-looking taxi dude asked us if we wanted a taxi. He looked legit (big mistake), so I said sure, why not? So this guy grabs my bag (mistake for the taxi dude... one point for us) and heads off in a direction that is contrary to our instructions. Wait here, he says, although I say to Lindsay, if the vehicle this guy gets is not a taxi, we split. Sure enough, an old VW pulls up - no taxi flag, no sign, no nothing, i.e. no way.

So me and Linds trundle off in the direction we were originally heading, but poor Linds is struggling with the heat now (oh boy, it was HOOO-OOT. Wait that looks like hoot. It's supposed to be an emphasised "HOT". You get the picture). A fair way along, and we hadn't reached the promised department store - instead we were at some hotel-thing that was merged with an upscale flea market. This is where a kindly bell-hop decided to champion our cause to find a taxi.

(Oh yeah, speaking of fleas, I forgot to mention the taxi dudes along the way. There were approx. six of them, all jumping up and down, yelling at us with the only English word they seemed to (read: pretended to) know: "Taxi!". Sorry for this intermission, but it's pretty hilarious on it's own... the best bit was where this one shrimpy old taxi dude pointed at his delapidated jalopy, and said (guess what) "Taxi?", and we replied "no, that's a car," whereupon all his competitors started shouting "No taxi! Car! Car! We taxi! He car!" i.e. he's just a car, but we're legitimate, you see...)

Back to the bell-hop. This is where I made mistake number 2.

Mistake #2: Negotiating with a taxi dude.

So while the bell-hop is going to the right place to find us an official taxi (not one official-looking taxi drove past us during this whole period, which led me to believing that official taxis did not exist in China - a very wrong assumption, I was to discover), up comes yet another flea, holding his mobile phone. "Zhuhai aeraerrahaaer?" he says. This apparently means Zhuhai Airport. "Yes," I reply. He points at his mobile phone, which reads "200". This means he wants 200yuan for the ride (it's about $25USD, not bad for an hour's journey, but when you don't know what the official rate is, this could well be an absolute rip). So I grab his mobile phone off him (who's the boss now, buddy?) and type in "120". "Aiyaheraiyurabutan" this guy utters. "180" he types in. So I put in "160". He enters "170". Deal.

Mistake #3: Reaching a deal

Okay so now is when the bell-hop turns up. "Azerwhachabanuba?" he says. "Yes," I reply. There doesn't appear to be a taxi in sight, but one is probably on it's way. An official one at that. However, in steps the dude whom I have now (apparently) reached a deal with. "Whazzaerchierupewhanashui!" he says to the bell-hop. The bell-hop then looks back at me and says "Basherrupeni?" I do believe this translates to "Are you an idiot? You are paying 170yuan for a ride that should cost you less than 10yuan?" I (of course) reply "Yes."

So this van pulls up, which is apparently our over-priced ride to Zhuhai airport. We are helped into the van, and I'm not feeling too happy with this right now. Too bad. We climb into the van, and the driver goes about 300m round a corner and stops. "Amitabhbacchan" he says. I say "Why have you stopped, driver?" but he doesn't reply, and instead, hops out. Uh oh. Another cantankerous mini-van has pulled up next to ours. The driver of this new van hops out, and beckons us to disembark. Heck, what choice do we have? So we do, and our luggage (all of it, I make sure) gets shunted into this new van. I have no idea why. It may be that our original driver was wanted by Zhuhai Airport security.

And now we were off! The new driver is pretty young, and quite conversational. The highlight of our conversation was when he turns to me and says "Rickbathosseiniulanbataar?", to which I replied "Yes. No". He then said "Yesno?" I say "yesno" in return. This game of yesno ping-pong lasts five minutes. However, all the signs that we drive past indicate that we are on the way to Zhuhai airport. Woot.

So I reluctantly part with the 170yuan, and we are dropped off at the rather nice Zhuhai airport. This place is pretty flash man, makes Nadi airport look like an outback cantina, and there certainly ain't no comparing Whangarei airport! And what's best is that the place is almost completely empty!

Btw, are you still reading? If so, awesome! How come nobody leaves any comments?? Leave a comment! Pllleease, it makes me feel popular!!! I'll continue this story in the next post, coz I'm hungry now and me and Linds are gonna find something to eat. We're in Chengdu now, so there's still more story to tell! Stay tuned.

Pies tip of the day: Going overseas? Don't pack ANYTHING. Just dump everything you own into the nearest garbage tip, and travel as light as possible - nude, if you can manage it. Excess luggage is a pain in the BACKSIDE.

The end of Macau

chinapies — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 15:25:00 GMT

Well, it's sunday now, and we're just about done with Macau. Next stage of the journey is... Chengdu! Via Zhuhai airport though, so we gotta negotiate with all of our luggage to get to the Macau border, then do everything possible to avoid stairs.

I got some more pictures! These were taken a couple days ago when we were wandering around Macau gettin' Lindsay's visa sorted. Ok, once I work out how to embed them into this blog via Flickr (which may or may not work in China), you will see the better side to this place... gimme a sec...

Ok so this is a blurry-as photo of the Golden Dragon Casino at dusk. The foreground is not covered in giant crabs - they're scooters. I must admit, as far as a den of inequity is concerned, this casino doesn't rank as high as the others in the neighbourhood do.

This cute little park is in an equally cute little township called Coloane. Not a bad little spot. We were stopping here coz there's a bakery in the town centre that's supposed to be world famous... here it is:

It's the decrepit building in the middle. Water Street Bakery eat your heart out. Here they make their croissants out of untreated leather, and their baked cheesecakes? Guaranteed indigestion. The "world-famous" aspect of this place is their egg tarts, which I must admit were pretty darn good. Apparently people travel from all over to eat at this place, which makes me think that good baking in mainland China will be non-existent. No more lemon-yogurt cake for Mr Pies! :-(

This is Shamim. He is from Sydney. He is taking a picture of me. I am taking a picture of him. It may be that we are both retarded. I hope he does not mind me saying that.

Established in 1989, and over 1,000,000 customers inflicted with interesting diseases. Oh yeah I forgot to mention the ginger-ade they served - not bad at all! It is a drink that tries to punch it's way out of the back of your throat with every sip, very nice!

View from Coloane. And yes, that is a real car. Cute, huh.

This is a flower. A what? A flower. Oh, it's a flower! And a big one at that... apparently this thing is famous. Notice the color-coordination thing I got goin' on? Very deliberate I tell you.

Ok the above picture is of the awesomest thing ever invented... what looks at first to be an innocent cup of tea is, in fact, a cup of coke. Hot coke. Unfizzy hot coke. Sound gross? Well, guess what... it's boiled with ginger! And holy flang! Ees good senores! Gonna be makin' me some cokeginger when I in Chengdu!

Helloooooooo! This is Lindsay! She in Macau too! :-)

This is a duck. A what? A duck. Oh it's a duck! Apparently this duck is the official mascot of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It has a look of consternation on it's face because - apparently - ducks aren't allowed to compete in the any of the swimming races, for obvious reasons.

When Mt. Pinatubo erupted in the early 90's, it attracted a lot of attention, and hence, a lot of money after writing it's award-winning autobiography "My Life as an Erupting Volcano". However, since then, it has been consigned to moping around the back-streets of Asia as an unemployed geological feature, similar to the demise of Vanilla Ice (I mean c'mon... that hair deserved at least a trig point notation!). BUT fortune favors the brave, and now a much-reduced-in-size Pinatubo can be found in Macau posing as a casino. But he will grow, and there will be trouble...

Another time, folks.

Pies tip of day: Starting a decent bakery in China could be a good business prospect. However, if you do, this idea is copyrighted to me, so please send a 10% royalty to me when you make a profit. Or else.

Old blog

chinapies — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:21:00 GMT

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Holy flang!

Ok, remember that comment I made a few hours ago about this place I'm staying being an internet-less gulag? I take it back. Completely. This place has net, and I am currently writing this post from there! Amazingness!

So that means I actually get to write a proper post instead of the quickie I gave you's before (get ur mind out of the gutter, Dr. Love). I do have an important announcement to make before I tell you about what's been happening to date - it appears blogspot blogs are banned in China (see wikipedia entry here). Therefore, I'm gonna have to find someplace else to host this tirade of misinformation and poor attempts at humour. When I do find something, I'll just link straight through in my last post from here. Nuff said.

Arright, I don't have any new photos as such to post either, coz I haven't been able to charge my latpot, but now that situation's changed too, so I'll get a few phots of the place I been staying and put them up, er, tomorrow or something :-)

The last few days have been pretty cool. Linds and I have been hangin' out on the island of Taipa, which is over the bridge from Macau, and it's a little bit prettier here. In fact, there's trees and stuff here. Amazing. The view from our lodging is a little spoiled by the power station nearby, but according to Dogbert pollution has vitamins, so who's complaining? I think the power station is coal too, so this unseasonably hot weather we're having? We don't need to look toooo far for the culprit. Boo! Hiss!!

The peeps we're hanging out with are all good too. There's a real range of folks, some who have spent time in China already, so it's been pretty invaluable in terms of knowing what to expect. This gathering is with a bunch of cool peeps, including dudes and dudettes (okay, more like fogies and fogettes, but there are a couple people under the age of 40 here) who actually live in Chengdu and haven't dissolved from all the pollution there. Yay for us!

The food here is great! No blocked toilets this time (although... oh never mind, you don't need to hear about it). Sleeping arrangements aren't too bad - sharing a dorm with people from Oz (kangaroos, not wizard of thereof), England and the US, plus a couple o' cute li'l kiddies who are comin' with there mommy and daddy to Nanjing (I think), and the dorms are air-conditioned from 8pm to 8am. Ain't bad for an all-up cost of $125 USD (incl. food!), if I may say so myself.

Hey, speakin' of USDs, holy crap man, do NOT under any circumstances bring US dinaros to Macau. Apparently (so the rumour goes) there was a host of counterfeit notes circulated during the 90s, and now banks don't like them one bit. Added to that is the fact that many money-changing places will re-sell the notes to other foreigners, so your notes gotta be in tip-top condition. Let me give a specific example:

Linds and I are leaving Best Western. All good. That'll be $1100MOP (about $150USD), says the hotel clerkess. Swet, I say, lemme just get some USD changed over. That's cool, says the clerkess, but you'd be better off changing it at the bank just across the street - 8 MOP to USD instead of 7.5, which is what the hotel offers. So I head over to the bank, and then....

"Too llinkly."

"What?" I say, chagrined.

"Too llinkly. Your dollar too llinkly. We sell to other customer. Too llinkly!"

"Flang! Too wrinkly? Ok, is there a bank around which doesn't have a problem if my notes don't use moisturizer?"

"(Name of bank censored)"

So I head to (name of bank censored). "We no buy US dollar! You go to headquarter to sell!"

"Ok, where's the headquarters?"

"Shanghai."

Get the picture?

Pies out.

Pies suggestion of the day (actually it's my second): Seek everywhere for internet. The Good Book says you shall find. Usually by knocking some heads, but that's not mentioned...

Sorry peeps

I've been in a place with, like, no internet access, man. I'll provide a more detailed update on events when I have moved outta the internet-less gulag and have more time to write about the misadventures to date. Pix included. Pies out.

Pies tip of the day: Going overseas? Don't take US dollars with you! They are hated by banks universally (well, in Macau, anyhow... more on this later when I have the time :-)).

Monday, August 20, 2007

Ok, it's time for some pictures...

Hell on Earth. These two are of the view from the hotel bedroom window. As you can see, Macau has been well-planned to accommodate it's inhabitants, and every effort has been made to enhance natural character and visual amenity. To be frank, I think the Pohe Island tip in it's heyday was a more attractive place to live.

Cuttlefish, normal fish, dried fish, blue fish, red fish, green fish, go fish. Later on we saw shark bits, but forgot to take a photo. You have been spared.

Macau's version of Ngahere Drive (or Remuera, for those that don't live in Whangaz). You can tell it's flash coz the air-conditioners don't leak onto the street like everywhere else.

In my previous post, I referred to the Death Star crashing to Earth. Here it is, and it appears the Empire is on the rise again. Skywalker must be informed.

The Death Star from a different perspective. As you can see, the protuberance from it's base must be the new planet-destroying laser gun. Ok, enough with the Star Wars jokes already, coz they're not funny any more...

Some greenery! These trees hide the Death Star from view, and actually make Macau seem like a nice place after all. It's a lie, I'm sorry.

No caption necessary.

Macau is.... interesting.

Okay I gotta admit, I'm getting over my initial misgivings about Macau. Man, the last 36 hours have been, er, fun.

Lemme start from the start (after the Hong Kong arrival). Linds and I finally tracked down her luggage from the Lost and Found at HK airport (thank you very much, United... Lost and Found is where they put misplaced luggage, useless ding-dongs). And boy, did Linds have some luggage! It wasn't that big a deal, coz we had trolleys :-) which you're not allowed to take on the train :-( which we needed to take in order to catch the ferry.

(one too many "which"s in that sentence... poor SNU students are gonna be screwed...)

Ok, so that was all cool, except we had to drag all 100kgs of luggage a looong way to get to the goddang ferry. And of course, English-speaking peoples were non-existent, esp. as far as customer services reps were concerned. But we managed to get onto the ferry (Macau has separate immigration requirements to HK) and get into Macau with approx. one brazillion other peoples... man I never seen so many people in one immigration queue man, made me wanna pack my bags and head back to cozy ol' Whangaz inna flash!

Soooo, anyhow, off the ferry and into another goddang queue for a taxi, with all our freakin' luggage. The taxi-dude pulls up, and man, do we pack his car full of our crap. I mean, there was luggage stickin' outta the window, luggage stickin' outta the boot, luggage pokin' outta the exhaust... let's just say that the driver wasn't amused (he couldn't speak English, but he didn't need to, lolz0r)...

Well at least he managed to get us to the hotel without a) crashing the cab; b) kicking us outta the cab; or c) disposing of our bodies in the Macau Harbour after stripping us of cash (and our bodies would have dissolved into Macau Harbour goodness...). Fortunately, the hotel had upgraded us to an Executive suite (i.e. rats were only on the menu instead of in the shower with you), which was a welcome reward for the pain of the morning. The only problem with the Executive suite was that it was on a higher floor than normal, so we got a better view of the hell-hole that is Macau. I will post a photo here for your viewing pleasure, once I download it off my camera.

After havin' a shower and getting changed, Linds and I decided to check out the town. So we walked up the street from the hotel, decided that if we continued, mugging and certain death would be our fate. Back to the hotel then for directions to a decent restaurant... and the answer was to head down the street, turn left, and keep on going until we found a restaurant that served actual food.

Fifteen minutes later, and we hadn't found a restaurant - instead we had found a little hole-in-the-wall where a bunch of little kiddies were drinking milk from Coke bottles. A good sign if ever there was one. It turned out to be a food place after all. Remember earlier when I said that English-speakers were rare around here? Try non-existent, now. So the lady behind the counter shows us some noodles. Thumbs up to that. Then she pulls out a ladle with what appeared to be lumps of rubber stirred into sump oil. We declined that. The lady then pulled out some sad-looking won-tons from the fridge. Thumbs up.

And holy flang, it was a good lunch! Best I've had so far since arriving, anyhow. We headed back to the hotel afterwards and crashed, man... haven't slept like that since last Friday's Policy and Monitoring meeting.

Hey if you're still reading this thing, great! If not, I don't blame you. How the heck am I saying so much about so little?

Fast-forward to the next day, and Linds and I are wandering around Macau. It turns out that the hotel (Best Western, if you wanted to know) is in a shady part of town, and the rest of Macau ain't that bad! We spotted a Portuguese restaurant along the way too, so we marked that for lunch. We wandered all over the place, and took a bunch of photos (again, please stay on hold while I get them uploaded...). The casinos here are literally out of this world. It appears the Death Star wasn't destroyed by Rebel X-wings - it crash-landed on Macau, and someone enterprisingly turned it into a casino.

I was getting hungry now. So we backtracked to the Portuguese restaurant, which turned out to be a classy affair. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the noodles and won-tons the previous day were $24 MOP, which is about $4 NZD. Today's lunch was $220 MOP, about $40 NZD, and it sucked the big one. In fact, it caused my stomach to be upset, and I, in turn (cover your ears, kiddies), caused the hotel lobby toilet to block and overflow, lolz0r. I told reception someone else had done it...

Anyhow, I promise to be more succinct in my next post. Apologies for the long read!

Pies out.

Pies tip of the day: Don't come to Macau. If you do, then you are an idiot, or a sadomasochist. Or both.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Made it!

Arright made it into Hong Kong without too much difficulty, altho I had to fork out $540 (!!!!) for excess luggage, aaaaaaargh... However, have since learned that we'll be getting accommodated pretty cheap in Macao ($125 for the whole week), which means that my budgeted hotel expenses are no longer a prob, so it kinda works out... still, $540... flang. The flight over was long and boring, and trying to sleep on the plane is akin to hanging out in a medieval torture pit. One of these days I'm gonna find the dude who designed the Economy class seating arrangement and punch his lights out.

Anyhow, hope everything is going well in Whangaz for those of you bored enough to read this blog. Linds and I are just hangin' out in HK aeroport waitin for United's luggage claim to open in order to get Linds' luggage (United also lost my luggage on the way back from Denver in July, so there is a lesson to be learned here... United are teh sux).

I'll also find a way to get people to comment if they want, so I don't kno how long this particular blog will last... however, for those of you savvy enough to know wot they're doing (Dr. Love), you can always create a blogspot account and comment anyway. Therefore, if I don't get any comments in the next week or so, it either means a) technological moroncy abounds, or b) nobody can be stuffed registering on blogspot.

Oh yeh and photos! Er... once I take some I will post some :-) This is Mr. Pies in China, signing out.

Pies recommendation of the day: Croissandwich at Burger King is the surest way to relieve constipation. The limpid, festering, sad-looking croissant with ham in the middle and some recycled weed-mat pretending to be an egg patty is not for the faint of heart.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

First post

I'm not in China yet. Three days to go!