There's a ton of construction going on next to me. i'll send some
pictures soon, of china and everything else, just waiting for my
internet to get installed today or tomorrow. i have to be near my
apartment, because they don't believe in advance warning for anything
here....i think because they don't know what they're doing from one
moment to the next here, in most of these types of companies. it's
funny, at home, chinese people are the hardest working people in the
nation. here, it's hit and miss. i think it has a lot to do with
employment policy here. in china, everyone gets a job. there is no
unemployment rate. what that means then, is on construction sites like
the one next to me, if it takes 90 people to take the place of one
machine, they will hire the 90 people. i think that's also why
marketplace's are so strange. going through any one of the strip malls
is crazy. i was in one last week that was all school supplies, musical
instruments, and safes. there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to
what these places sell. the one by my place seems to focus on clothes
and cell phone accessories. i am eventually going to get a pink case
with ears. i think it's important for your cell phone to look like a
giant pink cat. it's my way of getting into the way of thinking here.
i want to get a chinese version of the samsung note first though, as it
has some very nice applications for those who are learning chinese.
unfortunately, i don't think that the galaxy has a chinese version yet,
otherwise, that's the tablet i'd be picking up. that tablet is exactly
what i want, but i can't justify the price difference....i can get the
note for about 1,600 RMB, the galaxy is i think about 7,000 RMB. i'll
have to see if it has the capability of being on country wide wireless
and of loading up a vpn, if so, i may have to take the plunge. this
whole going without internet is tough. my gps on my phone doesn't work
here, the internet doesn't work on my phone, and the cab drivers don't
speak any english whatsoever, so, if you get lost, you're just going to
have to figure your way out of the situation. it would be nice to be
able to use one of the buses, but they don't use the pinyin system on
the bus, so, you have to guess at which one of the 30 or so come to that
stop, to get on. sometimes that can be a very, very bad idea, as half
of them will go into random place in the countryside, then you're in
worse shape. i've already done that, i'm not going to repeat the
experience. at the time, i found someone who spoke english-ish, and got
him to point the bus out to shenzhen. that got me home.
i had my window open a couple of nights ago, i like the breeze. i woke up at 3 am to a swarm of mosquitoes all over me. how are mosquitoes up this high? i had to shut it, as i had a thousand and one mosquito bites. at least i figured out how to use my air conditioners. the remotes are a little beyond me. there's 11 buttons on it with everything written in chinese. there is nothing that you can press on the actual unit itself. you always figure that since you've used remotes all of your life, that things should be pretty easy to figure out, but there's not an entirely logical order for what they do. you're also missing out on a key piece of information about electrical and electronic equipment in china. it's nowhere near as advanced as what they send to america, in many cases.
there's no such thing, for example, as a PVR. the cable box doesn't work really well. the remote has to be within a certain range and pointed directly at the right spot in order for it to work. when you turn it on, it brings up a menu that you can't read, with helpful pictures that make no sense whatsoever. i've figured out that the square is to watch tv, i don't know what the rest of them do, there's a wrench that takes you into an incomprehensible settings or tool screen...i think. the cable box has a volume on it that isn't over-ridden by the tv, so you have to adjust them both to get decent sound. if you have one set at the wrong level, sometimes the sound gets a little bassy or too much treble. the tv i have is an lcd, but takes the RGB style of cables, and you have to have a seperate audio cable to plug in. if you plug in the audio of your dvd player at the same time, neither sound will work. i only get 2.5 stations in english. one is cctv news, which is the china owned news station, and all they talk about is hong kong, i don't think i've seen a mainland story ever on it, and it's always problems in hong kong, which makes me wonder what message the government owned station is trying to get across. the other station is pearl, which plays a pile of everything....right now it's talking about the butterflies of ontario, canada. i have zero interest in 90% of the programming. it also plays some american tv shows, says that they're the new season, but they're about 2 years out of date, as far as i can tell. there's also a bunch of cartoons that are based on japanese anime, and seem to involve some sort of cards or something, i can't really pay attention to it, they keep talking about the importance of honesty, and then they go beat someone up, and make a new friend. weird show. the other station is world. it's half cantonese, half english. it doesn't have any discernible play list, just whatever the program director decided to show that day....all day yesterday was horse racing, interjected with stories about every horse in the race. i like having something in the background when i'm studying sometimes, but this is ridiculous. if i want to get more english programming, i have to buy a new tv, as the english programming requires HD, this is an LCD tv without HD capabilities, i didn't know that they made these. it's one year old, so, who knows. perhaps i'll look at the black market tv's and see what they're worth. i'd rather not spend the money right now though. i can't plug my laptop into any of it, because it's using very, very old tv technology, meaning that it's just not compatible.
i'm afraid of my toilet. i learned yesterday that it is important to keep the lid closed, lest any rats pop up. but, what's to prevent them from doing so while it is in use? a related question to that...does anyone know how long a rat can survive without food and water, and living in a small enclosed kitchen? i was thinking of opening the door, closing all the room doors, except the one out to the hall, and opening the front door for him to run out, but, i still don't know how to steer him out of my house. i'm a little disturbed by the whole thing. on a positive note, the weird smell coming from my bathroom is gone, which makes me wonder if i actually hallucinated him popping out of the toilet, maybe he was living in there somewhere, i just can't figure out where. any suggestions on this whole thing would be appreciated.
i don't know if i mentioned before...briefly, i suspect, but my laoshi took caligraphy for 3 years. she loves the fact that i know some of the old characters and that i enjoy drawing chinese characters properly. (stroke order & style), so, she brought in a practice pad for me. i could really get into this, but it's far from easy. i do think it's a great hobby though, and i seriously hope one day to be able to paint stylized on rice paper....that's always been my very favourite artwork, it's also a nice cultural thing to talk about with chinese business affiliates.....or korean, or japanese, etc.
the two biggest things in the news right now are the crackdown on milkpowder smuggling (milk for children) from hong kong into the mainland. you can bring up 2 tins at a time, it's a ton cheaper, and 17 people have been arrested thus far. the other one is about the hong kong tourists who died in a baloon accident in egypt, apparently it caught fire, killing 9 hong kong citizens, and i'm not sure why they keep reporting it, as there's nothing that they add to the story that wasn't talked about for the past 2 days.
time to get back to studying.
i had my window open a couple of nights ago, i like the breeze. i woke up at 3 am to a swarm of mosquitoes all over me. how are mosquitoes up this high? i had to shut it, as i had a thousand and one mosquito bites. at least i figured out how to use my air conditioners. the remotes are a little beyond me. there's 11 buttons on it with everything written in chinese. there is nothing that you can press on the actual unit itself. you always figure that since you've used remotes all of your life, that things should be pretty easy to figure out, but there's not an entirely logical order for what they do. you're also missing out on a key piece of information about electrical and electronic equipment in china. it's nowhere near as advanced as what they send to america, in many cases.
there's no such thing, for example, as a PVR. the cable box doesn't work really well. the remote has to be within a certain range and pointed directly at the right spot in order for it to work. when you turn it on, it brings up a menu that you can't read, with helpful pictures that make no sense whatsoever. i've figured out that the square is to watch tv, i don't know what the rest of them do, there's a wrench that takes you into an incomprehensible settings or tool screen...i think. the cable box has a volume on it that isn't over-ridden by the tv, so you have to adjust them both to get decent sound. if you have one set at the wrong level, sometimes the sound gets a little bassy or too much treble. the tv i have is an lcd, but takes the RGB style of cables, and you have to have a seperate audio cable to plug in. if you plug in the audio of your dvd player at the same time, neither sound will work. i only get 2.5 stations in english. one is cctv news, which is the china owned news station, and all they talk about is hong kong, i don't think i've seen a mainland story ever on it, and it's always problems in hong kong, which makes me wonder what message the government owned station is trying to get across. the other station is pearl, which plays a pile of everything....right now it's talking about the butterflies of ontario, canada. i have zero interest in 90% of the programming. it also plays some american tv shows, says that they're the new season, but they're about 2 years out of date, as far as i can tell. there's also a bunch of cartoons that are based on japanese anime, and seem to involve some sort of cards or something, i can't really pay attention to it, they keep talking about the importance of honesty, and then they go beat someone up, and make a new friend. weird show. the other station is world. it's half cantonese, half english. it doesn't have any discernible play list, just whatever the program director decided to show that day....all day yesterday was horse racing, interjected with stories about every horse in the race. i like having something in the background when i'm studying sometimes, but this is ridiculous. if i want to get more english programming, i have to buy a new tv, as the english programming requires HD, this is an LCD tv without HD capabilities, i didn't know that they made these. it's one year old, so, who knows. perhaps i'll look at the black market tv's and see what they're worth. i'd rather not spend the money right now though. i can't plug my laptop into any of it, because it's using very, very old tv technology, meaning that it's just not compatible.
i'm afraid of my toilet. i learned yesterday that it is important to keep the lid closed, lest any rats pop up. but, what's to prevent them from doing so while it is in use? a related question to that...does anyone know how long a rat can survive without food and water, and living in a small enclosed kitchen? i was thinking of opening the door, closing all the room doors, except the one out to the hall, and opening the front door for him to run out, but, i still don't know how to steer him out of my house. i'm a little disturbed by the whole thing. on a positive note, the weird smell coming from my bathroom is gone, which makes me wonder if i actually hallucinated him popping out of the toilet, maybe he was living in there somewhere, i just can't figure out where. any suggestions on this whole thing would be appreciated.
i don't know if i mentioned before...briefly, i suspect, but my laoshi took caligraphy for 3 years. she loves the fact that i know some of the old characters and that i enjoy drawing chinese characters properly. (stroke order & style), so, she brought in a practice pad for me. i could really get into this, but it's far from easy. i do think it's a great hobby though, and i seriously hope one day to be able to paint stylized on rice paper....that's always been my very favourite artwork, it's also a nice cultural thing to talk about with chinese business affiliates.....or korean, or japanese, etc.
the two biggest things in the news right now are the crackdown on milkpowder smuggling (milk for children) from hong kong into the mainland. you can bring up 2 tins at a time, it's a ton cheaper, and 17 people have been arrested thus far. the other one is about the hong kong tourists who died in a baloon accident in egypt, apparently it caught fire, killing 9 hong kong citizens, and i'm not sure why they keep reporting it, as there's nothing that they add to the story that wasn't talked about for the past 2 days.
time to get back to studying.
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