i'm just relaxing back at the hotel, listening to some dire
straits, and thought i'd write you back. i decided that it would
be easier to write a letter to everyone, anybody who wants to be
out of the loop, just let me know and i'll remove you, or use your
mail controls to send me to spam. (love that word, always makes
me think of the Spam song from Monty Python.) i've added sid to
the family list.
My ignorance is leading me in all of the right directions!
actually, i'm having a great time. i couldn't stay awake past 6
pm, woke up at 1 am, which was unfortunate. fortunately for me, i
had a pill left over from the dentists, and woke up at 9 am,
refreshed and feeling great. i'm not sure that i'll do that
again, but i thought it was a reasonably good idea at 1 am.
i'm toying with the idea of just doing a webpage, recording my
journal entries on there, then having annette compile them into a
book for me, perhaps she can collaborate with dave shields. i've
noticed that everyone who ever goes to china seems to have a book,
why shouldn't i? at the very least, i can post it on amazon for
$0.99.
so, what did i learn today?
1. filling out a chinese contract is exceedingly easy! all you
do is sign everywhere they point to because they can't speak
english, and i can't speak Mandarin. that reminds me, i have a
phone number now: +86 13602 659 650, and i'm not sure how the
spacing goes, i change it every time i write it, i'm assuming that
eventually, someone will tell me. i'm equally sure that i'll
never remember it. they asked me for an 11 digit number, i almost
gave them my bank account number, and luckily realized that that
was probably a bad idea.
2. If you are going to attempt to withdraw cash in China, make
sure that the bank will accept your card. i put the right code in
9 times, now i need a new card, it authorized the card 9 times,
then ate it. didn't withdraw any money for me, because i was
using the wrong machine....oops.
3. HSBC rocks! i found the branch. they're open for coffee and
tea on saturdays and sundays. they're not open for any banking
though. so, if you want to sip tea in a bank, they are the way to
go by far! turns out that i can set up an account with them, and
they penalize me $15/month for not having the right balance in my
account (they want a minimum deposit of $16,000 CDN), and to keep
that balance in my account, putting in additional funds for
withdrawal. The advantage of just paying the penalty is that
everyone who works there learned english either in the usa or the
uk, and thus are easy to deal with. they're going to call me on
monday to set up an appointment to meet and set up the account. i
availed myself of some very good red tea, and sipped it in the
bank, trying to get into whatever cultural norm has a bank serving
tea and coffee on saturdays.
i met some black people from England today. After a full day of
wandering around trying to get people to communicate with me, i
ended up walking up to some black people, and said, "please tell
me you speak english, can we hang out?", they asked me if i was
american, i said that i was canadian, and they asked me if i hated
the french. i replied that i sure did, and we hung out for a bit
and had a laugh, they were amusing, and just vacationing here for
a week. they're on the way to hong kong right now. they were
supposed to go back to england, but apparently weather conditions
have cancelled their flights on them.
as far as i can tell, the only people here who speak english are
the concierge, hsbc employees and fat people (who are 95%
americans). i had some little chinese kids run up to me today and
make fun of me...at least i think that's what they were doing,
their parents looked embarrassed until i started laughing. my
revenge is to bring my little sister's little terrorists (kids) here!
i'm not sure why the president of the university is going to pick
me up and take me to show me the schools, i'm just going to
believe that it's because i'm special, and everyone wants to serve
me. perhaps i should consider forming a cult following here.
the weather here is incredible, if a little humid. it's about 75
out, and is absolutely perfect. in the summer, it's supposed to
get up to 95 or so, i think that's a great range of temperatures.
i have nothing else, if anyone can come up with a good title for
my webpage, i'd appreciate it, nothing really clever is coming to
mind right now... perhaps my nieces and nephews have
some suggestions? please send them, then we can vote on them.
i'll send some pictures soon, i have to figure out where my power
adapters are to plug my phone into the computer....i really should
do that sometime soon as the battery is about done.
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