there beneath the blue suburban skies

yesterday

yesterday morning i went skipping in the courtyard. it was cold, but a lot of fun. i received funny stares from the locals, and when i met shangren on his way to school he said i think you're the only girl skipping in 富润家园. i also got displaced from my original position by a group of old ladies doing tai ji quan. shangren and i have been debating about asking them whether we can join them, but i believe he doesn't fit both requirements: you have to be female, and old. at least i fit the former.

yesterday afternoon, after going with my landlord to a nearby police station to register myself as an alien, i went shopping for some basic groceries all by myself - soy sauce, seasame oil, salt, pepper, garlic, onions etc. there were certain brands of soy sauce which cost less than half of the other brands, for the same volume, which i avoided. the locals appeared to have avoided it too, judging by the number of bottles left on the shelf. and there were these very dodgy-looking eco eggs which i didn't buy either. i figured that they actually weren't real eggs at all, in the sense of having being laid by chickens.

i bought some tuna which the locals also seemed to trust, seeing as there weren't many cans of it left. i also purchased some minced meat. i stood at the counter waiting to be served, when suddenly i realised that you were supposed to scoop up the amount you desired on your own, and bring it to the counter to be weighed.

garlic and ginger is very cheap here too. the garlic was about 0.88 yuan, which comes up to about 17 singapore cents.

yesterday evening, i decided to walk home from the supermarket. it was opposite the police station, and i'd taken a cab to the police station because i was late and it seemed very near my flat. the walk would have been pleasant enough, if only i hadn't been carrying so many groceries. still, it was good fun, and i think i'm going to do it again with less groceries.

yesterday night i finally started to feel some semblance of excitement about being in beijing, a place with (supposedly) good shopping (i wouldn't know, haven't gone to shop properly) and at the same time much history to see and experience. at twenty-one i doubt anyone'll ever feel the same sort of excitement as they did when they were children, particularly about travelling. or maybe that's because i've been to quite a few places. it's more of a pleasant, nice sort of feeling - finally having the knowledge that i wouldn't mind staying here for the next four or so months.

i remember being enthralled by mao's posters, reproduced in my history textbook. brightly coloured smiling people, and such idealistic slogans. not very different from singapore now, really. tell me what great difference there is between 同一个世界，同一个梦想 (one world, one dream - beijing olympics 2008), or together we can make this suburb a clean suburb and one people, one nation, one singapore?

it's interesting, experiencing the effects of those reforms and seeing how they've shaped and affected the chinese way of thinking, particularly with such rapid globalisation.

alright, this is starting to sound like a very boring gp essay.

coming home from dinner, i was looking out of the cab window at the surroundings - which, unfortunately, look the same at night, which resulted in us getting slightly lost - and i knew i'd miss it when it was time to go. but i told shangren also that a part of me's just counting down the days till i get back to singapore and i can see jon again.