i think our internet guy hates, and would dearly love to strangle us, one by one, slowly. last night our internet refused to work, and jinni only found his number at around 2330 so this morning i rang him at 0850 and tried to explain that we'd paid the bill for this month, but something was wrong again.
poor man, i wonder how many calls he gets a day from clueless foreign students who can't express themselves in mandarin very well.
poor man, i wonder how many calls he gets a day from clueless foreign students who can't express themselves in mandarin very well.
he told me to unplug the router and plug it back in again, assuring me that there was nothing wrong. which act of troubleshooting worked, because i am back online and listening to a Very Nice cantonese song called 扶手电梯 by sherman chung 钟舒漫 (who looks like a Bleddy Skank on her album cover) on repeat and chuckling to myself. because i don't understand a single word of it, save for the bits i'm able to pick out because it sounds like chinese, but i'm feeling Absolutely Delighted listening to it anyway. of course. :) and what a lot of capitals there are in this last paragraph.
***
... because i was feeling absolutely bored and restless with my life, and anyway my juvenile delinquency professor had actually walked into class with a half-finished one, how ironic.
all that Somebody With the Same Surname As Me had strived so hard to make sure the singapore education system instilled in me about the ill-effects of smoking went right out the window with the smoke from the professor's cigarette. i had been ready to take the plunge, but you know what they say, 进朱者赤，进墨者黑, interact with good people and become gooder, interact with bad people and become badder. so thanks to the wonderful, inspiring influence of the people on exchange with me, i eventually decided not to.
KIDDING!
(did you EVER think i was for real?)
what happened was, some dude rang me up telling me he'd found my wallet! jolie thinks the people at the pharmacy took it because they were very evasive when she went back to look for it; sure enough, this dude owned a shop which turned out to be a couple of doors away from the pharmacy.
we asked our local friend what i should get to thank him, and he said, you should buy wine or cigarettes. that's standard protocol here for gifts, because they're considered valuable items. and even if the person you're giving the cigarettes and wine to doesn't smoke or drink, they'll keep these items for guests, etc. or reuse them as gifts, i suppose. that's a world-wide practice for things you don't use yourself.
the co-op at our school sells cigarettes, and i was prepared to get either jolie or our local friend to purchase them for me because the whole idea of actually buying cigarettes felt really strange. i tried to point out to them also that i didn't want to encourage smoking, and that if anyone wanted to thank me they could get me fresh fruits and vegetables, but this idea was met with exasperated smiles.
but there's even a fruit shop outside the co-op can!
however, after lunch, we stood outside the co-op and i rang the dude back, but he didn't pick up the phone so we decided not to buy the cigarettes yet. we went across the road to the bakery - 金凤成祥, china's version of breadtalk, but there are TWO outlets within walking distance of my apartment, i don't think even breadtalk has expanded so fast - to buy some eats when he called me back.
much to my delight, i ended up buying him six portugese egg tarts.
when i got it back my wallet didn't have any money in it anyway.
***
it's good friday today, and i've just finished reading good omens by neil gaiman and terry pratchett. which was a really good book - british humour, a good ending, and enough fantasy and magic interspersed with the real world.
unfortunately, it also showed its authors up as humanists/materialists. in the middle of the book i'd begun harbouring (a rather faint) hope that they might very well have been christians. especially since i'd read neil gaiman's american gods before this, and i thought he'd described the concept and idea of god-worship pretty well, just that it hadn't been directed to Jesus in the book, of course.
by the end of good omens i had no doubt as to what position they took, and went to sleep feeling rather sad.
but there are some things in life you know you can never give up believing in, no matter how well-crafted the arguments against it are, and Jesus' death and resurrection is one of them.
***
it's raining properly for the first time since i came to beijing and it's a proper grey sky morning.
from what i've been able to identify of the lyrics so far, i'm pretty sure if i understood 扶手电梯 in its entirety, it's actually rather sappy and perfect for this emo-i-miss-jon-boohoohoo mood - the tune says it all too, despite the rather dodgy could-be-midi drum track.
you could baidu.com it, but in a while, because it hasn't been uploaded yet. better still, why don't you buy the CD - it's called castle - you'll be contributing to my getting better bak chor mee when i'm out with jon.
since discovering the wonders of baidu's mp3 search, i've been in love with faye wong's songs. a bit slow, i know. maybe i should buy her cd soon.
all that Somebody With the Same Surname As Me had strived so hard to make sure the singapore education system instilled in me about the ill-effects of smoking went right out the window with the smoke from the professor's cigarette. i had been ready to take the plunge, but you know what they say, 进朱者赤，进墨者黑, interact with good people and become gooder, interact with bad people and become badder. so thanks to the wonderful, inspiring influence of the people on exchange with me, i eventually decided not to.
KIDDING!
(did you EVER think i was for real?)
what happened was, some dude rang me up telling me he'd found my wallet! jolie thinks the people at the pharmacy took it because they were very evasive when she went back to look for it; sure enough, this dude owned a shop which turned out to be a couple of doors away from the pharmacy.
we asked our local friend what i should get to thank him, and he said, you should buy wine or cigarettes. that's standard protocol here for gifts, because they're considered valuable items. and even if the person you're giving the cigarettes and wine to doesn't smoke or drink, they'll keep these items for guests, etc. or reuse them as gifts, i suppose. that's a world-wide practice for things you don't use yourself.
the co-op at our school sells cigarettes, and i was prepared to get either jolie or our local friend to purchase them for me because the whole idea of actually buying cigarettes felt really strange. i tried to point out to them also that i didn't want to encourage smoking, and that if anyone wanted to thank me they could get me fresh fruits and vegetables, but this idea was met with exasperated smiles.
but there's even a fruit shop outside the co-op can!
however, after lunch, we stood outside the co-op and i rang the dude back, but he didn't pick up the phone so we decided not to buy the cigarettes yet. we went across the road to the bakery - 金凤成祥, china's version of breadtalk, but there are TWO outlets within walking distance of my apartment, i don't think even breadtalk has expanded so fast - to buy some eats when he called me back.
much to my delight, i ended up buying him six portugese egg tarts.
when i got it back my wallet didn't have any money in it anyway.
***
it's good friday today, and i've just finished reading good omens by neil gaiman and terry pratchett. which was a really good book - british humour, a good ending, and enough fantasy and magic interspersed with the real world.
unfortunately, it also showed its authors up as humanists/materialists. in the middle of the book i'd begun harbouring (a rather faint) hope that they might very well have been christians. especially since i'd read neil gaiman's american gods before this, and i thought he'd described the concept and idea of god-worship pretty well, just that it hadn't been directed to Jesus in the book, of course.
by the end of good omens i had no doubt as to what position they took, and went to sleep feeling rather sad.
but there are some things in life you know you can never give up believing in, no matter how well-crafted the arguments against it are, and Jesus' death and resurrection is one of them.
***
it's raining properly for the first time since i came to beijing and it's a proper grey sky morning.
from what i've been able to identify of the lyrics so far, i'm pretty sure if i understood 扶手电梯 in its entirety, it's actually rather sappy and perfect for this emo-i-miss-jon-boohoohoo mood - the tune says it all too, despite the rather dodgy could-be-midi drum track.
you could baidu.com it, but in a while, because it hasn't been uploaded yet. better still, why don't you buy the CD - it's called castle - you'll be contributing to my getting better bak chor mee when i'm out with jon.
since discovering the wonders of baidu's mp3 search, i've been in love with faye wong's songs. a bit slow, i know. maybe i should buy her cd soon.
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