I Want One

The weather here seems to have a pattern where it is warm and generally still weather for several days, allowing banks of smog to build up, before freezing winds pick up, howl and blow all night, leaving Qingdao clear and crisp the next day. Which is nice. Or was, as I have noticed that each time the winds arrive, they are slightly colder than before, and it never quite warms up fully afterwards... I suspect Autumn may have reached us here at last. Qingdao, by virtue of being on a  peninsula, is kept warm by the ocean so Autumn here is delayed a month. The flip side of this is that Spring is also delayed, but I'll worry about that later!

Anthony has acquired an ipod touch. I have never really liked ipods etc, seeing them as overpriced and, if technology can be so, far too smug. Plus I hate Macs. However there is now nothing I crave more than an ipod touch-purely because it is so damn useful for Chinese. You can look up characters very quickly by drawing them on the screen. It gives you extensive definitions and example sentences as well as a video of the stroke order. I love my battered paper dictionary but I fear that its bulk and time consuming method of looking up characters which requires you to know the radical of a character (which sometimes can be annoyingly obscure), plus lack of example sentences, means that I now crave a small, slick ipod touch. You have to understand that I am basically illiterate out here and this is just as large disadvantage here as it is at home. And if it takes me 60s with my paper dictionary to look up one character, and there can easily be 5 in a sentence I don't know, it'll take 5 minutes to read a sentence. 5 minutes I might not have... Hence why spending £150 on such a gadget might be worth it.

God I miss having an alphabet.

Plus an ipod plays music, can make Skype phone calls, can check emails and other useful things. I just need to persuade my parents to get me one for Christmas... Or rather, reimburse me as I really want one NOW...

I went to where I am potentially going to work. Raymond said that if anyone asks, I am a full-time teacher. Fairy has blue contact lenses. These don't quite work if you are Chinese with Chinese black eyes. But kudos for trying. They want me to talk about Halloween with some Kelloggs employees and tell ghost stories. And show them how to make pumpkin lanterns...

On the way I go past the Town Hall which from the front is Big and Splendid with smart guards and a fleet of black mercedes parked in front. It faces May 4th Square which is a huge avenue running down to the coast ending with a bizarre red lego sculpture. All very impressive. However my route then takes me along the side and round the back is the washing line with all the uniforms on :P

I finally plucked up the courage to text Vivien about her being my language partner. She sounds fantastic from her texts! She said "I am somewhat heavy but still a lovely person!". Chinese girls are very self concious about their weight. I'm looking forward to meeting her on Friday and practising my oral Chinese which is frankly appalling. Fingers crossed it goes well :)

I thought I might talk a bit about Chinese buses. They cost around 10p a ticket, although the 501 charges 20p and Becka and I have boycotted this one in protest. They specialise in fast moves in and out of traffic, normally if there is a female driver the slaloms are faster and more aggressive, and have an annoying design flaw where some seats at the back have nowhere to put your feet as the wheel compartment juts up leaving you with your knees level with your face. I am curious, and the Chinese seem to be as well as they keep trying, as to how many Chinese can fit on one single decker bus. A bus pulls up, absolutely crammed with people, faces squashed against the glass, and I've seen around 20 more eagerly push on, leaving around 10 on the last step huddled together as the doors bang shut again and again on their backs.

But they never give up and get off...

As Becka and I get more sinified we too are now braving the uber full buses and have found out that actually it's not the getting on that's the problem, it's the getting off... by the time your stop arrives you will have been inexorably pushed to the middle of the bus and have to barge through a solid wall of bodies to reach a door. And I mean solid! You inevitably leave ripples of angry Chinese whose ribs you've barged through to escape. Oh well.

Becka, James and I went in search of kebabs today and all the street sellers have disappeared... Where have they gone? Why? Are they coming back? We had to have McDonalds in the end and the cashier girl decided to interpret my saying I wanted five chicken nugget pieces as 10 and by the time I'd noticed I couldn't be bothered to change it. So now I'm pretty nuggeted out.