Only One Step Away

Super Surpise Come-back Post!

2011-02-20T03:30:00.000+08:00

Actually, not so much of a come-back, as a sort of 'Special Edition'. For those not in the know, Liam or Lili as he is sometimes affectionally known is currently off in the land of Nippon. How has he come to be here, how long has he been there, and how long till he returns? Oh, and what has he done? These be the things that we be cover'in very soon. For your audio pleasure, I suggest/recommend listening to this tune as you read. It's working for me as I write at this very moment :)

Okay, Why am I in Japan? Some time ago last year, JetStar had some sort of a short-term sale. Tickets to Japan were cheap, and a good friendo said 'Hey man, let's do it'. The date was set for basically the entire month of Feburary. To cut a long story short, a lot happened, and the trip date was revised to 8th Feb till 28th Feb. This included a few days in Cairns before hitting Japan (arriving via Osaka), as I couldn't get the flights closer together.

So, as of the time of writing, I've been in Japan for about 9 days now and the trip is around half-way through. It's been good so far, though tonight has certainly been one of the... less structured. You see, I'm sitting in a small, smokey, cramped but otherwise comfortable cubicle in a 24-hour internet cafe in Tokyo. It:'s about 3:30am. But here I am, getting ahead of myself. I'll take you back to Cairns and begin.

After my usual late rush of getting organised for travel (/life), I had made it to the Perth Domestic Airport courtesy of Brother. I was surprised when the girl at the security scanner asked me what I thought about Kindles, and if I liked mine (Girls and technology? Since when did THAT happen? /braces for impact). I can't remember if I got scanned then or at Cairns airport for explosives, but it happened somewhere. It always happens. The going theory is that they are attracted to beards. Anyway, the JetStar flight over was relatively uncomfortable, though for no exact reason. Just... couldn't get comfortable.

My next fun little hurdle was that the in-theory organised shuttle bus never turned up. After waiting about 1/2 an hour, I caught a cab to the hostel. Seeing as I was arriving at 4am, they were actually letting me sleep on the couch for free that night, so as to not have purchased a night for 3 hours worth of sleep. That was maybe a bad idea on my part, as though the couch was suitable comfy, I woke the next day with random bites on my body, which would be itchy and persist for about the next 5 or so days.

After lingering on the couch as long as I could after sunrise, I went and got checked in, and promptly fell asleep again in a real bed. This was much more satisfying, though I effectively slept most of the day away. When I woke, it was raining, which was to be a recurring theme for the rest of my time in Cairns. Eventually, I got up and did a walk around town. Smallish, plenty of drinking holes, and quite relaxed. Returning to the hostel, I got to know some Dutch guys, who were also sleeping in my dorm. In addition, there was another guy. I forget his exact origin - it was Middle Eastern/Arabic, but he spoke fluent English with an American accent and looked more 'tanned' than actually having arab features/characteristics. We all went out to get dinner, and I soon found myself surprised at the amount of alcohol that is apparently thrown around in some places.

In this case, it was a 2-4-1 drinks night (regularly scheduled), though it actually became a 3-4-1 drinks night (apparently spur-of-the-moment, but I don't see that as being that possible...). Boozing occured, and eventually we made our way home. That wasn't before visiting another bar, where I, frankly, was somewhat surprised/put off by the spectacle. Basically, a guy on stage shouting sex-positions, and the drunken mass below getting in those positions, with the slowest people getting ejected. This continued for a time until only a few couples remained, at which time it was the slowest people having to remove items of clothing. There was someone operating a video-camera from a higher level, zoomed in on the women, which was being piped to big screens around the club. Somewhere along the way, I stopped laughing at started feeling uncomfortable. Funny (hah, they fell over) became sleazy (hah, sex positions) became ...? (hah, the majority of a bar perving on women drunk enough to barely stand).

And when I said earlier that we made our way home, I actually meant that the 2 guys went straight back to the hostel, and I tried the other bar with the other guy, and left him there. I then proceeded to get lost on the theortically 5-10 minute walk back to the hostel. I don't know how long I spent out there, but it felt like forever. I managed to get an incredible hot-dog from a guy in a van on the main street, as he kept entertained watching late-night black and white films on ABC. Seriously, it was just a weiner in a bun, but he had added like half a kilo of grated cheese and then microwaved it and smashed it with sauce. Being drunk may have helped, but wow, it was delicious.

Next day proceeded much the same, from memory. I slept for a long time, walked around, had dinner from a nearby mexican bar/resturant (Delicious, again), and read a book. I also watched parts of Thelma and Louise, which some girls were watching. An old Simpsons episode made more sense, though I had known the reference already. It was raining essentially the whole day...

Skipping ahead, I got to the airport the next day and was off on my flight to Osaka. The flight was much better, though again for no apparent reason. Arriving in Kansai International Airport, I was relatively lost. The train network didn't make much sense to me, and the staff at the JR office weren't that helpful either. Foolishly, I triggered my JR Pass earlier than I should have (Effectively, it allows free travel on the major rail networks for whatever period you have purchased; 7, 14, or 21 days. I had purchased 14). Oh, and the guy only marked it down as a 7 day pass. This comes later on in the trip, but it would take around 30 minutes to get fixed. Though I still get funny looks from every person who looks at it, and half the time get called back so they can have a closer look. At least they are vigilant about their work, when he was not...?

Anyway, I got in to town and set about finding my hostel. The directions weren't great, though it was also due to my having not purchased a subway ticket (subways/light rail not being covered by the JR Pass). Here I had my first taste of the Japanese politeness/care, as a guy in that station noticed I was looking a bit confused. He pointed me in the right direction, and I was able to walk to the hostel, albeit getting a little lost. (Note the trend folks; it won't be the last time I get lost). Finally arriving at the hostel, I'm greeted by a warmer, gentler world. The hostel was possibly my favourite one up to current date, being small (around 14 people maximum?) and of a generally classier feel than all the others. The manager would later explain to me that the owner, an architect, is looking to attract patrons somewhere above backpackers, but below businessmen. Apparently he's happy enough with anyone that is paying, though.

I dropped my bags next to my bed and went up to join the strangers-but-soon-to-be-friends in the living room. 3 Australians from the East Coast, and a girl from England, but living in the UK. Later, a Canadian would also join us. We sat and chatted and generally made friendly, and were shouted a free round of warm wine on the house (Not sake, mind you. I think there was even ginger in the bottom of the cup). Amusingly for me, a reoccuring topic with the Australian girl was that she paid out on bogans extensively, but often said some pretty dopey things herself. Not that I'm perfect either, mind :)

So, I have been writing for awhile now. More to come, on such topics and places as Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Beppu, Matsuyama, and Tokyo.

End of Days

2010-10-10T11:18:00.000+08:00

Hey all, I'm going to stop updating this blog, and focus updating on The Rule. It's sort of appropriate, given that this blog was created as a place for me to blog whilst in China.

APB Closes Its Doors After Less Than Three Months

2010-09-17T22:01:00.000+08:00

APB Closes Its Doors After Less Than Three Months

Can't say I'm surprised, or that I didn't think that it looked crap to begin with. So long, good riddance.

burswood train station - Google Maps

2010-09-17T21:39:00.000+08:00

burswood train station - Google Maps

Wait... what? Since when did Google Maps have train times? That's awesome.

Jihad yo face~

2010-09-16T23:22:00.001+08:00

Alright, I’ve just had a heap of curry so there’s only one thing to do – blog. Or, I could go sleep. Really, actually, I should go sleep, but I’m going to do this first.

Someone mentioned this to me the other day, and it has been on my mind a few times since, so I’ll share it. Baaaaaaaaaaaasically, you know how last week there was the US priest who was like, ‘lol, check it out, I’m going to burn this Koran’? Yeah, a retard and a douche, I know.

So then what happens? You get all these people bitching him out. Left, right and centre. Everyone was raining shit on that guy. Which is fine, he was being a retard and a douche.

The point that was made was – Where is everyone when someone of the Islamic faith pulls a retarded and/or douchey manoeuvre? It’s not like it doesn’t happen pretty darn frequently.

Is it because a *insert most religions here?* priest won’t threaten to kill you if/when you do something that insults his/her religion? Is that the element? That stepping on the toes of Islam generally, correct me if I’m wrong, seems to end up with death threats and angry mobs burning flags and/or people injured or killed?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think most religions are massively retarded, and all are guilty of fucking up the lives of people throughout the history of Man.

And don’t get me wrong, again, I understand that every religion has people who will interpret it word-for-word, and that there are moderates and extremists. I can see that all too well, with the number of fundamentalist Christians in America.

AND DON’T GET ME WRONG, AGAIN AGAIN, I understand that we’re dealing with minorities here. Vocal, angry minorities. But that’s almost damning in itself. If you’re in the majority, you shouldn’t have to fear the minority. You’re not the ones with stupid ideas like GOD HATES FAGS and LOL ANY REPRESENTATION OF MUHAMMED IS A HUGE TERRIBLE SIN.

It just feels like… Moderate Christianity is able to cuss out on fundamentalist/extremist Christianity, but no-one is able to cuss out on fundamentalist/extremist Islam, because then there are death threats, violence and general unpleasantness.

And I don’t feel like that’s right.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To get specific, the quote that got me all up in the grill like this, was as follows…

‘And here is the voice of Moderate Islam… the noise is deafening’

I know, I know

2010-08-18T22:12:00.001+08:00

Yet another long delay between posts. Terrible, terrible.

Not as bad as the fact that it’s been… a fortnight? That I’ve been planning on shaving, and I still haven’t gotten there. Beardy-Mc’Beardo has got to go, but I just haven’t got the firepower to git’m gone.

I had a dream last night/this morning, and I actually made a point of trying my best not to forget it. I’ve been actively trying to remember my dreams, you see, but that’s another story. My dream this morning? The President (Not any president that I actually know of, just that he was The PRESIDENT’n’shit.) commanding a bunch of tanks via super-duper spy satellites, and getting them all destroyed. However, there were survivors from the tanks, and some other guys? And so they went on to the objective; but all they found was like, deeply scorched walls. Think like, if a velociraptor had lightsabre claws, and had been running around and fly-kicking the walls. Big deep melty cuts.

Dammnit, now I’m thinking of… pork chops, and melted cheese? Shit just gets weirder.

For more actual details on my life – currently working casually at a place doing general IT support. Potentially will solidify into a permanent position. For now, I just work like slave-dog. ‘Liam! Fetch monitors! Set them up! Good boy! Fix the printer! Fix my email! Fix my phone!’

In Soviet Russia, Computer plays You!

Yeah, I’m tired. Deal.

I’m so darn sick of the election. I mean, I knew it was going to be long and painful but –come-on-, this is getting ridiculous. Abbott; you’re a giant douche and I don’t like you. Gillard, you’re a turd sandwich and I don’t like you either. Dishonourable mention - B.Brown, you’re a douche-sandwich. –No, I don’t know how that would work. I’m sure it’s unpleasant though-

It has been awhile…

2010-07-29T12:21:00.001+08:00

Originally I was just going to post a rant about photography and how it seems so often that the apparent skill of a photographer is not in the pictures they take, but the quality of the camera they used. But I can’t be bothered going in to that. For now, here’s some things that have been going on.

I have a girlfriend now. Nice girl. I’ve known her a long time and it never seemed that we’d be together, for a variety of reasons. In the end, the final hurdle was convincing myself to take the plunge and to take a risk, of sorts. Relationships are something I take pretty seriously, so let’s just say that I don’t jump in to them lightly.

I’ve ‘sort’ of got a job. It’s for a mining-related consulting firm, and while they haven’t yet found me work as a field assistant, I have been able to work for them in the capacity of a grunt. That is to say, I’ve been a body with arms and legs, helping move boxes as they transfer to a new office. Still, that has provided some level of satisfaction to me.

My mother has been away travelling through Europe, and just got back yesterday. Good to have her back, though I’ll have to adjust my living style to suit having her in the house again. On a somewhat related note, my brother and his girlfriend are moving out into a rented place soon. They’ve actually started moving stuff in, but they won’t be living there till this weekend, I believe.

I felt ripped off after buying Starcraft 2 for $88, then finding that some places are selling it at $68-$69, which is apparently actually below their cost price. Just goes to show – shop around, every-single-fucking-time.

I’ve been shopping for the family a lot – groceries and whatnot – as I’m the one with the free time. It’s been alright doing this, though I always forget to take the damn Rewards card thing.

I’ve also been cooking a lot, mainly stir-fry dishes with rice. I’ve been enjoying that though, it has been interesting seeing what works and what doesn’t. Also did a little bit of baking with my girlfriend; we made some cookies and some muffins. The cookies were much better than the muffins…

Later, Y’all.

Step 38 – What now?

2010-06-09T19:42:00.001+08:00

Long time no post. I know. I always know. But whatever. I’ll deal. You’ll deal. We’ll all learn to deal with it somehow. Hopefully.

So I’m writing this from my laptop, sitting at my Grandparent’s house in Coffs Harbour. I keep going to call it Grandma’s house, but it doesn’t feel right. Grandpa moved into a ‘low-but-high-care’ facility last Friday. It’s been a pretty difficult move for everyone, not least him – he’s age 96 and a half. I didn’t even realise he was that old now. I thought he was 95.

I don’t think I really want to get into depth with it, but the his children – my mother, aunt and uncle – are all feeling pretty terrible about it. None of them want to put him in the place, but nor can they or Grandma continue to provide the level of care he needs.

It has been difficult for them trying to get what they feel is adequate care from the old folks place, where the staff seem pretty thin on the ground and early signs were not good. All the staff thought his name was Joe for some reason, despite this being nowhere on his forms or being in any way related to him.

Probably most disturbing for Grandma was when we took her to visit him, only for us not to find him in his room, or indeed anywhere around. He’d gone and gotten lost in another ward, where he’d been sat down so someone could keep an eye on him. Thing is, he needed to lie down and sleep. So he’s there, lost, feeling worse and worse.

Hurm. Things have improved but it’s been a pretty harsh move for the poor guy.

Update: Mum actually took him out for a drive with Nan and Kevin (his son, my uncle) today – and apparently that was quite nice. He’s getting more settled at the home, also good.

How did I end up in Coffs Harbour? I’m here with my mother, just visiting. Mum has retired now and I’m still without work, so it seemed a good thing to do. That and I haven’t been across since… too long. Folks, having all your relatives live on the far side of the country sucks balls. At least, when they’re the decent loving caring relatives that I’ve been lucky enough to have been given.

For the past few days I’ve been helping Kev clean out stuff from below the house. Once I’m back in Perth and have had a chance to sort things out, I’ll upload some of the pictures I’ve been taking.

In other news, I did the silly thing and caved to my desires and bought myself a new computer. Oh, and a new phone plan. Finally I escape the beast that is Tel$tra, but I really should have gotten a job first. ~$2k on the computer and $29 ongoing for the phone, with no job. That was interesting actually. The phone guy ended up fluffing the details on the phone contract a bit, so that I would pass the credit check. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that being unemployed would make it difficult for me to get an ongoing payment… ‘thing’ (agreement?) happening.

Well, I’m done writing and feel like posting. There’s more that I could/should write, but whatever. It’ll come out somewhere.

Step 37 – Surprises abound.

2010-04-28T15:41:00.001+08:00

So, something new is a foot. Most of you probably already know by now, but for those who don’t, I’ve been home for about a week now.

Home, you say? Yeah, Home home. Perth home. And damn it feels good.

So there’s people around asking questions (*shakes fist* damn you people) like ‘But why Liam? Why return when you’re so totally awesome that you can succeed at anything everywhere and anywhere on the globe!?’. Okay maybe I embellished that question, but the basic jist of ‘Why?’ is true, and fair enough – it’s a good question. Originally plans had me spending two years in China, perhaps coming home after one year for a holiday. So why am I back after 8 months?

There’s a long answer and a short answer. The short answer is that I was simply unhappy in Chengdu, and had had enough (I always feels weird about using that double ‘had’ – it’s natural enough in speaking but strange on paper…).

The long answer is longer (hur-durrrrrrrrrrr) and a bit more complex. Why was I unhappy? Why did I think returning to Australia would help? Why didn’t I ‘tough it out’ and stay longer? So on and so forth.

I guess that I’ll first look at why I was unhappy in Chengdu. There’s many different elements to this, but I think that possibly the most important was that I didn’t feel like I had good friends. There were people that I could hang out with, crack jokes, shoot the shit etc, but good friends? Not so much. And this actually got me really down. I felt like I didn’t have anyone around me who I shared common interests with. Obviously that’s not quite true – we shared enough to talk shit - but I think you’re getting my point.

Moving on, I moved into an apartment with a person I really shouldn’t have. We used to on and off argue, despite being friends, and it could get pretty heated at times. Why did I move in with this person when there were already warning bells before we were living together? Guilt, essentially. I felt that I couldn’t back out after giving my word that I would move in. Ironically, I would obviously bail later to come back to Australia (yey) anyway, leaving that person pissed off. Anyway, lesson learned – if you’re occasionally fighting before you move in, FFS DO NOT MOVE IN.

Okay, the weather also shat me. I knew it was going to be cloudy and shit, but I had no idea that I’d ever miss the sun/sky as much as I did while living in Chengdu. Basically, in my ~8 months there, I think I saw clear-ish blue skies on less than 5 days. The rest was a grey overcast. Sometimes there were variations in that grey overcast sky (Oh look, the sun is an angry red orb instead of the normal dim struggling lightbulb) but it was still, in the end, a grey overcast sky. And it got me down.

I’m not sure where this started, but I was increasingly losing interest in learning Chinese, and interacting with Chinese people. That sounds terrible and it kind of is – the people part I mean – but it’s true. I guess… maybe some sort of ‘culture-fatigue’ set in? I was only seeing/noticing the stuff that happened that annoyed me – people spitting everywhere and crapping their babies on the street/sidewalk/anywhere in particular. I’m serious, by the way. Kid needs to go potty? Yeah, let’s just have the kid take a dump on the sidewalk. No, let’s not clean it up in any way, shape or form. I’m not actually sure that I ever stepped on a human dump while in China, but my god, the chance that I might? Really pissed me off.

Anyway, I’d better post this now or I’ll leave it untouched and unfulfilled for another 2 weeks.

Step 36 - Watch this space

2010-04-10T16:31:00.000+08:00

The times, they are a-changin'

Conspiracy theorists kgo.

Step 35 - Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. sigh

2010-03-30T16:06:00.008+08:00

Nearly 3 full weeks later and I finally begin on a new blog post. What's gone on since my last post? I'll have to have a think about that.

So, I've been to Shanghai to catch up with a buddy. It was great to see her and she was super nice and brought me many a tasty treat from Australia. Namely, cheese and Dilmah tea. So much Dilmah tea. 1200 bags, exactly. <3. I didn't actually do that much in Shanghai, but it was my 3rd time there and I don't really feel like it has that much new to offer me. Maybe that's me being a bit too presumptuous, but Shanghai has never been very good at attracting me. First impressions count?

Back in Chengdu, I guess I've been feeling more homesick than ever. Whenever a negative event occurs, it only adds to my feelings of dislike (resentment?) towards China. I doubt that they're all valid complaints, but somehow they're more acceptable if they were to occur back home. Sometimes there are events that annoy me, that with greater reflection I realise would also easily occur in Perth. My most recent grievance against China begins as such - I awake to my roommate knocking on my door.

-Hey Liam, get up, I just got a message from (I forget) saying that someone at school was saying that Liam should go see the police. Apparently they think he has overstayed his VISA by like a month.
+Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. *sigh*

So I get up. The time is around 11am. I have a cup of tea. Mooch around for awhile I guess, just waking up. Around lunchtime I figure I'll leave and get some food on the way to the police station. My Chinese housemate stops me; 'Ah, Liam, I think the police station will be closed for their break. Maybe it would be better to go around 2.30pm'. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. *sigh*. I was fully used to the Int. Student office having long afternoon siesta's/lunch breaks, but I didn't realise that it also extended to the Police.

So I waited and bummed around, practicing some guitar, flopping around on the computer. Eventually I left and went to visit the 'Poe Poe'. The guy there didn't give two hoots about my Visa/Residence permit; just taking a few photocopies and getting my signature on a document confirming, yes, I was still living in China. So I get back home and figure it's all done and covered. Except that this morning, my Chinese housemate mentions to me that the landlord has called him and said that I should call the police. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. *sigh*.

I was already annoyed that the local police couldn't confirm shit with the Visa department - I mean, I assume they have a big file on me anyway, no doubt with a noteation of this blog and snarky recommendations that I should be fucked with at every available opportunity. But just listen to me, assumptions of celebrity and grandeur, thinking that my situation is shitty. I only need look around to see that there's plenty of Chinese get fucked every day by their government. Oh wait, there I go again, making parallels between China and Australia.

Anyway, I'm done ranting now. I haven't been taking pictures really, so I don't have anything much new to show. I've nearly finished the Vegemite my parents brought over for me, so that's sad for me. Perhaps I can find some strange sort of alchemy to convert tea into Vegemite.

I'm finding that my laptop is on it's final legs, in terms of gaming life/desktop replacement. It still functions more than adequately in every other function that I have for it, which is why it's so painful. If it were utterly useless, I'd have no qualms about replacing it right here and right now. Alak, it's still a generally healthy functioning machine and it still has use, so I have to watch it limp along best it can whenever I put it through the ordeal of modern gaming. I don't even attempt to run Battlefield: Bad Company 2 any more, it's just not worth the pain for either of us. Batman: Arkham Asylum is a similar story, though not quite so obviously... torturous.

In terms of my future/career, I've been finding myself more and more interested in the idea of video game journalism. God forbid my parents actually read this blog, I'm sure they'll shrivel up and die inside at the thought. A recent funny story behind that goes as such - I was recently chatting with my Dad on Skype, complaining as I have just done about my laptop failing at gaming.

[24/03/2010 6:18:43 PM] liam.jones08: hehe
[24/03/2010 6:18:58 PM] liam.jones08: you'll probably be glad to hear this
[24/03/2010 6:19:14 PM] liam.jones08: but i'm having trouble with hobbies of my own.
[24/03/2010 6:19:44 PM] Douglas Jones: Oh....what's that....home brewing?
[24/03/2010 6:20:08 PM] liam.jones08: playing computer games (the latest ones anyway) is becoming nigh impossible as my laptop just can't run them
[24/03/2010 6:20:12 PM] Douglas Jones: That's the normal student 'hobby'.....except for girls of course
[24/03/2010 6:20:25 PM] liam.jones08: you forget I'm a nerd, but anyway
[24/03/2010 6:20:26 PM] liam.jones08: haah
[24/03/2010 6:20:47 PM] Douglas Jones: That's an activity....not a hobby!!!
[24/03/2010 6:21:21 PM] liam.jones08: maybe i should check the definition of hobby
[24/03/2010 6:21:39 PM] liam.jones08: 'A hobby is an activity or interest that is undertaken for pleasure or relaxation'
[24/03/2010 6:21:58 PM] liam.jones08: Hmm, I think it passes as being a hobby dad!
[24/03/2010 6:22:16 PM] liam.jones08: despite you/mum's feelings towards it
[24/03/2010 6:22:17 PM] Douglas Jones: mumble mumble mumble

Yes, mumble indeed. Grumble is also appropriate. Anyway, this is just a relatively tame example of my parent's maligned attitude towards gaming and computers in general. So I did some quick searching, as I always do, to find out just about anything. Clogged toilet? Checking the internet. Stained clothes? Checking the internet. Mouldy walls? Checking the internet. You get the idea. Anyway, my search returned this article quite quickly. It made these 5 points (with greater detail, if you follow the link).

Be a gamer. (Tick)
Be a writer. (Tick)
Get a degree. (Tick)
Do work experience and/or put together a portfolio. (Cross, but in progress - as seen at 'The Rule', where I'm soon to be stepping up the standard)
Get a job. (Cross. On the flipside, I did my UWA work experience with two people who have at one stage or another been journalists and editors of an Australian video gaming magazine. It's not much, but it's better than not knowing anyone in the industry.)

For anyone that knows me, I'm about as changeable as the wind when it comes to having a clue about my future or what I want, so by all means take this with a grain of salt. Just... right now at least, this makes a lot of sense to me. Doesn't exactly tie in with me being in China/learning Mandarin, but I guess that's life. Let's see where I am next blog post...

Step 34 - Vinegar!

2010-03-11T03:40:00.001+08:00

Okay, as promised, an update.

What's been new? First week back at Uni has passed. My attendance has not been, shall we say, great. There's a combination of factors at work here. General ambivilence carrying over from last semester, poor sleeping habits from the break (for a period I was generally going to bed around 3-4am), and the increased travel time to class (from <= 5 minutes, to >=15 minutes). On the flipside, I've been doing more study at home. I'm not feeling worried about things because I'm much happier with the situation than I was last semester, and in general, still feeling more productive. A happy Liam is a productive Liam, perhaps.

In line with that, I've given my number to a nearby English teaching school. They aren't looking to hire, but said that they might call if they need a substitute teacher. Not the best result, but I'm happy that I've at least got that much going on so far. The next step is using my Chinese housemate to line up some 1 on 1 tutoring that isn't a Chinese - English swap. See, that's a thing here. They're very eager to not spend money (as am I), so they're very keen on the 'language swap'. Given money has become an issue for me, I'm more interested in a mix of language swap with a few people, and then recieving money from a few other people. We'll see what eventuates.

I've bought a whiteboard. It's been nice because I've used it to put out a few reminders for me to look at every day. I've made an exercise schedule (all body weight activities etc, as I haven't gotten myself back to the gym), an eating/dietary plan (reminds to drink heaps of water, 2 fruit + 5 veg, no sugar/minimal processed foods, etc), and a rough day plan. I haven't subscribed to any of these things perfectly yet, but I do like having them there, and they have been useful. I also bought a lamp. This is great, because for about a week I didn't have a ceiling light in my room. Why didn't I just buy a new bulb? Because the landlord wanted to replace the entire fixture. I'm actually glad they did, because now they're using nice incandescent bulbs instead of fluro. But yeah, the lamp now means I have a reading light for in bed. Great success.

Slowly but surely, this room is becoming my space. I still haven't put up posters due to lack of decent stickytape/blutack (hurrr D:) but whatever, I'm getting there. The other day I put white vinegar all over the mouldy spots on the wall, and gave it a good chance to soak in a bit. Hopefully I don't see that mould returning any time soon. I'm finding the air-conditioner actually makes the room a whole lot more humid - I should look to see if there's another setting I can use that leaves things a bit... drier. One set back I only realised last night was that my ginger-chili sweets that I bought in Yunnan had, despite being what I thought was pretty well sealed inside two plastic bags, gotten humid/soggy, so I now have a bag of concealed sticky ginger chili sweets. God damn. They were delicious. A friend has suggested I put them in the freezer, which actually seems like good advice - Just the other day on Lifehacker I was reading that if you spill water on a book, best place to put it is in a bag (not sealed) in the freezer. Supposed to pull the water right out of that sucker. Seems kind of obvious but Not something I'd ever thought of/realised before.

I'm getting more active with my guitar practice/learning, but struggling with my fat fingers. I'm getting better I think, but certainly frustrating at times. It's like doing anything else really (cough, damn you Mandarin, cough).

Oh, and I've said this to everyone I think, but the soundtrack for some PSP game called Shatter? Really awesome. Seriously, I love this album.

Finally, I've been pretty lazy more recently with adding photos and formatting the text on this blog. Can readers please get back to me on how much it matters to them? If everyone's in agreement that it looks better and makes for a more pleasurable reading experience, then I'll start doing it again.

Step 33 - Home, of sorts.

2010-02-28T18:00:00.001+08:00

Okay, so, I've obviously been really bad about keeping up to date with this blog. My bad. I started this post ages ago (would have been around the 13th of 14th of February) but never quite got around to continuing it. I'll update the old post as necessary, then keep on going with the original train of thought.

I'm making another 'out-of-correct-order' post, but whatever. I've currently been living in the new apartment for 3 or 4 days now (More like 18 now...). Things are going quite alright. I saw Byron off at the airport, and today said goodbye to the house mate's visiting friends. So now it's the two of us, looking after a puppy which belongs to what appears to be the soon-to-be ex-boyfriend of the house mate (Yep, ex-boyfriend. Also, puppy wasn't as much drama as it could have been). Valentine's day Drama, of course. For my part, my main <3 interest is a girl back in Perth, who I've never met and only know off the internet (Lol). That's not to bitch about net dating, that's how I met my last girlfriend, just complaining about the tyranny of distance/how lame China is.

So, the new apartment. I'll put some pictures up soon, but it's alright here. My room is large enough, the internet works, the location is fine. I have noticed (and am kicking myself for not noticing sooner) large spots/sections of black mould on the wall. Preeeeeeeetty gay. Going to get onto that ASAP with bleach and/or vinegar (so it turns out bleach is only supposed to be effective against mould on hard/non absorbent surfaces. Apparently it just kills the surface colony, which will resurface later on).

Seeing Byron off was pretty bad. I was very sad to see him go, and seeing him disappear off into the security section of the airport gave me a definite sinking feeling in my gut. It's not just that he's a really good friend, but a connection back to my home, my parents, and all my other friends back in Australia.

Alright, I didn't get much written that first time, am I right? I'm feeling quite a bit happier now, and I'm more settled, but I'm still definitely missing home. Not missing the heat you guys are apparently putting up with though. Screw that 40 degree shit -right- off.

Lijiang was, as I said, not that exciting. Big-time tourist action, expensive admission to all the parks etc, and not necessarily worth it. I'll only go there again if passing through to Tiger Leaping Gorge or something.

I feel like I should point out that Byron kept a much better blog of the trip than I did, and writes a whole bunch better too. Check his blog out, seriously.

What else do I have to say? Hm.

Last night I met a bunch of people and joined in for a game of Axis & Allies. It was the first time I've played A&A, and the first boardgame I've played in a really long time. It was quite fun, though quite amusing though. I was worried about slowing the game down with my inexperience, but out of the 6 people there, 3 were also quite new it seemed. Kind of frustratingly, one guy has apparently been playing with them for awhile, but just isn't getting a grip on how to play. I'm not talking strategy, I'm talking basic rules. The 2 experienced guys would be like 'No, dude, what are you doing? You -know- you can't do that', and the guy would be like 'Oh, okay', and try to do the exact same thing again. Not a cheater, just not really following.

It also happened to be the longest game they've ever played, apparently. We went from around 6.30, and still hadn't finished by 12. That was on the one game. It was getting to the closing stages, but dice roles had gone the wrong way in key battles that would have hastened the end of the game. I still enjoyed it, despite the long play time, and I'm glad to have met the people as they seem like a nice bunch.

I've managed to get my passport in for a new residence permit, this time with minimal fuss. Things could very easily have been ultra-frustrating but they didn't. For example, I needed to find a police station to register that I am now living off-campus. No one really knew where it was, but Gosia had done it before and had a vague idea of the area. Looking on Google Maps, there was a single police station in the vague vicinity of where Gosia had suggested I look. I walked over, and it happened to be the right place, so I got registered in like 40 minutes including travel time. If I'd been trying this when I first arrived, I probably would have been hit by 3 buses on the way there, and it still would have been the wrong place.

Going to the Public Security Beauru (PSB) could also have gone wrong. I went there late on a Tuesday or something, around 4pm. It closes at 5pm, so I knew already I was tempting fate. Anyway, I got there around 4.30 and the place was deserted. Awesome. I filled out the forms and was ready by 4.45pm. And then I sat there for about 10 minutes. The girls at the counter were doing what appeared to be 'make-look-busy work'. Just they weren't very good at it. Shuffling papers, and whatnot. Anyway, 5 minutes to go and one of them sighs, presses a button and bing, I'm up. We get done in a few minutes and I'm out of there. Praise to be whatever lords that control the PSB, for making it less painful than last time. I still ended up waiting like an hour and wandering about 1km before I managed to get a free cab, but still, all in all it was a very good run of luck.

So semester starts again on the 8th. I'm sort of keen and sort of not. Keen, because I get more meaning to life. Not keen, because it turns out I never got used to 8.30am classes.

~~That's it for now, I guess. Seems like I didn't have much to say after all.~~

Oh wow, totally forgot it's been Chinese New Year. Too many goddamn fireworks, seriously. They're -still- setting off fireworks at like 3am. It's ridiculous. Great if you like fireworks, but if you're a normal human being, 3 weeks is just soooooo annoying.

Step 32 - Da... li?

2010-02-09T18:38:00.002+08:00

Another day, another post. We're still in Lijiang, but soon to leave - tomorrow infact. Can't say I'll miss Lijiang very much, it seems a relatively dull place, more of a stopover location than anything else.

I'm currently trying to remember what I wrote in my last post, while sitting in CreaWriter with the Fallout 3 Soundtrack playing in the background - Old music is pretty awesome. I think my last post finished on the last major event in Kunming, the Stone Forest. So, moving on!

Byron and I left Gosia behind and caught a flight to Dali. It was a pretty short flight, somewhere around 30 minutes. It's the only flight I've been on where they've actually served in-flight refreshments before the plane has actually taken off. I'm not kidding, that actually happened. We're sitting on the tarmac, and two stewardesses pass by with a trolley, dispensing water and crackers. I guess stranger things happen, but it raised my eyebrow.

Dali. It's a town, pretty small. I often see people calling it an Ancient Town. Fair enough. Most people will probably recognise it by the 3 big-ass white pagodas. I know that's probably my most lingering memory of Dali, but they weren't the only thing I liked about the place.

After arriving dismounting the aircraft and collecting our luggage, we took the fixed 90 kuai taxi ride to the Old Town section of Dali. This taxi ride is actually pretty good, as it takes about 15-30 minutes from memory, and gives you some pretty good views of the general area, including New Town, the lake, the mountains surrounding and, of course, Old Town. The weather was yet again clear skies, though the wind was slightly gusty - we watched the white caps breaking on the lake surface as we drove in.

The hostel we were staying at was called the Jade Emu, owned and run by an Australian guy called Dave (from Melbourne) and his Chinese partner. This was to be the best hostel of the trip, with a large clean twin-share room and en-suite bathroom for the reasonable price of 60 kuai per person. I know, I know, twin-share? Why not a dorm!? Basically for hassle-free sleeping and general comfort. It's been nice. Anyway, the food and drink there was also cheaper than The Hump and the Wi-fi internet was available in our room, unlike The Hump. Sorry Hump, I do seem to keep dumping on you... Oh well.

So yeah, Dali. I believe we spent most of our first day there wandering around the Old Town. This was quite nice in itself, though it's all very touristy. You also occasionally get asked by local women if you're into smoking, more specifically, pot/weed. Apparently it used to be more obvious but after a crackdown by police, they're keeping it quite low-key. It's not really a bother though, you say 'No/Bu yao' and keep walking and they won't bother you until you pass by them again. It's our fault really, apparently all foreigners look the same. Yep, the coin has two faces people. I remember having noodles back in Chengdu and a guy in the place kept looking at me. I didn't recognise him, and so kept eating. Eventually he comes over and says, 'Hi... you don't remember me, do you?'. He wasn't exactly impressed than I didn't, and left. To this day, I still have no idea who that guy was, and where I was supposed to have known him from. Whoops?

What I liked the most about Dali was that I felt very... relaxed and at ease. It has a pretty chilled out atmosphere and I really enjoyed that. There wasn't really any hustle-and-bustle that I remember, though things got packed in some areas with Chinese tourists. Probably the most 'stressful' event was asking about 5 places for a top-up-card for my phone, each one passing me onto a new place that, of course, didn't have any and just redirected me. Eventually I got one, and it wasn't so much stressful but annoying.

What else did I see that I liked... a bunch of wall-poster type things that I ended up buying, and a broom-handle BB gun pistol that I didn't end up buying. I'm trying to remember any special food, but nothing comes to mind. The meal I probably enjoyed the most was probably the one Byron least enjoyed, as he complains it nearly killed him. Hmph. Just making him stronger! Better! More tolerant of chilli and other hot spices!

I'm feeling a bit tired of typing so I'll leave it here for today, with the update that I think Lijiang is kinda crap and we're both looking forward to returning to Chengdu!

Step 31 - Kunming Events! Kunming... parents? Damn, no decent titles here either.

2010-02-08T19:03:00.001+08:00

Alright, reporting live from Lijiang here, but I'm actually going to write about events in Kunming. Maybe even Dali! Since my memory is a little hazy, I'm going to run through these places out of chronological order. It won't really make a big difference. *edit - As it happens, I actually did write about them in chronological order. Word.*

The place I probably have the least to write about is Green Lake Park. It's located fairly close to Yunnan University, though as mentioned before, somewhat average directions made finding things a lot more difficult. Still, we had a map, we could have just looked at that first... A stitch in time saves nine and whatnot. Anyway, my views on GLP? It's alright, nothing spectacular though. Gosia had made it out to be an epic wonderous place of magic where unicorns graze calmly on rich green fields and rainbows fill the sky. Maybe even it rains chocolate, I forget what she says occasionally. *ANYWHO*, it's basically a small island surrounded by a lake, pretty sure it's man-made. On this island there's a small forest?/bunch of trees, and buildings. See, this is where things get tricky/debatable. Seeing as the island looked so lame, Byron and I didn't actually venture onto it. We'd walked the entire way around the island in like 15 minutes and were getting blasted by music coming from the island most of the way - It looked like there was a wedding happening there. The music was actually kind of funny - Chinese electro-pop and then Christmas carols came on... for a wedding? But still, there were lots of people in black suits, and what appeared to be a bride, soooooo... yeah. Anyway, at hearing we didn't go onto the island Gosia felt suddenly vindicated. If we hadn't been on the island, we clearly hadn't had the full experience. Maybe so, at that current time, I felt pretty good about avoiding the hordes of people dancing to questionable music. I still feel good about it.

Alright, next location, The Temple Of Which I Cannot Remember The Name. It's located pretty close to GLP, so following a quite average fried-rice lunch, we continued on our walk. Directions would prove quite crucial in this segment of our journey. As it turned out, Gosia had marked the wrong place on the map. Kunming's streets were a bit of trouble navigating, so Byron and I spent... maybe an hour or two wandering around. I would like to make the point (whether you choose to believe it or not is up to you!) that I was entirely okay with wandering randomly through the streets - as Byron's semi-guide here, I've felt that I ought to let/make him see some of the crappier parts of China. Luckily I don't have to try too hard, these things present themselves all the time. Back on topic, we eventually reached the marked location. Hmm, a government building, with armed guards posted at the entrance gate. Possibly a military building. After an entertaining conversation with the guards, with such phrases as 'Where are we?' and 'Can we look around' followed with 'Here' and 'lol, no', we continued on our way in what we decided was the best path to what looked like the place we were *actually* supposed to go.

Turned out we were right, so we paid the 6 kuai entry fee and wandered in. Initial impressions? 'Hmm, quite a bit of renovations going on here...' We basically wandered through a construction site, to arrive to the main part of the temple, which has a large moat/pond/pool?, filled with fish and turtles. Oh, my bad. Turns out the pool was getting a do-over as well, as it was drained with the mud getting pumped out. What wasn't getting pumped out? The variety of dead/dieing aquatic creatures that littered the bottom of the pool. Nice. Especially at what I believe is a Buddhist temple? Ah well. The actual temple itself was much like every other I've seen, and Byron didn't seem particularly impressed so we moved on. Again, I can imagine this one is probably better under nicer circumstances.

Next on the list, Byron and I took a half-day trip up the Bamboo Temple. This was one that Gosia had strongly advised against, but we'd decided that it sounded pretty good and we had the time to do it, so we'd just take the risk. Turned out to be the best thing we did in Kunming. We took a cab up into the hills which took around... 30 minutes? It provided some sketchy views of the city, but was relatively interesting as it showed probably the poorest parts of Kunming that I saw. The Bamboo Temple is, unsurprisingly, located in/around a whole bunch of bamboo, or what I like to call, a bamboo forest. There wasn't anything particularly amazing about the temple itself, or the model Buddha inside. There were a lot, but the Lonely Planet seemed to be talking about a different place when it said you could find models of disciples? riding various mounts through the surf (we did see exactly this sight in Dali, so... a mistake of theirs? Or did we just not explore fully enough?). I guess I just liked this place because it was calm, it was peaceful and the weather was warm and sunny with a light breeze. Basically, it was a really nice time to be there.

Finally, the Stone Forest. This one we attended with Gosia, and had a fairly entertaining day. Again Lonely Planet failed us with false information on getting there, but we ended up organising and haggling our way there on a mini-bus. The SF is basically just a big park full of interestingly formed rocks, some quite tall and imposing while others are just basically boulders/pinnacle-shaped rocks. It's entertaining enough to walk around though, exploring the various nooks and crannies which are actually quite small at times. See my facebook pictures to get a better understanding of what I'm waffling on about right now. There isn't much more to say about the SF, but I can talk about the trip back into Kunming. As it happens, for some reason the minibus was also stopping off at a coffee & flower market/building. They asked if we were cool with that and we figured there wasn't any harm. The only harm done was to our wallets. Seriously, this place was jam-packed with delicious little sweets and coffee tastings. I ended up buying some Pu'er tea (not coffee, I know.), coconut flavoured toffee/sweets (OM NOM NOM), and some random waffle thing. I'm yet to open the waffle thing, but Byron has been sharing his coffee-flavoured waffles and they're pretty nice. My passage through the flower market was quite brief, as I have no need of them... but they did look and smell nice, at least. Maybe I mis-spoke there. Flowers are awesome, but I had no current application for them in my travelling situation! Yeeaaaaaah.

Anyway, that's about all I have to comment on for now, I think. I'll get into Dali and Lijiang soon enough, but I will say for now that I think Dali is much more awesome than Lijiang. Dinner soon. I've been eating well everywhere we go... also spending too much O.O

Oh, side note. It appears that music purchased off iTunes can only actually be downloaded once. WHAT DA FRUCK? Seriously, this is nuts. I formatted and now I can't download purchased music again. Now, I'm not entirely as pissed as I might have been because the music if backed up elsewhere, but just the concept that I should have to pay again. I've bought it, I should be able to download it a million or two billion times should I want. In my opinion anyway. God-damn you Apple, god-damn you Steve Jobs. Yet another reason I'll avoid them both as much as possible in future.

Step 27 - We've got company!

2010-02-06T19:27:00.000+08:00

Okay so this post has been long delayed, but primarily to the harassment of Kani, I'm going to finish it. I started writing this post while sitting on the roof of 'The Hump' hostel, in the centre of Kunming. I was finding the warm sun on my face and skin a refreshing change, and was enjoying the company of Byron, who's a long-time friend who has come up to travel around Yunnan province with me. We were also joined by Gosia, my future house-mate.

But how did we get to that point? Byron arrived in Chengdu on the 30th of January, around mid-afternoon. Having never actually received anyone from the International Arrivals section of Chengdu Airport, I spent about 5 minutes wandering around and actually arrived at the exit point just as he was walking out. Pretty good timing, right? Anyway we took a quick cab back to my temporary apartment and then wandered around the streets for a bit, having a snack as we went. For those who don't know, flying from Perth to Chengdu takes around 12-14 hours, depending on who you fly with and how long your stop over is (either Hong Kong or Singapore I believe). The point I am making here is that Byron had been up for at least 14 hours with very little rest so he took a quick nap as I packed my bags. Now, you already know that we were going on holiday, but what you might not have known is that I was also moving my gear to my new, permanent apartment (for at least the next 3 months anyway). So this packing was taking quite awhile. I believe it was around 4 or 5pm by the time I was ready, once I was done I roused Byron to come give me a hand.

Concerningly, he was really struggling to not feel cold - I guess that's to be expected coming from 30+ Perth into 5+ Chengdu. He was shivering quite a bit so I was worried about keeping him outside too long, in the cool evening air and worn-down from travel. Of course, it was bloody painful to get a taxi, but eventually one pulled over and we made it to the new apartment. I dumped my stuff and we continued to chill out there for the next 3 hours as the couch was comfy, the air-conditioner was cranked up high and the English tea in the pantry was going down nicely. Side note - Gosia buys English tea, but doesn't drink it. We went out for a relatively tame Chengdu meal of 'Fish-fragrant Eggplant, Fish-Fragrant Pork, and rice'. I think that was it. We weren't feeling particularly creative so hence the two dishes with the same sauce. Unfortunately, Byron didn't much take to eggplant... Fair enough I guess, a lot of people seem to have issues with it, but I love it. Om nom nom. Delish.

As it happened, the French girl who I had thought would have been moved out, was actually still living there. This created issues - Byron could crash on the couch there, but in the morning that would complicate issues as we had a 7:45am flight to Kunming. In the end it was easiest just for Byron to come back with me to the temp. apartment, and share a double bed with me. Lucky guy, I know, right?

So we slept and woke up around 5am, a wonderful hour as you would all know. Light snack of crackers for breakfast and then we were out the door to find a cab to take us to the airport. This had probably been my main concern for the past 48 hours - I'd never been up in Chengdu at 5am, and had no idea how easy it would be to find a cab. As it happened, there were quite a few cruising down our section of the 1st Ring road (For those unaware, Chinese cities are usually broken up by concentric circle highways that emanate from the centre of the city. The first circle is the 1st Ring road, the second the 2nd, etc etc). As usual, the first cab we hailed tried to rip us off. A cab to the Airport from around Sichuan University has generally cost me around 40-50 kuai one-way. This guy wanted 80, and wouldn't use the meter. Fortunately there was an empty cab that had pulled up behind us, so I told the first guy to buzz off and we tried this new cab. He was a good guy, so off we went.

It should be commented I guess that 5am is probably the emptiest I have seen Chengdu looking. I'm sure 4am is probably worse, but around 2 or 3am there still seems to be people out clubbing and whatnot. Or maybe that's just the only times I've been out on the streets at 2-3am... *cough* Moving on!

We arrived with plenty of time and had no issues at the airport. I had been concerned by something Byron mentioned; apparently in Western airports, they don't particularly like big rucksacks/backpacks, and generally glad-wrap them like giant parcels so that the various buckles/straps don't get caught in conveyor belt systems. No such problem here. Not yet anyway, and I've made 2 flights with the bag. So we chilled out and soon we were off flying high to Kunming. The flight is relatively short, around 2 hours. I believe the train ride takes much longer, as the terrain becomes much more mountainous as you head down into Yunnan province from Sichuan province.

So we arrived in Kunming around 9 or 10am to, as mentioned, wonderful weather. Getting a cab into the city was no issue, and finding the hostel wasn't *too* difficult either - it was on the 3rd floor of a building and we approached from the less 'commonly' used side I suspect, as there wasn't much in the way of signage on that front. Anywho, we dropped our bags and promptly went out to lie in the sun on cushions over a stone bench. I'll just say this - coming from the overcast weather of Chengdu, it was sooooooo goooooooooooooooood. As it happened, good old Chengdu was having issues with fog at the airport - Gosia was due to fly out around 10 or 11 but didn't leave till 1pm-ish. She would later regal us with tales of sitting in the plane, on the tarmac, for 2 hours. Being the bastard I am, I enjoyed a hearty chuckle at her expense, and let myself slip further into sleep under the clear skies.

I know I've mentioned the weather/the sky about a million times, but you try living in a city that gets less annual clear skies (or is it less annual sunlight... whatever) than London, and then tell me that I shouldn't be enthralled by this crazy phenomenon that is... nice weather. That seems as good a place as any to leave off - Byron had safely made it to Chengdu, and together we had flown to Kunming. Over the next few days we would visit the Stone Forest (Shi Lin), Green Lake Park, the Bamboo Temple and another temple, the name of which currently avoids me. Mostly, we'd have a good time. When wasn't it a good time? Following Gosia's dodgy directions. But you'll hear more on our journey in due time!

Peace out.

Step 30 - Dali... Dali something. Nothing goes with Dali :\

2010-02-06T00:33:00.000+08:00

Okay so here is my first draft post written in 'CreaWriter'. It's basically a tool to try and create a distraction-free writing environment. It sits over the top of everything else that's running with a custom background and if desired, custom sound effect (think soothing sounds). If you *must* keep an eye on things happening in the background, you can set it to be transparent, though accessing them can still be a pain... alt-tab lets you get to them, but they're still not 'brought-to-front', so if transparency is disabled, you'll have access to them but not be able to see what you're doing T_T. Anyway it's early days, maybe they'll make it a bit more open minded/flexible.

This post is going to focus almost entirely on the town/city called Dali, located vaguely to the western side of the Yunnan province. I say town, because where I'm staying and where I've spent all my time here is in the 'old city' part of Dali, which is, you guessed it, the older section. Everything's pretty small scale here - it doesn't feel like there's a lot of people. The newer section is the 'modern' part of town, but I don't know that there's actually a lot to see or do there. Certainly not from what I've seen on WikiTravel or the Lonely Planet.

Anyway, Dali is probably best known to the West as the place with 3 big white Pagodas. I hadn't even heard of Dali, but when I saw the picture of the 3 bigguns', I had an instant feeling of recognition. Today (5th of Feb) Byron and I checked out the Pagodas and associated temple buildings, and had a pretty good time. The weather has been perfect, with sunny clear blue skies and almost no clouds (we did start getting some cloud cover this afternoon, but we'll see how that is tomorrow). The entrance fee is relatively expensive (121 yuan, from memory), but getting a good view of the Pagodas and wandering around the rest of the park/complex was quite awesome. Again, the weather made the experience extra nice. There was a special feeling about as I stood in front of a large temple entrance and a strong gust of wind blew through, rustling the leaves of the trees and ringing the various bells hanging off the eaves of the temple. I had been about to take a picture, but it made me pause and put the camera back in my pocket. Feeling the wind blow, the sun shine, the bells tingle and the trees whisper... It made me happy.

On a somewhat less inspiring/feel-good note, the views available of the Dali area from within the park are quite good, though you can probably get ones as good/better from up in the mountains. That's where we'll be going tomorrow, so I guess you'll find out soon enough how the view is from even higher up :D

Speaking of views, I've been having issues with my camera memory card (xD type). The camera is having no issues whatsoever, but the computer is insisting that it needs to format the memory before being able to read from it. The card is formatted as FAT, the OS is Windows 7. Has Windows dropped support for that? I don't know. All I know is that it's a pain in the ass and hopefully one that I'll be able to resolve quickly and easily - WITHOUT losing all my pictures!

We're staying at a hostel called the 'Jade-Emu Hostel', not too surprisingly it's owned by an Australian guy called Dave, who always seems to be hanging around in the courtyard. I've been wondering if there's anything else that he does or if managing the hostel is his sole occupation. The hostel is just off the main road, which itself deserves some comment.

It is quite epic wide, with 3 lanes going each direction. It feels strange to have such a wide road when most of the traffic that I've seen is small tractors/trucks going about 10-20km/h tops, doing local trips. Now that I've thought about it, there are light/passenger vehicles and buses that pass through, but lets just say that traffic isn't heavy.

Back on topic, the hostel is quite nice. Meals and drinks are cheap and reasonably tasty, the room is clean, spacious and comfortable. Most importantly, it appears the hot water system is capable of maintaining a constant supply of piping-hot water. Oh and there's Wi-Fi access everywhere inside the hostel. Basically it's oodles better than the last place we stayed at, The Hump, located in Kunming. They're slightly different situations though... Jade-Emu's location is good, but The Hump is in the centre of Kunming. Like, the very centre, of a big city.

Anyhow, shout outs are due for Byron, who reminded me to comment that he is super-awesome and for Alex. Nope, not the Stock variety. To my friend Alex, I tip my cap. Dick-butts to the very end.

I think that's about all I wanted to comment on for now. For a quick review of how writing this has worked out in CreaWriter, I'd say pretty good. I haven't done *anything* except writing this post, and I haven't felt the need/desire to check other things. I *will* mention though that it doesn't have any sort of spell-check, which I'm quite used to these days and feeling somewhat apprehensive about not having. Still, maybe this will force me to put more effort into both my spelling and my typing. It's quite late now and Byron's actually asleep, so far as I can tell, so I'll wrap it up and lose myself in some good old fashion slumber. Or something like that anyway.

Sorry about the weird-ass order of my posts! I'll get around to writing about everything eventually! Promise!

Step 29 - Sitting in Sun...

2010-02-02T10:35:00.000+08:00

... tapping away at my laptop. I've just had a mother and her bubby take a seat at the table behind me. Bubby is actually little kiddy, the more I listen. They're having some brunch.

Gosia and Byron are off changing money and I'm getting some vitamin D for the day. We're planning on going to the 'Stone Forest' today, apparently an epic tourist trap so I'm quite bummed about that. For those in the mood for detailed reading of each day's events, Byron is keeping a much more up-to-date blog.

Soon we'll be leaving Kunming and Gosia behind. Byron has expressed to me that he's a little disapointed we're not taking any trains on this trip, and I feel kind of bad about that too, but at the time I was just thinking of masses of people, crammed inside trains like sardines. Everyone I was speaking to was suggesting not to worry about taking a train, so that's just the way it's gone.

I had fun pointing out the 'water trucks' to B-man yesterday - for those that don't know about them, they are big trucks that drive around the streets, spraying the roads down with water while blaring Mr Whippy style music. The music is probably the only element that makes me like them.

Especially after reading Byron's blogging efforts, I feel like I've lost a bit of my touch. I guess you could call it writer's block, or you could call it laziness. Either works I guess. My battery is about to die so I should probably cheese it.

When I get the time, I'll be redoubling my blogging efforts. When I say 'when I get time', I mainly mean when I'm settled down into new apartment. God I'm craving my own room.

Step 28 - Tiring

2010-02-01T17:54:00.000+08:00

Just a real quick update, getting super tired of future housemate already. She followed us down to Kunming and urrrrrrzzzzzzzzzzhhhhhhhhh. I'm tired at the moment so it's worse but I just don't want to see her or hear her voice.

Spent today walking around 1/2 of Kunming with Byron, and it makes me feel like Chengdu is a giant hole. Here it's sunny, clear skies, animals and plants.

Ugh, I'm so tired, going to just leave it at that. These posts are going to be out of order, as I have a post about what we did yesterday that I'll finish later.

Does any of this make sense? Ugh.

Step 26 - I can see the future...

2010-01-23T23:20:00.003+08:00

Here's a recent exchange I had with a future housemate via SMS.

Housemate: hihi ill have a kitty! :D

Me: I'm allergic to cats :/

Housemate: what??? ur kiddin me right? fuck... isnt there anything u can do? like meds? :(

Me: not going to live on antihistamines so you can get a cat. Don't you think its a pretty big issue anyway? Something u should ask about? Regardless of allergies.

Housemate: it would live with me in my room so not really. plus it would make comin home nicer. whatever

Me: Be realistic *name*. Keeping a cat trapped in your room would be cruel to say the least, and its not like the cat hairs wouldn't come out on you and your clothes.

Housemate: i said whatever! no cat! jesus...

I can see the future, and it's not pretty.

I'm really hoping we can pull it together and have a working livable relationship, but I'm getting quite concerned about it. She's had a go at me twice about leaving the toilet seat up, when most times I've even been into that bathroom, the seat has been up anyway.

In particular, I'm really not cool with her attitude to bringing up issues that are annoying her. Her style is ...confrontational... (~~pretty accusatory, threatening and in general, aggressive~~). Regarding the toilet seat, my response was pretty immature (flipping the bird) so that raised the tempo of the argument, but I guess that was just my instant response when she decided to shout over me at a toilet seat.

'Dude, are you sure?'

There are other incidents that have occurred in the past that don't need to be raised here, but they're all pushing towards a tumultuous future. And this is before I've even signed a lease. I've had friends approach me and be like, 'Dude, are you sure?' and as it gets closer, I'm less and less sure. As I write this, I know I'm ready to confront any issue that there may be, and I won't be walked over, but the very fact I feel like I'm already entering into a living situation prepared (expecting to need?) to defend myself... it's crazy.

My last housemate was a dream, though it was different in that we had been friends from highschool - we already had a long established friendly relationship. But still, I'm not sure that we had even a single argument. If there were any issues, it was brought up in a friendly/relaxed way and no-one felt like they were getting getting a rough deal. I can only speak for myself, of course, but I think he felt the same way.

Is there any particular reason it should be down?

Maybe any women readers would like to explain this... issue... of the position of the toilet seat. Is there any particular reason it should be down other than for the ease of use by women? Now that the future housemate has made it clear that it's important to her that it be down, I'll endeavour to remember to put it down on that basis alone. I'm hoping that should an issue arise that I feel is really important to me, she'll show the same courtesy and take it on the chin.

For example, I'm concerned she'll take issue with my playing music in my room. Now, I warned her from the very very beginnings of the discussion of the possibility of me staying with her that I would want to have music, played through speakers, in my room. And that I'd probably have it playing all the time I'm home, at a respectable listening volume. She's said that's fine, as long as it's a reasonable volume.

Why am I concerned? When I walk into the house right now, it's almost completely silent. She's given me the impression that it's because her other housemates don't like noise, but I do wonder...

I can see the future...
I'm getting a cup of tea :D

Step 25 - There's a bear in there...

2010-01-20T17:21:00.001+08:00

Alright folks it's been a pretty long time since my last update, so I'll give you a fill-in on my progress.

Probably the most obvious change is that I'm now living in an apartment. This isn't my final destination however. Towards the end of January I will be moving into a different apartment. Why the apartment jumping? I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but when you buy a semester of accommodation at the International Students Dorm at Sichuan University, you get accommodation until the 16th of January. Exams fall between the 20th and 30th - in my case from the 25th to the 27th. If you're planning to keep on living inside the dorm, that's fine, you can just buy another semester or something and you're set. However, if you're planning to move out, like myself, then you're charged at the short-stay rate. For the shared-double room that I was in, the price increased from 20 kuai per night to 70 kuai per night. Seeing as I had no intention of paying an inflated rate, I had to find somewhere to go I just re-read my last post and saw that I'd said all this before. Whoops. I was *going* to be on a spare couch at a friend's place, until I discovered that another friend had an entire spare room in their apartment. Entire spare room. Oh yes, oh yes.

To keep the story short, they're being very generous and letting me stay for free. More annoyingly, they're even resisting efforts by me to buy them drinks/meals/etc. The only downside is that the bed in the room I've got... well, it has no bedsheets. So another friend has lent me a sleeping bag. I'd go out and simply buy some sheets, except that the girl currently staying in the apartment that I'll be moving into later will probably be wanting to sell me her sheets! Soooooo we'll just see what happens. For now I'm quite comfortable in a sleeping bag.

Okay, what else is happening. As I said, exams are fast approaching. I'm trying to keep up with studying but I'm not very good at it these days, it would seem. That's actually an upside to having my new temporary housemates - they're both much more organised, and by simply hanging out with them, I'm sort of piggy-backing on their study discussions. One of them is a classmate of mine, the other is a higher level.

Oh, which is another thing. It would seem we've lined up a Chinese housemate for the new place. So it'll be Gosia (Polish), Bruce (Chinese, I really should find out his Chinese name...) and myself. I've only met him once but he seems like a good guy. He's also a student at Chuanda, and is studying management... I believe.

It turns out I don't need to re-enrol at uni, just give them money. So I'm slowly building up the required cash to pay them off. On that point, yes, I've decided to spend another semester here at Sichuan Uni. Right now I think that for what I want in terms of freedom to travel, freedom to have friends visit, freedom to basically do what I want; it's the best option. That said, I'm still hoping to find work... I actually met a guy who's cheating the system. He was a student at Chuanda, but had a tutoring job with a family who owned a factory. He explained that he wanted a VISA to just exist, so to speak, and worked with them to set it up 'on paper' that he's working for them, when in reality he's just tutoring a few kids and that's it. Living a comfortable bachelor's life, studying Chinese at his own pace/will. I'm jealous as shit.

Writing all this, I'm finding certain hypocrisies within my thinking. On the one hand, I want to be free to study at my own pace, on the other hand, I mention that I'm pretty bad at motivating myself to study. Would it be different if I was outside the system? I like to think so. I believe so. Maybe within the 'system' I need to remind myself that I'm still here for me and any study I do is just for me. I'm sure this is all obvious to you guys, but it's easy to forget. At least for me.

What else can I say... I recently saw Avatar in 3D at a Chinese cinema. That was all well and good, the special effects quite mind blowing while the story was a little less impressive, but a good romp none-the-less. Probably enough can't be said about the special effects. I've just done some reading and wikipedia came up with the quote that, 'the film is composed of 60% computer-generated elements and 40% live action'. This is significant in that, I can't tell real from fake in the film. I'm mainly talking about environments here, not the obvious stuff like the vehicles and aliens. I was actually told today that Avatar is now banned in China, though it's been in the cinemas for a good period of time already. If true, I wonder why. I mean, why try and stop it once it's already a) been watched by just about everyone that was really interested in seeing it and b)in every single dvd store in China.

Whatever, there's still a lot to learn about China. I've taken awhile writing this so I'm going to leave it there. Other events that have occurred are a 24th birthday party that was a lot of fun, and... I don't know. I'll add to this post or the next one when/if I remember anything I missed. OH! The trip with the parents. Yeah, I'll try make time to do that real soon. Along with booking accomodation and travel tickets for a friend who's about to arrive to travel with me during the Spring Festival period. Ugh. Too much on right now.

Step 24 - Birthday Season

2010-01-13T14:40:00.000+08:00

Well, it's been awhile and I've been a few places, done a few things, seen a few people. It was fun and now I'm back, I'm feeling completely underwhelmed by my situation. My motivation is possibly the lowest that it has ever been, possibly ever. I stay away laying in bed at night, conflicted and full of negative emotions.

Why is this? - Multiple reasons I guess.

Having just been with my parents for two or so weeks, I'm missing them and home in general. What confuses me about this perhaps is that I'm missing them much more than when I first left. Seeing them off at the airport was much harder for me than it was last time, and given the expression on my mother's face, she probably felt the same. I've had people tell me off for the homesick feelings before, and remind me of the great situation I'm in. I know they're right, I know I should toughen up, put on that smiley face and go live the shit out of life, but right now I'm just not feeling it. I don't think I've ever been good at picking myself up out of low moods/feelings, and this time around seems no different.

Another reason is that right now, I feel like I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't really want to study via the university this semester, but finding a job/work has been pretty unsuccessful. Even looking at finding teaching jobs, I only seem to be finding organisations that, when researched online, are described as being false, cheating, fraudulent, so on and so forth. This has been disheartening. It's also been a reminder of wasted time back in Perth when I could have studied and gotten a TEFL/TOEFL/CELTA qualification, which would have been useful now.

Thirdly, I'm running out of time. Re-enrollment at the university closes on the 20th, 7 days away from now. Should I decide I DO want to study at the University, then I'll need to organise the appropriate forms and fees inside that time.

Further complicating issues are... as of the 16th I'll be couch surfing till the end of the month. I've only just realised how close the 16th is... not so great. The reason I'm in this situation is because when you buy a semester of accommodation at the university dorms, it doesn't actually last a semester. It lasts almost a semester, at which time you either have to buy for another full-ish semester, or pay at a massivly inflated rate (20 kuai per night goes up to 80 or 100 I believe). Maybe I've already complained about this, so I won't go on about it except to say it doesn't surprise me anymore.

At the end of the month, I should be moving into an apartment. This ties in with all my other worries and concerns as we struggle to get a 3rd housemate in to the place to share rent, get various broken things in the apartment fixed before they're my liability and so on.

Oh, and my residence permit expires on the 28th of Febuary. This needs to be ironed out either through me getting a job that provides a work visa or through re-enrolling at university.

Ugh, writing all this has not helped my situation, or my mood.

It's my birthday in 11 days. I'll be 23. Not entirely thrilled about being another year older either.

Step 23 - Away-way-way!

2010-01-08T20:32:00.000+08:00

Just a very brief update - I've been travelling with parents around China. Still traveling infact. I'll have some big posts once I return to Chengdu (10th Jan).

Step 22 - Christmas Day

2009-12-25T00:28:00.003+08:00

This is what I've come to?

Oh, and on another embarrassing front, I have to admit that I now have a Twitter account. I guess time will tell as to how long it remains active.

Merry Christmas, y'all.

*cough* Not to be a jerk or anything, but seriously people, cheap or free, this game is a bundle of fun. Just don't buy it for your mother.

Step 21 - Humper-knuckles and Griffin-flows

2009-12-22T00:23:00.001+08:00

I love balloons. Or at least, drawing them.

It's another one of those days where I find myself struggling for an appropriate title, and so we have this. I'm not entirely sure how it came to be - perhaps I subconsciously stole it off something?

Alright, getting down to the thick juicy meaty content of this post... we find ourselves actually quite disappointed. Today I'm going to post up some doodlings I've been drawing in my notebook while bored. After that, my increasing feelings of homesickness.

I wonder what could have possibly inspired this one?

Where am I finding the time for these doodlings? Class, of course. I also find myself writing out pages of thoughts at a time. Other people in the class sometimes find this quite curious, as I'm generally pretty coy about the whole operation. 'Hey Liam, what are you writing there...?' with the inevitable reply, 'Yeah, just thoughts. Nothing important'. And I'm right, it's nothing important, but I do find it a somewhat therapeutic exercise. It's an exercise I picked up from creative writing back in highschool - basically keeping pen to paper and writing every thought that comes to mind. This is related to why I don't let people read it - half the time I end up writing a page about the latest event and/or person to give me the shits. It's really not worth the drama of letting someone read it.

Patagonian Tooth-fish?

You could raise the point that if I'm writing private stuff, I should probably do it in private, as I'm very aware it's going to attract the attention of the various other bored elements in the class when of their kind is furiously scribbling away when nothing is occurring in class. Am I doing it as an attention seeking activity? I don't think so. While I know it's noticed, I'm doing it to keep myself occupied and because I actually enjoy it. Why don't I do it outside of class? I don't do it on my own time because I generally place a low-priority on it an, or rather, I've got better things to do. At least, I like to think I do.

Giant ninja heads will mess you up.

More doodlings here.

With my parents arriving in... about a week, I've been finding myself increasingly missing those back home. Friends, family, pets, vehicles, foods, beaches, skylines, sounds, smells... you get the idea. In part I guess this is because my world is still back in Australia. In my day-to-day life, I probably talk to as many or more of my friends back in Australia than I do here in Chengdu. What does this mean for me exactly? Well, in one area it's pretty clear - I really need to be more proactive and expand my social group here. This might be helped when I move out of the dorm - but not necessarily.

Where am I magicking these people from?

I think the best situation for my Chinese study would be having my day-to-day friends being Chinese. That's a no brainer, really. But it's not necessarily easily done. Where am I magicking these people from? Let alone people that would be generous enough to hang out and chat with me on a daily basis. I have Chinese friends online that I'm chatting to every day, but that's not even nearly the same thing. And it really shows - while I find my language improving, it's most noticeable in a MSN window - in real life I'm finding myself performing quite poorly and in a very shy manner. There's some pretty obvious reasons for this, on MSN there's no pressure on me to respond immediately, and I understand exactly what words they're saying; a character is much harder to mistake than a sound. And if there's a word I don't know, I can easily look it up.

This doesn't make it any less forgivable that I'm essentially not improving in the area I want to improve - face to face conversational Chinese. I end up feeling a slight feeling of awe/jealousy as my friend engages very easily and casually with Chinese people, in Chinese. Invariably, they're also very impressed. He has taken pleasure a few times in telling them that my Chinese is actually much better than his, and they look at me with somewhat surprised expressions. Can it be true? This guy with a concentrated look on his face and whom has barely spoken; he is the better one? I tell them I'm not, and in the very process of doing so they already know I'm not.

Bad Liam, bad bad bad

I wouldn't say that it gets me down, I just know there is a lot of work to be done. This recently has been a bit of a problem, and somewhat relates back to homesickness - with my parents arriving so soon, I'm finding myself less and less motivated to do... just about anything. It seems I pretty much want to kill time until they arrive, through any means other than study. Bad Liam, bad bad bad. There's a bunch of new policies I want to engage, New Year's resolutions if you will, but I'm finding myself in a sticky position as to when and how to implement them. I'm planning on moving in to an apartment around mid-late January, and the fresh location would work well with some fresh endeavours... or re-commitments... whatever.

My issue here is that.... while it would be convenient to start things then, another part of me tells me that there's no reason to wait. Sure, it will mean more stuff to pack up and take away and reorganise once I move, but that's not a huge issue. There's no reason to put it off, is there? Easy vs hard, wrong vs right (or perhaps, perceived worse vs perceived better. Maybe they may as well be the same thing). I'm still deciding.

In other news, I now have mutton chops. You may leave offerings of gold, frankincense and myrrh neatly at the door, thank you.

Oh, one more thing. Apparently it's common for young people to congregate in the centre of town on Christmas Eve and bash each other with inflatable toys - I haven't found anyone that knows how or why this got started as a tradition, but apparently it's been running for 5 or 6 years now. I hope to be there with camera in one hand and maybe even a giant inflatable mallet in the other

Yes, my chin is getting fatter. Yes, I do need to get back to the gym on a more frequent basis.

Only One Step Away

Super Surpise Come-back Post!

End of Days

APB Closes Its Doors After Less Than Three Months

burswood train station - Google Maps

Jihad yo face~

I know, I know

It has been awhile…

Step 38 – What now?

Step 37 – Surprises abound.

Step 36 - Watch this space

Step 35 - Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. *sigh*

Step 34 - Vinegar!

Step 33 - Home, of sorts.

Step 32 - Da... li?

Step 31 - Kunming Events! Kunming... parents? Damn, no decent titles here either.

Step 27 - We've got company!

Step 30 - Dali... Dali something. Nothing goes with Dali :\

Step 29 - Sitting in Sun...

Step 28 - Tiring

Step 26 - I can see the future...

Step 25 - There's a bear in there...

Step 24 - Birthday Season

Step 23 - Away-way-way!

Step 22 - Christmas Day

Step 21 - Humper-knuckles and Griffin-flows

Step 35 - Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. sigh