I seem to be falling into this ghastly pattern of writing longer articles at higher frequencies – no wonder I was going to burn out sometime. That time is actually not now. No. No. I’m actually covering my ass quite well, instead I think I’m gravitating towards producing more external content which will inevitably result in less content here. Of course, there is a particular brand of writing which fits this blog’s motif and of course, I’ll continue to pump this flavour of content out almost exclusively on this site – for simple reasons being; I don’t imagine that it would integrate so well with what’s offered externally, ie. on other sites and blogs . That last point saddens me actually. I’ve built up this lust for discussing the merits of a given title. Once I’ve played through X game, exploring X merit of X game is hugely enriching. Unfortunately, pitching more personal, perhaps journal-like writings on games -I haven’t settled on a naming convention yet – doesn’t really fit anywhere but here. I guess this will change with the continued fruition of blogs such as the Retronaut’s blog and the realization that we can actually discuss (even) new games in a personal light and not just those games that we have a nostalgic attachment too. Anyways, I digress!

For the past ten days this thought has been infixed in my mind and I haven’t been able to figure out why the sudden yearn for writing for other publications…until about 3 minutes ago when it all clicked. You see folks, this was the reason I originally started blogging, to write out the answers to my problems. ^_^

My reason is this, I’m craving a bit more polish in my work. I was watching some videos from Australian Problogger phenomena Darren Rowse (it’s been years since I’ve delved into such material) in which he was profiling his blogging work flow, which is incidentally more or less the same as my own – nothing gained then right? Well actually, he mentioned something that piqued my attention. He would write an article or most of an article and stew over the piece for a few days before returning to polish the piece. The downtime between writing intervals allows one’s mind to feast on possible ideas or wording that might not necessarily make its presence while you banging away the piece infront of the computer. The gap ensures much more flavoursome writing as you have the time to gather all your relevant ideas and then later apply those ideas.

I like writing in such a way that I feel pleased with what I’ve written. I uphold this with everything that goes up here and generally proofread each piece about three times before publication. Over the past 2 months, I’ve rarely had the opportunity to leave what I’ve written for more that a few days, usually because I want to stick to this strict 2 day posting schedule I’ve placed upon myself. That’s fine – most of what I post up here is great, and it gets a thorough checking before it goes up. Although I don’t think that the process is allowing me to develop my writing style which is what I ought to be aiming for at the moment. By providing more lead way I can polish my work for the better.

So I guess I subconsciously latched onto the idea that writing externally would force me to be a tougher scrutinizer of my work- which I would now evaluate as true. By writing elsewhere I’m a harsher critic of my work, plus I also get a little more breathing room.

The reason for me writing this is therefore to let you know that I may be slowing down a little. I don’t think it’s a big deal since I’ve basically sped up in the last few months anyways. I also need some time to read a couple of books too, in particular Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins, China – A Handbook in Chinese Intercultural Communication by Jean Brick as well as the two volumes of Gamespite that arrived today, some e-zines, print magazines and maybe some of Dahl’s short stories collection. It’s worth mentioning since I actually wish to write about a number of these here, once I have the time to process them. Anyways, that’s just a bit of a heads up. Any work that I post elsewhere will also been linked to here, so no loss really, just wanted to share my ideas and now was the best time to do that.

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Here’s some musings on Twitter that I dug out of a canned post of mine. I should probably flesh it out into something more, but it gets the main message across;

“Twitter, is the fertile soil to plant, grow, share and trade cultural norms – the medium in which is used to emit and transfer. In fact Twitter is more than just the medium, it’s the ideal medium. The social networking element keeps tweeters in touch on a minute-by-minute basis while not binding them to any real time conversation. The tight word count moderates each sentence making it low fluff and straight to the love. The response system flaunts replies to people within the same network. This whole set up is ideal for users to flirt and trade ambiguous nudge, nudge, wink, wink commentaries among each other, and then transmit their dialogue to onlookers. It’s a contained system, built around the utterance, a distilled cultural transmitter. As said to death in the cultural studies field, language = culture. Therefore Twitter’s composition is a fantastic, quantifiable way to observe memberships groups defining their cultural identity. It’s in Twitter that I draw much of my reasoning as it’s a transparent model to view this culture.

When I cruise through other people’s Twitter pages and observe the small talk, I’m often baffled at what’s actually going on. People declaring their membership roles or attempting to grow their seed, by throwing strings of replies to others. It’s a society alright. A society where people are constantly stating their roles and relationships. To “fit in” people have to acknowledge the presence of a membership group, whether they’re in it or not. And with only 140 characters to play with, you need to be discrete about this, which is where the love letters, and ultimately masturbation come into play. In Twitter, if you want to be part of the elusive membership group you have to wank it all up on an open stage, and therein lies my frustration, as the audience member of that stage.”

“The Foreign Game”

For my next column, I’m considering tackling the problems with creating a “foreign game”. That is in the same sense as a foreign movie. The inherent issue is basically that games require an interface outside of the avatar’s own world. Such things as menus, on-screen hub etc. These features take one out of the immersion of the game world. Now, how does one get around these issues when creating a a game with a foreign language as the only language.

Too Kind to be Cruel

Basically because of the whole face system, it sometimes seems that Chinese people are too polite to be critical as they lose face when transmitting something negative to someone else.

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The Chinese Perception of Friend

This one has really resonated with me recently, there have been two situations that have made this stick in the ceiling of my brain, I’ll mention one of them here. Over the holidays (likely beforehand), I made myself a new pen-pal from Shanghai. I hadn’t talked to her for over a month, when one day she started talking to me about feeling sad about somethings. That day she was dumped by her American boy friend as he wanted to be with another Chinese girl. Pretty heart breaking, she also failed at some English competition too, which is less tragic but still. I mean, what kind of jerk says that to the person they’re breaking up with? Particularly with a culture where friends can take on a different meaning (I’ll get to that soon) What a tosser eh?

Through consoling this girl and discussing the issue with her, another issue that’s always been at the back of my mind solidified. What I (properly) realized is that in China, friends are only very close (she directly said this to me actually). You don’t really have acquaintances, or, rather they’re not very important, but you’ll do anything for your friends. Much like the analogy Robert DeNiro made in Meet the Parents, there is a circle of trust. When you become friends with a Chinese person, you become friends for life. Achieving this is harder than making a normal friend, you need to first gain their trust. If I said that all the students in one of my classes were all my friends, they probably wouldn’t consider it that much of a stretch, even though our relationship doesn’t extend beyond the classroom. In China, people would never think like this, they, in the same way as staff members or store clerks, are cogs in the operation of life. They do their thing, you do yours – separate.

When you enter that (friend) membership group, you’ve become a very important member of this person’s life. This was highlighted well in one of my readings which cited from a China Daily an article where one person heard that their friend in another town, far away, was considering divorce with his wife, so the friend quit his job and moved to his friend’s town to comfort his friend and convince him not to do it.

I noticed that this occurred when I first become friends with Hanxue. I’d previously spent every week of the last year (2007-2008), being mates with (one of my best friends) Xi Wei. I helped him with his troubles and he did the same for me. Xi and Hanxue are very close friends, so when Xi put me in touch with her in Shanghai, she went out of her way to help me (as a favour to her close friend Xi). She helped me find an apartment, find a place to eat, get access to the internet as well as just spend time with me as a friend. Several times I questioned her motives, because this seemed so unprecedented, so unrequested, so selfless.

I put this question to another friend I’ve helped her out many, many times over the years, and sometimes she helps me out too. I asked her about this and pretty much said “what would you do for me, as a friend?”. Her response? Well “anything”, because (in her words) we are good friends and will be good friends forever. That’s comforting to know.

Perhaps more so than anyone else (hmmm…Xi Wei), I like to joke a lot with this person, and during our conversation on Chinese friendships I repeatedly made jokes about her using me to fix her translation homework. I usually make these jokes with her, and this time I was unsure how she felt about that. While she joined in on the jousting, truth is she was leaning more towards believing them and didn’t feel so good about that. Although she knew I was kidding, she felt bad that I would say that considering our friendship. That’s how serious its taken.

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I find that when I’m at my busiest I can never seem to keep writing in this thing. Thus implying that I’ve currently been rather busy? Well, this year, probably not. The past few weeks have been pretty substantial for DanielPrimed, I’ve been offered two quality freelance gigs (I’ll reveal the second one later) and have been receiving some solid attention. I’ve managed to lock the writing down to a new post (500 words+) every second day which is quite the achievement I think. The topics are tasteful, arguments mostly persuasive and writing style is improving steadily. I’m pleased with how it’s all going actually. With the GSW column, link backs and responses I’ve been getting, you might be fooled to think I’m actually getting good at this. That’s great, I’m so pleased, but am still miles away.

Today I feel pretty pissed off actually. I’m frustrated at one of my teachers for a number of reasons that all popped up the other day. Firstly we’ve been given the rather tricky assignment of hunting down some literature from an Asian language (Chinese) and then explain how the distinct nature of the language (through means of grammar, words, meaning, methods of speaking, phonology, whatever) communicate culture. I’m struggling with this idea, and my Chinese friends are all clueless – I went to them for suggestions. I can’t imagine how some of the students who’ve never learnt an Asian language will tackle this. I’m also frustrated at how he dumped a pile of recommended readings on me before the holidays for my project. I asked for some readings, so he lent me 6-7 books, but most of them are basic outlines of Chinese culture, Maoist history and all that, not really relevant to my project (Chinese communication). I found out yesterday that I have a project proposal to get done by next week, and unfortunately I have a weak base in terms of references. It shouldn’t be an issue really, I have cribbed some ideas from here and there, and filled the rest in with references from the literature review. At least I’ve pushed most of the readings out the way for now. Truth is, there are no readings on my topic, my project is delving into the unknown and considering that unknown is “how Chinese people manage their language among identities”, it’s tragic to see how little academic literature has been written on it.

I’m kinda frustrated at that because I want to read some books that may be relevant to the year-long project that can actually help me. Goffman’s ‘Presentation of Self in Everyday Life’ is going to be great once I clear off the remaining three books lent to me. I’m already very familiar with Goffman’s ideologies, and have probably read chunks of the book already through the readings. Still I want to read the whole book. It should be pretty useful for the project, but I also want to tie it into a super critique on Portal and the deconstruction of the institution. Fantastic stuff.

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Coming back from China has thrown everything to the wall again. Now there are two countries involved and that can only be messy. Now that I’ve thrown my marketing major away to the fishes, I also don’t really know what I’m going to do, when my time at University is up. I don’t feel particularly qualified for anything.

I’ve been looking through job classifieds and the Uni web portal in search for possible jobs. I’ve found some, but not many. My specialization is now design, and I don’t feel well suited to do that, so with that out the way, I am left with language/writing. I guess this could vary from anything such as a language teacher/writer/cultural consoltant of sorts.

In Shanghai there is an obvious demand for language teachers, so I could do something along those lines. Over here in Australia, I’m less sure. So many jobs are either management/marketing/business and I don’t want to do anything within that trifecta. Of course, I could also do writing for the web or something like that. I’ve been doing some freebie posts here and there, but have also started receiving money and other bonuses, which is reassuring. On the whole though, I don’t think that I’ll be able to make any sort of full time work out of writing, it needs to be accomodated by something else.

There’s also the matter of whether or not I want to return to China, and I think that is likely. I enjoy living in the challenging environment – it’s ideal for improving my Chinese and that’s a bankable asset, many of my bestest best friends are located there, living expenses are incredibly cheap and it ensures that I don’t seem like a lazy moucher if I am living overseas. I love the latter, you get a good image from living abroad. Still despite all this, everything is up in the air.

Which I why I need to stop worrying about it, I think. These things will undoubtedly come in their due course, I’m a good person and fortunately have plenty of options.

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Even being home, doesn’t stop me from being home sick. It feels like a good part of me has fragmented off and waiting for the other half to return to Shanghai. I haven’t just left part of myself over there, I’ve also left some of my dearest friends from the last couple of years. My regular Chinese friends since studying Uni have all more or less left me, or in fact remained where they are. I guess this is the problem which such circumstances, you can never have everyone you love together in the same place, and if so, it’s over before you realize it.

Before I went to Shanghai, over the holiday break several of my friends returned to their homeland, in which I followed (albeit to different places) shortly after for the exchange. When I came back to Australia, they all stayed put of course.

It’s not all bad, a couple of my friends are still here, or will be returning about now in time for the new semester. That’s comforting to have. Still, I sometimes feel terribly homesick even within my own home. It’s not a good feeling to have, and I know that even if I return later in the year, the other side of homesickness will occur.

Whatever the case, this is only a “sometimes” issue. While I miss my former life as a Shanghai expat, I just try and move on with what I’m doing. I still keep in contact with my good friends, more or less everyday which is great. I sure do miss them though.

On another note, I’m rather determined to make this year a year of words – corny! My University timetable is surprisingly slim through to year’s end, so really I’d love to use my free time writing as much as I can. I’m still clueless on what occupation I plan on occupying(!) once I graduate. Looking around on various job websites has made me even further dumbfounded. For now, I know three things; I enjoy writing, I would like to return to China sometime and this year I have ample time to kill. Put those things together and it’s rather telling of how I plan to disperse my time.

Considering that I have some workable subject matter, I’d also like to make this blog a little more prominent than just an emo-dump. At the same time, I’ve started a new Chinese only blog in which I can use to practice since I don’t have any formalized Chinese classes this year – as by personal decision. My goal is to eventually break down the barrier that I have between writing, publishing and posting, so that I can post more frequently, write more fluently and overall get all of my ideas out with much greater ease. Especially for my games blog, every post feels like a package that requires superfluous amounts of work for a single post.

I’m not suggesting some dip in quality. No, no, the quality control is in check, I just want to make the process a little more fluid and dynamic, to open up a wider platform of content delivery.

And that about does it for now. Still trying to figure out how exactly to write about my experience away. It really feels so overbearing that I have to cover so much, at least I have the time and space for it. Just gotta chunk it out now.

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I guess the backlog will come soon enough -as I say again- but for now let’s talk just do the intro. If that’s one thing I want to do with this blog is start using it as a journal of “cultural discovery”. Woo! That sounds exciting. It would because it’s probably not what will come out. Whatever the case, my field trip in Shanghai had me on a constant train of thought, one that I’d like to dispel with some conclusion/closest thing to a conclusion here.

To do this, I’m going to force myself to chunk it out, otherwise I’ll just be here all day writing one long stretch of dribble that I’ll eventually tangle myself in and die.

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Today I wanted to talk about one of my recent habbits that I’ve started to form since I got home. I find that I go to bed later and wake up later in the day. This is fine since I never really have any obligations the next day. I’ve slipped into this habbit because late at night is the most appropriate time that I can chat to my Chinese friends online. There is a 2.5hr time difference between Adelaide and Shanghai which means that the time when I usually go to bed is the ideal time to chat with my friends in Shanghai.

I did this a lot in China, spending 3-4hrs each night, most nights chatting to my friends that I’d met previously that day. Now even though I’m back home, I can keep this tradition up and its quite warming to do so, since I miss my friends dearly.

While I’m chatting I usually do other busy work tasks in the background which involve some sort of practice, so the chatting part is a great motivator to get me back on the language treadmill again. In fact, considering that many of my friends went back for the holidays and I don’t really have anyone to physically meet and practice, it’s ideal.

I also need to see how I go phoning my friends as well. That’ll come in due time.

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Three weeks after my homecoming I’ve decided to re-launch this blog into the stratosphere and umm yes a new design will be coming. So there’s a pinch of promise for you.

I mention the three weeks specifically because I was originally planning on booting this baby back up as soon as I got back home. Use it as something of a notebook to record the experience of plugging back into another culture, while at the same time filling in the gaps of my trip from the past couple of months.

There’s been a few things that have gotten in the way of that and I want to use this post to quickly talk about them and the the intents of this blog as I plan on shifting the direction a little.

For starters I should say that the reason why I stopped blogging back in November is more or less because I found myself a lovely Chinese girlfriend. This means two things, the first is that I simply don’t discuss relationship matters (that is any friend-friend or otherwise) here and hence threw it all on tempory hold while I figured out what to do. I always seem land myself in hot water by talking openly about people in public forums – that has almost nothing to do with her though, more so other people I think. I like to talk without restriction but I also need to be more concious of what I am saying too.

The other reason is because during the second half of my trip I was so very busy. Waking up at 7:30am, go to class, finish class at 1pm. Then have lunch with classmates/friends/girlfriend(predominately) and then spend time with them throughout the afternoon, until tea time in which I may or may not have tea with someone before arriving home to Auntie (yay!) at about 6-10pm to begin homework and cross between MSN conversations with the people I spent time with that day, family and friends from home. This all concludes sometime after 11pm, with the whole day spent speaking Chinese. It was exhausting but wholly satisfying, I loved it.

And as it would go I didn’t have time to write about all of this, instead micro-documenting it all in my rainlendar desktop calender. The information to that has all been lost since I moved to Linux and moved back to Windows in the first week back. Another reason for the hesitation.

I basically figure that all of my ideas regarding the two countries, people and so forth will come slowly over time. I want to use this blog to try and get a better handle on those ideas as well as for general use and the backlog too. Considering the lack of formaility, I’d also like to use this space to be more experiemental with my writing and to basically write about something when I don’t really feel like writing about games all the time.

By all of this, I mean there should hopefully be less information dumps of what I do and more so about what I am thinking. Blogging is handy like that as I’ll go onto explain sometime later.

Thanks to the new Verve album; Forth, for injecting new ideas for titles.

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Been trying to write up a post for a month now and constantly find myself with something unfinished and not worthy updating, not so cool. As such, I’m just going to do a bit of a bullet point blitz through the last month or so. Here we go.

13th – 19th October

I think that for a good portion of this week I spent coming to terms with the fact that my most significant Chinese problem is my speaking – and listening comes with the package. This week showed me that – even though a little bit of it is required – I simply cannot bear sitting at my desk and crunching down on characters and articles. I couldn’t stand doing this in Australia and I can’t stand it now. As such in this time I decided that I needed to find myself a ‘language partner’, that is someone with whom I can just practice language with.

In a way it feels a little silly that I am over here, in China, and yet the best way for me to learn is the same way I did in Australia; spending time one-on-one with my friends speaking Chinese. The experience of being here is -without a doubt- worthwhile, but the crux of good language improvement is..well, what I’d already been doing. I don’t want to discredit the merit of being over here, but, well it’s true. I guess it’s reassuring to be right.

Also during this time and the weeks surrounding it, I found myself becoming ever more frustrated with the system in place over here. The fact that people have to struggle through the mind-numbing education system (and, at times, culture) just to live a barely decent life. What frustrates me most is that all of the problems in China can be avoided with a little reform. Yet the people have been trained to not believe in such ideals and as such, the hard life carries on. It hurts me deep, really does. I will have to write up a “list of things that piss me off/are great about China” article soon, to make clear the issues I am talking about.

20th -26th October

The core thing about last week’s revelation regarding language partners is that, without them, I have such a hard time learning my material. I need to “learn through experience” as I often day and as such this basically ensured that this week I’d start my search. The previous friday my classmate asked the teacher about this topic who directed him to a billboard with a post of someone offering to help put people in touch with students from the school. I was going to take a slip but my teacher said that she had a friend who would be better/the two of us could be language partners.

On Monday I asked her more about it, she took my phone number and said that he’d call me sometime. That didn’t really end up happening, but that’s okay. On Tuesday I went out to an itallian restraunt with my Egyptian and French classmates. The French guy suggested that we share an entree of snails, and so we did. Quite chewy.

Wednesday I had some internet troubles when trying to set up security. The problem was essentially with the user ID and password they had provided – I had to reconfigure these options as Windows chucked a skitz. The service agent had illegibly scribbled it down and after trying every combination of interpretations possible, it still didn’t work. Basically we called a guy out who generated a new password, he said that the old one was broken…ah yes, that makes sense? Internet ID and passwords, which you provided, can suddenly break?

Thursday night I went to Hanxue’s and met her Grandparents who had come in from Anhui. After saying a few sentences in Chinese to them, they gave up all effort and just ignored me over the TV. Little disheartening. Got to try some ½ mandarin, ½ rockmelon like fruit from Taiwan…yeah, maybe I will discuss that later when I talk about Chinese fruit and meat. Hanxue was glad to see me -poor girl, so exhausted- and that was reassuring.

Friday afternoon, my French classmate told me that his language partner exchange went well and with this confirmation, I decided to finally take a slip as I didn’t think my teacher’s friend would pull through. That afternoon I sent off an email to this person and after a little organising, I got a response confirming that I could meet someone on Monday, awesome. Something also clicked which prompted me to check out one of the expat websites that I originally checked out to find an apartment. I’m not sure why but I took a squiz. Something on the site (some news article, I think) mentioned something about finding language partners in Shanghai, directing my attention to their personal classifieds page which featured a section for language partners (infact, easily the largest section in the classifieds).

So I spent a few hours setting that up, grappling with the system in place and then giving up after realizing that you needed to pay for a subscription to contact other members and there was no way around it.

On Saturday I gave up, but decided to look around for more classifieds and try my luck, sending off multiple emails and so forth. Hanxue also invited me to go with her and her Grandparents on Sunday to the Shanghai Botanic Gardens which is close to where live. Come Sunday afternoon, she contacted me to say that her Grandpa had a sore leg and even though he had a wheel chair, he still didn’t wish to go. Quite unfortunate considering that the weekend is the only time that Hanxue effectively has to take her folks around the city.

Later I found out that the Grandpa actually didn’t want to go because of my presence and what people would think of a foreigner and a young girl together in public. Hmmm…

Come that night though I had already received a few responses to my emails and postings. I began chatting with one of them and arranged to met up the following night. Awesome, things were finally working out.

27th October -2nd November

On the Monday this email correspondant showed up between the lesson breaks and brought along one of the students. Tall guy, about my age, lives on campus and is quite friendly. We talked for a while, exchanged numbers and I went back to class.

After class I went home, relaxed and then went out that night to have dinner with this person. I waited for them one subway stop away from where I am. After a little while they showed up, name Ashley, female, 23, fashion designer. We then together walked around looking for a restraunt and a place to get some money out. The latter was hard to find but eventually we found a a machine.

We then crossed the road and went to a self serve restraunt, also had fish hot pot as well. I forget the name of the fish but it is meant to be a good quality one, athough supposively the ones they serve in Shanghai aren’t very authentic. The meal was good, except for the fish, it all got cold quickly. Ashley and I talked a bit, I was surprised at how many words she said that were perfecty suited to what she wanted to express. Shows a good deal of understanding which a lot of people here lack. She also seemed much more culturally apt and able to understand this place better than most of the other people I speak too. All good properties. Unfortunately though, since she is working and mainly free during weekends I don’t think that it’ll work out.

On Tuesday I met up with the guy from Monday. His name is Adam, 20/21, quite tall (enough to make me look uncomfortably up) and lives on the campus which I study at. He seemed nice enough, although he makes me feel very uneasy about Chinese young people. I can’t quite put my finger on it though. We spoke mostly english, I don’t like speaking Chinese with him, that’s not so useful.

In class I was discussing clothes with my Egyptian clasmate who handed me a card (she gives me a lot of cards to shops/restraunts/entertainment she likes) to a place that she liked. It was one of those multi-storied complexes, packed to the rafters with fake goods. *clicks* fake market, that’s what! I’ve been to places like this before in Beijing, so I took her card and decided that after class I woud go with Adam to this place, since he could help me snuff out the best price. My Egyptian friend warned me that Chinese people have no idea when it comes to buying clothes (for a reasonable price), but I didn’t think too much of it.

After class, having waited for at least another 30 minutes for this guy to rock up, he finally showed and together we walked. He told me that he didn’t like the place suggested to me by my friend and offered to take me to some other places. So we walked a few blocks down to HuaiHai road (guessing, to many roads here) and popped into a few stores. Each of them were random designer stores that he prefered. He started spurting off names of brands and suggesting that they’d have something that I’d like. God, what is wrong with this kid, I can’t understand this brand language. Maybe that’s why he makes me feel uneasy, because he wastes money on expensive labelled shit instead of getting an airconditioner for his dorm.

Of course, I hate designer. Well, I like attractive clothes, no doubt. But I don’t like going into stores only to find the price of everything being twice the price I would pay Australian…while at the same time being in China; a country that should be giving me basement prices. Everywhere we went the prices were ridiculously expensive. The fashion was considerable…but when you match it against price it’s unavoidably daylight robbery.

So, we spent a few hours of me squabbling through designer stores, trying to find the right shade of brown to match go with the other hues while praying that the price would be reasonable (as well as proper croutch room).

Eventually, after turning down every piece of expensive tripe thrown my way (bar a vest) we headed off to this place on Nanjing road, as recommended by my friend. Luck didn’t prevail there either but I chalk that up to exhaustion and the fact that my friend just wanted to scoot through. So, on the whole, not much success…. actually a failure. At least I managed to pick up one of those prissy beanies with the ear flaps at the fake market.

As soon as I got home I received a call from my Egyptian friend. She asked how it went and it didn’t take long for her to understand. I told her what happen and she seemed totally unsurprised and offered that the to of us go out together next time. Done deal. By this time the number of responses from my postings was increasing and I had already organised to meet with two people on the weekend on either days.

On Friday, I went with my friend after class back to this market. We had lunch together before we left and discussed the various issues egarding our lives in China. She explained to me –with many examples and references- how Chinese life is all about money and how Chinese people like to use westerners for money. She also expalined how she finds Chinese people to lack manners in many circumstances as well. I told her that I have never come across these things but kept it at the back of my mind. We also discussed the issues regarding control, freedom and so forth, she agreed with most of my opinions on the topic, providing her own side of the story as well. Very interesting conversation.

I must confess, I thought that I was good at this bartering business, but I tell you, my friend, she is something of a professional. She was strict with her prices and often we would just throw our cash at them, take the clothes and run for it. That is, when our requested price was within a reasonable difference from the sellers. I managed to pick up a jacket, two pants, two long sleeved winter shirts and a jumper. Lot of laughs along the way, very pleased.

I had to stop off on the way home and drop off my garbage bag of goodies before I went out to tea. As soon as I returned, Auntie and a friend proceeded to critique my clothes and ask me for prices and so forth. I guess this fulfills one part of what my Egyptian friend was saying about Chinese people. From here, I have become evermore frustrated with Auntie and her pathetic clammer for attention.

On the Saturday, I went to the People’s Square Park (that’s a guess translation) and met another person for the first time. Yang, female, 20, very short. It rained on us so we took refuge at a small drinks bar with a group of old dudes smoking their lungs out and making too much noise in the local dialect. The exchange was fine, no worries, after a few hours we packed it in and headed off.

On the Sunday, I had to wait until my contact finished an exam first. I was expecting that to be maybe at around 2:00pm but I received a call at about 10:00am, not long after I woke up. So with that I headed down, near my school, met with this person and together we walked down to some place they wanted to go to and looked for a place to get lunch. The road that they selected was quite nice actually, very traditional in style.

My friend pointed out some restraunt which was like a snazy, chill-out kinda place. Together we went inside, I ordered a beef, avacado and cheese ficashia sandwhich, she had some sort of pasta. BTW, CiCi, 20, Uni student.

So we talked for a while,quite a while perhaps. Plenty of foreigners in the restraunt as well, several of them didn’t speak english though, that always makes me feel kinda wiereded out. Afterwards we went to an art gallery nearby and had a squiz, much better than the Translocomotion one that I went to with Hanxue. From there the two of us walked back to the station, diverged and that’s the week. Been busy for like almost everyday, I did take the Thursday off to rest if I remember correctly.

3rd November – 9th November

On Monday I managed to have tea with Hanxue which was unexpected. I think I just made a mess of myself dribbling about how much of a headache Chinese culture is. Seriously, I find this to be such a difficult issue to tackle. Maybe I will talk about it sometime, if I can find a beginning and end.

I also had my speaking and listening exam on the Wednesday which was bad news. I’d been so busy looking for language partners that I hadn’t had enough time to prepare. And I needed the language partners to improve my speaking, partly for the exam, so on the Tuesday before I spent most of the day with CiCi. We met up in the morning, had breakfast at a bakery (a lot of elegent, sweet stuff) and then had lunch at an Italian restaurant. We met up at an area not so far from her place and together discussed a variety of issues.

On the Wednesday I had my exam, didn’t go too good. I guess I should have seen it coming. I never do too well in Chinese exams. I can master the words, grammar and expressions perfectly, use them in my natural talk as well and yet when it comes to the questions I don’t know what they want from me. I can understand the contents within the tasks put forward but I don’t know how they expect me to answer. The questions all seem so formulaic and fixed, with a binary answer to it. The exams hardly fulfill their purpose.

Friday I met up again with CiCi, I gave her a bottle of Bundaberg Sarsaparilla as I love the stuff and it’s something Australian that I can give as a thank you. I find the bottle collection remark on the pack to be amusing too; can be recycled in SA for 5c. While at the import store I bought a pack of Tim Tams and 100s and 1000s biscuits for Auntie and Hanxue respectively. I was also planning on giving Hanxue a bottle of ginger beer from Australia too, as one night I couldn’t open the damn thing. Urges persisted and I eventually drank it, I told her that I’d buy another one though.

I told Auntie that I bought the the Tim Tams for her. Of course, she shrugged this off, saying the same old phrase which translates to “it’s nothing”. I think that she has a problem with someone gaining face on her. It’s a cultural nuance which she exemplifies with gleeming success. I hate it because she always tries to make her presence so overhwelmingly dominant. I’ve learnt now to just mumble my way out of it, eventually she puts on a cranky attitudes and storms out like a child. Problem fixed.

In anycase, I pointed out that the Tim Tams were for her, for being so good to me. I hate saying that she is ’so’ good to me, as she usually makes me say that to her (again face), while at the same time trying to convince me why my good friend Hanxue is such a bad person. As much as I hate these parts of her, as well as her lazy son, inability to remove stains from clothes, monsterously loud and ugly accent, and her disrespect towards me, she does wash my clothes and ocassionally give me food to eat, so its the least I could do.

Auntie was talking over me again as I told her about the Tim Tams and basically didn’t heed my message. So I just put the biscuits back in the fridge along with the 100s and 1000s. And yes, I didn’t really need to put the latter in the fridge, I just did for some reason.

Later I checked and 3 of the Tim Tams were already eated. Silent victory.

Saturday morning I decided to check the fridge again and to my surprise noticed that both packets were missing. My victory was short lived.

Puzzled, I decided to let the matter rest while I attended to more important matters, like bringing my thermals in from outside. Auntie usually does this…as well as folding my clothes and so forth – my resistance is just wasted energy against her forced take on politeness – but I needed to wear my thermals on that day. I went in search for the giant bar with the claw at the end, as I couldn’t reach my thermals from the cage gating my window from the outside world. I thought that it might have been in the son’s room, so I peeped in there too. Oh and guess what I found? The packet of Hanxue’s 100s and 1000s, half eaten, lying infront of his sacreligious computer. Bastard.

Furious at the possibility that this lazy, do-nothing slob got tucked into my overpriced imports, I had to call someone. So I called home, at this time Auntie also came back, I told her that I was angry that he ate my stuff, she laughed and said that she gave him some, made me even more angry because even if I explained to her what happened she wouldn’t care since the biscits were for Hanxue.

For the rest of the day I met up with my language partner. On Sunday, I went out to take some photographs of the People’s Square. My fears were realized, taking a photo in this country is son very difficult, at least if you want to captue the sky as well. The sky here is so dark that -unless it’s a bright morning- it’s almost impossible to get balanced exposure between the colourless sky and the ground below.Usually it is a case of opposite pollarities, the best photos that can be taken, still make this place look like the end of the earth…or almost completely drowned in monochrome.

10th November – 16th November

I spent Monday after class again with CiCi, we met up at the school and practiced for a few hours. Afterwards we had tea together, which was pleasing since I was getting sick of using the local university’s canteen for my beef n’ noodles. Good stuff though, I love those noodles and the chef is always sure to give me a heads up.

Wednesday was…quite a ride, I must say. I had my second exam which as expected didn’t go to well. I shared my frustrations with my teacher after class. During the breaks, when I went to grab a drink from the water cooler, one of the office ladies asked to speak with me after my classes. So after class I did just that.

Not good news. She told me that staff from the international office called earlier, notifying them that I had actually finished studying my Chinese course. There reasoning was that because I was studying intensively, I had aleady fullfilled a certain allotment of hours, meaning I was done. Yet, the University had originally told me that I would study a semesters worth of Chinese at their school (meaning I’m only ½ way thru, with another 2 months left). All of the paperwork given to me and my university said this and suddenly, they were going to chop my course in half, with a lack of any prior notice.

The office at my campus tried to call back but they were out for lunch. So I decided to call Mrs Hua (my contact at the office), who couldn’t do too much to help. I feel sorry for her, as her position is not to help me with these matters, yet the others are so useless, I’m often left with little choice. As I was calling Mrs Hua, I hurriedly made my way to the subway station to meet CiCi. She’d invited me to see the latest James Bond movie and due to the hold ups I was running late. I got to the subway station in good time and she hadn’t arrived, which was okay, I needed some time to compose my ideas on how to tackle this nonsense that the university had just thrown at me. I figured that after the movie, I might get the chance to go back to the school and check again. Anyways, CiCi arrived, I explained what happened and the two of us headed down to the cinemas. We were quite early, so I ate my lunch and we discussed a few things.

The movie theathre was very quiet, especially considering this movie had just been released, infact we would have been there on launch day since the movie still hadn’t been released in America. Should be noted though that Quantam of Solace was supposively the second highest grossing western movie in China ever. Tickets cost $AUD5.

I must say that all of the internet spillage regarding this movie is dead on. I was petty disappointed, feels like a semi-sequel to Casino Royale, about half the thrills, decent characters and excitement. Action scenes were wildly sporadic and hard to follow, kinda like Spiderman 3, which also wasn’t great either.

After the movie, we had a bit of time to kill, so we went back to the Uni. On the way some Brittish chap called me about a company specializing in retirement funds for expats, said he got my name from a friend called Josh…I have no such friend. I told him to call me later.

At the Uni I got them to call the office again, still not there. I practiced for a little while with CiCi. The guy called back, turns out he was trying to sell me a retirement fund and not a job, which I might have been interested in. After he babbled for a few minutes in a corperate, financial language I couldn’t understand, I asked him: “You know I’m 20 right?” and with that he politely finished up. Nice bloke though.

CiCi and I went to the Italian restaurant where I previously ate the snails. No snails this time. I ordered too much food, which is starting to get a little troublesome. I feel that when I am out, I should stock up on veggies and other nutrients since my regular diet is kinda lacking these a little. I ordered some mushroom pasta stuff, we shared a pizza and had some small sausages for an entree. CiCi also ordered a slice of cheese cake. We (that is, I) needed some time to let the food settle, so we talked for a bit before heading home.

Thursday I called the office back and had a frustrating call with the head of the office who actually didn’t understand much more about the problem herself. She said that I’d have to wait until Monday for the teacher who organised this mess to return from Mongolia. Argh.

Friday I met up with CiCi again (yeah, we both have too much free time, I guess). This time we went to her University, which isn’t too far away from my place, although a little awkward considering how close it is. I brought my laptop along as she was interested in listening to some western music.

We met up at the subway station, caught a bus out and went to a Korean restraunt on the campus. We had a sort of hot pot like dish, although it was more like a really hot, insulated bowl which kept the heat in. It was like a soup, but with a few things we could add. Quite good. Also we shared a smaller dish of spicy octopus and veggies. Also quite good. The chopsticks were metal too which was quite good.

Afterwards we found a classroom to hide in and started scrobling through the tracks. Basically, she hated anything remotely rock, some of the alternative stuff was kinda borning (how can anyone hate Bittersweet Symphony?) but the slower stuff, as well as the popular was not surprising her favourite. They don’t really have rock over here in China, let alone some of the other stuff. You can basically pidgeonwhole it all under the ‘popular’ label and you be 7/8s of the way there.

Afterwards she invited me to play badmington with some of her online forum buddies (hometown board). So we had tea at a restraunt which is completely derrivative of this restraunt my French classmate and I use to go to. I mean, same dishes, same style, same menu, same mugs, same typeface…complete knock off, but just as good. Awesome though, since I liked the other restraunt.

Afterwards we caught the subway, all the way up to where she lives, got a taxi to her place, she grabbed her raquets and then we headed out. Played for a few hours, until 9pm. I originally started off terribly, couldn’t get the hang of it, afterwards though I suddenly click and was surprisingly good. Although, like tennis, I overuse my wrist, instead of using my arm.

The weekend felt like a real waste of time actually. On Saturday I met up with one of my language partners. I don’t really know if I like practicing Chinese with her though. She is great but I am kinda not so much use to practicing with her. We did head out for snacks in which we stumbled across one of the many weekly match making gatherings that goes on every weekend in China. Basically there are a bunch of parents selling their kids soul to be wed, old fashion style, with boards listing their various details and requirements. Most people are just after security (car, house, good job). As you’re probably thinking, soooo far behind the times, this place still needs to execute a little more open thought in this department. Maybe later I will bitch about why I dislike Chinese old people.

On Sunday, I was going to do stuff with people, but kinda let it slide. Stayed at home and played the role of lonely bum. I don’t really feel like doing any study over here to be honest, even with the prospect of returning to school. So I just played some Quake and listened to some a 2hr long Retronauts podcast instead. Man I forgot how good these podcasts are. And that rounds out the week.

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My classes have improved significantly this week as I have managed to correct some of my speaking problems. I still struggling along in this regard but I am getting better, slowly. I’ve also got to know one of my classmates (French of Chinese descent) a little better, we’ve gone out for lunch a few times and he’s shared some incredible insight into this country. His girlfriend works for a French department store (upposively the second largest in the world, to Walmart), she does out to factories and inspects the quality of working conditions and so forth.

I feel that I am finally solidating my thoughts on China. I know one thing is certain, as much as there are some truly wonderful people here, all of the stereotypes are true. No human rights, no freedom of speech, population control and pollution coming out of their ears. The problem is, I look at these issues and then look at my friends. It’s sad but I can see the impact that this oppressive system has had on their lives. It’s tradgic and I just want to do the best for them. I see this and I worry, I’m not sure what to do. This is obviously a problem but am I even in the right position to ‘fix’ it? Furthermore what defines ‘fix’? And if they are happy then is there really a problem? I don’t really know.

This weekend has been surprisingly uneventful, Saturday was spent blogging (phew, got EVERYTHING down, so pleased) and today I was hoping to spend some time with Hanxue to start teaching her english. That didn’t work out. So I called home and then later realized that because I called, she couldn’t get through to invite me out with another friend and hence right now I’m at home being a loner. I swear, I always seem to land myself into these conveniently ironic situations. Argh.

Recently I’ve either been strapped for time or have had too much time on my hands. I just wish I had a little consistentcy, oh well, at least my classes are a little better, I can’t complain about that.

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Saturday

On Saturday I woke up at 9:35am and realized that Hanxue was meant to be here 5 minutes ago, but more importantly I needed to get ready! So I leaped into the shower, saying good morning to Auntie on the way in. Argh

So I showered with haste – despite my haste I felt very comfortable for some reason – dried myself and just as I was talking to my room Hanxue knocked, so I let her in and quickly threw my shit together.

Myself, Hanxue and Auntie then went down to the internet company to apply for some internet. Auntie took the scooter with me in the back and Hanxue rode a bicycle down there, following along. As you can probably tell, this (again) overwhelmed me with guilt, even more so when before we left Hanxue commented on the hot weather. Argh.

In anycase we went down to this place, only took a few minutes. Once inside, Hanxue and Auntie talked to the customer service agents and we then headed back home. I asked what was going on but didn’t get much of an answer. I am guessing that they just suggested that I buy a router and share the son’s internet as once we returned home, the three of us and the son looked online for a wireless router. After some calls back home to my brother, everything was sorted and the router was meant to ship overnight at the earliest.

By this time it was about lunch time, Auntie had requested she cook something for us but we refused, going to the university instead. So Hanxue and I walked down to the university (not my university, another, where I go to eat) to grab lunch. On the way she asked if I was interested in going to this art exhibition with her, she’d mentioned it before and I expressed my interest. Despite having a little homework to complete I accepted. After that we walked from the University, past her house to the railway station, it was quite a long walk actually, not sure why we didn’t get a bus. On the way we went to a small deli to buy a drink, Hanxue chose some lemon drink and I vouched for the same, at the counter I whipped my money out quicker to ensure that she didn’t have to pay again.

The drinks were terrible, we couldn’t open them despite trying a couple of times each. So we gave up for the time being. On the subway we tried again and I finally had some luck. Unfortunately I also got some bad blisters on my hand from opening them. They still haven’t quite healed two weeks later.

We got off at the People’s Square, asked for directions to the art gallery and then made our way around. Hanxue had brought her camera along as well so she took some photos of me infront of important landmarks on the walk over. We finally found the gallery with a huge line up out the front, this was crazy, the line was so long. Hanxue said that it was much better than the previous weekend (she went last weekend but the line was too long hence why we were there that day). Waiting in the line took ages and the humidity was getting to me, it was simply awful, I was sweating so much. The drink didn’t help it was like 20% pure lemon, I made some jokes about how the drink will kill us.

Finally we could go inside, we’d spent maybe 10 minutes looking around at some frankly terribly indecipherable artwork when a bunch of young school girls came running up to me (it’s my natural charisma that attracts them) to ask a bunch of questions. They spoke english too and spoke it beautifully. Hanxue found out that they were 15 yrs old and had been studying english since kindergarden. Their questions were typical reporter styled questions, they were all practicing to be journos, how cute. They then offered to be tour guides for us but yeah, they kinda of lost their way and didn’t know what to say about each piece.

We looked around some more, baffled at what we were looking at. We hadn’t a clue as to the artist’s meaning or intention was from each piece and frankly the artwork itself was ugh. They had super pixelated pictures of The Bund, boots for horses, photos of Africa and mish mash pieces that didn’t make any sense. The exhibition was titled ‘Trans local motion’ which was clever, unfortunately we failed to see the relationship to Shanghai’s developing transport system.

A few more floors later and we called it quits, Hanxue said that she wanted to go back outside and tell the people in the line not to waste their time. We then looked at some of the stuff outside the mueseum and then returned back home.

By the time we got home it was already getting dark so we grabbed tea together and went our seperate ways.

Sunday

Sunday, the day that internet would return, or so I’d hoped. In the morning the son came in to tell me that the router would be in tommorow, sure no dramas. For most of the day I got stuck into homework, I began blogging about my departure from USST. Auntie made lunch for me, rice, some cucumber and some meat. None of it tasted cooked…not so good, I decided to not let her cook me any meals from now on. I’ve failed at least 3 times.

I really wanted to leave Hanxue alone for that day as ever since I’d moved house she’d been by my side. Unfortunately I wasn’t sure about the canteen and how to buy my food as she hadn’t actually explained that to me. So that night we went back there and she showed me the institutional knowledge of the canteen. It sounds so simple yet it is needlessly complicated as they serve a variety of dishes and have different processes for different types.

We probably spent some time talking afterwards, I’m not sure.

Monday

Monday was the start of what felt like losing grip. I got home and the router had arrived. Yay, so I teamed up with the son and began setting it all up. I realized early on that even though there were instructions in Chinese (no english), the son was basically useless, that’s Chinese and problem solving right there.

When I called home my brother wasn’t there, he was at a mate’s place playing Gears of War. Mum wanted to talk and while we were talking the son began fiddling with stuff, going through each of the steps. Whatever, I couldn’t really care.

Afterwards I played around some more, we managed to get internet on my machine, only problem was that the son lost internet on his machine (his work not mine). Since he’d fiddled around before I hadn’t a clue what he’d done, this was problematic as his machine would give me an IP address…this makes no sense. Anyways, I spent a few more times grappling with the problem only to have no success. Frankly I got the impression that the son didn’t want to share his premium connection with me and as such was resistant to helping me out. I’m not sure, he seemed pretty retarded in his attempt to fix the problem, maybe this is natural…I don’t have a clue, by this point I was so frustrated and mad at the difficulty the problem had presented and the anal nature of the son.

Hanxue rocked up later on to help, which only layered on the guilt as I didn’t want to call on her again. But of course she is willing. It’s funny how some Chinese people can be complete jerks while others incredibly gracious.

She couldn’t get much out of the son. I was feeling pretty hazy and plain exhausted…..and pissed off. Hanxue, myself and Auntie did some talking and then the two of us went out for tea at about 8:00pm. While at tea, I decided to ask some of my I-wish-I-understood-but-perhaps-never-will questions about Chinese people. I was too tired and didn’t justify my question so it made little sense. It’s much like asking someone from a country…why are you guys so different? It is useless since, for them, everything is normal. It made me feel like more of a knob.

Tuesday

On Tuesday I found out Hanxue had called up to organise my internet. Wow I didn’t even ask for the favour. She got me a quote and I decided to apply for this deal. That night myself, Hanxue and Sam went out for tea and headed back to Sam and Ou Yans place for a while. Ou Yan’s brother had arrived in Shanghai, he seems like a reasonably nice guy. Was only staying for a little while.

Also in class, we discussed bad words that we’d learnt in Chinese, I said a few, the teacher and classmates had no idea what I was talking about. They seem to never understand me yet I have never come across these problems before and still don’t, it’s just in class. Anyways it was funny hearing my teacher say ‘fuck’ and ’shit’ in english. ^_^

Wednesday

On Wednesday Auntie had told me that the company would be around tommrow to install the internet. The router wasn’t a waste of money since I would be using it as my access point.

Thursday

Class was pretty sucky again for the second day running, this time I just couldn’t keep up with what we were talking about and then they caught me off guard and yeah, I hate being put in such an uncomfortable spot.

Some service agent rocked up in the afternoon, they took a look around and concluded that they’d have to drill a hole in the wall to get another phoneline through to my room. Suppsoively the chord already in my room was broken. Yeah I don’t really get it either. They buggered off, Auntie called up another place and signed me up for ½ a year of 512k, they’d be round the following day and could supposively thread the chord from outside the window.

Friday

I returned home on Friday after class (which was much better but still shitty) to find my internet all hooked up perfectly. I really don’t understand this but let me try and explain, suppsoively they threaded the phone line from out in the stairway into this already existing hole in my room. I don’t know how, and it looks like they had no problem in doing this but it is done and it works. God bless the hills.

Unfortunately they weren’t kind enough to install security but that was okay. Having been exhausted from trying to organise internet in the past few days and also from my classes, I just spent that afternoon catching up on all of the stuff I’d missed in the past month.

I hadn’t seen Hanxue for a few days and that night we had tea together, we then had some trouble in deciding what to do next beyond grabbing some supplies. We ended up walking the streets for a while until we found refuge in a KFC and talked for the next 2-3 hrs. This time I managed to communicate clearly my question about the differences between the cultures by explaining how I see things and how life is in Australia. I am so surprised at the responses too, very heart felt I’m starting to understand things a lot better now.

Headed home, jumped online to watch some more media and such. Talked to some friends and family, Hanxue was online too so we talked a little more. Phew.

Saturday/Sunday

On the weekend I continue my catch up session of all gaming news, blog articles and media. I watched a few hours of Good Game as well. All of my Chinse friends were heading home during this time as next week was the national week and everyone gets time off.

I also fixed the security problem but had to reset the router as Windows refused my password, something to do with the number of bits in password…hmmmm….if you can’t accept a 64bit password then why the hell allow me input one? This locked me out of the network, on getting back in (a few more wrestling matchs with Windows) the ISP password wouldn’t work. So I called an agent and he got me a new password and user ID, stating that the old one was bad. Yeah, that’s what he said? How does that make sense? How can your user name and password not work after one day? Eh, I had internet, I don’t care, it’s China’s problem, not mine.

Monday – Friday

I won’t lie to you, the last 5 days have been quite uneventful. Since I’ve had the free time I have decided to prioritize this time for study and some blogging to ensure that when school starts again I’ll have a leg up and hence can spend that time doing things with other people. Since, personally I don’t see there being much point in going out by myself unless I am doing an activity which requires me to fly solo, like photography. I’ve done a little of that too.

Most of my time has therefore been centred on the study though and I hate it. My friend Xi was planning on coming to Shanghai but plans change and he’s had so much on his plate it would be unreasonable for him to come to Shanghai. Xi and Hanxue were planning for Xi to come to Shanghai (as he had friend’s in Shanghai which had actually changed their plans too), spend some time with me and then for the two of us to go back to Hanxue’s hometown in Anhui and from there come back home. The problem is plans have changed and tickets are hard to come by, plus it is too difficult for me to get there by myself (6hrs away) , let alone having to find tickets. Hanxue still doesn’t have a return trip to Shanghai.

This means that I’ve been on my own a lot this past week but like I said, this is fine. I need to get my head around this study and I also have the time to just relax, in my own personal space. Do some writing, do some photography. The last 3 nights I have spent talking to Hanxue and Xi for 2-3hrs a night, it’s true, Chinese people stay up very late. Otherwise I’ve been prepping some interviews and cross blogging projects with others for my study on games and culture. I’m looking forward to writing about games from this perspective.

From Now On..

I’m not expecting much to happen. As usual I will be attending class, spending the night time and weekends with friends as well as blogging and photography. There will undoubtedly be less updates as I am now in routine and settled. Maybe once a month or every few weeks, we’ll see how we go.

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Thursday

Thursday morning I woke up at 7:45am assuming that it’d give me enough time to get to school. Auntie (the landlady; from here on I call her Auntie in Chinese) was up and already doing stuff. I’d actually woke up a few times before that at 6:30am and then 7:15am since there is so much noise in this complex. Cars honking their horns, people yelling across the street, old people chanting heavily. It ain’t the Spring Festival yet people!

Auntie explained to me some of the procedures of using the shower, like how the hot and cold dials are reversed and that I should close the window while I am using the toilet and shower. The bathroom is as I mentioned previously, very comfortable. The shower too was lovely, water doesn’t small like feces. I didn’t have much time to enjoy it though as time was on a treadmill.

Auntie was also keen to remind me to get Mrs Hua to call her about the police registration since they were all clueless from last night’s banter. She talked some more and I began to feel time running away from me.

It didn’t take long for me to find the bus stop and the right bus. The bus I catch was jammed pack, I entered from the front and realized that this bus line accepts cards from the back. It didn’t take long for me to catch on that passangers were passing each others cards and money along to the middle of the bus where it can be processed. I got off at the right stop and caught the line 1. Much to my bitter disapointment the line 1 during peak hour is even worse than I’d previously imagined. It really is butt check to butt check tight and the temperature climbs to a pressure cooker very quickly. Thankfully it cools down a little once we hit Xuhuijia.

Returning home was much more comfortable as the density of people had decreased. Once I got off at the railway station I lost my way and wandered around the complex for at least 25 minutes. This reminded me of all the other times I had gotten lost and how uncomfortable it felt. Eventually I found my way, I got off at the opposite end and had to walk through an underpass. Returning home from there was fine.

When I got home I called Auntie as I needed a key for the house. Her son answered and it didn’t take me long to realize that he was downstairs playing games so I got the key off him, this was only temporary though.

Once I got inside, I wasn’t too sure what to do. Like the day before, I had finished classes and had about 5hrs to myself. Hanxue was going to come over later and help me with the contract and the rest of it. I decided that It would be best that I work on my homework now since I might not have anytime to later. Even though my bags were still lying there mostly packed up I didn’t want to sort everything into drawers just yet.

In the down time I did some homework and slept a little, I also wrote up another to do list, noting everything I needed to know about the new place. Auntie rocked up later and told me to start sorting my stuff into drawers. She also helped me move the front loader washing machine left on my desk. From there I spent the next few hours unpacking my things. It felt great putting everything away, like things had finally turned my way.

Later on, Hanxue rocked up, the three of us did the routine talk-fest. We were going to arrange the contract and all that jazz but I later realized what it was me who had to set up the contract and not the landlord. Despite my lack of context Hanxue was already getting Ou Yan to get a template for me and would have it by tommorow.

Auntie also said a few things about me getting a webcam and doing a tour of the house for the people back in Australia. She also wanted to talk to my family, despite the different languages.

From there we went out to eat, we went to the same place as the night before, this time just the two of us. This time I let Hanxue order all of the dishes, they were all pretty good. Later on Ou Yan and Sam rocked up and joined in. From there we returned home, I showered (they encourage that I shower twice a day) and then went to sleep. I also called Xi at some stage.

Friday

Friday morning I went with Auntie down to the Police Station to complete the registration. Somehow they’d managed to work out something were I didn’t need all of the stuff on Mrs Hua’s list or something like that. I’m not too sure.

So I woke up, got ready and Auntie and waited a little for Auntie. She told me that we would travel to the police station via scooter. Scooters are extremely popular over here in China. Roads are littered with cars, busses bicycles, scooters and pedestrians. None of them really care about anyone else, they just go. Nobody wears helmets either.

We walked down to a small shed near the end of the compound and Auntie opened up the door and dragged out her scooter. She got on the front and I got on the back. I wasn’t sure where to put my hands, she said on her shoulders. From there we were off.

Ignoring the dangers of crashing and all that, being in the back, bending in and out of the early morning chaos was energising. It was only a short trip to the station. Inside I handed over my passport and signed some forms detailing my personal information. They then gave back my passport and a sheet of paper to say that I was registered along with the details that I’d just supplied.

On the way back Auntie dropped me off at the bus stop and I made my regular commute to school. After class I decided to check out an imported goods store that was recommended to me by one of my classmates. It was situated in the underground floor of a fancy department store.

Inside was packed with goods from around the world, mainly skewed towards American though. All of the sugary breakfast cereals were there, fresh meat, South Australian wines and a few Japanese goods. After searching the whole store I couldn’t find Vegemite and had to ask a staff member to direct me to where it was. I also picked up a can of ginger ale for AUD50c. I figured that I’d deserved it. No beer outside of Japan, China and the US. Tsk.

Once I got home I relaxed and played a short burst of games on my laptop. Auntie then rocked up and wanted to show me the canteens at the local university that I could buy my meals from. So we jumped on the scooter and she did a quick tour of the school. We looked at three canteens in total. A few things worried me about the university, firstly the quality of food was not very high at all, very sloppy, highly unappealing, it was much much lower than what I had been getting over in Yangpu. Secondly the method of transportation. Auntie had said that I could loan her bicycle and ride down to the university for lunch and tea. I didn’t exactly find comfort in the idea of gambling my life on the roads.

We returned home and I probably did some homework. Once again, Hanxue arrived after work to help me out. By this stage I am really unsure of how to handle her politeness, I mean ever since we met she had been helping me everything single day, as much as possible. I am so fortunate.

The three of us organised the contact, got it signed and I handed over the money. I then stored my copy away, nice and safe. We talked a little more about the plans ahead. My to do list had already shrunk as I’d figured out most of my questions (clean water, garbage bin etc.) by myself. I needed to ask a few more and got those out of the way.

Auntie knew of a quality restaurant and recommended that we go there for tea. She led the way and it didn’t take long before the two of us had found it. I was suprirsed at the calibur of this place, it was pretty classy, not quite what I am use to. Reminded me of the hotel from Home Alone 2 with the waiters hand gesturing and saying nice things to us.

Once we were inside we looked around for a spare table. I guess about 20% of the people inside began looking at me, like the foreign beast I am. I couldn’t help but ponder the kinds of thoughts running through there heads about me.

It didn’t take long for us to find a table, it needed a bit of a spruce up and the waiters did that with haste. We then looked at the menu concealed behind the class on the table. The menu was segmented into Chinese and Western dishes. I asked Hanxue if there was anything like the beef and black bean we had before, she found a ’similar’ dish and we ordered that.

I guess I should have been weary about this since it was in the westerners part of the menu but I didn’t think twice about it. We talked for a short while about why everyone looks at me and what they’re probably thinking. It was then that a waiter walked past and made some cluey remark to Hanxue. Ironi that. She said that he suggested that we drink lots of alcohol. Hmmm…

Our meals were finally served up on sizzling plates. The waiter removed the top pan and revealed what I’d describe as the ‘typical American breakfast’. It’s not really breakfast though. There was a slab of beef, pasta and egg all done up in a fatty, American style of cooking. Man, I had never had a meal like this before and it certainly wasn’t the ‘beef and black bean’-esque style of food I had thought it was.

In anycase, we both didn’t mind the meal. I really didn’t think that I’d like it but it was fine. No complaints. From the restaurant Hanxue delivered me home and said that she’d be around 9:30am tommorow to help me register for the internet. Like I said, hospitable.

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With the room booked, friends made and business sorted it was time to bust-a-move.

Tuesday

Even though I had the 4hr marathon of morning classes ahead of me, all I could think about was getting away from Lao Bao and the Old Guest House. It’s like two sides of the tunnel. On one side is the first few weeks in Shanghai; a grappling match to find my place and in that place become comfortable, it’s not where I wanted to be. The otherside; where I would have liked to have been from the start; comfortable.

In the afternoon, after I’d made lunch, I went to see Mrs Hua and seek assistant in my escapade out of USST. After telling her my plans she gave me some more forms about registering at the police station with a list of materials I needed to get. This seemed like a pain in the neck! Particularly another small photo of me, I had already given her 4 of the ones I took off in Australia and she couldn’t find one of them. She took a photocopy of my passport which I left in her scanner – argh! That night I began packing all of my things into my rucksack and got through a good chunk of it.

I also gave Hanxue a call to let her know my plans. She was going to give the landlady a call notifying her of my arrival and then meet me after work at about 6:40pm once my cab had arrived. Everything was set.

The Cambodian dude – I forgot his name and he forgot mine, he calls me Guy – rocked up as well, I told him my plans and he was sure to ask the right questions to me about transport and everything. You know the kinda stuff that you think the University would help you with.

Wednesday

Classes hadn’t been so good on Tuesday and Wednesday. We had a new guy in the class, a fill-in for Marcus. From France, Asian in appearance, infact his parents are Chinese and he is like 27 although he could fool me for 17. He is okay but I don’t like him, as his presence magnifies my role as the class incompetent, especially for the listening classes which now border on extremely difficult. I can’t even understand the transcripts and yet the articles for the other classes (reading and speaking) are much easier. Makes no sense.

Anyways, I was lucky in this sense as I gave Mrs Hua a call in the morning to find that she’d be knocking off at 1pm that day and indeed had my passport. So, assuming that the passport was going to be important for me moving house, I left my classes early to reclaim the passport. It was a small blessing as I didn’t have to play my demoralizing role as class idiot in the listening classes.

I guess the sour taste of my listening classes were matched by the lack of assistance that Mrs Hua could provide for me moving out. That is helping me organise a taxi and getting the materials for the registration – I ought to mention that they want you to register everytime you move. I don’t blame her for it, but it doesn’t make my situation any better and they don’t even seem to recongise that! I got my passport so I guess that was worthwhile.

Having 6hrs of free time to kill until I had to leave, I slept, did a few hours of revision (I’m not sure how much this helps) and played some more Thrilby as well as the mezmorizing Fractal Fighter.

I called home at some stage and then went to get my final meal at the school cafeteria. I’m not sure how their staring-at-the-only-foreigner-on-campus competition is going but they seemed to have upped the antte.

From there I went back home and told the receptionist – the less friendly one – that I was leaving, they already knew this as I talked to Lao Bao -he’s the landlord BTW – about it before hand. I said some stuff and then they basically refused to listen and called Lao Bao. Ten minutes later he arrived – getting kinda anxy as I need to call a cab – receptionist ignored my request for the cab. Lao Bao rocks up and repeats the previous process, I answered his questions, he doesn’t care for my responses and gets me to call ‘my teacher’ – that’s Mrs Hua – so I call her and then pass the phone over to Lao Bao. They talk for a bit, he passes it back to me, she explains what he just said, that they can’t refund me the tens days as I was leaving early, which I already knew before when he said it to me in person. I told her it is all fine, Lao Bao rips the phone from my ear, says some more, gives it back. She asks me if I want to keep the room for another 10 days, I say no and tell her that I think Lao Bao is a prick and just want to move to some place where I might get better treatment. Ordeal over.

Lao Bao scoots off – I gotta call that taxi – so I get the receptionist (that word is too dignified for the work they do) to call through, nope all busy, tells me to go out on the street and hail one.

I expected that this would be the case, now I am really frustrated and looking forward to getting out of Yangpu. I go to the front gate and call a driver, I tell him that I am moving to Xuhui and need his help. He said that he wasn’t too familiar with the district but would do his best to get me there. I navigate him to the Old Guest House.

I jump out and tell him to wait. I grab my first load of items and haul them into the boot. I then went upstairs for the toilet paper and other things. As I head out I throw the key on the table and the two of us head off to the South Shanghai Railyway station near where I live.

The taxi drove up to one of the upper level express ways, sweeping around Yangpu, direct to where we want to go. He follows this road for almost the whole time. For most of the trip I was quiet, observing the scenery and how dark the sky was getting (part pollution, part night time, part rain coming on) and how much it felt like a dooms day scenario. I eventually started talking to the driver who was a friendly dude. Also the driver told me that I didn’t near to wear a seat belt while in the front with him, I told him things are different in Australia. It was interesting going without.

I got a txt from Hanxue letting me know she’d be there. She also called while we were about 10 minutes away, to say she had arrived. Once we found the place, the taxi did a u-y (?!) and we headed in, Hanxue and a friend of hers were out the front and noticed the taxi. They hopped in and together we entered the compound. Hanxue and the other friend (Tiffany) have been friends for 20 years, since they were children. Much like Hanxue she is a cute, short Chinese girl, she has some freckles too which is not-so common and quite interesting.

We got to the building and the taxi pulled up out the front. We’d travelled 40km and it took us about 50-55 minutes with a fare of 132 yuan. I thanked the driver, the landlady was out the front and grabbed my rucksack off me and headed out. None of them let me carry anything and the landlady had already shot off with my heavy rucksack so I grabbed what I could off them. We arrived at the house, took our shoes off and put our stuff down. We congregated in my room and the lady grabbed a few stools to sit on. I figured that we’d get down to business….

…but we didn’t, infact it took two days before we signed the contract and exchanged the money. We spent the next hour and a half discussing things, the landlady showed off more of the house and when I showed the registration form that Mrs Hua gave me – it had both languages – they then spent another good hour talking over the implications. The lady next door also came over in her pyjamas and joined in on the conversation. I participated when possible but being the only second language speaker, my precedence in the turn taking is low. Although a lot of what they said was directed at me (the landlady likes to prove to Hanxue that I understand what she says, and I do, it’s just sometimes hard to crunch it all down logically).

From there, myself and the two young ladies went out to get some tea, I’d had dinner at the canteen a few hours ago but I didn’t mind going again. The girls had to ask some people at a clothes store about where the local restaurants were but after that it didn’t take too long before we found one.

The restaurant we’d found was small but comfortable. We sat down to order and Hanxue showed me to the english part of the menu and asked what I’d like. They were keen to ensure that I was comfortable with whatever we would eat. I chose one of my favourite dishes; beef and black bean and the girls chose some of their own including the infamous Smelly Bean Curd – wasn’t smelly or even curdy, I thought.

The dishes didn’t take long to arrive and were beyond my expectations, I was quite pleased. As we ate the girls asked me questions about Australia and Xi Wei, and I explained some cultural quirks. All very friendly jib jab, mostly Chinese but I spoke english when I lost my way. The girls told me that the neighbour who had called in on the conversation at the apartment wasn’t very nice and they didn’t like her since she was trying to persuade the landlady to not accept me. I was surprised at their frankness. I also started and have still been doing this up to now, thanking Hanxue and her friends for all of their help. Their assistance (mostly Hanxue though) in making me feel comfortable here is just incredible, I feel very blessed to have such courteous, lovely friends and I explained that I didn’t know how to make it up to her.

From there Hanxue made or had received calls from the other guys and together we walked to their apartment to talk for a while. On the way Tiffany exlained to me how restauranting together is a get-to-know people exercise in China.

The apartment wasn’t so nice, lots of pencil sketches on the wall from children. We all sat together in one of the rooms and we shared phone numbers. Sam made a few jokes regarding his billingualism and we then talked some more, maybe 45 minutes.

From there they all accompanied me home. I didn’t have a key yet so the son had to let me in. I began talking to him but he shrugged it off saying that if I had any problems to call him.

Not sure what the time was when I got home, would have been about 10:30pm. From there I just sat in my room for a few minutes thinking about what I had to do for tommorow and what time I shoud set my alarm for, then I went to bed.

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Been a lot of exciting changes in the past week, I’ve made some new friends and moved house. Let’s go.

Saturday

As I was saying last time, I was planning on calling around for accomodation on Saturday. I had to return to the internet cafe first to check the dates-of-posting for the 5 apartments. Unfortunately this reduced my list of five down to two as three of the postings were made at least half a year ago, some dating back to Christmas last year, with the remaining two being filed in the last month.

With all of this out the way I made my calls. The first place, a 10 minutes walk to Shanghai Stadium, was already taken, would have been sweet but no problem. I tried the second one, a two storey house, the top storey being my own, located two minutes from the Gong Kang road subway station and sharing with a quiet Chinese guy. This one was a success, the man at the other end of the phone was very helpful and spoke solid english. I quizzed him a little and then arranged to meet him the following day at the subway station two minutes from the house.

This was all reassuring and put me in a suitably upbeat mood. I can’t remember what I did for the rest of the afternoon, but I do remember something that I previously forgot to mention.

A few days earlier, I met an exchange student – Male, 28, Cambodia – who was also going to be living in the Old Guest House. I met him in Mrs Hua’s office and told him to pay me a visit sometime. So Thursday night, on returning home, the receptionist at the Old Guest House (that’s one of the two older laddies who live in their pyjamas, watching TV all day) told me that this guy couldn’t find me and would say hello later.

Just like the lady had said, he came knocking at about 8:00pm that night, so I invited him in and we traded stories for an hour or so. He is over here on a Shanghai Government scholarship – a higher class than the one the University threw at me – studying for his doctorate or Phd…or something like that. He does not know Chinese and English is his second language. It’s pretty difficult to understand what he has to say in either language.

On one of the nights we went out and had pizza together. He explained more about the resort like accomodation of his friend’s over at TongJi University and how their life is very comfortable. The pizzas we ordered had heaps of cheese, some meat and a beef like base, t’was actually quite nice although we should have ordered the size up. We also drank some sort of honey tea – it’s packaged and sold like soft drinks over here and is a cold drink.

Sunday

Sunday morning, the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, I took the subway for about an hour to meet this guy and inspect the house. To my surprise the subway doesn’t always remain underground, in some areas it accends up onto it’s own level above the rest of the other highways supported by pillars – think Wipeout-styled roads that twist, dip and turn.

I reached the train station, got off and gave this guy a call. After some quibbling he said that the room had already been taken and then followed up with a flurry of ’sorry’s. Pissed off that he hadn’t told me earlier and also a the typicall-ness of Chinese people (they’re all a bit like this, I think) I caught the subway home. That’s two hrs gone, not so cool.

I wasn’t really sure where to turn next, I had already tried some ‘good’ agents and checked out all of the websites recommended to me by Marcus and my other classmates, I’d tried the local student paper as well. It’d been raining outside and rained on me during my trip to nowhere so I think I played quite a bit of Thrilby: The Art of Theft for the rest of the afternoon. This title is by Yahtzee Crosshaw who narrates the often excellent Zero Punctuation. The game is equally fantastic and fully fleshed out, could definetly hold it’s own against some of the classic Commodore adventure titles.

That night, with all my options exhausted, I opted to give my friend Xi over in Anhui a call and see if he could help me. We talked for a while, he shared some details about his upcoming purposal to his girlfriend and asked for some advice. As for the accomodation, he said that he’d get in touch with his friends in Shanghai and see if they could help me. He said that he’d call them right after we’d finished talking, very gracious of him.

I got a call back about 20 minutes later from Xi explaining that one of his friends was out of Shanghai at the moment but another one – Hanxue, young girl who had added me to QQ ( the Chinese online chat program) about a month ago – would be glad to help, he told me to call her at about 1pm tommorow. Oh yeah, because of the Mid-Autumn festival it was a long weekend with the Monday off. Yay!

Monday

Not much else happened up until then, the weather hadn’t been too good outside, so I primarily stuck to my homework and at 1pm on the dot I received a text message from Hanxue. She wanted to know if we could meet up at 3:00pm that day. I gave her a call to organise everything, she wanted to meet me at the university but I said it was too far and explained what she’d have to do to get there. After some txting and calling back we eventually rested on meeting at the People’s Square.

I arrived a little early at the People’s Square and was simply amazed at the place. It is so upper-class, so sophisticated, so not like back home. The buildings in the area were all so interesting, elaborate and unconventionally design. Big screen TVs plaque some of the buildings too and display advertisements of up-market products.

I walked around a garden area (totally spotless of litter), the lawns were so incredibly lush and trimmed down to the blade. In the centre and infront of the Shanghai museum was a fountain, the centre-piece of the area. This was really magical. Parents were playing with their children, coming out drenched in water and with smiles on their faces. People were taking photos of each other with the water shooting up around them while others were flying kites. It was like a small, public resort in the middle of the city. Lovely.

I looped back around and after a few more minutes of waiting, Hanxue and a male friend came up to me and asked if I was Daniel – Hanxue is a short, cute Chinese girl, her personality is very natural, she is very kind and has a lovely character. I said yes and together they looked around for a place to go and talk. On the way they introduced themselves and the relationship that they have with Xi Wei. The male friend is also another one of Xi’s friends – Ou Yan, he looks a little dopey but is an interesting character and is kind and considerate like the others – and a friend to the rest of the party. They all studied english together in Anhui.

We went across the road and to a KFC which was packed, so out the front they whipped out a map and I explained where I was and where I was looking to move to. I’m not sure why they wanted to go to KFC, especially at 3:30pm in in the afternoon, clues indicate that they really like junkfood.

I get the impression that they wanted me to live near them since we then caught the subway down to where they live to find accomodation down there. They live near a stop on the line one, I guess about 25 minutes from my Uni. On the way I spoke some english to them and they seemed to have a hard time understanding what I was saying. Kinda surprised since Xi said that their english was better than his (and he seemed to understand me very well).

At the subway station we waited out the front for a while since it was raining heavily and there was thunder and lightning. There were people selling umbrellas out the front as well, very clever.

After 10 minutes of standing, I suggested that we just move since the weather didn’t look like it was going to get any better. So we did, I got a little wet along the way but it was fine. We travelled through an underpass and onto another street which was lined with a few real estate companies among small fashion stores. We went into about three of them and gave up after we couldn’t find a house that offered anything less than a half year package.

From there we did a little more walking down to Hanxue’s apartment. The estate was full of buildings smothered in grim and disgust, the sort of environment that is starting to become very familiar to me. We walked up a flight stairs to her room and she whipped out her laptop to look online for me. My problem was that I couldn’t find a 4 month deal, rental was only a year, six months or three months.

We spent maybe half an hour looking online and eventually found a suitable place, Hanxue called and we could inspect right away. In this time, the friend out of Shanghai had arrived, his name is Sam, he can also speak English and insists on speaking it to me as much as possible. He is also the joker out of the group. The other friend Ou Yan and Sam lit up a smoke and puffed away until we left. The Chinese seem to do this a bit, smoke with no regards to the people around them, Hanxue and myself don’t smoke.

Oh yeah, also while we where there Hanxue set up a QQ conversation with Xi using the webcam on her laptop (video of me and them, to him, one way). Very cool.

We headed off together and then caught a bus, 5 minutes to the destination. By this time it was already quite dark. We walked into another estate of about 60 buildings, all covered in the usual. There were also vendors selling fruit and other things. At the main gate there are people selling copied DVDs, although the inlet has the casing of a Blu-ray movie. Not sure which one they are.

We had to make a few turns to get to the building in which the unit was situated and eventually found ourselves in the right direction. So we knocked and were greeted in, the other two guys remained at the door and eventually headed off – I later discovered that they’d booked their own apatment in the same estate.

Basically the deal works like this. I pay 1000 yuan a month in rent (divide all of these by about 5.5 or 6 to get an approximate AUD or even USD) each month and then another 100 yuan ($20) in utilities, there is also a small charge dependent on how much I use the aircon due to the way it is set up -seperate from the other units…or something like that. This price is roughly half of what I was paying to stay in the Old Guest House over in Yangpu, yet there are no roaches here, I spotted 3 in the Old Guest House.

I am on the second floor of the building and live with the landlord’s son. The landlord lives below me. She is very outgoing and a little in-your-face at times. She speaks very loud, very local sounding Chinese and is constantly talking, sharing stories or cracking jokes. Despite her out-going nature she is very courteous towards guests and always ensures that they are comfortable. Her son is perhaps the opposite, he is quiet and introvert, he doesn’t say much and I find what he does say tends to be a little tough to understand. He has a PS2 in his room and spends a lot of his time playing games or on the internet. In fact that is all he ever seems to do.

The apartment is very comfortable and clean. My room and the son’s room are at opposite ends, divided by the kitchen and bathroom. All of the appliances are new and in good condition, the kitchen is quite clean as well. The tiles in the bathroom don’t feel like tiles and in fact look just like the floor boards, gives the bathroom a very cosy feel. Clothes are hung outside on the window by the son’s room.

My room has plenty of cupboards to store stuff in and my bed is a size up from what I have in Australia and is very comfortable. My cupboards right angle the bed. There is a TV (LCD, 20.1”, says it’s 1080p), aircon, fan and desk light in my room.

The landlord was keen to point out that everything in the house is well kept and she used plenty of visual examples such as rubbing her shirt against the furniture to get the point across. She also mentioned that she can help me wash my clothes, cook meals and sign me up for the internet.

This deal seemed pretty sweet, both from my point of view and Huaxue’s, so I gave her 300 yuan in rent so that she’d hold the room for me for 5 days. We spent a lot of time talking before that, especially Huaxue and the landlord. I think that the landlord was pleased that I could understand Chinese. We had to go out and get some money as well, since I orignally didn’t have the 300 yuan on me.

From there, after much conversation had pursued, Hanxue and I left. At the main gate, I asked her what was happening next, she asked if I wanted to have tea with her and the others, by that time it was already about 8:00pm and the trip home was at leats an hour so I declined. We then caught a bus to the closest subway station and she accompanied me in, from there we split. I’d said to her many times that I didn’t know how to thank her for all her help. She said it was nothing and told me to tell her when I arrived home safely.

I caught the subway and on the way tried to phone home. On the subway this big Chinese guy got on and began making a speech to the people on the train. Something about fighting corruption for an harmonious society. Once he finished, he turned to me and repeated the speech in english. Crazy I know. Much as I’d figured, he was talking about fighting corruption in government and society. He also mentioned that if I put his name in google – that’s fat teacher in Chinese, in english try the key words; fat teacher, line one subway, china – that I could find out more information on how to join his crusade. Once I get wireless I am going to give it a go.

So I got home safely, both Hanxue and Xi had txt’d me to ask if I had got home okay. I had made some calls to the family in this time so I hadn’t noticed the messages. I replied to both of them. I had two cups and a pack of Pringles for tea, man I am killing my body over here. Phew what a day, finally I had made some progress and some friends too, very pleasing.

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On Monday morning I woke up at 6:30am and got out of bed when my phone alarm chimmed in at 7am. Have been doing this everyday since. It gives me enough time to shower, eat breakfast and get ready for the day. I then get the bus. On Monday the bus was awfully crowded much the same as the stereotypes about over-populated Asian countries; bodies pressed against bodies and people pushing each other onto and out of the bus. The same, applies for the subway as well. In fact the subway is worse and kinda gets scary when you see people getting jammed in the doors. I’ve also seen officers that tell people where to stand – the centre of each doorway needs to be clear, passengers board from the left and right. These guys occasionally help with pushing and also stop people when they can’t fit.

The Line 1 is the “main” line in ShangHai and it is always crowded, although by midday things have cooled down a little. I have to interchange between two lines (totaling one bus, two trips on the subway and some walking) and this process of interchanging is equally frustrating. At each stop there are usually stairs and esculators. Almost everyone shoves their way onto the esculators so in this case I get the stairs as I get up faster. Sometimes though thre are only stairs in which case, you take things one step at a time and try to not fall over from the people pushing from behind.

As you can imagine, all of this is very stressful and I actually find that the shoving and tight spaces make it difficult to breathe, it strains my heart a little sometimes too which is not too good.

At least the transport is convenient in that it arrives every 5-8 minutes without fail. They also hand out free newspapers at the station. The PA system on the subway is bilinguial in both Chinese and English – not sure why though since I still don’t see many foreigners. The seats are all made of hard plastic and in general the conditions of the vehicles are clean and sanitary. Probably better than Australia. Furthermore there are TVs on the public transport which play advertisements.

So I got to school early and was put in my class. Our classroom had a table and 5 chairs and was no bigger than one of the University study rooms which you can loan out (Australia). I guess this meant that my class really would be small, just like Mrs Hua said. I was the only one around and spent a few minutes looking at a map to see how far I’d just travelled. I should also note that the class I am in is the highest that the school offers.

Eventually another guy arrived; Marcus, a Phillipino-American who had lived in LA for most of his life and spent 10 years in a Chinese school. In America he works as a retail consultant telling rich people which areas to invest their money. He is 37.

The other two students arrived and I forget their names. Both female. One of them looks about 32 (wouldn’t say age) and is from Korea, she speaks little english and I find her accent hard to grasp. She is very friendly but I find her intimidating. She is studying for the HSK test so she is quite good at Chinese.

The other is from Egypt, she wears Islamic clothes (the head-scarf and all) and is also quite apt at Chinese. She has been studying at the school for 3 years and is 23 herself. Her father works in China as well doing tourism.

The teacher arrived and began with some formalities, she said that she wasn’t really prepared and it seemed that way. I can’t remember much about her actually since she only taught us for one lesson and then got replaced with a much better teacher.

Lemme give the rundown of our classes. I have 4hrs of Chinese classes a day (9am-1pm), two of those hours are for general classes and the other two are for either listening or speaking, they alternate every second day. I have one teacher for the general classes and one for the other two. Meaning that I get two teachers for two hours each, everyday.

The teacher who teaches our main class, is a spunky, super enthusiastic young lady – I think about 28yrs old. She is just plain awesome and always makes our classes very enjoyable, never discouraging us but she still manages to straddle a lot of hard work out of us. I mean seriously, while classes are enjoyable, she is always pushing us a little harder so it’s very intensive.

The other teacher is less exciting but still interesting nonetheless. She is also young (maybe 25), a little more quiet and typical. Her teaching style is similar to the other teacher’s.

In the general class we usually begin by running through vocab. The teacher gives a short introduction to each word and then we are asked to make a sentence on the spot. We discuss and implement X amount of vocab and then conclude with reading a few paragraphs from the main text which utilize the previously learnt words. In and out of this routine we do exercises, either from the text book or just ones that the teacher makes up. For example, answering questions from the text, paraphrasing the text etc with the book closed and using the new words and grammar. So on the whole we get a thorough understaing of what it is we’re doing. Even though we do all of this routine stuff, we also spend a good deal of time going off track. For example if I don’t understand the meaning of a word, the teacher will then dicuss the meaning and usages of the word or they’ll get my classmates to explain it to me. So we are always jumping onto new words and grammar seperate from the classwork. With this we also spend a good deal of time discussing the topics of the text. We probably do more taling in this class than the spoken language class.

The oral language classes are basically the same but will have less new words and grammar, and a script for us to play out. Listening is just as you’d expect, we listen to a text and answer questions, reiterate the story, link back to new vocab and grammar etc. We also have smaller listening exercises.

The textbooks appear to be on par, perhaps a step up from what I’d been doing in Australia. The classes though feel like a slogging. Mainly because we ONLY speak Chinese. Even when we are defining meanings we only talk Chinese. I find it strange then when my teacher speaks english as I’m not use to it. So all of what I just said, is all conducted in Chinese and it’s hard and fast. The other students are all accustomed to this and do fine. I’m not quite as apt though and putting up with this for 4hrs really empties my energy tank.

The homework is also significant, maybe another 2+ hrs a night. At least for me, since I need to refine some of the stuff that was a little hazy when used in oral conversation.

Basically that’s my classes.

So anyways, Marcus, having spent the last week trying to find a room (and also working in real estate) wanted to help me out with finding a place closer to the school. So afterwards we went out to lunch to talk about it. Also another guy, who reponded to a room mate request from Marcus tagged along, although Marcus had already found a sweet deal and had to refuse the guy.

The other guy is Andrew, he looks young but is probably older than me. He’s from Indonesia and does 3D modelling, wants to get into games actually. Seems like a lost soul in China – a lot of people seem to be like that.

Together we walked down to a small cafteria like restaurant. On the way Marcus was descriving how time in Shanghai had been a string of coincidences which eventually got him a cheap, posh apartment with his landlord and how he’d met this lady which he’d been going out with. Marcus had basically already dug out the idea that he was getting on (in life) and wanted a women badly. Poor guy.

At the restaurant I had a huge bowl of hot noodles, beef and black bean. It was fantastic and only about $AUD2. We all talked for a good 30 minutes at least. Marcus said that he’d get me the contact details for some good agents. Andrew introduced himself and what he’d been doing the past year in Shanghai. He seemed into games and noticed that I recognised the software he uses for modelling so we eventually got talking about games criticsm. No surprise, he had know idea what I was talking about (despite enthusiest status).

From there the three of us headed back up to the station and departed ways. On the way back I got lost, again and this time caught the bus at the wrong side of the road. After getting off the bus and crossing the road (to get the corresponding bus back to where I’d started) I couldn’t find it and had to ask a bunch of barmy old people who just ended up yelling some indecipheable Chinese at me. Eventually a young dude helped me out and we caught a bus back to the subway. This guy lives in Yangpu but works in a 60 storey hotel in the PuDong, can speak a little english.

We got off at some hospital and from there I got on the subway again, back to where I’d started. I finally caught the right bus home (after 3 failed attempts). Once I got home, I was too late to see Mrs Hua to ask her about some canteen stuff. Went to the internet cafe and then squeezed in a little homework. I think that I also received some calls as well from my family and Xi.

I had more free time on Tuesday afternoon since I didn’t go out to lunch or get lost again. So I got my student card figured out and could now use the canteen with little fuss. I also called ShanShan in Beijing who was super-estatic to hear from me, that was nice. After that I did some washing and then a few hours of homework to stay afloat.

On Wednesday, our trio went out again for lunch. Marcus had also dropped down to a lower class leaving the 3 of us. This time we ate at a chicken place which I wasn’t very fond of. The chicken was cold (must have been intentional as it wasn’t even warm) but my noodles were fine. From there, I had to sort out some phone troubles then homework and internet.

On Thursday Marcus had got me the details of agents so I called both of them. None of them could find me a suitable place, near the University (within 20 minutes). Not so good.

On Friday, I was the only one in class for the first 1hr and then was joined by the Korean student. So only two of us that day. Oh yeah an old lady and her hsband offered me their seats on the bus, I told them that they ought to sit instead. Like the day before I headed home early, got stuck into some work for the weekend. Went to the internet cafe to download a bunch of trailers, blog posts and news as well as check online for some more places to rent. I have found 5 good apartments and will hopefully make some calls today.

Otherwise I have just been doing homework and writing this on Saturday morning. I have also been playing a few short bursts of indie games over the past few days. Not too much though.

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If everything is too long – in which case it is – then feel free to just skim, I’m not fussed if people just do that as it isn’t expected that everyone reads anything, let alone any of this at all.

All the Best,
Daniel

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This week I wanted to know why it was that all of these exchange student friends of mine had no other Australian friends but myself. They had friends and plenty of them – all of Asian descent and I wanted to know why it was like this.

As it’d be we discussed this, code-switching between the two languages for about an hour. The conclusion, as my friend had put it was that it’s hard making ‘local’ friends and that when I’d be in China, taking the role of the exchange student, I then would realize what it is like.

I was talking to Mrs Hua yesterday and I asked her how many other exchange students like myself were living on this campus. I’d already known that a good majority were paying a pile of money to live at this other campus, the “exchange student” campus but how many were here, where I am?

She said that I was the only one. I guess that’d makes sense. David would have been the second one and he’d left a few days ago. Plus I haven’t seen one foreigner in this district, let alone at the University.

I am trapped, surrounded by Chinese people and I have no choice but to understand what it is like to play the role of the outsider – particularly in a culture that stresses the outsider. I now understand my friend perfectly and understand what it would be like for the others too.

At the moment, when nothing is put infront of me, I’m not sure what to do. I can and have already done a bit of exploring and will do some more soon. I don’t want to do too much just now though since I still have more than 4 months to look around and I may as well do some after class when I am already out and about near the CBD. I obviously don’t _really_ (I’m not too sure if what I have now counts) have any friends in Shanghai either so there is no one to meet or go out with.

So during the days I have free leading up to Uni I have been doing a bit of travelling around Yangpu and Shanghai but have spent the lion’s share of my time in my room, playing indie games and writing. I’m not too sure what I should be doing right now so in the meantime this seems like the most suitable option.

As a quick mini run down, on Thursday I basically spent most of the day writing up articles for both blogs. Friday it was raining quite heavily, so I stayed inside (was planning on doing photography). I also quizzed Mrs Hua a little more, concluding my list of questions and looked into alternative meals. Saturday (today) I have basically been playing games and writing all day, I’m not too sure if I should just spend tommorow doing the same.

Next week, I plan on taking all of the photos I’ve been meaning to take (all in one hit). I’ll obviously be starting Uni and with that I will be closer to the CBD so I’ll probably look around the Pudong and those areas.

Since all of the basics of my trip have been covered the upcoming articles should be uch shorter as less writing is needed to explain the backstory.

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