Week -ends + -nights

Work has been sweet and I've posted some about that, but I only spend 8:30am-5:30pm every day at Hisense.
So, what do weeknights and weekends lend themselves to?

I smell a photo adventure.

A typical weeknight (choose one):
1. Walk home, change out of work clothes, go out to supermarket to get dinner
2. Walk home, change, walk to supermarket, decide to get KFC instead
3. Take the main street home, buy dinner at street stands or small restaurants
4. Go with work friends to the other side of town by bus, catch dinner, hang out

[Fig. 1a] On the way to Carrefour for dinner. Time for everybody to get off work!


[Fig. 2a] KFC dinner. 31yuan vs. 6yuan supermarket hot food dinner. Pretty much the same amount of food.
Hot wings are sold by the pair here. Who would ever stop at TWO kfc hot wings?! Come on. Oh yeah, they sell fries. AND there's KFC home delivery. On BIKES.


Since I began work here, I'd always tried to be home and showered/clean by 8:30pm latest ... sit down, use the computer, have the TV on, chill in my apartment ... last week, decided to switch things up a bit, and went over to the east side with co-workers right after work. They treated me to dinner and then brought me to a billiards bar and we played a few games ... I forgot how relaxing summer weeknights could be. Caught the 9:15pm bus (first time taking the bus here! Hadn't needed to up to this point; everything was within walking distance) back to apartment and still had evening hours online. Sweet.

[Fig. 4a] Dinner at random restaurant with friends from work


[Fig. 4b] streetside restaurants in the "ju ming qu" ... "citizens district" ... ie where all the non-fancy-schmancy normal people live


[Fig. 4c] billiards bar with 15ish tables. AWESOME.


[Fig. 4d] reaching for a long shot




Weekends
Saturday
1. Work half day, 9am-12pm
2. a) spend rest of Saturday online, Skype, etc.
b) get over to family friend's house, join them for dinner + in-house movie, hanging out
3. Do week's worth of laundry
Since Saturday entails half day of work, by the time I get home and am all sweaty from the walk under the blazing sun, all I want is a shower, air conditioning, and the internet. Also, Saturday night means going over to stay with my family friends (a few bus stops away) who I don't see during the week. So, getting picked up by car around 6pm means maybe 5ish hours guiltlessly filled with skype/gchat with you punks in the US.

[Fig. 2a] Movietime! Got too late to go to the supermarket, so ramen -straight out of the pot- will do. Yeah, I don't have an S-vid cord to connect my laptop to the actual TV. No big, I like it 17". Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.


[Fig. 2b] Ramen dinner deserves some fruit. This is all cut from ONE mango. A typical 1kg monster mango.




Sunday ... EXPLORATION DAY!
As much as I usually hate Sundays, it's become my adventures/outings day this summer. Saturday gets eaten up by work, and Sunday is the "whole" day.
A couple things I've been able to do in the past weekends:

1. Lao Shan
Drove up to a friend's house in the mountains around 10am, sat under a gazebo in the cool dawn air, drinking tea, chatting, devouring the endless fruit supply ...

[Fig. 1a] our spot, seemingly suspended in the vast mountainside, silence but for a few birds echoed by the morning breeze. one of the most peaceful ways I have ever felt.


[Fig. 1b] the view from our aura of calm


[Fig. 1c] soo much fruuiiiit




2. Tai Dong
A marketplace with malls, shops, outlets, street vendors, fake buys, movie theater, KFC, mickey D's, little restaurants, dessert stands, and anything else you can think of. With a side of 10 thousand Chinese people. I've been three times - once on a Sunday with a work friend, once after work with same friend just to "see Tai Dong," and last night with my sister & co. (they came here after their summer travel camp ended) to see Transformers 2 (in English with Chinese subtitles, no way am I going to see anything dubbed).

[Fig. 2a] Sunday afternoon. This is considered "population lightly sprinkled, low density"


[Fig. 2b] hot pot-esque lunch. a boiling pot fitted inside table, with skewers of food inside. take whatever you want, pay 50cents per stick at the end. so sweet. good ol' fashioned real Chinese people street shop food.


[Fig. 2c]


[Fig. 2d] Tai Dong on a typical Sunday


[Fig. 2e] Who goes to China and doesn't get Chinese bubble tea?


[Fig. 2f] Nighttime Tai Dong street vendors selling cheapest-stuff-on-earth (at decent quality)


[Fig. 2g] Coke can tribute to Transformers 2 at movie theater ... I think the theater screen was wider/bigger than the US ones ... interesting.


[Fig. 2h] From the exit of the movie theater: weeknight shoppers




3. Went to Lao Shan again ...
This past Sunday, left at 10am, back around 7pm. Drove about an hour.5 away, saw a Daoist temple, ate lunch by the seaside, hiked up/through a cave, ate watermelon by the sea, rode ski lifts down the mountain ...a standard 18mm shot from where we ate lunch, see here for full panorama.



I'll write another post about Lao Shan, too many pictures to go under simply "weekend activities."


That's all I got for now. Off to sleeep.

Never Have I Ever ...

[This post is chronologically out of order. Oh well. Afterthought.]

I will no longer be able to say "Never have I ever ... run from the police. literally."


So. On our way back from Huang Shan, the "bus stop" we were taken to by a random van driver/guide actually = the side of the highway. Bearing all our luggage (which wasn't too much since we hiked Huang Shan carrying what we had), we scaled a rocky hill, around some people's gardens, past barbed wire fence, through some bushes, to get next to the shiny green highway road sign stating "Nanjing, 291 km."

So it's 10 people - 7 kids, 2 moms, and me. Everyone has at least a bookbag. The moms have canes because their knees/legs were giving out while hiking. We wait for about 15 minutes, while our driver/guide phones the bus driver he apparently knew and assure us it'd be coming soon. I see a police car drive by, and a few minutes later, our guide is rustling in the bushes ... it's our driver looking around. Suddenly our guide is like "he's here! go go go! go!" and all I'm thinking is "dude, chill out, the bus driver can't be in that much of a hurry." and then the driver starts heading away from the bushes where I thought the bus was, yelling "go go, go back down the hill, go back to the van!" and everybody makes a mad dash. Of course, I had absolutely no idea what was going on due to standing farthest away from the guide/bushes, besides that maybe we had 0.001 seconds to get onto the bus before it left, or something. So I just stand and stare while everybody starts scrambling down the hill, because why run when you might not need to? and I was also hoping maybe to get a photo of the madness. Maybe 15 seconds later, when they're halfway down the hill and I'm still 23 steps behind, I realized we were running from the police. OH. why didn't you say so?

Ok so my next instinct is, why are we running from the police, just for standing by the highway? Oh, whatever, forget it. And I follow. By this time I'm enjoying the actual act of running (fast and from something, not moderate endurance/exercise running), but also hearing the policeman yelling "stop! stop!" behind us at the top of the hill and imagining getting shot by the 16 guns he keeps in his beltloop. That would be semi-tragic. I would never be able to review my photos from Huang Shan. Anyway so we run and run, with our bookbags full of clothes, down the hill, across the trashy abandoned pavement under the highway, around the corner, down an alleyway of houses, and into a little shop.

We're there maybe 1 minute before the van driver pulls up, jumps out, opens the trunk, says "everybody get in! fast! come on come on" and we proceed to pile 11 people into a 7-seater van. Yes, that is 4 extra people. Yes, everyone had luggage. Yes, that is illegal. Yes, it was hilarious.


... We ended up driving to a gas station about 20 minutes away and getting on the bus there. It was an overfilled bus, so some people sat on little tiny stools in the aisle (what?) ... they played a DISNEY movie. and not even a famous one, it was like a Disney-channel-only movie. Whatever, it was about time warp, and it was in English.

Anyway, conclusion: I have officially run from the police in a mad mob of children, women, and sketchy van drivers.
And I almost forgot about that story until just now.


our lovely "bus stop"


waiting for the bus.


heading home before police get us.

fLml

1. I'm in CHINA. flml.
2. Fruit. It is everywhere and it is so cheap. I just ate a mango as big as my calf muscle. flml.
3. It takes only 5 minutes to run to the biggest supermarket nearby. flml.
4. I ate dinner yesterday (hot food from supermarket) in a huge grassy lawn by the center of the city. I was the only one on the grass. flml.
5. Work consists of designing, 3D modeling, rendering, and Photoshopping all day. flml.
6. I am wearing a new pair of white adidas soccer shorts. Super comfortable. Super white. flml.
7. Last night after work, my co-workers treated me to dinner on the other side of town near their apartments, and then took me to a billiards bar and played pool. I won the last three games straight. flml.
8. I took an hour-long nap in the break/hangout/sofa room at work during my lunch break yesterday and today. It was fantastic. flml.
9. Travel plans/possibilities as of now: hanging out with Alice in Beijing, visiting Elise in Hong Kong, seeing Gui Lin with work friend, traveling Malaysia with Ellen, traveling Thailand with Elise, hosting Nick in Qingdao. flml.
10. CCTV5 (China's ESPN) shows soccer all the time. flml.
11. I bought dinner for 5yuan. That's $0.75usd. flml.
12. MIT VPN allows me to get past all the Chinese internet firewalls. I love MIT and I flml.
13. I finished my SoundBar Independent Speaker project at work today. Actually designed three products from start to finish on my own an as intern. flml.
14. My co-workers time-tested my typing speed. 107 wam, a couple words short from 5 years ago. Still close. flml.
15. I get to listen to music at work. My iTunes is currently looping Lupe Fiasco. Addicted to Streets On Fire. flml.
16. Brian sent me the rest of Lupe's The Cool yesterday. flml.
17. Getting lots of great pictures every day. flml.
18. Being immersed in the Chinese language 24/7 - listening, speaking, reading - is awesome. Polishing all the rusty corners of my Chinese. FLML.

Huang Shan Panoramic

A small portion of the panorama found here
Pieced from 3 verticals at 18mm, f/3.5, taken July 1, 2009
Only about 1/4 of it is displayed in this window ...

Environments 1, 2, 3

1. Home

My company covers my apartment, a big studio flat. Pretty sweet, clean, new, and spacious, and in a great location.






2. Work

Industrial Design group, meeting/brainstorming room


design has its creative processes. hence, from left to right: critiquing a design, eating watermelon, peeling a mango, playing with someone's SLR.


hard at work on their TV projects ...


we get awesome, relaxing, long, fun lunch breaks


my desk



3. Supermarket

Carrefour, #1 revenue supermarket in China, I believe. Yes, it is four stories.


Hisense TVs for sale!


spiky Dragonfruit.


advertising more sales more brightly and loudly than Wal-Mart


I believe this is the raw meat in ice extravaganza


several ... choices


have you ever seen milk come in small individual bags? keeps it fresh. one cup at a time.


stairless escalators: easy transportation of grocery carts! brilliant.


suntanned peaches. with templates of holiday-themed chinese characters.


I took this picture for Meagan Roth.





There you go. The three places I frequent the most.

Rule #23

Do not eat durian at work.

Durian /ˈdʊəriən, -ˌɑn/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [door-ee-uhn, -ahn]
n.
(1.) an off-white mushy substance wrapped inside yellow spiky peel
(2.) something people with weird taste buds buy and eat
(3.) an edible material that smells like pork & leek dumplings. seriously.
(4.) a fruit. --skeptical--




If you break this rule, everyone at work will hate you.
well not really but we will make fun of you for the rest of the week.


e.g.
1. *while pinching nose* "are eating durian?? come on, can't you go eat that in the bathroom or somewhere else?"
2. "you should put a plastic bag over your head, and eat inside there"


-- actual quotes from work today


I love my co-workers.

Huang Shan

OH MY GOD BEFORE I SAY ANYTHING ELSE:
OUR DRIVER UP THE MOUNTAIN WAS A MADMAN.

We drove no less than 40mph on bumpy little narrow mountain roads, and not only did we not slow down at the turns, we accelerated around the 90+ degree bends. Seriously. There were several turns where we'd speed up to what seemed at least 50mph - us, a bus of 25 people, a vehicle as tall as a school bus, around 180degree turns with radius R = busLength or sometimes even R = 0.5L ... it was crazy either way. Add to this that "staying in your own lane" and "driving patience" were concepts entirely foreign to our driver. The car horn was a signal to any and all people/small cars/bikes/goats/children on the road to GET OUT OF THE WAY, and we used the swerving tactic lavishly. Imagine: bus driver talking on cell phone, swerving around a car onto the opposite lane, a car 15 meters away coming toward us, driver honking with his other hand, all while driving a MANUAL shift bus. And for a 2-hour segment of time (out of the 5 hour drive), a cacophony of car honking constituted more than 75% of my soundtrack. I was sincerely afraid for my life.


Once we got there

It was raining. Out of 365/year, over 200 of them are rainy. Of the other 150ish days, only about 50 are sunny.
Walked for 45 minutes carrying our bookbags (which was all we brought) to our hotel. Stayed in hotel the rest of the day. Next morning, got up around 8am, ate breakfast, and trekked with our baggage to the next hotel, about 1.5 hours away. (I was completely expecting to stay in crappy little cabin things ... but both were actually 4-star hotels!)


Ate lunch, changed, and embarked for our second day "fun hike." Except, one problem. It was raining, incredibly foggy, and super windy. We could barely see 10m ahead of us, let alone sanely and safely complete a 6 hour hike.


mad steep stairs without railing. in the rain.


there was this slippery giant rock pathway, so the parents made everyone hold hands. notice the wind-blown puffy ponchos.

We got about 40 minutes in, and had to turn around because the paths with drop-off sides in the complete fog were "too dangerous" to walk. Plus, the rain was getting heavier and the ponchos were really not gonna cut it for the next 5 hours ...

For the rest of the day, we stayed in the hotel, watching CCTV, playing poker, and searching desperately for other time killers. For 8 straight hours.

We arranged to leave the mountain the next day (day 3) as we were only planning to stay 4 days anyway, but the weather didn't seem like it was going to get any better ... bummer.

The Next Morning

This is what we saw outside our hotel at 7am.


oh my god, we got one of the 50 clear, sunny, beautiful, non-rainy, non-foggy, non-windy days with "cloud seas" on Huang Shan. After immediately extending our hotels rooms by another day, we booked it for the long hike.

... We walked nearly 8 hours. Down windy paths, climbing steep steps, into valleys, back up to the peaks. The steps in "Xi Hai Da Xia Gu" (West Sea Valley) were the steepest things ever seen, and before you knew it, you'd be 200m above where you were a few steps ago. Besides Xi Hai Da Xia Gu, also hiked past Pai Yun Ting and Au Yu Feng.
I cannot begin to describe the vastness of Huang Shan.

Xi Hai








the famous "cloud seas" of Huang Shan.





Steep steps, narrow tunnels, and flowing waterfalls


How huge this place was with human size reference:


Sunset near hotel at 7:12pm


Good morning, Huang Shan


Right after sunrise



Leaving Huang Shan

Walked about 2 hours down the mountain, then caught the cable car.


Getting carried down the mountain by "ti jia zhi" people


Trying my hand at carrying luggage. No money for me though.


See Exhibit B. Man carrying 200 lbs of towels down the mountain to be washed, for maybe 100 yuan (~$14)


Had lunch at the bottom of the mountain, then hired a driver to take us to the bus stop. He brought us to his version of a "bus stop" - the side of the highway. The police came, we ran, the guy drove us to a gas station where the bus stopped to illegally pick us up. There weren't enough seats so some people sat on little stools in the aisle. 4 hours back to Nanjing.

Our bus stop. Yes, that is barbed wire, cement, and a road sign "291 km to Nanjing," next to the highway.






Goodbye, Huang Shan. See you again in a few years.