William Chow's Personal Web Page

The year is 2006.

China Round 2

Sunday, May 28, 2006

Today is a mixed bag of events. First thing is to do a quick trip to the Fu Super Market to get some beef and fruits while Alexanderia needs gets her teeth checked. Well, more exactly, she needs to have her braces adjusted.

Just by sheer coincidence, I saw a woman in a trench coat today on the way to Fu Market. Let me paint the scene. It is almost noon, bright sunny and clear day, about 24C if not hotter. We have this woman in a white trench coat holding up her umbrella to block the sun, standing waiting at the intersection to cross the road.

Oh ok, I standing on the other side of the street looking at this. First thing that struck my mind is what the hell is she thinking when she picked that to wear today. Even at 6:00am this morning there was no sign of rain what so ever, so why in the hell is she wearing that? Is it because it is fashionable? maybe.... Alright, second question pops into my mind, alright maybe she thought it might rain today, thus that is why she has the umbrella. But right now it is a burning 24C and she has the thing buttoned up from top to bottom. Wouldn't it make sense to just wear the overcoat with all the buttons undone so at least a chance breeze might cool the body down? I mean, even the with unbrella deployed, the temperature in the shade is still gonna be 22C plus. Unless.... she can't unbutton the coat because.... ahhh.... yes, she has nothing underneath... Flasher in heat syndrome...

So my conclusion is now just been confirmed by someone else. Yes, wearing overcoats with no clothes underneath maybe "fashionable" to women. However, if the situation was like it was today with the hot temperature and the inflexibility of the options in the coat, then it would seem logic and common sense should prevail and thus one should pick something else more suitable to wear on such a day.

We were going over to Ami's mom's place for lunch again. However today, she did something special. They bought me a birthday cake. We had to wait until 2:00pm for her brother's wife to arrive but that was ok, as I was able to spend some time wandering the streets.

I had to buy a pair of headphones because I left my Ipod ones on the desk in the study. In retrospect, the Sony ones kinda suck. I walked around Mizhulu Square. It is the area of town where I got my glasses done. It turns out this area of town in near the train station so all the warehouses and distribution places are here. There are many people with carts loading and selling and trading boxes and crates of goods. There is one street which is especially for health products including one building mall call Well-Mart. I suppose this would be a haven for all those stupid infommerical products.

I also found two musical instrument places. I bought a pair of drumsticks, 100 yuan. About the same price I would have paid at Tom Lee's so it was probably too expensive. Also found weird distro and repair places for pool tables and basketball nets for schools.

An important lesson when walking around. When you are thirsty and you want buy something to drink, what is the easiest thing to remember or say? Well, water is "shuwei" same pronounciation in Cantonese as Manderin but it can really come out wrong. And if it does, that bottle of water can jump up from the normal 2 or 3 yuan to the rip off the foreigner pricing of 4 to 5 or 6 yuan a bottle. Then you are gonna have to bargain for it, and then thus the whole shit you just don't want to do over a stupid bottle of water. So my suggestions are 2 drinks, Coke and 7 Up. Coke is almost univerisally known as Cola although some Pepsi venders will know to vend Pepsi instead. And since just about every country pronouces Cola the same you won't sound too much like an foreigner asking for "Cola". The second one is 7 Up, this is easy because in Manderin it is known as C-C (sea sea). Again the easiest thing to pronounce, it is hard to detect dialect when you look Asian.

Now if you are a non-Asian foreigner, just shut up, drop your pants and be prepared to be raped up the ass. If you are Asian, you still have a chance. You just have to keep your spoken Manderin to an absolute minimum and you should get by ok.

I returned with plenty of time for her brother's wife to come to the party as well.

The Experimental Chinese Food Of The Day is:
Lotte  Xylitol  Gum

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 This is actually a port over of a Japanese product, and comes in a three flavour medicine pill container.  Now my experience with the new gums of today are pretty sad. They are smaller and they hold their flavour for a short time.

Green is the first one.   The picture shows a green apple.  Yes, it does taste like a tart green apple.    Now like most small gums like this, the taste doesn’t last very long before it dies out and all your are chewing  is the gum, which may as well be plastic.    I was bored one day and decided to count how many chews the gum is worth.   Well, it is good for about 80 good chomps, before all the sweetness and the crisp outside coating is all gone.  I might be able to make it to about 100 chews before even that becomes tasteless and basically a lump of soft plastic that you are kneeding in your mouth. 

Red is the second one.   It is suppose to be nectarine.    I guess it sort of tastes citrus but that is all I will give it.   It is sweeter than the green ones. 

Yellow is the last one.  It is suppose to be pink grapefruit.   Well, it has a tartness to it.   I would say it might be like pink grapefruit but it might also be like a lemon too.   Again a citrus like after taste.

My conclusion, they sure don't make gum like they use to....