William Chow's Personal Web Page

The year is 2006.

China Round 2

Monday, May 29, 2006

Today is a sitting around the house and waiting day. Our letter from the ebassay should be arriving today or tomorrow.

Ami's dad dropped by some sticky rice that her mom made for me. It is a special day soon in China. She made them small but they had a big chunk of stewing beef in them.

I spent most of the day going through CDS and VCDs. I am realizing that one of my bags is gonna be really full of discs. Chinese customs will undoubtable want to open and inspect it, however, I think once they see there are no recordable media and there is basically only one copy of anything, I should be fine. Of course, the Canadian side might be different, although, with a $700 limit and being gone for almost 7 full weeks, I don't think I'll have to much to worry there.

A night time, I wanted to take a picture of what chaos the school does to a major street like Wuai Jie when it is time for the parents to come to pick up the kids. It is amazing, since Waui Jie is a 8 lane major street (4 each way, one of them a transit lane), and it will turn into a parking lot at about 8:45pm on the nose when the kids start pouring out of the gates.

Please click on the thumbnails to enlargen the larger pictures.

Wuai Le at about 7:30pm. 4 lanes each way, normal evening commute.
At about 8:00pm, the first cropping of cars start blocking the "No parking signs" at the front gate. Note cars on the right.
Close up of those cars on the right. Yes, they have parallel parked and thus knocked out 1 of the 4 lanes. Remember, the kids get out at 8:45pm.
I am sure parents are sitting in their cars picking their nose for 45 minutes. But here is one thing they can do, clean their car.

8:20pm. A row of cars are PARKED in front of the gates, and a second lane of cars is double PARKED beside them. So 4 lanes is now to 2 on that side.
8:30pm. Another row of cars and cabs now double double park in that lane. Now 4 lanes is down to 1 on that side.
8:33pm. As you can see, only 1 lane on their side and soon only 2 lanes on this side as cabs start double parking on this side of the street.
8:38pm. Cabs and cars start double parking on this side. Waui Le is now down to 3 lanes, 1 on their side, 2 on this side.

8:39pm. Drivers that are choked to 1 lane get fustrated. This bus decides to cross the median and travel on the wrong side of the road.
8:45pm. Students start pouring out the gates. They start crossing the road. Note: white truck is travelling on the wrong side of the road.
8:46pm. Cars are stop and go because of the students walking between the cars. Note the car in foreground is ready to pull out but car in double parked in front of him.
8:47pm. Big pack of kids crossing in the center slow traffic to a crawl. Note car in foreground still can't move.

It will pretty much stay this way for the next 30 to 45 minutes. Lots of drivers will be honking their horns to no avail.

8:49pm. Kids arriving in many of the cars on this side of the street. Cars trying to pull out and cars & cabs stopping in 3rd and 4th lanes to pick up passengers.
8:50pm A sea of people and cars.
Fustrations will inevitably get higher and stress levels will go up. And to think this goes on every school day.

The Experimental Chinese Food Of The Day is:
Oishi Brand "Coffee Carmel Popcorn"

Ok, these guys didn't make a good Earl Grey Tea Popcorn, what made me think they could make a good coffee flavoured one?

Well, this time the popcorn was kinda bad. I must have got a bag near the end of the run, because it had a lot of hard kernels. A lot more than normal, I think. I may try another to see if it was better.

But back to the point, does it taste like coffee? Well there is this burnt flavour. It is not the burned popcorn. It is kinda reminding me of a roasted coffee. However, you know when I really concentrate, the flavour that stands out the most in this is actually the powdered coffee creamer taste.

The syrup on the corn is a lot darker than regular caramel that is for sure. So maybe it is a really dark roasted burned coffee that they were trying to replicate.