‘Happy mid-Autumn festival!…’
Trip Start
Jul 18, 2010
1
54
82
Trip End
Mar 04, 2011
Shenzhen, Guangdong, China
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Wednesday 22nd
This morning I’m up at 6, seems my body clock is set well to work already. We head off after a hearty breakfast of udon rice noodles, spring onions and luncheon meat for Jusco shopping mall. HK was supposed to be hit by a huge typhoon yesterday, but it somehow jumped over the border to Guangdon province?! It’s further West of where I’m based, so all we get is some on/off epic rainstorms. The news is telling me that is has been awful in the West with major flooding in villages. Strange to be so close to where this is actually happening now, instead of just hearing it on the television and being very removed from it all. So, I remain removed - off shopping. I get some much needed birthday cards for people back home, and a few presents! Sammy’s new sleeping bag which is now long overdue considering I bought my notebook 2months ago! Wow, it was 2months ago I was in the U.K! Time is flying. Whilst we’re out, I’m suffering from some chaos back ache - my guess is it’s the fault of the cement mattress I slept on last night. I point to pharmacy hoping that there will be some sort of Universal pain-killer, like ‘Nurofen’… no such luck. Not even the boxes give a clue as to the contents. Sooo, I manage to communicate that a have a pain in my back and the girl gives me a box. It’s pretty big and only £1.60, so I get it. I-ohng and I leave after that in a taxi back to the apartment. I open the packet to find 6 small bottles of liquid! I thought I’d communicated tablet… I-ohng gets really cross at finding this so asks the driver to stop and marches me back through the mall to the pharmacy. She shouts at the staff, and one of the girls opens the other side of the box to reveal some tablets… she apologises and leaves - giving me a hell of a look. She hates me, she actually hates me! Soooo, back to the apartment and I crack on with trying to get my head around some work whilst I-ohng takes a nap, then goes to the supermarket to get some things for dinner. I get a couple of nice phone calls in and realise that I-ohng has set the table, when I look there are two place settings out! I quickly end the phone call and we sit down to eat together. This is great, she usually waits until I’ve finished eating, and then eats hers in the kitchen alone… we’re breaking down walls here. She still won’t let me do anything. Little does she know I made my own coffee whilst she was taking a nap, ha haa! Communication is as always, I keep flitting in between Mandarin and Cantonese, which isn’t helping matters… but Mandarin is my default here - speaking Cantonese wasn’t supposed to come into the equation. Her Mandarin is as good as my Cantonese though - so I’m trying my best to stick to the one language. Tomorrow I’m being picked up for work at 8:10 a.m. - great as I usually start work at 8! I’ll be glad to get back to the internet, I’ve missed it allot, however I’ve caught up on the news and even been subjected to Chinese pop-music, not to be repeated! However, if you’re surfing Youtube, look up ‘Honey - Di Di Da’… you’ll understand what I mean.
