When it rains it pours

My down time is coming to an end, and I cannot tell you how excited I am knowing I will be busy for the next few months. There is an International school that is interested to know if I would like to be a substitute teacher and I received a call today from Siew who owns the coffee and wine store we mentioned earlier to check my availability. She was inquiring as she had some future students who wanted to learn English. She has lined up 2 Chinese business men, 1 Chinese lady, and 3 children that were interested in learning English. When can I start she asks? I tell her I will know more once I get my class schedule which would be on Sept. 17th. Siew insisted that I meet with her today to work out the details, the timing, place, rates and so on. She's like my personal business manager. I wonder if she wants a cut..

Happy Days

Today I headed to the travel agency to book our flights to Hong Kong for next week which is over by the expat area of Xiamen. Once that was completed I decided, it had been a long time since we had a good cup of coffee and wandered over to Coffee Time, which apparently is the hot spot in this area. The place was completely full at 10:30am. Don't these people work? As I was placing my order I happened to notice that they had baguettes, yes my fellow friends, French baguettes. I thought it was a mirage, but it wasn't. Not only did they have them for purchase, this restaurant also has their own bakery, where you can purchase these wonderful delights. You think I just won the lottery. Emily you can cross that off your list.

Continued work on my stupidity....

When we took our tour of Xiamen on Saturday I casually mentioned how I had deleted all of our cable channels and our guide offered to help us out. Today she sent me the following e-mail:

For the cable TV, you can call 968810 and follow the instruction given to reset the channels. But it might only be answered in Chinese. Or you can try the following steps but I don't know whether or not it is really workable.

1) Press "menu" button of remote control
2) "Screen system setting" - press "confirm"
3) "System parameter" - press "confirm"
4) Key in password (1234 ?) - press "confirm"
5) "Channel searching" - select and press "confirm"

Yes, I would have been able to do that had the menu been in English. But then I wouldn’t have gotten into this mess either.

OK, so I go to the babelfish translator and type in just the buttons to get the following:
1) 菜单
2) 屏幕系统设置- 证实
3) 系统参量- 证实
4) 证实
5) 渠道搜寻- 证实

Easy right? I then have to transfer this into a notepad to take to the television, and then I start to try and undo all that I’ve done….

Actually not too bad, the first two are easy to find. The third step doesn’t exist as translated, maybe different wording. A few guesses and we are on our way, the television starts reprogramming.

So, now we have cable back and we can happily watch our one channel of Chinese controlled English news.

And, I’ve been banned from touching the remote…

The little wins in life

Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents always uttered those famous words.."respect your elders?" Yea, sometimes it's a little difficult to do that here in China, especially when these little old women want to cut in front of you. It happens just about once a day, be it in the stores, or trying to get on a bus, grabbing a taxi, you name it someone is usually cutting in front of you, and generally it's an older person. Go figure. At times comical, today annoying.

Today, I wanted some vegetables to make a salad. Picked up a nice balsamic vinegar and olive oil from this little store that Edlin recommended. I decided that a nice salad would do for lunch. Off I go to the market. I was next in line to get my vegetables, waiting for the person in front of me to finish weighing his fruits. This little old woman of about 65 tried her hardest to walk around everyone and cut in front of me from the other side. Ah.. but I knew what was coming and with lightning speed, I plopped my greens on the scale, and then the tomatoes,onions, peas, and cucumber. She conceded defeat and then gave me the look that says, hey you can't blame me for trying. No, no I can't.

Grocery shopping in China

Let me walk you through my experiences of grocery shopping in China. What you think may be child’s play is not so here. Obviously language being an issue, so one must inspect or smell the item to determine the contents.

We are restricted in our list as we do not have anything to cook with at this time, and personally speaking even if we did, I am not sure it would make that much of a difference. Not just due to the lack of our culinary skills, just because we wouldn't know what to do with most of the food that we see here.

Grocery List:
Milk,
Bread,
Vegetables
Fruit
Water

Okay, you would think that this is simple…or is it?

The fruits and vegetables are fairly simple and many look like items we would have back home, though the types of salad greens they have don’t look that healthy, but we figure that’s because we are in China and things are a bit different. After you pick your items, you weigh your purchases and move on, except here in China, everyone wants to be first in line, and think nothing of pushing you out of the way as they are really big with being the first in line. You give them a look that says I can’t believe you just did that, and they give you a look back that says, what’s your problem?

We move along as I need to get salad dressing. There is a wall with 10 shelves, that has nothing but Soy Sauce, and some vinegars but absolutely no salad dressing. People gaze at this, like they were purchasing fine wines. They take their soy sauce very seriously here. There were a couple of red wine vinegars. Edlin tells me the art of finding decent vinegar which by the way we didn't find. She turns the bottle over, and tells me that you need to look at the sediment on the bottom. If there is sediment, than don't buy it. We tried 4 and all appeared to be bad. The last one leaked on my hands, and smelled like very bad red wine. I think I will forgo the salad idea, I tell her. Edlin knows of a better place to get vinegar and will take me their on another day. Guess what Emily?

Next stop is for milk. You head over to the refrigerated section to find yogurt but no milk. Odd you say? Yes, yes, it is. It is on a shelf in a box, which would seem odd, but it is vacuumed sealed, and once opened you put in the fridge. Your options do not include skim or 1 or 2% milk. It's by name brands and the only recognizable one is Nestle. Apparently it tastes similar to the milk back home. Mark didn’t think so.

Then we see potato chips and figure let’s check this out. Interesting flavours here. One can choose from red meat sauce, to cucumber flavour, or chicken flavor. They even have chicken drum stick flavour Cheetos here. No barbecue, or salt and vinegar chip, though I did pick up the cucumber flavour and will report back to you on that.

Lastly, I headed over to the bread section. I have been unable to find good bread here and thought Edlin may be able to shed some light. She tried. Okay back home, we get whole wheat, 7 or 12 grain, white, bagels, croissants, rye bread etc. Here you get sweet, sweeter, or sweetest. The long French baguettes from home are now just a distant memory. Everything is stuffed with something sweet in it. You think you are buying rolls, or baguettes but nope, you get desert with this to whether you want to or not. Guess what your are bringing Emily?

It’s a sad day, when I ask Edlin, is this good and her reply is, ah, it’s not so bad. Back home you would say, it’s good, or delicious, here when someone says it’s not bad, you buy it.