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What
we did on the weekend Dalian integrating technology blog at DAIS
integrating technology
grades K - 12 tofu
"Do
not take my Vegemite "
ü Vegemite
ü Storage
ü Letters
ü Chinese
police using geese
ü Best loo
in Kaifaqu
ü In-flight Movies
ü Lenovo
ü Baggage
allowances
· Australians
are easy going, maybe some of the most laid back of any nationality. You will
hear
"she'll be right mate" more than anything else. In fact there's not
that much going on down under. The weather is the weather, not much news there.
Folks live their lives, watching the footy, whinging about the polllies
(translation for Americans: politicians.). Not a lot ruffles an Australian but
take away their Vegemite and we have a 'situation' at the security desk.
In the past six weeks we have gone through
eight airports with their security checks: Dalian, Beijing
(three times), Newark (twice), Atlanta, Albany, New York, Kula Lumpur (twice),
Adelaide (four times), and Melbourne (twice).
Narda bought a
jar of Vegemite and a jar of Promite at Woolies
(Woolworth's) in Adelaide after we had packed our check-in luggage so she
placed it in our carry-on. No worries, we went through customs at Adelaide and
KL. After a short night's sleep at Metro Park Lido in Beijing (we arrived in
Beijing at one AM and got to the hotel at 2:30 AM, up for breakfast five hours
later and to the airport in time for our fight to Dalian which we just
discovered has been delayed four hours. Most flights in China or out of China
are delayed by many hours.
Customs @ Beijing Domestic was brutal. We
had to take almost everything out of our carry-on bags then they took the jar
of Vegemite and Promite from Narda’s
bag. Narda was far from ‘she’ll be right mate’.
Vegemite
ad from the 1960s “We're happy little Vegemites
As bright as bright can be.
We all enjoy our Vegemite
For breakfast, lunch, and tea.
Our mummies say we're growing stronger
Every single week,
Because we love our Vegemite
We all adore our Vegemite
It puts a rose in every cheek.”
We're
happy little Vegemites – The original TV Advertisment
The customs agent chick walked off
with the two jars in her hands with Narda close by
saying ‘give me back my vegemite’. Good grief. I shoved all my bits and pieces
into my bags – three carry-on bags because we were overweight for check-in plus
Narda’s carry-on bags and ran after the jar carriers.
At some desk in a corner of the terminal the customs lady was trying to open
the jars which Narda was trying to take back from
her. Narda kept saying that it was food and that
every other airport allowed it through. Finally Narda
opened the Vegemite jar, the woman sniffed it and started to look up on her
computer monitor but Narda had the jars in her hand
and we were off to our gate. I think the smell was a bit OK as it looks and
smells a bit like something that could have been created out of soy bean paste.
Narda was still upset but we had the stuff. Granted I
remember seeing a few tubes and jars of it at home in our pantry but I suppose
there never can be too much of one’s comfort foods. It is like Dutch Salty Liquorice,
we always have a bag or two
near at hand; well Narda does and I will have a salty
drop now and then. Her parents always have a box of them next to their driver
seat so whenever we go someplace there is the Salty Liquorice.
Most people hate it and will spit out the liquorice
right away though I do not mind them. I wonder if we would have had such an
ordeal with customs if they took away Narda’s salty liquorice.
We did get out
of Beijing though several hours later than we were scheduled to. Standing in
front of us were two new teachers at our school and their sons from Peru,
though at the time we did not know that. We saw them a few days later when
school started and I said to them that I was standing behind them in line on
the way to Dalian.
As always our
true and faithful driver, Jack was there to meet us at the airport and we
instantly felt like we were back at home. Being back in our home after six
weeks flying around and rescuing vegemite from the grasping hands of
officialdom was a nice experience. Our plants had been watered by the cleaning
ladies and our home with all our crap was there shaking with excitement at our
return.
On the note of
all our crap… as if I have joked/complained/explained in the past it is
scattered: in a house in upstate New York, in a shed in upstate New York,
furniture in our Jersey City home, a piano in our Adelaide home, of course our
home in China with even closets filled with boxes from years ago that we
dragged here from the States two years ago and our furniture and now a storage
bin in Adelaide full. We get exhausted just thinking about all the material
belongings we have and I wonder how I managed to spend decades with just a bag
of things when I was in my 20s and early 30s and traveled the world. The stuff
in Adelaide has been moved about for more than a decade from being in the
parent’s shed to Narda’s son’s shed then he moved and
now into paid storage. Our firm confirmation, including a handshake, was that
we would go through each box and toss what we did not really really need/want. We had left Adelaide in 2002 bound for
New York with the belief we would be back in one maybe two years. Now eleven
years later we have made the decision it will be one more year overseas then
back home. So what we stored twelve years earlier we have managed to live
without and therefore no longer would keep. Narda
wants to sell everything and buy a live-in vehicle and travel around Australia
for years as normal retired folks would which would mean all the more that we
need to dump stuff. When we were in upstate New York a few weeks ago we went
into one of those large bus-homes that Yanks trawl the USA, staying overnight
in Walmart car parks in. It was ten years old, had
pullout sides and would have suited us fine and we considered purchasing it on
the spot until reason reared its ugly head and we realized it was not only impracticable
but we did not have the money or place to store it not to mention that we have
no intention to live in the States again. Nevertheless we got ourselves all
psyched up and went to the storage bin with a whole day in front of us to do
nothing but go through all our stuff and put it in a locked bin. At the moment
it was all sitting outside of bins until we arrived to dump and store. We
opened two or three boxes realized we did not know whether we wanted to keep
the stuff within or not, resealed the boxes and put them into a storage bin. So
hopefully a year from now we will move into our house in Adelaide or get an RV with
less worldwide possessions and hit the road. We are following the grey nomads,
an Australian site, http://thegreynomads.com.au/
that are blogs of folks that live and travel around
Australia in their vans.
· Letters.
Today in teacher’s prep for the upcoming school year at Dalian American
International School we did an intro of ourselves to one another that included
one word or phrase to describe our most significant moment/activity and etc.
over the summer school break. There were words like ‘beach’, ‘sunburn’, ‘beer’…
I did not say my most significant word for the summer but instead said ‘film’
which I suppose has meaning in the sense that I studied film creation over the summer
and worked with Adobe Premiere and the other products in the Adobe Creative
Cloud suite (love them all – now if I can find the time to learn and work with
them) and I am writing a script. The real word to describe the past six weeks
for me was ‘letters’ but of course that is not something to say in public or
for that matter put in a blog then post to the web but we all have some idiosyncrasies
in us I suppose; mine are based on five planets in Leo with a Venus, Saturn,
Pluto, Sun conjunction squaring my Jupiter in my first house (of course I no
longer believe in astrology so that is good) – I have Mercury just starting Leo
or maybe even with a feather in Cancer (29 degrees and 59 minutes) and my midhaven and part of fortune in Leo all in the tenth house
– damn beliefs are hard to kick, probably because of my Moon in Taurus, Jupiter
in Scorpio (damn grand square no wonder my life is this way) and the other
fixed planets which gives me 7 out of 10 planets in fixed signs. Not to worry I
am married to a Gemini and as all mutable sign people keep us fixed people on
our toes my fixedness is just my own illusion. Try being fixed with a Gemini at
your side – it just ain’t goin’
happen.
So my word for the summer is ‘letters’. Firstly,
I found a box of letters from my brother Robert that he wrote to people in the
1960s and 1970s (he died in 1994). I found a box of letters from ex-girlfriends
but we won’t tell Narda that I slipped that box in
between other boxes I kept and then there are the most
important discovery of the past ten years for me.
When my son, Leigh, was playing baseball in South
Africa for the Australian National Team in 1999 he met Jackie. I would find her
name in his belongings years later. I contacted her once in about 2005 and said
I found her name and could she tell me anything about her meeting with my son.
I also told her that Leigh committed suicide in 2003 a few weeks after turning
20. I set up a Facebook site for Leigh which has hundreds of people who knew
him on it. A year ago Jackie contacted me via Leigh’s Facebook page to tell me
she had moved from South Africa to Perth in Western Australia and that she had
a pile of letters that Leigh had written her. I do not check Leigh’s Facebook
page much as it is too difficult for me. I see all his friends, most of whom
have children now, including Jackie. I usually check on his birthday in July
and read the wonderful tributes his friends write him on that day. I told
Jackie I would be in Australia last month and she sent me his letters. There
were seven of them, some ten pages long. He had written them in late 1999 when
he was in Adelaide and early 2000 when he moved to Florida to play in the LA
Dodgers organization. They were love letters. I had never known that he had met
someone in Africa. He had a girlfriend in Adelaide and as I was a single parent
with him and his brother I thought I knew all that was going on. I never knew
he was having problems in his mind until I read his last very long email to his
girlfriend in Australia written August 10th (my birthday) 2003 in
which he said he had known since the age of ten that he would kill himself.
What am I supposed to do with that?
His letters to Jackie did say he was having
problems but he never said what they were and I always thought that he was at
the top of the world being chased by six or seven major league teams since he
was 16 (1999). His brother and I lived what I thought at the time was a fairly
happy life.
I wrote my hand-writing analysis friend two
days ago; he is a world authority and works with the FBI and police in the
States and has written several books on the subject and I asked if he would
look at Leigh’s letters. He wrote straight back that he would. I scanned and
sent off several pages. So this is why the real word in my mind to describe the
summer holiday was ‘letters’. Today is my 66th birthday (August 10 –
see? Leo all the way) but that is not the significant day of my life. August 13
2003, ten years ago, Leigh flew to Sydney without notifying the Dodgers; met up
with his ‘girlfriend’ at the time, not Jackie (story at http://neuage.org/Idol-star.gif
click on the image to enlarge) and the next morning he was at the bottom of his
fifteen story balcony at the Novotel Hotel Olympic
Park across from the baseball stadium where he had practiced for the Olympic
team that was to play in Athens. I did not even know he was in Australia.
I was finishing my PhD at the University of
South Australia and we were to head back to New York after the weekend to go
back to teaching. Narda came in to my office put her
arms around me and said ‘Leigh is dead’. Nothing can change those words. We
flew to Sydney and I had to identify him. Narda kept
me together then and has since and here a decade later we are preparing for
classes again. Now is not like then. We flew back to New York after the funeral
and with a couple of hours sleep, incredible depth of despair, jetlag, and all
the rest I was standing in front of a room of girls at Russell Sage College
welcoming them back to a new year of school. I did not say “I am falling apart
because my son killed himself five days ago” but instead taught that first
class which was on ‘communication’ and the rest of my classes that day and my
classes at the other school I was teaching at, the University of NY at Albany.
I managed to appear and teach but it was just a holography of me the real me
had died too.Ten years does not diminish depths it
only gives it more texture. There is nothing that can be done. I still wake
from the same type of dreams; Leigh has done something that has gotten him out
of baseball and I am trying to get him back as he keeps asking me – then I
awake… Narda hears me my despair wakes her too. I
find comfort in going to the gym and lifting weights. I keep lifting more as if
I can lift the burden off of me. I suppose it is better to do that than any
other escape, at least it is healthy. Leigh use to life weights and spent a lot
of time at the gym, maybe which has added to my escape. Leigh was big and
strong, he weighed 220 pounds, was six foot four and a solid athlete. He has
been reduced to a box of ashes which I still have no idea what to do with. So
‘letters’ were my theme and one word mindset. After death everything pales into
insignificance, almost everything. I have a son who is happy and successful and
doing stuff that is good: recording hip-hop, working with boat people who have
crashed into Australia, works with youth programs involving street kids getting
them into street art and hip-hop, giving their life meaning, so he and Narda - my islands
and mountains and strengths and they who make me laugh and help me go forth
into the day so I can believe that when I feel that all else is insignificant that
nothing can hurt me ever again I can still love; my son and wife give me that,
they are my two protectorates. I have become inoculated against suffering,
nothing can be taken away. In a way it is a liberating feeling to know nothing
more can be taken only layers and my core is not accessible by life’s
activities or babbling voices that echo off the walls of my Self. I also have freed myself of beliefs that I had
which too is liberating because the beliefs that we have, usually passed on to
us or brainwashed into us via media or spiritual hustlers are nonsense to begin
with. To stop believing is to start living. Instead of following where planets
are I now look at a moment and see how that can morph into something creative.
How can I storyboard a meshup of many different colurs happening at once?
We were talking today about standards
yesterday, a big focus within our school, and I said I am not following one
standard, like the technology one. I am using the Language Arts Standards to
create the story, the music standards, the Arts Standards, IT, maybe math and other standards – I
want to use every subject in our school to produce a collaborative film. Then I
want to take the story, whether written by the Language Arts, or some other
department and send it to Frank and Kay who are now in Burma and have their
students create a film interpretation of the story as well as my film class to
do the same then we can make a composite film. We integrate technology,
actually that is my job at our school, but I want to integrate creativity using
every department into film making this a year of production of the parts of the
whole. Something like that in simple statements.
Instead of getting too hung up on grades I want to unfetter the yoke of
learning and see if we can find the divine spark in each student to create not
only their masterpiece but a collective community of strangers
piece. To quote Jefferson Airplanes (1960s)
“you are the Crown
of Creation
And you’ve got no place to go’
I would add yes they have a place to go –
take it to the next realm. We quit too easy. I continued with 14 years of
university under trying times; raising two children, poverty, ten homes in ten
years, no family support (I was in a foreign country, Australia, which
strangely enough is now my home and the USA is my foreign country. Though I am
a duel citizen I no longer feel that I am a Yank I don’t care how much my wife
tells me I most definitely sound like one) and when you’ve got no place to go
the only way out is to be creative. Maybe it was because I was a street person
most of my life and I could live in the moment which is quite a creative thing
to do. Creativity to a street person is survival meaning to survive one needs to be creative. But in reality I was most not
successful I failed to read my son and at the time I thought I was very tuned
into my children, I thought I was psychic in regards to them I was at the top
of the spiritual mountain but hey it is all an illusion. One son is now happy
has a great girl friend and will soon be making a three month tour of Europe. I
think he and his life is real kool. I thought my ball
playing son was kool too. We threw a ball every
morning and every evening, one-hundred times, I taught him to be a major league
pitcher then he no longer wanted it all. He had star potential. We all have
start potential.
At the Dwight School in upper Manhattan the
graduating students could choose anyone to give their graduating speech. Dwight
is a prestigious school with many famous people having children at it (Paris
Hilton was there up until the year before I started and members of The Strokes
a popular rock band started their band while students at The Dwight School). I
was just a silly person who came up with silly ideas for projects. But I was
the overwhelming choice to give their farewell speech. I was going to say no
but the Leo in me jumped out and said yes. I told them the story of my son – it was sad I
suppose – high school students were teary eyed, maybe I am just mean but I had
to tell the story. I was a bit graphic but I sure highlight the good times too.
My message was simple that no matter how difficult life gets do not kill your self. My son ended his life because his relationship
to his girlfriend ended. My belief is that because his mother was not an active
part of his life he could not have another female reject him though I would
never say that to anyone – maybe I said it to his mother at his funeral because
she said mean things to me that day and told me it was all my
fault.
· Chinese
police using geese as guard dogs. My favourite story in the ‘China Daily’ that
I collected at the Beijing airport was about a police station that bought a lot
of geese to help prevent thefts, because geese will honk and chase intruders. There
is a copy of the story here, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-08/03/content_16867985.htm
I especially like the story because of the stories Narda
has told me about geese she had and how they carried on. (notice how the two
geese in the left front row are in step)
· Movies we
watched – we flew Malaysian Airlines for a few reasons. It stops in Kuala Lumpur – currently one of our favourite
cities, and from there flies directly to Adelaide instead of Melbourne which
was always a difficult connection to make after an overnight nine hours of
little sleep. In Melbourne there is customs to go through then to switch to
domestic but flying to Adelaide was great and the added bonus that one of the
family will be there waiting for us (thanks Helena). Flying back to China was
even better as we went day time from Adelaide to KL. The food is not bad
compared to China Southern or China Eastern (the worse). The Chinese just give
rice and a chunk of overcooked cabbage all smothered in MSG sauce for their
vegan meal whereas the Malaysians actually give a proper meal without rice and
perhaps without MSG. I do not think I have ever recommended a movie in my life
except for Jim Carrey flicks which my wife cannot believe that not only will I watch
but that I think are really funny (who could not love ‘Ace Ventura: Pet
Detective’, ‘The Mask’, ‘Dumb & Dumber’, ‘Batman Forever’, ‘Ace Ventura:
When Nature Calls’, ‘The Cable Guy’, ‘Liar Liar’, ‘The
Truman Show’, ‘Me, Myself & Irene’, ‘Bruce Almighty’, ‘Fun with Dick and
Jane’, and’ Kick-Ass 2’? to mention what I think are the funniest and best of
his. Narda did like ‘The Majestic’ and ‘The
Truman Show’ and I did watch half of ‘The Incredible Burt Wonderstone’ on one of
our flights whilst Narda read her Kindle.) Where was
I? Oh yes, a recommendation; ‘Night Train
to Lisbon’ we loved everything
about this movie, a really unique and well done story. We also watched the Tom
Cruise movie “Oblivion’ which is a typical stupid Tom Cruise movie – what a bad
actor and predictable script but it is an entertaining time-waster in between
vegetarian meals on a long flight. We watched some other movies but I have
forgotten them already. Hey I just turned 66 I am lucky to remember where I put
the car keys. Oh wait, we are in China and we do not have a car. Now I remember
we left our car keys in the ignition when we got out at the airport in
Adelaide. Luckily Narda’s son drove off with it.
· Melbourne
trip – I loved going to Melbourne but it is mainly because my super kool son lives there. He just wished me a happy birthday
which always helps too. And he sent photos of children he cares for in his job
working with illegal boat people. Australia in all its wisdom is now sending
the boat people to PNG – I will not comment because this is such a hot topic
now and I have my opinions but they are best kept in my own head. Sacha looks after the ones who are under 18, the rest get
sent to intern camps then off to PNG. Melbourne is probably one of the better
cities in the world though very expensive. We looked at some real estate in the
hills outside of the city and we are ready to move there but probably won’t.
· Back to
school. Back to work. Back to as interesting as life can be. We all have
different paths to get to where we are. Mine is probably not the most typical
teacher’s path. I got into teaching because I like to create and youth are so
creative. For the most part adults have
lost or covered or buried their creativity, the urge to be wild with
imagination. I was not a very good student and passed only band in grade 10. I
actually got a lower mark in French and in math doing both over for a second
year. I still have my report card with the 40’s and 50’s for final grades just
so I do not get on my high horse and say ‘look at me I have a PhD. I left
before finishing tenth grade and that was it until 1991. I was 44 with two boys
at school and a failed tofu business and illusions of being a writer and a
creative free spirit. So I enrolled in a BA program at Deakin
University, Melbourne and my ex-wife said that I would never make it past one
year because I was too stupid. Maybe it was because that pissed me off so much
that I persevered and four years later I had a BA in journalism, then I went
and got an Honours in Children’s Literature, then a
Masters in literature and whilst doing a degree in computing science at the top
ranked tech school, Flinders University in Adelaide, I switched to a PhD which
took me seven years to complete in 2005,14 years after
starting uni. My midlife crisis was that I discovered
I loved learning. I have gotten more degrees (and just three years ago I did
another one to get my teaching degree) and computing certificates and whatnots
since. Maybe when I retire I will just go back and get some more degrees. Of
course I was very lucky living in Australia where I never paid anything; their
system takes it out of one’s taxes and since I have not really made any money
in Australia since getting all these degrees I sort of never paid for any. What
I have loved about teaching is that I have been lucky to teach creative stuff.
And even luckier to be teaching film and video and collaborating with students
who have much better ideas for films than many adults.
How much more fun can one have in life than
to say to some kids ‘hey let’s make some films, do some news shows, make rock
videos, collaborate with students in other countries and create a film via
Skype with them? The older I get the more interesting life is becoming. I
goofed off and partied and did what I thought was creative stuff – like my
thousands of on-line
picture poems and before that I was a street artist in New Orleans, NYC, San
Francisco, Honolulu, and Adelaide, South Australia where I did my last shows in
1997 when at age fifty I finally woke up and thought maybe I am too old for
this and I should just go nuts on academic stuff. I found I loved doing
research, I loved computers and when the World Wide Web was invented in 1990 I
knew my life had just started. I probably have ten-thousand web pages; if I
believed in astrology I would say it is such a Leo thing. No doubt this will be
my last year of teaching but the next thing to do will be even more fun or
creative or fulfilling; I have ideas but they are best kept set aside to be
nurtured throughout this year.
· Lenovo
....
what a heart breaker you are.. all my grief to bear…
so I researched what I wanted; sixteen gigabytes RAM, a terabyte HD, fast video
card all in a solid 15 inch laptop. I bought it in Atlanta and had a wonderful
time for a few weeks with it. Wrote blogs, did some video and photography
stuff, started experimenting with the new Adobe Creative Cloud – give me more
time universe I need time to create – and had a good run of it. There were a
few days in the mountains of Georgia, Big Canoe, outside of Atlanta where I sat
early mornings watching the sun come up and bonding with Lenovo. Then days in
Jersey City and days in Malaysia editing stuff – love Malaysia and I will need
chunks of time to edit more clips and photos from those days, then three weeks
in Australia which started off well. After a few days Lenovo (Yoga 500 = bloody
yoga what are we reliving the 1960s?) died, blue screen of death. I spent a day
on phone calls. Australia Lenovo would not fix one bought in the States and the
States said I needed a boot disc which they did not give me with the computer
but they would send it to me. They would not send it to Australia and I spoke
to several people including a supervisor. They would only send it to the States
or Canada and Lenovo rabbits on how global they are. What? So I gave them Narda’s son’s address in Atlanta and I wrote him to send it
special three day mail and I would pay the one-hundred dollars for the special
service. He wanted to save us money and paid $15 for what he was told would
take seven working days to get to us. Twelve working days later, a week ago Thursday
we had to leave Adelaide and the DVD still was not there. The next day, Friday when
I checked my email at the Beijing Airport after Narda
rescued her Vegemite I received an email from Narda’s
mum saying it had arrived so she went to the post office and sent it to me here
in China. We have had mail get lost coming here so if it ever arrives that will
be wonderful. Lenovo I hate you.
· Baggage
allowances - these sometimes are a grey area depending on the person at the
counter. We always look at each person to see who will be most sympathetic to
all our many needs: check the veggie meal for me, an aisle seat as I have a
fear of being trapped in life: physically, emotionally, spiritually,
psychologically, seats toward the front,
as we are always in a hurry to get off - though not bulkhead seats as we have
long legs and need to stretch out, and of course our constantly year after
year, trip after trip extra luggage and/or weight, and aside - can you not put us in a row with or near babies which
have a tendency to holler all the way? We sometimes make a bad assessment and
having "no is not the correct answer" as our mantra, we then need a
supervisor)
Malaysian
Airlines (international) - check-in, they have allowed us 24 kilos (any number
of bags), plus 7 kilos carry-on, strictly enforced (this was 'enforced' at the
Adelaide end, we were a bit over, almost a kilo, but Aussies help when they are
able) and a camera bag or computer bag. The carry-on rule was not checked in KL
because we were in transit and as Malaysia is touting themselves as the
shopping capital of the world (forget Singapore and Hong Kong) they would not
mind if we bought heaps of crap at the airport and added it to our carry-on
which of course we did – oh look more stuff to put into storage and drag
through life with us).
China
Southern (domestic) - check-in = 20 kilos (any number of bags), carry-on -
there seems to be no restrictions; we were overweight for check-in and took
three bags as carry-on, all quite heavy as they would not allow our extra bag
to be checked-in. They then disputed Vegemite as a liquid. Good grief!
Virgin
Airlines or any Australian airline (domestic), inflexible - check their info.
USA,
good golly what a mess... As I wrote a couple of blogs ago Delta lost our stuff
three times for one destination (simply put it was on a flight to Newark which
was cancelled after we sat on the tarmac for a couple of hours so instead of
staying in Atlanta overnight and going on a flight the next day we took a
flight to Albany, New York that evening and we were told our luggage was on our
flight but it was not. Three days we were upstate and our stuff never arrived.
After three days we said not to send our things to Albany as we were going back
to Jersey City and we would collect it at Newark. When we got to Newark Narda's bag was there but not mine, it was sent to Albany
hours before we arrived and it took another couple of days to get it. Though we
do appreciate that Delta reimbursed the $400 we spent for ‘necessities’ we
needed until I did finally get my luggage).
Basically
even United International will not allow more than one bag per person unlike
Malaysian Airlines.
As
this is getting a tad bit long and I already have begun thinking about my next
blog I need to wrap this up – I just wanted to catch up for the past couple of
weeks – I write for myself so to remember stop, after all I am now 66 did I mention
that already?
· Best loo
in Kaifaqu… As we know finding a sit-down toilet in China is definitely the
shits – I mean a chore. I have never squatted because I do not have the legs
for it, well maybe, I do ride my bike almost every day and I spend heaps of
time at the gym. Just last month for July Narda got
me a month membership at a great fitness place in Adelaide, ‘Goodlife’, and some days I would spend close to
two hours there escaping dark thoughts that sometimes enter my head when I am
in Adelaide and I think of my time there with my children and how they are no
longer there, one is no longer anywhere… back to toilets so in Kaifaqu where we do a majority of our shopping not even
McDonalds has a sit down loo but a squat one. I discussed toilets in a previous
blog and even showed an image of a squat toilet so we will give that a flush,
OK so I have lost any sort of literary uniqueness. But we found not only a sit
down toilet but a really great loo with unfinished cedar wood walls, fancy wash
basins and a really trendy place to just hang out. Go upstairs in Manns Coffee for a relief. They also have wifi but I was unable to get my phone fired up but it was
not important enough to pursue. We got a mug of American coffee for 30 RMB
about five dollars which is the going price. It is not as good as coffee at
McDonalds but throw in the loo and it is worth it. We also had their waffles
with fruit which was my birthday breakfast. Manns
Coffee is on the main street past Ansheng shopping centre – the spelling may be wrong – hey I was a high
school drop out until I was 44 and now I am 66 with heaps of degrees and
certificates so it is a wonder I can spell anything. And on the next block is
what we call the Green Door shopping centre. I do not
know the name of the place as it is written in funny looking characters but it
has green doors. This is where we shop the most as nuts and vegetables are
cheap and the big thing for me is that it sells fresh soy milk and tofu. They make
their tofu there and after two years they always give me a big smile and know
what I want. I have my milk bottles and they just ladle it in and about two
liters of soy milk and a kilo of tofu cost about 10 RMB or a buck fifty. I use
to sell a block of tofu from my tofu factory in Adelaide back in the 1980s for
a dollar for half a kilo. I am still working on my tofu ebook
- http://neuage.us/tofu/ with the sub
chapters such as ‘tofu made me a bad astrologer’ and many other tales along
with recipes.
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