Freedom and sunshine

Visted my friend for the second time in a week at the hospital... he doesn't have the freedom to move about except when he is escorted around... We went outside to buy dental floss and a notebook. He was saying how he missed the outside, and how he had only spent a few hours outside in total the previous weeks - Trying to cheer him up, I mentioned that he probably spent more time outside than I did, "But freedom is the difference.." he said "it's the freedom that you enjoy, knowing that you can go out whenever you want, but others just can't. and I guess that allows them to appreciate it more and also miss it more." .. very true, and I need to stop and think more often about the freedoms and flexibilities that I do have and not waste the opportunities because so many others don't have the same chance. It's good to be reminded from time to time to not forget.... by the way, we each got a great deal on an 11x17 inch artists' notebook, 284 pages, for 6.29, tax included!

Talk with Issam

Talked with my roommate Issam, who is leaving back to Oman tomorrow, to his small hometown of Salalah.

He was always busy and we never got to talk too much, so I'm glad I had a chance to talk to him before he left.

It's very intersting there.. he has 13 children his family. When they get married all the brothers stay in the house with their wives. Although the sisters go to live in their husbands' family houses, they still visit their original family house often, and so it's always very busy.

Issam showed us a video of his brother getting married. They day after they get married, they hold a celebration for the groom, and the next day, for the bride.

For the groom, they dance with ceremonial swords, daggers, and staffs.. It was very nice of Issam to give each of us each a small silver ceremonial dagger like the ones in the video.

He is planning to go back and get married too. How it works is that he uses his 5 sisters, (and also his friends) to look for girls that would make a good fit for him. They would scout them out, and then he would try to see them in a public place, where his sisters would talk to her with him waiting to the side. If he was interested, he would ask her family if it was ok to make contact, and then she would say yes or no to continue on to get to know him.

Getting to know each other, he gets to see their face, although she would always have one of her family members present, otherwise it reflects badly on both of them. however, when talking over the telephone, it's not necessary to have another family member there, as I understand it.

Issam has the most education in his family, so his parents are anxious to make sure he has a really good bride. He also has his own criteria, which he is passing onto his sisters to help him pick. But unfortunately, out of all his brothers, he is the only one who can't dance -- which he will need to do for the wedding!

Butternut squash soup

I made butternut squash soup today. It only took me from 7:30 until 1:30 inculding cleanup!
I substituted white cranberry juice instead of apple juice, and apples instead of pears.

Also my friend Steve taught me to counter the over-sweetness with salt and chicken stock, and over-chicken taste with pepper.

Debating tournament and Hamilton

Went to a debating tournament in Hamilton...


we had 4 people to 2 double beds.. and the person i was beside is a blanket hog! While asleep, he kept rolling up and i would wake up cold.. and have to tug at the blankets to grab back my share. It was an interesting experience to fall alseep while anchoring the blankets on one side. The only problem was that from time to time he would suddenly roll the other way, towards me. This was a challenge since nobody really wants to be steamrolled over while sleeping - a few times I literally had to leap off the bed to avoid contact! I think we ended up last place in the tournamet, (my usual spot) but it was great fun.

Before coming back to Toronto, I visited my fried Sharam, an associate professor of electrical engineering at hamilton. We used to be roomates back at UBC where he did his doctorate. He also happens to be my first piano student! I met his lovely wife and beautiful son Koucha and (ooshi?) in their new house.. he actually is thinking of purchasing a piano there and getting his son to learn :) I guess that would make his son my piano-grandchild?

Blue man show

I just went to a "Blue man" show... where some of my clown classmates were performing.. it was fun! I would recommend people to see it. It was nice being able to go backstage and see behind the scenes too. It was the last show of one of the Blue men so we went to a pub afterwards with the rest of the crew... It was fun to hear that they had played a lot of practical jokes on him on his last performance, including putting lemon juice in stuff that he had to drink and get in his eye... the crew was also apparently flashing him from the wings of the set to try to distract him during the performance!

Wow, this is my first entry in about a year!

Just to finish where the other entries left off... I got ill in Dali for about a week, with fever and intestinal problems I mostly stayed in the filthy beds that they had there.

After I was partially recovered, we were considering visiting Tibet and "shangrila" but realized that we didn't have enough time, and you had to be more organized to arrange a guide, and travel permission to go there. Instead, we went hiking for three days through the mountains (Leaping Tiger Gorge) apparently there is one spot that is narrow enough for a Tiger to 'leap across'.. (maybe 50 feet? ), The entire hike was extremely beautiful with the famous Yangtze River below us and the varied scenery that was truly breathtaking... There were a few farmers' houses which were opened up to travellers along the way, and that is where we stayed.. one farmer even kept bees, so we feasted on honey and roasted walnuts :) A few times on the semi-treacherous trail we would see men on loaded horses or donkeys coming the other way. If the animals weren't loaded, they would be racing at really fast speed on the winding path of the cliff! In the evenings, it was very dark and silent, since we were so many miles away from everything. (I think the farmers communicated by a some sort of radio) It was a perfect time to reflect and think about things, and I've never seen so many stars in my life! Surrounded by mountains, far away from the city lights... so nice.
We also woke up to the farming families working in the fields on the slopes... All the places we stayed in also had delightful puppies / or dogs that I spent a lot of time playing with. Now I know you might ask, well, if you were in this wonderful place with so much to see, why did you spend so much time playing with puppies? First of all, i like puppies. but second of all. Ivo also got sick... in the form of explosive diarrhea. Now before I left Dali, we stopped at the pharmacy and got several boxes of French medicine, "Smecta", an anti diarretic which is a white poweder that you mix with water, and it turns into a chalky-grey sludge which you drink. It probably saved my life and also Ivo's up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, at the end, it ended near a road. The way back to civilization was also interesting because there was a restaurant/guesthouse, which had a scam in conjunction with the taxidrivers (the only way to get back) - the taxidrivers would refuse to take you unless you had had a meal at the restauraunt. I guess they got a cut of the profits... Anyway, they were also sort of scary because there was a real danger of rockslides and boulders falling down on to the road. As we were driving super fast through on the side of a mountain, in the section which indicated severe danger of rockslides, instead of looking at the road, the driver would be looking at the cliff we were travelling beside, looking for boulders. And he wasn't looking ahead to check if they were falling down (since the road is winding)-- he was looking directly beside us. Out the window where I was sitting (the front passenger!) :(

Anyway, I made it back safely.

After making it back to Beijing, I had to leave, and it was sad saying goodbye to all the friends, that I had made.. but it was also good to know that I could contact them as easily as an email or instant messenger.

meeting different people... and Dali

One of the Great things about travelling is the great number of people you meet with a wealth of different experiences. Often you will meet other people that have just left the place you are planning to go next, and they will give you many great suggestions. Other times they have interesting stories about places that they have visited. I`ve encountered equal numbers of English, French, German, Swedish, Italian, Australian, NewZealand and Canadian travellers, all interesting to talk to, at the hostels (perhaps it is because they all have the same guidebooks). In foosball, the Italians all seem to be very good, and I always lose.

A Yorkshire, england man was travelling for 22 months so far, and related he had gone to Mongolia, and found most of them very friendly, and even those who weren`t very friendly would still take peopole into their tents as guests and feed them. Apparnetly, outisde of a few cities, a lot of the people are nomadic, and wander finding food for their animals. Surprisingly, there is a working mail system for the wandering people! Not sure how it works, but apparently they ask where they think their neighbors may have moved to..

Kai Kai is the marketing manager for the Hump hostel in Kunming, and she had visited north korea... albeit for a short time... 1she said that there were many universities there, and the people were very friendly.... all except the soldiers, who would turn their backs when they waved to them, and even throw stones at them!

I met an 66 year old American who lived in a town called Dali, and he said it was one of the best things he`s ever been to in his 20 years of travelling, and that`s why he now lives there. He gave me a lot of tips drawn on a map - that some guy from the Sheffield, England gave to me - about what to do, and then we ended up talking about democratic process, political mandates and freedom... he is of the opinion that China is the most free country in the world by far, since you can do anything here and nobody cares.

Anyway, Ivo and I were planning to go to Dali anyway (you will read more about ivo later), and we took a sleeper train to DaLi, a small town in Yunnan province. It`s quite quaint, and nice compared to the large millions of people in the larger cities. During the train ride, there was a little 2 year old boy who kept on asking me what i was doing. ``I`m sewing the hole in my pants`` What are you doing. ``sewing` what are you doing. what are you doing. what are you doing. .... what are you doing... (in mandarin, of course) little children like to repeat things for some reason. i can't figure out how to get the question mark on this chinese keyboard)

My travelling companion for the next week is Ivo, a PhD student, also working for Microsoft in Beijing for 3 months (we met up in Kunming, and then we both took the train to Dali ). His family is from East Germany, and it was very interesting to hear about when the Berlin wall came down from his perspective. He was 12 at the time, and he only remembered that they took down the picture of the newly-ex prime minister from his school, and that he heard on the radio...

In East Germany, before the wall came down there were a few goverment shops that would sell western goods. 'Islands' of western goods, and sweeteners from candy would give a sweet artificial smell, that seemed to 12 year old Ivo that this was the smell of the west . When his family finally went across to West Germany, he remembered the shopping malls in many places, and that the smell of the west seemed everywhere. His parents bought him a small remote controlled car and he remembers being very happy. (the West Germany gave each East German citizen an equivalent of 50 Euros (in West German Marks) as a gift after the wall came down)

His parents had had tough choices to make... if you wanted to study in university, you had to cooperate and join the secret service, otherwise they woudl reject your application... apparently, it was very tough for a family that didn`t support the government. When the wall came down and the files revealed, apparently 1 million (out of a total population of 17 million people in the country) turned out to be part of the secret service network (informants included).

We rented bikes and rode to a lakeside town, which was very not meant for tourists and had a very nice bucolic feel. Houses are beside many many farms, with people hoeing and plucking away at the dirt. In the town it is very common for children to say "hello! hello!" when they see foreigners and try to get a response, and it is a strange to be asked it constantly when going through this very old town. Lots of staring. Sometimes the old people with a spark in their eye also say hello, but they are much more refined about it. People were very friendly universally. It was interesting to watch the 2 tables at the market, where one person was waving a plastic bag on a stick to keep flies off of the slab of meat he had on the table. I wanted to buy something to help support the economy but we couldnn`t find anything that I really wanted to get... so at a local cornet market we bought some drinks and i bought 3 packs of tiny playing cards for 5 mao (10 cents) each.

Sanitation and health

In much of china, there are wastepaper baskets for used toilet paper because the plumbing is too weak to handle paper... the washrooms start to smell pretty bad....

That said, I actually think the 'hole in the ground' toilets are cleaner because there isn't any physical contact with any surface! It's funny how used to things we get and how strange different customs seem.

reminds me of a parody i wrote of 'baked beans' by Pierre Burton... i should dig it up some time.

I suspect that I have been washing my hair with conditioner the last several weeks. My suspicions were confirmed when I finally asked my landlord. Would you have been able to tell? 

the anxious maternal seatmate, looking at someone examining the luggage that would turn out to be hers. 

the front of the hostel 

this is sonny in his box. it is dark and he is sleepy. he is about the size of my hand (a little bigger)  

my bed is the one in the middle, with the white sheet hanging off! (i can choose another one later if i want) there is a man from Manchester in the bunk below mine. There are many german and UK students travelling around, as well as french. Many of the books in the book exchange are german. (including german davinci code) 

you get your own locker and padlock, as well as bedding in most good hostels. 

big brick oven, internet access is just to the left of this picture 

ping pong! (pool not shown) 

patio at the hump hostel 

The bar open 6am to 3am serves lots of nice stuff 

Trip to Kunming

Well, decided to go to Kunming capital of Yunnan proivince at the last minute and, as usual, last minute packing ensues (i have to stop that!) this means that i don't have that much sleep.

Maternal Seatmate

As I get on the plane, I see an older woman in the seat next to me, and she looks kind of nervous. She was tightly clutching her purse to her chest the whole trip…As the seatbelt sign went on (no boring safety demo like in North America or Europe!) she was desperately trying to mate her belt buckle to the armrest, So I helped her to get it buckled by finding the other end, which happened to be under her.

She didn’t speak English, but with my limited verbal and gesture skills, it turns out that this was her first time on an airplane. She was visiting her 36 year old son in Kunming. And a ‘very beautiful’ four-year-old grandson. (she actually had 3 children since since it was before the single child policy time). When the meal came, she surreptitiously imitating what I was doing, since she hadn’t yet experienced the sheer joy of airplane meal artifacts. Deliberately making conversation to practice my mandarin, I told among other things, that I was around 9 years younger than her son. In hindsight, I think this may have triggered the started to stir a latent maternal instinct inside of her. She asked how I like Beijing, and I said at first I didn’t like it because I had mine luggage taken and hand no clothes to wear so I was cold. She I should have bought clothes, and started giving me suggestions and tips on where to buy cheap clothes in Beijing. Every time she mentioned the words for clothes, she tugged on my shirt to emphasize the words. Maternal instinct is coming in strong now, especially when I ate the food she offered because she didn’t like most of her breakfast. Soon after, she pointing out to me how I could stack my garbage in just the right way like she had had done, so as to take up minimal space taken on the meal tray. When the trolley came around to pick it up, before I could do anything she reached across (I was sitting on the aisle seat) to grab my garbage to put on the tray. Unfortunately, due to the peculiar stacking of discard fruit cups, it ended up spilling lots of sticky fruit juice on me. Oh well. She took out irregular stones out of her pocket and started to massage her hands with them.. I asked if she was comfortable, (yes she was), and then went to sleep for the rest of the 3 hour flight.

I was woken up, twice, by her elbowing me during the bumpy landing. “We’re landing” “(groggy) Yes”. . “Look, we’re landing!” “yes…”

As I walked off the plane, the air (even at the airport) was so much nicer than in Beijing, which had a dust-storm and pollution fog when I left it. It was a beautiful and bright sunny day. It felt nice. As we went into the terminal, she asked if I had luggage, she had mentioned earlier that she couldn’t see the tags since she didn’t have her glasses, so I asked if she would like help to identify her luggage. She gratefully accepted. And was very anxiously looking for it everywhere, and had expected it to be ready and waiting for her. I had to guide her several times back to the proper carousel and told her it wasn’t here yet. I asked what color it was. “well, it’s small, about as big as that bag there”, no, what color is it? Blue? Red? Turns out it’s black. Great, a black suitcase, that should be easy to find! : ( As the conveyor belt started moving clockwise, we saw we were on the side where the luggage went back in, and I suggested that we move to the other side to see the luggage as it came out. Too late! Just as we were passing the middle part of the conveyor with the largest crowds, the luggage started coming out. She dived straight into the middle of the crowd so she could see the stream of luggage as it went past. When she finally got her luggage, I’ve never seen such a quick departure. She immediately turned towards the door and started walking away, and said ‘goodbye’ without turning back. I was thinking, closure! I need closure! I eventually caught up with her and was able to obtain a goodbye that was a *little* bit better. (she was still in a most supreme hurry)

Rip off taxi

As I got out of the airport, I went into a taxi, and showed the driver where I wanted to go. I hate it when taxi drivers try to converse because as soon as they find out I can’t speak and don’t know where I’m going, many will try to rip you off, especially at the airport. (In contrast to Beijing, where I was, most recently, expertly telling the taxi driver where to go and how to take the short backroad routes around some parts of the city J ) Anyways, as we exit the airport parking lot he demands I pay the fee for the cars that are in the parking lot. Why? It doesn’t make sense. No, impossible, I say. He looks angry, and says I must. I said I must not. I can just walk 50 meters outside a parking lot and grab a taxi there. To my rip-off rich tainted eyes, he’s seems to be fitting the description. This was confirmed when he said it would cost me 30 kwai to get there. I noticed the taxi meter hadn’t been started, and said, please start the meter. (everything is in mandarin). He said, no, it’s cheaper. 30 is cheaper, and something closing time, anyway, I insited four times that he start the meter, and finally her relented, all the while protesting something in rapid words which I said I could not understand. When we arrived, the meter read 16.50. He demanded more. I said, no, it doesn’t make sense. But I wasn’t going to give him a cent more than he deserved, so I took out exact change. He was angry and started backing the car away from the hostel location, without me getting out of the car first, but stopped when I swung open the back door. I guess he didn’t want to damage it.

"The Hump" Hostel

The first thing that I saw when I came in, the tinest Pomeranian, Chihuahua/terrier mix puppy was sitting at the leg of a foosball table staring up at me. (I will try to post the picture) I found out later that his name is Sonny. Anyway, hostel seems great, the same standards, and in some ways better than many European hostels I’ve been to (quite relaxed). For those who have not really been to backpacker hostels, I’ll describe it a bit. When you go to a hostel, often you get a bed with sheets and pillow, and a big locker and padlock for your backpack and goods. I’m in a dorm room with 8 people, but the room is huge, with cathedral ceilings, which is good because I’m in the top bunk and if the ceiling was low, it would be too hot at night!

The name of the Hostel is “the hump” after something in the Himalayas (I believe it’s a peak that looks like… a hump!) There is a big broke oven, which looks like at some point was used to make pizzas, as well as low tables and cushions around it. As well as regular tables. A bar is open 6am to 3am, where you can order food like pizza or chicken and drinks, etc. for reasonable prices. Pool table, ping pong, nice patio, etc.. all for $4 (Canadian) a night!

As I am using their broadband internet, it is on the honour system, we tell them how long we used it for and pay (50 cents an hour). I am typing this while eating a spiced vanilla chicken breast dinner and special local coffee (very nice) that I ordered from the bar.

A section of the great wall!  

Art district : pixel man, part two 

Art district: pixel man - first of a two part series 

Some sculptures found during a trip to the Daishanze art district. The burgeoning art scene in Beijing is actually quite good. Many artists lofts and workshops. 

Lost wallet and passport!

This happened a while back, but I have really had much time to write until now, so here it is:

I was getting on the light-rail train to work. I paid for the ticket and put my wallet in my pocket. When I got off the train I put my hand to pat down into my pocket and it wasn't there! (On the subways and trains, if something looks like it might have some value, there are some people who will grab it the first chance they get and not ask around if it belongs to anyone... not everyone does this, but there are enough to make it unpleasant to drop things) My passport was in the wallet (apparently it's not that big a deal to be around the city without your passport.. you can just keep a photocopy with you or something, although I suppose you officially should have it on you) so i was feeling a little panicked.

I tried to go back on the train, but by the time I could communicate to the ticket lady why I had to go back onto the platform the train had already left for the next station. I couldn't pay for another ticket my cash, and bank card were also in the wallet, and so she refused to let me, until some bilingual passerby helped explain that i dropped my wallet. I spent a while looking for it at the two stations I got on and off the train. No luck! Then surprisingly, I got a phone call from someone at work saying, that someone had found my wallet and called them. I was very relieved. I had the card of an HR person at Microsoft in my wallet, and they must have used that.

Turns out that the person calling called himself 'Mr. Jin'. He said he lived in an apartment that was underground.. and was very busy most of the day. His cell phone seemed to be always off, but that makes sense if he was underground(!) the signal would be pretty weak. The person who took the phone call said that he sounded very suspicious because his accent was very strange, and he kept on demanding to know where i lived, and my personal phone number. Also the living underground thing didn't sit well with me... He called back a few times to work, and one of my friends, Alvin, offered his cell phone number to be given to the guy. It would be no good to give him my phone number since Mr. Jin doesn' speak english, and I couldn't understand Mandarin.

Locals suggested that I probably had a 50 percent chance of having a 'nice guy' who just wants to return it... and the Canadian consulate also suggested that in the majority of the cases when someone gets contacted, they just want to give back the passport. So I clung to hope that Mr. Jin was a good guy.

I came up with a plan, that we should invite Mr. Jin out to dinner to thank him, that way, keeping it in a public place, just in case he was crazy, or some other trouble... But by the time I left work ( 10pm ) they had not been able to get through to contact him.

Alvin got a call around midnight, and Mr. Jin said that we should meet that night, since he did not know where he would be tomorrow(!huh?) and my friend agreed, and then phoned me to tell me that he was on his way with three other students who also worked at Microsoft as interns. The plan was to meet in a public place, and that the other three were to stay far back with cell phone in hand ready to call for help (110 is Chinese equivalent of 911) at the first sign of trouble. Alvin and I would go and try to meet with Mr. Jin, and we would also run away at the first sign of trouble....

We approached the location and this tall skinny rough looking guy motioned us to go into a Korean bar. He had friends with him. In the bar, there was 5 guys, one at the door (i realized this later) and the other, including a really young one... 14?) sitting. They were scruffy looking,and perhaps worked outside, because they were very darkly tanned. Only the leader (the one with my wallet) spoke Chinese and even then, only with a very thick accent. Korean was their native language. They motioned us to sit down with them, and they ordered beers for everyone. Of course Alvin and I didn't drink any.. I checked to make sure all the contents of the wallet were there (they were, except the money)

With Alvin acting as interpreter, I found out they wanted 1500 RMB ( about $250 Canadian) to return the wallet. I hadn't been paid yet, and all the money I had was in the wallet. I told them to look at the bankbook (yes, i had that in my wallet too... i was going to go to the bank to change something that day and they needed bankbook and passport to verify) where it showed 5RMB in my account (less than a dollar Canadian). I had no money to give them! Second, it would only cost me about $50 / 300RMBto replace the passport. I said it would only cost 300 RMB, and I woudn't pay more. They gaffed at that... and negotiations started for maybe 30 - 45 minutes. From 1500 down to 800... We held firm and finally, they settled on 300 RMB plus their beer (turned out to be 100 RMB) .

Unfortuantely, none of the people that came with me had much money on them, so Alvin's three friends went back to the dormitory to get 300 RMB. This took a long time. another 45-60 minutes (but it seemed like forever). During which, Alvin and I were staring at 'Mr. Jin' and his gang at each other across the table. It was excrutiating. Like being punched in slow motion, and nothing you can do about it. (Unfortuantely, I was afraid to tell them to go to the police in English, since I wasn't sure if the gang of punks would understood ... (I found out afterwards that there is a police station about 3 blocks away!) Finally the friends came back and the exchange was made. The young extortionists who picked up my wallet were visibly nervous as it happened, and so they were just small time extortionists, and not professionals...


Total damage: 600 RMB (about 100 $ CAD). (150 in the wallet, 100 for beer, 300 for actual extortion money) and a couple sleepless nights thinking "what if". Well, at least I got my stuff back. yay!

By far, the worst thing about the experience is that everytime I saw someone who looked like the people who extorted me, I got a negative feeling about them and looked at them with suspicion; despite knowing that it is not a fair way of judging, and I know I shouldn't be thinking that way. It was quite bad in the first few weeks after it happened, but now, there's been enough time that the unwarranted suspicion and negative feelings are completely gone.