This author is currently on hiatus for the ignoble cause of mugging. The public is advised to remain calm, as this routine protocol has been shown to have no effect on one's violent tendencies in 96% of cases.
| Wednesday, April 30, 2008 |
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THERE IS NO SPOON. Neither is there internet in the dorms. T_T (Yes, that's my excuse for breaking my promise of blogging daily.) As expected, even when we have wireless in the classroom, it'sstill really laggy - 4kbps download ftl - so i guess ill just upload a compilation of all the photos at the end of the month. Possibly a Youtube video as well. Thankfully, there isn't much of a culture gap here, other than the noisy mainlanders, the polluted air, the extremely bad English translations ("Please take care of oldsters and children" on an escalator in TERMINAL 3), the fact that people here eat rice (they serve the glutinous stuff here btw) and everything else using only chopsticks, the chaotic traffic ("乱中有序", says Yufan)... Ok, maybe not that negligible a cultural gap after all. D: Living conditions are still fine though. It's six to a room (though if we really wanted to squeeze we could fit in eight) but still liveable. We don't stay in our own rooms much anyway, since we're usually out exploring Beijing or hanging out in others'. =P The worst part is probably the toilets though. First off, there's no toilet seats, only squatting WCs, and secondly, you-know-what seems to be only collected in a giant tank underneath which probably (I damn hope it does!) leads to the sewers. I think we've used up three bottles of air freshener so far. Open concept ftl. Food is edible (barely) in the school canteen, and pretty freaking good outside. Breakfast SUCKS. The canteen sells these tough but plain bun thingies (烧饼) which alternate between sweet and salty and soya bean which have utterly no taste at all. Other slightly better stuff includes pork buns and dumplings. Guess you can't expect much for freaking cheap food - you can get a full breakfast at less than 1.50 yuan (that's SG$0.30 for you). At least they buck up the food standards at lunch and dinner. Eating out at restaurants is good though, we had dinner with 北京烤鸭 for just $6 per person last night. Beats McDonald's hands down. xD As much as this sounds like a whiny post, it's actually not too bad. It's been pretty fun, shopping, field trips and all, and this is just the beginning. Watch out for more posts in the future during study periods... ;) |
'Twas teh winnar at 7:31 am.
