måndag 30 juni 2008

I walk the walk

This afternoon, I took a little walk a bit to the west of the teaching area.
These dudes are high above the ground.
Grass on the roofs are needed for the buildings to be "luxuriant".
Across the road from Luxuriant City, it looked like this.
It lookes really misserable, but I don't think these people are really poor.
Building new and tearing down the old.
Some old houses are sometimes left alone.

Taxi ride, this time for real



söndag 29 juni 2008

Taxi ride (not as crazy as I had expected) etc

There was supposed to be a video here from the day before yesterday, when we went to the forbidden city. Actually, I didn't go there since I've seen it before, but I went in the same cab and did some shopping instead.
I had to cut the video into smaller parts to be able to transfer it from my camera to the PC and now I don's seem to be able to upload the pieces to blogspot. Oh well.

Yesterday, I and Carlos went for a Go market.
I don't think we found it, but we did find a place that were selling Go stuff. I was a bit hung over, so I didn't buy anything but it was fun.
Later we went to a fancy restaurant to celebrate Rune's birthday. Meiying brought two friends (cute, of course) and Jonas brought his brother and a friend, so it was a bit hard to fit everybody around the table.
The food was not that good, but the prices were high. One dish had tiny fish in it, Su Yang thought they were sprouts until I showed him the eyes.

Today, I've been walking around in the neighbourhood a bit, on the other side of the mall I found a neat area with a small market and some restaurants and shops. It's funny how next to really modern, and allmost sterile blocks there usually is a block with old one-storey buildings and really cool little shops and restaurants. Looks like you suddenly are in some small village.

Seems it's gonna take some time for the video(s) to upload (I really should learn how the camera works) so I may as well continue writing, allthough I don't really have anything to say.

It's funny how I allways want to move to Beijing for good every time I'm here, even this year, with the crappy weather, I really really like it here.
I've been looking a bit on prices for appartments and it seems that the cheapest ones go for around €90 000. That is in this area, which supposedly is a bit expensive. If prices drops after the Olympic games (and I believe they will) I may very well buy one, that would be soo cool :-)
Well, maybe I won't do that, but it still would be awesome.

Oh and Chinese girls are simply tooo beautiful, especially those wearing a uniform.

fredag 27 juni 2008

A rainy day in Haidian

It was raining again yesterday. I'm getting a bit tired of the weather here this year...
My game yesterday was terrible, I made som really stupid overplays, but my opponent let me get away with them so in the end I won by resignation.

We had dinner at some Korean BBQ place in the mall, not even close to being good. I soo miss the Korean BBQ place we ate at in 2005. We got a small bottle of baijiu so that those who never tried it could have a taste, they didn't seem to disloike it all that much.

Later I bought a cask of "yellow wine", but nobody seemed to like it too much. I guess I'll have to drink it all by myself, poor, pooor me :-)

Then me and a couple of others went to play pool, much to my surprise they didn't serve beer, but we just went back to the appartment and picked up some cans. I didn't play too good, but managed to do some nice shots.
For a while we had some spectators. A couple of dudes that tried to look really mean and tough, maybe they were watching to see if we were really bad so that they could offer to play us for money, I dunno. Anyways, they left after a nice streak by me when I allmost cleared the table ;)
Also, there were two girls watching, one of them was really cute, I smiled at her after a nice shot and she smiled back. They left shortly after that however. We kept playing til around one, I think.

I woke up at nine without a hangover, Chinese alcohol is teh shit ;)

Soon allmost everybody will go to the forbidden city. I've seen it allready, but I may join them there and go shopping.

Weather isn't too nice today either, but at least it's not raining.

onsdag 25 juni 2008

Yesterday's news

As usual, I don't really have much to say.
I allmost ruined my teeth, eating lunch today. There where so much small bones in the meat.
Eq has been to the hospital too, maybe she's got whatever Paul has... She didn't sleep last night, but is sleeping now to compensate for that. As well as I, she fell asleep during today's lesson, I wasn't all that tired though but the teacher's low voice and the humming of the AC really makes me tired.
I found a couple of new, and cheaper, restaurants this morning. Gonna see if I can lure some of the others to try them out later.
Playing after the lesson.
Eat and drink ftw.
Though you may get a bit tired afterwards...

tisdag 24 juni 2008

Some pictures and a video

Nothing much to write about, lessons, lunch, lessons, dinner, sleep. Well some rain and some sunshine as well.
My teacher, Zhing Zhing (probably totally wrong spelling) or "Jack", talks really silent and his English could be better, but hopefully I'll learn something from his moves...


Apparantly, the landlord left two turtles in our appartment. MeiYing gave them some meat and vegetables to eat. Poor creatures...
MeiYing and eq.
Dinner yesterday.
Just a short video showing the teaching area seen from right outside the entrance.

söndag 22 juni 2008

Hot Pot for teh win

Allmost all of us together.

lördag 21 juni 2008

Food, food and some more food


Unfortunately, you never get all dishes served at the same time so hard th get a good picture of it all...

To my own astonishement, I've managed to guess the price quite correctly for our last two meals. Lunch was 45 yuan per person and dinner was 39 yuan (my guess was 45 and 40 yuan respectively).

fredag 20 juni 2008

Blue is the colour

Opening the bowls reveals a plastic board, but unless the ones I've seen before in similar sets, the boards are blue! Disgusting!

The first other students have started coming now. We've been eating and shopping sheets and pillows and some overpriced T-shirts and other stuff, and eating.

torsdag 19 juni 2008

Some more Hutongs and the like

Quite often, old buildings like this are found in the middle of a much more "cleaned up" areas...
Picking herbs (I guess) right by the highway.
Near the teaching area again.
Another couple of hutong houses.
Some construction workers get to sleep in tents like these, others sleep on the sidewalk.

Mahjong

Liu Yuanbo invited some friends over to play Mahjong before the goplayers arrives

Various

Another picture of electrical wires in the sky. I can't stop looking at these...
We sort of planned to make a movie in 2005 "The road to WuMart", well here's the sequel that won't get filmed either "WuMart the Hypermarket".
I guess the food in the cupboards needs heating too.
Why put the radiators underneath the windows when you can have then in the cupboards?

onsdag 18 juni 2008

Houses

Pretty close to the teaching area, a Hutong block is allmost totally torn down. This is one of the few houses left standing, and people still live in it...
Same house from the other side.
A couple of hundred meter up the same road, some sort of shop is open. People probably live in there as well.
And the last couple of houses left in the block still in use.
Playing Xiang Qi on the sidewalk, unfortunately Go (Wei Qi) is not a game played in the streets. Would have been fun to play them, but I suck at Xiang Qi.
Across the street from what used to be a Hutong block, some work still remains. This probably was Hutongs too a year or so ago, or fields where the people who lived in the Hutongs grew vegetables.

I learned a funny thing today. An appartment that you buy in Beijing (I guess it goes for all of China) is yours for 70 years only, after that the ownership goes back to the state. Also, if you sell it after say 20 years, the new owner has it for only 50 years...
I doudt that I'll last for more than 30-40 years, so maybe I should buy an appartment there, ought to be relatively cheap considering those rules.

I also asked Su Yang if it is at all possible to buy for a foreigner.
He thought not, but his mother was sure it was not only possible, but that owning a home in Beijing would also make applying for visa considerably easier.

Hot Pot

Li Siyuan, Meiyin and her sister, whos leaving for Japan soon as a exchange student.

The best Hot Pot I've had so far, maybe because you had your own pot and could avoid the nasty stuff and just put goodies in it, also some chili oil in the brown sauce made it a lot better.

tisdag 17 juni 2008

Another allmost wasted day

Su Yangs mother making dumplings. I normally don't like dumplings much, but these were awesome.Things are getting into place at the teaching appartment...

I got up at seven, but had nothing to do until noon, cause Su Yang slept like a pig. Had I known he would sleep so long I'd walked around by myself, but well. At least I got to taste his mothers dumplings.
I guess that that, together with finding a pool hall near the playing area, was what today had in store for me.

Funny that Su Yang don't really trust me in walking by myself, it's allways "be careful with the cars" and "watch out for thieves" and what not.
Seems to me much like when we where at a market and he walked with me so that I wouldn't get lost. He had no idea of where to go when we headed back, but we had just walked straight and turned once so I could return him safely to his mom ;-)

måndag 16 juni 2008

One night in Beijing

It's 10:55 pm
I'm drinking Yanjing beer and has just finished off my first Beijing cigarette in the Su family's kitchen, looking out at the rain and the thunder through the mosquito screen.
Life aint half bad.

Monday

Eat, eat, eat!
Haggle, haggle haggle!
Teaching appartment with stuff we bought.
Teaching appartment with network.

söndag 15 juni 2008

Some pictures

Well, what is there to say, I couldn't get a good picture of it but trees are commonly used to hold the wires as well.
Another post.
Cool educational center for children, with a planetarium and observatory.
Funny bike.
The main lecturing room. It's still a week to go, so allmost no furniture yet.

First meal

Closest to camera of course Gong Bao Ji Ding, then a delicious seafood dish, some tofu that I didn't try and a couple of plates with vegetable dishes.
Quite fancy place really, but the food wasn't all that special.

lördag 14 juni 2008

The mohsart has landed

It seems to be possible to reach this blog from China :-O
I landed today at 12:30 local time in Beijing and am now sitting in Su Yang's (or more correctly, his parents') flat.
His mother made us some fried rice once we arrived and after trying to get my computer up on the net for a while, I had a short nap. It is now 19:06 and Su Yang and his mother is at the airport picking up another participant.
If I can keep on blogging, I will do so, but don't expect daily updates...

fredag 13 juni 2008

See ya in a month!

Well, I'm off to Beijing now. I seriously doubt that I will be able to reach the blog from there, but well, who knows...

tisdag 10 juni 2008

Raggmunk al grotesco

Idag bjöd "Sunkhaket" på raggmunk. Brukar vara gott, men nu var de över två cm tjocka och de blir liite degiga då. Och jag överdriver inte när jag säger att jag fick två dl lingonsylt till dem.
På bordet brevid satt en tös och åt strömmingsfludra. Med lingonsylt...

lördag 7 juni 2008

Snooker

Jahapp jag har spelat lite snooker.
Jag vann första två framsarna (hur man nu bör svenskifiera frames) men sen fick jag fikon. Jävla LG!
Nå, jag köpte kön av han iaf, så nu äger jag en snookerkö, hurra, hurra.
Rådet från snookerhallsföreståndaren vad gäller kököp är att köpa en kass kö, inga köer är raka , billiga köer kanske kröker sig men spelar man med samma så är den iaf lika sned...
När man sen fattar vad man vill ha för kö kan man slaska in med $, men dumt att göra det för tidigt.