January 13th 2016

9:28 am

I should maybe consider closing my curtains, I had my alarm set for 10 but it's kind of bright.  There was more hammering/construction last night, but I reckon I was too exhausted for it to bother me much.

To quickly report on my meal at Food Bazzar yesterday: I had some kind of oily slices of potato that bedeviled my chop stick attempts. I had what looked like a slice of pizza, only instead of cheese or tomato sauce topping, I believe it was fried egg with some vegetables mixed into the whole affair. Quite good! I picked up another watermelon cup and water and finally I got what looked to me like some kind of whole wheat bun loaf- I've been on the look out for something less whitebread- and when I bit into it, it was purple inside! Bit a little further in, and there was some kind of massively sweet sugar filling, with one or two surprise peanuts hanging out inside. This country may be a deathtrap for people with a peanut allergy.

Walking out the door of Roosevelt Plaza onto Huanghe Lu/street I turned right, and walked west. For what felt like the majority of my walk I was uninterested with the area- it wasn't as nice as the south, and there wasn't an obvious feature drawing my attention. Then I saw another mountain in the distance, and thought I'd aim for that.

Not too long after that, I looked back up at my goal... and didn't see the mountain anymore. How'd I lose a mountain? (This one was actually much taller than the couple from my walk yesterday) The road must have veered a bit of course. I ended up thinking the area was remarkably unremarkable, that I must be walking through a valley cutting right through the mountainous landscape. (Er, hilly landscape?... Look, they're clearly mountains, but, yes, they could be taller... get on that guys)

Had a close call with a car backing out of a parking space- with the sun shining in my face it's no wonder I didn't see any reverse lights on the car. I also got honked at by a van than wanted to go by me on "the sidewalk". That guy I legit gave a dirty look to. I'm never going to stop complaining about this traffic.

Have I mentioned the barber poles here? With one boring westernized exception, all the barber poles have this sort of crystalline look to them. And there were a ton of barbers and salons on this road. There were a lot of places that offered some kind of service, but were also giant messes. A lot of things are worn down over here, people included. There are some shacks dotted around the city that I'm surprised no one from the city has shut down. But I guess if they did that they'd have to somehow look after these people. There was just such a shack underneath an elevated roadway (an ideal place for one, I'm sure there'd be plenty under the Gardner Expressway if a) they wouldn't get shut down and b) the Gardner didn't constantly threaten collapse.) but I caught a flash of a little foot climbing around. There was a clothes hangar a meter or two away from the structure that confirmed there was a small child living there, barely more than a toddler. Man.

I passed a couple of Bank of China's (Bank's of China?) that advertised for moneygram services, so that may be where I'll go to send money back to Canada. My credit cards (and Jordan) aren't going to pay themselves off. But to see multiple advertisements on that stretch of road makes me even more incredulous that no one at my bank knew what it was-- that's WITH an interpreter!

I passed by "Laoning Normal University" which most definitely is not a super villain academy. A completely normal university.

To my left, through the occasional break between buildings, I could see that I was walking beside the mountain I was aimed at- and on the other side of it there are residential building built into the mountain. Aw, I wanted to see mountain apartment buildings! Stupid curving Huanghe Lu.

Let's see, I saw a couple of cats, I returned a wave from some people I locked eyes with sitting in a restaurant, and around 3:30 I ran into a bunch of kids waitting for a bus that I think I surprised with my freakish appearance. The road was aimed up now, so I was out of the valley and getting a bit of a hike in. To my left was the Dalian resevoir, according to some english lettering on a sign. I turned around pretty soon after passing the resevoir sign- actually I recorded the intersection I turned back at if you want to check how far I walked: so I started at Xi'an Lu and Huanghe Lu, walking west on Huanghe until Hongqi Xilu and Huize Beiyuan, and then turned around and came back.

My knee hurt a little well before I decided to turn around, but it kicked back into gear just fine, so that was weird. And my pants didn't protect my legs from the cold as well as I'd have liked, they still ended up sore. My water bottle, by the end of the trip, had chunks of ice inside- I didn't think it was that cold at all! I also had a bit of a headache, perhaps from the cold, constant music (that was my choice) and likely I was dehydrated. So I drank some water, easy fix. I got a notice that my music player had a low power level, but it lasted me all the way until I returned back to my apartment after shopping, so it did really well to keep on ticking.

Back at Roosevelt Plaza I picked up the container of "EuroCow" quick cook oatmeal- I don't think there was any call for name calling. Then to Wal-Mart where I picked up a pillow, 4 litres of water, some green raisins and pumpkin seeds, some more of those donut holes (probably the same batch, judging by the taste now) and a container of some dessert bread- I wanted to eat the bread and then use the container for my oatmeal. I got four bananas, one of which I ate last night and was just what the doctor ordered. Aren't low potassium levels linked with depression? Or am I making that up? I got a mug to drink out of (I needed something with a wide enough opening to aim that 4L jug of water into) and, what took the longest to find, a spoon.

I asked a guy where I could find a spoon, making a spooning into cereal type motion, but he waved me off. I guess that motion doesn't translate so well if cereal isn't a thing here. Well, I found it on my own- I opted for the 15 yuan spoon that came with some chopsticks and a carrying case, mostly because it was all packaged up, and I wasn't prepared to think about how we clean dishes here if we don't drink the tap water. No, don't think about it! I said I wasn't ready to deal with this!

Exiting the Wal-Mart, a girl was handing out flyers... wait, she hands out flyers for Web International! She recognized me and we exchanged greetings but, like, she's moonlighting from her flyering job with another flyering job? That's rough buddy.

I put on another load of laundry (I'm back at my apartment, keep up) while eating the sweet bread and donuts and playing either candy crush or solitaire, both of which games I had an abysmal track record. Many losses. At one point the laundry machine stopped, and I went to see it was still full of water. Uhh. I kind of pressed a bunch of buttons until it starting doing stuff again. I'm definitely going to have to figure out how to use that thing properly.

And then I went to sleep- and amongst the many things I dreamed, but the few things I remember right now, I was helping Jeff Reid move a truck, and he was worried about his deposit on said truck. I mostly wanted to share that because someone reading this may tell Jeff that he got a shout out and I can picture his bemusement. :)

It's 10:51 am, so let's try this EuroCow oatmeal.

Wish me luck, have a good day