7:48 am on Wednesday the 27th. I'm having trouble getting back to sleep, coughing up the nights accumulation of snot- but I got 7 hours sleep, that's pretty good.
So to rewind to last Sunday night, I forgot to mention I threw my clothes in the laundry but the machine refused to squeeze out the water from my clothes. Frankly, it was a close call getting the water drain as much as it did. So I spent a good chunk of time wringing water out of all my clothes and hanging them around to drip dry. There comes a point where one makes so many compromises with their washing machine that they may as well have just been washing by hand the whole time. I am quickly approaching that point.
Anyways, on to Monday, it was pretty short but sweet. After completing my post for the 23rd (or near enough) I planned to drop by Wanda Plaza, see if I could find Jennifer again. My initial plan was shewd: to drop by with a gift of baked goods for the Wanda Web people, thanking them for hosting me for a day, and then, as Jennifer would mostly likely not be there, I'd ask Ronan to pass along a hi from me. I dropped the baked goods angle after consideration of my fund situation, and figured I'd get down there and improvise.
This time I sat on the opposite side of the tram, and could be far more relaxed on the journey. Where the tram does some elevating there's a sculpture below, in the center of another roundabout (this city has a bunch), that sort of looks like these two plates in the middle of falling, with one giant ball on each plate. I thought it would be funny if those balls ending up rolling off the plate and down the street.
I arrived at Wanda Plaza where, after getting off the tram, an older woman noticed me and gave a testing "hello".
"Hello."
"Where are you from?"
"Canada."
"Are you a teacher?"
She was looking for a teacher for an hour on Wednesday, pay was 200 Yuan (though at first she said twenty hundred yuan and I asked "do you mean two thousand?" because there was no way she meant that, otherwise I'm grossly underpaid.) I said I was busy Wednesday- she was rather insistent, so I gave her my yahoo e-mail address- an option I wish I'd have thought of when I was having lunch with Jennifer, but oh well.
The secret here is that my contract does not allow for me to take this work. Non-competition clause type of deal. On the other hand, what they don't know won't hurt me... well, it was an option to consider, and an extra 200 Yuan would be VERY handy.
I walked up to the Wanda Web, but all the lights were off... I forgot, despite all the signs at Roosevelt that should have reminded me, that all Web locations were closed on the 25th for the business' birthday/anniversary or something. Whoops. Did I waste my time coming here? Like fun I did! Besides getting a random job offer I figured I'd drop in on Ken at his sushi place.
It was easy enough to find in the light with all the operating signs on- plus I followed the same path I took before, on the inside of Wanda Plaza to the elevator, first floor, out the door, to the left. Re-tracing my steps.
(Which reminds me: there was this little old lady waiting at the elevator, and when the elevator came the doors closed almost immediately while the old woman was trying to hobble her way in- I moved in to hold open the door for her, and there inside the elevator is this woman with her finger squarely over the door-close button. Thanks a lot, lady.
Ken greeted me warmly, and I thanked him for a great meal, and apologized that I had to leave for class so soon. I was planning on splurging on some more sushi, as long as I was there, but Ken gave me an out when he specifically asked whether I'd have sushi or not. As long as it was a question, I could say no, again, citing my poorness. I told him I'd be back after payday- and he let me know that the place would be closed for the Spring Festival- from the 1st to maybe the 14th, maybe the 17th, something like that. I'll see him after that time then.
I headed back to the tram- there was one JUST AT THE STOP! AAAAnd it left without me. I was really close, the driver had to have seen me. It was about 2:30 when I left on the next one, and it got PACKED. Though I was standing, I still had a decent spot with some elbow room, others weren't as lucky. At least it wasn't as bad as that bus crammed full of a tram's worth of passengers- the bus is about 3/4's the size of a tram, if not less. I'm glad I was basically getting off at the end of the line, allowing for an easy exit.
Back at Roosevelt I grabbed lunch, some rice with the bits of ham and some bright, mushy vegetables. I don't think I had anything else, trying to keep costs down.
With some free time on my hands, I remembered I was going to check out the Toys R Us here- and man, it was something. English and pictures of predominantly white, smiling children everywhere, it's like I never left Canada. No video games. A fair amount of Marvel and Star Wars stuff... so I guess a fair amount of Disney stuff is what I mean.
But FAR more interesting (only to me though) were the superheroes um... unique to the area isn't quite accurate, but the superheroes that were ripped off from Japan. They had Ultraman figures, which is actually a Japanese property that I guess is famous here as well. I don't care for the designs and, from my understanding, he's basically an unbeatable space cop/prince. Not my thing.
HOWEVER they also had "Armour Hero" which looks like a straight up Kamen Rider rip-off, but the designs are really solid, the red form being a mix of Den-O and Kabuto. Plus there was another, altogether different version postered up on the wall- if they copied the Japanese schema, then they switch the hero up approximately every year. So, which of the two thematics I saw was from the current show? Do they switch every year? Which is the newest version? When did the newest version start? Is the show popular with its demographic? Does it have a large periphery demographic?
I also saw a couple of Power Rangers/Sentai rip-offs, "Space Deleters", but they were totally lame.
Ah, well, you probably don't care about this.
I started to head back to my apartment, but I looked at that junky building just north of Roosevelt- people are coming in and out. What's in there?? The draping quilt/door I took led below ground where there was a HUGE floor dedicated to all things electronic. I think it may have run the length of the block east to west! So I checked out a fancy cinematic on a computer at the front, and a sales guy approached with his translating program.
Not the most sophisticated translating program, it was rather blunt about the price - maybe it was more accurate than I thought? No, I'm kidding, the guy's body language was decently friendly.
So I just wandered for a long time. I got excited when I saw some X-Box One games, they were the first video game anything I had seen since arriving. Turns out here in "Electronic City" (it says that high up outside on the building I was in) video games weren't all that rare.
"Electronic City"- that reminds me of a story idea I had for a super hero adventure set in the Golden Age when "Straight Arrow" a man with, in short, "super situational awareness" powers (I wanted a power-set that finally explained why the hero could always rely on making that trick shot, like Bullseye or Green Arrow, or do any of a number of things that only work out because- they're the hero!- but without having to pretend they were still working with human level abilities) investigated the disappearance of the city's homeless population, only to find they were being lured into this elaborate underground city where they worked as slaves generating power for the city above. I may have thought of it as "Electric City" but still, close enough. And before you get excited, that's about all I had figured out about that particular story. Well, that, and that it was told in flashback from the perspective of my character Warp reading the old journal of Straight Arrow. Pretty fun stuff!
I saw some DS's for sale, and I saw a copy of Pokemon X which did me heart good, lad. (It's been a few days since I last used the written Irish accent. I added the "lad" part to hopefully hint I wasn't using "me heart" by accident.)
Further down the line, there were security cameras for sale EVERWHERE, a store selling DVD's (Netflix Daredevil and Jessica Jones on DVD? Awesome!- they probably wouldn't play on my laptop), a board game shop, and a LOT of educational book stores. That section looked more like a university book store than anything else. Just stacks of bland educational books, very little colour to speak of.
While I was here I kept on eye out for a charger for the phone Steve gave me, but this isn't my area of expertise and I didn't see anything useful.
The whole place was a weird mish-mash of stalls and unconcerned people either watching movies on computer screens or on their phones. There was one nicer store, with, you know, walls and stuff, which was playing Ant-Man, so I stuck around to see Paul Rudd mix it up with the Falcon.
I backtracked a bit south to Carrefour for another jug of water, a bottle of water (it's too hard and wasteful to rinse my toothbrush pouring water from my mug onto my toothrbrush. And no, swirling my toothbrush in my mug is not an option, the two items must ever be kept separate- so it is written, so shall it be done), as well as a large package of oatmeal and a package of raisins. No signs of pumpkin seeds here, may have to re-stock at Wal-Mart for that one.
Took a look at the place selling what looks like super glazed timbits... No, Isaac, no, it's a trick- remember, they're tiny apples! Full of seeds! Oh, what? Gross! Seeds? Thanks for reminding me!
I shoved everything in my backpack and it was heavy, but a good workout kind of heavy.
That's everything. - 11:10 am
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