February 8th, 2016

9:20 am on the 12th, working on this post for the 7th

The first thing that happened of note today was an immensely complicated Back to the Future dream, which I felt (and still do feel) merits division into its own dream trilogy of unique story elements that end up tying together, and yes, I wrote as much of it down, and yes, I'm about to copy those notes out here for your... enjoyment? Punishment? 

The first trilogy (yeah, it's actually LARGER than a single dream trilogy- best case scenario it's four dream movies... but could it be TWO trilogies?!?) involved larger and larger spectacle, super heroes reclaiming their proper lives in time, until in the third movie they call on Marty to stop an asteroid headed for Earth- but it was actually a DeLorean with a bomb inside disguised by giant space rocks (the resultant destruction may be limited to merely our own galaxy)- removal of the bomb blew open a hole in space/time, and a disoriented Marty says they need the Doc to fix things from the early 21st Century- but he no longer exists(!), because Marty changed the past to create the more exciting timeline of the three movies thus far.

So they have to stop Past-Marty, and end up teaming up with a friendly Biff, who tosses Marty off a ladder, breaking his hand and restoring the proper timeline- the one where he gets fired in the future- they go to collect a now senile Doc who doesn't recognize Marty as a young man, so Marty pretends to be old (how does that make sense, brain?), and that he'll be "right back" with his younger self... among other things, Marty gets willed back into the past as a comical ghost character in the Back to the Future cartoon reality by Doc's mind in a last ditch effort to time travel out of a hopeless situation with no time machine- because of course ghosts can time travel of their own free will/ability. 

At another point a young Marty and Clara go on a trip to introduce Clara to Doc when he was younger- and there was also a sequence involving Doc throwing acid on some guys face so that, in some future timeline, the Doc himself would NOT get the acid thrown in his own face... I didn't write this down, but around this point there was a kaleidescope of different timelines/alternate versions that began to Schroedinger's Cat coalesce into a single reality as those other possibilities were over-written. It was a cool effect.

Okay then.

At just about 8:18 am there was a knock at the door. Disoriented, I stumbled out of bed as quickly as I could to answer. In came the manager from Friday, he hands me two bowls of dumplings which were verging on hot, and I got a little hot dumpling water splashed on my hand. I went to put the bowls down on the tv platform and then the manager gave me a plastic bag containing two pieces of breakfast cake, two hard boiled eggs, and one large flavourless bun. I reported on the contents to Dany who didn't want any flavourless bun- score, more for me! I gave him the larger of the breakfast cake slices to try and balance things out.

So Dany and I had a surprise Together Breakfast in bed- actually it took Dany a while to dig in, once awake he went straight to purusing the internet on his phone like some kind of spaceman while I, like a caveman, hunched over my bowl of dumpling eating while food still hot.

I dropped one back into the bowl- I'm glad I didn't waste it, but I splashed myself a bit. Seriously guys, chopsticks aren't the way in general, but especially not this early in the morning.

I knocked my egg against the edge of the tv platform, which seemed weird to me, but at what point was any of this that normal? Once it was clear Dany was awake I flipped on the tv and found an episode of the transforming pig super hero show- this episode was a pretty big deal, some Megatron like dragon guy had brainwashed two of the heroes (even after the dragon guy is vaporized the two pigs still seem evil, and they're left in jail at the end of the episode, hallucinating that their toothbrush is a key they can use to escape-- but they're main characters! They're in the opening sequence with the other pigs and everything!) so the remaining three pigs had to overcome their mentor and comrade, the little red pig that wears some kind of dragon mask and a red body suit/underwear had to unlock the power of this special sword some (maybe) beaver thief had, which I assumed would power of friendship un-brainwash their friends, but NOPE they just had to beat them down, it looks like the sword was just a power boost, but when the little red pig, now in his tiger-robot battle form went to battle the dragon dude mano-a-mano he got knocked into this lake, where, as some kind of ghost, the little red pig hand to unlock the true powers of the sword/friendship whereupon the pig emerged from the lake, his tiger-robot battle form now akin to a gryphon, taking element from the other pig battle forms- INCLUDING the brainwashed ones, they're clearly brainwashed- and proceeds to super saiyan take out the dragon dude. It was pretty epic, had to be a season finale.

I had suggested to Dany that, instead of paying the approximately 115+ yuan taxi fare to the airport, he could use his magic phone device and find a way for us to take public transport. He thought this was a good idea ("Ralph! Ralph! Ralph!" "But surely I-" "C'mon, Lis, let him have this one. After all, it's Ralph." "Ralph! Ralph! Ralph!") and got directions from, I'm going to assume, the one girl from Web he always hangs out with. Those latin guys- you sly dog, Chuck.

We must have packed up just before noon, er, 11:30 am maybe? I forget, I don't seem to have written that info down. Checking out, I signed for my room receipt and Dany sent a picture to Vicky to make sure it was okay. No response. So whatever, let's go. The first bus stop we needed was close to the hotel, travelling in the direction of the fast food civilization we'd been frequenting these past few days. According to Dany's source this bus cost 10 yuan... so when the driver instead asked for 2 yuan I was left fumbling for change at the door of the now moving bus, while also growing concerned about the veracity of Dany's source. 10 to 2 is a pretty big difference man. We had to get off in 10 stops, so I counted down on my fingers while enjoying the scenery.

Dany said something about not sitting at the front, that those chairs were for old people- I said I'd be happy to move if any showed up... but when I moved to the single chairs by the left side of the bus later for a better view of both sides of the street Dany again said something about not sitting HERE, that, again, these chairs were for old people. So I don't know what that was about, if I moved to the back of the bus would I get the same speech? It was a moot point, the bus never became crowded.

We rode up some twisty roads, crossed the Yangtzhe (sp?), saw a cool statue that I forget whether it was a dragon or not, but it was actually pretty far away, so I get forgetting- there was this crazy, monolithic building to the west, towering over everything- if there was ever a modern Legend of Zelda game, that's Ganon's tower at the end of the game, no question.

Alt comment: I just realized Die Hard 2 could have been terrorists taking over an EVEN LARGER BUILDING!! I'll take the airport.

Exiting the bus under a bridge, the info said our next bus was 12 meters away. *Looks left, looks right* I don't know about these directions. Dany uses his magic phone translation device to ask where we go next, and were directed to cross the street. Across the street, we ask some MORE people about where to go, and were pointed to a sort of bus terminal, but not before being accosted by a pushy taxi driver that insisted he could drive us where we were going for a cheaper price. We didn't take him up on the obviously not real offer.

There was some confusion at the bus place, chiefly surrounding the departure time- we wanted the NEXT bus heading out, so we could go grab some lunch. They nod in agreement, and then give us tickets for the bus heading out immediately. Our empty stomachs had us stick to our guns, and we got tickets saying the departure time was 1:35. Okay. I set my alarm for 1:20 and we went to try Chinese McDonald's.

The Chinese McDonald's only had curly fries available, and I made an hilarious crack about eating at Arby's like animals... I actually like Arby's just fine, but I don't go there for the curly fries. I tolerate the curly fries when I want a roast beef sandwich with cheese sauce and a sweet little onion bun on top. To go to McDonald's and NOT get McDonalds fries is monstrous. The Big Mac was good, if a little light on the special sauce. At least it wasn't mysteriously spicy for no reason.

It didn't take long to eat, and we returned to the bus before my alarm even went off... only to be rushed onto the bus, which quickly filled with people and left the station at about 1:20-1:25. What? What happened to 1:35? Dany made the good point that, if the bus is full, you go.

We arrived at the airport, passing some very red dirt on the way- iron? clay? clayron?- at 1:50. We were asked to arrive for 4:30, so... mission accomplished.

Anticipating more 'single-name-on-the-boarding-pass' troubles we phoned Joy, who was surprised we were there so early, and said she'd call Vicky. This was the last we heard from Joy. We asked someone to help, but we were apparently too early for our passes to be in the kiosk- I think we had to wait, standing there mostly silent, for an hour. The moment the clock ticked past when we were asked to wait until we got that same woman to help us- we got to pick our seats, and you KNOW I got another window seat- printing off our boarding passes, and yes, I was still just "MILLS".

Dany attempted to communicate the difficulty with the passes as printed, but I just took out the boarding pass with the pen and stamp from the previous trip to compare the two and the example communicated itself. We went in search of whichever official we needed to find who, once we found him, didn't touch pen to paper at all, but simply assured us it was fine as is. This, coupled with our travelling with photocopies of our passport and "VISA/STAY PERMIT/RESIDENCE PERMIT APPLICATION RECEPTI" (sic) was a fairly sketchy combination, but, hey, they let me on the plane and dropped me off in Dalian (spoiler alert). And that's even AFTER I dared to leave my half empty water bottle in my bag as it got x-rayed. The security person wasn't happy, and pointed at a wet spot by my bag and said "leak" but considering my bag was bone dry and the water was spilled on exactly one spot far away from the x-ray machine, I have to figure she spilled the thing a bit herself opening up to check whether it was water or not. And then she took my water away.

I was hoping, this being not America, that I'd get to hold onto my water. I know, I'm ridiculous.

And then began the long wait.

Pretty soon Dany moved off to sit by the charging station, and I stayed where I was, which is pretty bad form on my part, but I wanted to stick by myself for a bit. However, I eventually looked over to see Dany waving me over so I could sit by his stuff while he went to the bathroom. So we were reunited from that point on, sitting in front of "Tien Coffee"... uh, I can't make out the last word. I took a picture so I would remember, but the sign was kind of long... "Lan" something...

As long as I'm looking at phone reminders, I took a picture in the bookshop of some kind of inspirational book with an origami aesthetic design on the cover of a woman whose shadow is a stylized, no-celebrities-were-harmed  Superman. It's a very cool cover.

And as long as I'm talking about the book store, there were no English books BUT there was a collection of old Peanuts strips, and though the commentary, cover, introduction, all that stuff, was in Chinese, the word balloons were English. And this is OLD Peanuts, when the designs looked vaguely Calvin and Hobbes-ish, and the characters had a bit more bite to them, before Charlie Brown became the universes punching bag.

I didn't read too much, for fear of offending the gentle shopkeep, but it was still nice.

At 4:28 this little girl and a littler boy promenaded by me with their grandmother to shyly say hello.

Smoking rooms in the airport become a noticable presence as people fill up and occupy the gate area enough that there's smoke spillover.

I have my idea about making comics for the purposes of teaching them as English lessons like my proposed English corner, an idea I expand on in a later blog post, so I won't go into detail here now.

The flight takes off from Wuhan at 6:37 and lands in Dalian at 8:41. 

From the plane window I could see fireworks dotting the landscape of China- I've managed to be on a plane for another new years celebration! Each little pocket of civilization from the air looks like a cgi image of a brain working, a neural network or something.

As with the flight in, the safety video they played about flotation devices and exits and whatnot was done using a sexy allegory video about staying at some exclusive resort, with the occasional holographic over lay to how, whatever they were talking about, actually relates to plane safety. It's actually a really creative video, Hubei airlines (I think that was the airline) didn't have to do that.

Unlike the flight in, we were served a meal- sweet! Got me some pineapple juice and rice and some beef, and a little cake. Despite the pineapple juice my record of not having used an airplane bathroom still stands.

The plane takes a flight path following the perimeter of Dalian from the south end, curving along with the water front up the east end, to the north where the airport actually is. Gave a great perspective on the actual size of Dalian- it's not Wuhan big, but there's still a lot to explore.

Slightly fewer fireworks on display- is Dalian less festive, or have we come too late?

We land, and take a crowded bus back to the airport- I'd rather have walked, but that probably isn't an option.

Dany messages Vicky who responds with a sort of crying emoticon, happy we made it back safely. I said to Dany "could you imagine if, after going through all that effort to get us documented, our plane crashed and Vicky had to start over with two new guys?" Dany agreed the thought was funny, which is good, I was a little iffy about the whole "imagine if we died" thing the moment the words left my mouth.

Dany shows me how to use the subway, it's crazy clean and white! Very few ads, and actually pretty user friendly. You pay at a terminal after inputting your destination, so yes, it's distance based, and it prints out a card for you that you swipe to enter the system, and when you get off you pop the card into the appropriate exit and it opens up for you. Apparently the subway only opened last year, so I got here just in time. Good luck, Toronto.

Arriving at the station in front of Roosevelt, and did I say there were fewer fireworks going off? Because it sounds like a warzone out here, the booms are echoing everywhere, very loud, though we don't see many actual firework explosions.

There's weird red paper littering everywhere- leftover firework parts? Confetti? No idea!

Dany and I part ways. There's a guy setting off some fireworks near the street, and there go some more on the other side. In front of my apartment door is a couple with some kind of giant sparkler pointed down in front of them. I edge past and enter the apartment, where they've put up a nice electric cherry tree and some paper decorations with Santa on them wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.

I left note on Iman's door explaining my absence this past weekend.

I take a much needed shower, charge my phone with my new phone usb charger. Experimenting with the phone, I manage to take some video of the fireworks going off in front of my apartment, though I wasn't able to do that when the fireworks were RIGHT in front of my window. Better luck next time.

And that was that day. 11:44 am. How did that take two hours and twenty minutes to do?? Yeesh. No wonder I've fallen behind on these posts- today was probably the easiest day in Wuhan to talk about!