February 10th, 2016

(Substitute Editor's note: I have fallen behind in posting these for Isaac. My apologies. -G)

8:53 pm on the 12th, talking about the ninth.

I knock on Aiman's door right at 1pm. Man, I'm punctual.

We go to a random phone store, it's connected to the shopping center with the Wal-Mart, but we were basically just getting suggestions for where to go- just south of Roosevelt to China Mobile.

The China Mobile place is on top of another phone store, and has kiosks to choose a number, you get your ID scanned, and then, uh, you get a phone that calls people. Sounds easy, right? Well, not when your ID at the moment is a photocopy of your passport. Sure, it was good enough to fly back to the city, but try and do something serious like get a phone? Forget it!

We crossed the street to try China Unicom or whatever it's called, citing the fact that I don't give up easy- but it was closed for Spring Festival. Honestly, it was surprising that China Mobile as open. Aiman commented on the sad expression of the worker we were talking with, that she didn't want to be there during the holidays at all.

So that's it- unless my Web co-workers can pull some kind of strings for me, I'm stuck without a phone until my passport comes back- and that's supposed to be three weeks... AFTER Spring Festival of course. So that's a whole other month sans phone. Come on, man, you kind of need a phone to have any kind of social life- to say nothing of the maps and translation services that would really help me out.

We stopped at Food Bazzar where I offered to get Aiman something, but he turned it down, suggesting maybe I can treat him AFTER I get a phone. Sounds good to me.

We take the tram to uh, whatever that square is called, the People's Square? It's the area with the carnival rides by the beach at south Dalian. I tell ya, it's a lot quicker to get there when you aren't stopping every few minutes to check out the surroundings, and when you take the tram.

The Square is packed with people celebrating the holidays, people are flying kites, there was a jogger, a rare sight here, a giant book people could walk on- there are no gates or fences or anything, so it's super dangerous. We climbed up to the edge of the pages- Aiman had to give me a little push because my shoes didn't have the traction to keep climbing, at the angle we were at I just slid down even if I was standing still. (Barely) I made it to the top to see, yikes, that is a drop on the other side! And after sliding back down and crossing to the other side, Aiman pointed out how the steps are only in the one area-- if you didn't notice that you could also take a hard fall there. Crazy dangerous!

Between the giant book and the waterfront the first thing I was interested in was this toy pony ride- these kids sit on this fake pony and sort of go up and down, pumping the mechanism to move forward. It was really cool, but possibly a less effecient form of travel than walking. The jury is still out on this one.

That was on the right, to the left were people whipping giant (less than a foot, but still up there) tops to keep them spinning. Again, very dangerous. Especially with those whippers that weren't so good at it- they'd keep knocking their tops into crowds of people.

We wandered around the rides, saw these two dogs leashed together such that the on behind hardly had to walk, it just sort of leapt and the other dog did the work.

Crossing back over, past the rides, past the tops, past the book and ponies, was a picturesque street in front of some new, swanky residential homes. I guess I could've just said homes. We passed a guy flying his drone way out towards the bridge in the distance (Aiman said bikes aren't allowed on it, but you can run it if you want- something like 7 km, totally do-able), and kept on the path until we entered a sort of waterpark, like if Ontario Place didn't charge admission, exhorbitant or otherwise. So, you know, a better business model. I tried to take a picture of a seal or walrus or whatever it is, but I didn't end up getting a good shot. I took a bunch of pictures I hope Cool Geoff will like, well, we'll see.

We run into a countryman of Aiman's (he knows a lot of fellow country men in Dalian it seems) at a dinosaur exhibit/statue with his family- there are a lot of touristy foreigners here. Curse 'em!

An opera singing granny (I probably wouldn't have gone with granny, but I'm co-opting the designation) noticed us noticing her- she stopped singing and loudly said something like "hello foreigners" in Chinese. It was easy for me to pretend not to understand on account of not speaking the language, and Aiman followed suit because once you start talking to a granny, he says, you're stuck.

The sound of whips cracking in the air reached us once again from further ahead. While one person was spinning a top, three others seemed to be practicing a martial art with some pretty serious looking whips. There was one old guy that was really into it, stertched out fingers like he's about to lightning bend, but then he tried a move where he tosses the whip into the air and he didn't make the catch. Embarrassing.

Aiman and I hop a bus to the nearest subway station, he goes home and I stop at Carrefour for water, and I consider getting a haircut but instead I buy scissors to do some easier beard trimming.

I take some photos of the north end entrance of Roosevelt Plaza, and take a picture with a random woman, so that was cool.

I get back to my apartment building just as Aiman and another friend of his are leaving the place, and I go up to record a video of my apartment in its messy state before I straighten the place out a bit.

I think that's everything- I kept things pretty short for this one, considering all the sights at the beach and whatnot. 9:35 pm.