February 13th, 2016

February 13th, 2016

Now I'm cheating in a whole new way, I've caught up on all my past posts (I feel like I must have skipped something important, but I guess not) and ordinarily I'd wait until after midnight or tomorrow morning (i.e. the 13th) to do my write up about the 12th, but I do in fact have work tomorrow, 9 am, and the early Saturday always messes up my post writing, so let's knock this one out and be free and clear for the future.

So, it's 9:39 pm on the 12th, talking about the 12th.

Besides copious blog post writing, both late at night and first thing in the morning- I began so many paragraphs with "So" and "We"- it's bad enough when I use "I" to start my paragraphs non stop, but these were really bugging me. It's possible I wrote too much too quickly to allow for proper stylistic creativity. Very possible.

Uh, anyways, BESIDES copious blog post writing, I ran through my exercises here for an hour and ten minutes, and yeesh I smelled bad. I think my room was too hot last night and it got me sweating, I don't know how to turn off any heat, so I've resorted to opening my window and shoving all the heat outside. You know, like how if you want to keep your place cool you just leave the refrigerater door open!

I walked to the north side of my apartment building, and Aiman was correct, a grocery store right here. I'll have to compare prices when it's opened- currently a victim of Spring Festival closures. I also took a look where some loud fireworks were going off earlier, and yes, there's that red confetti like business. Fireworks are messy man.

Circling around towards Roosevelt, there's Aiman and a friend of his coming into the apartment. They invite me to join them, but I was just leaving- I really need to go eat something more than my apartments collection of oatmeal or bananas. So many bananas. By this point I've had two bananas, and I have the third when I return home. Three bananas a day to get rid of the bunch before they go bad... it's too many, I'm bananaed out.

Despite my feeling fat-esque, I grabbed a lot at Food Bazzar- the tomato soup type thing I like, some sweet and sour pork business, and I THINK tofu in the shape of little bits of rubber- with a realistic rubber taste and everything! Ah, it wasn't that bad, but it was definitely weird.

I decided to get my haircut at the Carrefour place- but let's ask about the price BEFORE I sit in any chair. I take out my notebook and write what they appear to sign, and show it back to them: 50 yuan- is that right? Yeah. Eh, okay, let's go for it.

Before I arrived the three men in the barber place were sitting in a circle playing some card game, someone was smoking a cigarette too, but once I showed up they go into action. The one guy took my stuff and put them into a locker, leaving the key for me to hold, safely wrapped around my wrist on a uh, you know, plastic, key ring, sort of scrunchy thing. Technical term. Then I get my hair washed- warm water. Definitely need to get me some warm water going at the apartment. Then another guy handles the cutting part, he's got the clippers and suggests number three- he says three in English- but I say number one. Then I confuse the issue by saying "not zero". Whoops. Number one, number one, focus on that. Listen, it's all good- worse case scenario, I leave here with no hair. That's cool too.

His clippers were very smooth, everything about this haircut was light and soft, fingertips holding my egg of a head in place. Despite Aiman's warning to the contrary, he moved on to buzz my beard down. I thought the area just above my ears was a little dark relative to the rest of my head and face, and he dutifully went back over that area. There was one dark spot that wouldn't go away- but that was just my head with a mole or something. I lost a little more beard than I was expecting, but I'm actually really happy with how the whole experiment turned out. And then after, I went and got my hair washed again. Talk about decadence, washing about an 8th of an inch of hair on a balding head.

Don't quote me on that number, that's the roughest of pure guesswork.

Paying up, I left without entering Carrefour itself- and was then invited over by a purveyor of food stuffs. But I said no thanks!

I decided to do some hard walking east along Huanghe Lu for twenty minutes, then I'd turn north and see about getting back to my apartment in forty minutes- I wanted a good hour long walk. Surprisingly, the road I took north curved so much that, instead of heading north I wound up back on Xi'an Lu on the street with the Wal-Mart. I ended up back at my apartment ten minutes earlier than I'd planned, but considering I didn't really know where I was or where I was going, that worked out perfectly.

Having done a good job of sweating through my shirt, I changed, and then dropped in on Aiman- no answer, but apparently I just didn't wait long enough, because after getting back to my apartment, recording a video of my cleaned up place and then changing into pyjamas I got a knock on the door from Aiman. Seems I woke him up- whoops!- and he was wondering if I'd be up for a walk about. I thanked him, but I was definitely not up for it, having just returned from one, and being all pj'd up and whatnot. He was about to leave when I remembered to ask where I could deposit my empty water bottles and stuff so I could complete my straightening out process. I broke a personal rule by following Aiman out into the hall in my bare feet (it's okay, I was due to chop off my feet and get brand new ones anyways) but he showed me the smelly room I was to take advantage of. From outside the room I tossed in an empty water bottle. Just a downpayment.

I returned to my apartment, had that last, horrible banana, and shaved the ol' neck before throwing on some laundry. That mundane stuff. Er, well, it should be mundane, but it's still something of an adventure every time I do laundry- today it stopped and had some odd message on the display. Once again, I pressed buttons until the thing started working again. Thankfully I haven't had a repeat performance of the water not being properly rinsed out of the machine.

I also took a last minute video of some fireworks outside my window again- and before anyone tells me so (assuming I get these videos posted somewhere they can be seen in conjunction with my blog posts, I didn't actually think about that) I know all my videos play sideways. I have no idea why that happens... er, I guess the recording is supposed to always be done with the phone on its side, instead of held upright like I've been doing? Is that it?

Well, whatever. Good night! 10:41 pm on the 12th

exercise, haircut, walk, quick recording, Aiman visit, plastic bottle drop off point, finish those horrible bananas- three in a day is too many