March 1st, 2016

March 1st, 2016

(Relieved and confused editor's notes: Oh, good, the 29th, and I see I am referenced in the entry! Makes sense.)

10:07 am on the 3rd, talking about February 29th.

After a week of being sick and not exercising, I wanted to do something physical. Throwing on my long johnny's and shorts, the sweater lining of my winter gear, and my toque, I went for a jog north. It wasn't quite warm enough for my hands, I should have brought gloves, but other than that I was okay, and I quickly warmed up.

I set my clock to tell me after a half an hour, and the time hit just as I was leaving a standard area of buildings- after this point everything was starting to get spaced further apart, like I wasn't in the city anymore, a more suburban area. Up ahead there was a roundabout with some cartoon whale figure that I'm sure Cool Geoff would have liked a picture of. 

The alarm went off and I was all set to turn around and have an easy walk back the way I came... but, eh, I decided to walk west instead. I live dangerously.

The road must have curved south ahead, because there was a sign ahead that read 10 km to Shinghai park, which I'm pretty sure is that square at the waterfront, i.e. south. I was walking along a main street, blocked from walking south by a train track fence, when I found some stairs to go underneath the tracks and come out the other side. It only smelled vaguely sewerish, which is much better than expected. The tunnel was only about 5 meters before exiting by some factory smokestack. Surprisingly, it didn't smell like much of anything, despite the piles of garbage (are they burning garbage here?) and the burnt up SOMETHING dropping off a conveyor belt to the outside.

Ah, the wind turned. Smells bad. Could still be worse... this is the only advantage in having taken shifts at a pig slaughtering plant, you get a whole new measure of what smells bad at a factory. There are plenty of disadvantages.

I walked through an open air marketplace with plenty of fish and pieces of meat hanging around. The baked goods were tempting.

I hung a left, trying to keep my barings- I was pretty sure I was still headed south. I popped out at a Wal-Mart I had passed on Xi'an Lu before, before getting a friendly "hello" from a kid wearing a Space Deleter backpack (Power Rangers/Sentai rip-off).

There were two more strange entrances that I had to check out on my way home, both of which led to more crammed to the brim sales floors, the one had more food, like a supermarket without any sense of walls (there were walls though, just far away) and the other, just north of my apartment, had a second floor full of school supplies and toys and a lotof kids blocking the tight aisles. I cut my exploration short to go home and attempt to peel off my sweater lining- my twist-tie zipper had recently come off, the remains of which I keep in my back pocket if I ever risk it and zip this sweater closed, but if I can't thread the remains of the twist tie properly I may end up entombed within that sweater. It's possible I should buy a new one, with a functioning zipper puller. Zipper head. Zipper lock/unlock device. Thingy. Add it to the list of things I should get.

Ooh, I thought I saw some good looking collections of bed sheets in the one marketplace, that may come in handy later.

I shower and go to Roosevelt for food, where I was invited to eat with a young woman named Lina who works at a mens clothing store in Roosevelt. I assumed she was a new student when she invited me over, but nope- fairly decent English for someone who isn't studying it though. She has short, somewhat spiky hair, except for a thick braid of longer hair- a very bold style. We had a simple conversation before she awkwardly left- I kind of love how awkward people are here about leaving conversations, "well, I have to leave now, so, bye". But she returned to give me a bottle of coke and we waved goodbye again.

Whoo, I don't know if I'm un-used to coke or if it's different here in China but that is SWEET. Like I could feel the drink draining the life force out of my enamel.

I drank about half before I had to screw on the bottle and take a break.

At Roosevelt I internet surfed and answered various questions from people. Ivy came by and said hello, and I asked what happened the previous night. "Ohh, I didn't go, I stayed home." Well, I guess I don't have to worry about romantic intentions from Ivy after all, so that's good, but, you know, I rather thought my days of getting stood up were over. Guess not.

Bradley also wanted to talk about the idea of "design", and, amongst other words, I introduced "aesthetic". It was cool, man.

And Stella had some questions about some phrases contestants on The Apprentice used- "she couldn't sell her way out of a paperbag". So I got to explain that it was a bit of a mixed metaphor because the phrase is "she couldn't find her way out of a paperbag", but, unsurprisingly, the people on The Apprentice will get it wrong because they're reality tv contestants, i.e. people that make grandiose, "cool" sounding statements that are ultimately backwards and/or straight up idiotic. I didn't use those words at the time.

Ah, but it seems she missed out on the "it's not rocket science" phrase and a student had to correct her on the meaning. Ouch. Yup, that's why I talk about Hamlet- too tough for any student to possibly correct me! HA HA HA 

Okay, that's all I remember. - 10:56 am