Step 9 - Mao look what you've done!

Okay so it's been awhile since I've posted, here's what has been going on.

Would have been nice if I had managed to smile.

Classes have started. Initially the level of class I was in too easy, but I moved up and I'm feeling a bit happier about where I am. It's still revision in most classes I have, but when you haven't studied in a class for approximately 2 years, that isn't so bad. Annoyingly, the chairs are hard and uncomfortable, the desks are short and small, and the rooms in general being small, stale-aired and unpleasant. The teachers are generally fairly good at engaging the class and keeping things fun/interesting, but somewhat concerningly, they all speak with a strong Sichuan accent and pronounciation. I wouldn't care except this is a little different from actual Mandarin/Beijing dialect, which has led to confusion on more than one occasion. At this stage I'm thinking that I might move to Beijing, or another northern city after a year in Chengdu. To be honest the thought has crossed my mind of possibly moving even sooner than that, after 6 months perhaps. I'm in no rush to go through the pains of moving again though, so we'll just see how it goes.

Hard to tell, but there's a lot of people and a lot of kids in there.

I bought a phone. It's okay. It has some smart stuff that I like (eg, being able to select which days of the week an alarm will go off for), some stuff that I don't like (eg, the *, 0 and # keys are aligned vertically on the right hand side of the keypad), and some stuff I don't really get (it can use 2 sim cards, at the same time). I'm kind of disappointed that phones aren't as cheap as I had hoped (my phone was $399 kuai, or about $70 Australian). Apparently there are markets where they can be found for cheaper, but I don't know where they are, or if they exist in Chengdu. Time will tell.

Fire-Truck water: The Thirst Quencher.

I still don't have a bike. I'll hopefully remedy this soon. Apparently the best place to buy one is on 'Stolen Bike' street. The name is concerning. Half expect I'll buy a bike and then have it stolen, only to go shopping the next day and buy it back. Till then, I'm walking. I'm not sure I've done this much walking on this frequent a basis before, which leads me onto my next point.

New windows, China style.

I still don't have new shoes. This is bad because my current shoes aren't really good for walking long distances in. The problem is finding shoes large enough - anything over size 9 is fairly rare, and I tend to wear 10-12. At a store yesterday I managed to find a pair of size 11's, but they were in a really lame design and quite expensive ($299 kuai, $50 Aus). Maybe I'm complaining a bit too much when it's only $50 Australian, but I should be able to find/get shoes around $50-$100 kuai - I don't care if they're fake and I don't care if they're not a 'brand-name'. Some fake stuff has amused me. 'Adidsa' anyone?

I'm still pissed off at the general 'authorities' here. I had been told that to be able to use the canteens on campus, I would first need to have my Student ID, then get an electronic canteen swipe-card. Turns out that I actually don't need the student ID, I can just ask for a note that says I'm a student and that will suffice for getting the canteen swipe-card. So I've been here for nearly a month now, having to trek off campus to get decent meals (at greater expense than canteen food), when I didn't need to. Why? Because what the International Student Office told me was just plain wrong. Guess where I got the note for the canteen from? The International Student Office. *Sigh*

 Mao to meet you!

Speaking of contradictions, remember me complaining about mosquitoes and cockroaches in my room? Remember what advice I was given by the front desk of the Overseas Student Dormitory? If you don't, that advice was to burn incense/mosquito coils. Yesterday they inspected the room while we were out, and confiscated the mosquito coils. They called us today and told us that they weren't allowed (fire risk?). *Sigh*

Getting really sick of them bullshitting me. I'm not sure if this should make me feel better or worse, but from the stories I hear, it's not just me rough end of the stick. Everyone has their own stories of how various departments have screwed them around. In short, unless something magical happens to change my mind (maybe they will rescue me from a burning building with flying unicorns, who knows), I would advise people to avoid Sichuan University staff, wherever possible. The less contact, the less chance they have of being unhelpful/misleading/wrong.

On to more positive stuff - I walked to the centre of the city (Tianfu Square) with an Austrian chick, and found it relatively nice. While there's a lot of unattractive concrete, there are some trees/gardens around, with a few statues etc. Including of course, the ever-present spectre, Mao Zedong. The main attraction of the place for me was that it was quite eerily quiet. The sounds of the city and traffic suddenly become muted and distant, making it an awesome place to have a seat and rest your legs. On a side note, plenty of security around. Their camoflaged uniforms and serious weapons (shotguns reminding me of Spaz-9's) were quite eyecatching next to the flower gardens.

Went to a whole-sale store yesterday with Jonas, Mike and Patrick. It wasn't that much cheaper for many items, but the sheer size of the place and the range of products made the trip worthwhile. We bought everything from a coal-fired barbeque to spirits to meat to chicken nuggets to a phone. In short, there's a lot there. The other major drawcard is that membership isn't open to that many people - it was the shortest time I've spent in a queue in China yet. You either have to own a business or be a foreign student to be allowed access. I'm guessing it's because we are interested in imported goods and have the money to buy them. The downside is that with shopping bags being banned in major food outlets, we had to perhaps several canvas shopping bags to transport the !!2000!! kuai worth of groceries back to the apartment. Probably the most amusing purchase was 2 cloves of garlic, at a cost of 7 fen, approximately 0.0127 Australian cents. There was some relatively cheap vodka - a bottle Stolichnaya for 80 kuai/$14 Australian?

Not exactly sure what the building is, but they sure light it up nicely.

Anyway, the evening progressed on with us constructing the BBQ at 10pm, cooking fish and nachos and frying some chicken nuggets and cheese and toast sandwhichs, all downed with hearty helpings of drink. Concerningly, the Chinese don't often use tin-foil, which was kind of essential for our plans with the BBQ. Mike had to visit something like 6 convenience stores before finding one which stocked a small roll of the stuff.

That's enough for now, see you all later.