Sunday - Sunday

Okay, it's Sunday and the time change has moved to 12 hours so it should be much easier to remember the time difference, no math involved, look at my watch and change am to pm or visa-versa.

Today I went out on my own (I'm a big boy) to get some things done. I waited until the cleaning crew arrived and then I headed out to Singa Plaza with 3 goals. 1) Make sure my ATM card works before I run too far down on cash. It does work so Item #1- completed. 2) Look at the DVD store and see what I could find. I've had my eye on the Simpsons DVD set that covers Seasons 1 - 18 (mmmm, donuts!). They had the DVD but no price listed so I bypassed it. I know what it costs at other places and so I kinda looked and thought that perhaps I would wait for a little longer. There is a part of me that believes I need to avoid these things in order to allow me to do other stuff, TV can help pass the time but I should do something constructive. Before I left, I noticed the 24 box set; Seasons 1 - 6....only 90 RMB (less than $14). I love 24 and I never saw all of the episodes for the first couple of seasons, in fact I missed the endings of nearly all of the seasons. Ok, I'll get that and have something to fall back on (plus you never know if Jack Bauer is around the corner waiting to put you in the sleeper hold; of course in reality Keifer would need a stepladder to reach your neck [step away from my Lucky Charms]). Nice, double paranthesis...did you follow that one? 3) pick up some groceries. I went to Summit and walked through the market and picked up some real basics. A little pasta, spag. sauce, can of soup, laundry detergent and a few other things. I didn't buy much since I have to carry it all back the 15 minutes to the Chateau. I figure I can always make a couple of trips and each time pick up a few more things and eventually I might have what I need to survive. There's a small store here at the Chateau as well so I've got that to fall back on. Although, nearly everything there is labeled in Chinese so if I can't tell what the photo is, I'd better not get it. Did you know that Campbells sells Oxtail soup in a can? Oh yeah, Mmm, Mmm, good. There was some odd stuff but there's enough to feed the Westerners if they don't mind paying for the stuff. I don't shop much at home (check that...I never shop at home for groceries) so like the politicians in Washington, I have no idea how much stuff costs at the stores. Some things there I thought were expensive but I'll have to wait for Tammy to let me know if I'm right. Just as an example, a can of minestrone soup (like Progresso but anothe brand) was $4.67...seems a bit steep. A small jar of Prego was about $4.20...again seemed on the high side to me. On the other hand, Gatorade was about 70 cents for a medium sized drink (it was in Chinese so I don't know what the size was), defintely less expensive than the US.

I did laundry (ooohh, tell me more Mr. Exciting) and worked on my Chinese a little bit. The washer/dryer combination is really bad. It washes the clothes fine but it takes forever to dry them. Not to mention that it's very small and anything past 1 days worth of clothes seems to be too much to handle (I had 3 days worth). I had to essentially wash the clothes and then dry them in small batches. I had partially dry stuff hanging in the apartment, crazy but you do what you need to do. I'll start doing laundry every night and keeping on top of that to prevent this from happening again. I stayed in tonight and had pasta for dinner, you can't go out every night. Last night I went out with Steve & Sharon to The People's Kitchen (sounds about right doesn't it). It's a little bit away from the standard Westernized eateries but not too far. They had Delicious Frog on the menu (as opposed to gross frog I guess), pig's stomach, goat and (cover your eyes pet lovers) rabbit and dog on the menu. It didn't say fragrant beef (sorry I don't remember the exact verbage) but it was close enough that you knew it wasn't beef. I could be wrong but I don't think I am. Anyhow, the food was fantastic. Mountain Noodle Soup; spicey broth with noodles (duh), Sesame Chicken (sorry Golden Buddha but you don't know how to make this....seriously, get a cookbook or something), thin potatoe strings with spicey sauce, sweet corn pancake (think of a waffle looking thing filled with kernels of corn) which tasted much Corn Pops but better, chicken with broccoli, eggplant with soy, and another veggie dish. I think in total we have about 7 or 8 different things we ordered and just picked through the plates. It was really good, it may be a hole in the wall joint but they know how to cook. I'll have to find this place again. The best part was it cost 122 RMB, less than $20 for 3 people to eat and still have food leftover to take home. It cost me 60 RMB to eat by myself at Jack's Home on Thursday night. It just further proves that if you live like a local, you can save yourself a lot of cash.

Anyhow, I'm going to wrap this one up and get ready for some sleep (perhaps 1 more hour of Bauer).