Travel woes

The news just told me that about 170,000 people are stranded at the train station in Guangzhou. Severe weather throughout China has caused huge travel delays leading up to the New Year. Here's more information: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7212823.stm

I'm supposed to be on an 11AM train to Guangzhou tomorrow morning, but I'll be going into a different station than the one people are stranded at.

Update! I didn't go today (Tuesday), after some confusion during which I thought they told me not to come because of severe weather. Weather is supposed to be worse tomorrow, but I'm going anyways, if the trains run. Should be interesting. I'm even getting my own hotel room, since the Expert Room, Guangzhou Edition, isn't ready yet. (And what does that mean??) I am extremely relieved about this because the rooms there aren't heated, and it's in the 40s. I hope that the weather will have warmed up significantly by late February, when I actually start working there.

True happiness!

My new friend William showed me where to buy a box of these! And, he says there's another supermarket that sells American food in giant boxes - like two foot tall boxes of corn flakes. I can't wait to visit!

Makes me think of Fat Ammy's:

Stepping back in time...

... to last Sunday, when I moved into the Expert Room with Miranda's help. We dragged the bags upstairs and found that we couldn't get the gate to the apartment unlocked.

This first picture is the front gate of the building. It is demonstrating how cool and collected I am. After a few minutes of twisting and tugging at the key, both by me and a certified military expert, things are falling apart!




















Anyways, Celeste forgot to tell us about this secret button that actually opens the gate. Once we found her, things were fine. Here are a couple pictures of the Expert Room, or "ER," as it shall now be called:





Laundry censored!

Going to the movies!

I decided to go see My Blueberry Nights tonight. Wong Kar Wai will help me love Hong Kong, won't he? (Oops - I just read that the film is his "love letter to America.") Anyways, I was provoked to blog about this because I see that tickets purchased online include assigned seats. I wish they had this in NYC!

Also, Langham Place, where the film is showing, is a 15 story mall! According to Wikipedia, it includes:

Xpresscalators - The longest escalators within a shopping mall in the territory^[8]. A pair of them is located on the 4th floor leading up to the 8th floor, and another pair leads to the 12th floor. These long escalators have been designed to reduce the "horizontal drift" of shoppers, thus keeping them in the mall^[7].

I hope I can find my way back out of there!

A few photo highlights

In case you don't feel like wading through the hundreds of pictures I've posted on flickr, below are some of my favorite places and pictures from the trip, so far. These aren't necessarily the prettiest pictures - just some things I wanted to remember...

Long Arm

Long Arm
Originally uploaded by Indoor Cat

The Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery exceeds our expectations. We climbed a lot of stairs to see all the statues, but it was totally worth it. Plus, we had adventures with wild monkeys.

Abandoned fishing villages in the New Territories

Another beautiful abandoned building
Originally uploaded by Indoor Cat

Sidney, an anthropologist, takes us on an amazing hike through the parks in the New Territories, as well as Grass Island. We rescue a dandy Dutch soccer stadium architect, who hops a ride back to the mainland on our speedboat.

I love the shark's tooth over the center of this building. I was amazed how similar the plant life was to South Florida: melaleuca (brought to Florida and HK from Australia, I think), bougainvillea, feathery-looking pines, and banyan trees.

Grand Lisboa Casino, Macau: the world's most beautiful bathroom?

The most beautiful bathroom
Originally uploaded by Indoor Cat

Ok... this bathroom might come in 2nd to the Art Nouveau one at the John Brown House, but it's pretty amazing, isn't it? Miranda staged a whole photo shoot around the sinks. The Grand Lisboa Casino was full of spaces like this, plus the most amazing food I've had since I arrived.

Mock Front Desk

Mock front desk
Originally uploaded by Indoor Cat

We toured the Macau Institute for Tourism Studies, which included a working Mock Front Desk, including computerized check-in, sample door locks, etc. My childhood dream! Very Arrested Development, isn't it?

Ferry to Macao

Ferry to Macao
Originally uploaded by Indoor Cat

Hong Kong looks ridiculously picturesque from the sea, and I wasn't even feeling seasick anymore! Just after this, I demonstrated my repertoire of magic tricks for the group and made 10 HKD disappear forever.

Steve and Al

Steve and Al
Originally uploaded by Indoor Cat

From the top of the Museum of Macau, which was filled with some pretty great Disney-esque environments and interactives.

My fascinating adventure with an invection cooktop

Ah, Day 1. The first day went fine (Ikea in a foreign country: check!) until I tried to cook something. I couldn't wait to eat some vegetables that hadn't been drowned in oil and minced pork, but the Chinese buttons on the cooktop (aptly-named, left) were totally incomprehensible. You'd think low, medium, high and on/off would pretty much cover it, right? After pushing buttons in every sequence I could think of, I decided the dirty old thing was broken. It just beeped and beeped.

So, prioritizing my seemingly-urgent need to prepare my own hot food NOW over all logic and sense of economy, I went out and bought a new one. The outside of the box had all its text in English and Chinese, but when I opened it at home (home?), I was caught once again in the mysterious beeping problem. Finally, I made the timer function work. After it counted down to zero, the oiled pan on top of it went from stone cold to scorched and smoking within seconds. Could that be a feature? Can't return the thing now, since I ruined the pot it came with, but I think I'll go crawling back to the store where I purchased it and see if they can talk me through the meaning of the mysterious buttons. Can't imagine any sales clerk in the States bothering with this sort of thing, can you?

Anyways, all of this sent me on a desperate quest for vegetarian food. When my miso soup arrived with delicately rolled anchovies afloat, I called it a night. It seems the day is saved, though, since I just found out I can access someone's wireless from my bedroom! But then another turn of fortune, as I now see that my friend Puipui emailed me to say that I must have my visa to her by today. Sorry, PP, you'll have to wait until tomorrow!