Banks... again

The last couple of days I have been mainly spending time at home and relaxing. Most of the shops have opened now, so I head to my local noodle shop every day for my 3RMB noodles. This is the best deal around town that you will find and the noodles are much better than other more expensive places that I have visited. Therefore this has become my local now. For 5.50RMB I can have a beer and a bowl of noodles! In some shops this is the price of one single beer. So I am a local there now and every now and again me and the shop owners share a couple of words.

I am sitting in McDonald’s at the moment for a coffee. They serve the best coffee in town. I have been told that KFC has good coffee as well, so I will need to venture there sometime to see if the information is correct. But for time being I am a McDonald’s fan and client. I don’t eat there, I just drink their coffee. This is the couple of minutes I grant myself in the western world, sitting in McDonald’s with a coffee in hand and typing on my laptop. There is probably some other places around that serve good coffee, but their prices are ridiculous.

Sorry for the delay, it is now two days after I initially started writing the top two paragraphs. My computer just crashed on me in McDonald’s. Or rather the battery ran out. It used to have a battery life of 2 hours, but it looks like I might need a new battery as it only lasts 10 minutes now. Good thing it is "Made in China", might be able to get a good deal here. Things are going great here apart from the Banks that are still killing me. You need to know that when you travel from province to province the same bank’s branches are not connected. I found this out the hard way only to wait a week for my money from Shanxi province and for the service charge of 45RMB. Oh yes, and you have to cough up the money first before they will do your transaction. Mmm… it was also a good thing my Chinese is very bad otherwise I would have said a couple of things to the cashier that I would have later regretted. I think my translator saw the anger and the good thing is that she understood the frustration as she had a running with a bank a while ago.

Well, to put it like this. Someone stole her wallet with all her cards and money. So she headed to the bank to close her account only to find that she is not able to close her account without her ID card, and off course her ID card was in her wallet which got stolen. You see the frustration!! So she had to go to a different province, get a new ID card and close her account. They don’t just cancel the old card and give you a new one, no; you have to open a new account. So a week later she cancelled her account, opened a new account which cost her 10RMB and got a card which cost her another 10RMB. Ohh.. I would have been red in the face. Maybe this is a good place to work on patience.

Linyi City, Shandong Province, China

Closed, closed closed

It has been a quiet couple of days. As some of you might know, it is Chinese New Year and I have to admit that they have a much bigger party than the Westerners. It is to such an extend that you need to stock your house with food as you won't find any shops open. I mainly spent my New Years lazying at home, preparing for my studies for this term, watched Chinese television and drank beer. I am thinking of changing my diet from a coffee one to beer diet as this is much cheaper. Before i drink a cooldrink in this country I always go for a beer first. It is amazing to see the difference in price!! Just to give you an idea... one decent coffee goes for the price of 6-7 beers.

I don't really have too much to talk about as I was locked in my room for most of the time apart from getting lunch. To my surprise I found a couple of street vendors that were selling food. Most foreigners would not necessarily buy food from street vendors as this might not be seen as the cleanest. But like I said, I am no longer a foreigner in this country. So I went for it!! Up until now I haven't had any food poisoning or anything yet, "touch wood". And, I am planning to keep it like this for as long as possible.

Yesterday one of the shops which is a muslim food shop opened its doors for service again. I got my Mandarin together and decided to go eat something there. To my surprise they understood everything that I said. First I asked if they had a certain dish, and the chef confirmed that they had it. Then I said to him that I would like 1 dish. He then looked at me and said in Mandarin that there are two, one goes for 3Yuan and the other for 5Yuan. How I knew that he said this I don't know, but I ordered the 5Yuan bowl. I have been spending many hours listening to a Mandarin podcast and I am also spending quite a couple of hours in front of the television listening if I can hear what people are saying in Mandarin. There is one tv series that I am watching and sort of getting into. Catching a word every now and again I build the rest of the story with my own ideas and words.

I will probably be spending the rest of the month planning my studies, learning Mandarin and visiting shops practising my non-existing Mandarin.

(Linyi City, Shandong Province, China)