Greetings esteemed avid readers!
Apologies it has been so long for an update, I have been on the Trans-Siberian Express across Russia, and haven't had reliable access to the Intarwebz and now am in China, the home of the GFWoC aka the Great Firewall of China (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall_of_China), which blocks most things related to Google, the word "blog", the word "proxy", the word "Python 2.6.4" and anything else that I deem to be useful or helpful. So updates to this blog have been very scarce. My apologies again. Today I have found a reliable-ish proxy (I keep getting a "The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading" message every now and then though.
It's been a while since I wrote anything, but have been keeping a diary of events that have occurred. Here are a few entries. I also made a video diary of Russia, however, due to the GFWoC, access to YouTube is prohibited and uploading them through a proxy would literally take days.
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25th August 2010
I have now left Moscow after spending 2 and a half days here. It has been such a different experience. Amazing and also a bit scary. My flight was delayed and I had problems with security at Lisbon airport and also at Moscow. It was a nightmare. I was treated like a terrorist.
I have had such a brilliant 3 weeks. I am just under a month now into my "3 months of not working, at least" and it does feel pretty good. But I mention it because today I got one of those feelings that sometimes you get where you miss working and almost feel like that you've had enough of a break from work and you would like to go back. These feelings happen to everyone and only probably last a minute, but a few times in one day. Mine happened today; first when I was looking out of the window at Moscow; 2nd time on the train and 3rd when I was in the reception of the hotel watching Russians on what looked like business trips.
I can feel that I have quite a melancholy attitude at the moment. Probably due to the excitement and apprehension, tiredness and not being able to speak Russian or chat to people. And I have forgotten to get a fork and spoon and bring some sort of pillow, which the other occupants of this cabin have. It isn't too bad though, as my cabin is opposite a power point. Each cabin doesn't have a power point, and the corridor only seems to have 2 (which makes probably 20 people per power point per carriage).
I am in a cabin sharing with a lady and her 2 kids. She looks a bit younger than me and her kids - 1 boy and 1 girl. The boy is pretty well behaved and is just sleeping. He's probably 5 years old. The little girl is about 2 or 3 and randomly screaming and chatting in baby Russian. The mum is now reading a story to the young girl. Hopefully I will get some sleep! She can't speak English either, and I can hardly speak Russian (apart from common politeness). We managed to communicate enough to ascertain that the bunk above me is not being used. This was through pointing at it, pointing at numbers pointing at each other and saying "me" in both English and Russian.
There seems to be no other English people in the same carriage as me. They're all Russian or German. I did see a couple that looked Australian from the same hotel I was staying at, but they also looked German and were with a German tour group. I had an explore earlier. There was one English girl I met at the station, but she was in carriage 14 or something. I'm in carriage 1. There are around 20 carriages. It took nearly 10 minutes to walk the length of the train as my carriage was the furthest one away from the start of the platform. Tomorrow I will probably go on a wander to see if I can find some other English people.
---
After thoughts:
In total (I tried to count the people that I engaged in pseudo-Russian/English conversation with), I have met only 2 British people in 2 weeks, 2 French people, 6 Danish people, 2 Czech guys, about 10 Chinese people and about 150 Russians.
Oh, and if you’re wondering, I did eventually find a pillow and blanket. Each bed has a pillow and blanket, it was just hidden away. And I learnt the Russian for “please give me a fork/knife/plate/bowl/spoon”.
Oh and also at around 10pm the next evening I discovered a power point in my room! 2 days in to the journey and I have just discovered it... Well, there was one opposite my room. I had something plugged into that, but the provodnista (the designated carriage attendant for the whole journey), Natasha, walked past and showed me the power point hidden under a plastic cover under the table in my cabin...
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26th August 2010
A pretty strange experience just now. I was drinking with these 2 Russian guys (Alexander and Oleg). Beer and vodka. And eating snacks with them. Having a nice chat, showing pictures to each other of our families and girlfriends and wives. I went to their cabin that they were sharing with 2 old ladies, and we were getting along really well - despite our awful knowledge of each others languages. We then started talking to this guy from the Russian army (who wouldn't let me take his picture or get his real name - it was a "secret"...), from a city called Perm. It was his stop to get off. As we were talking people kept saying "no drink". To me it seemed. I wasn't sure what this meant. Was it that I shouldn't drink more, or others couldn't drink more? Maybe they were afraid that I would miss my stop. So I went back to the cabin of the Russian guys that I was drinking with and they gave me one more drink of vodka then said that I should leave. I left then they met me again going towards the smoking area. Again with the guy Alex, we had a chat (pigeon Russian and English again) and then managed to understand that Alex was going to bed....at 6pm....and we would meet tomorrow to take some pictures. All I could do was go to my cabin. The guy from the army "Sergei" (apparently) could speak a bit more English, so he told me a few things about Russian culture. We were drinking vodka and he said "one man drinking alone is an alcoholic, two men drinking are not alcoholics"! And also another bit of Russian culture; we were standing outside of the train at his stop, and he pointed at this walkway-bridge going across the tracks. Only a few people were using this walkway, and about 30 people were running across the tracks to get to the train. He said that this is typical Russian culture. He also told me that there were foreigners 6 carriages along. He also told me to that I shouldn't drink!
Alexander (or Sahsa, is 36 years old. He is a train driver from a place called Sha-hun-ye, near to Nizhy Novgorod and is travelling to a place near to the Chinese boarder in south eastern Russia called Magdagachi). With his basic English, and my even more basic Russian we managed to communicate. We talked about our families (he has a wife and a 2 year-old son) and showed pictures of our families to each other.
---
After thoughts:
I experienced a lot of this "subversive culture" in lots of places in Russia. In Moscow I was walking about and walked past this heavily armed building, which I thought was some sort of government building. Guys with AK-47s, grenades strapped to their bandoleers and full combat gear. I later found out that this was just an really expensive hotel!! I also went on a "secret" tour of Moscow, conducted by these 2 students that I met. One a rocket scientist and the other involved in business. They both could speak English quite well. They took me on a big tour of Moscow, to lots of back-streets and underground places to experience the real Moscow. It was amazing. We also met up with a friend of theirs, did some mandatory drinking of alcohol, and saw more heavily guarded KGB buildings and one of the highlights for me....Metro 2...a "secret" underground train system for government officials ONLY! The stations are deep, deep underground and are accessible by huge water-tower-like structures, also heavily guarded; you are not supposed to take pictures of (even rummaging in your bag near to a Metro 2 station arouses suspicion it seems) and just look like building sites (apart from the big widened "M" demarking them)
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29th August 2010
One of the things that really attracted me about the Trans-Siberian railway was the chance to see one of the most desolate and lonely landscapes in the world. I was also expecting to feel a temporary sense of desolation and loneliness too, but this has not been the case. Pretty much all the people that I have met have been really friendly and welcoming. The Russian people I have met have been quite well mannered, with a strong sense of etiquette and politeness. They all say "please", even the immigrants who do not speak Russian as their first language. Quite a contrast to life in the UK, where a lot of the immigrants and some native people are quite rude. It seems that you cannot live a proper life in Russia or be held in any serious regard and get along with the local people without politeness.
An example is today. I am in Listvyanka, a village on the south-western edge of Lake Baikal. I walked along the shore after lunch and decided to stop for a beer. I managed to buy one even though the guy serving me didn't understand my Russian. He spoke a little English though. I then sat down at a table, but didn't read the sign saying that I had to pay to sit at the table. So a guy came over and asked me to pay. He looked Arabic. But he had a clipboard and gave me a ticket for the table, and had obviously asked how to say "100" in English. I paid him. Then about 20 minutes later this guy and his wife and child came over and asked me something in Russian. I replied "sorry, i don't understand. Can you speak English?", and his reply was "nyet" and then laughed with his wife about something and they walked away. The guy who I bought the beer from then came over to my table and said "2 people. They sit here?" and pointed at the spare seats on my table. They then came over and sat down, but it was about 5 people. Husband, wife, young daughter, and their brother it looked like, and his wife. They sat down and said "thanks for letting them sit there" in Russian, and I asked the usual "do you speak English?". No; of course. So we just smiled at each other. Meanwhile, the people on the table behind me were laughing, and the girl at another table was also laughing at this situation. Eventually I finished my drink and left. They all said good bye to me, and one of the girls even could say "goodbye" in English.
I met Andrei and Sergei today. Andrei is my guide in this area that i am in. He showed me around the museum next to where I am staying. It's a research centre for Lake Baikal. I then went to a lovely little restaurant where I ate 3 courses of fish-based food. Fish sourced in Lake Baikal. I had beautiful sushi, followed by a fish soup, followed by grilled fish rolled up, stuffed with what tasted like cheese and herbs with potato cakes, parsley and what I think was tamarind paste. It was really good.
I am staying in the house of this guy Valerya. I am the only person here and he lives
somewhere else, so I pretty much have this flat to myself. He came round and cooked dinner for me tonight. It was strange, as he cooked, then left. Like my own personal chef. Some sort of spicy soup with rice, meat and potatoes in gravy, a roll stuffed with potato, a cinnamon-type roll, a few biscuits and this fudge-like chocolate, and some tea.
I also made a few videos today. One of the sunset over Lake Baikal from the beach. However, I went out thinking that I had packed my torch, and as it got darker and I got 15 minutes into my filming, I realised that I didn't actually have a torch with me. The path that I had come on was pretty precarious; bordered on one side by a rocky and tree-lined drop into the 5 degree centigrade water and a good way to drown through paralysis caused by a broken neck, and on the other side was a crash barrier and a road where there didn't seem to be a speed limit.Cars would overtake 3 at a time and for some reason I was really alarmed by the knowledge that MOTs don't seem to exist in Russia. So, unfortunately I had to abandon my filming of the sunset and walk 20 minutes back along the ever increasingly dark path/road. I first walked along the path next to the drop but a car hurtling towards me made me look up from my careful steps and then the final straw was when I slipped on some gravel on a part of the path that had a camber towards the big drop. So I devised a system of walking until I saw a car and then would stop and try to get behind the crash barriers (concrete blocks). 40 minutes later I eventually made it home safely.
---
After thoughts:
Uhhh, not many really. I'm glad I wrote this diary entry so descriptively. One thing that sticks in my head – we were driving through Irkutsk the next day (me, Andrei, Sergei) and got stuck in horrendous traffic for about 20 minutes). Andrei turned to me and started asking me about how attractive do I think Russian women are. I answered very positively, and Andrei turned to Sergei, said something, they both laughed and silence for a minute, then Andrei turned back to me and said “Sergei here calls all beautiful women ‘ovens’”. Do you know why?"
Without waiting for my answer: "They’re hot on the inside as well as the outside.”
---
7th September 2010
I am at my girlfriend's (Rain) flat in Dongguan, China. Just across the road is a furniture warehouse, probably where DFS or MFI get all their sofas from. Anyway, in many places in the world, loud music is played to entice shoppers and to illustrate how happy the employees are or how good the products are. In China this is especially the case, as you undoubtedly can hear loud dance music as you walk down the street. It probably makes locating a shop easier. So this furniture warehouse - a stone’s throw away from Rain's flat - plays what seems to be a mixture of Chinese happy hardcore, karaoke recordings (the highlight of which is of some nondescript Chinese female murdering Queen's We Will Rock You), happy hardcore versions of Chinese opera singing and some Chinese love ballads. On first listen this is laughable, so much so that you think to yourself "hahaha...wtf, this is awful." Then it carries on. From 9am to 7pm, 7 days a week it seems (it's Tuesday now - I have been here since Saturday evening and this camp X-Ray style musical torture has been running like clockwork). This wouldn't be so bad if I could go outside. I have briefly for a few hours each day, but really that's all I could take. It's about 30 degrees outside, but incredibly humid. I don't think I've stopped sweating or being a bit damp since I have been in China. I have been sitting, surfing the Internet, reading, sleeping and eating.
---
After thoughts:
Fast forward to today. I have been going out more now after getting bored of sitting, surfing the Internet, reading, sleeping and eating. I have been going jogging to the nearby park, shopping and to a few restaurants. My confidence of speaking Chinese has improved, although there are still a few little problems. This morning I went to a hotel for breakfast. I sat down and I was presented a menu for tea. I had no idea what many of the characters written on it meant, so I went with "pu tong cha", which is "ordinary tea". What arrived was just hot water in a pot. I realised that I had been interpreted as saying "bu cha" which is "no tea", and thus I got just hot water. Crap. I wanted tea. Now I have to ask for tea again. So I beckoned another waitress over and again said "wo xiang yao cha. qing gei wo pu tong cha" ("i would like tea. please give me ordinary tea"),...but what arrived was really, really strong ordinary tea - dark brown, like coffee. I think she thought i said "hong cha" which is "black tea". It felt like she had filled half the tea-pot with tea leaves, as when I had drank loads of tea, the pot was still pretty heavy.
Apologies it has been so long for an update, I have been on the Trans-Siberian Express across Russia, and haven't had reliable access to the Intarwebz and now am in China, the home of the GFWoC aka the Great Firewall of China (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall_of_China), which blocks most things related to Google, the word "blog", the word "proxy", the word "Python 2.6.4" and anything else that I deem to be useful or helpful. So updates to this blog have been very scarce. My apologies again. Today I have found a reliable-ish proxy (I keep getting a "The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading" message every now and then though.
It's been a while since I wrote anything, but have been keeping a diary of events that have occurred. Here are a few entries. I also made a video diary of Russia, however, due to the GFWoC, access to YouTube is prohibited and uploading them through a proxy would literally take days.
---
25th August 2010
I have now left Moscow after spending 2 and a half days here. It has been such a different experience. Amazing and also a bit scary. My flight was delayed and I had problems with security at Lisbon airport and also at Moscow. It was a nightmare. I was treated like a terrorist.
I have had such a brilliant 3 weeks. I am just under a month now into my "3 months of not working, at least" and it does feel pretty good. But I mention it because today I got one of those feelings that sometimes you get where you miss working and almost feel like that you've had enough of a break from work and you would like to go back. These feelings happen to everyone and only probably last a minute, but a few times in one day. Mine happened today; first when I was looking out of the window at Moscow; 2nd time on the train and 3rd when I was in the reception of the hotel watching Russians on what looked like business trips.
I can feel that I have quite a melancholy attitude at the moment. Probably due to the excitement and apprehension, tiredness and not being able to speak Russian or chat to people. And I have forgotten to get a fork and spoon and bring some sort of pillow, which the other occupants of this cabin have. It isn't too bad though, as my cabin is opposite a power point. Each cabin doesn't have a power point, and the corridor only seems to have 2 (which makes probably 20 people per power point per carriage).
I am in a cabin sharing with a lady and her 2 kids. She looks a bit younger than me and her kids - 1 boy and 1 girl. The boy is pretty well behaved and is just sleeping. He's probably 5 years old. The little girl is about 2 or 3 and randomly screaming and chatting in baby Russian. The mum is now reading a story to the young girl. Hopefully I will get some sleep! She can't speak English either, and I can hardly speak Russian (apart from common politeness). We managed to communicate enough to ascertain that the bunk above me is not being used. This was through pointing at it, pointing at numbers pointing at each other and saying "me" in both English and Russian.
There seems to be no other English people in the same carriage as me. They're all Russian or German. I did see a couple that looked Australian from the same hotel I was staying at, but they also looked German and were with a German tour group. I had an explore earlier. There was one English girl I met at the station, but she was in carriage 14 or something. I'm in carriage 1. There are around 20 carriages. It took nearly 10 minutes to walk the length of the train as my carriage was the furthest one away from the start of the platform. Tomorrow I will probably go on a wander to see if I can find some other English people.
---
After thoughts:
In total (I tried to count the people that I engaged in pseudo-Russian/English conversation with), I have met only 2 British people in 2 weeks, 2 French people, 6 Danish people, 2 Czech guys, about 10 Chinese people and about 150 Russians.
Oh, and if you’re wondering, I did eventually find a pillow and blanket. Each bed has a pillow and blanket, it was just hidden away. And I learnt the Russian for “please give me a fork/knife/plate/bowl/spoon”.
Oh and also at around 10pm the next evening I discovered a power point in my room! 2 days in to the journey and I have just discovered it... Well, there was one opposite my room. I had something plugged into that, but the provodnista (the designated carriage attendant for the whole journey), Natasha, walked past and showed me the power point hidden under a plastic cover under the table in my cabin...
---
26th August 2010
A pretty strange experience just now. I was drinking with these 2 Russian guys (Alexander and Oleg). Beer and vodka. And eating snacks with them. Having a nice chat, showing pictures to each other of our families and girlfriends and wives. I went to their cabin that they were sharing with 2 old ladies, and we were getting along really well - despite our awful knowledge of each others languages. We then started talking to this guy from the Russian army (who wouldn't let me take his picture or get his real name - it was a "secret"...), from a city called Perm. It was his stop to get off. As we were talking people kept saying "no drink". To me it seemed. I wasn't sure what this meant. Was it that I shouldn't drink more, or others couldn't drink more? Maybe they were afraid that I would miss my stop. So I went back to the cabin of the Russian guys that I was drinking with and they gave me one more drink of vodka then said that I should leave. I left then they met me again going towards the smoking area. Again with the guy Alex, we had a chat (pigeon Russian and English again) and then managed to understand that Alex was going to bed....at 6pm....and we would meet tomorrow to take some pictures. All I could do was go to my cabin. The guy from the army "Sergei" (apparently) could speak a bit more English, so he told me a few things about Russian culture. We were drinking vodka and he said "one man drinking alone is an alcoholic, two men drinking are not alcoholics"! And also another bit of Russian culture; we were standing outside of the train at his stop, and he pointed at this walkway-bridge going across the tracks. Only a few people were using this walkway, and about 30 people were running across the tracks to get to the train. He said that this is typical Russian culture. He also told me that there were foreigners 6 carriages along. He also told me to that I shouldn't drink!
Alexander (or Sahsa, is 36 years old. He is a train driver from a place called Sha-hun-ye, near to Nizhy Novgorod and is travelling to a place near to the Chinese boarder in south eastern Russia called Magdagachi). With his basic English, and my even more basic Russian we managed to communicate. We talked about our families (he has a wife and a 2 year-old son) and showed pictures of our families to each other.
---
After thoughts:
I experienced a lot of this "subversive culture" in lots of places in Russia. In Moscow I was walking about and walked past this heavily armed building, which I thought was some sort of government building. Guys with AK-47s, grenades strapped to their bandoleers and full combat gear. I later found out that this was just an really expensive hotel!! I also went on a "secret" tour of Moscow, conducted by these 2 students that I met. One a rocket scientist and the other involved in business. They both could speak English quite well. They took me on a big tour of Moscow, to lots of back-streets and underground places to experience the real Moscow. It was amazing. We also met up with a friend of theirs, did some mandatory drinking of alcohol, and saw more heavily guarded KGB buildings and one of the highlights for me....Metro 2...a "secret" underground train system for government officials ONLY! The stations are deep, deep underground and are accessible by huge water-tower-like structures, also heavily guarded; you are not supposed to take pictures of (even rummaging in your bag near to a Metro 2 station arouses suspicion it seems) and just look like building sites (apart from the big widened "M" demarking them)
---
29th August 2010
One of the things that really attracted me about the Trans-Siberian railway was the chance to see one of the most desolate and lonely landscapes in the world. I was also expecting to feel a temporary sense of desolation and loneliness too, but this has not been the case. Pretty much all the people that I have met have been really friendly and welcoming. The Russian people I have met have been quite well mannered, with a strong sense of etiquette and politeness. They all say "please", even the immigrants who do not speak Russian as their first language. Quite a contrast to life in the UK, where a lot of the immigrants and some native people are quite rude. It seems that you cannot live a proper life in Russia or be held in any serious regard and get along with the local people without politeness.
An example is today. I am in Listvyanka, a village on the south-western edge of Lake Baikal. I walked along the shore after lunch and decided to stop for a beer. I managed to buy one even though the guy serving me didn't understand my Russian. He spoke a little English though. I then sat down at a table, but didn't read the sign saying that I had to pay to sit at the table. So a guy came over and asked me to pay. He looked Arabic. But he had a clipboard and gave me a ticket for the table, and had obviously asked how to say "100" in English. I paid him. Then about 20 minutes later this guy and his wife and child came over and asked me something in Russian. I replied "sorry, i don't understand. Can you speak English?", and his reply was "nyet" and then laughed with his wife about something and they walked away. The guy who I bought the beer from then came over to my table and said "2 people. They sit here?" and pointed at the spare seats on my table. They then came over and sat down, but it was about 5 people. Husband, wife, young daughter, and their brother it looked like, and his wife. They sat down and said "thanks for letting them sit there" in Russian, and I asked the usual "do you speak English?". No; of course. So we just smiled at each other. Meanwhile, the people on the table behind me were laughing, and the girl at another table was also laughing at this situation. Eventually I finished my drink and left. They all said good bye to me, and one of the girls even could say "goodbye" in English.
I met Andrei and Sergei today. Andrei is my guide in this area that i am in. He showed me around the museum next to where I am staying. It's a research centre for Lake Baikal. I then went to a lovely little restaurant where I ate 3 courses of fish-based food. Fish sourced in Lake Baikal. I had beautiful sushi, followed by a fish soup, followed by grilled fish rolled up, stuffed with what tasted like cheese and herbs with potato cakes, parsley and what I think was tamarind paste. It was really good.
I am staying in the house of this guy Valerya. I am the only person here and he lives
somewhere else, so I pretty much have this flat to myself. He came round and cooked dinner for me tonight. It was strange, as he cooked, then left. Like my own personal chef. Some sort of spicy soup with rice, meat and potatoes in gravy, a roll stuffed with potato, a cinnamon-type roll, a few biscuits and this fudge-like chocolate, and some tea.
I also made a few videos today. One of the sunset over Lake Baikal from the beach. However, I went out thinking that I had packed my torch, and as it got darker and I got 15 minutes into my filming, I realised that I didn't actually have a torch with me. The path that I had come on was pretty precarious; bordered on one side by a rocky and tree-lined drop into the 5 degree centigrade water and a good way to drown through paralysis caused by a broken neck, and on the other side was a crash barrier and a road where there didn't seem to be a speed limit.Cars would overtake 3 at a time and for some reason I was really alarmed by the knowledge that MOTs don't seem to exist in Russia. So, unfortunately I had to abandon my filming of the sunset and walk 20 minutes back along the ever increasingly dark path/road. I first walked along the path next to the drop but a car hurtling towards me made me look up from my careful steps and then the final straw was when I slipped on some gravel on a part of the path that had a camber towards the big drop. So I devised a system of walking until I saw a car and then would stop and try to get behind the crash barriers (concrete blocks). 40 minutes later I eventually made it home safely.
---
After thoughts:
Uhhh, not many really. I'm glad I wrote this diary entry so descriptively. One thing that sticks in my head – we were driving through Irkutsk the next day (me, Andrei, Sergei) and got stuck in horrendous traffic for about 20 minutes). Andrei turned to me and started asking me about how attractive do I think Russian women are. I answered very positively, and Andrei turned to Sergei, said something, they both laughed and silence for a minute, then Andrei turned back to me and said “Sergei here calls all beautiful women ‘ovens’”. Do you know why?"
Without waiting for my answer: "They’re hot on the inside as well as the outside.”
---
7th September 2010
I am at my girlfriend's (Rain) flat in Dongguan, China. Just across the road is a furniture warehouse, probably where DFS or MFI get all their sofas from. Anyway, in many places in the world, loud music is played to entice shoppers and to illustrate how happy the employees are or how good the products are. In China this is especially the case, as you undoubtedly can hear loud dance music as you walk down the street. It probably makes locating a shop easier. So this furniture warehouse - a stone’s throw away from Rain's flat - plays what seems to be a mixture of Chinese happy hardcore, karaoke recordings (the highlight of which is of some nondescript Chinese female murdering Queen's We Will Rock You), happy hardcore versions of Chinese opera singing and some Chinese love ballads. On first listen this is laughable, so much so that you think to yourself "hahaha...wtf, this is awful." Then it carries on. From 9am to 7pm, 7 days a week it seems (it's Tuesday now - I have been here since Saturday evening and this camp X-Ray style musical torture has been running like clockwork). This wouldn't be so bad if I could go outside. I have briefly for a few hours each day, but really that's all I could take. It's about 30 degrees outside, but incredibly humid. I don't think I've stopped sweating or being a bit damp since I have been in China. I have been sitting, surfing the Internet, reading, sleeping and eating.
---
After thoughts:
Fast forward to today. I have been going out more now after getting bored of sitting, surfing the Internet, reading, sleeping and eating. I have been going jogging to the nearby park, shopping and to a few restaurants. My confidence of speaking Chinese has improved, although there are still a few little problems. This morning I went to a hotel for breakfast. I sat down and I was presented a menu for tea. I had no idea what many of the characters written on it meant, so I went with "pu tong cha", which is "ordinary tea". What arrived was just hot water in a pot. I realised that I had been interpreted as saying "bu cha" which is "no tea", and thus I got just hot water. Crap. I wanted tea. Now I have to ask for tea again. So I beckoned another waitress over and again said "wo xiang yao cha. qing gei wo pu tong cha" ("i would like tea. please give me ordinary tea"),...but what arrived was really, really strong ordinary tea - dark brown, like coffee. I think she thought i said "hong cha" which is "black tea". It felt like she had filled half the tea-pot with tea leaves, as when I had drank loads of tea, the pot was still pretty heavy.
Mate, the blog is amazing, I want to print it when its complete, put it in a book and leave it near the toilet so i keep coming back to it.
ReplyDeleteLoved the oven comment :-)
Hahaha, brilliant! Can I print this comment out and frame it? Maybe it can be a blurb on the back of the final book! :D
ReplyDelete