j a m e s f o r s y t h ✡ n e t

Last night I was walking along and a child who was sitting with - presumably - its parents yelled out “老外”, which means “old foreigner”. The parents, rather than scolding the child for using abusive language on the street, looked over to me to see how I would react. 误人子弟

The other day, I was walking along within university campus grounds. I heard a whistle, like someone was trying to attract my attention - must be important - I was greeted by a male student, walking with a group of friends, who yelled “hello” at me.

I went out for dinner with some friends the other night. Within the space of less than a minute, two groups walked past me saying “hello” and “hello hello hello hello” in low tones.

I hardly ever buy something at a shop without other customers asking the person behind the counter where I am from and why I can speak a bit of Chinese. The shopkeeper usually obliges them and tells them everything they know about me, in my presence.

Recently I went on a weekend-long excursion, hosted by a number of universities, for “foreign” teachers (a collective term which simply wouldn’t be used in Australia). Some of the Chinese university staff, who, one would assume, specialised in liaising with “foreigners” as a skill, referred to us as “老外” among themselves. So much for any special skills when it comes to liaison.

There are worse, but I’m just making this post public at the airport. I’ll add one or two stories to this post soon.

Last night I ate Pakistani food. It was a real relief and a pleasant change.

The photo above is blurry, which suits the whole rough and woolly image of this website. Totally hardcore and underground. Whoa!! It’s got panache baby!!

The dictionary I’m carrying is the ABC Chinese - English Dictionary 汉英词典 - 按罗马字母顺序排列。

***I’m reposting this at the top of the blog, because I accidentally deleted it last night. Having been unable to access Google’s cache here in China I owe big thanks to Terri for retrieving it for me and emailing it***

Literally “big bright lake”, I took David for a look at this major attraction. Well worth a second look.

It’s strange, the second character down (if you’ll compare it with the heading of this post) should have an 日 on the left, rather than a 目. I asked some kind bystanders what the reason for the difference was, and they said it was because of 特殊含义. I need to do a bit of investigating as to why this is. If you can give me any advice on this subject, please click on “4 Comments” below and add a comment to let me know about this strange occurrence. Thanks in advance.

雅各：嘿！用中文不是我的特长，你是逗哏我是捧哏，好不好？

新乐：好的。我们互捧互逗！嘿嘿！

雅各：哎呀！老兄！你为什么喝这么多可口可乐？喝多了对身体不好。每瓶里都含有很多糖。

新乐：老兄！你管得太宽啦！哈哈！我选择我喜欢！耶！！！！！！！

雅各：小心！你喝得太多大概睡不着。我就想帮助你啊.你为什么这么固执啊？

新乐：没关系，我很少喝可乐，就是和你在一起得时候才喝。谢谢您的关心。

雅各：好。行。喝咖啡也是我的爱好。但是，雀巢咖啡太不地道。没有咖啡因！很容易让人发困！

新乐：其实，我也很喜欢喝咖啡。不光好喝 ，而且我喝了不困。但是一瓶咖啡喝几口就没有了，而一瓶可乐可以喝很多口。

雅各：而且瓶子比较大，经济实惠。其实就是苏打水。可是喝咖啡不方便，咖啡只能和饼、蛋糕搭配，但是跟可乐可以和所有食物一起搭配食用。越来越胖嘟嘟！

新乐：咖啡和可乐都不错。其实我还是喜欢我家乡的水，尤其是小时侯的水清凉可口。

雅各：恩？你故乡的水？什么水啊？

新乐：就是平时喝得水，地下水或者是井水。

雅各：哦。真有意思，我应该尝一尝那个水。嘿！新乐，我得走了。我们应该很快就能在陶陶见面！保重！

新乐：好的，和你在一起很开心。我们很有缘分。

Well, writing this post didn’t get off to a good start - I couldn’t put any photos up. I haven’t taken many new ones recently, and those that are on my card I couldn’t resize. This computer is too slow for some reason.

I don’t even have firefox on this machine so that I can “save image location” on images, which is great for using someone else’s storage to display photos on one’s own page.

I’m going to have to send another package home. At the xinhua bookshop near my room I found the kid’s level for the first time - that’s right, LEVEL. I bought quite a few bits and pieces for Asher, but nothing I particularly want to carry to Beijing, Wuhan and Singapore later on, so tomorrow afternoon it’s off to the post office.

OK, well first off there’s the Nescafe mocca tinned variety. These are really small. You could skull the whole can in a fraction of a second if the opening was big enough. Quite nice, though the non-mocca one is a bit better in my opinion. It cost 2.5 人民币.

This one was imported from Japan. It was much more expensive than the Nescafe offering above, slugging me for 14.5 人民币. It was definitely drinkable, not too sweet. But it tasted like coffee you might buy at the Belgrave cake shop. Coffee isn’t a big thing in Japan, and I’m surprised to see they’re exporting the stuff.

Well, A-ha comes up trumps! A great value drink at 3.5 人民币, this coffee is available in Wuhan - and presumably in much of China. It is creamy, moorish and the sweetness level is just right. I’ve stocked up the fridge (having bought the whole latest shipment from Carrefour - and they’d only just got it in too) and am ready for a few days’ indulgence. If I can get the timing right I hopefully won’t lose too much sleep.

The other morning when I went to McDonald’s it was very early. Here’s a picture of the street at that time (about 5:30am). At peak hour it’s busy and totally chaotic.

I have nothing more to report.

At this restaurant they first skin the animals, and use the skin to produce fancy hats. The meat is then put on skewers and brought round by waiters so hurriedly that hardly any conversation can take place between the mega 很多 animal offerings.

Testify! Testify!

This morning I went to 麦当劳 at 5:45am to find a quiet place to do some study. I just drank coffee, which was bottomless and better than the Australian equivalent. The above picture is of a few patrons that I found there. There are actually three in the photo, one being in the background to the right.

It’s a good time for the great taste of McDonald’s.

More photos to come.