* Better ear plugs to help sleep
* Nicer eye mask to help sleep
* Stronger sleeping pills/relaxants to help save the rain forest
* USB cable to upload vid clips from this:

• Sunday we graced the WVD festivities and enjoyed a few moments of being able to sample all food items without having to question their integrity. (There might have also been a slight sense of superiority as we deduced that we were more ‘normal’ than a lot of the attendees. To further solidify this theory, we wasted the better part of the day in Chadstone)
• Himself bought a whole water melon, fulfilling a life-long dream of his. We carved out a lid at the top and dig at the flesh through the little hole.
• The Departed was pretty good. Although not as stylish as it’s HK counterpart Infernal Affairs.
• Today we will see The Hip Hop Project. Produced by Bruce Willis.
• This is week 16 of the semester. The year ends after week 18, classes end after week 17. Five assignments are due in week 17 (Video, Concpet Development, Animation and 3D Modelling), three more due in week 18 (Interactive Multimedia, Design and 2D Imaging). None have been finished so far. One haven’t even been started (3D modelling. I cannot drag my spacially inept brain to work on it)

Ahoy there.

School’s out for a week. Well, we’re already half way through that week. The so-called break is just to deceive us poor students into thinking it’s a week of ho-li-da-aays, when in fact its just one week of no classes but many assignments. I had good intentions of doing a lot of work, but thus far they’ve yet to manifest into actions.

I’m spending a short while in Canberra to hang out with the family. My guilt of being a less than perfect daughter/sister has me devoting this short stay mainly to family time. But again, good intentions don’t necessarily manifest into perfect reality.

Canberra. The sense of old familiarity. Nothing seems to change.

Saturday was spent traveling across the city in pursuit of a myriad of activities. Travelled to the Dandenong Ranges with a group of urban city boys, stopping along the way to playing with boomerangs. Yes boomerangs. Made our way back to the Globe 2 Globe World Music Festival, with a quick dinner stop along the way. Braved the freezing night air to jump along to some funky music and giggle like a little girl as fireworks lit up the sky. The night might have been still young but we were cold and tired. Still managed to continue our journey to Chapel St, to a small and all too cramped bar, where Himself was due for a cameo appearance. Stayed just long enough for the heavy clouds of cigarette smoke to settle into our clothes and skin. Home welcomed us back with its usual creature comforts. A shower, a bath and 10 mins of tv later, I was asleep in front of my little fan heater curled up in the most unusual position.

Sunday was much a blur. I remember waking up close to 1pm, having food, then before I knew it it was time to watch Idol.

Today (Monday) is much the same. Although I might try to achieve more, like maybe walking to the mailbox.

We’ve been taking trips to the Dandenong Ranges for the past two weekends to absorb the freshness that is nature. Both times we did a short walk through the lush greenery of Ferntree Gully, before heading up to Sky High at the top of Mt Dandenong to look over the city. Isn’t it interesting how you can drive only 30 mins out of the city and experience a completely different environment. Crisp air, beautiful scenery, quaint little cottages in quaint little villages, and amazing views. If I was organised enough I would post up some photos. But I’m not.

MIFF is on for 2006. I enjoyed it last year, even though I only managed to see 2 films and one free talk, but now I have an even softer spot for it since our “Design a (fictitious) MIFF Poster” assignment.

My final poster and a slight variation of it.
I don’t know why, but the more I look at them, the more I seem to dislike them.

Anyway, plenty of good films in the festival. Tonight I saw the Animation Shorts Program 1, which was great fun. Hoping to see more in the weeks to come.

Its 1am and I’m craving coffee. Himself is still at school working hard. I’ve tried tea, coffee alternatives, hot milk but the craving still nags. So now I’m bloated from too much liquid and is having a coffee on top of it. Had to open a new jar of the good stuff, and ahhhh! The smell is deep, smooth and alluring. I found myself inhaling deeply but not getting enough, and it makes my head a little lighter, but in a good way. Kind of like getting high on the smell of coffee. Mmmm…. I think it, the sweet sweet scent of fresh coffee, is one of the little pleasures in life.

Isn’t it amazing how I’ve managed to spend close to 3 weeks in a entirely different country and all I had to share are tales of toilets and weight loss scams?

This morning as I was pulling up my hair with a brand new hair tie, fresh from the streets of China, I remembered the place where it was bought. It was a small fashion market in Ningbo, rows of narrow alleyways in parallel, all filled to the brim with matchbox sized stalls. I also remembered a little incident just before purchasing the hair tie. I had taken a turn off a stretch of clothes stalls, walked halfway down a row of shoe stalls and came upon a small block of accessories stalls. Some of those were dedicated to wigs and hair accessories, and I spotted one in the middle of trying for a sale. The shop girl was fastening a hair extension fake ponytail to the customer’s real hair and rattling her tongue off with complements about how absolutely faaaabulous it looked. I must admit it did look pretty good, which was why I stopped to admire. I even felt myself considering getting a bit of extra hair myself. But I was jolted from my I’m-a-Pretty-Princess-with-Long-Floaty-Hair fantasy by the second store girl yelling abuse at me. “WEI!” she scolded, “Are you going to buy something? If not then get lost! Stop standing in the way!” Shocked I was. Appalled and lost for words. Never had I been kicked out of a shop in Australia for looking! Hell, I could probably lie down at the entrance of an Aussie shop and take a nap. Momentarily I considered giving her a piece of my mind in return, but a look at her sitting legs wide spread on a cardboard box viciously tearing the flesh off her lunchtime chicken made me decide that it was best to avoid eye contact and move away quietly.

There are probably close to 40 channels on free-to-air TV here. Yet some times, many times, its still very difficult to find something to watch. Perhaps its because of the amount of choice that I’m at a lost. I find myself spending more time channel flicking than watching.

With the increased number of channels comes an increased number of… err… crap. TV ads here are completely over the top, with products promising anything from increasing brain power/height/hair/longevity to curing all ailments. My favourites are the miracle weight loss products, and boy are there many! I’ve seen no ads for gyms, weight watchers or exercise machines, but plenty offering dramatic weight loss without exercise or diets. Examples include a cream that’s rubbed on to the fatty areas and will magically dissolve the fat, another cream that only needs to be rubbed 1cm behind the ear and 2cm under the belly button (errrr wtf?), a slimming shoe that will burn the same calories as running when you’re merely walking, a belt that vibrates away your fat when you wear it around your tubby areas, an apple flavoured candy that dissolves the fat inside your body when consumed, and the list goes on and on…. pills, drinks, magical tiaras (I haven’t seen one yet but I’m sure one is in the making). On all these ads they show images of an overweight person who (through the magic of computer graphics) slims down to a stick before our very eyes. They then show images of random skinny girls on the streets, who we’re suppose to assume achieved their fat-less figure through what ever product that’s being promoted. And my favourite part - a Western doctor/expert-looking person talking, who’s voice is dubbed in Chinese promoting the product. Throw in some scientific looking graphics, a computer generated diagram of the fat particles falling apart inside the body and you’re sold!

Its a wonder why the Western world hasn’t caught up with such miraculous progress.

With only 2 days left in China my body decided that being fit and healthy is no longer fun, and it would be oh-so-much more exciting to fall very very ill. So yesterday I woke to the world spinning in all directions, my stomach and my head competing to see which can induce the most agony. 2hrs of lying around and feeling like the life’s been drained out of me later, I was carried out of the house in my pajamas and to the hospital, which luckily is located just across the street.

It was the general assumption that I had suffered heat stroke from the day before when I went out shopping in the 39 degree heat, and the accumulated exhaustion from the non-stop 2 weeks I’ve had in China. The first and most common treatment for any illness in China is to put you on a glucose drip, which was exactly what I was prescribe - 2 bags of the stuff actually, at a hefty 500mLs a bag. Needles are not my favourite things, I find that as I grow older I become more and more terrified of them. Needles in a Chinese hospital, attached to a tube, attached to a big bag of liquid, can probably top my list of least favourite needle experiences. I was taken to the glucose injections room, which is a big hall filled with rows of chairs lined back to back, and a row of about a dozen beds against one wall. Rows of hooks hang from the ceiling in front of the chairs and beds, from them hang the bags of fluids which drip slowly down thing plastic tubes, which are attached to the needles, which are inserted into the back of the patients hands. All in all, not a good look.

When we arrived the place was busy with people, and I was still like a rag doll being supported by two people. Thanks to a good search by my grandma we were able to find me a bed, which was just as well because I ended up being on that bed for the next 6 hours.

I do feel a lot better now. My body still lacks energy and I get a little dizzy if move too much or too fast, but its a far cry from not even being able to open my eyes yesterday morning. I’d like to sit in peace and quiet and not have to talk to or listen to anyone, but the Chinese show they care by being like a broken record with the volume turn to MAX.

I head back to Aussie land tomorrow. My flight is 6:20pm departing from Shanghai. I’ll be leaving Ningbo around midday for a 3-4hr drive to Shanghai, a 2hr or more of check in and waiting at the airport, then the 11hr flight back to Melbourne.

Looking forward to getting back home and having a rest.

Some less than perfect attempts at English I’ve seen around the place:

FAG Automotives
Longdo Edible (grocery store)
Free Everyday Cafe and Tea (its suppose to be Freedom…)
Da Xin Green Washes Clothes (a laundromat)
Dig Gold Hotel
Lebanes Food

I took the train from Ningbo to Hangzhou and back again, and noticed that on all the doors it says: Please Not Carry Risk Rank Ride. Um… huh?

The buses here come in air con’d and non-air con’d. It costs 1 yuan (1 Chinese dollar, which is equivalent to approx 1/6 AUD) to ride the non airconditioned bus and 2 yuan for the airconditioned. The buses with air are newer and have a display at the front, much similar to the ones on Melbourne trains, with text scrolling across advising passengers of each stop. The information is displayed in both Chinese and English, and the English goes like this: ‘Here Is So and So, Plese Get Out’.

Public toilets here have giant signs erected at the front or on the roof, sometimes in big gold characters, displaying the fact that it is indeed a public toilet. Some even have a star rating, eg. 4 star public toilet, and many have another sign advertising the fact that its open 24 hours! You see, most of these toilets have a booth at the entrance and in it sits the person who mans the toilet. He or she is responsible for keeping the toilets in order, collecting money and locking/opening the toilets. You are actually charged a fee for using these toilets, and when the guard goes for lunch break or leaves for the day the toilets are locked. I heard a story of someone who was locked inside for over 2hrs when a toilet guard went for lunch and didnt realise he was inside.

Speaking of public toilets, I highly advice against using them in China. My personal rule is to only drink as much as I please when I’m at someone’s house or a fancy restaurant where there are flushing toilets. I would much rather go thirsty in the 35+ degrees weather than have to pee while I’m out. It never ceases to amaze me how there can be so many different types of ‘toilets’ in China. In Australia the only thing to worry about is the cleanliness of the toilets, but you’re pretty much guaranteed a ceramic bowl with a flush. Here it can be anything from the seat toilet we’re familiar with, to a ceramic hole built into the floor, to a long trench in the ground, or something even less attractive. It may or may not flush, the cubicals may or may not have doors (even then, people may or may not lock or close them), you may or may not be provided toilet paper. So it really is best to plan ahead, face the day with an empty bladder and take advantage of every ‘5 star’ toilet.

I’ve been in China for 10 days now, each one a new experience. I would like to document them all, minute by minute, but then I would need another 10 days dedicated entirely to remembering and writing, and even then I would still miss out on too much. I’ve been taking photos, many many photos. Almost everyday I’ve had to upload two to three hundred + photos and recharge my totally drained camera battery. But its the little things, moments too quick for the camera, and the personal thoughts and emotions that I really want to get down.

I don’t have enough resources, nor time, while I’m still in China to upload the photos, but will try to put together something when I’m back home in a week’s time.

The days have been passing with too much to experience and too much too absorb. I feel exhausted at the end of each day and have no energy left to try to recall all the events, even less to try to put them down in chronological order. So I will try to put some down here as I think of them, as hap hazard as they may be. And as I’ve found when I email the Boy, I tend to go off on tangents and ramble on too much.

Alas, I have to go have breakfast. It’s 8:30 am and shops open at 9:30 (and close around 9 - 10pm EVERYDAY!), so I must hurry out there, as today is my last day in Hangzhou and I’ve only 3hrs of shopping left here!

Tangent: I arrived in Shanghai on the night of the 20th, and spent 2 days there, then went to Ningbo for 4 days and came to Hangzhou on Tuesday. I like the Gardens and tourist spots in Hangzhou, and also the shopping! There seem to be more fashion stores here and more pretty clothes - something that makes a girl very happy. Unfortunately I havent really done much shopping as we’ve been spending our days sight-seeing. Going back to Ningbo this afternoon, hence the last minute shopping rush.

Hehe, stay tuned for the next installment, I will start writing something of substance then!