Random Insignificance

Here’s a completely non-Chinese comment to start the post: I find it hilarious when facebook recommends “people you may know” and yet you’ve never seen those strangers in your life.

Now here’s a completely Chinese comment: 我说中文的沙化，我常常听笨了。

Another random insignificant thought: When traveling, pack mini towels. I find myself using dirty cloths to dry up small spills.

Now let’s get down to business. If you haven’t guessed from the title on the few random lines above, this posting is simply a collection of some random insignificant moments that don’t individually diserve a post but together hopefully contain some weight.

Finding real Western (ie. non Asian/Chinese) is not an easy task and often is at the expense of your pocket book. A lot of the “western” food that I’ve come across generally always has a distinctly Chinese flare to it.
I had a stake dinner that required getting covered in a spicy black pepper gravy. The stake was delicious, but the “black pepper” were Sichuan Peppers. Sichuan peppers have a distinctly numbing quality, after just a few bites I could no longer feel my mouth–so I guess I can’t preciously judge the quality of the stake.
Getting past the “Great Fire Wall of China” is becoming damn near impossible, even with a VPN. I have to laugh, because the country that I log in through to get total internet access is Germany. Even still it’s often slow, and some websites still cannot funnel through. I have only averaged about 10 minutes on Facebook before being booted off.
Navigating the streets are ket to surviving. You need to maintain a constant diligence to the sidewalk to avoid cars, motorized bikes, mobile street vendors, and loose tiles. While you might suspect fast moving vehicles to be your biggest worry, in reality you really need to understand the tiled sidewalks. If you look below you may not notice the differences in the images but if you see that one tile is slightly more dark around the edges than the others. Well let me tell you that below those slightly more dark-tiles lays a disgustingly filthy missmatch of liquid nastiness that gets onto your lower half filling you with the feeling that you want to die. Seriously they are disgusting and nasty.
This really is useful knowledge… Your lower half will thank you for passing these over.
Other than the lack of western food, you can literally find anything in China. Some real, some not-so real. Jerseys, electronics, clothing, paintings, watches, excreta. It’s rather humorous just what exactly you can find and for what price you can pay for them. Even more so, if you ask enough questions, you can actually find the real thing, what you see below is not an example of the “real thing.”