Two interesting things

So, two interesting things happened today. The first is that I bought a guitar. I'd always wanted to learn to play the guitar but never had the time or discipline to really get going. A week or so after we arrived though, we were walking somewhere and I saw a music shop and in the window was a guitar for about 500 yuan. Now in a silly movie, that would be the one I bought, but it was electric and I want to learn on an acoustic!

So I looked around for some lessons and ended up buying a dvd and online lesson set which didn't cost too much, and I may get some lessons with a teacher once we get back to Aus. Anyway, I looked around online for some guitar shops in Beijing with the idea that most of the cheaper types of that sort of thing are made in China anyway. Turns out there's a whole music shop area about 30 minutes from our place on the metro.

So having done some research into what sort of guitar I should buy, Jane and I went out there this morning to check it out. It took us ages to find the street (the directions I read said go south from the station, they should have said go one block east and then south from the station!) but once we were there, pretty much every shop was a music shop selling guitars, organs, pi pa (Chinese one string things) flutes of various configurations, violins by the thousand, saxophones, and those Chinese table harps like in Red Cliff! A huge number of shops to choose from, and cause I can't actually play the guitar, I kind of just went in, looked at some stuff in my price range, ran through the strings etc. After about 5 stores we went into a really small one where the guy was really helpful. He suggested a (reasonably) cheap guitar which sounded ok, and then another one which sounded much better. The better one ended up costing a little less anyway and it was the best sounding one and had decent action (that's what we guitar people call the distance between the strings and the fretboard). When I asked him how much with a bag, I ended up getting one thrown in for free which is nice.

So I now have sore fingers from starting my practice and I'm aware that this is an exercise that will take a long time (weeks for anything resembling a simple song, months for anything more, probably years for something good) but I'm still pretty excited about it :)

The other nice thing today was that we found a new restaurant just near our house that makes nice Chinese BBQ. We'd been talking for a while about the lack of nice, close restaurants and this one is in a different direction than we normally go (North East for those playing on their maps at home). It was packed when we got there but they have English on their menu which is always a plus. We got seated in the "westerner's corner" which is a little strange. When we arrived there was a huge Russian man and his son but soon after we arrived they also seated (I think) a French couple as well. Oh well. The food was great chilli BBQ kebabs of various things (beef, pork and mushroom, just mushroom, chicken, sheep penis if that's your thing etc) of which the ones we had were all really nice. And even better, when we left we found they have a takeaway menu as well. Waimai!!