San Francisco

We just got back from San Francisco, where we had gone to see our friends Giles and Suzi get married! And we also did an astronomical amount of shopping!

San Francisco - Out and About

I also took some shots of the wedding, sorry they're not much good. Of all the types of photographers I am not, I am especially not a wedding photographer :)
The wedding was really nice though. In Golden Gate Park, it was nicely set up and all went off without a hitch. Jane had to read some of the script from Buffy which may have surprised some people, but not the ones who know either Suzi or Giles! It also went very well.

Giles and Suzi Get Hitched!

We had a fantastic time, it was great to catch up with friends. One of the things about being in China is that it is pretty isolating so seeing friends that I hadn't seen since the last time we were in Aus was really great.

We also got the chance to go for a drive down to Monterrey Bay which was also very nice. San Francisco seems to have terrible weather in the summer, colder than Australia in the winter which surprised me (even though EVERYONE told me in advance, it's still weird). We had a lot of overcast days except for the wedding so that was a bit like Beijing.

On the whole, a successful trip and I'd definitely like to go back. Maybe in another season though, I'm hoping that the other ones are warmer :)

Spending time in Paris

I've spent the last couple of days mostly with may family doing various things in preparation for Christmas. I really love France (and Paris in particular) but there are definitely some things that I like that aren't done the same way either in Australia or China. One is the politeness. Every shop you go into people say "Bonjour monsieur" and they always sound so cheery. Then when you leave it's "Merci monsieur, au revoir, bon journee". I like it, it's great!
The other thing is shopping for food. It really could be a full time job here. You stop at the baker, the butcher, the patissier, the fruit market, the fromagerie (cheese shop), the wine shop and sometimes the supermarket as well. This afternoon my sister and I spent about 3 hours out and only managed to get enough food for the day! We did find these fantastic meringues though.

We'd been looking for a Christmas tree for a few days that was big enough. Most people in Paris have quite small apartments and so quite small trees. The embassy has very big apartments though, so we needed an appropriately sized tree and there weren't very many around. My sister and my mother came home yesterday though with the instructions "put your shoes on, we've bought a tree and you need to carry it". So I head out with my sister to find the man with the tree. It's about 25 minutes walk or so. We get there and the tree is about 2.5m tall with a huge half log on the bottom to keep it stable. I could barely lift it! I managed to get it on my shoulder and carry it about 150m before we gave up and my sister left to get my brother in law. I got a lot of very strange looks along with a few "quelle grand sapin" form people. She finally came back and here's the tree on the streets of Paris.

The shop we bought it from is just out of sight in the background! My dad rocked up and we carried it back to the apartment where we had the unveiling ceremony, National Lampoon's Christmas style

Lucky the apartment is so damn big! So tonight it'll be decorating the tree which should be nice with the family all here (except Jane, hurry up and get here :).

I was out on the Champs-Elysees the other day (as one does!) and ordered a capuccino (because Australia is the only place that understands flat whites) and here's what I got

Yes that is whipped cream on the top. Definitely the weirdest capuccino I've ever had in my life! I was very confused when she gave it to me but she acted like it was the most normal thing in the world. Maybe she's never seen a capuccino before? Well she still hasn't!

Weekend tomorrow so the big shops will all be totally packed so I might do some local shopping here then head to the department stores (Le Printemps and Galeries LaFayette) early next week for some more in depth shopping :)

First day in Paris

So I managed to make it to my sister's house without too many issues. I also managed to stay awake until 10:30pm (5:30am Beijing time) which was nice. I then woke up at 8am Beijing time (1am) and a few more times, and finally gave up sleeping about 6:30am. Not too bad an effort. The view from the balcony is straight out at the Eiffel Tower, it's pretty special.

After a slow start with getting Lily ready to go (babies take lots of time), my sister, my mum and I went to Boulevard Haussman to the big department stores, Printemps and Galleries Lafayette. It was nice to get out in Paris again, the clothes, decorations and stuff are great here. I think I will spend a bit of money on clothes and shoes :) Lily was fine, not crying or anything. One problem with little kids is that the metro is really not designed for them. There are very few lifts and the turnstiles won't fit a pram or normal stroller through them and they're built really high to stop people jumping them. They have gates but there's almost never anyone there to open them. So Lily went in the baby carrier but it's not clear how long she'll fit in there, she's getting bigger pretty quickly.

I'm thinking about a few different options for stuff to do over the next week or so before Jane gets here. My parents are talking about going to Amsterdam which might be nice. I haven't been there before and it would be a fairly quick trip on the train. If anyone has any other suggestions for me, let me know!

After bedding

Yesterday we decided to make the trek out to Ikea to get a warmer doona as it's pretty cold in our apartment. When we've tried to look at this sort of stuff in Carrefour, we were basically mobbed so in the interests of that not happening and also having a bit more of a look around, we headed out on our bikes.

It had just started raining a tiny bit so Jane went back to grab some rain coats. As we left, a guy came barreling around the corner on his fold up bike going stupidly fast, saw us, slammed on his front brake, instantly locked the wheel and fell on his face right in front of us! We went to help him up, but he jumped up, looked pretty silly then rode off! It's very slippery!

It's chilly in Beijing at the moment, a maximum of about 12 so kind of an Australian winter so far. We headed out past where we buy our fruit and veg to a turn off where google maps said there was a road that would take us there and the Lonely Planet Beijing app said there wasn't. It turns out that Lonely Planet were right (good on them!) and there is as yet no road, just a confusing series of alleys that don't go anywhere. Back to the main road we went then and it meant we had to ride against the traffic on the side of the road which I'm not a big fan of. It wasn't too far fortunately and aside from almost being run over by a taxi when we arrived (the lane marked as a bike lane going in is also marked at the other end as a taxi lane going out), we were there. We'd been told it was ridiculously busy but still nicer than Ikea at home but maybe due to the weather it wasn't too bad.

We went in, eventually found doonas, cover and pillowcases and (most excitingly) some fitted sheets! I also got some fine slipper/boot things that make me look like a Christmas elf so that's all good. Most amazingly, our reasonable winter weight doona cost ... 249 yuan which is a bit less than $40!
Attempting to deal with the crowd (which in true Chinese fashion was about 50% going the wrong way, but they know best of course, not the Ikea architects!) we made our way to the exit and joined the very well labelled "Card Only" line. This is pretty common here. Not common or well marked enough for the people in front of us though who put all their stuff through (about 3 bags full) then pulled out cash to pay :(. The poor checkout girl had to go and find a supervisor and get them to come and sort it out. Then when we went to pay, she took Jane's card, and ran off. We never worked out why, maybe it's because it has a chip or something? We haven't had many issues with it before.
Coming home was much easier, we could go with the traffic and it's pretty straight to get back too.

The new sheets and doona are really nice and warm too!

CCCCCcccooolllllllddddd!

Now, being the final third of Autumn, the temperature is starting to drop in Beijing. Properly now, not like last time when I thought it was dropping! At the moment it's like a nice Canberra Winter day without the sunshine. Not too cold during the day but definitely cooling down at night. Pretty much overnight jackets, scarves, beanies and gloves started appearing on passersby which is a good sign that things are cooling down.

Another good sign is how cold it gets in the apartment. One of the niceties/annoyances of a fairly controlling government is that they decide when the heating comes on and not the people in the buildings themselves. This means that no matter the actual temperature, the heating comes on around the 15th of November and not before. Last year it was apparently absolutely freezing a few weeks before and the powers that be allowed the heating on for "testing" purposes but that's unlikely this year, it's not unseasonably cold. Just cold :)

Another byproduct of the seasonal changes that I'm sure I mentioned before is the leaves falling. We have a pond in our apartment complex surrounded by willow trees which are slowly losing their leaves. This must be the worst time of year for street sweepers, because they don't get any leeway just because the leaves are falling all the time. They're all out there constantly sweeping all the different bits around the city. Lucky there seems to be an army of them!

Anyway, the leaves don't really change colour in Beijing, apparently it's too dry for that but they do fall. They've also cleared away all the water plants from the pond, and as I noticed today, the ducks and swans have disappeared as well. I expect into someones dinner but maybe they just keep them somewhere else during the winter. They need to do this because the pond freezes over completely which is something I'm quite looking forward to.

Anyway, it used to look like this:

From Random China Photos

and now it looks like this:

From Random China Photos

Actually it still looks pretty green but trust me, they're thinning out!

Aside from being slightly colder in the apartment than we would like, things are going ok. We're planning trips away, Europe for Christmas and New Year, India for a wedding in early Feb and some other, more local trips too. Still getting along with the Mandarin, it's starting to stick a little more now and we've gotten as far as reading some (simple) paragraphs in Mandarin characters which is also a nice achievement. We're still a little short on useful words but we're managing to get by (we talked our way through getting a new inner on Jane's bike on the weekend, so that was quite nice).

As well as that, there are so many nice places around Beijing. On Saturday we went to a new shopping district just south of Tiananmen Square called Qianmen Avenue (well Big Street). It's much more of a modern take on traditional Chinese architecture than the other main shopping bit called Wangfujing:

From Random China Photos

From Random China Photos

It's still a little weird to see vaguely Chinese looking buildings with Swatch and Starbucks plastered on them but it was a nice spot. They also have a night market that only opens during the day so go figure :)

Back into the swing of things

In case you weren't sure, we arrived safely back home and are (attempting) to get back into our routine.
 The routine usually involves Jane getting up early to go to work and me sleeping in a bit before getting some work done later. Because yesterday (Sunday) was not a normal weekend but a day to make up for the National Day holiday, our routine involved Jane getting up and me sleeping in and not getting any work done.

Since we were completely out of food, we had some trips to make; one to Carrefour for some groceries and one to the market for fruit and vegetables. We went to Carrefour on Sunday night, vaguely expecting it to be a bit quieter but it wasn't. It's pretty much either really busy or insanely busy based on some variable I haven't yet discovered. Anyway, last night it was just very busy. We picked up the stuff we needed and some other stuff and getting to the registers, we realised that we had quite a lot of stuff, possibly more than were going to fit on our bikes. However, we (mostly I) realigned the laws of physics and got the stuff home :) Although walking around in Aus seemed to mess up my road crossing abilities (I went back to looking the wrong way), my Beijing traffic cycling seems unaffected which is nice.

We then got up early this morning to go to the food market. We discovered that we had about 50 yuan between us (about $8.50) and the bank was not yet open but we persevered anyway. We managed to buy pretty much everything we needed for the next week or so (capsicum, broccoli, peaches, mushrooms, bok choi, cabbage, spinach, noodles, tofu, bananas and other stuff I can't remember) and ended up with half a yuan left (about 8c). Not bad going really :)

Coming out of the markets we went back to our bikes and Jane was accosted by an old woman who just started talking to her. She broke out the old chestnut "bu tai ming bai" - "I don't understand" to which people normally reply "bu tai ming bai? bu tai ming bai?" like she's crazy and get kind of weird but this woman just sort of stopped then kept on talking. Jane looked at me and I did my best "I have no idea what the hell is going on" shrug but that didn't faze the woman either. She just kept on talking and we had no idea what she was talking about. Then she left. Very strange!

This evening was our Mandarin lesson and I was slightly nervous because it's been about 3 weeks since the last lesson and I had forgotten a whole lot of important stuff. It went quite well though, she kind of quizzed us on some stuff which was ok, then we did some conversations and things. She seems to have decided she likes us because she gave Jane a pomegranate. Maybe it's a cultural thing? Then after some hilarious moments at the end of class she was talking about blood types and our characters. Neither of us had any idea what she was talking about but it seemed positive so I'm just going to assume it was good!

Sunday - markets and more markets then the gym of weird

So today we went to the markets for a change! This time though, we were after clothes, at least I was because I seem to have neglected to bring enough shorts with me.

Short cycle to the shops, they are kind of near one of the embassy areas. Four floors of pretty much stalls, and they sell most of what anyone might need, t shirts, shorts, socks underwear, jackets, pants, shoes, bags everything.

Jane and Anita were bargaining for some t shirts, the lady wanted some huge price for them and when they decided to leave she followed them and started grabbing Jane and tried to bring them back. I ended up having to go back and pry her hand off Jane's arm, not very nice. Not sure why she thought behaving that way would persuade them to buy anything off her. Grabbing is not cool.

The vendors definitely start out high but it's kind of hard to work out what the right price should be. I found some shorts I quite liked and nearly choked when she said the price was Y280 (about $45). I started at Y25 and ended up getting them for Y90. I suspect I still got a bit ripped off but it seemed reasonable. I'm not very good at bargaining anyway.

Then we went to another multistory market thing, this time for tech products. There seem to be a bunch around, they had all kinds of laptops, screens, basic camera gear, projectors and as we went up there were more and more components like cases, video cards etc. Lots of fun.

After that, back to the apartment for a restful afternoon.

In the evening we decided to join the gym onsite at the apartments. It's called First Club. The price is similar to a gym in Aus (or so people tell me!) but this is not quite like any gym I've been to. After we sign up, the guy takes me through the change room. Shows me my first locker with some shoes (so I don't have to get my own shoes wet). Then we go to my second locker with towel, more shoes, coat hangers etc. All very nice. He shows me the shaving area complete with couches then downstairs to the showers, private giant spas (one with bubbles, one without) and games room, all in the men's locker room by the way! So if you want, you can sit and play video games while naked. Then I notice that I have to wear a swimming cap in the pool, so back to the front to ask if I can get one somewhere. "No problem sir, I'll bring you one." Well that was easy! I thought I was going to have to buy one.

It's at this point I think that I manage to lock my keys in my locker (they were in my shorts pocket). Grrrrr. So I am now half naked, trying to explain to the locker room attendant that my key is inside my locker while he looks at me blankly before saying something. I then look at him blankly. I did manage to get him to go and get the front desk guy who let me in. Note to self, don't do that again. 

I walk through the disinfectant pool thing and into the proper pool. It's only 25m, but there are about 5 or 6 lanes wide which means I can have two to myself if I need them. Not really like swimming at home where there's about 8 to a single lane. Mostly people were just playing in the pool, no one but me was actually swimming. Oh well, I will take this time to get fitter I think. After that it's back to the locker room, sit in the spa for a while, have a look around then back home for dinner. I don't know whether gyms in other places are like this but we're certainly getting more for our money here than at home. Plus it's about 5 minutes walk from the house. Tomorrow I might go for a run.