Stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else
Today I discovered I had all the ingredients necessary for a peanut butter and banana sandwhich: crunchy peanut butter, bananas, half-decent bread, and a glass of cold milk. In my (almost) two years of living in Beijing, this has never happened before, mostly because of the lack of real bread in my neighbourhood.
It was tasty. Time to go buy more bananas and peanut butter…….
I’ve read some interesting articles lately. The first two are a series on the key problem in the use of voting technology in the U.S. The author brings it all home for me—literally—by using Canada’s electoral system as an example. So now, the U.S. system finally makes sense to me; I now understand that it is totally senseless.
The third article is great. Really, these guys are nuts, but that’s why I read The Onion every week. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Crazy. It’s been a crazy past couple of weeks. Or maybe it hasn’t even been that long. Some cool things happened since my last weblog entry, so I’ll tell you about some of them.
On my flight back to Beijing, I met my cousins for brunch in Vancouver for something to do for the layover. We had a good time catching up on their lives in Canada and my life in China. My french toast was pretty good too. As we were saying goodbye before I entered the security gate for International Departures, I just happened to check the screen to find that my flight to Beijing had been cancelled. So we all went over to the check-in desk to find out what was going on. Well, the plane never left Beijing the day before, so there was no plane to take me back there. Probably unlike most of the other passengers that day, I was pleased. It meant I could spend 24 more hours with my cousins, plus see various aunts and uncles too. My uncle Paul was even in Vancouver on a business trip, so I got to see him. It was great to hang out in Vancouver like this. I even got to meet my cousin Ann’s husband Steve. They got married this past year while I was in China. He’s pretty cool. We have a lot in common.
I was a little concerned about how I was going to get a seat the next day since they were going to combine the two flights into one. The ladies at the desk told me to just come early (really early!) the next day. Well, I did that and everything seemed normal. I just wasn’t certain that I had a seat on the plane until I was sitting in it. It didn’t look like the crowd at the boarding gate would fit on the plane. But we all made it, some of us a day late.
I spent one or two days at the office when I got back. Not everything was where I had left it though. For one, the entire building had been cleared out and moved into the new building next door. I had gotten some advanced warning via an email though, so it wasn’t too bad.
A devastating realization hit me as I was unpacking from my vacation. I couldn’t find my laptop. I then realized that I must have left it on the x-ray belt as I went through security in Vancouver. How could I do that? Well, let’s just say I had a warehouse of electronics in my backpack and even though I was careful not to lose any of them, I forgot about the tray with the laptop in it. For one thing, I was held up by the metal-detector thing for several minutes. I set it off, which I normally don’t do, and it took a while to search me with the wand because I wasn’t wearing anything that should have set off the detector in the first place. So I was a bit flustered when I went back to the belt.
Anyway, after realizing my mistake (when I was in China) there wasn’t much I could do except call the airport lost and found. I did that, and because of email problems and my subsequent travel (more on that below), I didn’t actually hear from them until this morning. I spent a week in the dark about my laptop’s fate. The good news is that they do have it. I’m very lucky. So I’ll send one of my cousins back to the airport to fetch it for me. I was fully prepared to never see it again, the worst part being that all the digital pictures I took in Canada were only on the laptop. But this morning I had a feeling that I would hear some good news.
After settling into the new office for a day or two, I left for Hainan, in the southernmost part of China, for a 4-day training conference. The conference itself was two days long, with two days of tour tacked on the end of it. Oh, and the conference was in Chinese so my employer didn’t actually expect me to attend. I was there just to travel and experience more of China. I didn’t object.
There are only a few stories from my trip to Hainan. I got to swim in the South China Sea and it was pretty beautiful. I spent most of the trip, however, just recovering from my month in Canada. All in all, I’m just glad to be back in Beijing again. I haven’t seen any friends yet nor done any swing dancing. I’ll see Ilse for supper tonight. Maybe when I get home I can do some laundry!
It’s been a fun four weeks—I’m heading back to Beijing tomorrow. I’m looking forward to being back there. I’ll get up early tomorrow, wait at the airport for two hours, take a short flight to Vancouver, meet my cousins for brunch, and then begin the 11-hour flight to Beijing. I’ll arrive Sunday afternoon in Beijing.
I’ve enjoyed my visit. It will be nice to have a rest from my vacation!
Well, I’ve been having great fun here in Edmonton. I’ve got two more weeks left, then I go back to Beijing.
Here’s my first adventure. Within days of first arriving here, I developed a severe toothache in my bottom right molar. It would come and go in severity, but sometimes it would even cause a pretty bad headache and I wouldn’t be able to sleep well because of it. I noticed swelling down inside the mouth near the root line, so I really didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t think it was a cavity gone really bad. So within a few days I was able to see the dentist for my annual checkup and cleaning, and he investigated for me. It took an extra X-ray, but he was able to confirm that I had a tiny bone fragment in my gums making its way out. It came from the dental surgery I had way back in high school. Apparently it takes that long for stuff to work its way out of the body. With a bit of freezing (thankfully!), he was able to get a hold of it and pull it out. Within hours, my tooth settled back to normal and I haven’t had any pain from it since. The dentist said it would probably have taken the fragment six months or so to come out on its own. Ouch! So I’m very thankful that it happened now when I could have it looked at in Canada. Thanks, God!
After my Saskatchewan trip, I gave my friend Carl a call. He was my original introduction to swing dancing when I was studying for my master’s degree. To my great happiness, he told me that his club was still running and that they had lessons on Mondays and Wednesdays, plus there would be a social at the beginning of October. Great! The club is called Swing-Out Edmonton, if you want to have a look. I consequently joined the beginner and intermediate classes on the next Monday. We learned a dance step called the Balboa in the intermediate class, plus we worked on a step called the Grapevine. The beginner class is Lindy Hop, and it was more round of a style than I am used to. The follows don’t go back and forth in a line like we’ve learned in Beijing. I adapted somewhat. My follows didn’t seem too confused, and there were no casualties.
Last night was the social. I brought my Mom so I could teach her swing and also show her how I could dance. We had fun. The dance took place in the Orange Hall in Old Strathcona. About 40 people came. Before it started, Carl was busy getting the sound equipment ready, and since he’s an Electrical Engineer, I assumed he would be able to figure it out, and because of the male pride thing, I assumed he would be able to figure it out, and because of the male pride thing, I stayed away. But later I noticed he was having trouble (it was a different setup than they normally have) so I jumped in and quickly discovered that I was the sound equipment expert for the night. All I had to do was move a few of the inputs into the proper channels and then show him what the various controls do. I didn’t have to play DJ. I knew my Mom would want to leave early, and since I’m sporting a cold still, I don’t have my usual stamina, so we left at 11 p.m. I could have danced longer, of course, but it was better for me to go home and sleep. Neither of us are sore this morning, so that’s great! A fun night of good music and good dancing. I love it!
I finally have pictures ready from my trip to Canada so far. They mostly detail the trip I made to visit my Grandparents in Saskatchewan, plus there are some pictures at the end from when my friend Cathey visited my sister. Enjoy!
Yesterday was my grandfather’s birthday. Charles Bernard Griffith was born 100 years ago, on 30 August 1903. He died at the age of 76, when I was five years old. So I spent the day thinking about him and what the world would have been like 100 years ago. I have a few memories about him (maybe two or three). One winter—I was probably three or four years old—when I was visiting Jackfish Lake where he lived and had raised his family, I took a toboggan down the hill toward the lake. I’m pretty sure that he and my Dad had warned me not to go where the trees were, but they still comforted me after I hit a tree. I wasn’t always known to listen to my elders! It’s a good memory for me, anyway. No scars.
Ever since I saw this clock last week, I’ve been obsessed with it, like I just had to buy it and bring it into my apartment. I’m not really sure why. Fate knows. But there is a connection between me and precision instruments, somewhere deep within. And I guess I’ve always liked mechanical clocks, coveting them as I saw them in stores here in China.
The only problem is that all the “mechanical” alarm clocks I’ve seen aren’t real. They are of this style, but the bells on top are plastic and non-functional. And there are a lot of these kinds of clocks, from “Hello Kitty!”, to Snoopy, to Winnie the Pooh.
So when I was browsing through IKEA and saw that their Dekad alarm clock was real, I fell in love with it. I even had a fascinating dream about an intricate mechanical clock the next day.
It took me a week to come to the conclusion that I had to buy it to satisfy my obsession. It only cost me 39 RMB, or $8 CDN. It’s black, though I remember it as being blue. It has an adjustable rate, and I’m still fine tuning it to keep accurate time. It wakes me up though (if I remember to wind it), and I can know what time it is now by just glancing across the room.
I am pleased to announce that the Mad Philosopher now has his own domain. That is, these posts can now be accessed from the site https://madphilosopher.ca/. I registered the domain name from easyDNS on the advice of a friend. And it was truly easy. So now I’m on my way to building a true web identity and a better website.
Also, look for my latest picture gallery, just posted. I’ve had my camera since the Fall of 2000, so it’s about time that I put some more pictures on the site. The gallery design is based on other picture galleries that I have seen on the web, but I wrote the software that enables me to compile and update the galleries easily. If you are interested in using the software for your own site, please ask.
Enjoy! And thanks for visiting my site.
Not terribly enlightening, but a good laugh. Maybe the dog was enlightened. I don’t know. Enjoy!