This blog is: Humoristic! Diverting! Thrilling!

You can note it down: on November 26, 2011, I wore a sweatshirt to work. It was chilly enough at 8:15 in the morning to warrant a long-sleeved layer. This didn't last through the day, of course, and I carried the sweatshirt home over my arm. And, yesterday and today were both sunny and in the 80's. Ah, well. It gives me hope that maybe it'll be cool enough eventually that I can justify shopping for a cute sweater (which will be not nearly as fun as it is in my head, because 3/4 of the stores will not have anything in my size and it will be very depressing).

Actually, yesterday was so nice a day that a group of us went to Chimelong Paradise amusement park. It boasts a number of rather horrifying (to wimpy kid me, anyway) roller coasters along with the usual assortment of rides. I rode the swirly swings, the log-flume-esque ride, one called the Giant Frisbee which rotates and swings, some other spinny-kinds of rides, the mildest roller coast not actually in the kiddie area, and the most nausea-inducing teacups that I have ever ridden. Dad, I completely understand your pain, now. Wow. We all staggered off that one and had to sit down for a little while inhaling the medicated oil.

Yes, medicated oil. I've never actually been ill on a theme park ride, since I usually stick to the milder ones. So I can't really recall if places like Funtown or Six Flags provide vomit bags and dizziness-busting medicated oil at the exit gate of each ride, but Chimelong Paradise does. Actually, some of the rides (like the teacups) had a little bin of vomit bags on the ride, in handy reach of your seat. Ha, as if I could have been that coordinated while holding on for dear life and fixing my gaze on the center wheel. Regardless, the oil -- eucalyptus, perhaps? -- was actually quite helpful. I rubbed it on my wrist and then sniffed at when needed.

It was quite a fun day, and perhaps the most amusing part was the English descriptions of the rides on the park map. Here are a few of my personal favorites:
"Rotating Cup: To experience the fame in the cup"
"Jumping Tower: You are a hero in future. Jumping up and down in the tower and scream as you like."
"Carnival Parade: Come on, my dear friends! To enjoy the whoopee with your passion."
"Double-deck Carousel: Riding on the cockhorse to find your wonderful child's time."
"North American Lumberjack Show: The conventional Lumberjack Show appears here. Humoristic! Diverting!Thrilling!" (sadly, this show was closed for the day)
"Motorbike Launch Coaster: Let's come 'ride' a coaster together."

Honestly? Half of those sound like either the description of a low-budget slasher film or really terrible euphemisms for things that really shouldn't get 4-star family ratings.

Not much else to say about my week, really. I did manage to find some dried coconut and confectioner's sugar, so with any luck, I'll be able to make some needhams on Friday. Tomorrow, alas, I'll have no free time as I've got to attend work training for our new textbook series from 9:30am-4:30, then I have an evening class until 8, and I still have quite a bit of planning and grading to do before the weekend. Sigh. Thinking about it makes me tired. Is it my next day off, yet?

With any luck, next week I'll have some time to go find some Christmas decorations for my apartment. The whole city is decorated already, and it's really strange, and strangely depressing, to see Christmas celebrated with such disassociation from its cultural roots. More on that later in the month, when I expect I'll be feeling quite a bit more blue (I've expunged "I'll Be Home for Christmas" from my collection. Too. Darn. Depressing.). Still, I feel a powerful need for some fake poinsettias and plastic evergreens. Maybe if I spray some of that fake snow on the ledge outside my windows, and paint the corners of the windows with it, I can pretend it's really cold outside.

A Guangzhou Thanksgiving

 I anticipate a busy couple days off this week, so I am distributing my blog writing over a few days. It’s Monday as I write this, and I have just finished writing a long shopping list. You see, I am attempting to host Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday. It’s my very first Thanksgiving away from home and family, and in an attempt to not be overcome by holiday blues (let’s consider this a trial run for Christmas next month… that’s gonna be a doozy, no matter what I do), I concocted the wild plan to host my own Thanksgiving for a few of my fellow ex-pat friends. Well, let’s just start with a few of my immediate problems, shall we?

            1. Where the heck am I going to find turkey in Guangzhou?

            2. I don’t have an oven, and my stove only has two burners.

            3. I own two cooking vessels: a wok and a small pot.

            4. My flatmate is a vegan.

            5. I’m sure I can find cranberry sauce somewhere in this town, but where?

            6. We have two plates, two bowls, 2 mugs, and 4 sets of silverware.

I take problem solving as a personal challenge, and it’s what makes life worth living, right? Let’s get to it. Turkey in it’s traditional form is out. It’s probably prohibitively difficult, but I wasn’t even going to try. After all, I don’t have an oven. I plan to solve that problem tomorrow by going out and buying a tabletop oven… yes, I basically mean a toaster oven. So, size-wise, roasting any sort of meat is out. Solution 2: I could buy a whole roast chicken. But it just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving, you know? So my final solution is this: sliced deli turkey from the American import grocery store. Is it going to cost an arm and a leg and my firstborn child? Yes, but hot open-faced turkey sandwiches? Worth it. And payday is next week, anyway.

Whatever you paid per pound for you turkey, I can beat it.

Speaking of the American import grocery store (Corner’s Deli, underneath the CITIC plaza, if you have arrived here via a Google search for “Thanksgiving Guangzhou” hoping for help – you know I tried it, too), I am almost certain they will have canned cranberry sauce and possibly even stuffing mix, as well. If they don’t, I have two backup plans. Plan B:  Kitchen Carnival (in Zhujiang New Town). Plan C: homemade stuffing with dried cranberries [potentially the best plan, except for the extra work in my tiny little kitchen].

Cooking and eating vessels aren’t really much of a problem: I really ought to get around to owning drinking glasses and one of my guests has volunteered to bring paper plates. No, the biggest brain cramp in the vegan (and two vegetarian guests) element.

Googling “vegan Thanksgiving” actually gets you dozens (well, thousands, but who looks beyond the first two pages?) of really helpful suggestions and recipes. Honestly, vegan food can be delicious-looking, and it really doesn’t seem all that hard (side recommendation: the Youtube series “Cooking with the Vegan Zombie.” It’s got recipes. And zombies. Really, what more could you want?). Except, except: they pretty much assume you have access to a Whole Foods or an organic grocery store or at the very least, that your local shop carries vegan butter and soy creamer and some strange product called vegan cheese (I don’t want to think too hard about it). Hey, vegan bloggers: I went to Hong Kong just to get some quinoa! But oh thank goodness I bought some: apparently, it’s a protein substitute, so persimmon, orange, and apple quinoa will be our vegan main dish. And vegan maple pumpkin pie for dessert. 

Time passes quickly in the past tense.

Part 2:

Phew! It’s over. The guests are gone, and the dishes are (mostly) washed. It was quite fun, and I’ll call it a success. But let’s give you a bit of a recap.

Tuesday shopping went well, if long. I hit up the vegetable market, then went over to the Tianhe area to spend an ungodly sum on Western foodstuffs (Ocean Spray cranberry juice! Stovetop stuffing mix!). I did end up needing to go to Zhujiang, too, but I managed to get everything on my list except canned pumpkin. Alas, I had to make soup and pie from scratch. It’s better that way, anyway. Last on my list, I picked up a small oven at Gomz electronics store. It is always so fun to buy a big ticket item in a department store. First, you find a salesperson – they’re usually hovering behind you, so that’s easy. Then, you tell them which one you want. They write your name and the product number/price on a ticket, which you take to the cashier and pay. The cashier gives you a receipt, which you take back to your salesperson, who dispatches another clerk to the storeroom to get the actual item (or if it’s smaller, say, a thumb drive, they unlock the cabinet and get one out for you). When it arrives, if it is a small appliance, they often take it out of the box and plug it in to show you that it does in fact work. Finally, you get your item and you’re good to go. The only snag here, for foreigners, is our pesky foreign names. They are often confused to no end by my name. Which one is my surname? Which is my given name? Is that an ‘n’ or a ‘w’? Is this one word or two or three?

New oven!

I immediately tried out my oven by baking the pie on Tuesday evening. I also made the soup. They both came out well. I roasted my pumpkin first, which the oven did lickety-split. The pie, too, cooked evenly and problem-free. I am so happy with having an oven. I’ve already got a list of things to make (smörbullar, cookies, lasagna, baked apples, baked potatoes, more pie…).

Maple Pumpkin Pie with Pecan Crumb Topping.

This morning, I made mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, stuffing, vegan stuffing, roasted garlic, roasted green beans, Golden Orchard Quinoa (recipe by Kathy on Healthy Happy Life blog), and cut up my deli turkey into rough as-if-off-a-roast-bird slices, which I heated up in gravy. A couple things about my vegetables. First, think of green beans. Got it? Okay, look at mine:

They're Jolly Green Giant sized!

And while we're at it, let's talk sweet potatoes. Did you know they came in purple? Neither did I, until I started peeling. And yes, mashed purple potato looks exactly like homemade play dough.

Apparently, purple sweet potatoes are common in Japan.

Also today, I popped out to grab some water and soy milk from the store so my guests would have something other than boiled tap water and cranberry juice to drink. I decided to be really fancy while I was at it, so I walked up the road a bit to where there is a cluster of three or four fancy wine shops. Now, this was a heck of a lot classier than my usual wine-buying experience (usually a place called Bootleggers). I walked in, and, as it was 10 o’clock in the morning, I was the only customer. This means I got my own trail-behind-me clerk, and another clerk watched us from the counter. I perused the selection (US, France, Italy, but also South Africa, Argentina, Australia, and others), which ranged from price-I-would-actually-pay to holy-heck (but that’s true in most wine shops) and finally picked a French chardonnay (do I sound like I know what I’m talking about? Yeah, no, I Googled ‘thanksgiving wine pairings’). My clerk helpfully got me a chilled bottle (because I’m going to drink it immediately? At 10:15am?) and the cashier clerk rings me up while he puts it in a nice bottle-dimension cloth bag. Then he carried it to the door for me, which he held open while I exited. Yeah.

So, finally, it was down to trying to get everything warmed up for dinner at the same time. This is a challenge. And honestly, I could have not bothered, as half my guests were 30 minutes late, and so things were getting a little lukewarm again by then. But it was fun, nonetheless, and everyone said nice things about the food. That said, I have tons of leftovers, but I blame my (totally inherited, thanks Mom) tendency to overestimate the intake capacity of a dinner guest.

Dinner for 8 (feeds 16)

Despite the work and the challenge of finding ingredients – oh, who am I kidding, I loved the challenge – I really enjoyed hosting Thanksgiving and having friends over. Of my six guests, only two of them are Americans. One is Chinese, Polish, one is from the Philippines, and one is Canadian. Of the Americans, one is Columbian-American and one is Chinese-American, so they told interesting childhood stories of celebrating this holiday as part of immigrant families. For three of my guests, this was their first Thanksgiving. It was fun to be able to share and compare our traditions.

We’re not so different, you see. We all have things for which we are thankful. For me, I am thankful for friends (who helped me do the dishes after dinner, despite my protests), for the opportunity to live and work in a foreign country (despite the occasional difficulties and annoyances), and for my family (even if I can’t be with you this Thanksgiving). I am thankful for support when I need it and good advice when I ask for it. I am thankful for being alive and being loved. So Happy Thanksgiving, all.

Where in the World?

I think I need to see a doctor. I don't feel sick, or anything, but I did do something extremely out of character this week -- I up and took an overnight trip without any actual pre-planning. In fact, I never really did develop a plan, but rather took things one activity at a time. It was a busy two days, but quite enjoyable. I have lots to say, but I'm wicked tired and don't feel like typing it right now. So, I shall just give you some pictures, and leave you with a challenge (not a very difficult one): Where did I go?

As for last week's challenge (what's interesting about the elevator panel in my building), the answer is: there are no 4s (my building has no 4th, 14th, or 24th floors). This is because the Chinese word for 4 (si) is a homonym for 'death' and is quite unlucky.

One last picture from the trip:

Way. Too. Early. (there was music, too)

Rainy Wednesday

Wednesday again. It's been a pretty uneventful week. Yesterday and today have been quite rainy, but I'm not complaining too much, because the temperature today was down into the 60s. Going to run some errands, I actually wore a (light, short-sleeved) sweater.

As nothing much has happened this week, I thought today I'd take you through a typical Wednesday. And since I spent several hours today writing the first draft of a short story for a holiday exchange, I don't feel much like telling you in words. So, get ready for the Rainy Day Photo-Essay:

The day begins in my room. I overslept a bit today, as I don't usually set an alarm on my day off. The rain meant the light coming through my window was more muted than usual, so I slept later. But once I was up, I turned on my computer and got ready for the day.

First up, breakfast. 

I was feeling lazy this morning, and I have milk to use up, so breakfast was Frosted Flakes. They are imported and really expensive, but I love them. Actually, this is one of my biggest problems with cooking and eating in China. All the of the foods that my brain insists should be categorized as 'cheap' and 'typical' are actually quite often expensive. To name a few: cereal, cheese, peanut butter, and tomato-based pasta sauce. On the other hand,  I can get frozen dumplings, instant soup noodles, and steamed buns wicked cheap, so it evens out.

After breakfast, I ran a load of laundry. The washing machine is still working fine (hooray!). The laundry room is a little porch off the kitchen. It overlooks the "inside" of our building, and I can see the laundry room-porches of many of my neighbors. I absolutely do not spy on them.

I walk back to my room through the living room with my cereal. Normally, I would eat breakfast at the table (it's off the the left in this picture), but today is Video Chat day, and I want to catch my family before they go to bed. Now that Maine is back on Standard time, the time difference is 13 hours.

Okay, breakfast is eaten, phone calls are made, and the laundry is hung up to dry (good luck, considering the damp weather). It's time to leave the apartment and run some errands. Who can spot the interesting fact about the elevator panel?

My first errand is down Huanshi Road, about a five minute walk. I have to stop by China Telecom and pay the internet bill for the month. This is actually remarkably easy, once the clerk gives me a tutorial on how to use the self-service machine. Of course, I'll have forgotten the exact process by next month, and I will annoy whoever is in line behind me next month as I take three minutes to decipher every menu screen.

If you go a little further along Huanshi Road, you hit a block or two of shops that all seem to cater to the same clientele. Oh, look! Theodolites! And I know know that the Chinese word for surveying/mapping/cartography is 测绘ce4hui4 (and theodolite is 经纬仪 jing1wei3yi2, which is wicked cool, since 经纬 also means warp and weft, so 'theodolite' ends up being 'warp and weft instrument' ... okay, so it's really like 'latitude and longitude instrument').

After paying for my internet access (it's about 29 USD per month, if you're curious) and fondly gawking at surveying equipment like a loon, I hop on the bus to the shopping mecca at Tiyu West Road. I'm not actually shopping today (I did my grocery shopping yesterday) but I've got that story to write, and I need a writing environment other than my room. So, I'm headed for a cafe for a cup of tea, an armchair, and the mild distraction of people watching (rather than the major distraction of the internet).

There are several buses that go to the same general area, so I usually take which ever comes by first. Today that was the B3. The B buses are the rapid transit network, and stops at the central station. From there, I head underground to cross under the major intersection. This takes me through one end of Festival Walk, which is an underground shopping street. The B bus station is on this end, and the other end is the Tiyu subway station. Oh, and according to the sign on the wall, this is also an emergency air raid shelter.

Looking toward Tee Mall, while standing at Victory Plaza mall. There are four other malls within a five minute walk, not including Festival Walk, which is under the intersection in the picture. In all honestly, I think there is more retail space in this square mile than there is the entire state of Maine.

After a couple hours at the cafe (yum, oolong tea) I head back to my apartment. Bus 78 drops me around the corner from the building I work in (see the big blue curving sign? Our school is on the third floor, behind the sign and extending toward the right). Before crossing the street, I stop at my favorite steamed bun place for some black rice buns.

It's still raining, so there are no street vendors on my stretch of sidewalk. Too bad, I could have gone for a roasted potato.

Through the gate, across the courtyard, up the elevator to my floor. It's supposedly the 29th, but it's actually only 26 stories up. Have you solved the 'what's up with the elevator panel' problem yet?

Dinner tonight is leftover vegan pumpkin soup from yesterday with the black rice buns I bought on the way home. The soup isn't as smooth as it should be, since I don't have a blender, but it is kind of delicious, if I do say so myself. Pumpkin soup plus the cooler weather today? Gosh, a girl could almost think its Fall!

The day ends with a little blogging and catching up on Castle. Tomorrow morning I'm off to the fabric market to pick up the pants I had made, then it's back to weekend-mode as I get ready for the long days of classes on Saturday and Sunday. But for now, I think a cup of tea and then bed. There's nothing quite as relaxing as a rainy Wednesday.

Crafty

Crafty is one of my favorite words. It brings to mind a burst of other adjectives in my head, like the flash and echo of a distant firework: nifty, cunning, DIY. Crafty is fun, too, because of its wildly different definitions: 1) to be skilled at or inclined to doing crafts and 2) to be cunning, tricky, inclined to deceit. Yesterday was full of craftiness for me, in both senses of the word.

1. To be skilled at or inclined to doing crafts

Christy, a coworker/friend on mine invited a whole bunch of us over for Vietnamese spring rolls and craft time. When we were on vacation in Yangshuo a few weeks ago, we saw some beautiful hand-painted t-shirts. Being similarly inclined to DIY fun, she hunted down some fabric paints and we all brought a shirt to destroy paint. 

Now I've long since come to terms with my inability to paint. Give me some wool and I will craft that sucker to dead, but in my hand a paintbrush never quite lives up to what my mind designs. But I gave it a go, regardless. Christy has a number of art and fashion books, including one of portraits of women in traditional han fu. I stole/adapted a pattern from the neckband of one and attempted to paint it as a stripe down one side of my shirt. It, well, doesn't match the aspirations of my mind's eye, but I don't hate it, and it was fun to hang out with my friends and do crafts. Another friend brought a new knitting project for help. She's knit a scarf before, but now she's making a beret, in the round, on double pointed needles. It's a bit of a jump, skill-wise, but I think she'll manage it. Maybe we can organize a stitch'n'bitch and I can actually make some progress on my socks (untouched for three months and counting -- but who wants to touch wool when it's 98 degrees out?). 

Oh, and before I forget, the spring rolls were quite DIY, too, and super easy and delicious. Expect them to make an appearance in my cooking repertoire when I'm home.

2. to be cunning, tricky, inclined to deceit.

It was a little after ten when I headed home and I was stopped by a man on the street. He had a little girl with him. He asked me (all dialogue is in Mandarin) if I knew how to get to Panyu (a district way on the other side of the city). Are you suspicious yet? You should be. I said it was very far and told him he should take the subway station. He proceeds to tell me a lovely story about how he and his family (apparently the woman off to the side is Mom) from Beijing, in Guangzhou to visit a friend, but it's late, they're lost, and they don't have any money. So if I could just give them enough for a cab across the city... oh, and the little girl's on the brink of tears.

Now, let's talk for a moment about the craft of the con, because this man is certainly trying to be crafty and deceitful. He's just dreadful at it.

1. Stopping a foreigner for help on a street with several Chinese people within sight (but not particularly in earshot). -- Things to assume about foreigners: they don't speak Chinese, they aren't natives, they have a lot of money. In other words, not the person you flag down for directions, but possibly a good mark for a con.

2.  Panyu -- this is the gold standard for 'long trip without leaving the city.'  Now, it is mostly residential, so the 'friend who lives there' is relatively plausible. But I can't quite figure out how one gets so lost between any of the major inbound stations (train, bus, or plane) and Panyu as to end up in my neighborhood.

3. "I'm from Beijing" -- well, you do speak especially clear Mandarin, and I don't have any trouble understanding you. On the other hand, I've got more of a Beijing accent than you, sir. Here's a tip: drop and 'r' or two every other sentence. Even if you're purposely trying to clean up your dialect, the Beijing-trained ear just wants to hear 'yi dianr' not 'yi dian.'

4. "My wife is so upset" -- Yeah, that looks less like a woman overcome with a hopeless situation and more like a bored woman playing games on her cell phone. It's probably why she's over there. The big-eyed, crying kid is much more of a solid play.

Now, this was clearly a con. There was no way it wasn't. It wasn't even particularly skillful or crafty. Still, I did give him some money. You know why? a) Because it was semi-amusing free Chinese practice, and b) because he's a heartless bastard who's using his child to guilt people into giving him cash. He made me angry. You know why your kid is crying? Probably because you told her to. But really, how hard is it to get a five year old to cry when you've got her walking around at 10:15 at night? If that man has a sliver of a soul, he decided my donation to the cause was a sufficient haul for the night and took her home to bed.

Enough of that. It happens in every country, every day, and I don't really care. I'm much more self-centered at the moment. Why is that, you ask? Because I have a cold, and I'm crawling back into bed now. Mommy, come make me some soup.