yesterday I talked about community stuff, washed dishes, bought food, got a little distracted by blogs, recompiled all of kde on my desktop, fixed a few little bugs in my project, puzzled over a weird crash, caught up on email, made dinner with pete, and did some other stuff I’ve forgotten.

today I discussed plans for my august vacation, did the weeding, washed dishes, had breakfast, started laundry, went to the chiropractor, then bought cleaning supplies and a curtain rod for the house, spent a while on the phone with fido ’cause they were overcharging me again, tidied up a little, did more dishes, threw out some bad food, made myself a sandwich, recompiled all of kde on my laptop, and it’s 5:30 now so pretty soon I’ll have to start on dinner again.

I’m supposed to be getting code done… but I still need to clean the bathroom, clean the fridge, finish the laundry, try and fix the broken drawer in the kitchen, buy more plane tickets for my vacation, and maybe at some point exercise or practice guitar. :/ there just aren’t enough hours in a day, and my head feels like it’s going to pop off even though I have all this stuff written down. :P

so today was officially the start of summer of code, but I wasn’t at my computer. I spent the day playing in the dirt ;)

We were woke up this morning by the arrival of a truckload of dirt - we weren’t actually expecting it until the afternoon. soon after that, my friend showed up with a bed for me. yay, real bed, no more futon mattresses on the floor :) so we got the bed set up, moved some of the dirt, and had some breakfast.

once breakfast was dealt with, I went out to help pete with the humongous pile of dirt. it was a LOT of dirt. a mountain of it. way more than we needed. anyways, he asked me to do some weeding - the morning glories needed to be pulled out. I was a bit disappointed at first ’cause I think they’re pretty, but then I saw why they must be killed: they were everywhere. around the deck, under the deck, *in* the deck, around the house, and of course in the flowerbeds.

so, I started tearing it up. the more I pulled, the more I got. I ended up kneeling in the dirt, following the root systems and pulling them out as much as possible. the roots had gone right *through* the planks that were the border of this flowerbed, and when I realised one plank was loose and pulled it up, I just saw a huge mass of roots. I was digging about 6 inches down getting as much out as I could. eventually I took off my shoes because they kept cutting off circulation to my feet. I was pretty dirty already by then. it was fun :D

while I was digging up roots, pete was shoveling and wheelbarrowing dirt around. he covered the backyard, gave some of it to neighbours, covered the space beside the deck (after mowing the area and putting down some layers of grass clippings and cardboard), put more dirt on everything, and *still* had a big pile of it sitting in the alley, and the sun was starting to go down… so he moved that pile as much onto our property as possible - I came to help with the last bit of that as I’d finished clearing the flowerbed - and then we headed inside for dinner. hooray for roommates cooking. (they weren’t around for most of the yardwork because they had to go to work.)

of course, I had to shower before eating, since my hands and legs were totally covered in dirt. :) it took a lot of scrubbing to get most of it off. I still have a little on my hand. :P

now I’m fed, and tired, and… holy crap it’s almost 10pm. the day is pretty much over, and I haven’t had any time to code. Tomorrow I should be back on the computer, though. lots to do. :) according to my schedule I’ve given myself three weeks to get plasma and a screensaver displaying properly together, but I do hope it won’t take that long… I’d really rather have that happen tomorrow ;) gotta have those unreachable goals to aim for, y’know.

oh, and keyboard shortcuts have changed slightly for the sake of non-US keyboards. they may change again (specifically, ‘zoom in’ probably will).

oh, hey, it seems my soc proposal was accepted.
…yay?

I’ve been a bit preoccupied lately, so I wasn’t jumping up and down when I found out. actually, I was dashing out the door at the time, to get waaay across town for a chiropractor appointment. now that I’m living in vancouver proper I really need to switch to seeing people that don’t work back in coquitlam. it’s quite silly.

I’m sure I’ll be enthusiastic about soc again soon… it’s just.. right now all I can think of is the huge amount of plasma stuff I wanna get done before soc begins, and all the evil X11 stuff I have to investigate to see how bad the painful parts of my project are going to be, and so on… it’s a good thing I don’t have any errands to deal with tomorrow. I can just sit at the computer and stay there until I start getting code written again.

maybe later I’ll blog about my proposal, too. I never did get around to doing that, did I? it’s gonna be pretty awesome when it’s done :D I just fear the pain I’ll be going through to make it work…

I was kinda sad to leave italy, but happy to be going home. The world is just so full of awesome, I wish I could be everywhere at once. ;)

In some senses it’s still a small world, though. While I was waiting for the train to the airport, I was wandering around outside, looking at the few stalls that were open… I saw some hats for sale, and when I went up to look at them the chinese shopkeeper came out and started jabbering at me in italian… I couldn’t understand what he was saying, so I tried chinese, and we ended up chatting for a few minutes. :) it turns out he’s actually from hangzhou! (the city I was studying in.) there were some more people speaking mandarin on the train too, and iirc I’d had a short chat with a chinese guy on the flight from amsterdam to italy, but I wasn’t really feeling talkative then.

the flight back home was… tiring. I did at least get a small amount of sleep this time. I’ve noticed a few things about airlines: the ‘vegetarian’ meal option seems to be fully vegan (meaning I missed out on cake, but got more fruit), and yet snacks aren’t taken into consideration at all - I got cheese and meat sandwiches on the flight from italy to amsterdam. also, metal cutlery is returning… although security measures continue to get more and more crazy and annoying. I think I like KLM as an airline; their meals can be a little weird, but they get the little things right - headphones always works, the toilets have paper towel, etc.

one thing I noticed as the plane was taking off was that milan looks a lot… greener than vancouver. there seemed to be bright green fields everywhere. very pretty. :) another thing I miss about europe is the wildflowers - instead of just having boring grass everywhere, I saw pretty flowers that would probably be treated as weeds out here. yellow dandilions, white daisies, blue and purple flowers I forget the names of, and some others I don’t know at all.

now that I’m back, it seems my body is getting revenge for all the fun I had and sleep I missed. I’ve got a really annoying cough&cold that’s half-killed my voice. :P but I also have pete taking care of me and cooking me dinner n’stuff, so it’s not so bad. :) I think I’ll just curl up in bed and read books for a while - I’ll have to blog about the interesting stuff I’m reading. :)

so I was kinda without interwebs for a while there. last week pete and his friends unexpectedly got a house that was available immediately - they were planning to move for may. since pete’s landlord was being bitchy, I helped him move last week. the good: we have a 4-bedroom house all to ourselves until his friends get around to moving in. the bad: there’s no unsecured wireless in the area.

I was thinking of asking the neighbours if they’d be willing to share, but never got around to it - and today was the day the cable guy came, so now I have interwebs again, yay. :) life’s been quite busy, so in a way it was kinda nice to not have the internet distracting me. it was incredibly inconvenient at times, though - couldn’t look up bus schedules, couldn’t research things, etc… there are so many little things we take for granted.

so, yeah, busyness. mostly of the small-but-necessary variety. buying things, moving things, fixing things, making a vague attempt at househunting without craigslist access. I’ll be staying here for april, then actually getting a place of my own in may - or at least that’s the plan. between lack of interwebs and being about to head off to italy, there hasn’t been much time to look for a place, so… we’ll see how it goes.

apparently I forgot to mention this on my blog: I’m going to italy for a few days for a plasma sprint. lots of hacking, very little tourism. it’ll be awesome. :) while we’re on the subject, I’ll also be at akademy in august.

now I need to go panic about all the stuff I need to get done online. soc research to do (I haven’t even blogged about my application!!), email to catch up on, plasma stuff I never did…

plasma was a little frustrating last week, actually. I had just started on a ui for multiple desktop containments when I had to put aside that work to write a soc application… then I’d almost cleared everything away, and just had a bit of other code to do before returning to it… then I just had a few RL chores to get out of the way… somehow every morning there was another day’s worth of things in my way, and then I was offline and just as busy. since I spent most of today busywaiting for the cable guy (I’ve read most of the last harry potter book), I doubt I’ll get to it tonight… in fact, it may have to wait until I arrive in italy. there’s just so much to do!

well, at least I’m busy doing stuff I actually want to do. :) being back in canada continues to be awesome. hopefully after I get back from italy I’ll have time to go track down the friends that haven’t dragged me out or run into me at parties. and make some new friends. and… argh, there’s so much to do!! :)

I’m a bit late in blogging about hangzhou. too busy having fun. :)

I got back to hangzhou wednesday evening, got a room (in the dorm when I used to live) and had yummy korean food. didn’t manage to find any net access that night, but the comparative luxury of having a bathroom 3 feet from my bed was worth it :) I got a room in one of the buildings with new air conditioning too, so the room was all warm and comfortable :)

in the morning I went and got my suitcases, and somehow managed to stuff a few more things into them… I got a chance to check email, realised my flight was half an hour earlier than I thought it was… but didn’t worry too much ’cause I had plenty of time. I was planning to catch either the 12:30 or 1:30 bus to the airport, since it was supposed to take 3 hours, and my flight was at 6.

when I was done repacking and dealing with mail, I had to wait for my friend to finish his shower, then we dragged my suitcases out and found a taxi. I got to the bus station at 12:35, so I had loads of time to wait for the 1:30 bus. since I hadn’t got around to eating yet, some nice guard helped me get instant noodles. yay food-like-things. when the bus driver showed up at 1, he asked me when my flight was, and then got into a long converstaion with some other employee… he wasn’t too happy. thought I might not arrive in time, and kept telling me it was ‘weixian’, which usually translates as ‘dangerous’. he told me several times that I should’ve taken the previous bus… but, zenme ban? :P what can I do about it? it was a bit late for that. he said that the fastest he could go would take 3 1/2 hours, which would mean arriving at 5, but it would probably take longer… I prepared myself for a mad dash through the airport, tried to stay calm despite his nagging, and waited for the bus to leave. Two other people showed up to take the bus, and he got them to warn me some more in broken english. I was hoping that he was exaggerating (chinese people seem to have a tendency to make me worry about things I don’t really need to worry about) and decided that the best thing I could do at this point was have faith in the Armitage luck (something I’ve really been pushing lately).

so, we finally set off, and he was driving fast the whole time, weaving between other cars and trucks. we arrived at the airport at 4:15 - *less* than three hours. :) and that was after he took a small detour to let the other two people off at some hotel. I had plenty of time to sit around and wait for the plane. :)

as for the plane flight… I think I almost *like* flying at this time of year. almost. ;) there were lots of empty seats, so I had two to myself, and the vegetarian meals tasted quite good (partially because I’d had nothing but instant noodles that day, I bet). I alternated between watching movies and unsuccessfully attempting sleep.

it’s still kinda hard to believe I’m back in canada. my first night back I had toast, and grilled cheese :) yay food! every meal I’ve had so far has tasted delicious. I have my bike again, and I have a shiny new olpc to play with, and lots of people to see… I don’t think I’m gonna be online much this week. too busy having fun. :)

[another long post; wrote it last night]

whew. what a day!
I’d forgotten about the lack of central heating in the south. ohhh the cold. I do not like how cold I am. I do not like it, sam-I-am.

I meant to get up early and wander around, but of course that never happens; by the time I’d convinced myself to wake up and leave the relative almost-warmth of bed, then showered and checked email, it was already lunchtime. I wandered out and gawked at things for a while, and evenutally found myself in some underground shopping area - the standard chinese tourist shops with bags, watches, jewellery and other knicknacks.
I looked around for a while, and remembered that my mum wants another watch (I don’t know how she does it but no watch lasts even a year without breaking in some way or another). I was so surprised to find some watches that actually looked good, I bought two of them. at the price the girl was asking; 30 kuai each. I’m sure they can’t have been worth more than ten; in fact, on my way out I caught sight of some similar watches with marked prices - 28 kuai. yep, I’m a sucker. (at least I had my wits about me when I was buying clothing in beijing).

I wandered along the street a bit more, and some chinese guy started chatting with me… he had a standard phishing story about being only 15 years old, running away from home and looking for work - all bullshit I’m sure, but I bought him a cheap lunch anyways ’cause he was fun to talk to.

not long after getting rid of him, two girls came up - their story was that they were students doing an art exhibition. :) I let them pull me along to go see their ‘art’ - the standard scroll paintings that everyone swears they made themselves. they did have some silk paintings I hadn’t seen before, though, and those were pretty. I ended up buying one ofthem for 55 kuai - a ridiculous price I’m sure, but they were asking 50 for the cheapest paper scrolls that I know areworth under 10 kuai, and I made the mistake of saying I’d pay 50 for the nice silk painting not the little paper one… luckily 55 was all I had in my wallet at the time. :) they were fun to chat with, though. everyone’s been fascinated by my water thingummy today - I can never remember what to call those plastic water-sacks with the tube, but I dunno why everyone doesn’t buy them. they really are convenient.

After that I wandered until I reached the small strips of flowers and grass that were marked as a big green area on my map :P I was just turning around to wander back when some people saw me juggling and were quite interested… turns out they were tourists from some other part of china, around my age. it was a while before I convinced myself they really were just tourists and not part of some elaborate plot to part me from more of my money. ;) they were about to go buy tickets for some acrobatics show, and I decided to tag along. unfortunately the tickets cost a bit more than what I hadon me (minus the money tagged as ‘needed for survival’) and there was a charge for using plastic, so one of the guys paid for all four tickets and we headed to an ATM to pay him back. That was kinda.. very stupid. I’d already had to go to three ATMs in beijing to get my card to work. this time we went to… I think four ATMs, and then we went into a bank, where there was a minimum withdrawal of 1000 plus a 30 kuai service fee… which didn’t matter, because there was some kind of error again. I even tried my visa in an ATM, guessing at the pin # (I remember 3 of the 4 digits). we went back to the ticket-selling place and got them to try charging the ticket to either of my cards… while they were fiddling I realised the tickets were nonrefundable, and started to stress out. strange thing was, when they tried my debit card they never asked for my pin and said that the machine said there wasn’t enough money, so they must’ve been outright doing something wrong htere… anyways, they said there was an atm across the street that would surely work - I didn’t believe that, but we went anyways… and it actually worked. I have no fucking clue why, but I finally managed to get money, thank god.

and then one of the guys realised he’d left his bag back at the ticket office. doh. :) he ran back to get it and I headed off to the hostel.

I have a feeling that either my bank is having network issues, or my cards themselves are messed up, because that was pretty fucked up. never again will I buy something with someone else’s money. :P

anyways, I had just enough time to walk back to the hostel, get some food and head to the acrobatics show. I took the subway.. oh god. shanghai subways are madness. utter madness. also, the street maps down there don’t always have north pointing up… anyways, I survived, and even arrived a bit early. no sign of my new friends, though. :/ I sent them an sms and they said they were on their way, but I’m not sure if they ever made it. how odd. in any case, the performance was awesome :) lots of flips and guys standing on shoulders and jumping from one pole to another and swinging around, and girls doing weird ballet-like things, and even motorcycles in a ball… definately worth the money. :)

I’m gonna go collapse now. I have to head back to hangzhou tomorrow - I still can’t quite get my head around the fact that I’m really leaving china. :)

[warning: big long rambling post]

I don’t quite remember what my last blog post covered - I’m writing this offline. I think the last one was before nornagon arrived - the two of us did some touristy stuff in beijing, then went to xi’an for a couple of days, then had to hurry back to beijing so he could fly home. :( we didn’t have time to see the Great Wall, unfortunately - someday we’ll have to come back, ’cause there really wasn’t enough time.

xi’an was pretty nice - it’s a shame we had less than two days there. the hostel room was like a frigging hotel - actually, it looked like they really were sharing hte building with a hotel :) hehe. we ended up in a double room with ensuite (although I think we actually booked something a little cheaper) and it came with toothbrushes, shampoo, even towels! :) it’s a good thing it did, ’cause I used my own towel to mop up spilt tea.
the first day in xi’an we decided to just relax, enjoy the nice hostel room, hack a bit… then in the afternoon we went to buy train tickets for hte next day - there’s no such thing as return tickets in china, it seems. :/ the person at the regular ticket booth just kept repeating ‘没有’ - she didn’t have any. so we went back to the hostel and paid them 45 kuai commission to get tickets for us. after that I was stressed, worrying about whether they’d actually be able to get us tickets… I shouldn’t have worried, really, since that doesn’t change anything, and we did get our tickets after all. :)
in the evening we went out to the ‘muslim quarter’ - a couple of streets that were fairly touristy, selling lots of stuff, mostly food… we ate some pineapple rice cake thing that was yummy, then had dinner at an interesting restaurant - there was a big hot pot in the middle of the table, and all sorts of food on skewers along the wall. each skewer is the same price, so you gather up a trayful, start putting them in your pot to cook them, and at the end they count up the skewers for your bill… I really liked the peanutty sauce we got with it. yummy yummy food. :) I bought some snacks on the way back, too.
back at the hostel, we remembered they’d given us tickets for a free beer each - turns out it was a free chinese-size beer each :) so we drank and talked for the rest of the night.

in the morning we packed up and headed off for the standard teracotta warriors tour. one complication - there was no power or hot water in the morning. we’d missed the notice about construction somehow… good thing we’d showered before bed anyways.
the tour wasn’t too bad - they didn’t hurry us too much, and we stopped for lunch at an okay restaurant… of course it was only *after* we ate that they told us the food wasn’t included in the tour price and we had to pay an extra 40 kuai each. :P we weren’t happy about that, but since it wasn’t an unreasonable price for a tourist area we just grumbled a little.
the tour ended a bit earlier than expected, so we had a bit of free time. since no power at the hostel meant no internet, we went off in search of a starbucks - and found one, around the right side of the mall. :) once again we got a bit distracted hacking, then had to hurry to get food before it was time to leave. that evening we found a lovely little restaurant nearby - standard good-quality chinese food at chinese prices. just across the street from the starbucks, it was the second restaurant; the guy came out offering an english menu, so we went in (I can handle chinese menus now, but nornagon has only studied japanese).
on the train back to beijing, we wanted to watch a movie - but were sharing the cabin with two other people, and didn’t want to disturb them. so, we decided to splice two pairs of headphones together. :) we had one spare pair of cheap headphones, so we cut it open. unfortunately, the signal wire inside was insulated, and so fine that scraping off the insulation often broke it. :/ once we got some bare wire, trying to actually do anything with it broke it, so eventually we gave up and just shared one pair of headphones. ah well, at least it was fun to try :)

I was kinda having trouble enjoying myself in xi’an ’cause I’d caught a cough & cold, so I decided to rest for a couple of days back in beijing. that quickly turned into four days of hacking and catching up on email. oops :) it was nice to relax, though. I went out one evening for dinner with BLUG, which was fun, although all the talking and smoke in the air really didn’t help the cough :/
now I’m in shanghai… despite dozing off on the train right after it started (or maybe because of that) I didn’t sleep very well. I was slow in getting off the train, and I think I almost didn’t get off :/ the doors were closed and then some employee jumped when she saw me and opened the nearest door to let me off. then Ihad to find my way out, sincethere was no horde of people to follow. at first I tried to go out the entrance by mistake, but eventually I was pointed in the right direction. :)·
once I was off the train platform, everything was straightforward. I managed to take the subway and walk to the hostel this time, instead of relying on a taxi. oh god was it ever crowded on shanghai subway - they had employees at one point standing by hte doors to make sure people were let off beore the crowds pushed on. they didn’t seem to have that at the station I got off at - I had to kinda push backwards and sideways until I made it to the door, ’cause there was no room to turn in.
somehow I survived, though, and got out into the.. relatively clean shanghai air. it’s kinda disturbing to think of shanghai air as clean. :/
not long after arriving at the hostel, I pulled out my computer and returned to this blog entry (I started it on the train). they still have no wireless here, but they do have power outlets by the beds. pretty soon I was fast asleep - slept away the afternoon. I hope that doesn’t make it impossible to sleep tonight. I think I’ll get up now and go do something so that I don’t fall back asleep. :)

I’m enjoying beijing so far, despite the bad air :)

I got off the train monday morning, and some people who had been in my cabin took me to the subway since they were going the same direction as me, and told me which stop to get off at. they even insisted on paying for my ticket. :) the only downside to this was that I didn’t have a chance to buy a map on my way out of the train station.

after getting off the subway, people only seemed to have a vague idea of where I was trying to go (despite my directions being copied off the hostel website) - so I wandered in what one person said was the right direction until I found somewhere selling maps. after that I think it took me half an hour to figure out where I was and where I was going - but I wasn’t in any hurry. once I got the map figured out, the hostel actually wasn’t so hard to find. :) I showed up at building #1, and they took me through the hutong to building #2. I haven’t a clue how to get back there - hutong appears to be chinese for ‘a maze of twisty passages, all alike.’ ;)

the hostel itself is quite nice. very old, but in good condition, and the people here are quite friendly :) there are a couple of guys who seem to be staying here for a while - coincidentally, one is from canada. they seem to spend a lot of time eating and making terrible jokes. ;) I went shopping with one guy, and he’s really good at bargaining. :) he helped me get a pair of pants and a jacket at reasonable prices - now I just have to figure out how to fit them into my suitcase when I go home :P

the food here has been fairly good so far. I had a bit of trouble getting vegetarian stuff for dinner today (one of those “it’s not got *much* meat in it” places) but on monday I had no problems at all - when we went for lunch one of the guys didn’t eat any meat either just ’cause we’d already ordered plenty of yummy veggies. :)

it’s been kinda weird adjusting to central heating again. when I arrived, it was a cold morning - I’m pretty sure I saw a frozen river a few minutes before the train stopped - and the wind made it even colder. the hostel was somewhat heated, but I kept my layers and layers of clothing. :) all the rooms open onto a little outdoor corridor, and some people tend to leave the door open…

the conference hotel, on the other hand, was heated excessively. I was slowly stripping off t-shirts as the day wore on, and other people were commenting on the heat too… it was uncomfortably warm :/ but it was still quite cold outside. on the second day I wore less layers, and no long-sleeved shirt, but it was still a bit too hot. there was a lot of static electricity, too - someone said that the hotel power outlets aren’t really grounded :/ every time I picked up my laptop I got a shock. I’m praying that it didn’t damage the poor thing.

today, it seems spring has arrived. when I went out for food, I only wore two t-shirts and a jacket - no big winder coat, no gloves. :) hopefully this means the lake is less frozen, ’cause supposedly the lantern festival is tonight.

mmm, it’s a beautiful day today. :) it’s been sunny all week, which is part of the reason I’ve been dozing instead of coding, but today the temperature is no longer bloody freezing - I was actually outside without my winter jacket (although I was still wearing 5 layers of clothing). right now I have my window wide open, and I’m only wearing three layers. it’s an improvement! and the sunlight makes it really hard not to be happy :)

best of all, I have my train ticket! whee! I went down to the office at the main gate and just bought it myself - it was easy. I should’ve done that in the first place, but instead I followed my friend’s advice, trying to get the travel agent to do it.

so, it’s official, I’m leaving sunday evening. now I have to pack, and find out which train station I have to go to… I guess I should enjoy this bit of spring before I head up north where it’ll be all cold again :)