The late autumn downer

Weather: chilly, but warmer than yesterday
Temp: -6 ~4
Exchange rate:
RMB1 = R1.50 (I think it's stabilised)
Days left in kitty prison: 26
Textbook: An image from our Mandarin textbook.

Frikkie and I are not having the best week. He's really frustrated at the office and I'm so bored I want to platz. The economic downturn is really affecting China and the construction industry is no exception. So everybody is tightening their belts and to say that he's not having much fun at the office is a bit of an understatement. I've decided that teaching really isn't for me and that I want a proper 9-5 corporate job. I was looking at opening a flower/coffee shop, but after some further investigation decided that I don't know enough about the local environment to really make a go of it. Also, you need a local partner and since I know about 5 locals this wasn't really an option.

But it's not all bad. We're off to Shanghai for the weekend. Frikkie has to go there for a work on Thursday and I'm flying down on Friday for some R&R and slightly warmer weather.

We move into our new apartment next weekend. Lucky we don't have much to move so it should go quickly. Yeah!

Despite the cold at night we regularly hop on our (now dusty) bikes and head for our DVD shop. We don't have cable TV and it's a bit nippy to go out at night, so we're watching a lot of DVDs. The thing with the DVDs that you get from our friendly local DVD prirate is that you never quite know what you're going to get. We got a copy of Asterix and Obelix go to the Olympics (or whatever it's called in English). So we knew it's a french flick and we checked that it had English subtitles. Well, technically it did have English subtitles, but let's just say it wasn't comprehensible English. Not even close. And the movie was dubbed into Russian. So perhaps it was dubbed from French into Russian and then a Russian speaking frenchy translated it into Mandarin and then somebody typed every third word in Google Translate et voila - no comprendo Angleski.