A Fun Monday

Woke up around 8:30 or so on Monday, and when Alistair stumbled forth we hit a big new shopping mall about 8 kms south of our apartment. It was pretty nice. It felt like a Canadian mall. We grabbed lunch there (Chinese food court... surreal), then wandered and got some groceries for the movie afternoon/night: beer, chips/crisps, some Chinese baked goods (the white bread here is just too... much, and also sweet-tasting), juice and yogurt for work mornings. A group of 5 kids followed us around the grocery store for a bit, just trailing us wide-eyed. It's strange... Chinese react in one of two ways: they either stare as though we have three heads, or they don't care in the slightest. Odd to see such extremes.

Anyhoo... Then we hit a small DVD shop across the road. I got Strings (wooo!), V for Vendetta and the Inside Man. All copies work except Strings, but they all work on my iBook DVD player which means they'll work back home. They were 12 yuan each, so a great price, and they're all DVD-9 (high-quality). We got back to our place after a near-accident on a road perpendicular to Xinhua Dongdao (the main street in Tang Shan). The drivers here really suck, but thankfully most people don't drive very fast, so the taxi driver had time to break and swerve into oncoming traffic, which in turn shifted farther to their right. It was the result of a pedicab, a small van and a bike-cart all trying to move through/across traffic when the flow of cars hadn't let up.

Movie night was a success. Alistair, Michelle and I watched Ong-Bak while waiting on Nick and Katie to arrive around 4pm. Then we watched Tigerland (Michelle's), Click (Nick's) and The Inside Man (mine). We really should have watched the Inside Man earlier on as I don't think we were much in a mood for thinking or trying to track a plot after 4 movies and 8 hours. We finished up just after midnight. Everyone liked the movies, and I hadn't seen any of them before (except Ong-Bak which was a filler more than anything).

Oh, chips (ref. image). They have funky-ass flavours here; none of the usual NA flavours. There is Roasted Beijing Duck, Deep-Fried Dumstick, Lemon, Hokkaido Grilled Crab, Grilled Sparerib, Spicy Chicken and all kinds of other weird ones. They all still taste like most NA chips (and they're Lays), but I just found it funny. The little details make me smile.