Return from Hangzhou (writing the Aikido post, yes!) and preparing for Wuhan, but suffering a “little” cold, combination of heavy sweating on and off the mats during the weekend and a bit too much of air condition in the places where I did not have full control of it..
The effect was bad on my head and throat especially, with some little fever, but the body was not too bad. I actually feel good at a pure muscle/joints level, but the head is still easy to get dizzy.
I am trying to rest, but that’s easy since I do not have practice here. And much rain stopped me to go to the center for Taiji. More difficult for the thinking part, since job required a few runs in clean room and then office working. Good or bad, in the office we don’t use much AC (save money?) but then it gets quite humid. These days it’s actually not too hot outside, since it is often raining. But the humidity and usual still heat comes in the evening, for disappearing in the night. One night I had the electric fan on too long, and I got extremely cold!!
It is a little weird July!
FUNNY THING OF THE DAY – (one of those that are not that funny for me but I’d probably have a laugh as well watching from the outside!) Yesterday I ended up again in one of the typical Chinese situations where the kindness mixed with the intention to show that a person can really do a nice job and really know what he/she is doing has boring and frustrating results, that basically just pi$$e$ me off! Given that in China there are plenty of people and the country must find a way to give a job to several of them, often there is a person doing something that probably a trained monkey could do equally good, or better.. On the other hand, often people doing some job in public places are trained for only a few sets of things (and they usually are not able to think outside the box the authority set them in – yes, there is a story about this too.. for the future 😉 ), but they want to show that they can do very well those things. Then you have the laowai going to a pharmacy/local tiny hospital (typical, with the Chinese compounds counting a few thousands of people usually!). Since I knew what I wanted, I took a bag of the medicine I still had at home, trying to buy more. Got there, showed my bag: the woman start talking. I gently pointed out the bag and said I cannot really speak much. So the woman takes out 2 bag, one exactly like mine, one very similar. I understand she only got 2 bags like mine and 3 of the other product, and I understand they are not exactly the same. But, I know they are sort of herbal products, so, what the hell, I tell her I take all 5 (yes, in my broken Chinese), 3 new and the 2 exactly the same.. But the damn woman was not satisfied: so she start talking over and over about probably the differences and qualities of the 2 bags, or maybe just telling me she got a single niece really pretty and looking for husband, or that in these hot days she was sweating more than usual, or the dishes and TV series she really liked.. as you can understand, I was speechless, lost, trying to say a couple of times I just wanted the tiny bags.. showing the money.. but the old crone could not stop blabbering.. so I gave up (happened before), threw in a zai jian (goodbye) and left.. without medicine.. 😦
Dreaming of... Asia 