Of Laowai, Xbox, & mid-Autumn typhoons...

Several pieces of interesting news have cropped up in the last few days since I posted here... Interesting to me, at least, and since you're reading I also assume interesting to you.

First and likely foremost, after several days of tracking them - like a hunter stealthily stalks its prey - I've finally located and *pounced* on a nest of foreign-owned expat bars in the Xialupu area. "Expat" is a term you hear thrown around a LOT while abroad, and it took me a while to figure out what it meant the first time I was over here, since no one seemed too willing to explain it to me. It was like it was the password to their "expat club." But it's simply short for expatriate, or "someone living abroad longterm." The first one I found is a little hole-in-the-wall called La Luna which is owned by a Tex-Mex fellow named Jorge (prn. "George," not the Mexican "Hor-hay.")

Here is, in many respects, a home away from home. This is a little slice of Western-anybar. Beers range from local Tsing Tao (15元/ bottle), Budweiser (15), Heineken (25), some german beers (25-45), up to Guiness (55元, if I remember correctly). They also stock a full bar - and I enjoyed several well-made gin & tonics for a measly 25元 (Which, I'm sure you'll recall, work out to about $3.50). Real cheap? No. But it's competetively priced, especially considering it's marketed to us foreigners... expat bars tend to be more expensive, because owners know that often we'll come regardless of price, if only to feel a little more at home.

I cannot say how nice it was to be able to just shoot the shit with some people in English, and not feel like I had to dumb down what I was saying. And it's incredibly easy to feel very isolated here... Every time I leave my apartment, I'm the enormous, blue-eyed, ghost-skinned laowai... but I guess I should just be glad they don't call us yangguizi (lit. "foreign devil," very racist and pejorative) anymore. Regardless, it's nice to be average-sized and have skin pigmentation again by comparison... even if it's only until I step outside.

And furthermore, they had food! Real food! Hamburgers, hot dog, cheese-steak sammies, fresh-cut french fries with cajun seasoning! It's like a little oasis in a vast sea of noodles and tiny bits of meat floating in soup. I've made fast friends with the owner, and several of the regulars. I'm sure I'll be gaining regular status in the near future. Hell, I only work 3 days/week...

In Other News...
Forrest, a Chinese "friend" who was introduced to me though Xiaoxian, brought me one last time to the Digital Market where for the past several weeks I've been trying unsuccessfully to buy a working replacement for my fried Xbox 360 AC Adapter. How was I supposed to know that you shouldn't plug something rated at 120V into a 220V outlet?! BZZZZZZTT!!! smoulder, smoulder...
Finally, after weeks of failed attempts at using a transistor to rate down the wall current to 120 for an American adapter, we finally tried plugging a standard-issue Chinese adapter into my console. Low-and-behold!! It worked! Occasionally it's a godsend to have everything in the world made right here in China! The only problem is that once I leave this coutry, I'll have to do the same song and dance all over again buying a new-new-adapter... sigh... it's hard being a gamer ;)

And now, here's Tom with the weather...

Incoming typhoon! that's right, we've got a backward-spinning hurricane bearing down on this region, and is expected to bring some crazy weather down on us in the next day or so. No rain or anything as of yet, but there are some ominous clouds on the horizon. Fortunately, this city was built to withstand typhoons (a concept utterly alien to many Southern cities, I'm afraid), and soo I'm looking at, at worst, a couple days without power. No evacuation, no panic, no largescale destruction.

At least that's what I've been told. We'll see I guess.

(CS)WC Out.

And the words float out like holograms