A return to health

I have overcome my first bout of Oriental dysentery. This is a massive relief, not simply because I was feeling particularly unpleasant but also because I can now avoid the use of squat-pots. I know my last post was principally concerned with bathroom problems, but you must understand that it is a major issue.



Anywho, I visited my first Chinese nightclub yesterday (which goes some way to explaining the quality of the writing in this post). Wojciech, Tom and I went with our Jie Jie (older sister) and we had a good time sitting at the bar watching the young Chinese introverts attempting to flirt with one another. As with all of these places in China, it was massively overstaffed, we had three barmaids to ourselves who each competed to refill our glasses. Tom and I had a long discussion in broken English and fractured Chinese with one of the bar staff (I say bar staff as we never decided on his or her sex) who was from Guangdong province in the south of China. He/She spent a long time trying to teach us a dice game which in the end turned out to be about as rudimentary as a game can get, the person with highest roll is the winner.

The other day, Sean asked if I would go with him for this thing at the Henan TV station. It sounded interesting so I agreed. What it involved was an early morning trip to the northern outskirts of the city to stand around for a bit in a crowd while some of the presenters gave some spiel about the Olympics and it's sponsors (it appeared to simply be a big Coca-Cola advert). I do not really understand the purpose of our being there, but I did get to meet my new Belgian friend, Michael. He has been in China for about the same amount of time as me and is working as in Intern in one of the government offices in the city. He speaks no Chinese so I said we should meet up so I can scratch up on my French and teach the few simple things I know in Chinese.

On the subject of Chinese, I can feel myself improving. This total immersion thing really works. I am now thinking that if I am not satisfied with the amount I have learnt before I go to Pakistan for the cycling, I will come back afterwards and study a bit longer. It really isn't so difficult once you get past the initial shock of the pronunciation and the lack of syntax.