Out and about – a little, anyway

Happy New Year!

Mine stunk. Somehow I came down with a cold right before the holiday and pretty much went to bed around 8 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. I woke up again around 11 p.m. but fell right back to sleep. I'm told the tower was lit up big time and had "2014" running down it. Maybe I'll be well enough to see "2015" on it.

On New Year’s itself, I pretty much just lay in bed all day. The TV in my living room got jiggered and I couldn’t turn it on, so after working out I just curled back up in bed and watched some movie. To liven it up, I think I coughed a bit.

To be fair, I can’t complain because really, this is only my third cold since I left PC in 2009. The first was when I returned back to Morocco and was in the very cold Atlas Mountains. The second was at some point in Jakarta, and now here. Sensing a pattern.

But it’s pretty much gone now and after spending a holiday/day off in bed, I really wanted to go outside a bit and explore.

 

The pollution has been a little rough lately (100 is “unhealthy”; it’s been 190) so I skipped Saturday but today just said screw it. I’m tired of being cooped up.

My initial goal was to head to the Sacred Heart church, known here as the Stone Church. It’s a Catholic church that finished construction in 1888. According to the map I lost somewhere, it’s a district over but looked walkable.

It’s on the north bank of the river and I thought if I followed the river, I’d find it.

Not so much. I walked – it’s a nice walk – for awhile and came to some kind of barricade. Hmm. By that point the mass had started so I figured I’d just cross the river and go see the big tower that I can see from my bathroom.

Well, somehow that got thwarted, too. I still don’t understand how. I got on some bridge and then crossed the river, but when I got off the bridge (this part was harder than it sounds. I could see the park below me, but it took forever to find how to get from the overpass down to the park) I, somehow, wasn’t on the side with the tower. I think maybe the tower is on an island off an island or something. I don’t know, but I failed at that attempt, too.

Luckily I’ll be here for two years, so there’s another shot. As it was today, my feet were hurting and I started getting hungry. On weekends I’m pretty much waking up, working out and coming back to the apartment around 10:30, then checking emails and then eating breakfast around 11. It seems senseless to eat lunch at 3 or 4 and then another meal, so I’ve pretty much been eating breakfast and sort of a late lunch/early dinner.

So at that point today, I opted to walk to what we call the “bottle opener bridge” just to say I accomplished something and then go to Yoshinoya and Bread Talk for my beef bowl and donuts, which have become a Sunday staple.(Already, which is kind of sad.)

By that time my feet were killing me in my LL Bean tennis shoes, which have absolutely no arch support. I got home and pulled them off and sure enough, there was enough blood in one of the heels to make Curt Schilling blush.

So now they’re in the washing machine and I’m completely whipped. I have to get the clothes finished tonight, though, because I need some of the stuff for tomorrow.

At this point, I think I might just set an alarm to wake up again when they’re done. It’s not like I ever sleep through the night anyway.

In Amazon news, my first order came, the one with the Junior Mints, swim cap and frying pan. The swim cap looks goofy but is fine – I swam yesterday before hanging out in the steam room. The Junior Mints are awesome, although the boxes are smaller than I anticipated.

Sadly, my “intelligent” stove doesn’t like the frying pan. I don’t understand the stove, but I’ve been told it has something to do with magnets. The frying pan, a really nice Cuisinart, isn’t metal or whatever other material the stove likes.

So that is a bummer but I’ll deal with it.

The good news that came in the mail this past week was my Chinese national card. This really means nothing in my day-to-day life, although I can leave my passport at home now, but it clears the way for me to claim my air and boat shipments when they come.

It is possible that my air shipment arrive this week, so that’s exciting. My camera is in there, and I’d really like to take some photos.

As it stands, the ones here have been snagged from the internet. I think it's pretty clear which is the church, which is the tower and which is the bottle opener bridge.