Ji Rou Mien

THIS IS A TEST

That's what I said to the waitress today when I was trying to obtain supper. It means literally 'chicken meat noodles', and fortunately that's pretty much what I got. She seemed a little confused and pointed to a few things on the menu and asked me something that I didn't understand. I told her I couldn't speak Chinese and gave her 6 RMB since that was how much the last thing she pointed at cost. I have to say I'm pretty pleased with the result! I got some thin noodles in chicken broth with some bits of chicken, vegetables, and mushrooms. In other words, chicken noodle soup! Success!

What else is new... I cleaned some stuff around the apartment today and finally put away the rest of my clothes. I'm still not sure where to put a bunch of the stuff that I brought from home but fortunately it all fits in a small suitcase, so it's not really in the way or anything.

Purely by luck I managed to find (whipping) cream at the grocery store the other day. I had given up hope of finding it at all, and wasn't even looking for it when I found it. It's next to the cheese instead of the milk, and it comes in little 250ml boxes. A related skill that I have gained is differentiating between whole and skim milk. I had to compare a few different containers of milk to figure out which were the characters for fat, but it was totally worthwhile.

My power was off a couple times early on in the week but it seems to have been stable since then. The last time it was off I think it was just on my floor because the elevators still worked and there was a guy working on an open panel with wires strewn around the floor. The one part about this incident that sucked was that for some reason my water purifier thing sprang a leak and made a puddle on the livingroom floor.

Work has been going pretty well though the ticket I've been working on has been somewhat frustrating at times. Here you can finally see my desk. Since I took that photo I got a couple boxes that I put under my monitors to raise them up, which has made things more comfortable, and soon I'll get a keyboard tray which should help as well. Apparently you can't (or maybe you just don't...) just BUY a keyboard tray, you get a guy to come in and build one onto the desk for you. I can't wait to get my new BESPOKE KEYBOARD TRAY installed.

Also here is a panorama I took from the roof of the office showing the nearby neighbourhood. I think this was shot facing north.

And finally here is the bus I take to work every day. This particular bus was the one I got off one morning on my way to work. The street is called Jintai Lu, but only this part of it. Further north it's called Tianshuiyuan Jie, and further south it has some other name that I don't know. Also, I'm not talking a lot further north or south here, maybe a few blocks in either direction.

Anyway that's all for now as it's time for me to go to bed. More exciting adventures in domesticity next week.