September 2007 Archives
My life right now feels like I'm in stasis. Something where I am not moving at all, but appear to be seeing everything changing without my interaction or participation. An observer watching the daily grind of others, desperately wanting to be part of the mill, but rueing the inevitability of being a cog back in the machine.
This is the second round of unemployment for me in the last few months. Given that I just relocated to Australia, I'm not so concerned about it (also given the ~4% unemployment rate here). However, it is drudging up those old feelings of uselessness and depression that I felt during that time. Just like Pavlov's dog, I've conditioned myself to react quite well to this re-challenge.
One good thing about this round of unemployment is that I have a partner in crime - Linneh E. Being a bum is much better with a co-bum. We're spending our days looking for work, talking about what we want to do here in Australia, where to live, how to live, discussing the lifestyle options of our pro-green - pro-sustainability housemates, dealing with shipping agents and wrangling with international banking. Little things that all add up and fill our day.
Hence, we're quite bored, and really want to find some work.
I am now living with hippies. Lin's sister and her housemates in fact. And, it isn't too bad.
The advantage ofliviing living with wholesome people is wholesome food, lots of kangaroo meat, and a never ending supply of information surrounding Australian native fauna and fauna flora, sustainability, active transport (i.e. pedal pushing) and various other 'healthy and environmentally-concscious' lifestyle options.
However, I thank the stars that I can escape to my parent's place for a plate steak!
The location that we are living in Brisbane is fantastic. We're living in the inner west, the suburb of Auchenflower, just around the corner from The Alley Bar, Rosalie Village and Milton and Auchenflower train stations. Life without a car hasn't been so difficult due to the great public transportation options in this area, but we're both hanging out for our awesome bicycles to arrive from China.
One thing that has struck me since I arrived back in Brisbane is that the lifestyle I have here now would be nigh impossible to have in Shanghai. One plus for moving back, but I'm definitely missing the spontaneity of living in Shanghai. Life is a touch bland here at the moment.
Also, like millions of other Australians, I now possess a dislike for Centrelink. They make China's bureacracy seem efficient and friendly in comparison.
Now that we've left Shanghai, I can talk freely about where we used to live. The Jia Yuan Complex (also known as Chez Moi) is a pretty awesome area of town to live in, and the apartments aren't bad either.
One of the better aspects about living in this complex was the very active Jia Yuan Community Organization. Often, they put on performances, school holiday activities for the kiddies, and various other 'community-minded' events for the complex's residents.
Just before we left, we noticed that Jia Yuan was gearing up to host some athletes for the Special Olympics in Shanghai. Walking past our community's organization office, we saw this sign which welcomed some of the special athletes who were to visit our community. Linda immediately engaged her editorial and language skills, and offered to 'smooth out' some of the mistakes in the English-language signage.
As for me, I looked like a doofus and took photos.
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I wonder what marketing survey discovered this niche market among China's discerning consumers....
"Chocolate? Green Tea? Zhongnanhai flavours?"
"No, but I'd REALLY love vegetable flavour... It's SO healthy. Veges are good for you..."
Note the ISO9001 badge of honour, "Health Vege Flavour", and "Vitamin E Added".
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Shatin Cafe - Delicious Cuisine, originally uploaded by timbeckenham.
Delicious cuisine? Something innate within tells me to doubt this. ;)
Something was definitely lost in translation...
Shuicheng Lu, Gubei District, Shanghai, China
Just something I spied while enroute to Hongmei Lu yesterday.
I seriously doubt the food is 'delicious'...
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My profile page on Facebook.
This blog has been very quiet in the last few months, partly due to our imminent departure from China back to the Brisbane (Brisvegas, what a city, what a lady, I write rhymes about her daily...). Both Linda and myself are excited about our current move, and well, most of what we have been doing of late has revolved around packing, posting, purchasing and trying to flog our non-essential items off to our friends and acquaintances. Most of our collective internet time has been spent on Facebook recently, so if you want to catch up with what I am doing, head over to FB. In the last few days we have left in Shanghai I will be working at finishing up several web projects which had stalled due to work and manic moving preparations.
My scRambler RSS feed ported to facebook.
One cool little Facebook application that I stumbled across today (I'm out of the loop) is Flog Blog. It crawls your RSS/Atom feeds and posts it into Facebook. Not bad, but just a first step into integration.
snip...
The Shaolin temple "strongly condemned the horrible deeds" of the user, the newspaper said.
"It is not only extremely irresponsible behaviour with respect to the Shaolin temple and its monks, but also to the whole martial art and Chinese nation,"
Go RB Go!