An Exercise in Avoiding Boredom

Amazingly enough, sarcasm helped. Or, I just got lucky, as there were no further complications.

After arriving in Vancouver from San Francisco, I found this greeting from the Transport Security Administration (TSA) in my luggage.

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Fan-subs used to say in the opening of an episode:

“Not for sale, rent, or auction.”

These days, it has become:

“Not for sale, rent, auction, or online streaming.”

I guess that’s to prevent services like YouTube and crappy roll from benefiting from fan-subs and hurting the community.

In the U.S. mementos that life is transient are quite common, see below. Or, more prosaically, this is what you get when you try to leave the house in a hurry.

From a leaflet on tips and tricks for staying in Beijing:

“Please prepare extra clothes if you want to hang out in the evening, though we will never suggest you to do that.”

“Make sure you don’t have your cameras, bags, packets, and other unreasonable things with you. Ladies will be allowed to bring their hand bags as long as it’s tiny.”

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For yesterday’s drive to and presentation in Suzhou, I picked up my guide at the airport. I could have taken a cab but rather decided to take the Shanghai Magnetic Levitation train, a.k.a. the Maglev. Engineered in Germany but never deployed there, the Maglev connects the inner city with Pudong International airport, and travels 30 km in under 8 minutes. Peak speed is a whooping 431 km/h, as the following photos show.

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I just returned from a presentation and recruiting trip to Suzhou only to find my hotel room unmade. This was my fault as I had forgotten to switch of the Do-Not-Disturb sign. (*)

The fruits I had received as a welcome gift two days ago were still on their plate, half-eaten. So I called up the room service: “Hello, can you please pick up the fruits in my room.” The answer: “Yes, Sir, I will send someone.”

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Sunday was a day off, and so I did some sightseeing in Shanghai, together with Cao Yi. Shanghai showed itself from its best side—it was warm, sunny, and as unpolluted as it could get. Below, find a random sampling of photos I took.

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Alright, I don’t get it. Yesterday, a friend and I had dinner on Hong Kong Island for HK$ 450 (about US$ 60) for two. It was good and plenty. During my last visit I had either been invited or I had grabbed a quick dinner on my way back to the hotel—typically cheaply at a noodles place for maybe HK$ 100.

Today, there was a Typhoon warning, and so I decided not to stray too far from my hotel. I decided not to eat in the hotel as they are typically overpriced. Rather, I went to the nearest shopping mall, the New World Center, and decided to have dinner at one of the few available restaurants, Ginza.

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It started out with the usual quarrel: A woman was sitting in my aisle seat and couldn’t be convinced to move to her assigned (center) seat. I tried English, which didn’t help. She tried Cantonese, which didn’t help either. Sign language only lead to further confusion. Only when I started counting seats using A, B, C, … did she understand and I got my seat.

About 30 seconds after she had sat down, she decided to get up again and move places, leaving the seat next to me empty. Great I thought, but I was too slow and her friend one seat over had already moved into it. She took off her shoes and socks, put her legs on her old seat, and had her husband massage them. We hadn’t even taken off yet and he was already making love to her big toe.

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