Greetings from a wonderfully filthy but oh-so-cheap net cafe near my school in the urban jungle that is Jinan. The internet both and home and at school has been practically non-existent for a couple of days but good to see that these little holes still have their guanzi (read: connections) working for them among the ISP companies.

Life here is not that exciting to write about, the days are spent mostly teaching, working, recovering and eating.

But have I ever told you about Chinese shops? The weird things about them is that all the shops selling the same items are always located in the same area or in the same street. In that way, there is street of just mattress shops, another street of motorbike shops, another one of window frame makers and so on and so forth. It's bizarre in the way that you pretty much have to know where you are going if you are looking for something particular. Yu can't just wonder about some shopping streets, hoping to find a music shop. And when you find one, chances are there are a few others right next to it. And of course they all seem to have just about agreed on all their prices.

So, on saturday my mission was to find myself a used bike, so that i could join the masses of people fighting their way through the smog clouds in the streets. As i had no idea where to go, i started my search randomluy near the centre of the city and kept asking people if they knew of a place selling bicycles. The first guy i asked said no, but he wanted to sell me his own rusty bike instead. We started to haggle over the price, buty in the end he stuck to 80 yuan while I was ready to pay 70 tops. So on i went with my search.

After getting a few mei-yous (don't have), one guy finally told me to keep walking along towards the north. And asking along the way, I finally found my way to the 'used-bike-street' with lots of little shops selling bikes. The funny thing was that the people I asked not just told me where to go, they started to give me all sorts of advice in the line of "Make sure that you try the bike before you pay" or "Don't you let them rip you off, the right price is this and this."

Result: I now have a nice rust-spotted grey speed monster! Yea!

well, the bike story shall be it for this time. I'd better get home to see if our new flatmate, Andy, has moved in. Rebecca got another fancy job at a magazine/TV production company, so she left the school and moved out this morning. Her room in the flat is now taken over by andy, who also teaches at Aston 3. Laters!