Some pics for a Saturday.
Notre Dame Cathedral.
My fave resto in the world! South Beauty Szechuan, Beijing.
Star rated is good…
Co,
Columbia ice fields.
Self explanatory.
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Scribbling some perspective on Canada, Ottawa and whatever else crosses my mind…
… the I’m outta here edition.
All packed. Ready to grab one last bite before the mini-bus picks us up at 2 pm. Then it’s the waiting game… 6:10 flight to Tranna and a 8:20 to YOW.
Looking forward to going home and seeing C and the kids. Ten days is a long time. I cannot imagine how folks in the Forces do it for months at a go… guess they just do… it’s part of the deal.
In all likelihood this will be my last trip to China. The project is coming to a close and considering the austerity culture in the PS these days, there will not be a lot of international travel for years to come save for the select few.
No matter, this has been quite the experience for the ol’ Parry Sound boy. When I was growing up in that small Ontario town, I often dreamed of seeing far off and exotic places like China – and I have done exactly that.
China has a beauty that is unlike anywhere else I have visited. The natural and built beauty of the Great Wall to the beauty of its people and culture and food (esp. The Food!). I will miss these things but I am am fortunate to have experienced them at all.
And who knows? Maybe I will make it back one day! I do know that my travel bug has not been squashed and I want to see and I know I will see many more wonders and experience many more cultures before I turn to dust. The world is a mighty varied place and it would be a disservice to myself to not endeavor to see even more of what it has to offer!
谢谢
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Some of my fave non-food-related pics since I started coming here in 2009.
Part 1.
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… through a third floor office window…
I’m writing this on the way back to the hotel after a good and productive day. The A/C hasn’t yet been switched on for the building – or any of the government buildings, we are told – so the windows were open all to provide at least some measure of relief from the heat and humidity.
And along the day, the sounds of the northern capital stream through the windows. In many ways, they are sounds not dissimilar from urban sounds in many other cities. There are, of course, car and truck horns. But they are far more plentiful here than in Ottawa, Toronto or Montreal. The car horn repair business must indeed be lucrative here; as it likely is in cities like Paris and London. The same would go for brake shops.
Squeaking and squealing brakes, gears shifting, the roar of diesel engines… all are common here and again, are to a more or less degree, common elsewhere as well.
But there are sounds from the Beijing streets that are different from those I have heard elsewhere.
It IS so very different here in many ways.
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Day 7… forgot to take melatonin edition. Dammit!
Up since 4 am so it’s gonna be a loooonnnnggg day… oh well… last full day of meetings and discussions. We have a half day (hopefully) tomorrow to wrap up and then leave on Thursday.
Had the traditional banquet last night. It was a nice affair… not over the top, but nice. They held it in an old – and massive – greenhouse that has been converted into a restaurant / wedding venue / big party type place. And being that this is the last Mission, this was the last banquet.
Nice place, but I wasn’t thrilled to see these:
No worries – I didn’t eat any of that!
That’s about it for now… time to get moving!
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Day 2 – sleep, or a lack thereof…
The amazing thing about sleep pattern shifting is that you can achieve an almost altered state of reality without having to resort to pharmaceuticals! This is especially noticeable during the first couple of days of arriving in a drastically different time zone. Beijing, is 12 hours ahead of EDT at this time of the year. This means that your internal clock which governs not only your sleep patterns but also the expectations of you digestive system is turned completely upside down. Day is night, night is day. Breakfast is dinner and noon is midnight. People often complain about the time differences between, for example, Australia and Canada… which can be anywhere from 14-16 hours. But, in reality, this change is much less severe than the 12 hour gap as really your body is going through but an 8-10 hour shift.
Everyone tries to mitigate the effects of the change differently and everyone experiences different side effects both symptomatically and in terms of severity and duration.
For my part, the second sleep and second full day are usually the worst of a ten day trip. I use melatonin to offset some of the worst symptoms, namely interrupted sleep at night, but there remains shiftlessness and nervousness accompanied by a moderate headache, dry mouth and upset stomach. I have learned to not gorge myself or drink lots of booze on days two or three… both of which exacerbate the symptoms.
But by night number 4, I start to feel myself again and I am on an upward slope until day 8 or so… and then a funny thing happens – I go downhill at light speed! On the last mission, for example, I was feeling pretty good and my body had finally decided to accept the fact that we weren’t in Ottawa anymore when WHAM! I hit a wall at about noon on day 8 and felt like I had just been simultaneously Tasered, punched in the gut and had my head bashed into a wall by Chcuk Norris! It was next to impossible for me to stay awake and in the room that we were meeting our Chinese colleagues.
And then, that night, I felt fine again and had a nice 8 hours sleep! It was like my body had to “snap” that last bit into place. Weird.
Of course, this happens right before our return flight home, where we have to re-accustom ourselves from square one. And for whatever reason, it is far more difficult getting back to normal on the return trip to which I have found no solution. At least in this case, I am home, in my own bed and eating familiar vittles.
So, if you are going to travel distances that require multiple time zone jumps, like China or Japan, I advise the following:
There ya go. Take it for what it’s worth!
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Day one.
Well, that wasn’t so bad, really… yeah, it’s about 22 hours in travel mode door to door, but the flights were uneventful and I had a half-decent sleep last night. Melatonin rocks!
After checking in and dropping our stuff off at our rooms, we stuck to what has become the usual pattern for these trips: head off to one of the joints behind the hotel for what is intended to be a short bowl of soup but what invariably turns into a full-blown meal with numerous mouth-watering dishes and beer (equally yummy) . It’s my fourth trip here and I am still astounded by the price of food here… worked out to about $9 each! Awesome food heaven!
There are always surprises that await when coming here. A building that wasn’t there before has “suddenly” sprung up in a matter of months. A handy and cheap store is replaced by a pizza joint. And a super yummy Indian resto has vanished. Still, the hotel breakfast buffet hasn’t changed much since my first trip here in 2007 and the rooms in the Jianguo Hotel are still top-notch.
This afternoon, it’s off to the Silk market to get some clothes for myself and look for some things for C and the kids. Each trip here, the first time through the Market is a bit (a lot) of a trial… the yelling and grabbing can get under your skin… but it’s worth it. I try to get as much of this out of the way early in the week so I can spend the rest of my free time here enjoying myself in a less frantic way.
Tomorrow – off to work!
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