More minutia

April 25, 2007 Wednesday

We have been here a week and we are already planning our vacation. May 1 is the start of a one week holiday here. I went to the office with Chuck to talk about it with Hongfang. Originally, they had planned a hiking trip to the yellow mountain for us. Since Chuck needed treatment for a cyst on his spine just before we came, and since he is not in good condition for hiking anyway, they decided that Nanjing was just the ticket. Now, they are deciding how we are going to get there and where we will stay.

We know someone at the university at Nanjing. Prof Fan Wang was at UCLA a looong time ago. Unfortunately, he will be away during this time, but put us in contact with a Prof. who had been a student at UCLA. Prof. Ping made a reservation for us at the university guest house. We will go for 4 days between May 6 & 10. Hongfang is saying that the bus would be the easiest way to go. A student would go and get the tickets for us. I can tell that students here are the same slaves that they are in the States. When Chuck was in Grad school, his thesis prof. tried to have them install his air conditioner.

Went home to use the bathroom (4 flights) and took a taxi to Carrefour. I’m still looking for mustard and a dumpling steamer, but I really wanted to get the salami that I abandoned yesterday.

The taxi dropped me across the street, so I looked around at more of the shops that are around that area and also saw more of the ones inside the mall.

I can tell that I’ve been to Carrefour too often. I know where everything is. There was still a long line to buy eggs. I don’t know what is so special about them, they are loose and put carefully in a plastic bag and then weighed.

Found the salami, put it in a bag and gave it to the woman to weigh. The machine didn’t work!! I am not destined to get this. She ran off somewhere. I waited and when a store manager type came by, I snagged him and he fixed the machine and weighed my salami. The store wasn’t as busy today, so I could really look carefully in my efforts to find mustard. No luck.

Home by taxi to have lunch with Chuck. (4 flights) After lunch, we went to the store across the street. Chuck wanted some fruit, and I said that he could come and choose what looked good to him. (4 flights)

I took a lovely nap in the afternoon.

The physics group took us for dinner at Jinke (the restaurant nearest the physics building. (1 flight)

We had 2 Wangs, a Zhang, a Zeng, a Wu, a Chen and a Shao. I am writing down everyone’s name so that there is some hope that I will remember them. We had tofu several different ways – dried with a vegetable, regular with a vegetable, and noodles made with the skin. They ordered the duck (that had left the last time we were there) shrimp 2 ways (fried and boiled), mushroom soup, pork with peppers, clear slimy noodles, light green squash. For “main food” we had dumplings in broth. Watermelon for dessert.

Walked home (4 flights) and watched 24 on TV. It was really funny. The show was in English with Chinese subtitles, but the bad guy spoke Russian, so when he spoke there were English subtitles too.

17 flights today