Padd Solutions

CAUTION: Photo contains copious amounts of inner-thigh flesh. Vegetarians / easily offended need not apply.

that said, click here to see my nice bruise.

For the less brave, my upper hamstring is sporting a nice 20cm-square Africa-shaped corned-beef-looking bruise. Some googling revealed this kinda thing happens when you tear a muscle, oops! I remember badly-pulling it about a week or so ago, and since then it's been playing up every time I've used it. I think the killer was Sunday night when I went to the gym followed by the street roller-blading. Anyway, it's not a part of the body you often see, so I hadn't noticed it until just. Everything I read says avoid using it for a few days... how the hell do you not use your hamstring?! Let alone when you've become fiendishly addicted to Freestyle Inline Slaloming.

With that out of the way, on with the day's events!

Woke up about 10am, and phoned Tim to go get breakfast. No answer. Left it an hour, phoned again. No answer. Noon came around, phone him again - no answer. So I phoned Aya, no answer. This continued until about 3pm, neither Tim nor Aya answering. ( aside: It's now midnight, and they still haven't returned mine, Rob's or Dumi's calls. ) So, come 3pm I was about to pass out from starvation, so I headed to the mecca of full-stomaches; KFC. Like everywhere in China, you get lots of attention going into a restaurant, but especially on your own. However, you can make from it what you want. Instead of lowering my cap and burrying my head, I ended up speaking English with one of the guys who worked at KFC, I was speaking to one kid from the primary school where we teach, and there was a tiny 2-3yr old girl (who had probably never seen a white person) who was waving at me every 30 seconds for the entire time I was in there. Stomache full I decided to see if Dwayne was at his skate shop. KFC is basically next door, and I wanted to kill time for the rain to pass.

^ and he was!

I hung out in his shop for maybe 2hrs. We talked about all sorts, as we had Google translate helping us through. I showed him a bunch of my "life" through various photos I have online. Friends, Family, Pets, Home, Cars. We got onto a pretty big talk about cars although I was probably doing most of the talking on that subject. :D

Everyone in China plays "CS" (Counter-Strike), a game I used to be hugely into. I hadn't played in about a year, and then it turns out everyone in China plays the old version of CS... a game I first played in 1999, and that got out-dated by the latest version in 2004. It was undescribably bizarre playing a game I hadn't played in 5 years, hearing Chinese voice-commands over the in-game radio, being in the middle of a skate-shop, and being in the middle of China, but, I'll stop talking about Counter-Strike as about 2 people who read this blog will know what I'm talking about.

^ I'm thinking about getting me one of those pink helmets. ;-)

^ and maybe I should trade my skates in for some of the pink ones too? Alas - apparently they don't do my size. :( Chinese people have really small feet. I had like the 2nd biggest pair of boots in his shop, and I'm just a size 8 or 9 in the UK.

After a few hours at the skate shop we headed to the duck shop! Quite the entrepeneur is Dawyne. We met up with his GF and headed to grab some food. A very nice dish of mixed chicken and prawns, I ate prawn bodies but left the heads. Then I found out also in the dish were chicken-heads (with eyes and beaks clearly visible!) and chicken feet. Needless to say I avoided those too, but the pieces of non-descript chicken I ate were quite tasty! Food eaten we headed to the duck shop and hung out for a few hours. Dwayne's girlfriend had bought a Chinese -> English phrase book which provided much entertainment. Feeling quite cold without my coat, I headed home relatively early at 7:30pm. Got home and Dumi invited me to the gym, so we went to the gym for an hour where I was lifting 180kgs with my legs.... in hindsight - Oops!

Back home for some lesson-planning-by-Skype with Dumi, then an evening of internet procrastination; including this blog. I bid you all good-night!