the next leg

i have a new name.
its gao lan... it means tall orchid... or blue dog if you pronounce it wrong.
so here is the latest in news from gao lan town:

the last week or so was pretty rough, for some reason. i'm going to choose to call it mood swings. because i don't usually use that excuse, and it seems to cover a lot of ground from what i've heard in the past. so being that i am a female, i had some major mood swings in the last 2 weeks. sure.

anyhow, during that time i was napping at 4 in the afternoon, waking up at 11am, barely leaving the apartment for anything but a stroll in the wacked out amusement park across the street to watch old men fly kites. which is, by the way, my new favouritist past time. but nevertheless, this kind of activity does not really stimulate the mind in any which way, so a good smack in the face was needed from my loving jie jie, and she delivered it with spice.

since then, these last couple of days have been burning on rocket fuel. a run-in with a new old friend in a beijing coffee shop shoveled some good advice into my lap, a walk through ritan park invited me to see some old beijingers at their finest - without fear of embarrasment: old men singing operatic songs at the top of their lungs, tai chi being practiced by everyone, kites, endless kites, little kids in split pants chasing the kites, old dudes sharing stories with their pet birds in cages... this city has beauty built right into it.

also, i started a new career on saturday! get this - you can get PAID to read SCRIPTS into a microphone! skills required? born in the north western hemisphere, and the ability to talk. cool huh? so i went to some strange man's apartment/ studio and read page after page of dick and jane dialogue about going to the cinema, catching cabs, stephen hawking, going for dinner.. etcetera. i think i could make a living of doing voice overs, no sweat!

sunday morning i trekked across town to the most massive railway station in the world and managed to buy a one way ticket to hong kong, i hope. and then jumped on the subway for about 45 minutes, crammed against hundreds and hundreds of chinese people. it was great. you don't even need to hold onto anything because there are so many people surrounding you that you all just keep each other up! i will NEVER ever complain about the vancouver skytrain again... thats for sure. eventually i managed to meet up with a fellow vancouverite also working for Melco, and we did some touristy stroll through behei park and drank some bubble tea while snapping photos of temples. very enjoyable.

sorry to ramble on about the day's events past - but i just can't go to sleep! im jumping onto my own personal hard sleeper shelf aboard a 24 hour train to hong kong in the morning - AND - i just had my first ever phone interview from SFU in Vancouver regarding a course in september. thats on top of having 2 other interviews locally today... one at a sketchy coffee shop with a san fransican in a deserted art museum, and another to be a bartender with two taiwanese djs who are opening this amazing bar on a boat in a river. it was a cool interview too - walking around this boat/bar and then out to a cafe for some tea, and ending with all of us having our laptops in front of us, surfing facebook.

anyhow, the next post will be thrilling, i promise. hopefully hong kong has a good masseuse or two, because im not sure how my body will handle this train trip! that is, if i make it aboard... because its 2am now - and i should probably be loving the fact that i can sleep in a bed tonight.

adieu mes amies!
kisses
misses
gao lan - my new name - which means tall orchid one way - and blue dog if you pronounce it wrong :)

oh yeah, i had dinner sunday night with 5 other vancouverites - i could almost feel the west coast oozing out of them. mmm... like maple syrup sap being sucked from the treeeeeeeeeeee........... eeeeehehehehhehehe.

i need sleep. sleeep sleep. sleepy sleep sleep.

hahaha... and another thing - i was chatting with this retail dude at the silk market today - possibly the craziest shopping around - and his english name is "sheep"

baa

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