Zzzzz...

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In our original plan Joanne was supposed to be off work starting today, yet she has to fix some things at the office in the morning. This gives me a good excuse to sleep in late. After sleeping through the night next to the open balcony door and the a/c on full blow it is now getting quite comfy in the room, the temperature has dropped to around 22 C. I briefly get up in the morning to watch the faint glowing disk of sunlight desperately trying to break through the smog. It's no use. Beijing is in a self-imposed twilight zone. And much like in the rest of the city, the air in my apartment is a bit dry. Every time I go to the sink to splash some water into my face I receive a little electrical zap of static electricity. Back to bed...

I am woken up again by the phone ringing. I have two funky phones in the room. One is a standing combo lamp/phone in green plastic strategically positioned next to the bed and very easy to knock over. The other is a more traditional silver coloured one, except for the large LCD display which has animations of birds flying over a lakeside scenery while the background shifts in a full spectra of colours. You'd have to see it to believe it I guess. Anyway, picking up the phone guessing it would be Joanne or Mr. Wang I am surprised to find myself talking to a Chinese man who speaks fluid English. He has found an advert for a room on the Internet and now wishes to book it. I pass on Mr. Wang's phone number to him and go back to bed, hoping I will not receive a string of such calls through the rest of my stay.

Fast forward one or two hours or so and the phone is ringing again. I give in to curiosity - this time it is a woman in town asking to speak with a job applicant who has handed her his resume. What kind of moron applies for a job and then leaves a rented apartment number for his would be employer? For a split second I consider the option of learning more about this interview myself but the horizontal state of lazying the afternoon away in bed overcomes me and I politley finish the call. It is now nearing noon and Joanne thought that she would be done around this time so I am a bit disappointed when she calls and I learn that her boss is keeping her in the office a bit longer. And me? Well, I'll just continue to sleep.

*Riiiiing*

Again? I pick up the receiver expecting to hear Joanne confirming that she is now getting ready to leave, but instead I get a domestic call of unknown purpose. A woman is energetically firing off long statements in mandarin, and I haven't the slightest what she's on about. I counter by letting off a load of English blah blah. We continue like that for a few moments until she hangs up. I decide it is time to get up, after all it is almost four in the afternoon and the sun is coming down soon...

I finally meet up with Joanne around seven pm, her idea about a day off work definitely a failure. We have dinner (you could argue it is my breakfast) at a nearby pizzeria before heading over to her apartment in the northeast sector of town. We spend the evening looking through old photographs and talking about times long gone by. Then we get stuck in front of a DVD describing the history of the Forbidden City. Tomorrow we will have a day on our own and then on New Year's Eve we will be heading over to the Capital Airport to pick up Kay early morning. I bid Joanne farwell around four thirty in the morning and head outside to try and find a taxi. Luckily I know my way around the neighbourhood as I walk past little corner shops where the shopkeepers are bringing in their goods and preparing for the days business. I have always been impressed by the hard labour in China, and it always leaves me feeling like the spoilt person that I am.

Walking past some more sleeping high rises and after being momentarily chased by a pack of stray dogs I pass the neighbourhood guardhouse and enter the big street outside. Predictably there are a number of taxis parked outside the gates, but where are the drivers? A closer inspection finds at least one is sleeping in his car. Tapping a bit on the windshield wakes him up and while looking absolutely terrible he glances at my address card for a moment, nods, and we speed off into the night, his seatback still in a reclining position. After convincing myself that we are going south I lean back myself. There is virtually no traffic, not even on the ringroad. However, we drive past the scene of a recent violent car crash. One smashed car lies in the ditch while another car sits balancing on the concrete barrier separating the opposite lanes. Police is on the scene with a tow truck.

Not long after we are coming up on a section where we should continue straight ahead due west but the driver is going up in the lane for turning left behind a parked truck. The he suddenly changes his mind and picks the proper lane. A little while later we are going into the left lane again and this time I have a glance into the rear view mirror to see the drivers eyes closing. Shit! We avoid any problems and the zombie driver is recalled into the world of the awake people and I am glad that we soon arrive near my residence before anything serious happens. I walk the last couple hundred yards through an empty and completely pitch black street surrounded by newbuild projects, just waiting to step on a stray dog or into a pothole. This is apparently not meant to be a day of adventure though, and I reach the guardhouse without any need for excitement. Back in my room I finally go to sleep at seven am. I feel quite relaxed and have absolutely no problem with a day doing nothing like this.

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Photos

Sightseeing of the day...
Note the two groovy telephones on opposite sides of the bed.