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Published: October 9th 2012
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Awake and up and functioning at 7am, a little bit more apartment fiddling and I decided to tackle my Telstra mobile phone which is locked out to any other SIM despite it working before with another SIM. Rang the Telstra support number they sent me and 8 people later, three phone calls, no one that seemed to understand me or speak my language, I gave up.
A cup of tea helped, milk comes in little 230mls bags, one was kindly left in the fridge for me, you can easily buy them in most little stores in any little shop.
Porridge for breakfast, Australia oats! Again from the left over stash of food, no more milk no laundry detergent so a walk to the supermarket is in order.
Let me fire up the laptop I think and go on line. No!!!!!! Could not read the wireless instructions, plug in did not work, no one to contact and help me, feeling very isolated thankfully I have my mobile which allows me to txt home.
So with the maps left in the apartment I made my way to Carrefour Supermarket, 4 blocks
left along Lishan Lu, a very busy 8 lane road. Carrefour is a world wide chain selling it all! This area does not have expats so there is no western food really, have found Nescafe coffee and peanut butter, no blocks of cheese, no marg or butter, but there is olive oil.
Got some great stuff and staggered home with two massive parcels, my nicest thing was cherry tomatoes, a punnets worth for 50c.
A lovely older gentleman spied me at the checkout and made a huge effort to use his English which was hello, how are you, what nationality, goodbye. Virtually all the young people in the shop made no attempt to use any English despite all having learnt it at school. They all tried to help me speaking Mandarin. And my Mandarin consists of learnt phrases said very badly and with the wrong tones
I rewarded myself with 2 cups of plunger coffee upon my return; I brought this over with 2 bricks of coffee, soooo pleased to have it here.
At the front gate of the uni are fruit stalls, small food stalls and little supermarkets and
Brave policeman
In the middle of the picture in a yellow high vis vest is one lone little policeman controlling this intersection. All praise to him i say shops. Can get most of what I bought at Carrefour for not much more!
Got 9 lovely pieces of fruit for 9Y which is less than $2-. Bananas, persimmons and kiwifruit.
Feeling peckish I got a lovely hot bread snack filled thing off a street stall. 80J which is almost a1Y filled with meat and veges, very tasty.
What is so nice is there are no beggars, no touts and I have only seen what I would think is one homeless person.
Best find around the uni was a shop selling fresh roasted chestnuts, and all other sorts of dried fruit and nuts, loaded up with almonds, sultanas and peanuts in their shell.
Had a lovely moment with 3 old ladies who invited me to sit and talk with them. The invite was a smile and then a patting of a place to sit. They spoke no English but gave me a full stream of Mandarin questions. Managed to say in my best Mandarin that I did not understand them and that I was a teacher at Qilo university. And they understood me!!
Tea
tonight was snacks and bits and pieces with beer, was supposed to be red wine but I lack a bottle opener. Remedied that today with buying another bottle in a little shop and then miming a bottle opener, SCORE!
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