Brief updates: weather, friends, TV, movies, transport

WEATHER: June serves up pleasant weather where I live. July and August are unbearably hot and humid, but June's [usually] mild rains, known as the plum rain season, make for bearable temperatures. I'm trying to get out as much as I can before it becomes too hot. Today we had torrential rains instead of mild rains, but that's not common.

FOREIGN FRIENDS: Most of my foreign friends in town are leaving for the summer, but will be back in the fall. Chinese friends will still be around though, most of them anyway.

TV VIEWERSHIP: I get CNN International and Fox News on satellite TV, so for the most part, I hear the same news you do. I usually watch CNN in the morning (Anderson Cooper, et al) and Fox and Friends in the evening. (I'm in a different time zone, remember?) The toxic, argumentative political atmosphere bothers me though, so lately I've had have to turn off the TV often to maintain peace of heart and mind.

MOVIES: I don't watch movies much, but I watched the movie "Lion" on the airplane a few weeks ago, and I loved it. It is about an Indian boy who ends up being adopted by a family in Tasmania, where I once lived. The boy arrived in Tasmania the same year I did, in 1987. The movie is a tearjerker.

TRANSPORTATION: Bamboo Forest is opening more and more subway lines, and it makes life easier. When it rains and I have to get out, I stress out trying to plan the best way to get where I'm going and back. Taxis fill up with passengers during rainstorms and vacant ones can be hard to find; e-bike travel is not a great option; I'll get wet walking to and from the subway station, and sometimes at the other end, my destination is too far from the subway station. Buses seldom go where I want to go, so they are ruled out quickly. If you've always had a car, you've probably never had to think about this kind of thing.

Hope you've enjoyed these random updates!

Flat tire

I had a flat tire on my e-bike the other evening. I had ridden it all the way across town and back and was within five minutes of reaching my place when I heard a flapping sound.

Thank God I knew of a nearby repair place, and they hadn't quite closed down for the evening when I pulled up and asked them if my tire was out of air or not. They saw the nail (a screw really), so I pulled up a lawn chair and waited for them to repair it for me.

The cost was 5 RMB, which is about 73 cents. Not a bad price.

I'm so thankful for the sidewalk repair shops around town. You can get your bike fixed, or your shoes, often by the same repairman. 

Grocery shopping

I shop for American style groceries at this Euro-Mart.

Euro-Mart is inside the block, away from the street. Cars can't drive up to it, but most people don't have cars anyway, so it doesn't matter. I can park my e-bike next to the building. 

Grocery shopping in the Middle Kingdom is not easy, but it easier than it used to be.

I remember when I first moved to this country, I made a wild guess that grocery stores would arrive in this country by 2050. Fortunately for me, I was 50 years off. They arrived in the year 2000. Before that, you had to buy your groceries at the open market, stand in line as butcher carved pieces off a dead pig, or did bad things to a chicken.

Large grocery stores on the scale of Super Wal-Mart exist now. You can't get canned goods, and you can't get most packaged goods that you can get in the U.S. (no cake mixes, for example).

These large stores, RT-Mart, Carrefour, Tesco, etc. sell fresh fruits and veggies, packaged meat, ramen noodles, soy sauce, vinegar, mayonnaise, rice, frozen dumplings, milk, eggs, row after row of sugary drinks, cleaning supplies and cheap household goods (the quality is very low; makes Super Wal-Mart look like Neiman Marcus in comparison).

In my city, we used to have quite a selection of import grocery stores. Some have closed down and we have very few now.

We can get American goods but can't afford them in large quantities due to prices that are up to 4-5 times the price you pay in America. Who really wants a small can of Campbell tomato soup that costs over $5?

But sometimes a can of green beans, a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese, and a bag of tortilla chips makes you feel like a human being. I can buy paper towels, Betty Crocker cake mix, salsa, refried beans, and lettuce.

Euro-Mart, an import grocery store, is 30 minutes away from where I live, by e-bike, through the worst traffic in town. I can't go unless I am calm and alert enough to handle the traffic. I can make there about once every two weeks.

Euro-Mart has a bakery, but I don't eat bread. It has a dining area both indoors and outdoors. It is two-stories high, so I start upstairs with an empty basket and carry it downstairs to finish shopping before checking out. They take my American credit card so I don't have to carry cash there.

Euro-Mart has another location in town that is further away from me, and it is larger and only has one floor.

At Euro-Mart, I buy enough to fill four re-usable shopping bags and carry them back on my bike. Two stack on top of each other on my floorboard, then one each hangs over the sides of the two handlebars.

When I get home, I drop the bags by my front door, temporarily park my e-bike near the door, then scoot them over to the elevator so I can get them up to the 8th floor where I live. I'm so very thankful for my elevator.

I'm also very grateful that I didn't have to wait until 2050 to see the arrival of grocery stores here.

Getting there isn't half the fun -- it's no fun at all

I am about about to tell you something that will earn me no sympathy at all: I only have to set my alarm two times a week and I only have to make morning commutes those two days. One of those days is Sunday.

I am about to tell you something that ought to earn me sympathy though, if you have any feelings at all: I have no car. And I live in a place where it rains a whole lot.

Here are my options for getting across town to meet with like-minded people on Sunday mornings, and how those options are affected by rain:

Commute Option #1

E-bike. My preferred transportation is my e-bike. When my meeting is over I can roam around and take in different scenery. But when it rains, this option is really terrible. If I only had to go a few blocks, I could endure, but all the way across town? No way. The rain poncho worn by e-bikers is not efficient at keeping rain off your face and out of your eyes. I would arrive looking and feeling like a drowned rat. Ask me how I know. I am not good company when this occurs.

Commute Option #2

Subway. Subways are nice enough, but getting to and from the subway stations is the hard part. From the time I leave my door to the time I am at the subway platform takes at least 20 minutes by foot. It is a rough 20 minutes though, dodging cars, bikes, street vendors, crazy people on a narrow street. If it rains, it takes slightly longer and is more dangerous.

Once I arrive at the subway station platform, I may have to wait 10 minutes between trains. The subway trip across town takes 20 or more minutes. When I get to the other end of town, I have to walk another 10-15 minutes to get where I'm going. You do the math. This gets to be obnoxious, especially the part about walking in the rain for so long. And the math.

Commute Option #3

Taxis. Taxis are nice. Someone else does the driving, you just sit in back and relax. But finding a taxi is hard in good weather, and might-near impossible when it is raining. And if I do get lucky and find a taxi, then when I get to the other part of town, I may not find a taxi back home. I have waited for taxis for an hour or longer before.

If I am choosing the taxi option, then when I leave home I go to the main road, to the south of where I live. If I can't find a taxi, usually it is too late to go with a back-up plan -- the subway is the opposite direction.

Rainy commutes are very stressful. I had a rainy taxi commute this past Sunday.

Here I am waiting for a taxi. I'm on the curb between the bike path and the main road. See my umbrella at the top of the photo?

 E-bikes zoom by. 

Buses zoom by. 

Not a taxi in sight.