February 25th 2011

This week I've been handling a few issues here and there. One of them was getting a new cellphone. In China you get to buy your phone number among a list of available ones. The more 8's the more expensive since 8 is a lucky number, while 4 it's the opposite because it's pronounced similar to death. As you can imagine I just got a random number because I really don't care. 

But the pinnacle of my bureaucratic experience was the achievement of my "Great Wall Debit Card ™" at Bank of China. Not unexpectedly nobody there spoke english, so I still don't know how, but my bank account was open and ready to go. I just hope my recent wire transfer from the US gets in my pockets and not those of a farmer in Jiangsu.

Today at 9:00 we've been convoked to buy our books. Then I spent the morning with Mr Frankfurt, a German lawyer with existentialist questions and who takes this chinese course as an intermediate step towards who knows what. I can totally relate to that… Then we joined his wife, a Chinese girl who has already spent so much time in Germany that is considered a "Xiang Jiao" (Banana), yellow on the outside an white on the inside. They are both super nice and friendly.

We went downtown for some delicious Sichuan food. And on my way back I stood in front of Mao and I thought it's really cool that I'm here. Mao looked down and blinked an eye to me and then he went back to his vigilant position.

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