A post from the past.... UK...

... the one that started it all!

This whole travel blog idea actually started more than a year back. But with the usual starting troubles I have, it took me this long to start writing! ZhongGuo (China) was a big factor in motivating me to start. And a shuttle ride of 90+ minutes everyday gives me a lot of time to find ways to harass people with my blogging! :)

So here are some notes about my UK trip that I should have written a year back!

The places…
UK was awesome. It’s the perfect example of East meets West. It has the historical charm of the east and the lifestyle of the west. London was great. Thames was bit of a disappointment with little water in it, though I did take the boat ride! Ohh, I never knew till I actually went to the Big Eye that it goes around really slow! Sorry about the spoiler, just wanted to save you some heartache if you plan to go there expecting the usual speed of a Ferris wheel! I was walking along Thames and saw the Big Eye from a distance. I saw it wasn’t moving around fast and started to panic that it was an off day. It took me a while to peer at it closely to realize that it was indeed moving but really slow! But still the view from the Big Eye is worth the ride, though I would have preferred it to be faster!

Ahh, and the London Bridge! You wont believe me. All these years I thought the Tower bridge was called the London bridge(incase you are like me, tower bridge is the elegant one with the towers and a prominent fixture in photos about London! See link below.). I didn’t realize my ignorance even when I was standing under London bridge and reading the name on the bridge! Don’t ask me why! I went to the extent of thinking that something bad happened to the towers and the British have rebuilt the Tower bridge as this current dumb looking bridge without telling me or the world! So I was cursing everyone in the world and myself, for not coming to London before whatever happened to Tower bridge. And guess what, I turn a corner and see the Tower bridge in front of me. Note that previously I was standing on the north bank of Thames under the London bridge. Tower bridge is less than a mile away to the East but I couldn’t see it yet since the Thames bank curves a little bit in between these two bridges. And there it was, the most stupid moment of my life! Hmm, one of the most stupid moments of my life, to be honest!! But to my defense, why would you name the landmark bridge of your city Tower bridge (actual reason is in the link at the end of this post) and why make the namesake bridge look like any usual bridge! Weird, the British!! :)

So two lessons learnt in one evening on my first ever travel trip. Big eye doesn’t go around fast! London bridge and Tower bridge are different. So they are indeed right, Travel makes you wiser . Or as I have started realizing these days, Travel makes you realize how dumb you really are!

The accent…
I thought after watching BBC for so long, British accent shouldn’t be a big deal. Guess what, British English in London is way different from what you hear in BBC. But here is the kicker. Two days later I find myself in Scotland and London accent started to feel very easy compared to Scottish accent. And yes, it doesn’t stop there… Two days later I am in Belfast and Irish accent made Scottish and London accent sound so easy. Infact to me Irish accent sounded like some other language. I think I used "Pardon me" and "Sorry, can you please repeat that?" a zillion times in that one week!

The fun moments…
Someone scared me before my trip that racism is a bit more obvious in northern UK. But based on my experience I didn’t feel it that much. Actually I believe I was the one who scared people when I was there. I would attribute those instances to the way I looked - a scruffy, unshaved, backpack lugging, typical hobo style look!

So I get off the train in Edinburgh at 5am. I get out of the train station with a map in my hand and blood shot eyes from overnight travel. I had the map and the address of my hostel, but I didn’t know where I was standing. So the roads are deserted, its partially dark, the wind is howling… yes, I am trying to build up a horror movie like scene! :) But you get the picture, right? Then I see a woman walking towards me and I decide to ask for direction. I think by now you know what is going to happen. You should have seen the look in her face. I scared the hell out of her, the blood in her face drained and she hurriedly crossed the road and started walking in the other direction as if she had seen a ghost! As if I wouldn’t follow her and harass her if I had wanted to!

Then there was this overnight stay at the ferry terminal to catch a ferry from Scotland to Ireland. Dont ask me why! My amazing planning skills put me in a small, deserted town in Scotland in the middle of the night and nowhere to spend the night but the ferry terminal!! There were these 2 drunk Irish guys and we started talking. As I said earlier, Irish accent was like a different language to me. Still I manage to catch a few words and we ended up discussing sports scores. Only after a while did I realize I was talking about cricket and he was talking about soccer!!

Ohh, and never, repeat, never ever order the local popular beer in London. I made that mistake and ended up getting a warm beer! Though they called it warm it was actually hot!! I have never spent 30 minutes drinking a glass of beer! Ofcourse after 30 minutes of torture I had to wash down the after-taste with a shot of Baileys! Even after more than a year, I still cringe when I think of the taste of warm beer! :) For all the warm beer lovers out there, I salute your quite unique and interesting taste for warm beers!!

The amazing sights…
The giant causeway, the coastal drive north of Belfast, The Royal Mile in Edinburgh and London in general. Ohh I was disappointed at the Highlands of Scotland. Expected something like in Braveheart. But the only interesting sight in the Highlands trip was the Scottish cow. Wow, they look so different from the usual cows you see!

The people…
Travel is especially fun since you get to meet new people! There were these Australian girls in the Belfast hostel, whose name I never quite caught but I do remember they were pretty! The manger in the Edinburgh hostel was a sweet Italian girl, whom I wowed by guessing her nationality from her accent, thanks to my Italian friends at work! Don’t worry, I know what you are thinking! I am getting to the guys!! On the bus ride to Giant Causeway and back in Ireland, I met this Indian guy - tamil speaking Indian guy - who for some weird reason started advising me to get married!! Small, weird world! Small for meeting a tamil speaking Indian guy in the northern Irish coast and definitely weird considering the fact that he started advising me about wedding after knowing me for just over 3 hours!!!

PS: I did some background search on London bridge and Tower bridge online before publishing this post. Now I am even more intrigued why they rebuilt London bridge (one of the oldest bridges in London) into this this bland looking structure!
Links:
London bridge
Tower bridge
You can see that the misconception I had is actually common! Its so satisfying to know that you are not the only dumb person in the classroom!!

Chinese eccentricities!

1. You probably remember in mathematics, negative and negative becomes positive. Have you ever seen that concept in dishes? Here it is… how does a dish with a name that contains the words "Chicken" and "Meat" become a vegetarian dish?!!! (But my Chinese friends here swear it is pure vegetarian!)

2. Who said we are not democratic? We are way more democratic than almost everyone of the countries out there!!! Proof? Here it is… see anything interesting in this picture? Where else can you sell these fridge magnets?! We don’t care if you are considered evil by the whole world, as long as you are (in)famous and we can make money out of you, we don’t have a problem!

3. Some elevators have floor call buttons outside, not on the inside!
Some of the interesting scenarios this brings about:
- You hit the wrong floor, the elevator comes to pick you up. You get in and realize you hit the wrong button. What do you do? Yes, get off on the wrong floor, call the elevator again using the outside keypad and wait for it again!
- I found that you cant act like a gentleman and impress a girl by jumping to catch the door from closing when you see her walk towards the elevator. Because, once the door starts closing, even if someone calls for an elevator on that same floor, a different elevator is sent. So you holding the door for her is pretty foolish, she still cant take your elevator; which I found the hard, humiliating way! :(
2. Chopstick skills can regress any time, any where, without any warning whatsoever!
3. Soup comes at the end of the meal not at the start!
4. You can have a full lunch for 10RMB but Starbucks still costs 30RMB for a cup of coffee!
5. McD and KFC are ultra famous, so is Buick! Yeah, I have no clue too.
6. Calls from China to US costs 0.37$, but from US to China it is 0.02$!!
7. "ma" in Chinese has 5 different meanings based on the tone you use! So does every other word! You might think you are calling your mom, but you are probably calling your horse if you get the tone wrong! How much more interesting a language can get?!
8. Aptmt comes with a safe box. Two key-locks, one electonic lock, but, here is the kicker, the box weighs only 20 pounds or so and not bolted to anything!

My experiments with Chinese! - "I am a cow"!!

Yes, the "My experiments with…" phrase has been used so many times in so many combinations that it has become a cliché these days. Still, I cant find a better way to capture the essence unless I call it as "My tragedies with Chinese!".

So this is how my conversation (experiment!) with our van driver went today morning! In Chinese because he doesn’t know a single word of English.

Me: Hello, How are you?
Mr. Li: Hello, How are you!
(No problem so far. I am cruising along smooth with my new Chinese skills! Patting myself on the back!)
Me: (Smile)
Mr.Li: How old are you?
Me: (Smile wiped right off, replaced with a dumb look and to cover it up, a stupid grin! I had no clue what he just said) huh?! (In English, I still haven't learnt how to say 'huh' in Chinese!)
Mr. Li: (Tries to help me by saying some numbers) 19, 29, 39….
Me:(Recognize that he is saying some numbers but have no clue what its for!) No.. Yi…(Blabber and mix up English and Chinese now!!!)
Mr.Li: (Laughs and says something, again no clue what it is)

Right then, a colleague walks up to the van. Mr. Li and he discuss and both laugh now! Remember the dumb look and stupid grin I adopted a while back? That’s still planted on my face, except now, it has aggravated to dumber and more stupid!!

The colleague elaborates what actually transpired between me and Mr.Li. Seems Li asked me how old I was and I had responded "I am a cow". (Yes, when I was mixing English and Chinese, I have actually told him that I was a cow!!)

So I had successfully managed to respond "I am a cow" to the question "How old are you?". Never mind that the answer is wrong or a disastrous reply, still I had said something in Chinese that made the sentence meaningful! Ahh, the bliss of seeing the cup half full!!! :)

Ohh, and the conversation continued during the ride back home. This time he asked me a question and also followed it up with some sign language and showed me real life examples. I successfully understood and even replied correctly, though only after referring to my Chinese notebook. I am not going to make an ass out of myself anymore by calling myself as various animals! Yeah, Yeah, ok, but ass is a fine animal!! :)

The wild ride to the Wild Animal Park...

July 4th. All of us got this unbounded patriotism to our residence country and decided to go celebrate the US independence day in an US bar. I can confidently generalize to residence country because of the medley of 7 or 8 people, more than half were non US citizens! Still the allure of beer and fat loaded cheese burger is all it took to convince us that we should celebrate July 4th.
So in the middle of all the drinking and eating, someone got the urge to see some animals in captivity. Reasoning being, if you as foreigners feel unique (translated to, feel like specimens, in a good sense!) in this country, how do the animals feel here?! Hence started the plan to go to a zoo nearby in Shanghai. Most of us being the kind who would jump at any opportunity to explore new places, we decided we will go the next day.
Next day came, everyone started as planned, left for the subway station as planned, and even somehow got waylaid to take an international Gallup survey about what foreigners think of the upcoming Beijing Olympics! Unfortunately we didn’t qualify for the entire poll. I guess my friend got one of the answers for the 3 initial questions wrong. The girl said that the survey was over with just 3 questions. Our guess is we got the question about how long we were in China wrong! My friend said 4 months and that’s it, looks like we were not considered foreign anymore, we are now almost an all knowing native Chinese and didn’t qualify for the poll!!
Hmm, yes, back to the zoo (note I am still calling it Zoo and not the park as in the title, you will see why soon!), still everything was going as per plan. That is, until we got to the subway station and realized we did not know where the zoo was! So, here is the deal… someone yesterday night, thought they had seen a subway stop with the word zoo in it and said they knew where it was! Huh, don’t ask! When you are part intoxicated, anything is a great idea and doable!! So we search the whole subway map, don’t find any zoo or park or farm or sanctuary or petting station or even an animal hospital!
Of the four of us, one knew a little bit of Chinese. Enough of Chinese to clobber our destination from the local zoo to the Wild Animal Park outside the city!!! The outside the city part we didn’t realize and decided to follow the directions given by the subway official. So after 2 subway line rides and a long bus ride we found ourselves at the park, 2 hours after we left our homes. Ohh, the bus part was very interesting. People were standing in a queue to board the bus. The bus terminus official was kind enough to take us to the correct queue(because everything was written in Chinese and there were no route numbers!). So we stood in the queue, the bus came and people started boarding. But the queue stopped as soon as all the seats were taken. We waited a bit, looked around and didn’t understand why people stopped boarding. After few seconds of meditation on the issue at hand, we decided to be the usual stupid-foreigners, jumped over the railings and got into the bus. Suckers! Aahh, but wiser were they who stayed put and waited for the next bus. Little did we know that it was a long ride. To aggravate it, we were stuck in traffic for the next 1 hour. So, we being the suckers now, happily sat on the floor to the amusement of the entire bus, having no clue how long the bus ride was!

Ofcourse, all the adventure was worth it, because the park was awesome. There were giant pandas, scary ostriches, poop kicking rhinoceros, lions, tigers and bears.
Ohh, to make the day of all the Chinese visitors to the park that day, we were the free bonus attraction that day in the park. I think we generated as much interest as the other animals. Especially since we rented big colorful self ride rickshaws and pedaled around the park. Animal parks are a fancy, red rickshaws in an animal park are interesting, four laowai-s in a red rickshaw in an animal park are certifiably ridiculous, interesting and awfully fancy sight!

And to round off the experience, not just me, Mr. J got ripped too, Chinese style. So I paid 5RMB for a bottle of water when we entered the park. Mr. J came along, looked at the rate I paid and walked away. Immediately the lady offered the water to him for 4RMB. Come on, lady, the idiot that paid 5RMB for the water (that’s me, if you are wondering!) is still standing here! But she got to Mr.J, just when we were leaving the park in the evening. She came running to him offering water for 3 RMB now!!! Mr. J was so touched. One, for she remembering him from afternoon, two, for offering him water for 3 RMB now! Again, yes, you guessed right, suckers!!! As soon as he gave her a 10RMB note for one bottle of water, she promptly dumped 3 bottles of water and 1 RMB change and walked away! So he ended up with 3 bottles of water and 9RMB down just because he was so touched that she remembered him!
That sums up our adventurous trip to the park, which was totally worth it! Thanks to Mr. A for using his 3 month Chinese lessons! He was awesome because, he would get into the taxi, talk to the driver in Chinese, listen intently to the long reply from the driver, nod knowingly, mumble a word or two and turn around and say, "I wish I understood what the driver said!!!" :) Still he got us around without getting too lost! :) Ofcourse I should thank Mr. R, our pro trigger happy clicker, for the pics that I have linked here!

PS: The names have been ambiguated (ha, I have coined a new word in English!) to preserve the secret identities of these spies I roll with! :) Nah, its just to avoid any lawsuit. Two of them are Americans, you know! The third is Nigerian and US settled, so you never know, he might sue too!