I haven’t written any blog entries for a while, mainly because I have been busy making the Waikato Golden Key’s website. I have some new website creation plugins for the software I have been using, Rapidweaver. The plugins allow me to do much more, allowing the creation of very pretty websites.

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A few days ago we went into town to meet Yvonne’s friend and her friend’s boyfriend. They were very nice, her friend’s English was pretty good. After we met up the boyfriend and I were told to follow them around, while they looked at makeup. During this time, I attempted conversation with the boyfriend, in Mandarin. It was pretty slow and painful. He eventually tired of standing idly in the makeup store “taking” with me, and suggested we get a drink of juice from the store opposite. He gave me the menu and told me to choose something, and I chose “火龙果风菠萝”, or “Fire Dragon Pineapple”. I chose it because the name sounded interesting. It turned out that “Fire Dragon” is actually “Fire Dragon Fruit”, or Pitaya, which I have never heard of. I thought the drink would be spicy or hot in some other sense, but it was sour. I drank it anyway.

Hours later Yvonne and her friend finished looking at makeup, or ran out of money. I don’t know which. We then went to get dinner, which tasted good. We ordered “Stinky Tofu”, and it was really stinky, like Gouda.

On the way home we went back to the same store, because Yvonne wanted to look around again. In the store I found various New Zealand products. Honey and Lanolin oil. The honey was ludicrously expensive, the most costly example being 860å…ƒ for 500mL. That is around $160. This is the same honey one can buy from Pak ‘n’ Save, for around $5-10. Next time I’ll take some photos as proof.

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Some time before meeting Yvonne’s friend I devised a method by which one can level up a Super Paper Mario character without actually playing. I used a rubber band to attach a nutcracker to the wiimote in such a way that the required button is continually pressed. It works well. I plan to beat the Flopside Pit of 100 Trials sometime, if I get really bored.

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We are going to Beijing today, leaving in two hours. It is snowing in Beijing, which is good because I like snow. We’re sure to see a bunch of interesting stuff, which I will document as much as batteries allow. The train ride will apparently take 8-10 hours, which means that either Beijing is very far away, or the train is very slow.

That is all, I’ll be writing entries each day in Beijing, but I probably won’t be able to upload them until I return, in about a week.

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Tags: Beijing - 北京, China - 中国, Shanghai - 上海