Tempest7: Blogger

Back To The Basics With Little Frog

I thought when I first arrived that the heat would be bareable. It didn't seem so bad at first sticky, hot but not terrible. Actually it was the start of the rainy season so it didn't seem that hot at all, just really wet. Now that summer is in full swing I've had second thoughts. Not that I feel the heat, but I can sense my body which feels the heat. I haven't even stepped outside and I have beads of sweat forming on my forehead. The thing to do in this weather? The public pool! There's been quite a scare with people finding red blood worms in the past, they really aren't dangerous though. But I think after the scandle they really made an effort to clean up.

I went swimming with Ada, she is somewhat an instructor for little children, and infact a former school team competitor. There was somethign I was fairly sure I wasn't really sure I was doing correctly for the longest time, the front crawl. I have a difficult time doing the "S" for the left side though but like everything else I need to learn to do it properly. I usually like to go to Victoria Park to swim but they were holding an event so we ended up in Wan Chai. Wan Chai has an indoor pool, which is also quite big. There's a smaller pool open to the outside but the main pool is still located indoors. The lanes can get quite crowded I think Ada was struck in the face once and had a bit of a mark. So far it is still safe to go swimming. I've been a bit fearful because of my skin. It has started to peel from wakeboarding but it doesn't look too bad yet.

After swimming we hung around the area, she took me over to a collection of shopping booths that had a large collection of video games and toys. Basically two levels of unique and cute toys plus tons and tons of video games. I think my brother and Rui would love it in there, they can find all their Macross models or Sergant Kero Kero toys or whatever. We discovered something interesting though aside from North Point, I haven't found a 7 Eleven that has Aloe drinks. I am addicted to this stuff, and why not? Aloe drinks are known to be "healthy" drinks though that's not always entirely true. I like the taste of the drinks though and having the bits of pulp. Ma Shi Te bought a large container back in Toronto, but here I can't seem to find large bottles of it. I guess I just need to keep looking. These these I'm getting pretty poor. Basically I have to live 2 months off of 1 month's pay so it is pretty rough. I really can't survive totally on 1 month's pay. I started to do the unthinkable, living off Mcdonald Crispy Chicken. $8 HKD is pretty reasonable I think and if I am really hungry, it is a quick meal since I can walk across the street to the MTR to pick one up.

My sleeping patterns have been a bit messed up lately, I woke up about 3 am and because I had nothing to do I felt like fixing up the Readership webpage. I had to tweak the CSS Style sheet and hopefully it will be completely standards compliant. I was reading some nasty things about the upcoming IE 7. Microsoft doesn't really seem to be moving towards the standards they basically helped create, which is pretty frustrating for developers. Erine asked for an underconstruction page and I found an old flash file he made so I put it up. I had to play with the position because I can have an overlapping layer ontop of the flash animation.

Today offically my summer term begins. I only had 1 day off this week which kind of threw me off. I was expecting a call with my schedule but never got it so I got in late at work, Rosalind had to cover a class for me. I just took her class instead so it all worked out. My summer schedule seems killer at a glance, actually I don't even know what it full looks like since it seems to change every hour. But Hong Kong children are certainly busy in the Summer. Some are taking 2 English classes, Mandarin classes, Playing sports, piano classes, and art classes. Well I have a bit of studying myself as well. I went to the Central Library after work and met up with Ada. She has experience teaching learning disabled children, which is both beneficial for my work, and for teaching me!

We hung around the children's section looking for a book suitable for my level. I didn't pick up much Chinese in Sarnia and only a little bit in Waterloo or Toronto in terms of reading. I peeked at the books the kids around me were reading and they were much too hard for me. That is pretty depressing to see. I really need to start at a baby level, the lowest level. We found 2 books that were done by some famous children's book author. One about a little frong who needs to hibernate and the other about a puppy. A handy thing that I've been doing is recording people on my camera when they teach me new things in Chinese. So I recorded Miss Ada as she paitently read and explained the story of the little frog who needed to hibernate. Lets keep this a secret amongst my friends please...

posted by Tempest7 @ 11:00