If You Ain't Got No Money Take Your Brokeass Home

Read to Fergie - Glamorous

Why the title you say?  Because during the last few days that's exactly what I had to do: stay home cuz I ain't got no money.

For those of you who didn't know, the last two weeks was Chinese New Year.  Everything basically shuts down.  Schools, businesses, banks, etc.  So yes, not having found a job yet, my parents were going to wire me some money from HK/Shenzhen, which is easy enough.  Unfortunately, this was right before the CNY.  So, due to possibly a backlog of transfers, my parents not naming the specific sub-branch of my account, their using a different bank than mine, and/or gremlins in the financial machine, I haven't received my money yet (as of Feb 12).

Excluding the inaccessible 13.50 rmb in my bank account, my liquid assets was at 8 rmb.  Imagine my joy and excitement when I found 20 rmb stashed away in my drawer.  That's right, I had a little less than 6 Canadian dollars to my name.  Thank God I had a lot of instant noodles and frozen dumplings at home.

So yes, for a few days, I survived on pre-made food.  It doesn't sound so bad, but when you have to ration out the number of dumplings you eat so that you had something with meat the next day, it gets a little depressing.

Luckily, I've been hanging out at my cousin Lamont's place.  Thanks Lamont and Anna for all the meals!  Haha, also, thanks to their emergency bailout loan, I no longer have to skip buying vegetables and water for fear of lack of money.

Oh Beijing, what valuable life lessons you have taught me.  :D    

Baby It's Cold Outside

Read to Glee - Baby It's Cold Outside

Ah Beijing, such a wonderful time of the year.  Seriously though, it's pretty damn cold here.  These last few days have been warmer, so I'm optimistic that spring will be here soon?  I mean the temperature 'highs' for the next week are 2 degrees!  YES!  I mean that honestly with no sarcasm.  The lowest 'lows' are -12.  Sigh....

Life here has been...routine.  It feels like I've been here ages already, instead of just one month.  Maybe it's the 'Blackhole Effect' again.  For those you who don't know, Beijing is kind of like an informational blackhole.  Anything that happens to the outside world doesn't really correlate here.  Consequently, Beijing life seems to go on without change...

So yes people, please let me know what you're doing, what's going, etc.  Even a short FB post would be nice!  In return, I'll try to reply more often!  :)

But yes, more about me...  Getting together with cousins and their families has been nice.  It's crazy how much the nephews and nieces have grown in such a short amount of time.  I'm still working on becoming the favourite uncle, but I've made pretty good progress.  Beijing friends are as crazy as always, so it's nice to see that some things never change.

The Job Hunt has been decent so far, but not without ups and downs.  Hopefully I'll find something soon?