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Today was the first of all our days here that it was actually cool enough for me to want to leave the house when I didn’t actually have to.Patrick took me to see Baohe Park and Zheng Bao pavilion. Although I had lived in Hefei for a year previously, I had never spent any time in the park or climbed the pavilion, so I am glad I managed to finally get around to it.

There are a lot of terribly misspelt and completely incomprehensible signs around Hefei, I have stolen menus in the past just because I found them so highly amusing. I don’t usually bother to take photos because there are just so many odd signs to be seen, but I took one today of a sign in Baohe park, as I just couldn’t understand how they had managed to complicate the message so much, and it made me smile.

How can you put your step on the green grass

Are they angry? As in “how could you??!!” I am not sure…

We were also given a final date for our apartment completion today. After weeks of being messed around by the builders, Patrick went to see them with the government official in charge of Hefei’s building and development or something-or-other, and we’ve now been assured it will be ready in 10 days.

I so hope it’s ready by then, I want to go and buy house stuff!!

Our car isn’t going to be ready for another two weeks either. I still haven’t worked out exactly what everyone is up to during all this waiting time, I bet there is a lot of nothing going on.

I highly recommend anyone who suffers from a lack of patience to come and live in China a while, if you don’t die of frustration, you’ll be cured forever.

We are picking up our new car in the next few days I think. Life should become a little more comfortable after that.

Yesterday our three modes of transport for the day included a taxi, a scooter and a company car.

The taxi had only one handle for winding up the windows, so we all had to hurriedly pass it around when it suddenly began to rain.

The scooter was fun, but I was in charge of holding the umbrella as Patrick drove, and I am not very good at that.  It is very difficult not to smack Patrick in the face with it as it blows inside out and all about.  I don’t think that is very safe.

Finally we took a company car in the afternoon, which I think has served the company for a very long time.  The hand brake gets stuck and generally takes two men or five minutes to un-stick.  Unfortunately Patrick has the unconscious habit of pulling the hand brake everytime we stop in traffic.  It took a very long time to get home.

We were undecided about which car we wanted, so went to test drive the second today.  We were taken for a demonstration drive as well as a test drive.

I didn’t think too carefully about what a demonstration drive would be, but imagined a nice cruise around with maybe some autumn leaves swirling around our tires or something…

The salesman asked me to put my seatbelt on, which I thought was very sweet, as seatbelts are not commonly worn (or available) here. Little did I know that was just to prevent me from being flung out the window as he demonstrated every possible safety feature except for the air bags.

It was all very impressive though, so sealed our decision of which car to buy.

Lucky for me, cuteoverload.com can still be read in China, so I am able to borrow pictures of pugs from them to beautify my posts while I wait to get myself organised with my own photos…

Now that we have a nice big apartment with a huge park just downstairs, I have asked Patrick to buy me a puppy.
I couldn’t decide for ages between a miniature poodle (without the silly haircut) or a pug.

I finally decided on a little ugly pug, because they are just so ridiculous looking, and I like a dog that makes me laugh. I also read somewhere that they hate the heat, aren’t very athletic, and if you take them for too much excersize they start to wheeze, and you have to take them home.

Hold on a minute, I thought… That’s ME!

Ugly little pugs and I seem well suited. The final point that sealed my decision was when I heard Patrick asking around about where to buy a good pug in China. “Pug” in Chinese is pronounced “Bugger”. TeeHee!

‘Where are you going?” … “I’m taking the little Bugger to the park.”

I’m still getting used to Hefei. Some things I love about it… some things are making me almost constantly irritated at the moment.

When we first arrived and spent a few hours looking at houses I got terribly overheated so Patrick’s mum took me for a three hour facial, hair wash and massage to cool down. This I can get used to.

The fact that there is an internet cafe policeman hovering about behind me at the moment and apparently checking I don’t break any internet laws is a little odd.

I am not sure what sets off their alarms, but every now and then, the staff will start yelling and Internet Cafe Policeman runs off to shut down someone’s computer.

I love the fact that unlike Tokyo, everything is open all the time, and we never get shuffled out the door early because a place is closing. If we are hungry at 3am, there are plenty of places to choose from.

I’m a little annoyed that after only three days here, my shoes suddenly look 15 years old. The place is just so unbelievably dirty. Keeping our apartment clean is going to be really hard work.

I love that when we go out to eat, we order what we want whether it is on the menu or not, and no one minds one bit if it isn’t.

I don’t like days when it is 38 degrees, I am grumpy, dripping with sweat and clearly not at my best, and everyone is pointing me out to their children. Generally, I much prefer to go unnoticed when I am looking like shit.

Finally, I love Hefei, because the people are happy.

Hopefully after I have been here a while I’ll soak up this attitude and stop whinging about the small irritations in life…

So after just a few tiny complications, we have made it to Shanghai.I am glad to find I can still post to my blog and to Flickr… just can’t see what exactly I am posting, so please let me know if the photos aren’t showing up or if I have completely mislabelled them all.

It turned out that the airline staff today weren’t as lenient on us and our massive amounts of luggage as check in staff usually are, and we paid an extra $200 for our excess baggage. I can’t complain, as I hate to think how much we have got away with in the past.

We have enjoyed a couple of days of weather in the low 20s in Tokyo, and had both subconsciously begun to think that summer was ending. We were horribly reminded that this isn’t so when we arrived to a sauna at Shanghai airport and a forecast of 38 tomorrow. Oh dear.

Patrick was a little surprised to find that he is seeing China through Australian eyes now. He looked at me sideways when our taxi stopped next to a group of people standing about in their underpants to see if I had spotted them.

“Now I can see that is a bit weird.” He said.

He also was a little concerned when we went downstairs to eat and he watched his meal being prepared, not quite to the standards of hygiene he has become used to.

I think he will get used to it soon.