Occasional Tales

Eventually. I thought I'd try getting a VGA cable so that I could connect the laptop to the new TV. I found what I was looking for in Metro, but I wasn't absolutely certain I should be buying a male-male cable. I returned home and found that I was right, but I'd also noticed that the cable at Metro had a damaged end. I decided to try Yonghui Supermarket, but they didn't have any. I knew that there was another branch of Gome in the vicinity which I found by luck rather than certain knowledge. Once I managed to convey to them what I wanted (I had the manual with me, but they still seemed unable to grasp initially that I wanted a VGA cable), I was informed that they didn't have any. Huh? This is Gome. It's an electronics shop. I returned home and then headed to the branch of Gome on the mainland where the same thing happened, but with none of the what-the-hell-does-the- laowai -want-in-spite-of-a-Chinese-manual routine. They sent me to 大利 which turned out to be op...

Never lie at a right angle. Today started strangely. I woke up some time after dawn and found that I turned myself 90° during the night so that my head was now pointing towards the window. Logical conclusion: it was the earthquake disrupting the earth's magnetic field. [ Hark at Mr Compass . –ed.] I got to school just before 9am, but with time for the delivery of the TV running out before I had to go to class, I got Tracy to phone Gome. I learnt that they don't start work until 9am, which meant a 9am delivery was never going to happen. Then while I was pretending to teach Class 13, there was a knock at the door. It was Tracy who needed to get the delivery receipt. Then during the next class I got a text message saying that the TV was in the gatehouse. I got it home and plugged everything in. Could I get the DVD player to run through it? No. I got some message saying "No sync detected", which means as much to me as the same message in Chinese. I went back to Gome with...

I think it's the handmaiden. I went back to Gome to see whether I could get any explanations about why the DVD player(s) aren't working with the new TV. I was informed that a worker would come here tomorrow afternoon. Meanwhile, it'd appear from Chris's comment that Internet access is probably being limited from here. I'm not sure whether this is Nanny's local handmaiden (which seems likely) or an increase in local Internet traffic in the wake of the earthquake. There are no problems with national websites. I got straight on to China Daily, which is the reason why I'm back. The bottom side bar of the page about the earthquake has the following advertisement: Alibaba is the largest B2B marketplace in the world. Source model ship, wooden puzzle, one-piece toilet, RC hovercraft, photo album, prom dress, pocket bike, Vaginal Speculum, Samurai Sword, String Panty and PVC Pipe. Am I imagining things? Bugger. I've just had a text message to say that the IELTS ...