Health Exam

I passed! Woohoo!

Because I'm going to live here longer than 6 months, I needed to get a health exam.

What did they find? Everything is normal! What a relief!

For the blood tests they looked for (and found nothing I might add).

Anti-HIV
Syphilis Serology
HBsAg
Anti-HCV
HBsAb
HBeAg
HBeAb
HBcAb

Google tells me the HB stuff is for Hepatitis. So is HCV but thats Hep C. I'm guessing 'Anti' means they are looking for antibodies against the listed infections. Why am I sharing all of this with you? I don't know, maybe it will shed some light on people coming to China on what kind of tests to expect. Actually, I'm just too tired to post any pictures so I had to think of something to write about.

Walmart in Zhangzhou

Zhangzhou has one Walmart in town. You can reach it from the college park using bus 11 or 25. There is also a McDonalds across the street and a KFC in the building. The Zhangzhou Walmart has two stories. The first floor is for food, and the second floor is for house stuff.

Here is a picture of their Sandiwch Silced bread, I mean Sandwich Sliced bread. Look closely at the picture if you don't get it.

A personal update about my life

So what have I been doing lately? Well, I met a new friend in Xiamen and she introduced me to a bunch of her friends, including her best friend Alice. She is Chinese but currently lives in Singapore while coming to Xiamen for business about once a month. You should look at the cost of living and immigration requirements to live there to get a ballpark figure about the kind of money she has. Needless to say she is a very successful business woman. This weekend I saw her again and she introduced me to a bunch of her business partners. We're talking about filthy, disgustingly rich people. These business partners of hers just recently bought a three-story villa for their new business. They also asked her to pay them 1 million yuan to join as a partner of the company. Thats about oh $140,000. She told them she doesn't have that much money.

It's really amazing what you can get yourself into being a foreigner in Asia. As far as Alice and myself, I'm not sure how long our friendship will last. To be honest I'm not too fond of her personality, and shes constantly traveling. Most annoyingly I had to explain to her that I don't like being shown off like a prize trophy, I had enough of that in Korea. I also explained how poor I am and how careful I am about who I pick for my friends. So I have a feeling this won't last too long.

But, damn it, you only live ONCE. You can never rewind your life, and you'll never have another one so be damn sure to follow all your dreams before your time is up.

I'll keep you up to date....maybe

Hong Kong at night

Here are some pictures of Hong Kong at night.

How I got to Hong Kong

The school had a driver take me to the Xiamen airport. Then I flew to Shenzhen where I took 3 buses to get to Hong Kong. The first bus took me to the Chinese immigration building. The second bus took me across to the Hong Kong immigration building, and the third bus took me to my destination in Hong Kong. I had a small, written guide on how to find my hotel and the Visa office.

On a side note, the internet here is severely messed up right now due to obviously reasons (read or watch news about China).

Hong Kong

So I was in Hong Kong for 3 days. The city is one of a kind, but to be honest I didn't enjoy it that much. Perhaps because it reminded me a little bit of Korea (although people were more friendly in Hong Kong), or perhaps it was the two and a half hours I spent standing in line to pick up my passport and visa. I'm not sure why they only had one window for collections.

I'm also pretty sick of traveling at the moment. I'd like to just settle in for a while and relax. Anyway, here are a couple pictures of Hong Kong during the daytime.

Hong Kong

I am leaving for Hong Kong for three days tomorrow. I will blog about it when I get back.

Multi-Care Soop

It's actually soap.

Xiamen beach

Xiamen is the Jewel of China. I know where I will be spending my weekends. It's about one and a half hours away from my home.

My apartment

My apartment is very big, but rough around the edges. Here are some pictures without showing the small, nagging problems.

I have a living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, office and balcony.

What's wrong with this picture?

Hmm, I've heard of Puma but not Pmua.

Zhangzhou City

I played Tennis with a student and his friend today. Then we went to his friend's house for tea and then out to dinner. Before our dinner of duck blood soup and noodles with pig intestine they told me that 10 years ago there were no cars in Zhangzhou...

...think about that for a second...what were you doing 10 years ago? I was a college student at a community college in my hometown trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with the rest of my life.

In my Beijing Hotel

Where does the water go?

Onto the floor.

It was fixed later that day.