Shay's Page

I've been totatlly MIA...I need to get back to the swing of things..I will be check out your blog;)

Yeah, they say you never know what you would REALLY do until you are actually in that situation. So I want to believe that a switch would flip inside me and I would fight through. If nothing else, it would make a better story.  :)

Probably for the best.  The Labour Day holiday will still be happening around then and Shanghai would probably be batshit crowded.

I'm practically a modern-day philosopher; excellent points are kind of my thing.

I bet clothes will be on the inexpensive side though.  Don't know how the fashion will compare with all the glitz and glamour of Seoul, but you'd probably find something worth getting in Shanghai.

And if you decide you're going out to party at all, drinks will probably be stupid cheap, and food definitely will be.

It's true: everything's cheap.  Except western stuff.  If you want an authentic iPad, you're probably going to pay western prices for it.  That's not a guarantee though.  You should also figure out how Chinese that iPad will be.  It may be authentic, but I know the Android phones you buy in China have their own Chinese app store, which I'm assuming is government regulated.  If Apple's the same way that may be problematic for you, seeing as you can't read Chinese and you live in a place that has "freedom".

I don't know how factual that statement is, but just something to think about.

Find a travel agency, fill out like two or three sheets of paperwork, pay fees, leave travel agency, come back in like a week.  That's tiring you? My tale of subway misfortune, marked-up taxi rides, and getting lost on the streets of Seoul with an x-ray of my chest would put you in an exhaustion coma hahaha

Yeah, you're not getting a visa for less than 200,000 Won.  However, you don't have to go to the consulate in person to do it in Korea, which is nice.  Just find a travel agency around (there's a list on the Chinese Consulate in Seoul website, might need to translate it, but there are definitely a couple agencies that speak English), and they'll do everything but the small amount of paperwork for you.  Like if I didn't have to go through all the bullshit of my health check-up and everything like that, it would have been easy as pie.  You know, except the roughly $200USD it costs in consular fees. I think all you need for an L visa (that's the tourist one) in Korea is your passport, some passport-sized photographs to attach to your applications, and your alien residency card.

Just wrote a long-winded reply to your comment on my Eating Disorders topic lol

I keep a running list of shit I don't talk about out loud.  So far it's:

-Tienanmen Square

-the Nobel Peace Prize

-Democracy

-the Dalai Lama or Tibet

-I don't say "bless you" because of the religious implications, so people just sneeze and I let them go to hell

-Mao Zedong

But you know, always adding to it hahaha

Also apparently Western journalists are talking a bunch of shit about something called the Jasmine Revolution, but that's like...not that huge as far as me and the other expats can tell.  Of course, being in Liaoning Province has the side effect of not being near places where huge demonstrations might take place.  Has the government all worked up though.