Jinan - Day 7 (11.19): A Relaxing Day

Sunday has arrived and I spent my day off of wushu relaxing and enjoying myself, doing what I love to do best: being a nerd.

I tried to sleep in but the best I could do was 7:30. I wasn’t hungry thanks to the horrible duck last night so I just relaxed in my hotel room and did some media organization on my hard drives. At around 9:30 I went to run an errand at the computer store.

I had brought a hard drive with me but the casing’s power connection was having problems so I went to get a new casing put on. I spent my time walking around the store and checking things out. It’s laid out pretty much like every other computer / electronics store I’ve been to in China so nothing particularly exciting (unless you’ve never been to one before, in which case it’s a geek’s paradise). I got a new casing put on with a significantly reduced form factor (which means “it’s smaller” in tech-babble). With that hard drive back in action I have a combined 830 GB of space sitting on my desk right now. And I guess that’s not including the 80 GB I have on my desktop at home. That’s almost a terabyte. Wow … maybe I’ll have a party when I hit the big “T”.

Amazingly, I only have about 100 GB of free space here too.  I have waaaaaay too many wushu videos…

Electronics Galore!

While I was out and about I found a nice little street of food stalls and vendors behind the electronics plaza and got myself some bing. For Justin, who didn’t know what “bing” was (how can you do wushu for that long and not know what “bing” is?), it’s a flat flour pancake type of food. The standard kind is cooked with green onions but sometimes they put meat in them or … well, there are a variety of ways you can have it. I actually put pictures of the bing I was referring to in my previous blogs but you probably didn’t notice them with all the words in your way. Here is another picture of the type of bing I ate today, just so you don’t miss it this time around:

Bing in the making

After going out shopping I caught a cab back home, grabbed some lunch of meat, an egg, some oranges and another (different type of) bing and ate it in my room while watching several episodes of “Prison Break”. I haven’t been watching much of the second season yet even though I’ve been downloading them. It’s quite a good show. I followed that up with an afternoon of media organization and watching the first season of “The New Adventures of Old Christine” (not bad, but not the best show in the universe either).

I went back across the street for some dinner (chicken leg and another variation of bing) and then came back and continued doing the same. I realize an entire day of sitting in front of my computer (when, in fact, I do that for a living — when I’m employed, that is) might seem simultaneously silly, boring and a poor way to spend a day in a new city, but to be honest I really enjoy it. And if I’m going to spend a day relaxing doing whatever I want, then what I’ll end up doing is something I actually enjoy doing. I’m not huge on touristy things and I don’t really go for parties or clubbing. Spending a quiet day at home is just my speed.

Holy cow … I AM getting older…

Anyway, not much to blog about today. Tomorrow it’s back to wushu. I was thinking about my form today (see? something else I enjoy) and thinking of some improvements in the 3rd section choreography of my nanquan. Parts of it just don’t seem quite right yet. I also planned out a bit of this week’s workouts. Since Jennifer and Wang Wei are arriving in the afternoon on Thursday I’m not going to assume that I will have the opportunity to go to wushu on Friday morning before we head off to Heze.

That being the case I’m going to double up workouts for the first 3 days and then attend thursday morning. I won’t be training until the following week so I want to make a strong showing before I take another few days off of wushu. I’m sure by Thursday morning I’ll be regretting this decision, but it’s not yet Thursday morning so the future version of me can just deal with it.  (You hear that Future Mark??  I’m calling you out!  See you in 4 days! … MAYbe!)

Hmm … I just realized today that this week is Thanksgiving. Just you watch .. I’m going to forget Christmas when it comes too.

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