Death Note

Day Two: I was handed my very own death note, parchment texture, yet dyed orange. Unfortunately it had my name written down along with the date and time of the unfortunate circumstances.1500: Chinese Placement Exam. I had been given 20 minutes more of life, when I had been told that the exam was on Friday, leaving me an evening to cram. But 1500 arrived, I was seated in a room akin to an oven and it was with dread that I watched the examiner’s walk in. What followed was something I had never before experienced…
It was a 100 question multiple choice exam. It was singularly the hardest exam I have ever done/attempted. It was all in characters. It might as well have been written in Latin, as I would probably have understood the same amount. The first few people to leave were all white, not just from shock, but westerners =p I then walked out of the examination, the first exam I have ever walked out of before time was up (I’m not actually sure how long we had allocated to do the placement exam) but 45 minutes of staring at that paper was just too intense for me. Leaving behind a room full of Koreans, a couple of Japanese and a scattering of westerners, I walked to part two of my death sentence. However, the oral exam wasn’t too hard, but only served to highlight just how much I had forgotten.

Banks here are insane. The queues are like…2-3 hours long. Like..in the heat and everything. Why don’t they put better air-conditioners in the bank. I mean, they’re a bank!! They have money!!! I came into the bank, got ticket number 468. They were serving customer 278. I was like jaw drop So I stand there, and stand there, and then the guard comes up to me and slips me a ticket for 349. And I’m like…OMG..you ROCK!! Except I didn’t say that, I wasn’t quite sure what was happening and if he would get in trouble. So I cashed my travellers cheques
I then went back today, Day 3, to get money out for my accommodation. My ticket was 350, and they were serving 199, damn you’d think eh? But noooo the guard came up to me again and gave me 244. Like…awesome!!! Except for the part where the bank was unable to put through a visa cash advance. For some unknown reason. So I go to their ATM which has a limit of 5000rmb/day, but it’s not on the maestro-cirrus network. Great. I go to another bank, their ATM rejects both of my cards saying it is too busy to service me. WTF? I go to a random ATM in the middle of the street, it only has 2000rmb limit. Which sucks cos I need 10k to pay for accomd. And now the banks are closed till Monday. Ok. Time to stop ranting.

Once the teething problems get sorted, and even now, I am enjoying myself. Went to the shitang(canteen) today and had a meal for 3.5RMB, which is like 50 cents. Comparable to the $8 chinese meals in the food courts in Sydney. Good eh? Lots of Indonesians here actually. There’s like a massive tour group of them. Settling in nicely, the ppl here are nice, smiling and saying hello =) There’s an American living across from me, and some Germans nearby, and of course the requisite multitude of Koreans (and some Japanese.)

I haven’t taken any photos yet either. I might have to end up using some photo site to upload the photos as the internet here is so restricted I can’t access anything more advanced than a normal website. So goodbye ftp’s and shell access and the backend to my websites. It’s like cutting off my virtual arm and leg. How will I survive? Find out in my next random rant, which I will endeavour to be less of a rant and more of an interesting monologue=p