The good things in Xiamen

Joey and xiao didi at Taiwan street snack here in Xiamen! Shilin kind of thing :-D

FIVE RULES TO REMEMBER IN LIFE:

1. Money cannot buy happiness but its more comfortable to cry in a Mercedes than on a bicycle.
2. Forgive your enemy but remember the bastards name.
3. Help someone when they are in trouble and they will remember you when they're in trouble again.
4. Many people are alive only because its illegal to shoot them.
5. Alcohol does not solve any problems, but then again, neither does milk.
Sent from AguMa's BB

Where we kill our time

Me and Ayala (Lulu) come to these 2 cafes quite a lot, 1 is the brown sugar cafe and another is Rendevouz cafe. Lately we've been going to the latter one cuz it has less people and the we kinda know the waitress there who's always helping us with homework and whatnots, correcting our chinese pronunciation and teaching us how to say things in chinese.

In Xiamen

Finally arrived in Xiamen! (well actually a couple of days ago)
Still trying to make Facebook,Twitter,Blogger and other websites to
work with free proxy sites, but failed until now.. If this goes on, I
might have to pay for an exclusive VPN/Proxy servers to make it work
:'(

What I've been up to until today, I went around the campus, I live
just outside the West Gate of Xiamen University, which is quite
convenient. The campus is really big, I haven't gone around the whole
place yesterday, I think it could be as big as, or even bigger than
the U.W. campus. And the campus is as pretty as I remembered from my
first very brief visit to the place. It has hills or low mountains (in
CAMPUS!) and a small lake too, lots of greens, lots of old style
chinese buildings, very pretty. And outside, it's already very close
to the sea. Xiamen itself is not very big, it's an island very close
to the mainland, it has several bridges connecting to the mainland,
and it has highway flyovers, which has the constructions above the
sea, (how to explain this, I'll take pictures next time), meaning the
flyovers go around and just outside the land, the construction legs go
inside the sea, so it looks like that the flyovers are floating above
the sea, it's really cool. Indonesian government need to start
thinking about doing this, since there are no more land to broaden the
highways and such. And they have a transportation system called BRT
(Bus Rapid Transportation), so it's like Busways in Jakarta, but they
don't hog the already crowded roads, instead the built monorail-like
ways above the main roads, and the BRT buses go there. I heard that
they cannot make subways, since under the earth here is already
covered with water which makes it impossible to dig too far into the
island.

School doesn't start until next week. Tomorrow I gotta go down there
to do all the formal registration stuffs, pay the tuition etc. During
the week, we will have campus orientation, introductions to faculty
staffs, simple interviews with the faculty, and placement tests. I
don't know where I'll be placed, since I know a little too much
Chinese to be at the 0 level, but probably too little to be in the
next course. Might have to start from bottom again, which is probably
fine, that means I get to review everything, and just learn the rest
myself, by interacting with chinese people, I guess.

So I used this weekend to get myself a bit more familiar with the
city, after I went shopping for the apartment, I took a bus to a mall,
called SM Lifestyle City Plaza (SM 城市广场), which was about 30 minutes
ride. I kinda panicked inside the bus the first time, I thought it
could be that we already went pass the stop, but I didn't know it,
because I didn't think it would take such a long ride (thinking that
Xiamen is not such a big city). But fortunately I wasn't mistaken.

Anyway, what annoys me at this moment, I couldn't get my stupid iPhone
to work here! Yes it's American gadget, but with all the troubles, I
already got it unlocked, and was able to use it in Indo, so there is
really no reason that it shouldn't work in China. But it's not
working! stupid phone! I hate not having my gadget around, cannot chat
while I'm outside, cannot check for informations on the go.. *sniffs*

The picture is a view from my room on the 16th floor. Over there is
already the sea.