Freedom of Expression

My apolagies for not blogging for the past few days.

I thought that Blogspot was experiencing some downtime as I just couldn't reach the website. But, I finally realised that the Chinese government probably blocked it like what they did to Youtube. Yes, ladies and gentleman, apart from YouTube, they have also blocked all porn sites. Which is a good thing for the kids at home. *wink* But its starting to get really annoying, because I have to access the site by a proxy which does not allow me the full convenience of formatting, or attaching pictures, or reviewing my blog. I wonder when it will go back to normal. Or would it ever... Yes, the Chinese Government did a superb job with the public transportation especially in Beijing which probably thanks to the Olympics also made it easier for foreigners. BUT, this is getting ridiculous!!! Come on, its just blogging about opinions. Readers have minds too, let them think for themselves.

And what have I been doing for the past few days? Mainly resting from my Xian trip with 7 other coursemates. Those of us who took the train back arrived at 10:00am on Monday morning. Needless to say, we couldn't attend our classes on time. The more economic way of travelling was to sleep overnight in a 3 level hard bunker beds shared by many other people. There are of course pros and cons to it.

The pros were:-
(1) It was such a fun train ride with my mates squished on to the highest top two bunks playing big two, much to the horror of the people sleeping below. They must have been wondering if the each bunk could hold the three of us;
(2) Economical = RMB260 or 270 for hard bunkers;
(3) Its part of the China experience to rough it out like the locals.

The cons were:-
(1) Shared toilets which frankly was totally disgusting!!! Thank god for perfumed tissue!!!;
(2) The bunks probably could not fit bigger sized or taller people. I was just able to twist and turn sides. One of our mates had a good 1.5 ft of his legs sticking out at the end. Luckily he was sleeping on the second level;
(3) The fear of H1N1 virus running around. Not that it bothered me in the beginning. However, at the end of the trip at the Xian trainstation, the amount of people there were horrendously scary. I started to think that this couldn't be good for us.

Generally, it was a good train ride. I won't mind doing it again, especially being a "poor" student. It wasn't a problem sleeping on the train except for the dream that I had about dieing in my sleep if I did not wake up. Yes, morbid dreams at 6am. I wonder what that meant...

Overall, the Xian trip was a great one except for the fact that I kept on losing things everyday.

For example:-
Day 1: Lost my pen. (Ok, no biggie..I can still handle that!)
Day 2: Dropped RMB250 together with some Muslim Temple Brochures from my backpocket! (What!! I am on a budget trip. Ok, now I am starting to get annoyed. But I have to thank some mates of mine who actually went back with me to the place where I dropped it just to chance finding it again.)
Day 3: Lost my students card after Ping Ma Yue (Terracotta Soldiers). (Arrgh, now I am really annoyed. Because this meant that I would have to fork out more money without a student's price. And there usually is a 50% discount for students).
Day 4: Lost my lenscleaner on Hua Shan. (Gees...what else could go wrong! And as I just thought that I got through the day without losing anything...I had purposely bought the lenscleaner for my trip in China.)
Day 5: ONLY DAY THAT I DIDN'T LOSE SOMETHING!

Wo zhen de mei you jili! But at least it was a fun trip, the best being Hua Shan!!! Will blog about it in my next post. For now, GOODNIGHT, WORLD...or is it, GOOD MORNING!

P/S: This is the 2nd time that I am writing this postup due to this proxy inconvenience resulting in an unsaved draft. Arrggghh.