A lot has changed in the last month or so. The biggest thing is that we've moved. Yep, we're in the same city but we've moved a few miles southwest of where we used to live. Our old place was about three times the size of this place. Yes we've moved from a big place to a small place, from three large bedrooms to two small ones. The new building we live in is exactly twice as tall, 28 stories instead of 14 in the old one, it has two elevators instead of one. Most people we know here don't have elevators, most people live in seven story buildings, half as tall as our old building. They seem to build in multiples of seven here.
The southern view from our new living room is overlooking the roof of a two level grocery store, just as our old place was. Not the best view, but a convenient one. But the new grocery store here is twice the size of the old one, but only has half as much foreign food. Foreign food being 'Western Food' like peanut butter and sliced bread. Actually they have peanut butter, but the jar is only half the size of a jar of peanut butter from the old store. I thought the old store's peanut butter jars were as small as they came! but I was wrong, I think I could put one of these half-of-a-small-sized peanut butter jars into my pants pocket. I think I could make about four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches out of it if the jelly (or jam) jars weren't even smaller!
I guess it's a good thing when my biggest complaint is about the size of the peanut butter jars at my local grocery store.
The Internet is six times faster in our new place and it takes one-sixth the amount of time to get to the subway from here. We chose this apartment mostly because of it's proximity to public transportation.
I'm almost out of fractions and multipliers but I should mention that we have only half as many bathrooms in our new place, or one instead of two. But our washing machine is about one hundred times quieter. Yes, you may be surprised that our old place here was quite a bit bigger than any place we lived back home in the states, but not anymore.
The other things that have happened I can't remember now, so they must have been unremarkable, moving is quite enough. Although we did just get back from one night in Hong Kong a week ago, which sounds way cooler than it was, even to us. I really like Hong Kong, they call it the city where East meets West, and it is, it is an interesting mix.
I guess one other thing that happened, happened yesterday when I was taking a shower.
Most bathrooms in China, and Taiwan for that matter, do not have bathtubs or shower stalls, they just have a shower sprayer on a hose and a floor drain. But don't worry as soon as we moved in we installed a suction cup supported shower rod in the corner of the bathroom where the shower head and drain are. After that we installed a suction cup supported shower shelf to hold our various soaps and shampoos, and recently a pink razor. The little "shower shelf" as I call it, has three aluminum shelves and a little frame that we had to assemble with a screwdriver after we got it.
I think we only had the "shower shelf" installed 24 hours before I discovered that the edges of the aluminum shelf bottoms were razor sharp. You could peel a potato with them. Of course I discovered this by casually, I guess somewhat recklessly, reaching for my bottle of packed-from-America Old Spice body wash. I cut a razor precise and clean cut into the largest knuckle on my right middle finger.
There's something about cutting yourself in the shower, with all the water flowing it's hard to tell how much you're actually bleeding with the stream of blood flowing down your hand and disappearing rapidly into drain. It makes me woozy just typing about it...
Anyway, it wasn't a big deal, I was done showering anyway, I put a band-aide on it and then mentioned it to my wife telling her that I was going to do something about it, somehow cover or fix the razor sharp edges of that "shower shelf." I was thinking of using my new hot-glue gun to put a small rubbery bumper over the razor sharp edge.
Of course we both made jokes about how you could only buy something that dangerous, and cheap, in China. We even joked that if we mentioned it to a local person that they would just say something like "Just be careful and don't cut yourself on it."
But yesterday, about a week after my knuckle injury, while I was being careful when I reached for bottles of things sitting on the shelves of that "shower shelf" I did not cut myself. But when I washed my hair, elbows up, I turned and sliced open one of my elbows. Either the skin on my elbow is about an eighth of an inch thick or I cut through some extra fat layer too, it was very white.
Most of the time when I do something like that I think to myself "That was stupid" but I have to say, this wasn't really one of those times. I was in a confined slippery wet space inches from three strategically placed razor shelves, it was bound to happen. Of course I guess I could say it was stupid of me to have not "fixed" them somehow, covering the edges with something. But don't worry, I have fixed them now, I filed those edges down with a fingernail file earlier today.
Of course the tricky part for a hemophobic like myself is to remain calm and not pass out. I did fine. I barely worried about all the crazy probably exaggerated rumors I've heard about willy nilly blood transfusions, and people getting antibiotics for the sniffles at hospitals in China. The hard part was drying myself off without getting blood on the towel. I had to have Becky help me put a make-shift bandage on it because I sliced open the part of my elbow that I can barely see.
Now I must apologize, you probably thought that this blog entry would be more about China, like things happening outside of my apartment in China. But I say to you: our apartment is in China! I doubt you know anyone in America who has sliced open their elbow on the razor sharp shelves in the showering corner of their bathroom.
