Local holiday here in the Golden Bridge International Hotel as internet (网际) has been restored. The weekend was pretty fun, and mostly consisted of invading a bar or club as a large group of American students. This will probably shock no one, but I can confirm that American songs are still the song of choice for any place catering to young people. Bon Jovi, Linkin Park, Smashmouth; if it is less that 15 or 20 years old and in English it's basically popular. 99 Red Balloons also got a play, as well as some Spanish music. Another nice thing is that since Chinese people absolutely LOVE having English on their t-shirts, it automatically boosts the classiness factor of my wardrobe by 100%. In America, you would probably get weird looks for wearing a regular red t-shirt that says "Wisconsin Football" with a little football design on it to anything more formal than well, a football game. In a fancy hotel bar though, I don't think anyone (Chinese) cared. It may have even earned me bonus points.
I already discussed how milk is fairly expensive here (compared to everything else), but pure services with no associated material resources are ridiculously cheap. A massage, for example: 70 minutes of genuine Tianjin Korean-town massage for $8.50. According to my parental units, a massage of that length will run you at least $70 in the States, and that is apparently for a cheap one. This country is giving me anti-sticker shock at every turn, and it's awesome. A taxi ride, by the way, is never more than $2 from within the city to within the city. I have yet to spot gas prices but will be on the lookout.
No new pictures, but a sweet Engrish line from a pack of Mentos I bought. It's not just word order and grammar, they are pulling up really old-school words. The Mentos I bought are labeled as CHEWY DRAGEES. I'll let you look up that word yourself.
Final word - aforementioned Internet reliability here has been downgraded from awful to Detroit-based-AOL. It went out for more than 30 hours.
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