The days are passing way to quickly. Its getting cold out there, and the sun sets around 5.30 now.
Today was a sort of frustrating adventure – an hour wasted spent talking to the Australian bank about the excessive fees – ‘international’ fees for withdrawing money, and then you can only get small amounts of money at a time, (the daily limit), so you need constant withdrawals, and more ‘international fees’ for using a credit card. These are excessive – sometimes sitting at around 120 AUD for a large equipment or flight purchase. This call didn’t acheive much, but its amazing how these accounts don’t suit people who live out of the norm.
Then it took an hour to print out a map – the address kept changing depending on whether it was google or http://www.baidu.com/ which is popular here. By then I was running late for a lunch appointment with the cultural team from the Australian Embassy, which meant I had to catch a cab. I find the cabs in Beijing, are frustrating – you need to be armed with maps (I had three) the address written in english and chinese, and then the number of a chinese speaking person at the destination who can guide the cab driver. I had all of the above, and after an hour in the cab, and him driving around in circles, and four calls to the embassy to work out where he was and where they were, he was still lost. He was stopping on the streets to ask pedestrians where he was. Then he just stopped and sort of motioned for us to get out. We motioned ‘no’ and wouldn’t move. An hour later, late for lunch – he found the embassy which is situtated on a very major street, near a major subway station in the chaoyang district. The taxi drive apologised. But, lesson learnt, from now on, unless your with someone who can speak chinese – I think buses and subway are the way to go – atleast you can keep a bearing of where you are. i haven’t felt so frustrated for a long time.
Lunch was nice, in the embassy district in the sunlitan area in Beijing at a usual sort of expat place, trying to make a pannini with dried out bread and not much else. After the panninis were sort of dumped on the table, we had to search through the inside of the panninis to work out which ones we had ordered. We met with Amanda and Katie, Cultural Relations Officer at the Australian Embassy in Beijing. I think its best to stick to chinese food in china.
We went to the a visa office to discuss our visa issues. With a payment of 880RMB per person, we will extend our visa for another month, and they will deal with the opening of bank accounts and transferring of funds. We will go in on Tuesday and they take our passports for a week, as well as marriage certificate and pablo’s birth certificate.
Yesterday we searched around 798 district for optometrists. We were armed with maps, and also Viki, from Platform China, had translated what we wanted into Chinese and printed it out for us.
So after visiting a few, and just getting puzzled faces and amused sort of grinning, we found one that seemed to understand what we wanted.
Translated note to optemetrist:
“I am an artist, and for an art project I would like to create a pair of glasses with mirror lenses on the inside. So when a person wears the glasses they can only see their own eyes in the mirror.
Is this possible?
Do you have a good choice of frames?
How much would this be?
How long would this take?
I would like to create 6 of these.
I would also like to create glasses for my husband, Matthew Wild and myself. We have attached our prescription from our optometrist in Australia.
How long would this take?
Do you have a good choice of frames?
How much would this be?
So 200 dollars later are now making three sets of glasses. This being my first set of glasses that I need for distance. Matts are bi-fold we hope. And the mirror glasses – if they are good, I will order more. Who knows what they will be like, but we can pick them up tomorrow.
