Buying a laptop in Jinan

The no. 80 bus, right outside my apartment - takes me straight to the down town area

Watching TV on the bus

Eating too much garlic???

PRADA in down town

One of four Starbucks in Jinan

One cool dude

It costs 1 RMB for most bus journeys. You have to put the exact amount in these ominous boxes.

This bus driver thought she was going to a midnight dance when  she was sadly informed that she was in fact going to drive a bus instead

 

In the distance you can see the 'Pregnant Building' for all your electronic needs

So, my laptop has officially breathed its last breath. It's time to buy a new one. My criteria? Cheap and cheerful and hopefully in English.

I started my day by catching the no.80 bus outside my house, to take me to the down town area. I managed to find a seat and I sat down in front of the television. Usually after I've been at work all day I can never find a seat. What is strange to me though is how I find toddlers, maybe 3 or 4 years of age, sitting majestically on seats that could be vacant if there mothers would bother to put the damn kids on their laps. I'm pretty damn sure those kids haven't been doing 12-hour shifts and can hardly keep themselves standing but never mind. I later found out that when it comes to the bus-seating hierarchy I come mostly at the bottom since I am a young female.

Sitting on the bus, I tried to catch up on a few Chinese words using an app I have on my iPod. Then, the smell hit me. First the woman behind me started having a coughing fit over me, after which I smelled the smell. This is a smell I have smelled over and over again during my brief few weeks here in China, but I know exactly what it is. It's a rancid, sour smell that makes my stomach turn and I know for a fact it is caused by eating too much garlic. How do I know this? Well, a certain family member of mine, not mentioning any names, used to eat copious amounts of garlic for their 'health'. The when I would share the same sleeping room as this person my olfactory senses would be assaulted in the most grotesque possible of ways. The smell would make my stomach turn and I would feel as though I was going to lose the ability to breath. The bad news for my sense of smell therefore, is that this particular odor is EVERYWHERE in China. But on the other hand they probably think I smell like cross between a poo of rotting fish and slime so it's not all bad.

I read on an online forum that when Westerners started coming to China, the Chinese couldn't stand their sour, rancid smell, that came from drinking milk. These foodstuffs seep through the pores in the skin and diffuse into the air. So I have one of two options. The first is that I learn to deal with the garlic smell somehow. The second is to eat so much garlic that I out-smell anybody who dares to out-smell me, and therefore I will no longer be able to smell the offending odour. Which should I do?

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I got to down town and scoured a shop called InZone for a laptop. Our school had given us 400 RMB worth of InZone vouchers because of the National Holiday and Teacher's Day, so I was hoping to find a laptop there so I could save a bit of money. I was disappointed to find that they had a very poor selection of laptops, and what they did have was very expensive. I dragged my feet up to another floor and looked in vain for some more electronic items. Instead I found a Starbucks. It was time for a rest, I thought.

Starbucks in China is pretty much the same as any other Starbucks I've been to, except they have things like green tea cakes and Chinese tea. A tall Vanilla latte costs 30 RMB, about 3 GBP or 30 EGP, for any Egyptians who may be reading this blog. I had a nice sit down, read a bit of my Kindle (I think I was reading Robinson Crusoe) then continued my laborious search for a laptop.

In the end I concluded that I would not have much luck in InZone, so I made my way to the so-called Silicon Valley of Jinan. A better name would be the 'Crap-hole of Jinan, guaranteed to give you more diseases than you can shake a stick at'. The 'Pregnant Building' above is one of the buildings at the entrance to Silicon Valley. It doesn't look too bad but the real problem comes when you start walking down the street. They are forever doing roadworks in this street (actually this statement is true for all of Jinan) and you are therefore battered by chemical smells and tiny particles of floating dust that find their way into you delicate breathing apparatus, make a nice home for themselves and then in a few years time give rise to some wonderfully unpleasant diseases. In short, I wanted to be in and out of 'Silicon Crappity Crap' as fast as I could.

I entered a building opposite 'Pregnant Building' an scanned a few laptops. 'Can you change these to English?' I asked. 'Of course, of course', was the reply. In fact they had no idea. It was incredibly frustrating as no one spoke English. Finally a boy with over sized glasses and goofy teeth came up way too close for my liking. 'I speak English', he coughed on me. 'Thank God', I thought.

It turns out that although he spoke English he was incredible, unbelievably annoying. I wanted to ask him whether he used some sort of daily spiritual practice to maintain such high levels of irritation-inducement. In the end it was clear he wanted to milk me for my worth. When I asked how much it would cost to download a (pirated) Windows 7 in English he said it would take a very very very long time, but was unable to give me a price, because he was obviously thinking of the most ludicrous amount that I might agree to. In the end I'd had enough of him and his ways and walked around the rest of the store in a cloud of anger, frustration and impatience. I started thinking I'd be left without a laptop and therefore would be unable to plan my lessons for school...

In the distance I saw a thin, wiry man hunched over a laptop in a section painted yellow and labelled 'Hasee', a brand of Chinese made laptops. If I wanted cheap that was my best bet.

The man had that smell of garlic lingering over him, and he was more yellow than I'd ever seen anyone before, I wondered whether he had jaundice. He had long, greasy hair which flopped over his eyes and he must have been in his late thirties. I went up to a laptop and asked him the price. '1800 RMB' he said. 'That's more like it', I thought. Not the 4000 - 5000 RMB laptops I had been previously directed to by the Goof-Meister. He even said he could put Windows 7 on it for free, it would take only 40 minutes AND he would give me a laptop case, muse, mouse pad and screen wiper for free. 'Go for it', I thought, for there was limited verbal communicatin between us.

In the end it took 4 hours to install the Windows 7, because of a partition difficulty. What I was most impressed with was the fact that although I spoke more Chinese than he spoke English, he made his way around Windows 7 with such confidence and ease, it was as if he understood English perfectly.

When it was time for us to make our sad farewells, the skinny man began acting most peculiarly. He started 'forgetting' about the free gifts he had so freely bestowed upon me at the beginning of our encounter. I had to remind him one by one of all the things that were still on the desk, in plain view of both of us, that he had omitted to include in my bag. He also tried to make me pay an extra 100 RMB for a screen protector, which I stupidly agreed to. My instincts were screaming at me not to do it and in the end I tried to get my money back, and tell him I didn't want a screen protector. Luckily he caved and gave me back my money, but if I had been in Egypt or India that money would have been long gone.

So there you have it. I finally got my laptop and here I am typing on it now. That same day I also got myself a bus pass, put credit on my phone and joined a local gym. All in all a very successful day methinks.