Jeremiah's Strange Times

Moving on. "Day 5, Saturday the 8th of December 2012.  Bus to the Great Wall. On my way out to one of the prerequisites. Up early this morning to grab lunch for the great wall trip and to check out.  The little old lady in the tiny store at the end of the road insisted on me not buying some plastic wrapped French bread like I wanted but instead held out a packet of weird Tiaramasu like things towards me, she looked so sweet, smiling and curtsying slightly with her head tilted to one side, nodding encouragement.  She tried to make me buy two packs, the sly old thing, but I only bought the one.   On the bus, which I caught at a hostel a few doors up, I met 2 Irish people, one, a girl from Kilkenny, is travelling home for Christmas.  The other is from KerryPike in Cork! Hes the nephew of Mags MacCarthy from UCC!  When he was young he was Babysat by none other then Gillian Horgan, an old Drama society colleague also at UCC.  The madness of the world's coincidences.  He stu

Tourism The road to the tube "Day 4 Peking International Youth hostel, Beijing China Friday the 7th of December 2012, 17.55 Quite woozy.  Waking from mid evening sleep.  Still not entirely awake as of yet. Today.  Well, China is definitely insane.  Its quite impressive, but its definitely insane.   Up about 8 or so, needed to collect my trans-mongolian ticket so couldn't join Jonas and the other two in the Forbidden city - but I thought I'd be relatively quick so would meet them later.  This was not to be, albeit mainly because of my foolishness and the scrap of drawing above (There is a fragmentary pencil of a corner of roof above this paragraph)  I was going to get a taxi but a half formed plan to rent a bike lodged itself in my head, so I walked on with an eye out for such a rental place - didn't see one and ended up walking to the relatively distant tube stop. Right next to it was a small park with two old ladies waltzing to classical music, another

Jet Lagged "I Collapsed asleep, but not before greeting another new arrival, an Italian girl, a student of anthropology, here in China to work on a "stage" as she called it, that is, a study of the population, Nice chat.   But then I was out like a light til 4.  I rose, showered, changed, then met Jonas, another dorm mate.  We got chatting and he left - I went for coffee downstairs where he joined me.  He was heading for the forbidden city so I said I'd join him.  It was closed but the hill just too its north 'Jingshan park' was not - and was only 2 yuan to get in - it was dark so we laughed at our absurdity as we clambered up the wooded stairs in the black - its a very steep hill with a classical Chinese building on top, and on the 4 sub peaks surrounding the main one at its corners, the hill itself in the middle of flat Beijing. - My feelings tell me its a burial mound and - lets check - Oh, no, apparently, according to Feng Shui it is necessary for pl

Culture shock, wonderful wonderful culture shock. Thursday the 6th of December 2012, 07:20 (GMT +8) Beijing International Airport, China. So I'm in China now, and its fantastic! I have no idea what is going on.  All the signs are unintelligible to me , the ticket machine for the train works along very basic lines but it is a huge thing. The airport's terminal 3 I think is the biggest terminal in the world, and by god it feels like it.  Lots of unnecessarily large, wide, long corridors, the roof arching over a conveyor running along the middle.  Walking seemingly for an age before it wound off to passport control.  Along the way a few dour women were scattered about with no purpose but seemingly random jobs such as holding out a paper towel to passers by or some such impenetrable task  Kinda like this, but not quite found it on the web On the connecting train now. Very clean white walls, grey floor, fancy blue chairs with orange head cloth. Good. At Passport control (itself

Part 1   It has been a long assed time. A lot has changed since last year, and in the spirit of change I'm going to begin updating this thing a bit more regularly. But first, something of a special feature, an account of my trip in December. For my 30th birthday my Mother and Sister banded together to purchase me a flight to Beijing and the Trans Siberian back.  Over the following few days and weeks I will attempt to impart something of the spirit of the thing, for what a thing it was. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you, well, most of the world.. So... I'll open with my initial diary entry, it sums it all up quite well I think: Tuesday  the 4th of December 2012  10:50 Heathrow Airport, Terminal 4, Pret A Manger For a small time there... well, a long time there, I thought I was immune to the excitement of this trip.  I guess I was wrong.  Clutching my tickets -  London - Rome - Beijing - awakened in me a very specific type of excitement I had not felt in ye