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Reflections on a Wandering Life.....

Thursday, April 24, 2008

I was riding the bus into town this morning, when we passed a Xinhua Bookstore. You know that feeling you get when you drive by a bookstore? I am sure you've all felt it. "Somewhere in that bookstore is a book that could change my life, and I missed it!" This time it got the best of me. I got off the bus. Not much in that place, but I did manage to find a bilingual collection of stories by Sir Walter Scott. I like him. I studied Ivanhoe in Ninth Grade, but there were several others I hadn't read yet. Don't know--I'll probably read a couple stories and throw it aside, but it was only 20 kuai. Met an Irish guy at Tommy's today who is building a golf course. Golf course? What is going on with this town? New airport, new golf course...somebody somewhere in authority must have a plan for Beihai that anticipates an increase in tourism. Something tells me this sleepy fishing town is going to be a very different place one of these days. But I wonder what they will do to increase the tourism? Silver Beach needs a lot of work. I don't want to make it sound too bad, but it's a far cry from Waikiki. The island (Weizhou Dao) is a pretty place, I will have to say that. Out of the way, though. And Beihai itself is nice in the evening during the spring of the year. But it's kinda raw in the winter. Not subzero or anything, but cold and damp, you know. And summer is burning hot. So I'm just not sure. If your vacation is in the spring I do think you'd like the place, if you don't mind a slow paced community. Medicine. Got an ear infection somehow. I was chatting with Anne Marie on Skype and she recommended Cortisporin. Good thing I talked to her, because I would have looked for Neosporin. I wasn't quite sure if ear drops were what I needed, but today the ear infection switched over to the other ear, so that made me pretty sure it must be an outer ear infection. Can't imagine that happening with otitis media. I went to the pharmacy in town, and told the lady I needed something for my ears. She showed me a couple things, and I found one that said, "hydrocortisone." Fortunately, I had gone online before I want to the drug store and found the actual chemical components for Cortisporin. And the price was right. Seven jiao. Less than one yuan. That's the thing with buying meds in China. In any given situation, if you walk into a drug store, the odds are they have exactly what you're looking for, and it's cheap. But you have to figure out how to tell them what you need. Be sure you go online before you go to the pharmacy and find out the actual name of the drug, because you can't go by the brand name. Every drug in China has a the chemical componants printed in English, hopefully on the outside, but always at least once on the inside.

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