Journal of a Sabbatical

China Trip 2000

batteries, phytoestrogens, and bad manuals

Quote of the Day: "The mountains are high and the emperor is far away." - Old Chinese Proverb

Today's Reading: The Story of the Stone (a.k.a. Dream of the Red Chamber) by Cao Xuequin

Photos:

The waterfall in the garden - taken with the CoolPix. They turn the waterfall off at night.

A Pavilion in Xiangshan Park

Drizzle this morning (9/27)- or should I say "dizzle", the spelling on the Tibet Tours web site. We've been researching Tibet tours because the plans we've been making with Sa-ren and Li-ai-li are not coming together. Anyway, the description of the weather as dizzle somehow fits.

Got my period again this morning already. Strange. I just had it when I got here on the 16th. I've got plenty of feminine supplies now that I've got my luggage, so that's not a problem. I was thinking maybe I should make a note to see a doctor when I get back when Carol asked me if I normally eat this much tofu. I hadn't thought of that. I am eating way more than my usual amount of tofu morning, noon, and night. It's probably the phytoestrogens in the tofu messing me up. That and jet lag and whatever all else. [Note, the morning's flow seems to have been a one time thing. It did not continue that day or subsequently.]

The battery charger for the CoolPix batteries seems to be dead. Plugging it into any number of outlets with all the right adapters and transformers does not seem to charge the batteries. This hasn't been a problem because I use the AC adapter when I'm working in the herbarium, but I wanted to take some pictures in the garden with the CoolPix. I bought batteries yesterday at the convenience store across the street: four AA batteries, alkaline 'cause that's all they had. The alkaline batteries lasted 12 minutes. I took one picture with them and they're dead. So I have two sets of dead rechargeable batteries and one set of dead disposable alkaline batteries. This is not making me love and desire the CoolPix.

The buttons on the CoolPix 990 are hard to press with my grotesquely huge fingers. You need child size fingers or maybe needle size fingers to change some of the settings and to get the PC flash card in and out.

The manual is incomprehensible. Now there's a surprise :-) Why don't people respect what a good technical writer can do for their product? Not that a good manual can compensate for a bad product as much as a bad manual can wreck a good product, but still... Oh bother. Why is everybody and his brother so enthused about the CoolPix 990? With a battery life of 12 minutes you can't even take it for a long walk with you let alone a field trip, a day of birding, a day of sightseeing. Oh never mind. I suppose the real batteries last longer than 12 minutes, if only there's someplace to plug in the battery charger (and of course the charger works). The lithium battery for my Mavica lasts 2.5 hours, which is plenty of time for field trip or a day of sightseeing.

The copy stand that the workshop built shakes when I press the exposure button, so I have to use the self timer and take every shot with a ten second delay. That means pressing miniature buttons 3 times for every shot. That's 3 x 55 times a day if I take 55 pictures a day (3 x 110 on good days). When I press those tiny buttons that many times my finger starts to get tender like the nerves are irritated. It's really uncomfortable.

I wish the camera had a remote, then I'd never have to touch it while it's on the stand, hence no shaking. But I don't have a remote here so there is no point in wishing for one.

I feel trapped. Trapped in the guest house with only the garden, herbarium, or the restaurant as alternative places to go. I just got up from the desk and took a walk down our street in search of the post office. I passed the usual restaurant, the garden entrance all decorated with red and yellow flowers for National Day, the tiny deli, the motorcycle repair shop, the alley that looks like it dead ends in the garden, a dirty river full of trash, and then took a left onto a street that had rubble piles and fences overgrown with vines on one side and a wall with barbed wire on top on the other side. There were some large brick buildings on the other side of the wall, but I didn't see any road leading to them. I was hoping one of them was the post office but I didn't see anything remotely like a post office and the road got rougher. It was getting dark so I turned back.

The crazy lady restaurant (actually I think it's a bar) didn't' look open. Not that there's ever anyone in it.

I thought of buying a scooter of some kind at the motorcycle repair shop. Maybe that would ...

Got interrupted at that point in writing and went to dinner at the usual restaurant with the usual suspects. The usual restaurant, the usual food, the usual Sprite for me and the usual beer for Carol and Rosalie.

István's laptop quit while Rosalie was working on the labels. I can't figure out what's wrong with it. The screen is blank. The plug icon appears on that little screen on the top of the keyboard and once it said 0% there but now it doesn't even say that. I tracked down a Toshiba office in Beijing using the Internet and Carol called them. At first the guy said they were in northwest Beijing and I cheered. That was the first good news I've had in days. Turns out they are in southeast Beijing - miles and miles away from us. And they never heard of this model. But at least they are willing to take a look at it if we can get it there. We elected Rosalie to take it there.

There appear to be no blue tarps in China. What plastic tarps we've seen are striped in white, pink, and a pale bluish color.

Bleach appears unknown in this far northwest corner of the northwest corner of Beijing. None in the supermarket or the two convenience stores. Didn't try the motorcycle repair shops (there are two of those too). What else kills mildew? Maybe citric acid? Could we squeeze some lemons on it? It isn't just the storage room where Z & Ist's stuff was. The whole garden complex is moldy. My room smells like mildew when I walk in. I opened the windows and left the door open to try to air it out but I'm not sure it had much effect.

So, like I've been in China for two weeks and haven't seen much at all. All I do is take pictures of the Type collection under abysmal lighting conditions.

I really want to know where the camel guy keeps that camel at night. How far could he go on a camel and still be back bilking the tourists in the morning?

The next morning (9/28), Carol has pulled it off. We have booked a 9-day tour to Tibet for the dates we want and going to the places we want. No more messing around with friends of friends of friends. CTS has come through.

In the herbarium, I met a curly-haired conifer guy from the Netherlands who knows Zsolt and István from way back. He said he hadn't seen them in like 15 years or so and then ran into them in Kunming last week. He reported that they were leaving for Dali the following morning. Aljos (I think that's how you spell it) is studying the Cupressus specimens from the Type collection. That's OK with me because I haven't gotten to them yet. I finished all the Picea specimens and have made a good start on the genus Pinus. I still have this feeling I'll never be done.