I thought I've gone blind

I'm back from China, folks! I'm going to summarize my trip from the very beginning.

When I got out of Guangzhou airport, the first thing I've noticed was state of its air pollution. For one thing, I thought my near sightedness has gone far worse within the span of 16 hours. I mean, I visit the country every two years, but the white fog has always left me to believe that I was inhaling/ingesting chemicals, or even worse, organism's byproducts - it sure smelled like it..and tasted like it. Since this year's Asian Games will take place in Guangzhou, the government has spent an immense amount of $ on renovations. Thus, the building, drilling, demolishing, and rebuilding causes some insufferable pollution. Oh good ol' beauty can be painful, expensive, and health hazardous.

It is not until my recent trip to China did I regarded the importance of the extra few dollars guests voluntarily leave for their waiters/etc. In China, it is not customary to leave tips. For a scrooge-like, freeloading person, who only receives money during birthdays and Chinese new years, I found this notion absolutely wondrous! However, I soon learned that I should hold up on the celebration. Let's just say, without tips, waiters are inattentive, snappy (I had to snap back), and completely, downright horrible. For example, a waitress who served our table got an order wrong and blamed her idiocy on us. She had argued and acted if it was not her fault. What ever happened to "Customers are always right"? And worse, she persisted that it was not her fault and refused to change the order. Sadly, this was not the only restaurant with horrible service. MOST restaurants are the same, if not, worse.

I have to say, for the few restaurants that did not wrong me, I had a great time. The workers there were nice. For some, I wished that I could leave a few dollars on the table. Too bad I only had USD on me.

Remember how I said two weeks ago that I will hunt for a Pikachu for Toby? What I want is a cute, yellow, fluffy mouse that resembles this one from the picture taken in Narita airport:

What I found is.... a whole different story:

I almost crapped my pants when I saw this. Heck, how badly can they mess it up? To me, it seems like the manufacturers were building some sort of gargoyle and suddenly came up with a brilliant idea to paint a Pikachu overcoat. Apparently, this is suppose to be riding machine for children. From my observation, most children choose to ride the less threatening helicopters and race cars and left this menacing-I'm-gonna-raep-you-yellow-monster alone.

I don't think I can post everything into one entry. I will continue this later.