The Little Things in Life

The holidays are over, and I'm back to the daily grind. I want to post some pictures of Qingdao, but first, I just want to dedicate this post to the little things in life.


Everybody experiences a bad day every now and then, but hardly anything beats a bad China day. We all have them, and when things don't work out in China, it can really get to you. Luckily, it's usually just one day, but I've been having a BAD CHINA WEEK, and I've officially decided that the worse thing than a bad China day is to experience more than one consecutively.

I can write a super long posting about all of the things that went wrong this week (and an even longer post about the things that went wrong today, i.e. THIS MORNING), but no, I'm going to be positive and think about the good things in life. In fact, I'm going to think about the little things that have been holding me up this week and keeping me sane. So here we go:

• Kedi runs - I finally did a Kedi run earlier this week! Kedis don't exist in Beijing (we have 7-Elevens but they're not the same). I never thought I would miss this little Japanese owned convenience store, but when I finally visited one on Monday night, I got very nostalgic and was reminiscing the good old times on Bai Se. Which leads me to the next thing...


• Muffins! - When I used to frequent the Kedis on Bai Se, one of my favorite snacks was the yellow muffin pack from the bakery section. I used to buy a pack of four, eat two for breakfast, and leave the other two on Jamie's desk for her to devour. Today I had two muffins for breakfast, two left over, no Jamie, but at least I get to eat my favorite muffins tomorrow morning again!

• Nescafe 2+1 coffee packs - Ok, so I don't really love these. In fact, the coffee snob in me was rather thankful when I moved to Beijing, ditched the instant powder and bought fresh coffee beans from Yunnan province (they are very aromatic!). But given that I'm staying in a rather remote area right now, the Nescafe coffee packs were a familiar and strangely enough, comfortable sight at the Kedi.


• Kao yu (roasted fish) - This is a new finding and one I'm rather excited about! I went out on Monday night with one of my colleagues and her college friends. There's nothing better than eating Chinese food with a bunch of locals who know what to order. One of the dishes they introduced me to was kao yu. Basically, the fish is cooked in a vat of red chili oil and spicy red peppers, and it's served over burning charcoal. The fish looks incredibly spicy at first glance, but when you peel away the skin and only eat the meat inside, it's not spicy at all! Somehow the spices managed to add flavor but not overpower the taste of the fish. After we finished the fish, we even ordered an extra plate of tofu and vegetables to cook in the oil - yummm...

• Fried bananas! - DSpear introduced me to this a few weeks ago at Di Shui Dong. I still don't remember the name, but had more fried bananas at the kao yu place on Monday night. Double yum!



• Ti guan yin tea - If I didn't stress this enough above, I had a horrendous morning today. The little thing that won me over was when a coworker knocked on my door this morning and asked me to try this tea. The taste of the tea had a lot of depth in it, and it felt nice and soothing when I drank it. I'm going to order some!
  

Hats off to all of these little things. If it weren't for them, I may have wallowed in my misery. It's Wednesday night, and I have a little less than two days left before the weekend. I can't wait to hop on the train and head to Shanghai on Friday night, and I hope there will be more little things to hold me up for the rest of this week!