Moving right along

It’s been a couple days without an update, but I haven’t really done anything exciting this week. I’m packing up all my things at the hotel, getting ready to check out and move over to my apartment. It’s still only partially appointed, but I don’t have the room at the Kuntai for another night. So I’m in the new place for better or worse. The internet connection is supposed to be already live, so I should be able to survive.

I’m learning more about how things work with the apartment. The key I got is a little round disk about the size of a watch battery, and it has some sort of code in it. I place it against a round depression in the door mechanism, and it opens. There’s also a panel I can slide up to enter a numeric code if I don’t have the key on me. I can reprogram it (if I can remember the instructions), but right now it’s an eight-digit code.

I’ll write more later about the adventure of getting a Chinese domestic cell phone, but now I’m back in the crowd that carries around two phones, one my BlackBerry with a US number, on which I get work email and can call the US, and a Chinese one I’ll use for local things.

This morning was the first time I’ve had any digestive issues since my arrival. I guess my luck couldn’t hold out forever – it must have been the Korean food I had for dinner last night. It was really good, but something in the plumbing didn’t care for it. The English descriptions of the dishes were amusing (“Chicken meat hot stone slab”). I did not get the one that mentioned dog meat.

Anyway, back to packing.