Statues and Yuppie Supermarket

Usually, 1pm is wakeup time +2h for me. Occasionally, it's wakeup time +1h, sometimes +3h. On weekends, it could even be wakeup time -1h. Today, 1pm was wakeup time +8h.

I'm not used to being awake for so long in the morning. After 8 hours of coding, facebook stalking, attempting (successfully) to bypass the Great Firewall to read wikipedia and livejournal, and attempting (unsuccessfully, due to my inability to explain object oriented programming in Chinese) to teach my 10 yr old cousin Java, I had become thoroughly restless. Thus, I brought along my trusty camera and took a walk around the neighborhood.

The subdistrict where my family lives, "Europe Garden" (not European Garden), is a gated cluster of apartments like wedding cakes. Here's a view from our rear window taken on a sunnier day:

Between the apartments are nice patches of green space full of beautiful stray cats (I saw 10 today on my little walk) and replicas of famous Western statues for added European flair.
Comment if you can identify any of them.




Anyway, back to my stroll. I decided to stop by the supermarket down the street, partly to see if the delicatessen boys from two summers ago, who blew me kisses whenever I walked by, were still there. A few cultural notes about supermarkets in China:
1. There are friendly staff members everywhere- There's a worker in uniform at every corner of the store. They even help you select and weight your vegetables. I think a main motive for this type of overstaffing is to prevent shoplifting.
2. There are pretty girls in ridiculous outfits giving out samples and advertising specific brands.
3. They sell the pornographic DVD's out in the open. Amusingly enough, the adult entertainment shelf of this store was right next to the children's entertainment.

Finally, some pictures:

The delicatessen section. I was slightly self-conscious and took the picture several steps back from where I'd have liked to. I think the guy at the right might have been one of the boys from 2 summers ago, but then again, they all look similar with their mask things on.

Jelly by the kilo. Childhood in a cup.

Girl in a green jumpsuit with white boots promoting GuangMing brand yogart.

Pornography...

... next to some children's CD's...