Almost a legal alien

After a rather soft landing in Hong Kong we arrived in Suzhou.

We really feel like space travellers because of the absolute assault on one's senses...Almost everything is different - sounds, smells, trees, cars, people, buildings. We also realize what it must feel like to be illiterate...

As many space travellers before us, the first major mission was to get ourselves "connected" and to establish contact with our mother ship. This was not done without a few technical "glitches". We marched to an outlet of "China mobile" as we were told that it is the most reliable network, wide coverage etc. Irene took the first step but her phone was incompatible with the card so I landed up with the sim and lo and behold my Blackberry"s approval ratings hit an all time high! A cool thing is that in China you can choose your own number. It is important to choose a "good" or "lucky" number preferable not containing the letter"4". Four is considered unlucky and you will also find no hotel or apartment with a 4th floor or a room with a four in it. 3G (they will go straight to 5G) is not very well developed in China and apparently we have to wait another month before we can obtain 3G compatibility with our phones.

Something that also posed quite a challenge in the first couple of days was to get a cable with which to connect the computer to the power supply...A search for "adapter plug" aroused some surprised looks and gestures...Lastly we took the cable to a computer store"downtown" with the help of our housing agent. In the same store we could source a cable for RMB480 (ZAR600) and at a different counter in the same store one for RMB20...There's some free market enterprise for you!

Yesterday we found an apartment and will be moving there in about three weeks...

Wherever we go people literally stop and and stare at our kids (both girls with blonde hair) and will comment and say "piao liang" which means 'beautiful"All the stares are a bit unnerving at first but you get used to it after about a day and just smile back. I know how Paris Hilton or Britney Spears' father must feel like! I heard before that Chinese people are very concerned about children and their welfare...Murphy would have it that in Suzhou's relatively cold weather (ranges between 6 and 12 degrees), Renee refuses to wear a jersey and constantly says "ek kry warm"...The whole range of threats, promises, alternatives and asking nicely cannot get her to wear a jersey (oh and no socks)...So it happened that especially when she is with me, a fairly large group of normally elderly ladies would gather and scold me (in Chinese of course) for apparently being such a useless excuse for a father to let his beautiful blond daughter walk around without a jacket...Hey and we are trying to attract as little attention as possible!

The reason why I called this blog "Almost a legal alien" is that the red tape is still not done...On Tuesday we are travelling to Shanghai to complete the last leg in the process of being formally called "alien" by presenting ourselves at the relevant government office and having some kind of an interview and a medical test. We also found out seventy two hours after our arrival that we had to report to the local police within twenty four hours...Luckily because we live in a hotel, this was taken care of on our behalf (and without our knowledge).

This whole weekend and Monday the Chinese have a public holiday what they call "tomb sweeping". It is quite a novel way of families getting together and visiting relatives graves and commemorating their dead ones.

Next mission to find a car and a driver...watch this space...