tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9236232.post-1120489789623845682005-07-04T20:39:00.000+05:302005-07-04T21:18:45.670+05:30<div style="text-align: justify;"> <div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;font-size:100%;" >Its been about 2 weeks since I arrived here in Xiamen, China. </span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:12;" ><span style="font-family: georgia;font-size:100%;" >The place is really beautiful and very clean. It’s an island in south east <st1:country-region st="on">China</st1:country-region> (very close to <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Taiwan</st1:place></st1:country-region>). Language seems to be my primary problem out here since not many localites speak English. So I'm trying to learn Mandarin :-) . Here nearly everthing (Billboards, business cards, magazines, sign/navigation boards... even Windows !!) is in mandarin. As Bhavin puts it -- "We work with 128 bit encrypted version of Windows !!"</span></span><br /><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:12;" ><span style="font-family: georgia;font-size:100%;" >We do get veg food.. and that's how i'm surviving here. I've learnt to use chop sticks pretty well now. Its good fun using chop sticks (atleast its fun until you drop something on the table :-))</span></span><br /></div> <span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:12;" ><br /></span></div> <div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/245/2701/640/tortoise.jpg"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); margin: 2px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/245/2701/320/tortoise.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /></div> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Red Eared Slider<br /><br /></span></span></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Lotsa places to visit around here. So far have only been to the Amoy botanical garden. Its really huge and beautiful. I've got a lot of snaps but I cant upload them coz the network connection is very slow here. I've taken some good snaps over here. The one above is a Tortoise (a red-eared slider as identified by Naveein from INP) which I found in our backyard. I havent had any luck trying to photograph pandas yet :-(<br />I was shocked to find out that China blocks all blogspot sites !! (although I can login and post something.... i cant view it, or for that matter cant view any blogspot site !) . Thats the update for now. Hopefully, I'd be posting my experiences regularly.</div>Chirdeep Shettyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14381505283745664367noreply@blogger.com