The travels of Justin

The first 7-days of May is a major labour holiday in China. Of the 3 courses I’m taking this semester, the first has just finished and the next will begin after the holiday. In a few hours I depart from Tianjin to my next destination: Seoul, South Korea. The ferry takes more than 24-hours from [...]

Vancouver’s CKNW News Talk 980 reports this bit of irony: The NDP’s take on gas tax reduction
The BC New Democrats want the provincial government to stand up to prime minister Stephen Harper…. by demanding he make good on his promise to roll back the GST on gasoline purchases.
NDP finance critic Jenny Kwan chose international earth [...]

Last night I got to see a small punk concert in Beijing. I’m not a big punk fan, but it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the bands and the atmosphere. Leaving the club I experienced my first Beijing sandstorm. Nothing exciting really. It was just strong winds with sand blowing in your [...]

Behind the Foreign Students Dormitory is a 400-metre track/soccer pitch that occasionally receives the pomp and pageantry of very nationalistic-sounding music, a lot of flag waving, and various announcements echoing through the loudspeakers. Previous times I’ve looked out the back window to see what is happening and it always seemed to be a presentation, the [...]

This is Part 3, in an ongoing series
Part 2: Pangolin
Part 1: Danger on Campus
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Looks like serious digging going on at the school. Students are still sticking together for safety. Not sure exactly what’s going on though.

Click to enlarge

I’m often asked what kind of things are different between Canada and China to which my first response is always the same: the driving. It’s not so much of a critisim as it is simply is a very clear difference between two countries. My rule of thumb for safe travelling to any country you are [...]

[Part 1 is here: Danger on Campus]
Today was pretty uneventful, but that’s only if you measure it by Chinese standards. This morning I mingled in the morning crowd for safety as I went to a print shop to print some homework out to hand-in. I was startled by a large group of students with shovels [...]

In a strange twist of events today, one of my friends in the student union took special care to warn me and Ryan to be careful when walking around campus for the next week or so. They say we shouldn’t be alarmed and that if we walk in the centre of the roads, and only [...]

On Thursday, Ryan and I went to the post office to see if any of our packages had arrived; both of us have been waiting for longer than we can remember for boxes from our families. China Post was very clear that unless we have a piece of paper with some kind of tracking/inventory number [...]

What a great week. We get back from Shanghai after an absolutely fantastic trip and we find the local grocery store has a sale on a camping BBQ with coal — RMB$50 (CAD$7). I don’t remember the last time I made my own burger patties, but I swear they were the best burgers I’ve eaten [...]