Finally in Fuzhou

Today started rather abruptly when we all woke up around 6:40 AM…although we had planned to be out the door by 6:45. Oops. We still made it out in good time – Susan and Walter stopped by the bakery while Dad and I hailed a taxi, and we made it to the border gate by 7:10 AM. Dad joked about using the senior (65+ years) line, but hey, it got us through more quickly than Walter and Susan, who couldn’t pass as “companions.”

More trouble came when we hauled our suitcases over to the Gongbei coach station that I’ve used before to get to Guangzhou airport, only to find that the bus was leaving from ANOTHER station across the street and down the block. Dad and I rushed over there, making it with about 10 minutes to spare, but we were worried about Walter and Susan, who hadn’t shown up by 7:55, but the bus didn’t leave either. Around 8:00, a van pulled up next to us and they hopped out, so it was ok. It turns out that if we had waited at the first station, we too could have gotten the shuttle, but the station staff didn’t say anything about it.

The bus ride was fairly uneventful, minus a few people throwing up in the rows ahead of us, but there must have been something wrong with them because the ride wasn’t that rough. We arrived by 11:00, got slightly lost looking for the check-in counter, but then found the electronic check-in machines and printed out boarding passes. Susan and Walter went to gate 104 for their flight to Beijing, while Dad and I headed to gate 111 and just hung out there for a couple hours.

Around 1:00, however, things started going downhill again. We were wondering why things were so quiet – boarding was supposed to start at 12:50 PM for the 1:30 flight to Fuzhou. There was a plane outside the window, but mysteriously, it wasn’t connected to the boarding extension, it wasn’t being refueled, or anything. Suddenly, the gate sign flashed that the Fuzhou flight had been moved to Gate 103, so we rushed over only to find ourselves waiting for another half hour. Around 2:00, we finally boarded a bus that took us to the plane, got on, listened to the security features video, etc. After that, however, the plane just stayed put…and I dozed off =P

I woke up around 3:00 to find that the attendants were passing out food – noodles with chicken or pork, plus a small piece of cake, some dried fruit, and a choice of water or “liang cha” (cooling tea, with chrysanthemum, lotus, and a few other things). Apparently the delay was not because of problems in Guangzhou, although it was cloudy, but because of heavy rain in Fuzhou, so air traffic control wasn’t letting the plane take off. Everyone ate quickly and the flight attendants even had time to clean up before we finally started moving around 3:30, and we got to Fuzhou around 5:00.

Another 90 minutes later, we thankfully made it to the hotel via bus/taxi, which is where we are now. Dinner was just in the hotel restaurant downstairs for convenience, but the food was ok: tofu cubes stir-fried with young chives, another squash dish, and mushroom soup. They even gave us a bonus of two small zhong zi at the end, in honor of Duan Wu Jie (still kind of sad that I missed the dragon boat races in Macau, but oh well). As I’m writing this, Dad is watching something on TV about how to pick the best turtles for cooking, but he’s dozed off and I think I’m going to sleep early too. Good night!

Air Asia FAIL

For once, I'm blogging in real time, not post-dating after I've edited and uploaded photos. However, right now I should also be in the air on my way back to Macau. At the moment, though, it is impossible for me to be both online and in the air, ergo, I am not in the air as I should be.

The day started off well enough - I got a bunch of work done while hanging out with Joyce at her office (in the PEMANDU unit of the Malaysian Prime Minister's office, which is very nice). We went out for a late lunch, hugged goodbye at the airport entrance, and I checked in, went through security, etc. I even had time to stop at the airport McDonalds for a much-needed "Pineapple Passion McFlurry" (which must be a flavor unique to Malaysia or at least to SE Asia, because I haven't seen it even in Macau) and bought a jar of kaya with my leftover ringgit.

The first sign of trouble was when we got on the plane and it seemed, no, it WAS unusually warm. The captain apologized for the stuffiness: apparently the auxiliary power unit that normally powers ground AC was broken, but the AC should kick in again once the main engines were started. I took out my hand fan only to find that one end of the fabric had come unglued from the frame, but it was still usable enough to generate a slight breeze.

After another 10 minutes, however, we all started getting antsy, and the flight attendants at the front entrance looked worried. The captain also came out of the cockpit and looked out the front entrance, and then we knew something else must be up. I have no idea what this means, but if someone could explain this announcement, I would be much obliged: "The plane's nose oil is low...the plane's nose is lower than usual, so we can't close the door." Everyone got off the plane and we waited out on the tarmac for a while before being directed back to the (thankfully air-conditioned) waiting area while the plane was being repaired. That's where I am now...I can only hope the plane will get fixed and we'll be able to get off the ground in the next hour or so, so I can get back home before midnight -_-

EDIT: We got back on the plane a few minutes after I posted this, and finally landed around 10 PM. Photos below:

Uh, what's going on...

Everyone waiting around

Tech Troubles

I haven’t been posting recently because of
a) broken camera
b) broken laptop
c) general busy-ness
d) all of the above

The correct answer would be D…sort of.

In the case of A, I was wandering around a couple weekends ago when I noticed that every photo I took that afternoon was extremely overexposed. I rechecked my morning photos, which looked fine, the ISO settings, which were normal, and every other setting I could think of, but I hadn’t changed anything that could explain the problem. After a little web research, I diagnosed the problem as a broken shutter, but now the question was how to fix it, if possible.

I asked around some of the ELC teachers, and fortunately Manuel had a recommendation for a good camera shop that would do the repair in Macau (instead of sending it to HK) and would charge me a fair price. It’s a bit out of the way, behind a school next to the Cinema Alegria, but the owner was very professional, calling me the next day with a repair price and an estimated date of completion. I thought about just giving up and buying a new camera, but I figure it’s worth paying the 530 MOP (about $67 USD) because it’ll extend the life of my camera another 2-3 years (this is the only problem I’ve had in its 4.5-year lifetime), and I’ll have a working camera faster than if I bought one online and had my family bring it over.

In the case of B, it’s not my laptop that’s the problem, it’s the charger. It’s been having connection issues for a while, but it was still working well enough when plugged in just the right way. However, just a couple nights ago, I was grading papers, when I suddenly noticed something flashing and sputtering under my desk. Yup, the charger was sparking. I quickly unplugged the surge protector it was in, then unplugged the charger after the sparks stopped, put it away, and haven’t touched it since. I borrowed Susan’s charger to backup my files one last time on to an external hard drive, but now my Dell is officially retired from service and I’m relying solely on my netbook. It’s a little annoying because the screen is smaller, and I no longer have programs like Photoshop readily available, but I can deal with it until I get home, since I need to get a new computer for med school anyway.

As for C, English Festival was last week (got photos off the ELC’s camera), and now we have prom on May 14, so it’s not letting up anytime soon. The EELC102 exam is just the day after, May 15, so we also have to hurriedly finish preparing our students for that…the reading material has been interesting (subcultures, cults, and potential issues in the future), but the advanced vocabulary and sentence structure has most of them struggling with comprehension. Don’t even get me started on the listening – when I asked my students if they wanted more practice listening exercises, it was actually a unanimous YES! Who ever heard of students asking for more work?!

Viva Macau update

We were hoping to get our refunds by now, but instead, yesterday I received this letter from the Macau Consumer Council. The important excerpts are below, with semi-snarky comments interspersed:

“Dear Sir/Madam,

The Consumer Council has received a few hundred complaints against Viva Macau Airlines for the refund of flight ticket and claims for damages as a result of various flight cancellation by Viva…(Only a few hundred, really? That wouldn’t even be one plane, and at least 20 flights were cancelled so I’m sure they have many, many more unhappy people.)

However, Viva’s announcement of its office closure and subsequent cessation of business on 7th April 2010…rendered the liaison between Viva and our office and the follow-up actions for subsequent complaints unavailable. (Uh oh…)

Meanwhile, the arrangement of the refund of flight ticket and the related follow-up actions still remain uncertain, it casts doubt as to whether Viva would honour its promise to reimburse to the complainants within 1-2 weeks after flight cancellation (which was the verbal commitment made by Viva’s staff at the time of handling complainants’ refund procedures. As Viva has made no reply to the complainants’ complaints so far and its business being ceased, most complainants suspect fraud as a result of the non-compliance of the refund pledged by Viva. (Oh drat. I should have known that special fare was too good to be true!)

In view of this, pursuant to the regime of [insert law and section yadda-yadda], our office will refer the related complaint cases to the Judiciary Institutions for investigation. Should the Public Prosecution Office regard that there is sufficient evidence amounting to prosecution against Viva, you may pursue your claims for the refund and compensation under the civil litigation procedures.” (Wtf?! I have two months left in Macau – no way they’re going to move this fast enough for me to get a refund that way.)

In other words, it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever get my money back from Viva, not to mention the related costs of cancelling the hostel reservation/overnight bus tickets. My only other option (which I am currently pursuing) is filing a claim with the trip cancellation insurance that (thankfully) came automatically with my Mastercard, but that’s also going to take a while because they have to mail a claims form to my US address and then my family will probably have to fill it out for me and mail it back. The slightly tricky issue is proving the flights were canceled because of the carrier’s “financial inviability,” aka the carrier must have gone bankrupt, but considering Viva has pretty much disappeared off the face of the earth, that should count, right?

In the meantime, I was able to see sakura semi-vicariously through the photos of my two friends in Japan: Garrett and Kunmi. *sigh* Oh well, maybe next year I'll just take a short jaunt to Washington DC instead...

No sakura for me =(

I had this lovely trip planned out for Easter break: 6 days in Japan with fellow ETAs Susan, Emily, and Amy, touring Tokyo, Kyoto, and Nara. Even better, I was hoping to meet up with two Yale ’09 friends, Kunmi (studying in Tokyo) and Garrett (studying in Kyoto). Best of all, we would be going smack in the middle of cherry-blossom season, but we had managed to scrimp down to a budget of $1000 US including round-trip flight from Macau to Tokyo, hostels, transport within Japan, admission to various sights, food for the week, plus a little for souvenirs. In anticipation, I even changed my Firefox persona to a cherry-blossom theme!

However, it was all too good to be true…things began unraveling the morning before our flight was supposed to leave at 2:30 PM. I was actually at the UM office finishing up a few things before heading to the airport when I got this call from Amy:

Amy: Uh Jen, Viva Macau is going bankrupt or something.
Me: WHAT?!
Amy: Yeah, check it on Google.
Me: …

I quickly checked Google News, and while Viva Macau wasn’t technically going bankrupt, it might as well have been. The Macanese government had abruptly pulled its operating license as of March 26, citing that they needed to repay 200 million MOP in loans and hadn’t been keeping up on fuel payments. All flights were subsequently grounded, with no idea of when they would start again. Susan and I went to the airport anyway, on the off chance that our flight might still take off, but if not, to figure out what to do next.

At the Viva Macau counter, we were met by two officials from the tourism bureau, who took us to a sort of crisis headquarters in the China Hotel across the street. There, we realized that at least we were luckily to be leaving from Macau, rather than stuck in it. We registered our “case” with the tourism/consumer complaint bureau, hoping it would increase our chances of getting a refund since it didn’t seem like Viva had any sense of corporate responsibility. That night, we sadly canceled our reservations for the hostels and the overnight bus trips.

The next morning, Amy, Susan, and I headed for the Viva Macau office in the AIA Tower, just behind the Grand Emperor Hotel. We had heard from some local friends that Viva was giving out refunds there, but apparently, plenty of other people were waiting for the same – we got there before the opening time at 9 AM and there was a already a waiting area set up in the courtyard behind the tower.

Sign directing us to the courtyard

There, we waited for another half hour before this guy came out:

The Viva employee is the one in the striped sweatshirt

Unfortunately, he was there not to let us into the office, but to hand out numbered slips telling us to come back later. Apparently, there were still lots of people from the previous day that hadn’t been processed, so those were the ones who had first priority. We were annoyed (though not as clearly miffed as the people in the photo above) but took our tickets for an appointment at 1:30 PM. Clearly, this was also some of the biggest news to hit Macau in a while – there were at least 3 video cameras rolling to capture the 20 or so of us waiting in line.

When we came back at 1:30, we were smoothly escorted up to the office, where we filled out a few simple forms and received an apologetic letter stating how sorry Viva was for the inconvenience, but refunds would be processed in the next 2-3 weeks. That being as much as we could do, we went back home and started thinking about where else we could go on such short notice without spending too much money…

Mooncake mishap

Tonight after work, Susan and I went to get mooncakes at Sanmiu, the local grocery store. We needed to get at least two boxes as gifts, one for the security guy who has been super-helpful, and one for the UM Chinese teacher who went to Zhuhai to get textbooks for us even though we didn't end up taking her class.

After we picked out two boxes of white lotus paste cakes with egg yolks for them, we were super-excited about getting a box for our apartment to share. I recognized one box from mooncakes I've had in the US, but it was more than twice as expensive as any of the others! We didn't want to spend too much money, so we decided to try one of the locally-produced brands (but not the cheapest one). Susan is not a huge fan of red bean and I've had a lot of red bean-flavored stuff here already, so we opted for lotus paste again. The box looked promising, with a pretty cover that even featured the Ruins of St. Paul:
Susan wanted to try one of our mooncakes for dessert, but when we opened the plastic wrap, a very...inauspicious scent came out, a salty sort of oily smell. She cut it open, only to find a bewildering mess of chunks rather than the white paste we had expected.

Ick.

Turns out we didn't get lotus paste...we got "Five Nuts" filling instead -_- The ingredients list only shows lotus seeds, but we also spotted what we think was walnuts and sunflower seeds (not sure what the other two nuts should have been). There was an egg yolk inside, as promised, but it wasn't that great either.

The label we didn't see until too late

We're not sure what to do with this box of undesirable mooncakes, but on the bright side, if I avoid eating them, it'll be better for my cholesterol (the nutritional information on those is scary!) Maybe I'll just get one red bean cake for the Mid-Autumn Festival, then get a box when it goes on sale post-Festival =P