Bank of China experience, 中国银行体验

Back in Beijing now for what it is coming to be real autumn, colder weather, less green and clearer skies.

I came from home with some cash that needed changed and also had to pay our landlord a big chunk of money for our rent. Like always, I go in, take a number in the line and then wait. Like always there are over 100 people in front of me, but only about 30 present - who takes the other 70 tickets?

In the meantime, I had lunch, had a tea and still after coming back to check on the line I had more than one hour to wait. After the actual payment occurred, I must say that it took me 2.5 hours to complete everything making every trip to the bank like a nightmare.

Just as a information systems curiosity, even though I use Bank of China online banking, you can't make a payment to another account outside of Beijing. Isn't that crazy? Plus, the whole system is still in Chinese, making it very hard to navigate.

Hey, but this is China. It's fun...

outside of China, in Romania

The Romanian Flag

Back in Europe for a week... one the one side to see friends & family again and on the other to attend my cousin's wedding ceremonies.

So go to be back home, people are so nice, sky is blue and the food is wonderful and the access to information is not restricted (I CAN SEE MY BLOG, wow!).

Wuxi, 无锡 (Wúxī)

Downtown Wuxi at night

Downtown Wuxi in the evening is very colorful, animated and lively but nothing is more interesting in Wuxi than a visit to a local famous street food street. The street is very narrow (about a car-wide) but loads of cars, scooters, bikes and people still somehow manage to cross increasing the general street noise over acceptable levels at first.

More scooters in Wuxi than any other city I've seen so far

Great video of the ways of the street... couldn't get the street noise to blend in

There are a couple of stands with ready to be made skewers. One has a large variety, from sea food, vegetables, all kinds of meat, tofus to things that I will never understand what they are.

Different from what I saw in the past, all the food from these 2 or 3 stands goes to common line-up of grilling chefs. The result is good street food accompanied draft beer. It can only be very good…

The chefs barbecuing the meet and veggies

Wuxi friends and a Chinese begger

The city silently becomes asleep, with fewer and fewer people on the street. The lights are still and somehow you can see a star in the sky. This is rare for China… what a good night!