And they start with an Aston Martin.
Sooner or later, once a year, I have to make a copy of some CD for listening. On each occasion, I say to myself that I really ought to buy a permanent marker so that I can write on the CD what it is, but so far I’ve been using a non-permanent marker, a Pental Sign Pen, which I’ve owned for about twenty years. I’ve also said that I really ought to get sleeves for these things because I’ve been lucky that a small supply has been left behind by some previous teacher, but those have long since run out. I did have a better idea, though, and that was to buy one of those CD cases.
But my adventure starts with a white Aston Martin which I might’ve overlooked had I not been wondering what some drumming was all about. It was parked under the 春申路 bridge just near the back gate. It’s still there right now because I can see it from the window near my front door. I think it’s a Vantage, probably the V8, and is as yummy as a fresh chocolate eclair on a bed of chocolate ice cream an smothered in chocolate-flavoured whipped cream with shavings of dark choc… [Yes, I think we get the idea. The car is very nice. –ed.]
I went to Walmart that was formerly Trust Mart, and had no problems finding permanent markers. As for the CD cases, nothing doing. They had none. Really, none. I went to Vanguard, but expected to find nothing, and Suyou, but found nothing, and then went to Buynow, where they did have them, but when the first person asked ¥128 and I protested, the price dropped to ¥68, and the other case I saw was marked as ¥58. So I headed to Carrefour, which I thought would have such cases at a more reasonable prices, but like Trust Mart, it had none at all.
I went to 远东百货 to get something for lunch (which I ought to start eating because I’m beginning to feel hungry). Outside I saw that pink BMW Z4 for the second time. Pink. Ugh. Lady Penelope and Parker could get away with a pink Rolls because they were too cool for school. The Z4 tells us that a.) the owner has money; b.) certainly enough to get the car resprayed; and c.) has no sense of good taste after turning a tiger into My Little Pony.
My bike does have pink flashes on it, but they actually go well with the darker red of the frame. In this case, pink works as a highlight whereas it’s just not right as the main colour on some things.
I needed to find one of those ubiquitous stationery shops which are so easy to find near most schools in the Empire (一中 being a bit of an exception), and went down the back streets behind the 红豆 building and across 解放路 into a commercial electronics district. I was still looking for a stationery shop, but I was also looking for a market where I might find cheap CD cases. I stopped at the very sort of shop I was looking for, but got sent off up the street where I found a CD shop which seemed to specialise in educational material, but they had CD cases. They had quite a selection with car badges on them, but these were small and didn’t have the capacity I wanted; but they did have what I was looking for at the right price: ¥10.
I have quite a number of CDs in my desk drawer at school which need a home, and they’ll now have one.
I took my bike out for a spin yesterday, which included a turn in the park to play about with the gears. What did we learn? Gears 1.1 to 1.71 are almost entirely too low unless you’re going up a hill. I could easily fling the bike out from under me on 1.1 when I accelerate. I find 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5 good for general cycling, and 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5 quite good for going up bridges. A combination of the gears and the lightness of the aluminium frame allows me to get up too some scarily high speeds which just did not happen on my old bike.
The other night my dear and beloved colleagues claimed that I was the fastest thing on two wheels in Wuxi, which is only a slight exaggeration. It is, though, a poor reflection on the rest of the population when some middle-aged git like me is faster than just about everything else, motorised or not.
Notes
1. For convenience I’m number the driving cogs as 1 to 3 (the first number) and the secondary cogs as 1 to 7 (the second number). Thus 1.1 is the lowest gear and 3.7 is the highest.
Green Bamboo 