Around 7.30 this morning, I heard it. A vaguely familiar tune, repeated over and over again. What was it? A Christmas carol? A nursery rhyme? By the time I walked out the door for work, it was running on a loop in my head but I hadn’t identified the song. And then, I realised – the Disney song. You know the one, “there is just one moon and one golden sun, and a smile means friendship to everyone… though the mountains divide and the oceans are wide, it’s a small world after all”. Well done ME for remember the words, as I gave myself a mental pat on the back. But where is it coming from? I figured, must be an ice-cream truck, a la Mr Whippy and Mr Gelati in Australia. I tried to remember what songs they played as they meandered through Australian streets every summer, selling ice-creams. I mean, an ice-cream truck makes sense – it *is* summer here, and it hasn’t dropped more than 1-2C below 30C since I arrived 3 weeks ago. So, on my walk to work, I’m looking around, trying to find this ice-cream truck. Kind of seems a bit early in the day for ice-cream, but who am I to judge? Almost at the office, the music become significantly louder, and I stopped in my tracks to figure out *where* it was coming from. Visions of Micky, Minnie and Donald danced in my mind. All I could see in the street were taxis, a police van, and a garbage truck. The tune was coming from – that’s right – the garbage truck! I then started to think of how many Chinese men must leap out of bed at the sound of that song, realising that they didn’t put the bins out when their wives asked last night (it probably sooooo doesn’t happen that way, but still!) and cracked up. I love it! Musical garbage trucks!
The second cool thing today was a visit to Canton Tower, the highest TV tower in the world and less than 1 year old. It opened in October 2010 and is kind of like Eureka Tower in Melbourne but much sexier. On September 1, they are opening a new attraction – a slingshot bungee (not joking!) to complement the ‘world’s highest ferris wheel’. From www.gztvtower.info: Mark Hemel, the IBA architect that together with his partner Barbara Kuit designed the Guangzhou TV tower, comments, ″Where most skyscrapers bear ′male′ features; being introvert, strong, straight, rectangular, and based on repetition, we wanted to create a ′female′ tower being complex, transparent, curvy and gracious.″ ″Our aim was to design a free-form tower with a rich and human-like identity that would represent Guangzhou as a dynamic and exciting city. We therefore wanted it to be non-symmetrical so that the building would look as if ′in movement′ and ′alive′. The result is a tower like a ′sexy female′, the very reason that earned her the nickname: ′Xiao Man Yao′.″ which means "young girl with tight waist”. I love that this tower is a chick. Impressive by day, glamorous by night. She has a few ‘sky platforms’, like that in Eureka Tower in Melbourne. As you can see, from 433m up and from the vantage of the sky platform, Guangzhou is a HUGE city. And the picture only shows you a tiny part of it. But then, another reminder of how small the world is – chatting with another Aussie in the group, we realised we lived 2 streets apart in Melbourne’s East when we’re not expat-ing it up in old Canton.
So today I am grateful for another great day in Guangzhou; a big, big city in a small, small world
Postscript to my great Thursday – severe food poisoning from lunch at restaurant in Canton Tower. Spent my night alternating between being balled up on bathroom floor, and my head in the loo. Being sick SUCKS. Being sick when you’re all alone in a big city in a foreign country sucks even worse. Grateful for my bestie in Shanghai who checked in on me all night by call and text. I lived to tell the tale of my first GZ food poisoning. I hope there isn’t a second!
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