After work today, i cooked some sichuan style sour & spicy instant rice noodles (四川味酸辣米粉)… it tasted rather weird at first, but after a while, it seemed to taste better so I just had that for dinner… unhealthy I know, but well, it’s not easy to cook for one, and it’s so not fun to eat alone… hmm… guess I’ll try to make it a point not to eat instant noodles too often, and at least with a gap of 2 days in between because it supposedly takes 2 days for the body to get rid of the layer of wax or whatever other unhealthy preservatives in the packet of instant noodles… >_<
sichuan style sour & spicy instant rice noodles 四川味酸辣米粉
Anyway, I’ve been having a perpetual “nose bleed” since I came to china!! Ok, not like I have blood flowing out of my nostrils continuously, but it’s probably partly due to the dry weather, heatiness or wat-not… so I often have dried blood in my nostrils, and when I blow my nose, there’ll be strains of blood too… =( feels so uncomfortable… I emailed the NTU medical centre’s doctor who’s in charge of GIP students, and asked him for advice on my condition… he said that it should be due to the dryness of the weather, and asked me to moisturize my nose by getting a basin of hot water and breathing in the steam. He also said to apply moisturizer inside the nostrils regularly, twice a day… seems like pretty good advice, but unfortunately, I haven’t followed either instruction… oopz… haha… so much for complaining about my condition… but I find it troublesome to get that basin of hot water just for me to breathe in the steam, and I don’t quite fancy the idea of applying moisturizer in my nose… feels weird… haha… I’m such a naughty patient… feel so sorry to the doctor for making him provide me with medical advice, yet none heeded… haha… okok, maybe I shall be guai and try out the first method tonight… remind me if you see me online! Haha… =)
And well, since I was talking about my nose, I shall elaborate on the pollution problems in china… in shanghai, the air quality is slightly bad coz of the exhaust fumes of many poorly maintained heavy vehicles, cars, motorcycles, electric motor bicycles, etc… but in nanjing, I find the air pollution problem worse… in the city area, the problem’s probably not that bad… but at times, you can really see the black soot flying out of the old buses’ exhaust pipes… & I wouldn’t be surprised if moles & moles of carbon monoxide are emitted due to incomplete combustion… >_< it’s really scary just thinking about the composition of the air I’m breathing in here… I bet the % of nitrogen, oxygen, and other gases would be skewed… from what I found online, this is supposedly the composition of air:
supposed normal composition of air:
But from what I feel, this might be the composition of air here:
Well, perhaps at the industrial area where I’m working at, the 2nd pie chart above would be especially true… thankfully, when traveling to work, I’m in an enclosed air-conditioned car, supposedly protected from the polluted air outside… but at times, the strong smell of the toxic exhaust fumes emitted from the vehicles on the expressway will still manage to seep into the car and stink up the car… but thank god I’m not exposed to such air quality (or the lack of) out in the open… and when I reach the company, I’m usually in the safety of my air-conditioned office… so most of the time, I won’t smell the air outside… well, apart from a few occasions after work, when I walked out of the company towards the car, and smelt a rather pungent odour in the air, probably that of ammonia or one of the gases produced at the plant… I asked a colleague if it often smelt like that coz of the company’s proximity to the plant, but he said it just so happened that the wind direction for that day was blowing the gases in our direction, which was why the smell was especially strong… >_< apart from air pollution caused by exhaust fumes from heavy vehicles, the millions of heavy smokers here are also contributing to the already poor air condition… everywhere you go, even in air-conditioned restaurants, there’re people smoking… they smoke while they walk, smoke while they eat, smoke while they drink, and smoke while they pee! not that I’ve seen it for myself, but from the smoke coming out of the toilet and the many cigarette butts in there, I can pretty much guess what they do inside the toilet… well, of all places… I’m sure the toilet provides the best atmosphere for smoking… fragrance of the toilet added on to the fragrance of the cigarette smoke… killer combi…(pun intended) -_-“
On top of air pollution, another severe type of pollution I witness here in china is noise pollution… when you walk along the rds or travel on a vehicle, you keep hearing honking of car horns – loud, repetitive ones, as though the whole world’s deaf and that you gotta horn 10x whatever no. of honks you wanted to give in order to make your honk heard… >_< drivers here honk whether others are at fault, they themselves are at fault, or no one's at fault; they honk at other vehicles, cyclists, young pedestrians, old pedestrians… basically, you name it, they honk it… and like what one of our teachers at jiaotong uni said… one of the main reasons why the drivers in china honk so much is because it’s considered quite a luxury to own a car, and therefore these drivers like to show off to others that they can afford one, so honking supposedly draws others’ attention to themselves and boosts their ego in an ultra lame way… -_-“ when you’re constantly exposed to such loud honking noises wherever you go, it’ll undoubtedly damage your ear drums over time, and your hearing gets affected because you’re too used to such background noise that your ears will auto shut out a lot of sounds in future and dismiss them as some incessant droning… moreover, with background noise pollution like this, people have to speak even louder to each other in order for their conversation to be heard… as a result, most people get used to such high decibels that they find themselves unable to catch softer speeches after a while… =( I remember one of my seniors who came back from gip china about a year ago sharing her experience with me… she admitted that her hearing was affected after a prolonged exposure to the loud conversations held in her office between her Chinese colleagues, who often seemed to be shouting at each other from across the room when they were really just right next to each other… >_< my senior also found herself speaking more loudly than before, after she had returned from her gip trip… well, I’m certainly worried that my hearing will be further damaged after my stint in china… but thankfully, in my office, it’s really quiet most of the time, apart from the few occasions when my colleague gets into a verbal war with someone over the phone, so I’m not that frequently exposed to loud shouting… but outside my office, I can often hear “shouting” as the engineers greet one another or when they discuss work… one thing I must point out is in china, talking very loudly sometimes doesn’t really equate to being rude or being engaged in a quarrel… at times, it’s just the local chinese's way of life and seemingly a sign of affection or friendliness that they speak to each other in a loud manner decorated with lots of large gesticulation… so it’s really some cultural difference there that we gotta understand and not misinterpret…
So much for pollution problems… right now, I’m just missing the clean air in Singapore where I don’t feel my nose clogged all the time with all the dirt and unknown particles in the air… clean air, where are you??? =(
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