The night was what you can expect with 3 others in a small room and a toilet with the vacuum roar sound known from trains. But the night’s rest was enough to tackle the compulsory and freestyle tasks of the new day. Compulsory: breakfast, lunch and dinner and free section: talking, reading and writing. I even managed to catch up on my sunrise, late as 06:22.
There had been some more trucks and a few cars in the morning but still enough space left.
But I was surprised that the dining room was full as “usual”
Until noon I mainly was busy with reading (Yan Lianke – My grandfather’s dream). It is my first non-non-fiction book in years but that’s another ferry tradition. . In this case, I’m not just allowing myself a novel, but also seeing it as a kind of preparation for China. It was one of many titles recommended by Han, my last Chinese CS guest, and the best part for me is that we can meet over the course of this trip and talk not only about “everything,” but also about this book, which in turn will open several doors to “everything.”
Perhaps this is a good opportunity to explain the title “Kunming and beyond“:
After Efan, a CS friend since her time in Vienna, with personal contact in Hong Kong, Australia (twice), and again in Vienna, told me about her Yunnan road trip project, I was excited.
A similar idea—meeting friends from “everywhere” and connecting them through the Uganda project “damawas” on the occasion of my 60th birthday—somehow hadn’t come to fruition.
YES! – “Kunming” itself is exciting!
But how can I travel so far without visiting or meeting friends along the way? That’s the “beyond” aspect, beyond also as a hint that I want to go on to Taiwan and more.
What I’m getting at is this:
I don’t want to compare anything or anyone and therefore try to use sober language when writing about friends, except stating that they are true friends to me.
And the journey will be a string of pearls, highlight after highlight
Last point:
Just as a string of pearls is not only made of pearls but also needs a connection, travelling is necessary for the connection, and I wonder how deep my connection to buses and trains will ultimately be.
Back to lunch and back to my mission.
No matter what we have for lunch or dinner, it comes with mountains of white bread. And people take 5 slices, eat their meal using one or two slices (and “naturally” they produce plenty of leftovers anyway) and three slices of bread join the other leftovers in the trash.
In Vienna, I decided at the last minute to write a text asking people to take only as much bread as they wanted to eat. I translated it into Georgian, Bulgarian, and Russian and asked Doron to print it out. He added something else: He asked an AI for variants that also took cultural backgrounds into account. That was a good idea and an interesting result.
My task was to position the sheet so it would be easy to read. If I gave it to the staff, they could refuse it or really hang it up. If I wanted to do it secretly, I needed an unobserved moment, and the staff could still put it away. Thanks to Doron, I had the text four times and made a first attempt in the afternoon. Only one guy looked toward the buffet, so I pretended to look for a drink and put the sheet there. When they started preparing dinner, it was still there, and once I saw a staff member put it BACK in place! I hadn’t understood why it hadn’t been there, but now I guess he had shown it to his boss before putting it back. So, a first small success!
But none of those I introduced here yesterday had seen the sheet, and I can’t say whether less bread was wasted, or who else didn’t see my message, and which of the actual readers were wicked enough to ignore my good advice.
The next stage will be A4 format instead of A5, and I’ll keep you updated!