Yesterday was given over to making 'travel chore' type arrangements - a task which, in China, can rapidly spin from everyday dullness into a something that foments a kind of pent-up rage at the seeming idiocy of things.

The small task that needed attending to was apparently simple: I needed to find a screen protector for a Palm PDA that I bought cheaply in Singapore. The travel gods were frowning on this plan, I guess, because it turned out to be impossible to accomplish easily in Beijing.

I can only suppose that it's some sort of travel retribution for a) being such a yuppie; and b) for my stupidity in not just purchasing a screen protector when I bought the damn thing.

At any rate, we took ourselves to the upmarket shopping district of Beijing that's all big malls and flashing lights and fancy stuff. After a good few hours of people staring at the Palm in complete bewilderment - or, alternatively, delightedly atempting to sell me ANOTHER Palm to go with it - any hopes of finding this flimsy bit of plastic seemed slim.

It was one of those things which just makes you quiver with frustrated confusion. Why, in a city of millions, and a country of billions, where mobile phones and other gee-gaws are being hawked on every corner, can I not find a simple screen protector?

It didn't help my mood that I kept thinkng bitterly, 'China is the spiritual home of plastic claptrap - now that I want to buy some, where the hell is it all?'

Shop after shop told us, 'no, no, no!' I finally took to asking in desperation, 'Do they sell these in China at all?'

To which the answer was, of course, 'yes'.

WHERE this elusive item could be found remained a mystery. We did see some for sale in the upmarket 'Oriental Malls', but the asking price was around $30 AUD - which seemed exorbitant for a sliver of plastic, so we gave it a miss.

Finally, a guy in one camera store took pity on us. After two or three hours of trudging up and down the same shopping strip, he finally confirmed what we'd started to expect: 'Not in this street!'

Taking our map in hand, he located a street about an hour from central Beijing, and tapped his pen on it. 'There! There they have!'

Excellent. Now we just have to muster the strength to go back into the fray - knowing all the while that it's entirely possible that we've got the wrong end of the stick, and that that street might be the wrong place to look altogether.

Aaah, China, I missed you. It's good to be back.