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I am strangely fortunate in many ways although I'd prefer that members of my family keep their opinions to themselves. Case in point: Going to YiWu - the bus is faster and more direct than the train, nonstop, and everybody tells me to take the bus. Okay, I can do that. Except we have three intercity bus stations here, and I don't know which one to use. Plus, October 1 is the beginning of the National Holiday when all 1.3 billion people in China are travelling - all of them to YiWu, with my luck. And you can't book bus tickets ten days in advance, and in any case when I get there it would mean standing in line for 12 hours to get a ticket, if there are any left. And besides, I don't know how to buy a ticket to anywhere, and my Chinese isn't good enough to understand. But a pretty friend has a father who, before he retired, worked for the bus station. So I now have my ticket with a reserved seat, 12 days in advance. All things are possible to him who is white. Well, almost all things. Pretty friend was concerned with my ability to navigate once in YiWu, and felt I needed company and a tour guide. lnvitation naturally ensued. Unfortunately discovered that spirit was willing but spirit's husband was returning to Shanghai that weekend. | ||
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I love China. I love Shanghai, I love almost everything here. I have had more good meals than I can count, and almost never the same thing twice. People are astonishingly nice and helpful to me. I have some wonderful friends. I have often been lost, but never irretrieveably so. I've had the odd bad day, but then a pretty girl smiles at me for no reason and I revert to counting my blessings. In the meantime, I'm sipping on some Courvoisier (which is cheaper here than in Canada) and enjoying one of my 30-cent cigars - savouring another enjoyable day. | ||
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I made a database of my DVD movies. I discovered I have more than 500, and I was losing track of them, sometimes buying a second copy (if you'll forgive the expression) because I no longer knew what I had. I recorded the name, year, run time, main actors and some important category classifications, and included my ranking of them though that's arbitrary at best. I tend to like best those movies that I'm willing to watch more than one time. There are too many movies that I suppose I'm happy to have seen but don't care to ever watch again, and that's disappointing. So part of my ranking relates to my assessment of the movie quality and a large part to whether I'm interested in watching it many times. | ||
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Things in Shanghai are fine, the weather is lovely and warm, the skies are blue, the air is not polluted in spite of what you may read elsewhere, the food is wonderful, the people are great, I have wonderful friends here and little to complain about. On the debit side, my mobile phone no longer calls pretty girls in the middle of the night but I'll just have to learn to live with that. Also on the debit side, taxi drivers here understand no English and some of them don't appear to understand Chinese all that well either. With any luck, my next message may be from Korea. | ||
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Shanghai is a wonderful place. It really is. And people are so much nicer to me than I deserve, that I often feel guilty. Last month, I didn't bother to check my post mail for a long time and discovered that my utility bills were past due - which means I can no longer pay them at the nearest 7-11 equivalent but must go to the company offices. One for electricity, one for gas, one for water, one for the phone, and they're scattered everywhere on little streets that aren't even on my map. Not promising, if I want light and heat. But a friend in an advertising agency (a finance manager, actually) offered to do it for me. So I gave him my bills and he drove his bicycle around all one Saturday morning to pay all my accounts - including almost 2,000 RMB for a year's internet access. And he wouldn't take my money at the start; he paid all my bills first and gave me the receipts and I would pay him later. I couldn't believe he would do that. In Canada, even my own family wouldn't do that for me. Probably especially my own family. Here, so many people treat me that way. I feel truly blessed. | ||
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A friend will help me choose one of those little electronic dictionaries that can translate from Chinese to English and vice-versa. I've decided that might make my learning easier. I've begun studying the language with a little more effort, and someday I may be able to buy my own train ticket so I can get myself lost in yet another city. | ||
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I went to Nanjing and got drunk with some friends. Had a birthday cake in a restaurant and sang Happy Birthday to me. There are now lots of people in Nanjing who know who I am and when my birthday is. And may never forget. But they don't know how old I am because we had a long debate about which candles to put on the cake, and settled for only one number candle with a zero on it. Great weekend, great birthday party, took my camera, forgot to take photos. Just as well. Did some shopping, had lots of fun, ate like a pig. Back to work early tomorrow morning, but unfortunately I need a holiday to recover from the weekend. | ||
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If you're going to play tennis for the first time in 12 years, don't start with three hours of mixed doubles. And especially don't do it on an outdoor court in full sunshine when the temperature is 38 degrees. I hurt everywhere. I hurt in places where I didn't know I had places. My foot feels broken, my ankle is sprained, one shoulder is dislocated, my legs hurt, my butt aches. I did a lot of damage in a short time. Last week, it was just my butt from riding those little horses, but now all my body parts are either misaligned, broken, damaged or missing. The worst part is that I have a blister on my thumb that really hurts. No, the worst part is the crazy Chinese girls hitting balls at me. Or else pouring bottles of water on my head to cool down. Actually, the worst part was that I made a lot of lousy shots. I forgot everything I knew; I forgot to watch the ball, I forgot to step into the ball, I forgot about topspin. But it was so much fun I'll do it again anyway. | ||
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Last Sunday I had a bunch of friends over for playing cards and dinner and, since I fired my ayi, we just left all the dishes for the next day - for me. I held a dishwashing party on Monday night, but nobody came. I sent my ayi off before I went to Canada for Christmas, thinking I'd find another when I returned. But local staff are all planning to return home for the Chinese New Year so it wasn't a good time. I'll have to wait until after the holiday, which begins on Feb. 14 this year. So I'll be doing my own cleaning a while longer. | ||
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I have just returned from a massage, and it was so nice. I wanted to stay there for another hour but didn't have the courage to ask. The girl would probably have thought I was a pervert and called the police. I really like having a massage, except for the first one I had in a hotel when I was travelling somewhere, maybe Chengdu. That girl was a stocky, 35-year-old woman with a body like Arnold Shwarzenneger, and I was afraid I'd be limping to the hospital afterwards. It seemed unmanly to complain that a masseuse is digging too hard, but I recall that one being rather more agony than ecstasy. | ||
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Did I tell you I hate gas stoves? I do. I really hate them. They're messy, too hot, and too difficult to control. I hate them. On an electric stove, I can pick up a pot by the lid or the metal handles; you won't try it on a gas stove more than once. The entire pot become blistering hot, the open flame is not good for the metal, and everything about them is a big pain. Food cooks more quickly but that's all the good I've discovered. Just so you know, it is not possible to cook rice on a gas stove without burning the rice on the bottom and sides of the pot. I hate gas stoves. I hate barbecues by asssociation, and propane and butane by even further association. Also octane, pentane, septane and hectane. Is there a tritane? I hate that too. | ||
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I've discovered that duck is very cheap in China. A whole duck costs about 20 RMB - $3.00, and half a duck is only $1.50, and I saw whole ducks in a supermarket the other day for only 10 RMB - $1.50. You can't do better than that. So, imagine a nice roasted duck, covered with an orange glaze and stuffed with bread and raisins and apples. And now imagine a gas stove with only two top burners and no oven. And now imagine yourself going down to McDonald's for a hamburger. God, I hate gas stoves. The duck is only 10 RMB but I'll have to pay 300 for a toaster oven to cook the damned thing. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. | ||
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You may not care much about this but it was important to me. I left some pieces of chewing gum in the pockets of several of my shirts (the best ones, too), and forgot to check the pockets before I put the shirts in the washing machine. Well, geez. Huge mess. So I took them to the laundry and asked the people to clean them and remove the stains. The result wasn't what I'd hoped. The nincompoops just rewashed my shirts in hot water and then ironed them with what must have been a blistering hot iron. The gum was by now permanently embedded in my good shirts and, for good measure, was burned into the cloth. Like the farmers in Anhui, I checked on the internet for a solution but the only one I found was a comment by someone that spraying the cloth with WD-40 would remove gum. Well, no chance to find that in Shanghai so I was going to throw away my good shirts. But then I was in the supermarket looking for some hangers in the housewares department, and guess what was staring me in the face? A pretty little can of WD-40. So I bought it, sprayed my shirts, let them sit, washed them off, and all the gum and stains were gone. Like magic. Harry Potter couldn't have done better. | ||
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I have to make a decision very soon about my apartment because my lease is up for renewal. I'm really quite happy where I am now, and I couldn't replace what I have unless I pay twice as much rent. It would be more convenient for me to live closer to the downtown, but really all I would save is maybe 20 minutes and that just isn't worth a doubling of my rent. I've gone back and forth on this many times, with no resolution. It takes me about 50 minutes door to door, to go to the office in the morning and to return at night. But that consists of leaving 10 minutes before my train, 20 minutes on the train to a junction, another 10 minutes to change trains and get to my station, and then a 10 minute walk to the office. I don't want to live very close to the office, but just in that general area, so it's likely that I would save only that first 20 minutes of train travel. I'm paying only 3,000 RMB for rent now, and to live in the downtown area where I think I'd like to be would cost me at least 6,000 or 7,000. I can do a lot of travelling for that extra money and the small saving in time doesn't seem worthwhile. The other thing is that the train station is right under my building, I have a supermarket here, and the park and swimming pools (which I have never used but which my conscience tells me I should and my eternal hopefulness tells me I might do any day now), and the private park and stuff. My buildings are all very new, very clean, no bugs, good management, good service, all very happy. I can't tell if I'm just growing roots and getting into a rut or if I'm genuinely happy and should stay. But I need to decide quickly. Maybe tomorrow, after I study some Chinese. |
