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Anna Overseas

3/26/2005

Busy open market...

One of the things that struck me as odd is how realistic movie and video game portrayals of open markets like this one are. I mean, granted, they're all put through the proper filter, but you do walk down crowded little "allies" in the open markets, where people have their wares out on blankets or on tables, and you can buy everything you can think of. Lots of "antiques" in this market - right outside of a major tourist attraction in Nanjing. But I went to other ones that had foodstuffs, household goods, tourist crap, lots of postcards, stuff like that. It was so loud and full of energy, and it was so hard to find what you wanted, but if you stumbled on it the bargaining could be fun.

(I'll admit, bargaining was more satisfying for me in Shanghai because mostly I could do it in English. When I went to other places, we did it through calculators.)

I remember the place I went to buy food in Jiangyan. Not the grocery store, but the open market they sold food in that was hidden in a alley off the main street. Bao Ying took me, and she delighted in bargaining for meat for me, which they weighed with little weights on a ... a... weighing thing where you put the one weight on one side and the other weight on the other side until they balance. Gah! I can't remember the word! *hangs head in shame* Oh well. You know what I mean.

Bargaining is like an art in China. It's apparently different in other places where you bargain, but in China it's based around smiling and being friendly and laughing, never taking it too seriously. If you take it seriously, they won't bargain with you. I bought both Raven and Crash gifts in Shanghai that took me over 30 minutes to bargain for, but I spent the whole time laughing and giggling with the shop-owners. (The one person started out with this ridiculously huge price, which I responded to with a ridiculously low price, and then we sorta laughed and got on to reasonable bargaining. It was great.)

My favorite bargaining story is one of the packs of cards I picked up. This was in Xi'an. I found it in the Muslin Quarter, and the initial offering for this deck was something like 30 yuan. I thought I bargained hard, and was happy to get it for 10 yuan. I decided later on during my trip that I wanted another deck for a friend, when to get it at another shop in the same area, and got it for 1 yuan.

You just have to find stories like that funny, or it doesn't work to go to China.

Last night had it's share of oddities at work, but nothing as bad as the naked guy wandering the halls. The really odd one was the young man with the British Passport who insisted he was staying at our hotel with his friends. No one by any of the names he gave me was staying in the hotel, and the room number he claimed that he was staying wasn't one we have. He kept arguing with me about this, then suddenly looked around the lobbey, blushed bright red, and walked out.

I think he wanted the hotel next to us.

But it's Melanie's night that takes the cake. Mel's a night auditor down the street from me (I used to work with her, for all that I'd love to claim that all night auditors, everywhere, know each other), and she got this phone call from a woman who'd called the hotel before. Both times she called, she insisted that she had a reservation at Mel's hotel, but didn't. Last time she called, she talked to Shazmin, who finally tracked down that she had a reservation at a sister hotel, but for two days later. And both Mel and Shazmin had told this woman that the hotel wasn't going to go to the airport to pick her up.

When she called this time, she asked again when the hotel would come get her at the airport. (In the background of this call, Mel could hear a noise like MSN Messenger going off every couple of minutes.) When Melanie remineded her that the hotel didn't pick up guests at the airport, this woman first insisted on talking to Shazmin. When Mel informed her that Shaz wasn't there, the woman said, "Well, can you call her at home? She said she'd come get me!"

"No, I'm not going to call her at home."

"Well, why not?"

"Because she's sleeping."

I guess soon after this Mel got sick of the whole thing and hung up on her.

I've had weirder phone calls, like the one that sudden degenerated into screaming insults and insisted that I was "having consensual sex with Mr. (General Manager) on the front desk right now!". That one was... odd....

I'm telling you, full moons in Edmonton are weird.

...

Scales! The word I was looking for is scales!

Anna stopped here at 3:50 PM

3/25/2005

Work was... um... interesting today.

My week day night security person is French Canadian. He struggles with his English on occasion, so it's not unusual for him to wander into the office, grab the French-English dictionary, and look up words. He'll ask me how to say them, ask for them in a sentence, stuff like that.

He comes over to me last night, and is pointing to the word nudity. "What's another way of saying this?" he asks.

"Naked." Then I blink. "Why do you ask?"

"Ah, yes. Naked. There is a naked man on the 5th floor."

(Oh, for those who don't know, I work night audit at a hotel.)

"Naked."

"Yes, on the fifth floor. He was getting ice."

"Naked. Man. On the fifth floor. Getting ice."

He grin at me. "Yes. He was from Quebec. He just wanted ice. I explained he had to go back to his room."

I burried my face in my hands. "Well, at least it's the fifth floor. It's only a team on that floor, no one else. So, it would only be his team mates seeing him. Naked. Getting ice."

He walked away to start getting the papers. Later on, I was staring at him again. "Naked?"

"Yes!" He grin at me, then made this rather unmistakable hand gesture about ... things... dangling and stuff and size and oh my poor eyes and brain. "He was uncircumsized."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!"

And that, ladies, gentlemen, and others, was my day at work.

Anna stopped here at 4:13 PM

3/24/2005

Yummy Yummy Squid!

He is cooking squid. I think. Little squid-looking legs.

Street food in China is entirely different from street food in Canada, and I really think we're missing out. A lot of my favorite food memories are of things you can buy on the side of the road in China. Yummy buns filled with meat, these sorta but not really pancake things that are rolled up around hot dogs (more like crepes, I guess), all sorts of things on sticks (like deep fat fried tofu, which I loved), and squid.

This was again in Nanjing, and I asked the nice man (well, in pantomime) if I could take his picture, which he smiled and nodded. I think he was flattered, but it's so hard to say. I couldn't believe they were selling what looked like tiny little squid legs on sticks in the middle of the street for anyone to have.

I was really tempted (and he offered more than once, and they were cheap), but I was travelling alone at the time and the idea of being sick because of something I ate and not having anyone there didn't really appeal. So I passed on the squid. But there were lots of other foods I tried, and I got to the point in restaurants where I'd often just point at random on the menu just to see what I'd get.

So, yeah. Squid. On a stick. That people ate. In the street.

It still kinda boggles my mind.

Now I'm actually sitting here staring at the computer trying to come up with something to say that's at least a little bit interesting, and coming up dry.

I used to have a notebook I filled with point form notes about things to blog about, but I think it got shoved in a filing cabinet in my never-ending struggle to get things put away in this apartment. And thus, I am dull.

Um... when I was going through a box yesterday of things I thought were junk (and most of them were), I found a couple of books I thought were gone forever. So, I guess that's good. And I started slowly going through my collection of magazines. I'm taking them with me to work, flipping through them, cutting out anything that interests me, and then leaving them there. I leave a little note on them telling the rest of the staff that if they don't want to read them, just toss them in recycling. Got that okayed with the boss. If I take 5 magazines with me to work every day, I may be through them all by the end of the year. (I have a million magazines, it seems, and I keep finding more.)

Or, you know, when Margery comes up on the weekend to decimate the laundry with me, I might just close my eyes and toss them all in the recycling bins. Then they'll be gone, gone, and I won't be wondering anymore. As someone emailed me to remind me, everything is eventually reprinted, and most of it I could find online anyway.

I also found someone willing to take the entire huge amount of pink (pink? what was I thinking?) envelopes off my hands. She'll actually use them. Yay!

Yeah, I'm dull today. Sorry 'bout that. But, at least I can write in sparkly text now. Watch my mad HTML skillz.

Anna stopped here at 10:23 PM

3/23/2005

One good thing about being insomniac when you work nights. For some reason, you get more sympathy.

"You haven't slept and now you have to be up all night? You poor dear! Here, have some caffeine."

I don't think I ever got that much sympathy when I was working days. *smile*

But yes, I haven't slept since noon, and now I have to work till 7 a.m.

It's all because I've had all this time off this week. Way too much time off. So, I was awake at 3 a.m. a while ago, and seriously considered who I could call because I was so bored, and there's not much to do in Edmonton at 3 a.m., and I swear I found the last page of the internet. Twice. I called my friend in Halifax, which was not appreciated (what, it was 6 a.m., everyone should be up at 6 a.m. I am!), then I called a friend of mine who also works night audit. So all was saved in the Anna-verse.

I am right now killing time until I have to leave for work. I am tired, I don't want to go. *whine whine whine* I wrote up a list of things that kept running through my mind when I was trying to sleep, but I'm not sure if they'd interest anyone, either.

More on China in the morning...

Anna stopped here at 10:13 PM

Him: So, how's the decluttering going?
Me: Shut you.
Him: That good, huh?
Me: I have too much stuff.
Him: Isn't that the point of decluttering?
Me: Shut up.

I am seriously considering either a) taking all the boxes in the closet and just tossing them in the dumpster to get rid of them or b) setting up a box out on the street that says "Please Take" and see what happens. Except it would get soggy, because there is snow out there.

At least the books to India are off. Margery came up on Friday and nabbed them from me, which I greatly appreciated. I'm rather amused by how they're getting to India, though. It's to expensive to ship things overseas like that. But, AUC is sending a group of students this year to India, and each of them will be taking a bunch of books in their luggage to send along. I'm not quite sure when they're leaving, obviously after the school year is done, which is good. Because after sending a monitor box full of books with Margery on Friday, I filled another (much smaller) box yesterday, and am starting on another one today. Go me.

A lot of stuff is earmarked for the woman's shelter. The extra dishes and cultery and stuff, as well as some board games I've got kicking around in a closet. I'm going through my clothes terribly slowly, and a bunch of that will be dropped off as well. I feel like I'm not advancing at all in this project, but I must be, right? *sigh* I want to get rid of all of this stuff so badly. I know it's tying me down in a lot of ways, but it seems like I'm never going to be done this, ever.

Things I Found In Decluttering My Home, a list, by jo

  1. Several balls of different types and colour of wool, which, put together, would make a very small scarf
  2. One knitting needle
  3. A half-completed scarf (green and purple) that is not on a knitting needle, but strung onto a pencil crayon
  4. An empty Easter basket (x 2!)
  5. Several very nice gift bags
  6. ID tags and name tags from several different places, each with a different name on them - not always mine
  7. Bubble Wrap
  8. Christmas wrapping paper from my childhood that I just refuse to part with
  9. A huge bag of paints for minifigs
  10. A Go board - it took me a lot more looking to find the stones that went with it
  11. A bicycle repair kit - I don't own a bike
  12. A stack the height of my hand of pink (pink?) envelopes
  13. A bag of flour - which would have been useful to know I had when I was baking bread, and had to go out at 3 a.m. to the nearest convience store and buy really expensive flour to finish the damned bread
  14. An awful lot of useless McDonald's Toys that I don't want or need
  15. A mismatched collection of both Collectible and ... not Collectible Card Games. None of which actually add up to an entire game
  16. Presents I bought people in China but never gave to them - For Raven, Kent, a whole bunch of kids in my life, Josh, Hoffman, Jenn and Kris' mom, which I am listing here so if they see their name, they will harrass me into giving it to them
  17. Enough clothes and books to start my own Used Clothes and Books store
  18. Poker Chips - but no cards
  19. 2 crayons
  20. Candles - millions and millions of candles


I have no idea where half of this stuff came from. I swear, when I'm not looking, it breeds in the corners.

Does anyone see anything they want? I'm at the point where I'll spring for shipping, should someone not in Edmonton want the stuff. I just want it out of my house, and can't come up with a good place to put it.

(Well, that's not true, my box for the woman's shelter is getting quite full.)

I keep telling myself that soon, soon, I will have less stuff, and my house will be back under control. This weekend, I'm going to a friend's house with all of my clothes, and we will spend two days doing laundry and playing with her computer and talking about boys or something. It'll be fun. And when I'm done, I'll have less clothes, and they will all be clean, and I'll be happier because of it.

It's good to have a plan. *grin*

Anna stopped here at 6:26 AM

3/21/2005

fish!

I know, it's fish. But after the frustration of trying to describe the last picture, I'm fairly confident I can recreate in words the day that I saw the fish.

It was in another garden in Nanjing. The pond dominated the area I was in. On one side of the bridge across the water was a stone and wood boat, one with beautiful carvings making up the interior. And on the other side, completely oblivious to the beauty of this boat, was a small child. He was holding popcorn in his hand, and with gleeful giggles was feeding it to these huge gold fish.

I can still remember the big mouths on this fish, each one opening and closing as they swarmed up to the surface of the water. They were all huge, fat, long gold fish, obviously spoiled by years of small children feeding them popcorn and bread. All of them many colours of gold and white and black, and each of them eager to get more popcorn, eager to get more attention. A few of them followed me when I walked away, swimming along the edge of the bridge until they realized I didn't have any popcorn, and they hurried back to the giggling child.

I like those sorts of images, of spoiled and pampered gold fish in carefully maintained ponds. The idea of a leisurely class of people, who had the time and the inclination to create gardens and sheltered places like this, appeals to me. It's an image I like to keep in my mind, the one I like to talk about when I talk about China.

But then it does give the wrong impression in a lot of ways, gives this idea that China is full of these idlyic little places. But I still have difficulty talking about the poverty that so many people live in there. That the people I worked with walked past without a moment's thought or glance, and the disdain that some of them showed for people living in poverty. Occasionally I still have dreams about children begging on the streets, and even now, when I walk past buskers in Edmonton, it haunts me the different levels of what is poverty in different areas of the world.

Sometimes it's so hard to think of what to write about. I don't think people come to see my pictures wanting a realistic view of China. I think they want what I want to give them - fun stories of my adventures, fun travel things that happened. But sometimes I just can't create that.

Anna stopped here at 5:51 PM

 mind the gap

A 20-something Canadian who used to teach English in China. There's lots in the archives about my experiences with teaching, with culture shock, and with my adventures in China. Occasionally it meanders into melancholy (part of the culture shock), which must be very dull to read, so you can skip that.

But right now, I'm back in Canada, and kinda determined to do something with the several thousand photos I took, as well as write more about China and other stuff.

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