Totally Rockin.
Today was a long interesting one. I got up for Putonghua lessons at the BOND office at 10AM. Doris was running this lesson. I was the only one since New John came in 1 hour late thinkin it was at 11am. Silly irishman. Basically the lesson consisted of me practicing the tones of nouns of things you find in a house or apartment and what to say when they break...since they do constantly. Most of the time was spent just practicing the tones and not much time for reveiw. Doris kept yelling at me about the tones. At least with Lynn I could hear the tones when she spoke, with Doris, its miniscule. The only time I was able to get the tones with any sort of accuracy was when I impersonated a chinese opera singer say the words, so it sounded very high pitched and unbearably annoying, and quite funny.
After class I headed out to lunch with Damon, New John, Owen, and a couple others. I reminded them about Peter's gathering. From there I headed home.
I had class at 3pm with Daisy and Violet showed up late again. Jack was there today as well as this other kid that has never had much english outside of a couple words. "Owen, why is this child in this class? He has no experience, these other kids know alot more and this kid will be confused and left behind."
"It doesn't matter...he is here to see if he likes it."
Really? Is BOND gonna rip him off as well? Class went really well. I taught, "How much is this? It costs ... dollars".
When class ended at 345pm I had to scamper off because I had to meet Nick and Megan at the bus stop to go to Shiqi. We needed to go to Justco to pick up some foodstuffs for the party tonite and for personal reasons. After going to Justco, we got out of there in record time, we headed over to the guitar shop to finally purchase those guitars I have had my eye on. While I was in HK, I went to the Tom Lee music stores and realized how much I miss shredding up Van Halen tunes and rocking out on Crazy Train. I knew I needed to get those things now. So, i went in there to see what I wanted to do. I wanted the total cock-rock Randy Rhodes Leopard print body guitar, no question on that. Thats a no brainer. But then I had to decide on the archtop/hollow-body or the Les Paul. I decided on the Les Paul. It plays wonderfully and I realized that the archtop is just too small for my tastes and it didn't play all that well when I was there. So i got the Les Paul...which plays wonderfully. I also got a small amp...about 7 inches tall and 7 inches wide. Its this cute little thing that is run off a 9-Volt battery. Its killer. Once I had decided on everything, it came Megan's turn to deliberate the price. It was originally 2550 RMB, but I know that stuff ain't worth near that amount. Megan was able, after about 15 minutes, to get them down to 2000. Damn. She is good. As we left she said she felt she could get a little more off, but prolly not much and it would have taken much longer. What an awesome deal. The place said I have free repairs for 1 month...um...uh oh...thats not a good sign. I assume the first thing to go will be the amp.
We then tried to get a taxi back because Nick said it would be hard to catch the bus at this time. Alrite. This proved to be hard. All the taxis wanted 60RMB, when 40 is usual. For about 3 cars, we were standing there and the driver said that because we were foreigners, then we should pay the full amount. This sent Megan in a rage, she yelled at him pretty good. So, on the next taxi, Nick and I decided to hide around the corner. Megan negotiated a taxi down to 40RMB, then as she waved us out, the taxi driver got pissed and drove off. LOL! Awesome! After a while we finally decided for 50RMB. We had gone thru about 8 taxis. 4 of them we were trying for 50RMB. Finally one relented. We thru the stuff in the trunk and took off. I had to direct him thru Xiaolan because he didnt know where he was going and Nick didn't really know from the highway.
We got back to the house and fired up the grill. Folks showed up and apparently it was Ash's bday on Monday. Cool, a party for two folks. Somehow we ended up with 2 cakes. So Ash gone and so did Peter. We all hung out for a while. I popped in Return of the Jedi for a little kid at the party. He seemed to be engrossed in it at times. But his attention span was quite short. He was only 3.5 years old. At one point, he was clutching a bacardi breezer that was his mom's. He was trying to take a sip, so I pulled it from his hands. HIs mother was clueless and so was Echo. "What are you doing? That's his mothers!"
"He is trying to drink it."
-"So what? Its his mothers!"
"Its alcohol! F-ing A!
-"Oh..."
The rest of the gathering was relaxing. I was super tired and passed out.