Today was bittersweet.
Today was another nice, yet hot day. I just go out side and stand or something and i start sweating. My room is airconditioned, but the house is not because some people in the house believe its ok to keep the windows open and the glass sliding door open to allow giant flying cockroaches to enter the house and have free range. No, the real problem is that the house is really big and there is no airconditioner. AC units are expensive here, well, for a free standing one which we would get. It would be nice to have. I walk out of my room into the hallway to head out and right when I open the door, I am slammed with a wall of heat that feels like it has come from an oven. Another problem with the house is lack of insulation. Not just this house, but all of China. No insulation. The moment you turn off the AC, the cold air is sucked away. China is like a giant sink hole for AC air.
Yumi and I headed to the Bond office so I could get paid before we went out for lunch. We got to the office and it was packed full of people. Mark Lee, Nick & Megan, Peter, Ben, Shevon, Gary, Mountain, Owen, Jolene and Wing. I was surprised. Mark was chatting with Peter and Nick about something he was told to do. Apparently a travel agency has put together an english educational tour to Canada and England. They wanted Bond to do some recruiting for this. The price for the trip is 2500RMB. So, they can only really ask those who are rich, and Mark Lee teaches at the school where the richest people send their kids. The travel agency gave him the tourist DVDs for both locations. His school cancelled all his classes for this week and Bond just told him that he had this to do this week. So, all he will do is pop the DVDs in during the class, tell the kids about it and ask, "Who wants to go?" There is not much more he can do in such short notice. The chinese are their own worst enemy. Just like APPLE. The iPod could be the perfect mp3 player, however, they shot themselves in the foot with the lack of battery power and the ability to remove and replace just the battery.
So, while we were there i mentioned to everyone that we were going to the upstairs of the CRC for lunch, the place I had my cellfone stolen in september. Megan and Nick were the only takers. So we headed out. We had some dim sum and a couple other things. I saw a couple cool t-shirts. There was a family of 3 that walked out of the small japanese resturant that is located there and all three family members had matching "Revenge of the Sith" t-shirts on. I WAS LIKE SWEET! The boy was prolly about 8. So i mentioned to them, "Wo xihuan nimen de t-shirts." They smiled and said thank you. Then, a few minutes later, another little girl, no more than 8 years old, walked by wearing a t-shirt with this written on it.... "Queen of the Bitch". I laughed my ass off and so did Nick. Yumi and Megan were clueless. It was the emblem of the Queen's crown in gold on a white shirt with the words written in black. It ruled.
Then about 5 minutes later, Peter called me. He was in Guzhen at the moment with Echo purchasing a motorbike. He said the local movie theatre here has a bunch of Revenge of the Sith posters. Apparently, Star Wars will be playing in Guzhen on May 20th. "The official 'Star Wars' website has put up the full list of worldwide release dates for 'Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith'. Some countries such as China are missing from the list currently due to strict censorship laws." Peter just laughed at what I said. He was like, "Dude, its China. If it will make money, they will do it." Seems as though someone smuggled it over from Hong Kong or something. Thats good for me then. I get to see it without having to go to HK. I might end up beating the crap out of all the chinese people in the theatre though...apparently, in movie theatres, none of the chinese turn off their cellfones. And they live and die by their cellfones here. Nick saw Lord of the Rings here last year, and said it was super annoying.
After lunch was over, we split up and were planning to meet at the bus station about 155pm to head down to Shiqi to go sightseeing. There are some sights that are really kool that you gots to see. So, I made it to the bus station at 155pm and Yumi wasn't there. Before buying tix I called her up to see where she was. She had just left her place. Great. THe bus leaves at 2pm and she told me to buy tix. So, I did and there I sat at the entrance to the bus waiting for her and the driver was looking at me and I was like, "Dude, I am waiting for a woman." He was like, "Ahh, yes, I understand." Yumi showed up right at 2pm, we got on, and they kicked us off the bus. There was no room left on the bus. We just bought tix for a 2pm ride. Look, "Seat 45". And they were like, no seats. WTF! I was like, "Look, 2pm, this is our bus ride." They kicked us off. Mutha...
They have all this stuff computerized, it would help if it actually worked and had things synched up. But, nope. Its just a waste of time to do anything properly.
So we waited for 30 minutes for the next bus, got on that, and it filled up. The guy checking tix said something to us because it said 2pm, and I was like, "I ain't getting off, sucka!" And Yumi couldn't understand cause he was speaking Guangdonghua.
So, we got to Shiqi and asked a hotel to see their map briefly, since mine was only in Chinese. The place we wanted to go was another 30 minutes out of the way, so we went to this other park in town, Zhimaling Park, that was quite large. Its got a bird sanctuary or more like a bird prison. We took a taxi and he didn't try to screw us, which is always refreshing. We walked around it alot for a couple hours. The bird prison had a bunch of doves/pigeons, cranes, peacock's, pheasants, and a few other things. They also had a cage with 3 asian black bears that I wanted to pet. They were so cute. Next too it they had about 4 monkeys enclosed. Everytime I go to a zoo now, I think of "Planet of the Apes". They look so depressed, I want to set them free. The park was gorgeous. It was alot of fun to walk around. There were a bunch of little kids playing and swimming in the fountain in just their underwear. It was cute, but I was like, GET OUT OF THE DIRTY WATER! Don't drink it!
After that we hopped a taxi to Jusco, the big international supermarket. We went to the sushi shop, Sushi Oh. Super good! Fantastic sushi. I want to go again. Expensive, but soooooo good. I splashed soy sauce all over my shirt. Yumi said, "Just like a child. :-)"
We then grabbed a taxi back to the bus station and grabbed a ticket for the 7pm bus back to Xiaolan. It was 630, so I figured we could go for a walk down walking street then come back. When we got back, the bus to Xiaolan was leaving. It was 655pm, so I tried to get it to stop. It never leaves before 7pm, which made me think this was the 630 bus, but I wasn't taking any chances. I chased it down and the passengers were just staring at me smiling and pointing. I was telling them to have the driver stop and they did nothing but stare and point. I was like, YOU FUCKERS! STOP THE DAMN BUS, they drove off so I threw up a single barrel and they laughed and were happy i swore at them.
We talked to the ticket counter and started giving them shit. And they had no idea what we were talking about. The were like, "i don't know where the buses are." Theoretically, you computerize a system so you know where everything is at the moment, and you have ways to find out where the buses are by CB radio, or other type things. So, finally, after minutes of trying to figure it out, they were like, lets call. Takes a genious to do that initially i guess. They said the bus was broken down and not coming. I was like, "You should have told us that when we bought the tickets." She was like, "I didn't know." I was like, "Why is your system computerized and shouldn't your bus driver contact you immediately if he wasn't coming?"
Aiya.
So we tried to get a taxi, but all the taxis wanted 60 RMB, and i am like, screw you. We shouldn't pay more than 40RMB. But of course, since I am white, we have to pay more. I didn't really want to take the 4RMB bus, but we ended up doing so. This is the bus taht stops every 200 meters. Its not a bad ride, it gets you there within 45min - 1 hour. The problem is that it is overcrowded, loud, smelly, most of the time its super hot, and people are always throwing up on them because chinese people have week stomachs on buses. So we took the #38.
On the way back to Xiaolan I called Gary and Wing trying to find out about my sword for Guo Sifu. I got a call back and it was said that it wasn't ready. Ok, even though they said today. Wing said we would go tomorrow at 5pm or something.
We got to the Xiaolan bus station and then we needed to get motorcycle taxis. I was heading to my place. I knew the price should be about 3 or 4, but some of these punks wanted 6 and I lauged at them. No one would give it to me for 4, so I was like, screw it, I am sick of you people, i took it for 5 and this jerkface took me all over the city. I yelled at him a couple times in chinese because he was going the wrong way. And when he dropped me off I scolded him some more. Racist, arrogant, Turd Ferguson.
So, needless to say, at the end of a relatively great day, I am in a very pissy mood.