Finally…..
It’s been an interesting weekend….
October 31st was Halloween, as you all know, what
you don’t know is that it’s one of my good friend’s, Adrian’s, birthdays as
well. He started planning it about 2
weeks ago, and we were going to go to the pub Ecstasy, which is a bar in a boat
and has a very, very good band. We were
supposed to meet at 8 pm, so, I went to the pub, and nobody was there. I decided instead to wait at a cafe just
outside, have a green tea latte (something that everyone is making fun of me
for now…it’s delicious, but apparently only grandmother’s here order it), and
wait for people to show up. At 8:30, my
friend Clark showed up. He laughed at me
for forgetting that 8 pm, Chinese time, is between 9 and 10, I don’t know how I
always forget this fact.
We sat around for a while and watched the craziness in Sea
World, which is not the same as Sea World anywhere else. It’s essentially an area full of bars and
restaurants. I don’t know how many
restaurants there are, I’m guessing somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-60
different ones, with food from all over the world: Italian, German, American, UK, Brazilian,
Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, you get the idea. It also has a huge square where people can
wander around, and do whatever it is that Chinese people do when they come to Shenzhen
on vacation and want to see a foreigner frequented place…mainly take excessive
amounts of pictures, look at the giant cruise-ship there, and mill around
aimlessly. This time, people were sort
of dressed up for Halloween, Chinese Jesus was there, he was quite
popular. Most of the little boys were
dressed up as witches, which was different from my point of view. Finally, Ade contacted me at about 9 pm, and
we went to McCawley’s Pub to meet instead of Ecstasy.
The pub was absolutely packed. It’s a 3 level pub, the 3rd level
was full, the 2nd level was standing room only, and, since I know
the manager there quite well, he snagged a table in the corner for us, Clark
and I arriving first. Adrian and his
wife Moon came in dressed up as Sia (I don’t know who that is either, google it
if you want), which seemed to involve a leotard, a blonde wig, and ballet
slippers. I don’t have a clue how Adrian
found his costume as he is more or less a bodybuilder, it was a seriously
disturbing image for me. While at
McCawley’s, we had a girl come up and
join us, she apparently loves Halloween, and wished that she had been able to
dress up for it, she had been in China for a grand total of 2 hours, which is
fairly impressive, I think, and her name is Jessica.
Jessica is currently working for a casino in Macao, and is
waiting for her work visa, so, she has to stay in China while she waits – I don’t
really understand why. She’s with the
construction crew building the casino. She
joined us to go to Ecstasy, and enjoyed watching the band with us. The rock band there is absolutely
fantastic. I went to the same place last
Halloween, and I love the costumes that they always do, but, more than that,
they are extremely talented. Jessica
mentioned that the next day she was going apartment shopping, and needed to run
some other errands. She asked for my
help, and I informed her that I would be happy to do so.
On Saturday, I met her at her hotel, and joined her to look
at apartments. The Hotel Chain that she
works for (I’m avoiding mentioning it, as I know that they’re contracts are a
little crazy, and there’s all kinds of rules of conduct for living abroad, and I
don’t want to accidentally get her in trouble if there’s anything that she’s
not supposed to do. I talked to her
co-worker at length a few weeks ago, and their rules are seriously insane; they
essentially rule your personal and your professional life down to what types of
friends you have, who you associate with, where you spend your free time, etc.)
takes care of apartment rental, so, we got together and met up with her real
estate agent. As soon as I saw her, I wondered
if she would recognized me, she’s the cause of my almost arrest when I first
came to China. I didn’t really say
anything, since the corporation was taking care of things, so, I didn’t think
this real estate agent could afford to play the same games with her that they
did with me.
We looked at the corporations approved locations, and
decided on which was better, with a little input from me. She mentioned as well that she would be
interested in learning a bit of Chinese.
I introduced her to a school that is local to her and has some fantastic
instructors, and also arranged for a friend to teach her the tea ceremony. Jessica was able to make some friends with
some local girls who are already planning on going to KTV next weekend if she
can (karaoke). We then went out for Thai
for dinner, then watched the water show.
Ended the day with massage, and an offer from another friend of mine to
teach her yoga on top of a mountain every day that she is in town. Finally dropped her off at her hotel in Shenzhen,
and went home myself.
What made my day (aside from spending time with an extremely
beautiful woman!!), was that I was able to translate directly Chinese to
English and back again, all day long. I was
able to show her around and find her everything that she needed. I started thinking that perhaps in a year or
so, I should look at taking a 6 month break from studying the language, and
just do some guided tours in China. I
finally do feel comfortable with the language.
I’ve had numerous friends and people that I’ve met tell me
that my Chinese is extremely good for a foreigner, until translating all day, I
didn’t really feel that that was true. Granted,
I still have a lot of work to do. What I
need is more sentence forms, more vocabulary, and, of course, a couple of
thousand more characters, but, all that aside, I’m very comfortable in talking
with strangers now, and speaking Chinese in a variety of situations. This boost in confidence is exactly what I needed
to get me motivated for this next year of studying. I find it interesting that passing that HSK
exam didn’t do it, but a day of showing someone around, certainly did.
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