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Ode to Jay
There's more room for ambiguity than I thought.
muumuuhouse.com
As I spend more free time writing, I have also devoted more time to studying contemporary writing.(This is all cutting into my special TV time with Beau when I come home from the office emotionally, physically and sometimes even morally drained to stare at a TV showing any one of the following three programs: Californication, Sons of Anarchy or Big Bang Theory. But I digress.)
I am definitely a reader, but I tend to buy my own books, and I don't ever let myself buy new fiction. Not only do I suspect anything very popular and easily obtained of being poorly written, but also a college classmates and self-appointed intellectual superior (JD, you know who you are) once told me that I shouldn't read anything contemporary until I have read the rest of the Western canon. I started following his advice but at some point I must have lost my way as I ended up with a lot of Henry Miller, some Proust, a collection of Flannery O'Connor's short stories, a secondhand copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, some political non-fiction, and a slew of textbooks for learning Chinese and French. All in all, it's a pretty shameful disarray of a collection for someone who likes reading and wants to write.
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my local
I have been spending my Sunday mornings the past few weekends at the cafe closest to my house. It gets me away from my loony ayi and forces me to work on some of the stuff that I really want to do. It's starting to feel like I am myself on these weekends where I can hide out in the cafe and play at being a writer, and then I have to wriggle back into some suit of responsibility and a deep interest in the Chinese business world on Monday mornings. I can tell already that is only going to be harder and harder, so I am going to have to work harder and harder on the weekends if there's any hope for me to actually lead the life that I want to lead.I don't love this cafe. Lately, it's been ridiculously cold, which is no fault of theirs, but it's also filled with people, which I hate. Like this woman sitting across from me who keeps raising her hand and then slapping her thigh in defeat. Over and over again. She's trying to get the attention of the wait staff, despite the fact that there is a sign, in English and Chinese, explaining that customers should order their food at the counter and pay for it first. It's just a special streak of stupid. This morning, I got to watch a foreigner, a man in his mid-40s, have a conniption because his orange juice was too big. That's right--he paid good money for a glass of orange juice and there was just too much of it. "This is enough for a whole family," he snorted in anger. I fucking hate places full of people, because then you have to listen to stupid shit like that and it rots your brain.
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Sunday mornings at my house
We hired an ayi in October. I was a bit ambivalent about it first; the thought of hiring someone else to do my cooking and cleaning made me feel like a pretentious bourgeois prat. However, it's not very expensive to take on a housekeeper here, and I was tired after working late everyday at work. And if the difference between fighting with Beau over who needs to clean the bathroom or having someone else do it so we can both spend our time doing the things we enjoy is only a few hundred RMB, then springing for an ayi was totally worth it.Only we managed to take on a lunatic. She was recommended by a co-worker who is apparently never home when the maid is there. I miss her on Tuesdays and Fridays because I'm at work, but on Sunday mornings, she comes into the house and starts shouting to find out who's home. Of course, if I've been out the night before, I'm still in bed, and if I'm in bed, I'm nekkid. This does not bother her in the least. She comes in, wrenches open the curtains, and shouts at me while I lay in bed wondering if my ass is hanging out the back of the blankets. Then she sweeps and chatters nonsense and I can't stand up because as humiliating as it is, I really don't want to show her my naked flesh. Last time, Beau tried to be clever and lock the door, only he didn't quite manage it and she walked in on him in his birthday suit. She closed the door and start cackling heartily; I confess, I giggled, too. But I definitely jumped out of bed and got dressed as quickly as I could as well.
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on the other hand...
After that special experience yesterday, I was confused and full of goodwill towards everybody. My heart brimming with bonhomie, I stopped at the department store on the way home from work to find some cologne for Beau's Christmas gift. I'd done the homework and knew they were supposed to carry his brand, but I hadn't had any luck finding it the night before. I queued up at the information desk - I have no idea why there was a queue at the information desk - and a man jumped in line just ahead of me. That familiar cyclone of fury started whirling inside of me and when somebody's mom wearing a velour sweatsuit and too much makeup slid in front of me, I was ready to go off. "Do you mind?!" I snapped at her in English. She got the hint and moved behind me, but then proceeded to dry hump my ass while using her eight arms to try to get the clerk's attention. I ignored her antics but as soon as the clerk was free, she thrust her slip of paper between us and started barking at the clerk. In my first fully Chinese outburst, I shouted at her, "Do you see me here? I was here first! Do you have eyes?!" She looked positively wounded and pouty while the clerk snorted and covered her mouth. I just wanted to know if they carried Jean-Paul Gaultier, which they didn't, despite the information I found online.Read More!
Foreigners to the fore
I read a blog post yesterday that raised the question of the existence of racism in China, specifically the variety that requires foreigners receive better treatment than local residents. Coincidentally, I found myself placed in just that position last night. The subway train accident that shut down Line 1 of the Shanghai Metro resulted in the morning’s commuters being herded out of the People’s Square station without swiping our Shanghai public transportation cards to register that we had already left the station. I got back on the subway in the evening without any trouble, but when I tried to get out of the station at the stop nearest my home, the turnstile beeped at me and flashed an error message.Read More!