Chris’ Blog

Well it’s been a while, so here goes. This one’s kind of long (not like the other one’s weren’t) so you might want to read it over a few sittings. Feel free to print it out and read a chapter a night before going to bed. Also, I have switched computers and may not have properly added everyone to the mailing list. If you think that I have missed someone or think there is someone that would like to know about our adventures in China, please let me know.

Flight to Ottawa

I was in Shanghai until the end of February when I returned to Ottawa for a few days and then went to San Jose for two months. The flight from Shanghai to Vancouver was interesting. I was stuck in the area between First Class and Coach where there are about four or five rows. I had an isle seat on the side in the first row (the row was 2 seats on each side and three seats in the middle) so I had a wall directly in front of me (which meant no seat to put your stuff under), so I had to put all my stuff in the overheads. I put everything away and then reorganised the bins and helped everone else in my aisle pack their stuff. 3 generations of Chinese can live together in a house the size of my living room, but they can’t figure out how to pack two carry-on suitcases in one overhead bin. (Actually, I believe this is a universal problem). So I start thinking to myself maybe I’ll have two seats to myself since the window seat hasn’t been taken yet. But soon enough a woman shows up carrying a suitcase, a largely oversized purse, and about 5 plastic grocery bags filled with oddly shaped items. If your grandma is like my grandma (and for some of you your grandma is my grandma) then you know what I’m talking about. She sets them all on the floor in front of her seat while I’m thinking, “You can’t put those there”. Then she says she has to go get her baby. I think, “You can’t put your baby there either.” She returns with her baby and possibly some more bags (I can’t remember) and proceeds to start shuffling things around in front of her (and me also). Soon a stewerdess (or flight attendent if you prefer) shows up to inform the woman that she has to stow everything in the overhead bins for takeoff. “For my baby,” she says. “Yes well, I understand that they’re for your baby, but you still have to put everything overhead until we take off.” “For my baby.” It went on from there and the stewerdess apoligised to me for all the trouble and said she would try to find me or the woman another seat (I wasn’t holding my breath for that). I could see that the woman had her hands full with a baby and bags up to her ears so I packed her bags for her and managed to squeeze everything into the remaining spaces of 4 or 5 bins. I think the stewerdess had to convince someone to let her put her suitcase or one of her bags in front of them for takeoff as well. Then she told me that the flight was competely full. Shocking. All in all the flight wasn’t too bad. Once we took off the woman retrieved half of her things and built a play area in front of our seats. Good times.

San Jose

I got home to Ottawa and was able to see Christine for a few days before I left for San Jose. San Jose was alright. Instead of not being able to understand people because they speak Chinese, I couldn’t understand them because they spoke Spanish. One of my co-workers in San Jose has an electric car. We took a ride and I’ve attached some pictures. I think the best feature was the serial port next to the emergency brake. That should be standard issue in all cars if you ask me. He also has some electric bunny slippers. I attached pictures of those as well.

Time in Ottawa

I returned home to Ottawa to my newly graduated wife. I was able to attend her year-end exhibition where all the photography students put their best pictures on display. In my honest opinion, Christine was one of the best. She won an award for best digital image (a picture that has been doctored in photoshop). The award came with a prize: an Epson colour inkjet printer and flatbed scanner. I was happy that she won, but not so happy that it wasn’t something slightly more portable like cash.

I was in Ottawa for a little less than two weeks. In that time we sold our condo, sold or gave away most of everything we owned, and shipped those things we wanted to keep to Edmonton. It is a very liberating feeling to get rid of your possessions. You feel very free. (As long as you don’t think about how much it will cost to replace…) We also tried to see all of our friends before we left. We were very busy. I defniitely feel that God allowed for everything to go very smoothly for us. Our final day in Ottawa was pretty crazy. We still had a lot of stuff left, so in the morning I took two carfulls (and I mean carfulls) of stuff to Goodwill. I challenge anyone to fit 10 2-square-foot boxes and 6 garbage bags and various lamps and accessories into a Nissan Sentra…and still leave room for his wife. Christine said that I kept taking boxes and bags and she kept thinking that I would come in and say, “Okay it’s full now” but I just kept taking more stuff. So we did two trips to Goodwill in the morning and then started packing in the afternoon. It turned out that we had kept more clothes than could fit in our suitcases - so we had to throw some away. It basically came down to, if you look at it and hesitate, it’s garbage. So we loaded our stuff into the car and headed over to some friends of ours that were supposed to drive us to the airport. Due to a communication breakdown (it’s always the same) they had headed over to our place to pick us up. Of course we didn’t know that at the time…so we left a second set of car keys with some other friends of ours that are also friends of the first set of friends and happen to be their neighbours (that was lucky) and headed off to the airport. I unloaded Christine and all of our bags at the departure gate, then drove the car to the far corner of the parking lot, tossed the keys inside, locked the doors and walked away. I call it my own version of walk away insurance…

Walk-Away Insurance

Let me tell you a story about a young man named Chris and his lovely bride of one year who we will call Christine. Chris and Christine lived happily in a two bedroom condominium in a mostly quiet residential area of Ottawa. They, like many others, had a car that they enjoyed very much. It was a large car, very heavy, had a horn that could give a moose a heart attach, and was stylishly emblazened with the words “Park Avenue” on the rear passanger side. Although Chris and Christine enjoyed their car very much, despite its lack of cup holders, it was having difficulties with the transmission and Chris felt that it was wiser to shoot the horse than to be thrown into a cactus or rattlesnake or some such painful predicament (that’s a metaphor that I just made up, so don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard anyone say that before). So Chris and Christine went down to the local Nissan dealer to investigate the possibility of a new car. They felt that they were being responsible and had prayed about the issue before they headed out (after making a previous financial decision for which they did not pray about and proved to be too foolish to even make a little story about). They test-drove a few cars and decided on leasing a Sentra. Chris was very careful about not being suckered into buying options that would cost extra money now and provide little or no enjoyment (such as spoilers or aluminum alloy rims). There were many forms to sign and Chris soon found himself saying, “Yeah, uh huh…and where do I sign?” They decided to purchase some extra protection called walk-away insurance which allowed them to return the car and “walk away” in the case of losing employment or being transfered to another location. This seemed like a very good idea in such an uncertain world. So Chris and Christine went home with their car (well, not that day actually; Chris did get talked into buying the high-gloss coat that makes the rain bead up so your car looks really cool) and were very happy with it (it had cup holders after all). Not too much later, Chris did indeed get transfered to a place (let’s call it exotic so as not to give away the identities of “Chris” and “Christine”) where Chris and Christine could certainly not take their beloved car. Chris was feeling pretty smug about his wise purchase of the walk-away insurance. His office co-workers were impressed with his previous foresight…that is until he went to the dealer to work out the details of the walking away part. It would appear that when Chris and Christine traded in their previous car, it was registered to Christine. With the lease of the new car they decided to keep the registration in Christine’s name since it meant not having to get new licence plates, and more importantly, not having to remember a new licence plate number (although it is possible that Christine may have not actually memorised the original number). It would further appear, and this is where our story takes a turn for the worse, that the walk-away insurance was also in Christine’s name, and so was only good if Christine was layed off or transfered. Well, you can imagine this was disappointing news for the couple. Chris tried to explain that his wife was a student, and why would he buy employment related insurance for someone who was unemployed. Obviously the intention at the time of purchase was for Chris (the employed person) to be insured because who in their right mind would buy completely useless insurance. The dealership explained to Chris that the insurance was not completely useless because if Christine died (presumabely in something other than a car crash) then Chris could use the insurance. Chris couldn’t understand why the dealership thought that he would no longer need a car if his wife died but then he also wasn’t smart enough to read what he was signing so it was probably just beyond his limited comprehension. The dealership did offer to buy the car from him for a price of about 3 or 4 thousand dollars below the buy-out price (and then sell it for a price roughly equivelent to the buy-out price) but Chris politely declined and instead left the car with some friends and now spends his time in the exotic location that he was transfered to thinking about ways to get rid of his car.

Visiting Family

After I walked away from our car, we flew to Edmonton to visit family. I hadn’t seen my mom or dad for almost two years. It was very good; much of my family came to visit us while we were at my mom’s which was really nice because we didn’t have the time or the energy to go visit everyone ourselves. We spent about two weeks there and then went to San Jose for a couple weeks to finish up what I was doing before I went to Ottawa. Through our trip to Edmonton and San Jose we seemed to start buying more things and I began to get worried that we would have to throw more things away since our suitcases were already full, but we seemed to manage to get it all to fit. After San Jose we flew back to Edmonton for the weekend before leaving for Shanghai. By now, we were pretty sick of flying places and living out of suitcases. As a testament to how much stuff we had and how big our suitcases were, we had to pay extra on our flight from San Jose to Edmonton. Apparantly the first 75 pounds are free (per bag), but after that you have to pay. It was 50 dollars extra.

Going to the airport

We spent another couple days with my mom and then my brother-in-law drove us to the airport. Now going to the airport is always somewhat of a touchy topic with Christine and myself. Christine likes to be there very early, and I don’t like waiting at the airport. Anyway, I estimated that it would take two hours to get from my mom’s to the airport. Now a good idea when driving to the airport is that you should generally increase the amount of extra time you need relative to the amount of time it takes you to get there. For example if it takes 20 minutes, plan for 30 minutes. If it takes 2 hours, don’t plan for two hours and 10 minutes. In the end I think it took closer to two and three quarter hours. I had underestimated the amount of time and then there were some traffic problems. And of course I didn’t stop to go pee at Mundare (that’s the town with the giant kubassa). So now we’re about 30 mintues from the airport and our flight leaves in 45 minutes and I’m trying to estimate whether I can make it or not. It’s funny how things like missing a flight that is likely completely sold out for the next week or so just don’t matter anymore when you start doing the pee dance. “Pull over here.” Five minutes later (I really had to go) we were back on the road. We arrived at the airport about ten or fifteen minutes before our flight left. My brother-in-law dropped us off at the gate and we hauled our bags in. Luckily for us everyone was already on the plane so there was no line at check-in. We started going through the checking-in process when the guys says, “This bag weighs 96 pounds. The limit is 75 pounds. Do you want to put some things in another bag?” I few thoughts went through my mind. Things like: my plane leaves in ten minutes; those other bags are full; my plane leaves in ten minutes; why didn’t this happen before; my plane leaves in nine minutes. So I asked him if can pay the penalty. “Sure,” he says, “but let me see how much it will cost….that will be $362.” Well, that was certainly more than the $50 on the last flight. My thoughts started changing from “my flights leaves in nine minutes” to “I’m not paying $362.” “Well,” he says, “you could put the extra stuff in another box in which case it would cost you….$150.” “Okay.” So a skycap went off, in no hurry I might add, to fetch a box. It didn’t seem that there was much I could do. I mean our flight was leaving in eight minutes. So in the mean time we started checking the other bags. “Oh. This one’s overweight too. It’s 85 pounds.” I see. So we checked the two “small” bags and opened up the two big bags. The skycap returned with the box and we started throwing books and anything that looked heavy into the box. When I couldn’t take it any longer we zipped up the bags and tossed them back on the scale: 73 pounds; 68 pounds. Good. The skycap taped up the box and then the check-in guy says, “Okay, so you’ll want to write your name on the box…let me get you a pen.” Seven minutes. Christine writes our names on, and I tell her to go while I collect our documents. “I’ll call down and tell them to hold the gate.” “Good idea.” Then the skycap figured he deserved something for his help… I catch up to Christine at security. We cut in front of everyone and start going through the process. Now I’ve gotten pretty good at the security thing, and I can do it pretty fast…but when you’re carrying a camera, film that needs to be hand-checked, a laptop, a film scanner, and walkman you can only go so fast. Oh yeah, and I always have to take my shoes off because I know they will set off the alarm. So Christine goes through and then I follow. While one guy is swabbing Christine’s film and my laptop for traces of explosives another guy says, “Do you have scissors in your bag?” “No.” “Hmmmm. It looks like it’s over here.” So I start ripping through my bag. Usually they don’t like my razor, so that’s the first thing I go for. “No….that’s not it.” So he starts looking through my bag. Him and I are going through the bag and then Christine starts getting in then when he starts getting a little clausterphobic. “Just stand back and let me look,” he says. Just let us go you crazy Nazi; our flight leaves in four minutes. Then I finally open up the last pouch and remember putting my cuticle scissors on my keychain; you know, so I wouldn’t lose them. Well, I lost them. “Do you want us to label these so you can pick them up when you com back?” “No.” “Okay. Well I need you to fill out this form because we found scissors in your bag.” “Yeah….” So Christine runs ahead while I finish up signing my name for trying to smuggle weapons on the plane. Well, can you believe it, but we made it. Not only that, but our bags arrived in Shanghai with us. That was a miracle. Even if you arrive on time you only have a 50/50 chance that your bags will make it. I was impressed.

Back in China

So we made our flight and arrived in Shanghai with no further problems. The de-planing (that’s an airline term) took a long time because they had to check everyones temperature. Mine was 34.4 C. It seems I have bigger things to worry about than SARS, like hypothermia. I got through customs with no problems. I thought that because my visa was in an old invalid passport I might have some problems, but they just passed me on through. We got a cab that was big enough to hold our suitcases and we were off. The cab driver asked us some questions, probably wanting to know which route to take, but I just let him decide. There was some trouble at the gate to our apartment. The security guard didn’t want to let us in. I just pointed at buildings and said, “We live here,” over and over. He finally gave up and let us in. We got our stuff up to the apartment and possibly passed out. My memory is a little foggy.

Christine likes our apartment, so that’s good considering we have a year lease. Sometimes funny smells come out of the drain and we’ve been trying to seal off the kitchen to keep out the cockcroaches. I think we’re making progress. Try to explain “spray foam insulation” to a Chinaman. But we found some. We took a co-worker of mine that speaks good English.

We bought Christine a bicycle. The salesman kept trying to tell us that we needed a more expensive bike, but I insisted on the cheap one so that’s what we got. All the bicycles here come with a rack over the rear tire. A lot of the guys put their girlfriends there and drive around. So one evening, before Christine got her bicycle, we wanted to go to my work to get my laptop so we could watch a DVD. I talked fast for about five minutes and finally convinced Christine that it was perfectly safe (relatively speaking, of course) to ride on the back and away we went. We got a lot of looks and I was pretty tired when we got back (it’s about six km each way to work and back) but it was fun. I don’t think she wants to do it again though. Apparantly the luggage rack isn’t very comfortable. Since then we’ve seen some bikes that have a padded seat on the luggage rack. They think of everything here.

We arrived the beginning of June and most of the past month has been spent making the apartment more like home. We bought a few more things for the apartment: a computer, DVD player, stereo, and other things that don’t really interest me. The basic problem when shopping is this: the salesman sees a “whitey” and thinks something in Chinese that translates to “this guy is rich so I’m going to sell him the most expensive thing we have” while I think “hey, I’m in China; I wonder how cheap I can get this for.” You should have seen the disgusted look that the salesman at the appliance store gave me when I wanted to give a listen to the RMB 400 ($70) bookshelf stereo. We ended up buying it, only someplace else where they seemed a little more pleased with our purchase.

DVD’s are so cheap here. It costs the same to buy a DVD in China as it does to rent it in Canada. The problem is trying to find ones that aren’t pirated or smuggled. If it comes in a zip-loc bag, it’s pirated. But even if it comes in a regular case and looks legit, you still don’t know. We’ve bought a few that say “Not for sale or resale outside the USA or Canada.” I don’t know what that’s all about. Oh, and of course the other problem is that our DVD player has Chinese buttons and menus and the DVD has Chinese menus as well. It usually takes us a few minutes to figure out how to change the audio track to English, but we get it done.

We spent our second wedding anniversary here in Shanghai. We celebrated by going to Yang’s Kitchen for supper. Yang’s Kitchen was one of the restaurants listed in Christine’s travel guide. We found it at the end of a long alley that made a few turns before finally openning up at the restaurant. Yang was smart enough to put up plenty of signs along the way to let you know that you were still on the right track. We had spring rolls (although they brought them at the end of the meal), hot and sour soup (not as good as what I can make, but still acceptable), lemon chicken, the seasonal vegetable plate (it looked like a plate of boiled spinach to me) and some tea. All for RMB 76 (or about $12.50); gotta love it.

Other than that Christine has started a job as a part-time English teacher. She teaches elementary children English. She likes the teaching a lot, but like many institutions here it’s poorly organised and the toilets are in rough condition. From what she tells me there are stalls with half-length doors (half a door is better than no door), a trough for number 1 and a bucket for number 2. As of yet she has not had to use the facilities…but I’m waiting for the day when she comes home with a look in her eye similar to what Bambi must have had when he saw his mom get shot in the meadow by the hunters.

I think I’ll close this message with a funny story about cockroaches. Being a hot and humid climate where people like to throw garbage on the ground, Shanghai has a fair number of cockroaches. We see the odd one in our kitchen once in a while (cockroach soup anyone?) and I swear I’ve seen movement out of the corner of my eye a couple times at the grocery store or a food court. Well, the other night we were in a taxi on the way to a nearby (although not nearby enough to walk) department store. We were stuck in traffic and just sitting around at the time when Christine starting thinking to herself as she often does, “If there are cockroaches in people’s homes, I wonder if there are cockroaches in cars?” So that she wouldn’t have to wonder any longer, a little cockroach decided to walk up beside her. I don’t think I ever saw here move so fast. She turned around and started pushing me, trying to get away. Unfortunately, both of her exits were blocked: one by the cockroach and the other by me. By now I’m starting to wonder what’s going on. I have a certain sense that tells me that when my wife starts climbing over me and clawing at the door that there’s probably something wrong. Now, one of my responsibilites as husband is to instill a certain sense of calmness into our relationship. I find that it is necessary in order to keep our lives from tumbling into complete chaos although my efforts are not always met with complete appreciation and are sometimes misunderstood as a lack of awareness of my surroundings or just a general dullness. I believe this may have been one of those times. Christine is in a general panic and desperately pushing against me (I usually interpret this as “Why aren’t you doing something?!”) while I am trying to think of what I can say that will fill me in as to what’s going on yet not require too lengthy of a reponse that will use up Christine’s greatly shortened patience. I decided to ask, “What’s wrong?” Now you have to remember that before Christine saw the cockroach she was thinking about the cockroach and you have to understand that whatever she’s thinking about, I am expected to be thinking about also or at the very least have thought about it in the past so that if it’s a question involving her and various other people drowning, I would know right away who I would save. (There’s only one correct answer for that question by the way, and asking if I’m in a boat or swimming as well is not the right answer). So in addition to not thinking about cockroaches I also did not see the cockroach, and thereby through the mere act of sitting had commited two terrible indescretions of inattentiveness. Well, she replied with something like, “There’s a cockroach on the seat!!!” which in retrospect was pretty nice of her, considering what I had done. I think that perhaps she was just too scared to really think about how disappointed she was with me. Okay, so I now I know the problem. My first thought was, “What do you want me to do about it?” I decided not to say that. My second thought was, “Well, maybe it will go away.” I decided not to say that either. My third thought was, “I’ve been thinking for a long time without saying anything. I better say something quick.” I decided to say something that would let her know that I had acknowledged the problem, was deeply concerned about the situation, and that I was committed to finding a solution although I did not have one ready at the time. So I said, “Oh.” By now Christine had realised that despite my role as provider and protector I was not going to provide an acceptable level of support in this situation and she was going to have to do something herself. So she jumped up on my lap and hid behind me like a little kitten. By now the cockroach had gone away, although I’m still glad that I hadn’t offered that as a suggestion. We rode the rest of the way with Christine on my lap.

So, that’s it for this edition of the China update. We will send more pictures next time. Christine needs to get her film developed and then we need to get her scanner running.