A Day In The Life

Wake up call at 6am. I answer once and hang up the phone. Proceed to bathroom and take a shower. Upon exiting the shower I get another phone call. “Sir we think your phone is broke, can someone come up to look at it. We tried calling you 4 times.” Umm, 1. How can it be broke if I am talking to you now? 2. I was in the shower, I got the first wake up call.”

Head to the airport to travel to next city. Check in is fast, security is miles ahead of US security. I go into the sundry shop and start to peruse the interesting choices for fast food snacks. No peanuts, no chex mix, no combos. The usual for a China airport. Plenty of fish balls, dehydrated chicken wings in a bag, dehydrated chicken legs in a bag(room tempature), fish crackers, beef candy, red meat Lay’s potatoe chips, curry chicken Lay’s potatoe chips and so on.

At this point as though I am like a deer in headlights having seen so many dried meat products, the clerk approaches me and says “here you go!”. Handing me a bag of Oreo cookies, cause clearly I came into the store for some Oreo’s. Hoping for some almonds, I leave defeated with an apple juice.

Next stop the bathroom. Praying to myself “please be a western toilet, please be a western toilet”. Into the stall and “YES!” a western toilet. But now realizing there is no toilet paper. Nope, the only thing usable in the stall is a parchment type paper that I don’t even think of tring to wipe my butt with. Defeated at trying to use the restroom, I now go to the sink to wash my hands. And as I look for a paper towel, I realize that the one roll of toilet paper is to be used to dry your hands. Having used half a roll to dry up my wet hands I pick off the little pieces of toilet paper now glued to my hands and exit the restroom.

Heading to the café’ to see what sort of food is available in the airport. I settle on the egg salad sandwich and French fries. As I collect my goods, I get 1 packet of ketchup. I politely ask for 4 more, cause there are a lot of French fries. I get laughed at. Asking for anything more than 2 of anything, you are always laughed at, cause who in the world needs condiments. Egg salad sandwich was great, can’t complain about that. But the French fries must have been put in a microwave because they are soggy and very greasey.

Sitting down at the gate to eat, you see others stare and point at you. Having spent enough time in Asia, you just get use to being the minority. It is kinda odd, but kinda welcomed because for once you realize what it is like to not be the norm. To always get starred at and laughed at.

For some reason noise pollution just doesn’t seem to matter in China. You have the airport speaker that is blarring 4,5,6 times for the guy in seat 5D on the Shanghai to Vancouver flight to please board now. All things considered, I guess that is the generousity of the culture, to wait on the one guy that hasn’t made it to the gate yet.

Next up is dinner. Good Wood Coffee shop is a western chain over here, and we try to go to as many as possible. Steak dinner with an extra ordered plate of broccoli (oh course). Hotel California comes on in Good Wood. I can’t recall a single other song that has been played in restaurants here in China except Hotel California. We must have heard it 30 times in all the places we have been in. It’s as though it was the only 70’s song to have made it out of an era and into every restaurant in China.

And that is a day in the life of China.