potpourri

So it’s been a bit since we've posted. I think the problem is that after the driving day post, you keep waiting for the 'crazier than that' day to come and life provides daily doses of craziness but nothing to top that. So here's a collection of thoughts/pictures from the last couple of weeks.

Signs: You just have to laugh at the signs. I don't always get my camera out fast enough to catch them, but every once in awhile you have to snap the photo.

Shanghai Airport. Somebody needs to explain to the Chinese that when English people put 'you are here' on a sign, it’s part of a map as in ‘you are located here relative to these other landmarks’. In china, they want to be like the west. So they have signs that tell you where you are. ‘You are here’. ‘ Oh, thanks for the info’. From an epistemological perspective, you can't really argue with them. They get extra points for delivering unequivocal truth in advertising. I am indeed here.

Shanghai hotel. So I landed in shanghai at like 11:30 pm. I was tired and just wanted a hotel. I walked out of the airport and stood under the sign that said ‘buses to all hotels’ for about 20 minutes and realized that just maybe there wouldn’t be any buses coming this way. So I just started walking toward the ‘airport hotel’ sign. The hotel was only like $80 a night for some reason (no smart alec comment coming explaining why the hotel was so cheap. It just was a cheap hotel attached to an airport). So they gave me my key and told me I was in room 8713. I took the elevator up to the 8th floor only to realize there was no room 713. Turns out at this particular hotel the room number was room 13 on the 7th floor of an 8 floor hotel. 8713. I’m not sure why I would have thought anything else. I discovered that obviously intuitive solutions probably depend on the intuition of the person being asked to use the product. So the picture of the hotel room is with the round bed. Kind of a cool room with a ridiculously uncomfortable bed.

Shoe shopping. So right next to our apartment is a little ‘industrial park’. In china, this means little shops on the street where work is done in the shop and on the sidewalk. Heavy on the manual labor. I think I mentioned before that the corner shop makes HVAC ducting. By hand. Dudes with sheet after sheet of galvanized steel bending sheets on a brake press and then drilling/riveting ducts. Great big industrial ducts, little tiny adapter ducts, and the occasional flower watering pot. 7 days a week these guys are getting after it. I’m guessing they make peanuts, but they are committed. So next to the duct makers is a cell phone store. Our Chinese friend took us into the cell phone shop and then out the back of the shop. Behind all the store fronts is a large cafeteria with steps leading upstairs to a clothing store. Not sure how anyone finds this place for the first time, but we were in. This was clearly where the Chinese buy cheap Chinese junk. They had thousands of square feet dedicated to shoes. All types. All brands. All cheap. I’m not sure, but I have a hunch that the 29 RMB Adidas’ are not really made by Adidas (29 RMB=$4). I was also surprised to see that Nike, with all their work developing their brand recognition would be so sloppy as to manufacture one of their shoes with a backwards N. I guess Nike is not as tight a ship as we all thought they were.

Another airport photo. Changchun airport. Capitalism and marketing has not penetrated all of china. Yet. If you’re going to sell this and that at the airport, what would you call your shop. Why ‘the generic shop’ of course. Simple. Elegant. To the point. We’re not selling anything special here. Nothing to write home about. No niche products. Just everyday junk that you might want. Or you might not. Whatever. I don’t own the place, the government does.

Last story that I don’t have any pictures for. We were playing soccer again as a family at our local neighborhood soccer field (the one with the new slit in the fence every time the last slit gets re-wired). In the middle of our game, we saw some college kids coming over to the open grass field behind the soccer pitch to practice throwing discus. After playing for awhile, I couldn’t help but notice that the discuses were landing pretty close to the fence, but didn’t think much of it. Until one of the discs hit one of our bikes. Then I got mad. Turns out when you live in a country where you can’t express yourself and somebody does something to tick you off, you just kind of snap. I slipped through the slit in the fence, grabbed the discus and walked over to where the folks were standing. I yelled at them for awhile figuring that if they couldn’t understand any of my words, maybe a prolonged look at the vein on the side of my neck about to pop might get the point across. Of course I went back through the slit and they started throwing shot put as close to our bikes as they could (let’s see if the cracker will snap again. Hee Hee). We ended the soccer game shortly after that and got the bikes out of there before there was an international incident. My wife fears that I may have reinforced their stereotypes of Americans as hot headed nut jobs. I resented that.

Til next time. . .