TIC
TIC TIC (This Is China): My friend Bex, who lives in the same building as I do,
but on the 20th floor (I live on the 6th), pays more for
water service because she’s higher up.
She’s charged a “premium” because of the difficulty in getting water up
to her floor. For real. And we live in a pretty “modern” building.
I
know I’ve mentioned this before, but it is fucking gross beyond belief to see
these people let their fucking kids fucking piss wherever they fucking want. Can you tell how disgusted I am by it or do I
need to throw in more “fucks”? The other
night, while waiting on the elevator, some fucking trash had their fucking kid piss
in one of the fucking plants in my fucking lobby. They
couldn’t fucking wait until they got up to their fucking apartment or to
whomever they were visiting! I’m no
longer even “sorry” about not trying to pretend to be “culturally
sensitive.” This one aspect is just
savage beyond belief and COMPLETELY unworthy of ANY real “civilization” in the
year 2013. Fucking gross. A few days later, I saw a woman holding her
toddler over a trashcan in the Metro stop, squirting away – a good 3-4 feet off
the ground. Again: fucking disgusting.
I’m
not sure why, and doubt even asking would get a reasonable response, but for
some reason they don’t use checking accounts here. I pay my rent by going to the ATM and making
a transfer from my account to my landlady’s.
This means, of course, that I have her bank account number – so the idea
that they don’t use checking accounts because of possible security concerns
doesn’t hold water. Of course, I know in
the states more and more people are moving to paperless accounts, use checks
less often, etc., but something’s telling me the reason here for not using them is something dumb and/or backwards. But then again, I could be presuming that due
to a “syndrome” my friend Freddie mentioned wherein I’m experiencing a cultural
disconnect and judgment and seeing stupidity where there is none. Will try to remember to ask around about the
lack of checking accounts and see what answer I get.
My
weekly “tourist sojourn” was to the Chen Clan Academy, which was pretty awesome. I went with my first out-of-town visitor – a
Chinese guy from Nanning I started chatting with online while I was still in
Oklahoma. He came to Guangzhou for a
little holiday and to see about possibly being a Disney Learning Partner. He, too, was amazed at the stupidity that is
Tiyu Xilu (see previous post) and his most common comment, on the whole, about
Guangzhou was, “Jesus, it’s hot!” J
We both enjoyed the Academy, though, which is a museum of older Chinese
architecture and example of wealthy family living. Will be posting pics if I haven’t already by
the time I post this.
Don’t
think I’ve mentioned yet a “side effect” of working for Disney English: getting
all the songs stuck in your head. I’m
not talking about classic Disney movie songs; I mean the songs developed for
the teaching content to help the kids learn English. Beyond the various “Hello” and “Goodbye”
songs for the different class levels, literally every lesson for every level has a song. Of course, due to sheer number, many of them
are forgettable/unremarkable, but there are a fair number of catchy ones and I
generally leave work with at least 2-3 different songs on “replay” through my
head in a typical week. It’s kind of
annoying but also kind of fun at the same time.
It’s cute to see how much the kids get into some of the songs, actually. A current favorite we’ll be doing for “end of
term presentations” for parents is called “This is My Yo-Yo,” and there are 4-5
year olds that literally go into throes of ecstasy while singing it – closing
their eyes, and swaying back and forth, or dancing like little whirling
dervishes. Hella cute. J
The
whole song thing, esp. Hello, is a key of the demos – one of the opening lines
at these “mini lessons” where we sell the program is “And of course at Disney,
we just don’t say hello, we sing it.” Yes, it’s just about as corny as it
sounds. “Luckily” for me, I generally
only do “Step Up” level demos, which is the class for the older kids, and that
particular demo doesn’t have time for the hello song – we get right into the
content, which opens with a fun clip from “Monsters, Inc.” I only just started doing demos a couple
weeks ago, and am apparently crushing them.
I’ve gotten at least one kid from each one I’ve done so far to
enroll/sign up. Yay, me.
I
don’t know why I would be surprised at being surprised over seeing glimpses of “individuality”
here, but I am. Maybe because it’s still
so rare. You’d think I’d see the random
adult with, say, a bleached blond Mohawk, and I would be surprised coz you just
don’t see that in China, and I’d move on.
But I’m still actually surprised that I’m surprised. Get it?
Yeah, me neither. I know what I’m
trying to say, but me not speak English good.
Saw
my first movie in China last night – woot, woot! Courtesy of my status as a Disney employee,
got a free pass to see “Monsters University.”
It was, of course, awesome. Went
with a few other Disney Foreign Trainers and we all enjoyed it. The theater was nice enough once you got in,
but a couple of co-workers were taking pics of the lobby displays coated in
dust. The popcorn was pretty decent,
too, although instead of the “traditional” butter & salt topping, it had
been made with a semi-sweet/semi-savory topping that was pretty decent, but
still a bit odd. We all got a combo deal
with a popcorn, soda, and Mike Wazowski (sic?) plush for 28 quai AND a free
bottle of tea thrown in for good measure.
Ooooooh! J
Again, cute flick. Although it
probably wouldn’t be as good if you had not seen the original, which is
technically a sequel to this later flick.
Whoa, did I just blow your mind?
Don’t
think I mentioned our ‘team-building’ night a few weeks ago at a local Italian
restaurant – after some time at a karaoke bar.
Apparently, our center hit our target/goals for enrollments or some
such, so we got a bonus. Said bonus was
then used to have the whole staff – locals and foreigners – go do something as
a “bonding” experience. But despite the
fact that none of us “foreigners” really wanted to do the karaoke thing, that
was decided on anyway by the Center Manager (a local) to be followed up by
dinner at said Italian restaurant. I
know some people like karaoke, but honestly, why would I want to sit around and
listen to people butcher either popular English songs I like (i.e., used to
like by the end of the evening), wail through songs I don’t like, or sing songs
in a language I don’t understand?
In
any case, there is a chain of these karaoke lounges in China called KTV. Some of the bigger ones, as this one was, are
quite nice, with buffets, games, nice lounges of various sizes, etc. And of course we still had our “China
moments.” My friend Nicky tried to order
a bottle of champagne from the menu they gave us of things we could choose from
as part of the evening. Said bottle of
(pear!) champagne was on the first page of said menu and Nicky was informed,
via much hand gesturing and translated Chinese, that she could not order that
champagne, or anything on the first page.
So she turned the page, pointed, and asked if it was okay to order from
that page? She was informed that it was,
indeed, okay to order from that page, so she promptly ordered the exact same
bottle, listed for the exact same price, and the waitress beamed happily and
said she would bring it right out! We
all looked at each other and said, “TIC TIC TIC!”
