Guangzhou Diary XII

I continue to be amazed at how inconsiderate the Chinese are of other people’s time.  Granted, this is “simply” another example of their broader complete lack of consideration for anyone outside of themselves as individuals – but the irony is they will light you up if you take advantage of them in any way.

From repairmen to delivery folks to people who have signed up to come to a presentation, I don’t know why they even bother to set a time.  I have a somewhat “challenging” schedule in that I am generally out of my apt. from noon to at least 9pm during most days of the week.  Yet, in another sense, that provides me with some a.m. flexibility others with the typical 9-5 may not have.  But, as an example today, I was told that repairmen would be at my apartment at 9:30am to dig the growing mold spot out of my bedroom upstairs (a problem in the first place, of course, because they can’t be bothered to make anything here in a quality manner). 

10:00am rolls around with no one in sight (BTW, not only do they not concern themselves with scheduled time, they feel NO compunction about actually contacting you to say they will be late or decided not to show at all).  When I contact my realtor to see what’s happening, she says, “Oh, I called and he says he’s on his way; wait one second.”  The “one second” turns into a full half hour later when two guys show up/knock on the door, confirm they’re at the right place, and now they’ve spent the past 15 minutes out in the hallway with their equipment doing god knows what when I have to leave for work in 45 minutes.

Delivery people the same way.  And we have an astonishing number of “no shows” for folks who sign up to come to a scheduled Disney English presentation with their kids.   Re: this latter, I get that stuff comes up with your kids.  I get that maybe you thought it over and felt you didn’t really wanna bother with checking out a showy/expensive English-learning “experience” for your child, but again, have the decency to call/e-mail/text/whatever that you’ve changed your mind.  Fewer than 5%-10% do this.  And we will consistently have 6-8-10 spots scheduled for a demonstration where only 3-2-1 or even zero will show up and NO ONE will have had the decency to call.  It’s amazing and disgusting.  Oh, and the repair guys have now been in the hallway for 30 mins.

UPDATE: After sitting in the hall/outside my door for 30 minutes, it turns out the guys are doing something in the apartment next to mine.  “My” repair guys simply have not shown.  Because this is China.

Speaking of my apartment, the tile floors downstairs certainly present their own challenges.  Not sure what they’re made of, but it seems like some kind of porcelain/slate combination.  In any case, when I clumsily drop a glass it not only shatters, but it shatters and flies WAY farther than any other hard-surface floor I’ve had in the past.  I dropped this tiny little medicine bottle (more on that in a bit), and later found bits of it 15 feet away.

I had a tiny little medicine bottle because of a recent trip to one of the local hospitals to have an allergy test.  As mentioned above, I have a mold problem in my apt.  It first appeared a little over a month ago as a smallish spot outside my bathroom.  I reported it to my realtor, she came and took a look with the building maintenance guys, took a picture, and I was told they’d “develop a plan” on how to address it.

A couple weeks go by.  I contact the realtor again and she says my landlady has also talked to the bldg.. mgmt.. and they are still “developing a plan.”  In the meantime, said spot has grown exponentially and other spots start appearing upstairs.  I contact my doctor about getting a test to see if I’m allergic to mold and they tell me to come in the following Monday.  A nurse at the clinic says she will escort me to a “nearby” hospital where they can do the tests/she will translate.  We hop in a cab, nurse tells driver where to go, and off we go in a (naturally) circuitous route over the river and through the woods until cabbie pulls over – to the nurse’s astonishment – and says we’re there. 

We are not. Nurse and cabbie proceed to argue violently, no doubt her calling him stupid for not getting it right, him calling her stupid and/or claiming we really ARE at the right place (yes, they will actually try that!).  And when I say arguing violently, I mean arguing violently.  Cabbie makes calls.  Nurse berates him.  I sit in the back playing candy crush and texting friends and co-workers about how much I hate China.  J

After finally arriving at the hospital (which is not heated, BTW, and fairly chilly – esp. considering how damp it is that day), the whole experience is actually fairly efficient all things considered.  Nurse checks us in at the front desk, which takes about 5-10 mins. with the line; we go upstairs to exam room to talk to doctor; another wait of about 10 mins.  I talk to doctor, explain situation through translating nurse and he checks me out.  I will add that, in the meantime, other patients come in and out of the room to interrupt with further questions and/or to wait their turn/try to get some questions answered immediately, etc.  (Have I mentioned the complete lack of personal space/privacy they have here?  Which I do understand to some extent because of the sheer number of people here).

After doctor signs off/makes recommendations, we go down to the cashier to pay (my insurance does cover all of this, BTW, with ZERO copay), which takes about 5 mins.  We then go to have my blood drawn for the allergy tests, and this is the longest wait – probably just over 10 mins. as it’s just a constant stream of folks (take a number!) getting blood drawn for whatever various reasons.  The blood draw itself is quick and painless. 

We then go down to the pharmacy for the three meds the doctor has prescribed to help my scratchy throat in the meantime, and that takes barely 5 mins. since the doc had input the Rx info. in a computer so they could start working on it while I was having my blood draw.  All told, I spent probably just over half an hour in the hospital itself – and you know if I’d been in the states, I would probably have spent that much time in the doctor’s office waiting room for my “scheduled” appt.  (hmmmm, now that I think about it, American doctors with their own complete lack of consideration for others’ time should feel quite at home in China!).

As for the prescriptions, I got an antihistamine (which I promptly stored for if/when I actually need that), an antibiotic to take for 5 days to address any possible mold throat infection, and a couple of boxes filled with a “traditional Chinese medicine” to help with my throat.  Said medicine was a FOUL tasting concoction that came in 15 miniature bottles to take 3X daily.  The bottles were sealed with heavy duty aluminum tops that you punctured using the little plastic puncture tool included.  You then inserted one of the 15 tiny straws into said puncture and drank the vile liquid like it was a juice box.  A disgusting, glass/cylindrical juice box.    No common sense bottle of medicine that you poured capful doses of and drank, NOOOO.  How could you have wasteful packaging if you did that?

At the end of the day, my tests came back to show no mold allergy (not to mention no allergies of any kind except to dust/pollen so cool to discover that!), but the mold spots threaten to take over my apartment and I am hoping against hope I can land one of these Peace Corps jobs I just interviewed for last week and get the fuck out of Dodge!  J