Motorcycle incident

It was a Friday night and I was planning to meet my friend Daniel for cocktails. I wasn't too keen on going, but he swore that the bar we were going to was amazing. So, I headed out of my apartment which is located in the busiest part of town - People's Square. Yep, nine o'clock on a Friday night and there were billions of taxis on the street... all of them full. There were also billions of people standing on the sidewalk also desperately waving at any taxi that drove by. After fifteen minutes of waiting, I was getting impatient.

A guy on a motorcycle started loitering around me. Yes yes, everyone tells you: DO NOT TAKE THE MOTORCYCLE TAXIS. They are illegal and don't have meters... they are just normal people trying to make a buck on the side. Yet, I was getting desperate, and this guy kept hanging around me, knowing that I was waiting for a taxi. So finally (after repeatedly calling Daniel who wasn't answering) I caved in and got on the motorcycle. I figured I might as well take a chance once in my life. "How much?" I asked him. "Five quai" he replied. Not a bad price.

We were zooming along happily (I was excitedly recording my video) when I realized that I only had a one-hundred quai bill with me. "I hope you have change for one-hundred" I told the driver. "It's fifty quai, so I will owe you fifty quai" the driver said. WHAT?! NO. HELL NO. He said five quai at first! Another Chinese person trying to rip me off because I'm white. I got pissed. I started arguing with the driver but he wasn't convinced. And I didn't know how to tell him to stop and let me off. So I did what any rational person would do. I called my daddy. My dad started to argue with the taxi driver in Chinese.

Finally the taxi driver stopped in a neighborhood and demanded twenty quai for getting me that far. I was pissed. I started yelling at him in my very bad Chinese. People started coming out of their houses and peering out of their windows. One guy helped me translate. Finally, I settled on marching to a restaurant and getting change for my one-hundred quai. I gave the guy ten quai and the finger, and took a picture of his license plate. The jerk.

Word of advice. DO NOT TAKE THE MOTORCYCLE TAXIS.

The Tea Ceremony Scam

The scam is this: A group of friendly young Chinese people approach a foreigner, usually a young woman who is alone. They speak English well and they are funny and make lots of conversation. They claim to be college students on vacation from Beijing. Later, they mention that they are on their way to a tea ceremony. They ask if you would like to join. So, you figure... "why not?!" You are in Shanghai, and feeling all grown-up and spontaneous and independent. So you go to the tea ceremony and have a lot of fun with these so-called students. Later the bill comes and it's ridiculously expensive. Everybody splits the bill, but you still end up having to pay $350 quai for your part ($50 USD). You wonder how only the tea was so expensive, but don't say anything because everybody else pays their part as well.

This happened to Constanze the first day she got to Shanghai. She was confused about the incident, but didn't think anything of it until the next day she was in the same park, when another group of "friendly students" approached her. She was conversing with them, and they too asked her to go to a tea ceremony. She said no, but the thought began to dawn on her that it was a scam. This was confirmed later by a French girl who approached her and and warned her about it. Apparently the "tea house" has many different menus depending on how much money the "mark" appears to have.

Once you know about the scam, its very easy to spot, as the groups of students hang out mainly in People's Square and the park nearby and make quite obvious attempts to start conversations with foreigners. I've been approached a few times, but I just ignore them.

Constanze and I were on our way to an art exhibit when we walked by a young woman talking to a few young Chinese people. Overhearing the conversation, we realized that she was a "mark". After continuing walking for a few minutes, we decided to turn around and warn her. Luckily, we came right as they were leaving. We suspected that the girl was German, so Constanze marched in and started talking to the poor girl in German (yes, she understood!). She ended up leaving and coming with us to the art museum where she was headed in the first place.

Porn, Arabic Equipment, and other things...

* I went out with my boss for lunch the other day, and the waiter brought out some type of meat dish. 

Me: "What kind of food is that?"

Boss: "It's porn."

Me: "Huh?"

Boss: "Porn."

Me: "WHAT?"

Boss: "It's Porn. P-O-R-N. Porn. It's a type of meat."

Me: "Are you sure its called PORN?"

Boss: (Checks her English-Chinese electronic dictionary) "Oh, wait. It's called spare ribs."

* The same type of misunderstanding happened with my co-workers. They kept telling me about all the expensive Arabic equipment and Arabic classes that our club offers. "Wow." I thought, "You need equipment to learn Arabic?" No, turns out they meant AEROBIC. :-) 

* I met two super nice girls at a party at my school. Constanze is German, and Laura is French and English. We have been spending a lot of time together and it's great! We've been to the Yuyuan Gardens, to a "fake market" (where they sell fake brand-name things) and to several nightclubs. Sadly they are both leaving soon!

* I volunteered at the Shanghai Children's Medical Center this weekend. I met three other Chinese girls about my age, and I got to play with sick Chinese kids. Most of the kids were shy, and it was quite hard for me to communicate with them and their parents. But still, I made a few little friends, and learned Chinese words such as: headache, toothache, turtle (oo-guay like Kung Fu Panda Master Ooguay), kangaroo, dolphin, bear and chimpanzee). 

* Today I moved into my apartment next to the school. The other people here seem very nice, but my room is dingy and the bathroom STINKS. Next week I am moving to a nicer room in a different apartment in the same building. Me living in that room was the original agreement - but they somehow decided to stick me here for one week. Grr. 

Szechuan Food

I met my dads coworkers today. We had a fancy dinner tonight in a Szechuan restaurant which rivaled my Hong Kong dinner and included lamb ribs, frog stew, eel and fake eel (which is made from tofu), fish, pork, pork and fish together, chicken, chicken feet and thankfully ONE vegetable dish which they ordered especially for me. We also had "swa-mei-tang" which is plum juice. It was quite good and helped to take the spice out of the famously spicy Szechuan food. 

The coworkers were all very nice. They told me an urban legend about a Spanish man and Chinese woman who got married. The couple spoke English to one another in order to communicate. When they had a baby, they spoke to the baby in their mother tongues. Three years later, the baby still couldn't speak any language at all. Finally it started speaking in a language nobody understood! 

YAY!

Horray, yippee! I've finally finished the site that I've been working on for author Leslie Williams!!! You can view it at:
LeslieWalkerWilliams.com

Now I am planning to make a new site for MEE since my dad has been holding on to a domain name that he hasn't been using: fishtoe.com. Hehe funny name, I know! 

First Day of Work!

Today was my first day at work at the Ambassy Club, a swanky private club that costs in the range of $1,300 USD and belongs to casino tycoon Stanley Ho. I was scheduled to arrive at 1:00 today, however my new boss didn't show up until around 2:30, so I was stuck waiting for her in the lobby for over an hour. While in the lobby, I realized how frumpy I was (aka rumpled shirt, salt-residue on my scuffed boots from winter, leather BOOTS because I don't have dress shoes) compared to all the other well-groomed, immaculately dressed workers of the place. Man, I should really get some shoes.

I think I am the only American that works there, although the staff say that 80% of the members are foreigners. Most staff speak at least a little bit of English luckily. My job title is: personal assistant to the woman in charge of sales and memberships. She has about 6 other people in her office (working under her), and I really like all of them. They are all fairly young (late 20s, early 30s-ish), and one girl in particular is very helpful and talkative. Her name is Michelle and she has two pet chipmunks! She showed me around the club, although we spent most of our time talking to the dreamy fitness trainer in the gym. He seemed nice as well, although our conversation was quite stunted by his strong accent. It took him and Michelle 10 minutes to get me to understand that they were talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger (which they pronounced something like: Ah-Ro-Du-Do Sha-Zen-Nu-No-Guh). My boss, other than showing up late, is very pleasant and soft-spoken. However she seems to be a little directionless with what to do with me. Today after taking a tour of the place I just chatted with co-workers and played around online. Tomorrow I will start correcting all the English on their website. I think everyone likes me so far, if nothing more for the fact that I can practice English with them and that I am on their level.


Oh, just found a WIKIPEDIA link about my work:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambassy_Club