Thursday, December 11, 2008

It takes all kinds.

I will try to coin a new compound word: Wuxi Vexpat. That is, a foreigner in Wuxi who vexes or annoys others. Now, I know that I am the candidate to be king of the Wuxi Vexpats, but I surely can't be bad as the perverts and drug-addicts and lazy slobs that make up the Wuxi Expat population. They are Wuxi Vexpats, par excellence, if by excellence I mean the prime examples of what are I am coining a word to describe. These Vexpats really are not at all excellent, but contemptible.

Anyway, this coining of a word has nothing to do with what I am about to blog about. I will discuss something annoying that a local must have done. Wuxi people are notorious for doing these things I am afraid to say.

When I parked my bike tonight, I was vexed to see that one half of the parking area was unoccupied because the electrical outlets were not working and so the other half was filled to the brim, as it were, with bikes recharging. I found a spot, nonetheless, to park my bike because I do have an extension cord. As soon as I parked the bike and was about to plug the bike in, a man with a smaller bike parked his bike just right in front of the outlet I was going to use. I starred at him wondering when he would clue into the fact that I was planning to use the outlet. He didn't. I then swore loudly in a manner that only an idiot could not realize was swearing as I moved my bike to another spot. I called the man every bad name in the book: asshole, cocksucker, et cetra. But he walked away like an idiot oblivious.

My fatal flaw is to believe that people are basically decent. They mostly aren't. Try to give people second chances, and they only use it to prove that they won't change. I gave this man every chance to correct himself assuming that he was just unaware, but he didn't take it. You think people will rise to the occasion but more than often they won't.

I says to myself, looking in the mirror. Telling this to my wife, she wonders why I didn't try to tell the guy to move. Some things I suppose aren't worth fighting, is about all I can say in my defence. I have probably had absent-minded moments myself where I did something oblivious to the offence it was giving to others. Parking spots aren't worth fighting over. The rudeness you see in Wuxi is just a fact of life that as a foreigner I will have to learn to accept.

No comments: