Friday, May 13, 2011

Saturday Night's alright

  • Saturday Day is no good.  It is hot.  Night is alright because I am with the wife and son.
  • 星期六,我 有工作。 我 教 四个课。 I will have to do more of this.
  • 我 太太 是 中国人。 我们 有 一个孩子。 他的 名字 是 Tony.
  • I  went to a part of Wuxi that I had never been to before.  There was this road which I was familiar with up to a certain point.  Thursday, the road took me past this point and I saw yet another large industrial area.  Over a bridge, the road took me, before it became bumpy and potholed.  And this road took one to the industrial area.  The bad section of road caused the drivers and cyclists to take evasive actions and so make traffic even more chaotic than I was accustomed -- even after being in Wuxi for six years.
  • Before Chinese holidays start, half the customers in the larger supermarkets  will use debits cards from the supermarket to purchase things.  These cards have a story behind them, that I hesitate to provide details about, but which if I could, would explain why sometimes you can get things cheaper in small shops than in grocery stores.  I can say that people who use these cards don't pay much attention to prices and so "things" can be pulled over on them.  For example, a single bottle of beer can have a cheaper unit price than a case.
  • It is not only home dwellers who can be forced to move by the goverment when it decides to do some construction.  Companies can be told to move as well, I learned, as I talked to the boss of one.
  • Some students!  I asked one what games or sports he liked.  He told me he didn't like games.  I asked him what job was interesting.  He said accountant.  I asked why.  He said it was his job.
  • 星期五晚饭,我 吃了  米饭 和 川牛肉。很好吃!
  • Friday night, I am on the bus, minding my own business.  I was studying my Chinese textbook listening to an ESPN podcast on my mobile phone, when all-of-a-sudden I got a phone call.  Receiving a phone call while listening to a podcast can be quite annoying for me, because anytime this happens, I have to re-listen to a portion of a podcast.  Sometimes, the podcast has been reversed one minute by the call, and sometimes twenty minutes (very annoying!).  Who phoned me?  I saw a number I didn't recognize so I didn't answer the phone.  I then saw that my podcast had been pushed back ten minutes.  Someone then tapped me on the shoulder and said "long time no see!"  Not knowing exactly who I was talking to, I just replied in kind.  And then I realized that this was the person who had just phoned me.  Somewhere, at sometime, I had given him my phone number.  The man, having got my attention, asked me all sorts of questions.  He was thinking of opening an online big-and-tall shop to sell clothes to foreigners.  I gave him advice about where to advertise this business.  He then asked me a question, which I understood as asking  what I thought of Wuxi, and what suggestions I had for it.  Thankfully, my stop came before I had to think up an answer.
  • Saturday morning, I was on the bus doing the same thing I was doing on Friday night, minding my own business, studying my Chinese textbook, and listening to a podcast.  This time, the person sitting beside me, having seen me read my Chinese textbook, started asking me questions in Chinese.  He actually spoke Chinese slowly enough that I could understand him, and I learned that he was studying Japanese; and I was able to answer some of his questions.  Talking about learning Japanese, he said "中国人 觉得 日文容易!外国人觉得 日本文 很难!" -- to which I heartily agreed.

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