Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

• Woke up at 2:30 this morning and I was starving because I couldn't find a place in Tokyo that sold just rice the night before
• So I had a refreshing breakfast of sushi, a big roll filled with meat, and a red bean rice cake
• I can tell I'm getting older because I couldn't even finish that meal but I don't feel that bad because it was $3 sushi and I think other people wouldn't have finished it because of the $3 sushi quality

• On my way to Shibuya Station I did notice something strange
• I just thought it was funny that of all the signs I saw in Japan, the only one I saw in French was one telling people where to smoke
• Tokyo is really an awesome city
• It was a lot of fun to walk through and I didn't walk through it because I have an Asian thing and wanted to see Japanese girls but the lights were all really cool
• I think every time I've interacted with a Japanese person I've been difficult whether it's exchanging currency or checking in bags which makes me feel really horrible
• I was the first person in line for checking bags into my Beijing flight and once again one of my bags was 10 lbs. overweight so I had to repackage everything again in front of this poor Japanese Airlines girl so once again I was holding up the line helping lend credibility to the stereotype that Americans are stupid (Sorry Uncle Sam)
• Finally found postcards at the airport so now I can start my Asian collection
• I really felt emasculated at that point due to the fact that I was a male buying Hello Kitty cards for no one but myself
• Plus the lady behind the counter made some comment to another lady who in turn looked at me and laughed so that made me feel really good about myself
• And that’s why you work behind the cash register at the airport
• Today was just me at my dumbest in society since I was about 6 years old
• But that’s alright because at least I smile (even if sometimes it looks like I'm a serial killer when I smile, I was probably one of the few people in Japan who was smiling at that point in time)
• On the Japan Airlines flight I thought I saw the woman sitting next to me having trouble setting up her tv monitor in front of her
• Turns out she was fine and she just didn’t want to be rude and say no when I asked if she needs help so I was sitting there pressing all of her betters not realizing that the reason I didn’t see anything come up on the screen was because Japan Airlines had a privacy screen on each screen so I couldn’t see if it worked or didn’t work so I probably closed whatever program she had been watching 
• Smog in Beijing is real
• I just remember when we got over China I thought, "wow that's a lot of cloud cover over an entire country" but then we actually went into the clouds and they turned yellow
• Ah, the smell of progress
• At least I was able to find Linyue from TFC
• She got a little sign that said “Teach for China” with Bruce Spencer written in brown marker which made me feel really legitimate
• I bugged her a lot on the car ride back
• I was way too goofy and way too excited, so I tried to read every Chinese sign I could and I kept asking her, "Did I get that right?"
• I probably did this well over 100 times because just driving to Beijing was so cool
• And then I just HAD to open a bank account in China
• We waited in queue for about 15 minutes and then we spent 45 minutes with the woman trying to figure out how to open a bank account which according to Linyue
• Linyue did all of the work if you don’t count my meager signature which actually at one point screwed things up because it didn’t match the signature on my passport so all in all I actually hurt the process of me opening a Chinese bank account
• So in short, Linyue is amazing, Bruce is a dumb foreigner who can't do much right
• Linyue even saw me off to the subway station where I boarded a subway car heading for Beijing Railway Station
• Getting to Beijing Railway Station took me 10 minutes, finding the ticket booth took me an hour
• I just walked up and down that Beijing Train Station not knowing that the entire time the ticket office was just outside the main ticket hall where I was getting some pretty good exercise
• I wanted to call the Teach for China office but then I remembered that my mom had turned off my American phone that day and I really didn't know how to use the public phones in the airport
• Turns out that they sold out the trains to Dalian that night so that meant I had to take the train tomorrow night at 6
• I honestly thought about giving up on the trip at that point but I thought, “Nah, Beijing is too expensive” and that’s when I met the good enough hotel lady”
• Good enough hotel
• This lady came up to me asking me if I wanted to stay at a hotel and I said sure because I was running on 5 hours of sleep and I was really tired
• That’s when she escorted me to a maroon van which didn’t have a meter on it and the seats were cut out so that all that was left for people to travel on were 5 kiddie stools
• I stayed there for maybe 60 seconds and then I thought, “nah, I don't want to be raped today” and left
• Then I met this lady who spoke 3 words of English and I agreed to go to her hotel because she personally walked me there
• It was more of a “come, come” hand motion that got me to go and at that point I didn't care where I ended up so long as I ended up in a bed
• It did have a western-style toilet
• With a crack in it halfway through
• It did have a shower
• Whose highest temperature was  somewhere between frigid and the lukewarm
• The corner of the wall was missing quite a bit of wallpaper, the beds were as hard as a rock, and there was no Gideon bible
• I'd stay there again in a heart beat
• Then seeing my previous success getting a bank account, I tried to get a Chinese cell phone
• That took me 3.5 hours and too much yuan
• I first bought a 50 yuan calling card not because I was impressed with China Unicom’s plan but because in the 15 minutes of Chinglish I had with the people in the store, that was what it came too
• The card didn’t work because my blackberry was blocked (thanks Sprint), so that meant I had to go back to get a refund
• Well somewhere along the way I dropped the SIM card somewhere and I couldn’t find it so that meant that I couldn’t return it for a refund
• If I haven't already said it before, it was a really long day
• So I went back to the store of the company that determined my phone couldn’t work and wasted 2.5 hours of my life and made him lose face (which is absolutely horrible in China-kind of like calling the lady at McDonald's who screwed up your order an ignoramus but not quite as direct)
• So I bought a phone (android from Motorola) and tried it out but didn’t leave the store because I didn’t know how to work it
• So me and this guy are trying to get my gmail account to work and it seems as if they don’t like gmail much in China
• Therefore I asked for a refund and when he demurred I stood my ground and said, “Please just give me a refund” and you could have heard the drop of a pin
• That’s when in my head I went, “Oh, I’m going to die” because I was way too direct with him
• I apologized profusely and he said it was ok, but I think he wanted to take that phone and bash my brains in based on the look he gave me 
• He gave me my refund, and then I asked about Nokia chargers for the phone Michelle Spada gave me and he said, in impressive English, that he needs the phone to see if it works 
• I had 45 minutes until he closed so I ran back to my hotel and ran all the way back and in sweat (with the girl behind the counter laughing at me) I got a charger and a new battery but I still felt horrible about the entire situation
• Then I crashed
• I finally got sleep for the first time in 18 hours in spite of myself and I slept like a fat guy filled with dumplings which I definitely was