All Went over My Head

October 3, 2008

I’ve been slacking off with keeping this up to date but it’s not too important since routine is starting to form and there is less to talk about.

Saturday

On Saturday I woke up at 9:35am and realized that Hanxue was meant to be here 5 minutes ago, but more importantly I needed to get ready! So I leaped into the shower, saying good morning to Auntie on the way in. Argh

So I showered with haste – despite my haste I felt very comfortable for some reason – dried myself and just as I was talking to my room Hanxue knocked, so I let her in and quickly threw my shit together.

Myself, Hanxue and Auntie then went down to the internet company to apply for some internet. Auntie took the scooter with me in the back and Hanxue rode a bicycle down there, following along. As you can probably tell, this (again) overwhelmed me with guilt, even more so when before we left Hanxue commented on the hot weather. Argh.

In anycase we went down to this place, only took a few minutes. Once inside, Hanxue and Auntie talked to the customer service agents and we then headed back home. I asked what was going on but didn’t get much of an answer. I am guessing that they just suggested that I buy a router and share the son’s internet as once we returned home, the three of us and the son looked online for a wireless router. After some calls back home to my brother, everything was sorted and the router was meant to ship overnight at the earliest.

By this time it was about lunch time, Auntie had requested she cook something for us but we refused, going to the university instead. So Hanxue and I walked down to the university (not my university, another, where I go to eat) to grab lunch. On the way she asked if I was interested in going to this art exhibition with her, she’d mentioned it before and I expressed my interest. Despite having a little homework to complete I accepted. After that we walked from the University, past her house to the railway station, it was quite a long walk actually, not sure why we didn’t get a bus. On the way we went to a small deli to buy a drink, Hanxue chose some lemon drink and I vouched for the same, at the counter I whipped my money out quicker to ensure that she didn’t have to pay again.

The drinks were terrible, we couldn’t open them despite trying a couple of times each. So we gave up for the time being. On the subway we tried again and I finally had some luck. Unfortunately I also got some bad blisters on my hand from opening them. They still haven’t quite healed two weeks later.

We got off at the People’s Square, asked for directions to the art gallery and then made our way around. Hanxue had brought her camera along as well so she took some photos of me infront of important landmarks on the walk over. We finally found the gallery with a huge line up out the front, this was crazy, the line was so long. Hanxue said that it was much better than the previous weekend (she went last weekend but the line was too long hence why we were there that day). Waiting in the line took ages and the humidity was getting to me, it was simply awful, I was sweating so much. The drink didn’t help it was like 20% pure lemon, I made some jokes about how the drink will kill us.

Finally we could go inside, we’d spent maybe 10 minutes looking around at some frankly terribly indecipherable artwork when a bunch of young school girls came running up to me (it’s my natural charisma that attracts them) to ask a bunch of questions. They spoke english too and spoke it beautifully. Hanxue found out that they were 15 yrs old and had been studying english since kindergarden. Their questions were typical reporter styled questions, they were all practicing to be journos, how cute. They then offered to be tour guides for us but yeah, they kinda of lost their way and didn’t know what to say about each piece.

We looked around some more, baffled at what we were looking at. We hadn’t a clue as to the artist’s meaning or intention was from each piece and frankly the artwork itself was ugh. They had super pixelated pictures of The Bund, boots for horses, photos of Africa and mish mash pieces that didn’t make any sense. The exhibition was titled ‘Trans local motion’ which was clever, unfortunately we failed to see the relationship to Shanghai’s developing transport system.

A few more floors later and we called it quits, Hanxue said that she wanted to go back outside and tell the people in the line not to waste their time. We then looked at some of the stuff outside the mueseum and then returned back home.

By the time we got home it was already getting dark so we grabbed tea together and went our seperate ways.

Sunday

Sunday, the day that internet would return, or so I’d hoped. In the morning the son came in to tell me that the router would be in tommorow, sure no dramas. For most of the day I got stuck into homework, I began blogging about my departure from USST. Auntie made lunch for me, rice, some cucumber and some meat. None of it tasted cooked…not so good, I decided to not let her cook me any meals from now on. I’ve failed at least 3 times.

I really wanted to leave Hanxue alone for that day as ever since I’d moved house she’d been by my side. Unfortunately I wasn’t sure about the canteen and how to buy my food as she hadn’t actually explained that to me. So that night we went back there and she showed me the institutional knowledge of the canteen. It sounds so simple yet it is needlessly complicated as they serve a variety of dishes and have different processes for different types.

We probably spent some time talking afterwards, I’m not sure.

Monday

Monday was the start of what felt like losing grip. I got home and the router had arrived. Yay, so I teamed up with the son and began setting it all up. I realized early on that even though there were instructions in Chinese (no english), the son was basically useless, that’s Chinese and problem solving right there.

When I called home my brother wasn’t there, he was at a mate’s place playing Gears of War. Mum wanted to talk and while we were talking the son began fiddling with stuff, going through each of the steps. Whatever, I couldn’t really care.

Afterwards I played around some more, we managed to get internet on my machine, only problem was that the son lost internet on his machine (his work not mine). Since he’d fiddled around before I hadn’t a clue what he’d done, this was problematic as his machine would give me an IP address…this makes no sense. Anyways, I spent a few more times grappling with the problem only to have no success. Frankly I got the impression that the son didn’t want to share his premium connection with me and as such was resistant to helping me out. I’m not sure, he seemed pretty retarded in his attempt to fix the problem, maybe this is natural…I don’t have a clue, by this point I was so frustrated and mad at the difficulty the problem had presented and the anal nature of the son.

Hanxue rocked up later on to help, which only layered on the guilt as I didn’t want to call on her again. But of course she is willing. It’s funny how some Chinese people can be complete jerks while others incredibly gracious.

She couldn’t get much out of the son. I was feeling pretty hazy and plain exhausted…..and pissed off. Hanxue, myself and Auntie did some talking and then the two of us went out for tea at about 8:00pm. While at tea, I decided to ask some of my I-wish-I-understood-but-perhaps-never-will questions about Chinese people. I was too tired and didn’t justify my question so it made little sense. It’s much like asking someone from a country…why are you guys so different? It is useless since, for them, everything is normal. It made me feel like more of a knob.

Tuesday

On Tuesday I found out Hanxue had called up to organise my internet. Wow I didn’t even ask for the favour. She got me a quote and I decided to apply for this deal. That night myself, Hanxue and Sam went out for tea and headed back to Sam and Ou Yans place for a while. Ou Yan’s brother had arrived in Shanghai, he seems like a reasonably nice guy. Was only staying for a little while.

Also in class, we discussed bad words that we’d learnt in Chinese, I said a few, the teacher and classmates had no idea what I was talking about. They seem to never understand me yet I have never come across these problems before and still don’t, it’s just in class. Anyways it was funny hearing my teacher say ‘fuck’ and ’shit’ in english. ^_^

Wednesday

On Wednesday Auntie had told me that the company would be around tommrow to install the internet. The router wasn’t a waste of money since I would be using it as my access point.

Thursday

Class was pretty sucky again for the second day running, this time I just couldn’t keep up with what we were talking about and then they caught me off guard and yeah, I hate being put in such an uncomfortable spot.

Some service agent rocked up in the afternoon, they took a look around and concluded that they’d have to drill a hole in the wall to get another phoneline through to my room. Suppsoively the chord already in my room was broken. Yeah I don’t really get it either. They buggered off, Auntie called up another place and signed me up for ½ a year of 512k, they’d be round the following day and could supposively thread the chord from outside the window.

Friday

I returned home on Friday after class (which was much better but still shitty) to find my internet all hooked up perfectly. I really don’t understand this but let me try and explain, suppsoively they threaded the phone line from out in the stairway into this already existing hole in my room. I don’t know how, and it looks like they had no problem in doing this but it is done and it works. God bless the hills.

Unfortunately they weren’t kind enough to install security but that was okay. Having been exhausted from trying to organise internet in the past few days and also from my classes, I just spent that afternoon catching up on all of the stuff I’d missed in the past month.

I hadn’t seen Hanxue for a few days and that night we had tea together, we then had some trouble in deciding what to do next beyond grabbing some supplies. We ended up walking the streets for a while until we found refuge in a KFC and talked for the next 2-3 hrs. This time I managed to communicate clearly my question about the differences between the cultures by explaining how I see things and how life is in Australia. I am so surprised at the responses too, very heart felt I’m starting to understand things a lot better now.

Headed home, jumped online to watch some more media and such. Talked to some friends and family, Hanxue was online too so we talked a little more. Phew.

Saturday/Sunday

On the weekend I continue my catch up session of all gaming news, blog articles and media. I watched a few hours of Good Game as well. All of my Chinse friends were heading home during this time as next week was the national week and everyone gets time off.

I also fixed the security problem but had to reset the router as Windows refused my password, something to do with the number of bits in password…hmmmm….if you can’t accept a 64bit password then why the hell allow me input one? This locked me out of the network, on getting back in (a few more wrestling matchs with Windows) the ISP password wouldn’t work. So I called an agent and he got me a new password and user ID, stating that the old one was bad. Yeah, that’s what he said? How does that make sense? How can your user name and password not work after one day? Eh, I had internet, I don’t care, it’s China’s problem, not mine.

Monday – Friday

I won’t lie to you, the last 5 days have been quite uneventful. Since I’ve had the free time I have decided to prioritize this time for study and some blogging to ensure that when school starts again I’ll have a leg up and hence can spend that time doing things with other people. Since, personally I don’t see there being much point in going out by myself unless I am doing an activity which requires me to fly solo, like photography. I’ve done a little of that too.

Most of my time has therefore been centred on the study though and I hate it. My friend Xi was planning on coming to Shanghai but plans change and he’s had so much on his plate it would be unreasonable for him to come to Shanghai. Xi and Hanxue were planning for Xi to come to Shanghai (as he had friend’s in Shanghai which had actually changed their plans too), spend some time with me and then for the two of us to go back to Hanxue’s hometown in Anhui and from there come back home. The problem is plans have changed and tickets are hard to come by, plus it is too difficult for me to get there by myself (6hrs away) , let alone having to find tickets. Hanxue still doesn’t have a return trip to Shanghai.

This means that I’ve been on my own a lot this past week but like I said, this is fine. I need to get my head around this study and I also have the time to just relax, in my own personal space. Do some writing, do some photography. The last 3 nights I have spent talking to Hanxue and Xi for 2-3hrs a night, it’s true, Chinese people stay up very late. Otherwise I’ve been prepping some interviews and cross blogging projects with others for my study on games and culture. I’m looking forward to writing about games from this perspective.

From Now On..

I’m not expecting much to happen. As usual I will be attending class, spending the night time and weekends with friends as well as blogging and photography. There will undoubtedly be less updates as I am now in routine and settled. Maybe once a month or every few weeks, we’ll see how we go.

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