Moving House

September 28, 2008

20th September 2008

With the room booked, friends made and business sorted it was time to bust-a-move.

Tuesday

Even though I had the 4hr marathon of morning classes ahead of me, all I could think about was getting away from Lao Bao and the Old Guest House. It’s like two sides of the tunnel. On one side is the first few weeks in Shanghai; a grappling match to find my place and in that place become comfortable, it’s not where I wanted to be. The otherside; where I would have liked to have been from the start; comfortable.

In the afternoon, after I’d made lunch, I went to see Mrs Hua and seek assistant in my escapade out of USST. After telling her my plans she gave me some more forms about registering at the police station with a list of materials I needed to get. This seemed like a pain in the neck! Particularly another small photo of me, I had already given her 4 of the ones I took off in Australia and she couldn’t find one of them. She took a photocopy of my passport which I left in her scanner – argh! That night I began packing all of my things into my rucksack and got through a good chunk of it.

I also gave Hanxue a call to let her know my plans. She was going to give the landlady a call notifying her of my arrival and then meet me after work at about 6:40pm once my cab had arrived. Everything was set.

The Cambodian dude – I forgot his name and he forgot mine, he calls me Guy – rocked up as well, I told him my plans and he was sure to ask the right questions to me about transport and everything. You know the kinda stuff that you think the University would help you with.

Wednesday

Classes hadn’t been so good on Tuesday and Wednesday. We had a new guy in the class, a fill-in for Marcus. From France, Asian in appearance, infact his parents are Chinese and he is like 27 although he could fool me for 17. He is okay but I don’t like him, as his presence magnifies my role as the class incompetent, especially for the listening classes which now border on extremely difficult. I can’t even understand the transcripts and yet the articles for the other classes (reading and speaking) are much easier. Makes no sense.

Anyways, I was lucky in this sense as I gave Mrs Hua a call in the morning to find that she’d be knocking off at 1pm that day and indeed had my passport. So, assuming that the passport was going to be important for me moving house, I left my classes early to reclaim the passport. It was a small blessing as I didn’t have to play my demoralizing role as class idiot in the listening classes.

I guess the sour taste of my listening classes were matched by the lack of assistance that Mrs Hua could provide for me moving out. That is helping me organise a taxi and getting the materials for the registration – I ought to mention that they want you to register everytime you move. I don’t blame her for it, but it doesn’t make my situation any better and they don’t even seem to recongise that! I got my passport so I guess that was worthwhile.

Having 6hrs of free time to kill until I had to leave, I slept, did a few hours of revision (I’m not sure how much this helps) and played some more Thrilby as well as the mezmorizing Fractal Fighter.

I called home at some stage and then went to get my final meal at the school cafeteria. I’m not sure how their staring-at-the-only-foreigner-on-campus competition is going but they seemed to have upped the antte.

From there I went back home and told the receptionist – the less friendly one – that I was leaving, they already knew this as I talked to Lao Bao -he’s the landlord BTW – about it before hand. I said some stuff and then they basically refused to listen and called Lao Bao. Ten minutes later he arrived – getting kinda anxy as I need to call a cab – receptionist ignored my request for the cab. Lao Bao rocks up and repeats the previous process, I answered his questions, he doesn’t care for my responses and gets me to call ‘my teacher’ – that’s Mrs Hua – so I call her and then pass the phone over to Lao Bao. They talk for a bit, he passes it back to me, she explains what he just said, that they can’t refund me the tens days as I was leaving early, which I already knew before when he said it to me in person. I told her it is all fine, Lao Bao rips the phone from my ear, says some more, gives it back. She asks me if I want to keep the room for another 10 days, I say no and tell her that I think Lao Bao is a prick and just want to move to some place where I might get better treatment. Ordeal over.

Lao Bao scoots off – I gotta call that taxi – so I get the receptionist (that word is too dignified for the work they do) to call through, nope all busy, tells me to go out on the street and hail one.

I expected that this would be the case, now I am really frustrated and looking forward to getting out of Yangpu. I go to the front gate and call a driver, I tell him that I am moving to Xuhui and need his help. He said that he wasn’t too familiar with the district but would do his best to get me there. I navigate him to the Old Guest House.

I jump out and tell him to wait. I grab my first load of items and haul them into the boot. I then went upstairs for the toilet paper and other things. As I head out I throw the key on the table and the two of us head off to the South Shanghai Railyway station near where I live.

The taxi drove up to one of the upper level express ways, sweeping around Yangpu, direct to where we want to go. He follows this road for almost the whole time. For most of the trip I was quiet, observing the scenery and how dark the sky was getting (part pollution, part night time, part rain coming on) and how much it felt like a dooms day scenario. I eventually started talking to the driver who was a friendly dude. Also the driver told me that I didn’t near to wear a seat belt while in the front with him, I told him things are different in Australia. It was interesting going without.

I got a txt from Hanxue letting me know she’d be there. She also called while we were about 10 minutes away, to say she had arrived. Once we found the place, the taxi did a u-y (?!) and we headed in, Hanxue and a friend of hers were out the front and noticed the taxi. They hopped in and together we entered the compound. Hanxue and the other friend (Tiffany) have been friends for 20 years, since they were children. Much like Hanxue she is a cute, short Chinese girl, she has some freckles too which is not-so common and quite interesting.

We got to the building and the taxi pulled up out the front. We’d travelled 40km and it took us about 50-55 minutes with a fare of 132 yuan. I thanked the driver, the landlady was out the front and grabbed my rucksack off me and headed out. None of them let me carry anything and the landlady had already shot off with my heavy rucksack so I grabbed what I could off them. We arrived at the house, took our shoes off and put our stuff down. We congregated in my room and the lady grabbed a few stools to sit on. I figured that we’d get down to business….

…but we didn’t, infact it took two days before we signed the contract and exchanged the money. We spent the next hour and a half discussing things, the landlady showed off more of the house and when I showed the registration form that Mrs Hua gave me – it had both languages – they then spent another good hour talking over the implications. The lady next door also came over in her pyjamas and joined in on the conversation. I participated when possible but being the only second language speaker, my precedence in the turn taking is low. Although a lot of what they said was directed at me (the landlady likes to prove to Hanxue that I understand what she says, and I do, it’s just sometimes hard to crunch it all down logically).

From there, myself and the two young ladies went out to get some tea, I’d had dinner at the canteen a few hours ago but I didn’t mind going again. The girls had to ask some people at a clothes store about where the local restaurants were but after that it didn’t take too long before we found one.

The restaurant we’d found was small but comfortable. We sat down to order and Hanxue showed me to the english part of the menu and asked what I’d like. They were keen to ensure that I was comfortable with whatever we would eat. I chose one of my favourite dishes; beef and black bean and the girls chose some of their own including the infamous Smelly Bean Curd – wasn’t smelly or even curdy, I thought.

The dishes didn’t take long to arrive and were beyond my expectations, I was quite pleased. As we ate the girls asked me questions about Australia and Xi Wei, and I explained some cultural quirks. All very friendly jib jab, mostly Chinese but I spoke english when I lost my way. The girls told me that the neighbour who had called in on the conversation at the apartment wasn’t very nice and they didn’t like her since she was trying to persuade the landlady to not accept me. I was surprised at their frankness. I also started and have still been doing this up to now, thanking Hanxue and her friends for all of their help. Their assistance (mostly Hanxue though) in making me feel comfortable here is just incredible, I feel very blessed to have such courteous, lovely friends and I explained that I didn’t know how to make it up to her.

From there Hanxue made or had received calls from the other guys and together we walked to their apartment to talk for a while. On the way Tiffany exlained to me how restauranting together is a get-to-know people exercise in China.

The apartment wasn’t so nice, lots of pencil sketches on the wall from children. We all sat together in one of the rooms and we shared phone numbers. Sam made a few jokes regarding his billingualism and we then talked some more, maybe 45 minutes.

From there they all accompanied me home. I didn’t have a key yet so the son had to let me in. I began talking to him but he shrugged it off saying that if I had any problems to call him.

Not sure what the time was when I got home, would have been about 10:30pm. From there I just sat in my room for a few minutes thinking about what I had to do for tommorow and what time I shoud set my alarm for, then I went to bed.

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