The weekend has been a good one! Feeling positively towards China! Five of us spent our Saturday night bowling. Now then, labelling it the shittest bowling alley in the northern hemisphere doesn’t quite put enough emphasis on how shit it is. The lanes are wonky for a start (although I’m biased because I scored 50 on one of my games…which would have been a lot lower had the electronic scoring not added points and given away spares when there were still pins standing), the lanes had to be fixed at least every few turns which involved one of the staff members climbing up inside the pin machines. It’s the first time I’ve had to bowl without those bumpers up that children use…yknow the ones which make it impossible to miss, and I’ve decided, like most sports, that it isn’t my game. Simon thinks it’s because all the balls are too heavy, so I have drag them up to the lane and swing them until there’s enough momentum to let it go and it even get as far as the pins. It’s much better with Old Spice there though because it’s a bit like dumb and dumber, between the two of our university educated minds we couldn’t work out how many pins there actually were in ten pin bowling. Although kudos to her she did figure out that the game is easier if you look where you’re throwing the ball. On the way home I saw a rat carrying a shopping bag. I’m starting to feel like they’re my neighbours…I see the giant rat family downstairs way more than I see my actual flatmate.
I’ve got the Scooby gang in my head on red alert at the minute too (there’s so few foreigners here that I’m reverting to imaginary friends from 90s TV shows)…the other day I saw a woman walking behind her husband, for a good minute or so, continuously pretending the punch him in the back of the head. Clueless so far. Maybe she was angry with him. Speaking of anger, living here feels like an episode of Prison Break sometimes…apparently the Russians and the Kazakhs have had some big disagreement which ended up with some knife fighting and a couple of people getting hurt. Living in the Chinese ghetto feels pretty safe in comparison. In all seriousness there’s a lot of pretty odd characters amongst the expats here, it’s as though they’re all running away from reality back home, or maybe they couldn’t function in their own society and really get a kick out of being white and practically worshipped here. You couldn’t be much further away from the western world here, barely anything that even reminds you of your life in the west, the perfect place to come if there’s something you don’t want to deal with. Don’t get me wrong we’ve met some great people here but you quickly notice that when it comes to most people the question “what are you doing in Hainan?” never really gets answered.
On the subject of other cultures I’m ABSOLUTELY loving the fact that Americans don’t pick up on the British straight faced sarcasm. My American friend Elena had just been telling me about how she can’t recognise sarcasm if it isn’t said in a jokey tone, so I instantly went into a story about how me and Si first met when he was a professional pole dancer in a nightclub, and that he had to be all greased up for the dances. I still don’t think she knows it was a joke, she’s expecting Si to go to a pole dancing class with her at the gym soon! My new favourite game.
Some photos of the typhoon wreckage. Bear in mind that it did look a bit like a disaster movie even before the typhoon hit. I’m also a bit baffled as to why it’s still a shit tip 4 days later…there’s normally people sweeping the campus every day from about 6am…now that there’s actual mess to be cleared up they don’t wanna know.
One final note, Simon caved today and had his first McDonalds of the 21st century. He, very impressively, ate 3 meals in the space of about 5 minutes. I think maybe he hates himself or something.
It really is hard to find educated people on that topic, nevertheless, you sound like you no doubt know exactly what you are sharing! Thanks a lot