Why I Hate Buying Things and Three Photos

It was a good day for sacrificial rites (I keep wondering if the calendar company is also in the business of sacrificial rites paraphernalia...) but a bad day for breaking earth or having a funeral. According to the Duke of Zhou, if you dream that the whole sky is full of falling snow, it means that someone is going to cheat you. I didn't dream that the whole sky was full of falling snow, and I really hope I am not going to get cheated, for reasons that will become clear as you read on.

Yesterday was a low day, in completely uninteresting ways. I had to buy a ticket for my trip to Hong Kong in February. My Chinese tutor had recommended a good travel agency ("tell them I sent you") that would give me the lowest price. She taught me the right questions to ask, and the procedure, and what they might say. I was putting off calling or some time, but yesterday morning I happened to check the price of a Hong Kong ticket--over $700. Since people on the FB group had been talking $400, I decided I should get off my butt and start working on the ticket. I thought, "I'll do this in the morning and get it out of the way." Yeah right. I called the travel agent, but they didn't say the things I expected them to say. Their price was good though, $400 plus tax. Every exchange was a struggle though. Why do people have to talk so fast and so mumblingly on the phone!? I hate using the phone. Did I want the ticket? Yeah sure.

I was then instructed (with much struggle on my part to comprehend and his part to explain) to go pay at the bank. See, no one really uses credit cards here. Long distance transactions are done by depositing money directly into the person's account. This is a feature of Chinese commerce that I hate. Here's another: there are no e-tickets. Everything is the old paper-ticket system. You buy a ticket, they deliver it to your house. My teacher had said that you get the ticket first, then pay. But the travel agent said it had to be the other way around. This made me nervous, so instead of going to the back right away I wrote a quick e-mail to my teacher, lay down in bed with my novel (already totally exhausted) and proceeded to forget the whole thing. Before my teacher answered, though, the travel agent called again to ask why I hadn't gone to the bank yet. Oh, I was supposed to go right away? Okay okay. I also asked what time of day the ticket was for--because they hadn't asked my preference the way my teacher had said they would. He couldn't say just now, he could look it up and call me back.

Suppressing my misgivings, I did the bank thing. I had just returned when my teacher called back, having called the travel agency, saying there was some confusion, but that she'd called the travel agency and I shouldn't have had to pay first…but that they had given me the lowest fare and all. Fine. I didn't bother telling her that I'd already paid, just thanked her. At least she'd confirmed that things seemed all right. By now it was like four in the afternoon (LONG line at the bank; banks here are like the DMV--you take a number and wait…). The travel agent called too. I told him I'd done the deposit already. He said it was an afternoon ticket--just what I didn't want, because I was actually supposed to attend some preliminary evening function. But at this point, I just wanted to get the damn ticket done with and besides I had already said I wanted it. It's still possible I might make it to that function and even if I miss it, so what. It doesn't seem all that interesting or important anyway from the description.

Then I waited around for the ticket to arrive but it didn't. Must have been too late in the afternoon already, but I felt worried and unhappy and frustrated.

So that was how I was able to spend a whole day on a single errand and still not accomplish it. Sorry for the long and boring story. Now on to some photos to brighten up this rather gloomy blog post:

First, this is a box of Chinese Cheerios. There are two interesting things about it. One is that the Cheerios are multi-colored, kind of like fruit loops, but not fruit-flavored: they are in five different colors representing the "Five Grains", an almost revered categorization in Chinese--some ancestral memory of the Neolithic revolution perhaps. I thought this was cute, and much more interesting than just plain oat flavor, or whatever US Cheerios are. On the other hand, they can't be the original five grains--which have at least a 2-3 millennia history in China--because one was corn (which of course is a new world grain). The others (don't quote me on this) I think are rice, wheat, oat, and barley? The other thing to notice about this box of Cheerios is that it specifies, "Not a fried food"! This makes me laugh. They must look kind of fried in the picture? I find it amusing to think of fried Cheerios!

Another funny photo I thought I'd post today was my "lazy person's affirmations." This is a new idea I had from the depths of my gloom. Colin's mom had given me this memo-pad (regift?), which is really a highly not-me type of message--I try to be in my happy place whenever possible! On the other hand, I really was not in my happy place yesterday, and every time I looked at the memo-pad stuck on my fridge, I felt even less in my happy place. Then I decided that maybe it would make me happier if I crossed out the "not." I crossed out ten "not"s and felt actually a bit better. So there you go, for the next ten grocery lists I will be--still frazzled and frumpy looking--but at least not not in my happy place, ha ha.

Finally, when I talked to Colin in the evening I was still too gloomy and irritable to do work. I asked him for advice about what I should do and he said I should draw a picture. Of what? I said. The view out your window, he suggested. Of course for him it was, like, 10 in the morning. But for me it was 11 at night. It's all dark, I protested. So it'll be more of a challenge, Colin said. So I turned off all the lights in my apartment (otherwise the only view out my window is me looking back at me), mixed paints in the dark, and painted this rather silly nightscape. I won't say I took a lot of time on it or that it's a great work of art, but it was kind of fun.