Curious Coda

After finally getting back into my apartment, I plugged in my cell phone, ignored it, and collapsed with a novel for the whole rest of the evening. By morning I had received a slough of text messages, mostly from my landlady.

Apparently she had posted an ad for the apartment on the school BBS. I have never been in to online bulletin boards. I'm not even sure how they work. And especially in Chinese--I don't think it's possible to be any less interested than I am in the sort of crap that shows up there, not least because it's written in a special Chinese youth argot heavy on the funny phonetic borrowings from English which turn my brain inside out. However, HJ once told me that in general Chinese students' attitudes toward these things is positive bordering on obsessive. It's the first thing they look at in the morning, the last thing they look at at night, and they keep up with it during the day too when possible.

My landlady, when checking her ad, noticed that someone else had placed a notice saying, keys found in the library on such and such a date, [name-brand American university] key chain, and success-in-study talisman. Yep, those would be mine. Landlady, knowing I came from name-brand university and that I had lost my keys on that day, had forwarded me the notice.

It's easy to put it together now, of course. While e-mail here is not such a big thing necessarily, BBSs are huge. Why trust some poker-face security type in uniform at the lost and found, when you could do the good deed for your fellow classmate yourself? If I had been any ordinary student, it would have worked just fine, too. You know, because I had my computer and of course I would have been reading the BBS.

So I rescind my last post condemning to hell whoever picked up my keys and did not turn them in. Cultural difference: it makes you feel wrong-footed about every single time you manage to get good and mad.

I met the guy outside the library to receive the keys. Despite the trouble he had caused me, I handed him in return my spare key-chain, the exact (but newer and shinier) twin of the name-brand university officially licensed paraphernalia one which had drawn my landlady's attention in his notice. Cause even misguided good deeds should be rewarded, and besides, I'd bought them as presents but presents just ended up never seeming appropriate.

Now I have all my keys, and a spare one besides. And several long-term plans to ensure that this doesn't happen to me again!!