Fried Hasaam And Eggs

Day #63

(rough location of my hostel)
Location: Some Internet Cafe on Nanjing Road, near People's Square (still Shanghai but)
Michael has come to terms with the death of his laptop, Simon.


Oh man the amount of getting up tos I've been doing since I last saw my blog has been crazy!!! If I could have, I would have posted about 3 blogs since the last one, I even had the time to do it occasionally, but unfortunately my laptop no longer wants to load windows. All it will do is spit the DVD drive in and out at me, quite disrespectfully, I feel. As usual when I have a crisis which turns my life upside-down for stupid reasons, Joy came to the rescue and together we went and bought a usb that contains 16gb - Simon could hold 20. I also now have a USB that can accept any camera memory card, which saves a lot of hassle loading photos. All up this cost me about $AUS30, it is unclear how the guy on the street obtained these goods =[

The reason photos have not been going up is because for some reason the computers at these net cafes seem to despise facebook for some reason. In fact, my laptop was unusual in that I could access facebook at all, in hindsight a couple other Monash people had similar problems, so I may have to investigate a new means of getting them across the pond. Hmmm I'm thinking I may do a couple entries tonight just to make it more readable for my loyal viewers ... oh who am I kidding, hi Mum and Nana =P (jk I know there's a couple more ^^)

So Joy's Uncle and his lot are the real deal, crazy Chinese politeness is not restricted to religious nuts like my experience may have led me to believe. Before last week, the treatment I've been used to in Shanghai as a foreigner has generally been a sort of attitude that I'm basically a walking cash machine with no brains. I've taken this on board as a half-truth. In all fairness though, some taxi drivers and waiters have been awesome patient with my terrible directions, and in the market if I tell people I'm just following my friends but have no money they'll hang out for a chat too here and there. But anyway!
Joy knew her Uncle, Aunty and cousin. Everyone else was as random to her as they were to me. I struggled terribly following their Shanghai accents - most people put on a standard sort of accent for dealings with anyone but these guys were just hanging out. We had dinner at a restaurant and then a couple nights later her Aunty cooked, but the food was equally good. I've never had such good food in China. They made a point of ensuring there was plenty of vego stuff for me, which is a massive deal because even though Chinese cuisine has more diverse vegetarian (su de) dishes, they seem to be more freaked out by the notion of vegetarianism than Australians (case in point, after I explained that I don't eat meat, one waitress stared for 5 seconds before asking "is lamb or dog ok then?"). Joy whispered tips in English here and there to make sure I didn't commit any horrible manners, and made me promise not to finish every last grain of rice like usual - this makes the host feel like they haven't given you enough, and they WILL keep offering you food until they're sure you've been satisfied.
I decided that one couple at the table were basically the Shanghainese version of Rat and Jenny. Most of you have no idea who that is. If you were at my 21st, you may recall me singing in Chinese. If you're still with me, you may remember somebody yelling, "oy! Speak English!" That was Rat. Anyway this Shangy guy was hilarious but his accent was so strong I had no hope of understanding even basic stuff. Joy can follow Shanghainese but still had trouble because he loved his slangso much. He kept interupting people with bizarre statements that they all seemed to find hilarious and some of the younger guys kept laughing and saying stuff like "shut up none of us can understand you!" Heheheh. He insisted I drink as much as possible and mistakenly assumed I was holding back because of Joy, which wound up with her being labelled "Lao Hu" (= "Old Tiger", apparently what you call a wife who won't let her husband have any fun cos she's too naggy and dominating, kinda like "The Old Ball and Chain" in English I suppose). But he told me not to worry because "And old tiger is just a sick cat when she's weak", so the solution to my "problem" was to hit her, apparently xD His wife was very nice, spoke really carefully and slowly, we had a nice little chat =]

Aw man this blog-stuff is wearing me out. From the top of my memory, here's a list of stuff I wanna get people up to speed on:

Trip to Zhu Jia Jiao
The Impromptu Trip To Nanjing
Brief Rundown of Booktown!
Kicking it with Eugene and Co. (a.k.a. "Trilingual Conversations That Fried My Brain And Exposed Just How Much Japanese I Really Have Forgotten")
Comments On Living in The Same Hostel As Last Time