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Tuesday: A Story of Jet Lag, Sleep Deprivation, and Looming Insanity.
Note: This story has little to do with China in particular, but everything to do with the hazards of 15 hour time zone differences.
Last Tuesday I somehow managed to fall asleep during the daytime without realizing it. My alarm was already set from the day before to go off at 7:35, but it makes no differentiation between am/pm because it's just a cheapie little analogue. So the thing goes off at 7:35 and I wake up with my computer resting on my lap, fully clothed in what I wore yesterday (well...actually today, but I’m getting to that).
I wake up thinking it's morning, thanking god that my alarm happened to be set still from the "day before" or I would have been screwed. I'm still fully clothed and pissed that I didn't get to take a shower before I went to bed. I was also mad that I didn't have time to study any of the words from my last Chinese lesson before going to class, which is pretty bad because one-on-one teaching makes it difficult to pretend I know something I don't.
So I start getting ready for my day, changing, etc. I'm ready by 8 (breakfast time!) so I go down to the lounge/dining area to eat. My friend John is out there. The door to get to the dining room is locked. ...that was the first sign. I ask him why nobody else is there, because usually there are at least ten students who come to breakfast. I quickly tell him the story about how I fell asleep with all my clothes and the light on, and was really disoriented. He answers that he doesn't know why there's nobody here, but wants me to know that "the guys are meeting for drinks at 10" and I should come.
...hrrrrmmm...why are they planning so far in advance? Usually we plan going out during dinner, not at breakfast.
It's only at that point that I start to question myself on the time. I ask John to check, since I don't have a watch and he says it's 8. I finally decide to throw out any shred of self respect I might have and ask if that's 8AM or 8PM. He tells me AM, so I'm thinking, “Okay, sweet! Right on schedule.” ...turns out he was playing me! (He does stuff like this a lot, so in retrospect I’m not surprised)
John let me go on thinking that it was morning for about ten minutes while I frantically looked over my notes in preparation for my class. We kept talking and I kept questioning him on the time because I just felt like something was off. Finally he said it was nighttime, and that he thought I had known that all along, and that I was joking before! I freak out now, not knowing what to believe anymore. I had to get him to tell me it was evening like ten more times before I actually believed him.
I went back to my room, disoriented and curious about when I had actually fallen asleep and for how long, so I checked my Internet History bar to see when I had last gone to a website. Turns out I had fallen asleep at 5:30pm, had missed dinner, and had gotten ready for the next day without even realizing it!
I can't believe how many aspects of this story had to align for me to go on thinking for a whole HOUR that it was morning instead of evening.
But that's not all. Here's the worst part: This is the SECOND time I've done that here. Last time was last weekend and I was planning to go out to brunch with the guys in the morning at 10am. I woke up at 8:50 but read the clock as 9:50, for some reason.
I hurried to get dressed but nobody was at the meeting spot when I got there. I was about 10 minutes later than we had planned on, so figured they had probably just left. Either that or... the plans had been slightly nebulous and everyone was really wiped from the night before so I figured they were all probably still sleeping. I decided since I was already up I'd go grab breakfast by myself.
It took me until I got to the restaurant and had already ordered to glance at my ipod clock and realize it was only 9am instead of 10! That day I ended up finishing my solitary breakfast, coming back to meet everyone at the proper meeting time, and then going out to the same exact restaurant i had just finished eating at with all of them.
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On Thursday, I learned how to say words about music in my Chinese lesson. This wasn’t originally in my lesson plan, but I figured it’s something I talk about enough that I should learn a few basic words. I mentioned to my teacher that I learned a silly pop song in my high school Chinese class called “Lao Shu Ai Da Mi,” which translates to “Mice Love Rice” (or it’s full title “I Love you like Mice Love Rice”). I told her I had forgotten most of it because I learned the song four years ago. She immediately took it upon herself to not only teach me the song again but also read through the pinyin (Chinese words) with me and help me translate it so I knew what the lyrics meant. The underlying lyric is essentially “I love you like mice love rice.” Pretty mushy, eh?
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| Spotted. Toiletcam sign inside yet another bathroom, this time in a club called SoHo. Pretty great, eh? Talk about an invasion of privacy! |
In other news, I watched a bootleg version of the movie The Lovely Bones the other day. I know, I know, this is an American movie. Why am I writing about it in a blog about China? Well, despite my best efforts I couldn’t get the English subtitles to go away. Incidentally these turned out to be the best part of the movie!!
If someone were to read the subtitles of this film, they would not believe it was the same movie as the American version! It’s almost as if someone watched the movie on silent and then wrote all their own words with despicable grammar based on (or not at all based on) what they saw on screen. Basically, most of the subtitles made absolutely zero sense. They were so ridiculous that after a while I couldn’t help but write some of them down.
Enjoy!
“It's hot in here”--> “take the beer”
"Im not gonna hurt you" -->"i have not been appreciated enough"
"she's dead isn't she" -->"you should sleep"
"heaven" turned into "Acura Paradise"
"You might be dead soon"=> "I really like you"
"He was animal"-->”he liked animals".
"I thought you'd be happy"-->"You should be glad to a point."
"She wanted to kiss him very much"--> "He very much wanted to kiss me"
"He resented it"-->"He himself was also very confused."
"you're a hunter"-->"you're a carpenter too"
“It's all about concealment”--> “It's all displacement.”
"gorgeous"-->"Incense and"
"I insist, open the door"--> “I exercise!”
“When i was alive”--> “When I fooled.”
“You don't control this, Suzie”--> “you do not not say that.”
“You will see, everybody dies”--> “You are so lovely.”
"Did you hear me say that"--> “Did you hear me save a bitch?”
“She had been his land lady”--> “this is a very beautiful place.”
"she was six"--> she has six children
"You go on"--> “You will continue to the bar.” (had nothing to do with bars).
"My girl" (spoken by a father)--> “I am a woman.”
“Have you seen holly?”--> “You must have heard of Harry.”
“you wrote me a poem once”--> “you have called yourself in.”
“These were the lovely bones”--> “He is sniffing a lovely bones.”
“You looking for a ride”--> “you look like car.”
“Look mister, I'm not interested, Okay?”--> “Hello Mr. President, I am not interested in this.”
“My name is Salmon, like the fish”--> “My name is salmon, and sardines with the same name.”
I must say, it is quite difficult to feel sad during a dramatic moment when a speech about a six-year-old dead girl carries subtitles that suggest she is a mother of six children.
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| Top One, aka the club we got kicked out of |
For a piece of completely unrelated but equally exciting news, on Friday night my friends and I were robbed by the cops. Here's how it happened: We went back to Kun Du, the clubbing district. Everything was going fine when we first got there. We went to a club called Top One, which ended up being a loud crowded bar with people dancing all over these little platforms around the dance floor. After hanging out for a while, we decided to go dance a bit, taking our spots on one of the many platforms. The club was decorated with huge fakey-gaudy chandeliers everywhere that hung down far enough to reach while standing on the platform.
Basically my friends and I were dancing, and at one point Pete placed his hand on one of the arms of a hanging chandelier for balance. All at once the part he had touched fell out of it’s “socket!” He quickly tried to push it back in, but the arm wouldn’t reattach.
Giving up on the light, he grabbed my arm and made a beeline for the club’s exit. We were promptly met by two security guards standing at the door, so he swerved us in the other direction (back in towards the dance floor). We had traveled no more than 10 feet when a string of security guards started following our every move. I started walking faster, trying to lose myself from Pete since after all, I didn’t really do anything wrong. Unfortunately he kept close by me. Probably thought there was some kind of safety in numbers…
Despite my best efforts, they kept right on our tail as I weaved the way through the crowd. Even worse, now the club security guards had phoned the cops about us and they were quickly arriving at the scene as well. I jumped over a banister to get back to the table where my other friends were and all my things were sitting. One of the security guards who had been chasing us caught my eye. I tried as hard as I could to look like I was confused at the whole ordeal (which wasn’t hard, considering I’ve never been chased by cops before.)
I decided to try my hand at some elementary Chinese. I mean, I’m supposed to be practicing my conversational skills, right? So I asked the guy in Chinese if I could leave the club. To my surprise, he nodded his head yes! I made a beeline for the exit, hoping none of my friends were following me, especially Pete, because it looked like they weren’t going to get off quite as easily. However, even though the security guard let me go, that didn’t stop the police from wanting me to stay with the party I had arrived with.
With the club guard’s blessing, I sped out of the club and into the crowded streets of Kun Du. Unsure of what to do next, I slipped inside a random club across the street to wait for my friends. It was so surreal walking through there, yet knowing all along that I was being looked for by police. The only thing I could think to do was run into the club bathroom and alter my appearance. That’s what people do in the movies, right?
Examining my options in the mirror, I pulled my hair up into the highest ponytail I could possibly create. I know it sounds weird but I felt like this simple change actually helped a lot. Then I put a grey sweater on over my dress, hoping to thwart any distinguishable descriptions about what I was wearing.
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| Chandelier in KunDu. Yeah, that's plastic all right. |
After about ten minutes had passed, I peeked my head out of the club, thinking I would probably see my friends standing outside waiting for me. Instead I saw about 20 men (police men) wearing plastic white hats surrounding the entrance to Top One. And in the middle of the crowd were my five foreign friends, arguing with the police. I wasn't sure what to do at this pont, since we hadn’t made any kind of plan to meet up, considering how swiftly I had gotten out of there. I walked the streets awhile in my new “disguise,” checking up on them every few minutes to see if the trouble had passed.
After about a half an hour of walking nervously throughout Kun Du, I decided to catch a taxi home, and hope they assumed I had gotten out of there okay (at this point, none of them knew about my civil conversation with the Top One security guard).
I arrived safely to my room about 15 minutes later, but still highly strung up and anxious. I wasn’t sure if the cops were looking for me or what was going on with the travel-buddies I had just abandoned in exchange for saving myself.
When I got to my room, I started pacing, frantically trying to make sense of what had just happened and imagining the scenario if I were to have gotten in trouble with the cops, or even gone to jail just because of a dumb broken light that I didn’t even break! About five minutes into this, I was interrupted by a loud banging on my door. Of course my first thoughts were “Oh shit! They’ve found me! How did they find me?! What am I going to do! …well, there goes everything…” I cracked open the door, and to my surprise I found Pete standing outside, looking like he was ready to hit someone.
“They robbed me” he said, defeated. “The cops fucking robbed me.” I found out the next day that the police had basically told the group that either they hand over 1000 kuai ($150) then and there (for what? being foreigners?!), give them passports as collateral and come back tomorrow to pay the fine, or be taken to jail. Of course, they paid, but only after bargaining the cops down to 500 kuai instead of 1000.
Woah! Sure glad I got myself out of there!
The next day we were talking about the incident at lunch. Maria, a student here from Spain, made a good point. She was like “What?! They made you pay for breaking a chandelier? You did them a favor. Those things are atrocious!” Haha, she was so right.
BONUS PICTURE:
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| Best lamps ever. I'm dubbing them 'Erection Lamps.' Erect=light on, Flaccid=light off. The Chinese continue to baffle me with their cunning wit! |
