Eh… I wish I could just leave it at that.
Let me put it this way I’m currently listening to “Summer of 69 (dan winter remix)” by Topmodelz and that is the best thing to happen today.
Work went ok, I’m now down to 12 potential markets, but the internet was so slow that I feel like I mostly just sat at a webpage trying to load the whole day. Not to mention the information I’m now trying to find a cool rock in a gravel pit to finding a diamond in a desert. O well hopefully I building valuable… research skills? I don’t know I’ll need to find a better way to market that.
Anyways after work I realized that I had been tricked by the decent weather and I quickly found out that I would be walking in the rain. The rain is not healthy for most laptops, and I assumed mine was no different so I ended up stuffing my entire backpack under my hoodie (so glad I bought one that was slightly to big). A girl on the subway made me really sad though. I was sitting across from one that was pretty but in that kind of “I spend a long time on making myself look good” kind of way, which just eh doesn’t do much for me. Then this girl (we’re call her Girl2) sat down that kind of had this girl next door look going for her., pretty but in kind of a more natural carefree way, kind of like saying “ya I take care of myself but honestly there are more important things in life that I focus on.”
Soon my mind had moved on to the day’s events and trying to figure out what else I needed today until I noticed Girl2 had just pulled out something from her purse and was brushing it with what looked like eyeliner. Suddenly she stuck a fake eyebrow on her face!! I was mortified, in one fell swoop this girl just destroyed everything I had liked about her. Ughh *sad face*
So I got off at a stop I normally don’t get off at to meet this guy from PartiesInChina.com because apparently I had one this prize from them when I was at Club Guandi (it’s a yoga lesson, whoo). But I was way early so I shopped around the local area and found some Nuttella that I knew the Frenchies would like so I picked it up. So I’m in line and suddenly a couple of high school girls come up and ask me to fill out this form, it was some sort of school project, asked for my nationality, and had various situational questions “if I was in an earthquake what would I do,” “if someone tried to rob me what would I do” , and one of the last questions was “If a stranger asked you for money what would you do.” Which is kind of a weird question for me, usually I have a strict “don’t give money to beggars” policy, but I was thinking that I would in fact offer money to people say if someone was like 5RMB short on groceries in the line ahead of me. So I circled I would give them money if I knew what their situation was.
Alright well that’s all well and good, I got my groceries, checked out, and left. I was no more than about 8 meters or so (have you noticed I’ve started trying to use the metric system?), and suddenly two girls who looked about the high school age but didn’t have on uniforms came up and asked if I spoke Chinese. Well of course I tried to explain that I didn’t, but they seemed insistent on trying to communicate to me so I called up this hotline that they have here in Shanghai for the expo which will basically help you translate. Well the operator told me that she wanted to ask for directions.
If the situation wasn’t strange enough having two Chinese girls come up to a white person in the middle of Shanghai to ask for directions pushed it over the edge. Well I try to explain to them as best as I can that I have no idea about what’s in this area but eventually she came up with the phrase “looking for food.” … We’re literally surrounded by a grocery store and several little restaurants. So I point around and try to show that they’re surrounded by food. “No money… *sad face*” And it all suddenly clicked.
Now they could have actually been hungry, and they could have been actually asking for help, etc. But for them to single me out, certainly not the richest looking person in this high end food area, right after I answered a survey question from girls there same age about giving money to strangers, and the cynical being that lives inside of me suddenly was shouting at the top of his lunges.
Now anyone that knows psychology will be well aware of the forces at work here. Essentially human beings practically starve to be consistent, and it’s one of the reasons why hypocrisy is so looked down upon. If we say we do something, or we’ve recently answered a question it is greatly disturbing to us subconsciously to violate those past actions. Now I’ve vastly summarized the whole thing, and I realize that on the surface (and we’re assuming at this point that the girls are all in league with each other) the high school age girls probably are not fully away of the actual experiment they’re conducting but that was what was actually happening.
Luckily I’m a real asshole ( ^_^ ) and simply told them I had to go (and it was true I was suppose to meet this guy at 17:45 and it was 17:43). But still I thought the whole thing was super strange. Now honestly I could have, and maybe should have gone with them and bought them like 10RMB worth of food (which is like maybe a $1.50) but I was so bewildered, and even amused by the whole thing that my natural fear of being late to a meeting over road any other courses of action.
I know that sounds super weird but that’s what happened and that’s how I felt as close as I can explain it.
So then I went home and got to walk in the rain some more. The Frenchies were excited to get some Nuttella, and by excited I mean one girl screamed and Ping Pong jumped around in her underwear. Anywho we split it and they asked if I wanted to go with them to the bar tonight but I just didn’t feel like it. I mean I started to think why I would actually go. If I it was to hang out with them I could just as easily do it here for free, if it was to drink I could just as easily do it here for MUCH cheaper, if it was to try and pick up other girls at the bar well… I just don’t, and they explain that it wasn’t really a place to dance so I just decided to stay here. I was pretty tired by this point and kind of in a funk anyways.
So now I just hung out on my balcony and watched and episode of Family Guy. Talked with Yerim a little bit, surfed the internet, and now I’ve wrote this blog post.
This pretty much puts me at the stage where I tell yall good night.
…night
eh
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