Maybe it's because I've reached that magical point where things really start to piss me off here. Usually I am a fairly civil down-to-earth kinda guy adopting the shake of the head but accepting that weird stuff occasionally happens here.
Went to Walmart today to buy a hat for my gf that I saw there last week. When I came in I walked through the food area and noticed one of the cleaning ladies picking something up from the pile of rubbish she just had broomed together. Out came 2 big shrimps that had fallen down from the ice table. She looked at them carefully then brushed them off a bit and put them back on the table. Uhm,, the dirt on the floor aside it doesn't take many braincells to know that shrimp can go bad pretty darn quick and there was no way to tell how long they had been on the floor.
Anyway,, after having promised myself never to buy "fresh" seafood from Walmart again I walked up to the clothes department and discovered that the grey hats had sold out. There were plenty of other colours but my gf wanted the grey one so I dared to trouble the 3 fuwuyuans standing nearby disgussing last night's episode of "Ugly Mother". "Do you have any more of those hats but in grey somewhere?" I asked getting the usual up-n-down stare from half the staff on the floor. "Yes but we can't go and get them from storage right now since we have to stay here" is what she replied (roughly,, my Chinese isn't so good yet). So after once more having realised that service isn't a big deal here and having tried to argue that the other 600 fuwuyans could look after the clothes while she helped me out I decided to walk down to the soft drinks and stock up on diet cola.
Since Pepsi stopped making Diet for Kunming it's been increasingly hard to find cola without sugar and Coca Cola is taking advantage of this by jacking the price of CC Zero up to 4.5-5 kuai a bottle. I wanted some but after having scoured the isles for 10 minutes coming up with nothing I again dared to ask a fuwuyuan. She repeated "cola without sugar" and took off to another isle where the no-sugar products were. No cola though so I asked her again if they had any cola without sugar and she said no.
Then I asked specifically for the Coca Cola Zero (many people here haven't got a clue that you can get diet coke) but when she was about to answer me the top most annoying thing happened (again). Chinese guy walks over, taps her shoulder and starts asking her stuff completely ignorant that she is with another customer. I guess I could live with that if the salespeople would just tell them to wait a second but as usual she immediately turned her attention to him instead.
Having tried that before I just kept talking ( a little bit louder ) to get her attention back,, when after 30 seconds it finally worked she turned and said "Look,, we don't sell coke or pepsi without sugar here at all". Nice,, a Walmart that sells imported dates from Algeria for 60 kuai a kilo and imported (crappy) cheese for 25 pr 200 gram doesn't even sell diet coke.
Needless to say I am not going back to that place. I can ofcourse accept that things get sold out and that brands dissapear but the lack of service and the way that woman handled the shrimp just doesn't cut it. It's not the local noodleshop we are talking about where you don't expect hygiene is in the Michelin class but from a place like Walmart you would hopefully get better.
You can bash me all you want for not robotlike chanting "This is China" and go on with my business but I don't really care :)
Chinese college freshmen increasingly unfit
发布者Since when did a 1 kilometre run become an 'endurance' test? During handball and football practice, our endurance training was rarely less than a 5 km run. Apart from that, many of my students talk enthusiastically about sports but when do they have time to train? My high school kids attend school 7 days a week, 6 of those from 8 morning to 11 at night (with 2x 1.5 hours breaks) and the little time left not spent at school is used for homework and what few extracurricular activities they have left, and they are always study related. At the start of this semester when a 1-on-1 student began 10th grade she finally had to give up on her piano lessons and her track and field (which she had enjoyed immensely) as well as her extra maths lessons because there's just no way for her to keep it up. Hell, even finding time for her private English lessons took 2 weeks of sorting out her schedule and intense planning. Before China begins complaining about the priorities of the youngsters, they ought to take a good, hard look at how the educational business is conducted and how teenagers are treated in this setting.
Green Lake to get wetter, brighter, noisier
发布者They have one of those here in Tengchong. They're noisy but people seem to enjoy it. The water wall projection is so-so but the laser/fountain thingy set to music looks very nice. I agree with Dazzer by the way that it it's a bit of an eye sore when the nozzles and the pipes protrude the water. Don't expect the movies to look spectacular though. When the novelty's worn off you find yourself struggling to figure out what's on 'screen'. The photo on top is definitely taken during one of the brighter moments.
Chinese teens murder seven before arrests
发布者Against capital punishment per definition here. Also, in China a bullet to the neck normally happens less than a month after the sentence and then that's it. These guys won't suffer, it will just be over. Personally I'd like them to spend life in a Chinese prison/work camp, every day like hell. Somehow seems more fitting.
The Box says goodbye
发布者30.000 a month for such a tiny place? Does The Box have 4-5 floors above it I'm not aware of included in that price? You could find cheaper storefronts in London's W2 no problem. The businesses ought to sit down together and all decide to move to another accessible area, sign cheaper 5 year leases and collectively raise their middle fingers to the greedy bastards at Wenhua Xiang.
Yunnan serial killer gets death penalty
发布者Nice job allowing an insane murderer back into society so he could kill countless more people, eat their flesh and stack their eyeballs. That's what you get when you're focused on punishment and not rehabilitation, have nothing in place to do something about the mentally ill or some functioning psychiatric system able to determine if someone is fit to be released. Also, 4 YEARS to figure out who did this in a relatively small town where an insane loner with stacked human flesh on his property lives?? No one managed to tip off the police that, you know, just maybe they should go take a look at this guy's property?