Halloween

Today being Halloween, a few co-workers have been asking a little about the American holiday. I try to explain to them that it's not really a holiday, we still have work, and it's really just an excuse for little kids to get candy (after all, every little kid's motto/driving principle is: getcandygetcandygetcandygetcandy) and young adults to party. Jim kindly showed them a few pictures of Halloween from Isla Vista yesterday at work, while I desperately tried to tell them, "America isn't all like that!" In the spirit of IV, I was thinking I could best explain the spirit for young adults by showing up today in costume, by which of course as a girl I could only mean my underwear. And then I would just explain to Microsoft that I was celebrating my American heritage, and that this was important to me. Actually, I wouldn't have to explain anything, because they would just think to themselves, "Oh, it must be an American thing." In the end, I decided to reverse trick or treat them after lunch instead.

However, some things the Chinese have decided it is easier to just let me get away with:

1) I think I went to the gym at 7 AM for a few days when the opening time had been switched to 10 AM. By the way, what business changes it's opening time by three hours? I mean, what's going on here? It's not a new business, and even if it was, isn't initially being off by three hours a lot? You gotta have a little more accuracy than that...

2) Getting in cabs when I'm within a few blocks of where I'm going. But actually I guess they don't always let me get away with this. In fact, I'm keeping a running tally of the number of times they somewhat yell at me when I get in the cab and point in the direction of what I'm looking for. I'm up to 2. For the record, I always know that I'm extremely close. I like to walk places and get lost, because it's a great way to see the city and explore. I don't feel like I see it the same way from a cab. But eventually I decide I actually want to get where I'm going, and to me it's worth the $1.25 for them to just drop me off at the front door, so that I don't have to re-orient myself and find the place, and most importantly, bother a Chinese person and force them to try to speak English and point me in the right direction. Evidently to those two cabbies it was not worth the $1.25. Which, by the way, doesn't make sense. Shouldn't you want to get paid for doing practically nothing?

3) Putting MSG on my oatmeal.

4) Going to the bulk bins at the grocery store, and buying 12.5 cents worth of something. One time, I didn't even have enough in the bag. It was too light for the scale, and the person couldn't figure out what was going wrong and why the scale was beeping at her when she tried to print the price label. In China I have never seen people get so much bulk at one time. We're talking 10 gallon-sized bags worth of snacks and candy. At first I'm not sure where it all goes...but then I remember my "hike" up Xiang Shan, that they've had to institute a one-child policy, and the fact that they are able to manually tag their web. Anyway, they must think I'm strange to get so little, but they never say anything.