Why rain when it can pour?

Today has been a less than wonderful day. It began with my attempt to go out and watch the football/soccor at 2am this morning, culminating in Phil and I staying awake, getting dressed up, and walking to the front door before turning around and heading to bed instead.

I slept REALLY badly, woke up with a migraine, and had to face four 11 year olds for two hours of English tuition at 8.30am. To make matters worse, the kids had done better than I and had managed to stay awake for the game. Thus by 8.30am they were all over-tired and cranky, bickering at each other constantly. The soccor-mad David had been staying up and watching all the games this week obsessively, however he fell asleep at 1pm last night, and his family failed to wake him until the game went into extra-time. He was still crying from the disappointment of having missed the game, and I had to deal with that as well.

So after tutoring I came home, and at 12.00 I am making a peanut butter sandwich when I drop the bread. Butter-side down of course.

As I bend over to pick up the bread, the crotch of my jeans rips clean through. My last pair of jeans that actually fit.

I already know I am too big for most of the clothes in the shops here (I'm considered a whale with my 32 inch waist). Yet I try to go and buy a new pair anyway, as now I have only one pair of pants that fit, and that's going to get tricky on laundry day.

I ride my electric scooter to the nearest department store and walk around for an hour and a half, trying on every pair of jeans I can find (which is difficult since they have been cleared off the racks for summer). 100% of them are too small, 95% of them I can't even get passed my thighs. Feeling fat and frumpy I end up buying a pair of 3/4 length pants that fit me (just) but do not flatter me at all, because they are better than going naked.

I walk out of the department store, exhausted and demoralised to see that someone has stolen the battery out of my scooter. They somehow overcame the two locks on it, and carried it away (it weighs 4kg) without anyone noticing. In fact, when I came to my bike, there was a group of builders from the demolished building across the street standing there and openly laughing at me. I have my suspicions that they had something to do with it, and if looks could kill they'd be six feet under by now. The battery will cost at least a couple hundred dollars to replace- money I just do not have right now.

So, yeah, not a good day at all. Sure, no-one died, but none-the-less I feel like giving up and going back to bed.

Update: To overcome such a bad day, Phil and I decided to go out for dinner. We went to a popular street in an "ex-pat" area of Shanghai, that has many different types of cuisine. On the way to one of our usual restaurants, we passed a new Persian restaurant and decided not to be such creatures of habit.

Upon walking in, we asked immediately if they had any vegetarian food for your's truly. I was shown the last page of the menu, which had 6 vegetarian options- almost a record for China. As we settled ourselves on the cushioned day bed a la Arabian Nights, we congratulated ourselves for stepping outside of our comfort zone.

As our food arrived, I realised instead of an Eggplant and Tomato stew with rice, I had a beef stew in front of me. I sent it back and the manager (an Iranian man with perfect English) came to see what the problem was.

"Well, the vegetarian stew is full of beef" I tried to calmly report.
"I'm very sorry Madam, these two stews are very similar, there has been a mistake. I will bring you a new one".

Lo and behold, five minutes later, my vegetarian stew arrived. I was so starving I took a huge mouthfull without looking at it properly. You guessed it: it was the same beef stew with the larger beef chunks picked out. It was still full of smaller chunks of beef, not to mention the strings of slow cooked meat that have flaked off into the soup.

Phil had nearly finished his meal, but by this time we were so fed up with the service that we got up and left. On our way out the New Zealander owner of the restaurant came running up to us to see what was wrong. Phil shouted something about the meal and their attitude being completely disrespectful to me, but I was too worn down by the day to say anything.

As we walked away, the mounting pressure of all the little things that had gone wrong that day broke the dam wall, and I burst out crying in the middle of the street.

What a day.

Thanks to my hero and protector Phil, for always standing up for me, and letting me wipe my snotty face on his t-shirt in public. xxx