Monday, July 10, 2006

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

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

...I hate days like that, and they number far too many.

I would have stormed up to them and done...something. I don't know what.

Anonymous said...

Oops ^

- Lynn

Anonymous said...

You poor thing, I've been there - on days like that the only thing to do is hibernate with red wine...

Karmyn R said...

You poor thing! Reminds me of a time when I was in Japan and went into the clothing store. My size 12 butt was NEVER going to fit into ANYTHING....never felt so fat in my whole life. I ended up buying a hat.

Good luck with the battery. Damn those construction workers. May fate cause them to get stuck in cement!

Anonymous said...

Oh, that really sucks, Loiuse. Is it possible to have family post you jeans? Jeanswest have some good ones at present, and they're generally okay about doing returns as long as you have the receipt. Of course, the mail over there may be dodgy, and I'm not sure how expensive it might be to send parcels.

Do you get migraines often? Acupuncture helped me to an extent, but the "miracle cure" was being put on blood pressure tablets (catapres 100 mcg) which have the wonderful side-effect of blocking migraines! On them for life, but it beats having severe migraines every few weeks for years. Might be worth a try?

Sprocket.

Anonymous said...

Me again. Was just talking to Saudi-girl and she tried the "anonymiser" suggested, so she could view more web pages (as you suggested some posts back). Unfortunately, it didn't work for her. Any other suggestions? She's been living there for several years, and would like to have a bit more freedom to browse online.

Thanks for the suggestion - was worth a try.

Sprocket.

Louise said...

Awwww, guys! Thanks for the overwhelming support! It was truly just "one of those days", and I am over it now. It does help to blog and vent, and even more to hear your words of advice and support. Thanks! MOUAH!!

Sprocket: I may ask the fam to send jeans for my birthday, but they are such a hard to to buy sight unseen. Perhaps I'll just suffer without, or somehow get the old ones patched. If I wait until November there should be more jeans on the shelves, and hopefully a few more sizes available. Finger's crossed!

I'm sorry, I don't have any more advice for your friend in Saudi. Anonymouse works for most things here, but not all (no BBC sites get through). I'm not tech-savvy enough to offer any other suggestions, but I will ask around.

As for the migraines- I hate them. But thankfully I don't get nearly as many as when I was a kid. My main triggers are food allergies (beef and chocolate among many MANY others!) and hormones. Watching my diet I can usually get away with only one or two migraines a month. I guess the blood pressure tablets you are reffering to are for high blood pressure? I don't think that would work for me as I tend to have problems with having too low blood pressure. I'll have to go to the doc and find an alternative for my medication, which has run out and I have just found is not available in China!

Anonymous said...

Strangely enough, I had low blood pressure when they put me on catapres. I think it's given in specific dosages especially for migraine, rather than BP. Good luck with the doctor, anyway.

I wonder, do the tailors over there do jeans at all? Just a thought - you may be able to get something made up without spending a fortune?

Saudi-girl sends her thanks. She is currently banging her head against the monitor (well, she was last night). Apparently, it feels good when she stops...

Hope your day went better. What an awful thing, after everything yesterday - it just builds up, sometimes. Glad you had a "snot-rag" handy! :)

Louise said...

Thanks for the tip Sprocket, I'll ask the doctor about it (when I finally get the nerve up to pay half a month's rent on the consultation!).

I thought about getting jeans tailored. I'm just not sure what the result will be. I might give it a try, because getting clothes tailored here is really cheap. It could be an interesting adventure, and at worst, an amusing blog entry!

Carbi Yarker said...

If it does turn out to be an amusing blog entry - make sure you accompany it with photos!