I’m losing my mind in this place. The day started just fine: Julia heard of a bookstore that we had to see, and of course Yeye would not let us go on our own, so the four of us – Yeye, Julia, Ada, and I – took a bus, then the subway, and then a taxi, to find the bookstore. The bookstore is in a mall, and we let ourselves wander around a bit, mostly to see whether the mall has some indoor play area for Ada. Ever since we landed in Chengdu, Yeye has been trying to find a red panda backpack for Ada, just because Julia mentioned in passing something about a red panda backpack. The problem is that red pandas are not that popular in Chengdu. It’s all about the regular pandas here, which is really strange, because red pandas are way cuter. Anyway, we tried to go to toy stores just to look around, but that not an idea Yeye can understand. He walks directly to the staff, demands to know if they have anything at all with red pandas, and when they that they don’t, he completely loses interest and starts heading out.
We finally made it to the bookstore, and it was worth the trip:
They also had a coffee shop, so we sat down for a coffee. After we left we saw through the glass walls that we missed the children area:
Then we came home for lunch and hung out in the living room. Yeye is making a lot of progress with Ada. He makes her laugh with funny noises and bribes her with pieces of pomelo. Laolao, laying on her couch with her hand-held massage device, thinks she could harvest the fruits of Yeye’s efforts, so she calls to Ada as she waves the massage thing to grab her attention. Needless to say, Ada is not impressed.
After lunch it was Julia’s turn to go shopping with Yeye on his electric vehicle, and there was no way I was going to stay home alone with Laolao and Erjiujiu, so I decided to take Ada for a walk. As we were getting ready to leave, Laolao stood in front of me and mimed pushing a stroller. I assumed she wanted to know if I’m about to leave. “wu fenzhong!” (“five minutes!”) I said, feeling very proud of myself. I would later learn that she knew I was about to leave but wanted to know why I’m not taking the stroller, which I was, it’s just that the stroller was parked outside the apartment. That, of course, did not change the fact that Laolao was annoyed with me for not taking the stroller, which I did, and for not understanding what the fuck she wanted when she mimed pushing a stroller.
Ada and I walked along the countless stores selling karaoke gear, rice cookers, and portable heaters. There are so many of these, and it doesn’t look like they have a lot of business going. Who the hell buys all this crap? I also noticed that people stare at Ada way more that they stare at me. She is adorable, I’ll give her that, but I wonder if they recognize her Asian genes, but my genes cause her to look a bit “off” to them, which is what makes them stare at her. It also seems to be very uncommon for a stroller to pushed by a man around here, let alone a white man.
Then Julia called – she survived the trip and wanted to come and join us. With some unreliable help from Google Maps and counting mostly on our telepathy as a couple, we managed to find each other, and as we wandered around, we stumbled upon a maze of stores that sell electronic components and tools – my favorites. Serendipity won once again.
Then we got home for dinner. The amount of noise in this house is insane. The TV is on, both Yeye and Laolao watch videos on their phone, the notification sounds bleep constantly, and in between someone has to start an argument about something that doesn’t matter at all. Through all that noise I was trying to get some work done, but then –
Then Ada fell, hit her head, and started crying. Julia picked her up and gave her comfort, which usually takes just a minute or two until Ada calms down, but Yeye felt that this is not enough. He took a knife and a pomelo and started hitting the pomelo with the knife relentlessly while yelling “Ye! Ye!”, thinking, I guess, that this will distract Ada. Ada, of course, started crying harder. I called Yeye and gestured to him to stop. He thought about it for a second, and decided to continue anyway. “Yeye, stop!” I said, and again, he paused, looked at me, and started again. I jumped from my seat, stood in front of him and yelled “stop!”. I found myself ready to punch a man in his 90s, and my heart was racing with rage. He finally stopped and Ada slowly calmed down.
Then Ada fell asleep, Julia made me tea to calm me down, and just when I thought the day was over, Yeye yelled to Julia from his home office. We had to remind him that Ada is sleeping. He had issues with his internet connection and wanted me to help. I followed him to his office, where Erjiujiu was sitting at the desk. He got up and gestured for me to sit. I wanted to find the router first in order to give it a nice power cycle. The router was on the desk, so I stood behind the desk and examined the connections, but that was not Erjiujiu’s idea of what it takes to fix the internet connection. He shook the chair vigorously and demanded that I sit. I was tired of this bullshit, so I pointed at the door and told Yeye to tell Erjiujiu to get the fuck out of my face – I used a more delicate language, of course. Yeye scolded Erjiujiu and kicked him out, and now, when he was finally out of the way, Yeye took over the vigorous shaking of the chair, demanding that I sit down. I restarted the router and sat down, and only then Yeye left.
It’s a windows 7 machine, and everything is in Chinese. It did look like the computer was connected to the router, but there was no internet connection. I left the room frustrated and told Julia that “there’s probably nothing I can do. When this happens, it’s usually the ISP’s fault. Or that the ethernet cable is disconnected. Which I didn’t check because I was so pissed. God damnit”. I returned to the office and attached the loose ethernet cable. Now we finally have decent internet in the house. I can’t take this anymore.
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