Day Two

1. A woman walked up to me yesterday and asked where I was from. I said New York. “Eh?” came her reply, She was confused. I said U.S.A. a little more slowly. “Eh?” she said again scrunching up her face. I then said “America” very slowly. “Oh America!” She beamed. “Welcome, welcome!” she said exuberantly, patting my back heartily.

2. Crossing the road here is like playing “Frogger” on the Commodore 64. Cars never slow down, but just beep their horns, and there is no such thing as NOT jaywalking. Even at intersections, cars nearly miss hitting each other every few minutes, while people squeeze between them.

3. I had my name translated into Chinese for the benefit of a woman in the office who felt shy about pronouncing it in English. Basically it roughly translates into something like “Rei-Bei-Ca” which means “Lucky Treasure”. Apparently the word Bei, can also mean Baby, but I think I’ll not include that part. Also, my pinyin spelling may be inaccurate.

4. I had someone decode the Exit signs for me because I was seeing it written with four characters, while at the airport, only the last two characters were being used. Basically, the most direct, word for word translation of the four characters is this: “Safe Everything Out Mouth”. Phew! Couldn’t they just use “Out”?