March 8th, 2016

March 8th, 2016

10:41 am

Aw, yeah, I had a great night of sleep (er, excepting the very sad Magic School Bus dream where Ralphie alienated everyone in the class), I'm all breakfasted up, teeth brushed, ready for the day, and, oh snap, it's beautiful out!

I'm expected down at Qingniwaqiao for an over time shift today- oh no, my day off work will be spent working! How will I ever catch up on all my blog posts without today to work on it? Problem solved- I'll write my notes about the days down in between classes, and format all the fonts and whatnot afterwards at home. The formating stuff- plus the fact that I'm usually too busy with friendly faces and/or internet access at Roosevelt- is why I don't always catch up on blogposts at work.

So great, I've got notes for all those days, written on my daily work schedule, but I didn't have a daily work schedule for yesterday, it was my day off, so that means I'd better write about it before it slips away.

Unlike today, I got up too too early, only six hours sleep until I got up and got ready to head over to Roosevelt (I could maybe have gone back to sleep for a bit, but I didn't want to sleep through my appointment)- what appointment you ask? I was meeting up with Vicky at 10, whereupon I would get my passport back, and we'd go get me a phone. And, hopefully, set up some internet banking, and internet for my apartment, and moneygram funds back to Canada for my credit cards- yeah, it should have been a useful, productive day.

Welp, 10am came and went, no Vicky- I internet surfed until just before noon when I grabbed some lunch before the rush crowd arrived. Exiting the bathroom, I saw a co-worker getting food for herself, so I got her attention (I'm not a 100% comfortable with her name, you know how it goes- the food stand attendant actually had to point me out to her, so embarrassing) and asked if Vicky had arrived. Her response? "Maybe."

Okay then, I'll leave you to your lunch. 

I go down the escalator, and there's Leo heading up: "Leo, has Vicky arrived?"

"Maybe."

What are the odds on that one?

I enter Web, and no, Vicky was definitely not there. Alona sent her a message for me on, you know, her functioning phone. It took a while to get a response, which Alona and I understood to be a harbinger of bad news, finally hearing that Vicky was still at some meeting. This meeting was never mentioned to me before, but fine.

During this time, I was asked if I would take Adeel's shift at Qingniwaqiao tomorrow, and of course I was good for that. My middle name is "Team-player". Oh, wait, no, my middle name is "Over-time pay". Maybe I have two middle names?

I was slightly confused when Adeel showed up to work today, feeling better than he had yesterday- was I still going to Qingniwaqiao tomorrow?

Finally, Vicky showed up. Okay, do you have my passport? No, but I have a tracking number.

My brain didn't register the significance of the phrase "tracking number" so I just sort of had a blank expression on my face, Vicky had to spell out that my passport was en route, but thus far still in Wuhan. It should be here Tuesday or Wednesday. 

And we all know that means Wednesday, I mean, come on.

I think she expected me to get mad about this, and I can't say I was happy, but I think I was more stunned. I was hoping to give my grandfather a call on my new phone, but scratch that. Maybe I should try with my Canadian cell phone, how much could they charge me? ... I don't trust it, they could charge a lot. Those roaming fees. Hrmm.

Vicky clued me in, I mean, yes, I asked her first, about my shift tomorrow at Qingniwaqiao- Adeel is going to get checked out at the hospital for his bronchitis tomorrow, so yes, I'm still on deck for my over time shift. Alrighty.

I had been scheduled to see "Zootopia" with Steve on Tuesday, so when he came in I updated him on that situation- we switched gears and went on this day, Monday.

In other news, I discussed Chinese censorship with Nikita, who has been reading wikipedia articles on China using a VPN- in fact he's read enough that now he's a little worried about reading those articles on China. I told him he's probably fine as long as he keeps his mouth shut. He told me about a Chinese punk band that operates out of Sweden... Norway? No, probably Sweden, because of course they're banned in China. I showed him a music video for "London Calling" and "The Kids Aren't Alright", the latter of which music video is pretty messed up, and I can't say I'm a fan of the look of the Offspring's front man there- kind of blank, generic 90's/early 2000's guy, but I do really dig the song. As a bit of an aside I then showed him "Needing/Getting" from OK Go as well as their latest, that gravity defying airplane song- this was my first time watching that video too, very cool. I had to assure Nikita that the OK Go stuff was real, besides perhaps a little ADR I believe is the term.

The theatre at Roosevelt was apparently only playing Zootopia in Chinese... or something, I don't know- but it was no good to watch it there. So Steve came back with my ticket money and instead we took a trip to another theatre by subway- Imax 3D screening, English with Chinese subtitles. After confirming that, yes, this screening would be understandable for me, we called Sylar who purchased the tickets online for us from back at Web- apparently this netted us a considerable discount, from 140 yuan a ticket down to 60 yuan. Still expensive, but at 60 yuan I reckon it was about half the cost of an Imax ticket in Canada.

There was an odd bottleneck entrance to the actual theatre areas, and Steve wanted to take the ramp up- stairs are tough for him, and he'd had to deal with a LOT of stairs today- some manager type tried to give him a hard time, but eventually relented and let the kid go up the ramp while I handed the attendant our tickets. I asked Steve whether or not he could get some kind of official card or something that would explain at a glance that he wasn't fully mobile- he said he didn't like that idea, that he doesn't want to be treated differently or looked at differently. Fair enough, many people feel the same way, but, I pointed out, who cares what that random theatre owner thinks?

We had to sit really close to the screen, not eyebleedingly close, but only the first row up after entering the theatre itself. But it wasn't bad at all, and the seats were AMAZING! It's like every seat was its own individual leather grandpa chair. Like, where do I sign up to get one of these? They didn't recline, but they also didn't need to, you sunk into it a bit. Man, that chair was worth the price of admission... which is good, since I was somewhat grumbling about "Imax...grumble grumble... 3D... grumble grumble.... James Cameron's Avatar... grumble grumble".

Zootopia was phenomenal. I had no idea what it was about, so I feared a movie based solely around Bojack Horseman levels of "animals are people? Punspunspuns" comedy (I'm sorry, all my friends that are nuts for Bojack- it's not that good. Not even close.) But what I  got instead was a movie about a little rabbit that wanted to be a police officer in a world where only big animals were police officers. A Disney movie tackling racism and prejudice using cute animals (uh, it's okay for another bunny to call me "cute", but when another animal says it...) and doing it in a more complex, modern way. When I was a kid this movie would have been more High School Musical- you know, "We're all in this together", but instead the ending narration says "real life is messy", acknowledging that nobody is perfect, that you're going to make mistakes, be prejudiced, and that, as Gazelle/Shakira sings, you just have to try to be better, because that's all you can do.

Not only is this a big important message for kids, but it's a wonderful message for everyone out there that polices language so hard that, right or wrong, you get shamed and excommunicated for saying "the wrong thing". I don't expect many people will get that particular message out of the film, I'm predicting now they'll be too busy praising the film for its message of inclusivity (which, granted, fair enough) without noting how the main character fails to live up to that standard all the time, and needs to be forgiven when failing to meet that standard.

Anyways, it was great. Nostalgically reminded me of the Bonkers D. Bobcat show "Bonkers" from back in the days of Darkwing Duck and whatnot.

Steve and I headed back to Xi'an Lu so I could get some water- I was in great need, all out (Steve: "You don't have a kettle to boil water at home?" Isaac: "I do, but I gotta be honest here... I'm not going to drink the tap water here. Boiled or not. It's not happening."). We stopped back at Web, but it was a little too late in the day for parking my water there and then getting food, so I lugged it out to, uh, "Yoshinoya"? Maybe that's what it's called. Think Japanese food meets A&W. Had a chicken and rice bowl with some carrots and cauliflower. So, gotta give it to this place, health-wise.

I parted ways with Steve after he got safely into a cab, and then I walked back home with my water. I was concerned I'd be too cold, I was only wearing my button up flannel shirt- I've told you before, I'm a little reckless with the cold weather- I explained to everyone how Canadians always take the first warmer weather to ditch coats and enjoy spring, or go jogging in shorts. You know how we do. But I was pretty okay, I've been much colder.

I arrived home to find a note from Aimen in my door, so I dropped my things off and went to say hi to him- it seems he hasn't left the country for Jordan yet, as they have new visa rules for residency- they want him to have $30, 000 US in a bank account in Jordan. So, scratch that plan. Now he's seeing if he can take more university courses and further extend his student visa. It's a big pain, and everything is up in the air with him. Wish him luck.

And that was it- I had some oatmeal and a banana when I got back to my apartment, even though I had eaten plenty today (Jordan, Duck Dodgers as El Zero making the "so fat" motion. - sorry everyone, just doing an inside joke for my brother), did my laundry- I seem to have discovered the optimal button procedure to activate my laundry machine, I'll keep you informed as ever about that one, watched some Colbert videos I saved onto my USB while at Web, and that's all she wrote. I mean all I wrote. I'm done writing. - 12:01pm