Shanghai (1/20 - 1/22): Weekend Proposal

I’m quite a bit behind on my blogging so I’m going to keep the next few entries relatively short and sweet (relatively speaking, of course).

I woke up on Saturday morning and Zhu Wen Jun and I ran over to the wushu guan to meet up with Yang Laoshi so that I could finalize plans for TR’s visit the following week.  Unfortunately it was as I suspected.  Yang Laoshi was expecting me to arrive the day before and he didn’t have class on Saturday for this particular week.  That means I would have to wait until Monday to meet up with him.  So I rescheduled my flight back to HK for Monday afternoon and arranged to talk with him then.

I spent most of the weekend just getting my place ready for TR and taking care of my own relocation loose ends.  I also did some major DVD organization too.

I think the most interesting thing that happened over the weekend was getting a phone call from an old friend who used to work at the Japanese restaurant around the corner from where I lived on Yan An Lu.  Back when I used to hang out at the restaurant a lot we got to know each other pretty well.  I even expressed some initial interest in getting to know her “better”, but at the time she didn’t seem interested so I didn’t pursue the matter any further.

As a bit of background on her, she is originally from Wuhan and moved to Shanghai a few years back.  She is fluent in Japanese after having worked at a Japanese restuarant for 2 years (which I find pretty impressive) so originally we would communicate in a mix of Chinese and Japanese, but these days mostly in Chinese.

Anyway, I got a call from her on Sunday.  She said that Saturday had been her birthday and asked if I had forgotten.  I wasn’t going to lie and said that I didn’t realize it was her birthday but asked if she had remembered mine a few weeks earlier (which she hadn’t).  She forgot mine and I forgot hers, so I didn’t feel tooooo bad about it.  After all I hadn’t talked to her in several months.

She asked what I was up to and I said that I was just in town for the weekend and had moved to Hong Kong.  At that point she started to cry and I asked what was wrong.  On her birthday she realized that she didn’t really have any friends in Shanghai and didn’t have anyone to hang out with at all and was feeling exteremely lonely.  Her way of combating this depressing feeling?  Decide to get married so that she wouldn’t be lonely anymore.  And who was she going to marry?  You guessed it.  Me.

Say what?  This just seemed a bit silly, but I suppose when you’re depressed and lonely you will come up with some strange logic.  She had decided that she wanted to get married to me.  I told her that wasn’t really very realistic, especially since I just moved to Hong Kong and was starting a new company down there.  I tried to battle her sentiment with logic, but it wasn’t really working.

I agreed to meet with her later that day.  I had some shopping to do anyway so I figured I could meet with her while I shopped thereby avoiding her and I being alone in my home.  I also figured the more people around the better — she would be less likely to do something severe.

Anyway, I ended up going shopping and we ended up chatting and getting something to eat.  She was pretty insistent on the whole issue but I think I convinced her that it wasn’t something that was going to happen.

With that out of the way, Monday went fairly smoothly.  I met with Coach Yang, finalized the plans for TR’s stay in Shanghai and then ran out to PuDong Airport to catch my flight to Shenzhen.  I actually made really good time in Shenzhen.  From the airport to the office in just under 3 hours.  I did the taxi, lowu, kcr, mtr route.  If the ferry times were as regular as the ones to Macau I’d bank on that more often, but they don’t run as often to Shenzhen.

No pictures for this entry either.  Still getting the hang of my new camera at this point.  But will have some in the upcoming entries.