Maybe I should completely give up planning things. I can’t think of a single event or trip I have taken in the last seven years (including going back to the UK) where disaster hasn’t been visited upon me.
Having spent time researching timetables, finding anomalies and actually getting my students to search as if they themselves were making the trip, I awoke this morning armed with plans A and B, both dependent on what time Shenyang Steve arrived. My own movements were immaterial, I had the simple task of taking a bus to the train station and then a train to the airport. Nothing could go wrong.
Of course, being Dragon Boat, there was a long queue of students waiting for the 131 bus. No problem there, I had left plenty of time and could at a pinch see four buses depart without me before starting to panic. I both boarded and obtained a geriatric seat on the third bus, leaving Peili Square at 0950. The journey normally takes 40-45 minutes and my train was scheduled for 1103. It was in the bag.
The first omen came five minutes later when we were held up by an accident that had occurred some time before (because the police were already there) in which a car had crashed through the central the barriers from the opposite lane, by the looks of things the driver had cut up a coach and the coach had mated it from the rear. Still plenty of time.
Another minor shunt delayed us further on but still no cause for alarm and indeed we arrived at 1035. I duly headed to the ticket office. I never took my passport, instead I took my Chinese ID, something I have used to buy train tickets all over China and even on one occasion a domestic flight. I need your passport. No you don’t, read the inside back cover - it says this is my ID in China. Well I could hardly back down and produce my passport just because this stupid woman didn’t know the rules, the damned thing was miles away at home and I had a train to catch in twenty minutes.
Except she then told me (after getting on the walkie talkie to her boss to verify I was right) the next train was 1148. No, there’s one at 1102 or 1103. No, next train is 1148.
Shit.
Steve lands at 1210, no luggage so maybe he will emerge from the terminal at 1220. I am going to be late. With no choice, I bought a ticket and with an hour to kill, went outside to smoke, fuming because I thought both I and my students had erred. Standing in the shade having a puff, I realised I was outside the automatic ticket dispensers (foreigners can’t use them as we don’t have plastic ID cards yet) and that above the machines it displayed all the train departures for the day.
There WAS a train at 1103!!! Only now, it was too late for me to catch it, all because of that stupid woman. You can guess my mood by now. I fired off some texts apologising to Steve and apprising him of the situation. Eventually I was sitting on a train and two minutes after we left, he phoned me at 1150 - around the time I should have arrived. Except I still had 45 minutes to go.
Utter disaster, hence I believe maybe I should abandon any form of planning in future and just go with the flow because meticulous preparation can be undone from the beginning.
As a result, he decided (not unexpectedly) that we would take a taxi from the airport, which thankfully he paid for at 200y - a rip-off. And the cheese I asked if he could bring me? Magically it had transformed into a proper deep fat fryer! He remembered my comment from my blog some time ago. The cheese is edam and Jens and Shona brought that with them when they flew in late last night. By all accounts it has survived by the skin of its teeth as Shona had the munchies last night.
So tonight (or early evening at least) we went to a bar, drank a load of beer (having found one that actually sold cold ones) and then we went to the sweet pork place for dinner. It seems they liked my choice of venue, certainly liked the food and even better the bill, which was about 240y - in Shenyang it could have been quadruple that.
Once sated we went in search of another bar but to our collective disgust (remember I have no company here so I don’t know many haunts) most of them had the idea that a cold beer involved pouring a lager into a glass filled with ice. We ended up back at the same bar we were in before dinner, where at least they had bottles in a chest freezer.
Ok they got tired very early and being the lunatics they are, they have plans to get up at dawn tomorrow and walk the equivalent of Land’s End to John O’Groat’s before breakfast. I meanwhile have said text me when you are done and want lunch! I feel somewhat inadequate in not knowing many places to eat or visit but I think/hope they realise that being isolated I don’t go out that often. It’s no fun exploring solo.
However, it was great to see them again and even better to be able to argue the toss and have no offence taken. I cannot do it with most Chinese as they do not understand the humour. Sadly I was most remiss in the photo department but we did get a waitress to take a group photo for us. Tomorrow could be interesting because they just want to eat wherever they end up - I may just find somewhere new and interesting to eat!
No comments:
Post a Comment