<rant>

Yesterday I went to buy some replacement contact lenses. I went to an optician that has boxes of all sorts of contact lenses literally lining the walls. I brought my empty box with me so they had all the type, size, prescription info.

When I asked the sales assistants (for some reason they had FIVE people to help simultaneously) for some of the same they said they didn’t have any. And they couldn’t order any either.

I went back over to one of the huge display cases – It seemed a little hard to believe that not one single box was going to be appropriate. I asked them if they had anything similar, on account of needing lenses to see. No.

OK, so what do they have? They rummaged around for a bit and came up with some daily lenses (I asked for 2 weekly), from some random Chinese brand (clearly dodgy) and for a prescription for someone who is very nearly totally blind (I’m not).

Realising that I was going to have to compromise, I then asked for Acuvue brand lenses if possible but said that dailies were ok.

After a small amount of rummaging, they brought out the below box. This is for a lens that is ALMOST IDENTICAL to the ones that I had asked for. I think the only difference was that mine were “Advance Plus” and the others are just “Advance”.

It’s a total mystery to me why they couldn’t have found these the first time around. Why is everything so difficult? And why is the first answer and the second answer (at least) always no. Urgh.

</rant>

Why is everything so bloody difficult here? It’s driving me crazy that even the tiny things can ridiculously difficult.

[it turns out that this is a bit of a rant – if you don’t want to read a rant – then the general gist is that it’s really difficult to get anything done here. ]

For example, how difficult do you think it is to get a remote control fixed? Extremely difficult as it turns out. So it isn’t actually ridiculous  asking for a working remote- we’re in a serviced apartment where they own and manage all of our TV/ audio equipment . On the whole fairly responsive to requests.

Anyway, in September the video remote control mostly stopped working, that is, some of the buttons stopped working no matter how hard we pressed them. This isn’t just a case of needing the remote to save walking those annoying 3 metres to the DVD player to press play. No. As the TV here is indescribably awful (and those are the bits that aren’t Chinese) we watch quite a few films and TV series on DVD (I’ll admit to having developed a bit of a “House” addiction since moving here.) In any case, most of these DVDs have options for scene/ episode selection which you can’t select from the machine – you need the remote.

So I dropped the remote control back with the building management and explained that some of the buttons didn’t work. A day later the remote was returned with the batteries replaced but no working buttons.

OK so maybe I didn’t explain this properly. I went back, explained at length exactly what the problem was and the next day had my remote returned. Not working but with new batteries.

So it went back again. Some days later it was explained to me that actually the problem was that my DVD was bad. “What all of them?” Apparently yes. Huh?

It went back.  This time it came back with an apology. Apparently there were no replacements available. I find this quite difficult to believe in China, where all manner of electronics is available for next to nothing.

I took a break from trying to get it repaired over Christmas but renewed my efforts in January (clearly I have too much time on my hands…). This time they said that they had a “special spray” that would help. Hallelujah it this actually worked. For about four days.

So I took it back.

Finally, last week I received a new remote. New to me in any case – it’s battered and scratched but it WORKS!

It took FIVE MONTHS to fix. I’ll leave you to imagine how hard it is to make the bigger things happen. It seems that the easiest answer to almost anything is No.

It gets pretty chilly in Shanghai which translates into freezing hands when scooting about town. (I can’t express quite how much I miss the heated handlebars of my BMW). My solution to the problem is to wear my skiing mittens but the locals have a much better solution. They have mittens pre-wrapped around the handlebars. Some are pretty fancy like the ones in the picture. These even look like this was what they are designed to do. Many others are distinctly DIY. Think bits of cardboard and miles of gaffer tape. For that matter, there are thousands of scooters out there that are entirely held together by gaffer tape. Reassuring…NOT.

The other day I took the first step towards getting my Chinese driving licence  – I went to a translation agency to get an official translation of my current one. Simples! you might say. Well, mostly.

The first thing they asked me to do is to write down my Chinese name. “I don’t have one.” I said. They looked at me as if I were crazy . “But you have to have a Chinese name…” I didn’t mention it, but it hasn’t been an issue before, what with living in Pennsylvania and bits of Western Europe.

Unfortunately there was no getting round it. Fortunately they had a reference book. A weighty tome with many thousands of names and their translations. Except mine of course.They did have my Surname, or near enough but no first name.

So after some discussion they came up with one. I have no idea what it means. Names are a BIG DEAL in China. There is a huge amount of superstition tied up with the number of characters involved and how many strokes they comprise even before you get to the meaning of the characters. I know that people have spent ages helping foreigners create appropriate Chinese names. Well I had some girl at the translation agency sort something out for me in about 30 secs. Great.

I haven’t dared look up what my new name means yet. I really hope it isn’t something like “Giant Horse’s Arse”. Still, it’s unlikely to be as completely bonkers as some of the names the Chinese give themselves. Maybe I should just ask for “Teapot Chambers” or something like that. That actually has a nice ring to it…

I can’t pretend that I’ve ever been remotely interested in washing machines or tumble dryers. Obviously I like to have them in the house so I don’t have to walk to a launderette but other than that I’m not really bothered. I know ex-USA expats have a hard time coming to terms with the smaller front loaders we have in Europe and, indeed China but I’m fine with them (although I have to say I do like the idea of being able to do a gargantuan amount of washing at once but ho hum).

So once installed in the apartment in Shanghai I happily washed and dried clothes in the two relevant appliances. Until the dryer stopped working and sprouted a new flashing orange light that is. Now I know that orange flashing lights are not good generally. That made me actually look at the thing.

After some poking around it turned out that the top drawer – usually absent in a dryer I think – is actually where the water that’s extracted from the clothes goes. The drawer actually runs the length of the dryer. When it fills up, the orange light comes on and you have to take the container out and empty it.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that isn’t plumbed to the outside somehow.

OK not Earth shattering – but I thought mildly strange all the same. Here it is.

One of the many things that I love about the Chinese is their appreciation of the needs of dragons. Dragons living in mountains will of course want to fly down to the sea, which is increasingly problematic for them as the waterfront acquires more and more high rise buildings, for example in Hong Kong. So what do you do if you want to build a building in the dragon’s flight path? You leave gaps in it so the dragons can fly through, naturally.

I saw this building from the ferry on the way to Lamma Island. Pretty much all the flight paths are covered but I can’t help wondering how the floors of that building are arranged around the gap. I’m guessing they need a lift either side for a start…

Since I moved to China, I’ve had a Chinese iPhone. This behaved mostly as I expected until a few months ago when it spontaneously acquired a custom ringtone. Not as you might think the sound I hear when people call me… No. Nothing that mundane.

When people called me, rather than the expected ring-ring they were subjected to what might most accurately be described as a “Chinese Maria Carey ballad”.  Oh the humiliation. People might think that I actually SELECTED this horrific screeching.  I have no idea why this started, or indeed any idea how to stop it or at least change the music. The only possible solution was to throw myself at my phone when it rang to pick up as quickly as possible to minimise potential exposure to the caterwauling. Thank goodness not that many people have my Chinese number.

I believe this is what the Chinese operators consider to be a “value-added feature” and it’s surprisingly popular. I recently called a local company to have a proper, serious business discussion, only to be greeted by a ring tone that sounded like a demented ice cream van. Not a great start to a professional interaction.

Actually the best example of a customised phone tone I have experienced was by a company I used to deal with in the UK. They played Monty Python sketches rather than hold music so when someone actually answered I was sometimes a little disappointed. More people should do something like that.

Actually what am I saying? I am now imagining being subjected to Chinese Monty Python while on hold. On second thoughts, forget I ever brought it up. Please….