Day 139: Taxis are great

Last Friday, went to Blue Frog on Tongren Lu with some peo­ple. Ten chicken wings was some­thing like 30 RMB. Reasonable. But a Corona was 40 RMB! Sheesh. All the servers spoke good English. Then went to C’s Pub again. Drank too much. Mother says don’t eat those yán­gròuchuàn (bar­be­cued lamb on a stick) that peo­ple serve on the side­walks but they’re so good! Some homo pics from C’s:

Hungover all day Saturday. Went to a party at Khalid’s house a few hours late. Ate some great home­made food. Watched Indian mu­sic videos. Witnessed a ridicu­lously huge bot­tle of Johnny Walker. Didn’t drink any but took a pic with it. [Note to self: Get pics from Khalid!] Stopped by C’s again on the way home but didn’t drink. Had yan­grouchuan again. Yum.

Went to Disc Kart on Sunday with Jenn and Khalid. Jenn broke 40 sec­onds (39.something) and placed first. Khalid and I kept pass­ing each other but Jenn was nowhere to be seen. My left shoul­der was dead af­ter two ses­sions. Ate hot­pot with them at Dolar Shop. Talked about ex­pat salary vs lo­cal salary. Depressing dis­cus­sion for me.

Lately I’ve been tak­ing taxis a lot. It’s eat­ing up my sav­ings but I don’t care be­cause it’s sav­ing my san­ity. I can’t stand tak­ing the bus and metro all the time from Qibao to down­town anymore.

Imagine spend­ing 90 min­utes right af­ter work to go have a late din­ner with some­one, and then hav­ing to go home im­me­di­ately be­cause the jour­ney back is an­other 90 min­utes, not count­ing the time it takes to walk to the bus stop and wait for the right bus.

Not do­ing that any­more. Just think­ing about it pisses me off. If the jour­ney would take more than 30 min­utes by bus or metro, I’m call­ing a cab. Besides, some taxi dri­vers are re­ally funny, even though I never to­tally un­der­stand what they’re saying.

One dri­ver kept bitch­ing about how stu­pid that “Beijing Welcomes You” song is, say­ing it’s like a monk chant­ing be­cause the tune keeps re­peat­ing non­stop for seven min­utes. He even mim­ic­ked a monk to prove his point. (Being a taxi dri­ver he must have heard it a mil­lion times on the radio.)

I asked him why it’s still be­ing played when the Olympics is over, and he said be­cause some peo­ple like it. He asked me if I like it. I don’t care but I said no just to agree. Then he slapped my leg and con­tin­ued say­ing how aw­ful that song is.