Wednesday, May 19, 2004
I went to Ali Mountain yesterday and watched the sun rise over the horizon at 5.25 this morning. This required a 3 o'clock wakeup but it was 90% worth it. You will never guess who I went with. I just wanted to go to Ali Shan so I said yes.
The people are heaps nice. I handed this lady twenty five kuai for a mango and she gave me forty kuai change. I was buying a papaya and the guy started handing us all these free papayas. Then we were sitting outside a tea stand when he brought over plates and plates of cut-up papaya for us. On the train back through the mountains this arvo, I saw a blue truck full of papayas driving along the road parallel to the tracks approaching one of the mid-route stops. I checked the driver to see if it was the same truck and it ended up being the same Mr Papaya from last night. We did the whole waving what a coincidence thing. I was surprised he could actually spot us in the train from the road. THEN after the train had stopped he appeared outside my window with a bag of papayas motioning for me to come to the door and take them off him. He had stopped his truck, grabbed some papayas, ran into the station and onto the platform without a ticket, found where we were sitting, and offered us some more, all within the five minutes needed to drop off passengers and pick up new ones. The people at Ali Shan are eerily kind people. The souvenir shop people were handing us free stuff too. Miss M said it was because Mr Papaya thought we were 'cute' i.e. hot, I believe because this is the only reasoning she is capable of producing. I decided we had stumbled upon a bunch of kind people with a romantic spirit, sigh... so different to every other average person around here.
In other news, I threw down the towel, or threw it out, or threw it in or whatever at the music club after a dorky bitch-face said I was lousy for the last time. I sought post-traumatic stress counselling from various students of the language centre and they advised me that I couldn't blame these dickwads for failing to contemplate that some foreigners can speak Chinese. Yeah but that doesn't make them any nicer people. I cancelled my lessons from Cute Piano Teacher aswell although he didn't deserve it. But I think he really needs that $8 per hour coz he called to ask if I wanted lessons again. I said yes so I'm going back tomorrow to let him explain how to position my hands properly.
¶ 22:23
The people are heaps nice. I handed this lady twenty five kuai for a mango and she gave me forty kuai change. I was buying a papaya and the guy started handing us all these free papayas. Then we were sitting outside a tea stand when he brought over plates and plates of cut-up papaya for us. On the train back through the mountains this arvo, I saw a blue truck full of papayas driving along the road parallel to the tracks approaching one of the mid-route stops. I checked the driver to see if it was the same truck and it ended up being the same Mr Papaya from last night. We did the whole waving what a coincidence thing. I was surprised he could actually spot us in the train from the road. THEN after the train had stopped he appeared outside my window with a bag of papayas motioning for me to come to the door and take them off him. He had stopped his truck, grabbed some papayas, ran into the station and onto the platform without a ticket, found where we were sitting, and offered us some more, all within the five minutes needed to drop off passengers and pick up new ones. The people at Ali Shan are eerily kind people. The souvenir shop people were handing us free stuff too. Miss M said it was because Mr Papaya thought we were 'cute' i.e. hot, I believe because this is the only reasoning she is capable of producing. I decided we had stumbled upon a bunch of kind people with a romantic spirit, sigh... so different to every other average person around here.
In other news, I threw down the towel, or threw it out, or threw it in or whatever at the music club after a dorky bitch-face said I was lousy for the last time. I sought post-traumatic stress counselling from various students of the language centre and they advised me that I couldn't blame these dickwads for failing to contemplate that some foreigners can speak Chinese. Yeah but that doesn't make them any nicer people. I cancelled my lessons from Cute Piano Teacher aswell although he didn't deserve it. But I think he really needs that $8 per hour coz he called to ask if I wanted lessons again. I said yes so I'm going back tomorrow to let him explain how to position my hands properly.
¶ 22:23
