TIME MANAGEMENT
Today I went out with my friend to the park. Just want to share some cultural differences that upsets me every now and then. We were meant to meet at the bus stop at 1:00 o'clock. I left home at quarter to 12:00 as I had to take some money from the Bank. By the time I got to the bus stop it was exactly 1:00 o'clock in the afternoon. Then text-ed my friend, told her that I was at the bus stop and would be there waiting. I got a reply telling me that she hasn't reached home from work. Then I told her I will be waiting...she replied again, "i will try asap." I replied, "it's ok, i'll wait." She apologized for being late and told me she would be there soon. Since, I didn't have time to eat lunch at home, I decided to grab a bite from the street vendors. Ate sticky rice and eggs thinking that it would only be 10 mins at the most that I would have to wait. To kill the time I took out the "Chinese Visual Phrase Book" from my bag , thinking that I could kill the time. So I waited and waited and waited...after 45 mins she turned up!!! I was a little upset that I could no longer be polite with her. I had to give a piece of advice, advice from a "Waiguoren", a foreigner. Apparently she had to take an extra class to cover her colleague up and she wasn't able to come out earlier.
Can't she just inform me earlier that she would be late?
"She thought that she would be able to make it." Very typical Chinese!!
In China, these are things that very often upsets me....it would have been perfect if she had told me that she might be late before I left home, then I wont have to stand outside waiting for 45 mins and I won't have to lose my cool!!
Of course she is my good friend, so we went to the park happily and forgot about what happened. We had a great day together.
PHOTOGRAPHS NOT FOR FREE
We were on our way to the park, and there I saw some thing that was totally interesting. It was a Chinese traditional style popcorn maker. I was so enthralled by it that I started taking pictures without the face of the man who was operating it. Then, he started telling me off saying, "Two pictures are for free, if you take one more picture then I would have to charge you money." Why does everything has to be about MONEY MONEY MONEY!!!
I feel that at times, because of my Chinese looks they were being rude to me because they are very rude to each other at times.
Chinese style popcorn maker.
I sometimes don't always have the grace to put up with these kinds of situations and even though I know I should be more tolerant with them, I didn't have the patience to do so....An area where I need to work on myself, to be more gracious to the people who are not always so nice to me.
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