It Isn’t My Cart!

I’m sitting here in the back of a cab in Shanghai.  Before me is an ad.  I have seen this ad before.  There is a young guy.  I guess he is “attractive.”  He doesn’t have a shirt on.  His body is reasonably fit with some abs and no body fat on display.   Our friend is cutting vegetables.  While he does so, he looks coyly up at the camera.  Perhaps the ad has a textual subtlety that justifies this rakish look.  More likely he is simply promoting the importance of spinach and mushrooms which are in not only being cut before him but are arranged in bowls of to the side.

Deep inside Pudong Airport now.  It’s not an insignificant schlep to get your ass out to boarding gate eighty-five here at terminal two.  The plane is . . . delayed.  The plane is, already here, which is a great thing.  It could be that we leave in ten minutes.  The likelihood we’ll leave at all is greatly increased with possession of the plane here on this tarmac.   I’m at a restaurant.  I looked at the marketing materials and there was no mention of the name of the restaurant.  One would imagine that marketing materials would want to profile such things.  Presumably there is a nice big name of the place profiled outside.  But before I could get up to look I asked the waitress and she told me: “Huh? Oh. “Ya pin.”  I see.  This could mean many things.   There on the marketing, in rather modest profiling I can see there is a character before the next three that anyone could recognize as “pin” restaurant.  OK.  I’m having roasted goose.  Perhaps the “ya” is for a duck?  I just checked.  It isn’t that 'ya.'  I tried to take a photo.  It’s too small.   I’ll return home and check with my older one.  She’ll laugh at me and say no one could read that sign dad.  Perhaps there will be a big, fat name of the restaurant that I‘ll be able to positively photograph outside.  Perhaps I’ll even know what it says myself.

One lady pointed to the space across from me.  There is not chair and it is empty.  Another woman acknowledge that it was indeed empty.  She then stood up and took her airport push cart and moved it directly in front of me.  She then took her seat.  At no point did she bother to look at me and secure basic acknowledgement that she had just significantly invaded my space.  I looked for a while.  I may as well have been a potted plant.  I know.   I’ll photograph the cart.  That will signal to her that I must think this is a bit of an invasion.  I photographed it from below and from above.  I made photography motions that were exaggerated.  I really wanted her to look at me and cognate that I was aware of her luggage in my foot space.  But she kept eating her noodles, oblivious to anything I might do. 

I have a good view of the gate eighty-five holding pen across the way.  No one has moved.  If I crane my neck I can see the physical gate itself.  No one is doing much of anything there.  I’ve ordered another Asahi beer.  A week from tonight I’ll probably be there having one in Tokyo.  The cart has been pushed by one two three people who’ve moved through and found it to be blocking their way.  I keep imagining explaining myself in Chinese that it isn’t my cart!  But no one cares about the fact that this cart is in my space but isn’t mine.  It’s irrelevant.  Just like it will be when she takes it and leaves.  And . . . there she goes. 

Thursday, 08/24/17