Really Consider English Communication

Someone wants a call at 5:30PM.  I’ve got to leave at 6:15PM. My daughter needs to go downtown and I’ll accompany her.  She has a bit of time to wolf down a dinner. Not so I.  I’ve gotta get the car and wrap up the call and so we take off before I can eat. 

We ride to Jinxianqiao.  The driver keeps cutting in to my daughter and my conversation with traffic updates about one pathway or another.  In Chinese: “Yep, that’s still OK with me.  Let’s just stick to the Da Shanzi exit.”  In English: Anyway, so how long is the class going to focus on that story?”  In Chinese:  “You know that Da Shanzi exit sometimes can be really backed up.”  “Look, whatever your GPS is telling you is fine with me.” In English: And you’re going to talk about Freud’s influence on Kafka?”  And so it goes, for much of the ride as if he doesn’t really consider English communication anything to be concerned with interrupting. 

The traffic was slow.  An hour later we’re up in the building on the seventh floor.   There’s a TV on in the waiting room.  I fiddle with the controls and try to kill the volume.  It’s a story about a young woman who’s obviously come home from a shitty date.  She sad.  She takes off her false eyelashes and we now watch her watching the television, where a woman is attacked violently in the bathtub.  I don’t want to get drawn in any further and I close the cabinet that the TV rests in’s doors and put on an old Freddie Redd LP that suits me.

Ninety minutes later she’s ready and I am famished.  I dial a DiDi.  We step outside and he rings me up.  “Hi this is Di Di Da Che, ready to serve you.  Where shall I meet you?”  “I’m by the Communication Bank, how about you?”  He mentions something unintelligible.   “Right.  Are you facing east or west.”  “North.”  “Oh.  Are you near the Ham-burger King”  “Yes. Yes.  Right outside.”  “Got it.” And we head over and hop in.

The ride back is remarkably fast.  I’ve only 30 minutes to go before a 9:00PM call.  I begin charging my phone assuming I’ll be taking it in the car, but we’re back and in the door within twenty minutes.  There’s a bowl of eggplant and a mantou waiting for me in the kitchen, which I’ve most grateful for.  I’ve got about eight minutes to eat it.  The appointment texts me and says he’ll be five minutes late.  “Take your time” I text in response with a mouth full of mantou. 

Thursday, 2/08/18