Friday, February 6, 2009

Miscellaneous Observations

I have noticed a few things in the almost a month that we've been here. First, no one uses paper towels or normal napkins for anything. If you want a disposable wiping apparatus, you use a tissue, a Kleenex. Its ridiculous. Imagine trying to clean a toddler's ketchup face with Kleenex! We use paper towels at home, but there is only one brand available in the grocery stores and its stuck in some back corner where you have to be a magician to find them.

Secondly, no one uses aluminium foil. Plastic wrap is the only way to go. They plastic wrap everything. I think this has something to do with the nobody uses an oven thing. I use foil to cook with all the time, but if I didn't have an oven I guess I wouldn't use foil either. Again, I have found some in the grocery store, but its in a aisle full of 100 brands of plastic wrap, and it takes five minutes to decipher the half English, half Chinese writing on everything to eventually find what you are looking for!

Thirdly, and I may need Scott to pipe in on this story, they use glue sticks for everything! My experience with glue sticks is that you don't use them unless you are planning to have whatever you are sticking together fall apart eventually. Here, they use them to glue things like passport pictures to forms! On the last day before Chinese New Year, some guy walks into Scott's office and hands him a strip of paper and a glue stick. He says this is for the door. For the door? What does that mean? I think Scott had to ask him five times before the guy realized that Scott really didn't know what that meant. Apparently before closing the office for the holiday week, its customary to glue stick the door shut with a piece of paper. I am guessing it has something to do with a superstition about evil spirits or something.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Awesome! I love the glue stick story. How random.