I have been escaping into all the sports stuff here in Boston, which I believe is the greatest sports city in the world, period. Dennis Miller said on his show that the last time the city of Boston got this cocky the King sent troops over here, that is what the atmosphere here is: cocky, arrogant. World Champion Red Sox, Celtics have the best record in Basketball, and the DYNASTY (Patriots), well, they are just plain fun. Spygate this Sunday against the Jets should be interesting too (supposed bad blood between the coaches over the alleged spying/filming), so while we are trying to process the year and we stand with empty plates staring at a huge buffet of options and ideas, these distractions help me not to get bored and jump into something I will regret.
Yesterday we had 10 inches of snow fall on us in seven hours, a new record for Boston, and it seems we will be having a white Christmas.
Speaking of Christmas, Linnea was putting gifts together and my mom was talking to her about the upcoming holiday, and she asked “when would we start shopping?”. I could hear the shock in my mom’s voice when Linnea told her we were done, and I yelled out that “this might be the first time I ever enjoyed Christmas”. (kind of funny, but mostly depressing, huh?)
I realize, between the long cold dark times of winter blues that start in December and the pressure of shopping, Christmas has always been full of stress and fatigue and boredom, this only ends with the coming spring, the seasonal affective stuff of late winter I missed this past year on the race (thank you God).
As we talk about Christmas I realize, I have no problems spending money, and I love giving gifts, it is simply shopping that stresses me out, and everyone talks about shopping, everyone is forced into this addiction…never mind, some people just love shopping and their excitement about the whole thing usually makes my head spin.
When we were in the crappiest city in the world, Beijing, I learned one more lesson about shopping.
In Mexico we were overwhelmed with all the new culture and haggling for prices was just one more thing, my attitude was just spend a little more, I would spend extra money just to stay out of an argument, but over time we learned to haggle, and it is just part of the experience. In most countries we basically offered about half of the asking price as a start and would wind up paying somewhere in there for something we wanted. If we didn’t want something, sometimes we would wind up buying it anyway just because the person was so insistent.
So, by the time we were in Beijing, the dirtiest city in the world, I was pretty comfortable with all the people in my face wanting to sell stuff.
We were only in Beijing, city of filth, for a couple days so we wanted to maximize our time…and being tired and ready to go home, I didn’t want to work too hard on doing stuff. So five of us went to the Summer Palace. We heard that the government had something going on at the Forbidden City so it was not worth going, and we took two taxis to the Palace.
Jake, Rusty, Amy, Linnea and I wandered around this amazing property. There was a walkway, called the Long Corridor that had over 17,000 different hand paintings over a distance of 1500 yards, and while we were looking at this, I had a man come up and try to sell me official 2008 Summer Olympic t-shirts. He was asking 70 yuen or quay which would be about 10 US dollars for one t-shirt. I offered him 4 quay and kept walking thinking that was funny. He kept coming down in price, and I kept saying 4 until he offered 2 t-shirts for 40 quay. Now that was a good deal, and I wound up handing him a 100 yuen note and pocketing the t-shirts and change and feeling good about my shopping skills.
As we continued to walk another man came, offering the same t-shirts and kept hounding us and hounding us and I kept offering 4 again, just to see how much he would come down to. He stopped at offering 4 shirts for 50 quay, and I wasn’t so proud of my skills anymore, because I am sure I could have gotten that price from the other guy. Eventually I said no, I can’t buy any more shirts because Linnea was getting stressed out.
The whole time there we were approached by sellers and at one point Jake almost got punched for trying to get a guy to leave us alone. (the whole thing was my fault too, as I had talked the guy from 250 yuen to 25 yuen for a tea set and then said “nah”, which seemed to upset him a bit and he almost swung at Jake. If anyone is going to Beijing for the Olympics, don’t pay more than 10% of the asking price of anything, which is an attitude I will use here when looking for a place to live…think I will get punched? Who cares?)
Later that day we were at a restaurant and when it was time to pay we pulled out our money, and we found out that the change we were given was either counterfeit or money we had never seen and couldn’t use…so that’s how they are making money off the tourists, ripping us off every chance they have.
Beijing. One city I would never go back to (I mean, unless of course I have to). It is nice to be back in the city where freedom began.
