Parkson

April 26, 2007 Thursday

Marie called in the morning. It is fun to talk to home.

I took a taxi to Parkson. It was listed on my “places to go” sheet under supermarkets, but it really is a high end department store with a supermarket in the basement. In Shanghai, the one that I saw also had restaurants on the top floor, but no luck here.

What strikes me when I walk through a store here is the number of people ready and willing to wait on you. This department store was set up with each make of clothing in its own boutique. Each boutique had at least 2 salespeople. I was the only customer on some of the floors. It also has this system where you choose what you want to buy; receive an order slip; take it to the cashier; receive a receipt; return to the original salesperson and pick up the purchase. In a supermarket, there will be an assistant on each aisle – in a crowded store they are helping clog up the aisle. Each checkout counter also has its own bagger. It is easy to see that labor is very cheap here.

Outside of Parkson is a pedestrian walking street. I wandered for awhile, but had to leave to get home for lunch. Having Chuck come home everyday does mean that I have to stop what I am doing to go home too. (It reminds me of when we were in Paris when Alec was 7. He came home for lunch everyday and it meant that I only had about 2 ½ hours to explore.) Taxis are so cheap though that I can always return to wherever I left off.)

(4 flights)

After lunch (supposedly the Chinese people are all home taking naps) Chuck watches a little TV (the west coast NBA games might be on.) or checks his email then he goes back about 1:30.

I went to pick up his shirts. I guess that they do take naps. I woke up the shirt lady. She showed me that one of the shirts had a rip along the tuck in the back. She repaired it while I watched on her peddle Singer. Then she ironed the tuck down using a pair of jeans as a pressing pad. It looks great. (4 flights)

The air conditioner repair man came this afternoon. 2 students brought him so that they could translate for me. He took away the controller because it is defective. The other 2 air conditioners work with another controller. I had finally found that one and had managed to make the air conditioner beep, but since I can’t read the buttons, nothing else seemed to work. One of the students told me what the buttons said. I think that he has the same technical competence as Chuck. He could tell me what the buttons said, but didn’t seem to be able to tell me what they would do. He finally told me enough that I was able to figure out how the thing worked. I hadn’t realized that I had to push the blue button after every other button. The blue button sends the information to the air conditioner. Making the AC work is very important. Everyone keeps saying that it is going to get very very hot and that we are very lucky that it is still cool.

Since this kid was tall, I had him change two light bulbs, also.

We went out for dinner with Jun Yu and Xing Liu. Xing is a girl and they are a couple – not only just for this dinner. When we were walking to the taxi over rough ground, she took my arm. This is something that I have seen a lot here, a young person taking an old woman’s arm to help her walk. (Of course, that does make me an “old woman” and I don’t really think of myself as needing help, but it was really sweet.)

This place was Meng-Cheng, pronounced Mung-chung. There are several of them around town. It also had a bride in the lobby. She was in her white dress when we went in, looking very tired. I don’t know how long she has to stand there, everyone else seems to be inside the big room eating and drinking. When we left, she was still there, but had changed into a red and gold net evening gown.

We had pickled radish, pigeon with shrimp chips, beef with mayonnaise, ground pork stuffed into tofu balls (hard to pick up), fish with hot peppers, green bean soup, banana dumplings (shaped like bananas with a faint banana taste, but more like the pumpkin dumplings than a real banana) and watermelon.

(4 flights) 12 total today.