O fuck it.

Yesterday, when I was in my daughter’s extremely brightly lit bathroom, I threw a glance in the mirror, thinking how long my highlights had lasted; no dark roots at all! I leaned in closer, inspecting my tired, pasty white face with dark, gloomy circles underneath my eyes and saw to my horror that the hairs that I thought were salon bought coloring were in fact strands of grey. I’ve never had a grey hair before in my life. These grey hair sums up what has been a week of bad mood and disappointments.

Bad mood caused by the disappointing news that our container is being held captive and has not yet even arrived in China. The weather has not helped improve my bad mood; it’s absolutely freezing outside and chilly to say the least, inside. A quick email to Serena to complain and voila! today an air con/heater repair person shows up out of the blue.

“Tai leng le” (Too cold) I complain.

“Mei wenti!” (No problem!” he explains.

Everything works fine I think he says while he is touching the pipes coming out of the units inside the garage.

“But wei shenme (why) only 17 degrees (Celcius – you figure it out if you have to but it’s cold, trust me) in the living/dining room?” I ask.

“Zhe ge fangjia hen da le” (this room is very big), he continues.

“But wei shenme only 17 degrees zai zhe ge fanjia?”  (in this room) I ask him and shows him the control pad in the TV-room/sun room (no sun though) “zhe ge fangjia hen xiao.” (this room is very small)

“Ahh”, he exclaims and starts fiddling with the control pad pushing the buttons and tries to explain that (I think) max is 23 degrees and when it reaches 23 it will ting (stop).

“23 tai re le.” (too hot) I tell him.

“Mei wenti, it’s never going to reach 23 anyway” he says and leaves.

I think, this is the jist of our conversation and considering that the insulation is non-existent, the plumbing sucks, the paint flakes and the laminate on the cupboards are falling off it makes absolutely perfect sense.

Getting in the spirit

Swish, time flies, seriously fast as if by jet plane. November is nearly over, almost all the leaves has changed colors and fallen down and it is cold in Beijing. Ah, the novelty of wearing hats and gloves – it quickly wears off. “You must be tired of sun and warm weather after four years in Phoenix?” someone commented. Uhhh….not so much. We layer on sweaters and jackets and grunt about the fact that we bought new winter clothes for everyone last year before our spring-break ski trip; gear that has not yet arrived. The container that was supposed to arrive in Xinhui, China – in the very south – last Saturday is still M.I.A. and/or delayed due to congestion. I try desperately to stay positive whereas my husband, the ever pessimist (or perhaps realist) says we are lucky if we have a home before Christmas.

It is hard to find a holiday spirit in an empty house but we’ve got to! It is still early days, not even the last week of November yet, but still. Had we been in America still, our Christmas lights would at least be up, lightning up the dark, starlit Arizonan nights. 

That reminds me, gotta buy new Christmas lights too…. I never thought I’d say this but I’m so tired of buying new stuff all the time. Here shopping can be a chore which takes several days. This can be found there and that is best to buy at that place, an hour away; where is Target when you need it? And when you find it, bring it home and realizes it won’t fit, it isn’t the right color, it’s broken or whatever – you have to do it all over again the next day or whenever is convenient and you have the car and driver.

What I did find yesterday on my food market shopping trip was saffron, both the good, real stuff and the thready orange bits without flavor. This afternoon will be dedicated to lussebullar.

That reminds me…gotta get back to IKEA (again) and get some Glögg…

Fly away!

Thanksgiving is coming up, a holiday we never celebrated in the US because it simply doesn’t mean anything to us. It is not our tradition, we didn’t have family close by and to cook a whole turkey for four people is simply a waste. Here, I long for Thanksgiving. Maybe it’s the weather, maybe I just feel more thankful this year or maybe it would just be nice to do something nice, I don’t know. But I’m looking forward to Saturday, cooking all afternoon and enjoying a nice meal with new friends.

Therefore Christine and I headed to San yuan li market to find a turkey. San yuan li is a real market-market; indoors but not heated, small stalls selling everything under the sun related to food and cooking. A huge fruit section, vegetables of every kind, nuts, spices, noodles, tofu, meat – some still almost alive, fish and seafood – beautiful scallops; every kind of crustacean, teeny tiny mussels  and huge razor clams. This is the place where the embassy chefs go shopping, or so I’ve heard, and I understand why.

Amidst all the food stalls there are also tiny stalls selling pots and pans, plastic buckets and silver ware, cooking utensils, kettles – anything and everything imaginable.

Christine has had a few flies in her house refusing to die a normal death. They are probably just like any living creature trying to escape the bitter cold outside and like the environment in the deMuro household. She’s been looking for a fly swapper for some time now but to no avail, simply impossible to find. This should be the place.

“Bzzzzzzzz”, I tell him making a swapping gesture with my hand.

“Aaahhh!” he exclaims excitedly and gets a huge hammer from under a counter.

“Nonononono, bzzzzzzzz, xiaode (small) bzzzzzzz”, I continue.

“Aaahaaaa!” more excitement follows and he bends down and gets a smaller hammer.

“Nooooo”, ok, now it’s time to get the dictionary out and find the right word for fly or mosquito.

Amazingly enough, he finally gets it (and gets it) from under a pile of stuff, a variety of fly swatters in hot pink and baby blue.

Now if we can only find some background sound of a football game, the American kind.

I go by cool

“Amanda, you look super cute in your new soccer outfit!”

“Mum, I don’t go by cute, I go by cool.”

“Amanda, do you want to see if Katie can play today?”

"Mum, we don’t call it play anymore, we hang out.”

All said with attitude of course. What happened to my six-year old?

But then again, last night she couldn’t sleep and I told her to start thinking about her wish list for Santa and I told her I would do the same.

“But mommy, how will he know where we are?”

“Oh, remember the Santa satellite? We talked about it last year. And now Santa has email! Write your list and we can send it to him.”

My dad is coming for a visit to help us unpack (hopefully we will by then have things to unpack) and buy Christmas presents. When I told the kids about that both of them exclaimed:

“But Santa makes the gifts! He makes all of them!”

Ooops.

Christmas trees are already for sale, big ones, small ones, all planted in big, green buckets by the side of the road and we hope there will still be some around the weekend before Christmas when we will find the perfect one to decorate and enjoy for one whole week before flying off to our sunny holiday break in Vietnam. Hopefully we will also have our own decorations to decorate it with….the missing container saga continues….

Butt naked

Sometimes, those things happen in life that makes you say: “One day we will laugh at this…” even though, at that moment when it happens; it is definitely no laughing matter. 

One of those moments was last Sunday, when after a long weekend of moving to our new house, Halloweening and a delicious Sunday brunch, we ended up sitting buck naked in the bath, waiting for the management office to send a repair man.

By Sunday night we were exhausted. We had successfully unpacked most bags and semi-installed ourselves, we had ordered out for dinner, enjoyed our Chinese food (just food here!) on paper plates and successfully put the kids to bed. The huge Jacuzzi was too tempting to be ignored; ahhh, to relieve those sore muscles and to relax for a while before trying to sleep on our rented rock-hard bed.

It all started out well; we did not run out of hot water, nor did icky stuff come out from the air holes when we started the Jacuzzi. It was nice and relaxing, really, but there is a limit how long you can stay and we were ready to get up and get ready for bed. “Let’s turn the bubbles off, dear”, I told my husband and as the nice man that he is, he tried to do just that. And tried again, when it didn’t work, and again. And again. He tried to move, get out of the bath to get a better look at the button but then, of course, we had a geyser in the bath. We managed to fill it up so that he could exit but to no avail. The bubbles would not stop. Next, time for me to try to get out – more water had to get in – and finally we are both out of the water, wandering what to do next.

One of the benefits of living in a compound like this is that you have a 24/7 management office to call, in times of need. And boy, were we in need. A quick phone call to explain the matter and 30 or 40 minutes or so later, a worker  comes in the night on his bicycle.

“Ayoo, bu hao, bu hao” (not good, not good), he repeats to himself and to us as he is trying to pry the button up in order to shut it off. More head shaking follows. Finally he manages to turn it off and then we can’t get the water out. The stopper is stuck as well! More prying, more head shaking, more sharp tools not to be used near the tub normally are used and finally, he manages to pop it out. Ok, we think, that was it. One dip and for sure, the tub will be broken for the entire term of our lease. 

But, to my surprise, and with the help of our excellent realtor Sabrina, a few days later a worker shows up. And after five hours of work, including lifting the whole thing up, prying underneath, rubbing cooking oil on the drain stopper and inviting a worker from the house next door to help; it supposedly works again. I’m not sure we will be brave enough to try it again in the near future but at least we now know who to call and what to do in case we end up in endless bubbles again.

Enjoy!

Last Sunday we were enjoying our first Sunday Brunch since moving back to Asia. Now, if you are not familiar with the concept, in Asia brunch isn’t simply eggs and bacon, pancakes and free flow of coffee; No! In Asia you go to five star hotels and enjoy anything under the sun to eat and free flow champagne to drink. 

We headed to Westin and their Bubbalicios, and as it was Halloween weekend – Spookylicious, brunch.

It was all so very familiar and took us back to the days when we did this quite frequently, i.e. BC – Before Children: the lobster, the sashimi, the make-your-own pasta counter, Indian food, “normal” breakfast fare (the best sausages and bacon ever according to the kids), dim sum, chocolate fountain and every other dessert imaginable; all accompanied by free flow of Moet & Chandon. Due to Halloween weekend we also had vampires walking around offering a taste of their own blood, mealworms, spiders and cockroaches on display, another vampire girl in a gigantic plastic bubble greeting us at the entrance, and a full game of Planet Vs. Zombies being put on in the one of the ballrooms in addition to the fully supervised and equipped play room. Everyone enjoyed themselves and ate and drank their hearts out.

Halfway into our meal, the kids were summoned to the ballroom for THE Planet Vs. Zombies game and excitedly they went. 10 minutes later they return: “Mom, it was soooo lame!” I think they both expected computers to be involved somehow, not a bunch of kids and grown-ups in paper masks throwing plastic fruit on each other. Still, you have to admire their ingeniousness.

The kids didn’t suffer though. There were tons of kids around and strengthened by ice-cream and candy they hit the play room and soon found friends and me and my husband could have a rare, quiet champagne moment alone.

Still, as we were sitting there in this wonderful restaurant enjoying all these extravagances, everyone having a wonderful time, I couldn’t help but think about my friend who last Tuesday had to do the unimaginable – she had to put her little girl to rest. Sweet Mia only got to live 400 days before a viral infection of her heart and lungs took her short life, unexpectedly, unexplained, very quickly and so very unfair. My heart is breaking for her parents and the rest of her family.

Life sure offers many ups and downs and trying to settle in in China is a real roller coaster. Still, we are so very lucky. We are all healthy and together and we have embarked on this adventure that will turn out fabulously. Sweet Mia, rest in peace, I wish there was more I could do for your mom and dad right now.