Spring Festival

27 January. To celebrate the first day of my Spring Festival holiday, I went shopping. There's this pair of Giordano corduroy pants that I've been thinking of buying for the past month or so. Of course I had to ask Joyce, since she used to work at Giordano Philippines, first how much it would be back home and I was assured that it's at least P500 cheaper here. Whee! I love China!

I did not find the Giordano outlet. I'm sure I would have if I persisted but there were so many other stores lined up on the street and I got distracted from my mission. I ended up buying four Kamiseta-like blouses, at half the price if I did buy them from Kamiseta. I know, I know, four is a little too much but I can't help it if everything I tried on looked good on me. Sigh. Then I bought a bra and a sleeveless shirt from an underwear store that spells lingerie as "langerie". Can't blame them, really. Why are bras always so expensive? It's hard enough to find good ones, then when you do, they're usually even more expensive than a shirt or a blouse. Not fair!

At the underwear store, they were having a little debate on which country I was from until somebody finally asked me if I were Korean. "Bu shi." "Then what country are you from?" I can't remember how she asked it but that was what she meant. "FeiLiPin." "Oh!" Nods all around the shop. A young woman came forward to help the woman who was originally assisting me. I was asking if there was a similar shirt without the Chinese words prominently written on the chest area. I wouldn't have minded too much if they were written in Chinese characters, but they were in Pinyin so it kind of took the fun out of it. Anyway, there wasn't. I asked what the words mean and the woman said something I didn't understand then showed me the tag where the Chinese characters were written. I remembered a story wherein a student was wearing a shirt with "fuck" written all over. When she was told what it meant by her foreign teacher, she almost died of embarrassment. "The brand," I said under my breath. The young woman said, "Yes, the brand!" I looked at her, pleasantly surprised, "You can speak English!" It was supposed to be a question but it came out more like a statement of relief. In this city, it is very hard to find anyone who can speak English so you'll have to understand my joy everytime I find someone who can. It turned out that she was the owner's niece and that she was studying at so-and-so university in Beijing and was home for the Spring Festival. The woman who was assisting me chided her for not speaking up sooner and said she didn't know. Well, she thought I was Korean.

After that, I tried looking for my bus stop. I walked and walked and walked but could not find it. I wasn't really worried though since I knew I could always hail a cab once I'd decided that I was really lost. I ended up in a market that was quite close to my house. Perfect! For some time now, I'd been wanting to cook tinola. (I'm reading Noli Me Tangere, remember?) I took the list of ingredients that I got from the internet and started looking for each one. I could not find dahon ng sili, papaya nor sayote. Truthfully, I'm not really sure how dahon ng sili would look like uncooked so I just bought some leafy vegetables that I could use as substitute. For the papaya, I... um... settled for... a radish. There were no papaya nor sayote in sight! I even thought of buying eggplant instead, or cucumbers. Radish would be closer to papaya, right? Darn. I'll tell you how tinola with radish tastes like soon.

I got home, tripped over the cables that connect my DVD player to the TV, which promptly sent my player crashing to the floor so it's not working now and I'll have to get it fixed tomorrow. Then I went online and read some depressing articles.

28 January. I wanted to have the DVD player fixed today but when I asked Wendy about it, she informed me that since it's the Spring Festival, most shops are closed in the afternoon so we'll have to wait until tomorrow. She also told me that the headmaster called to ask if I have any plans for tonight. He was inviting me to have Spring Festival dinner with his family. "I don't have plans but I don't really want to see him either." Laughter on the other end of the line. "I understand. I'll just tell him you already have plans." "Thanks Wendy!"

In China, at least in TieLing, nobody really makes plans until the last minute. I'm pretty sure someone would call later to ask if I have any plans and if I want to have dinner or something. And if not, I could always just sleep. That's the plan.

For lunch, I fried a fish. Don't ask me what fish, I have no idea. But it was good and I will post pictures later. I might cook the tinola tonight. I am still a little nervous at how that might turn out. I've pretty much covered boiling and frying so I think I'm ready for something more complicated. I'll post pictures of the tinola too.