Adjustments big and small

A move to another place inevitably requires adjustments and I've been making lots.  Here are a few.

1.     Trying to understand what the heck the Aussies and Kiwis are saying, especially when they are talking to each other.  One third grade teacher answers every question I ask him with “mate” and I can’t tell if he thinks I’m a man or if he’s trying to be friendly, or just asserting his Australianness… It leaves me speechless.

2.     The checkout place at the elementary library is where my return place used to be, and for the life of me I can’t seem to remember that.  The receptionist is nice, but she does look at me with a little alarm when she keeps reminding me if I want to check the books out, I need to take them out of the return box.

3.     Learning how to interact with my IKEA alarm clock:  The Swedes are smart people, no one denies that.  Sometimes too smart, maybe?  I bought an alarm clock at IKEA recently, and since the directions always come in those funny figures, they are no help, but I figured out how to set the alarm.  When you put it on one of its four sides, it serves as a clock.  Fine, got that.  Turn it 90 degrees and it’s an alarm clock, another 90 and it’s a stop watch, and the finally turn is the temperature. HOWEVER, I keep freaking myself out in the morning when I wake before the alarm goes off, because (1) I can’t remember if the alarm went off and I blew it off, or (2) it’s too early to get up.  The logical way to resolve this dilemma would seem to be to look at the clock, which conveniently lights up when you touch it, a different color for each of the four functions.  You try remembering which color is which function at 4:30 a.m. and tell me how it goes.] However, when I look at the clock, it always says 6:30, so I think I just heard the alarm but don’t remember that I heard it, so I get up.  I get as far as the shower before I remember to check my watch, and sure enough, it’s usually only 5:15 or 5:45 or something that is NOT yet 6:30.  Yep, I’m looking at the alarm and thinking it’s the clock function, morning after morning, a la Groundhog Day.  This week I finally spent some time trying to figure out how to overcome this looniness when I decided I would move the clock around the four corners and check out everything, and I would be able to tell which was the time function, right?  Not so fast. The problem with that idea is the way to turn off the alarm (I think) is to turn it a quarter turn, so if I check to see if I’m looking at the alarm or the clock, I would be turning off the alarm.  You see why I’m thinking of investing in another, much less-cool, much more basic clock.

4.     The BTUs on my 2 gas burners threaten to singe my eyebrows every time I turn them on.  The Chinese are NOT afraid of flame, and since their method of stir fry requires a lot of heat, these burners are perfectly appointed for this country.  However, because I don’t always stir fry, I spend a lot of time taking my pans off the heat so as to not burn every thing I try to cook.  There is no simmer in the culinary vocabulary of Chinese cooking, I guess, nor medium heat.  It’s all high, all the time, so I need to keep my wits about me, and my hand at the ready to pull off a pan for some heat relief.

5.     The forward-to-blunt nature of Chinese if they want to interact with you.  I just got seated on the subway yesterday when a young woman sitting beside me looked me up and down, and promptly asked, “Do you want to teach English?”  When I explained I already did, she persisted with a question she was sure would hook me, “Do you want to teach children?”  Again, I had to pop her bubble, but she didn’t skip a beat and told me all about her new after-school English center, which I understood her to say was named RICE.  Interesting name, I told her.  She wrote it down later in the conversation and I saw it was really RISE, which makes more sense, really I should have been able to make that adjustment.  Anyway she asked for my email, my phone # (I declined), and said we’d be in touch.  Maybe, or maybe not, but she was quite eager and it’s always good to be friendly.

There are lots more adjustments but in order to list them, I should be along the continuum a bit further, like learning more Mandarin, but I’m doing what I can in the hours I have left after work and a workout.  It doesn’t leave a gal much, but the upside is I should save plenty of money this year because there isn’t time to buy anything in the week-day schedule.

This week's garden was one of the many on the UNESCO list:  Lion Grove's Garden:  It's quite beautiful but there were hundreds of human bodies that were NOT in the original garden plan that I got to view....I keep vowing to get up early and leave for the gardens before the onslaught of other visitors, but so far that hasn't happened.  Perhaps when it gets cold the crowds will thin?  Some pictures of the beautiful Lion's Grove Garden:   https://flic.kr/s/aHsk367xr9