I think those four words are quite possibly my favorites in the entire English language, at least when my credit card is inside an ATM machine. Every time I go and use an ATM I have this sinking horrible feeling that once the card goes in, it might not ever come out, and what would I do then? I had kind of a scary experience this afternoon, as at the first China Construction Bank I went to, the card went in, but after a very long period of waiting... and waiting... and waiting... the card came out again but without any money. I went inside the bank to ask the guy in there if there was another Construction Bank in the area (no withdrawal fee with Bank of America, which is why I use it), only to have him keep saying "去不了，去不了！" I then kept trying to tell him that the card works at Construction Bank ATMs, that I've used it lots of times in Beijing, until he finally said (in English): "Our...m achine...is...broken!" I only wish I knew how to say, "Then why don't you put a sign on the machine???" in Chinese, but I just asked him where the next nearest Construction Bank was, and after a 15 minute walk I was there, and it worked without a hitch. One of those times when you're glad it's the machine's fault, and not your card's.
Other news from today: my first attempt to change the number on my cell phone ended in failure, as the women at the university mobile phone office proved themselves to be spectacularly unhelpful, to the point of not only refusing to explain to me what the different options were, (instead demanding that I tell them what I wanted, and then walking away when I didn't immediately reply), but also referring to me as a "laowai" (foreigner) - which can either be used affectionately or not, depending on the circumstances. These are people who were never taught the basic principles of a market economy in school - the exchange of money for goods and services. Not only this, but these are also people who, no matter how poorly they do their jobs, or how poorly they treat their customers, can never, ever be fired. It's actually kind of an equal opportunity thing (they don't just treat the foreigners badly), as even when Chin ese students arrived to pay their phone bills, they still had to be ripped away from their conversations with their co-workers to help them. If there was an alternative mobile phone company I'd use it, but there's not, so I'm stuck with China Mobile. So much for state-run monopolies! Anyway, after stubbornly standing at the counter for five minutes waiting for someone to help me, (I am very stubborn) a woman finally came over who was willing to explain to me what my options were, but she told me to come back on March 1st, (with a copy of my passport), because the base fee is 38 yuan a month, and if I got the card today, I'd have two days to spend the 38 yuan before it expired. I don't know why the system is run this way, but it is. So, I'm not going to have a new cell phone number until March 1st, and there's not really much I can do about it!
one last thing before I head out to meet people to go to the gym: just found this article in the Globe, which seemed interesting - http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/02/students_to_lea.html. crazy stuff!
