Part 1 Train rides and unexpected things

Shangqiu 1 - The Train and Otherwise Unexpected Things

I swear - its those things you just don’t expect that really do get you.

Things like a fly in your meal at a restaurant.

Things like getting the flu right as your favourite band comes into town for a concert.

Things like not eating a real meal before getting on a 2.5 hour train to another city during the dinner time frame. Instant noodles have their place, but not as a base for the wrath and vengeance of baijiu (BAI joe) in a reunion dinner with an adoptive family you haven’t seen in a year...

oh yes.. these things happen... in China

(remind me to go somewhere that alcohol is illegal for my next language, I think my body is gonna need it before too long)

Well lets start at the beginning.

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Took the train - pleasant as always, right on schedule ~ lots of room.

My friend and I sat down at our seats across from a rather cute girl who was off in her corner doing cute chinese girl things... like taking pictures of herself and doing her best to eat a KFC chicken burger delicately. She succeeded.

Hadn’t spoken to my friend in the longest time, so we chatted it up for the first hour and a half of our trip, I ate my instant noodles, which were no where near as wonderful as the should have been given that the first time I added water, the “hot” water dispenser was at best a very warm water dispenser- and that just doesn’t cut it for health destroying noodles. Second time around I had to pour off some of the flavour filled poison to get it hot enough... which more or less worked. Kept me from being starving which was helpful~ until the baijiu 2-3 hours later.

After we both kind of ran out of interesting things to say, we started to play cards, eventually I learned a super-common chinese card game that doesn’t really have a name because thats what chinese people always play evidently. I won every time... somehow. I’m fast, but not usually good at strategy games, which this was: so I don’t get what happened that made me such “hot stuff”.

I suggested we add the mystery girl sitting adjacent to us because she was pretending not to evesdrop and listen to her music the whole time... but lets face it - I’m just too darn charming :D and she laughed a few times.

SOOO she joined, we played mystery game for the next 45 or so minutes. I continued to win every game.

They really should have stopped giving me advice.

We got near the end of our trip and as my friend and I had been chatting with this new girl - I decided that she should be a new part of my friend group. I have her business card ~ she’s 23 and a typical accountant slave for some local company in ZZ not far from my favourite coffee shop. I think we’ll go. ^_^

In answer to your question - yes

I’m pretty sure I hear Wall-E rolling around somewhere playing the “It only takes a moment” song from Hello Dolly (both great movies).

I walked off that train with my other friend saying to me... “I’m pretty sure you’ll see her again.”

Have to say... I’ve never ended up realizing that i’d ended up with a crush on a 2.5 hour train ride before. I think its funny if nothing else~

MOVING ON! No time for questions now!

Second, she’s just normal ~ but not. I dunno how you all feel about this concept, but I like to be disillusioned with the idea that people have a kind of aura. You can kind of feel people even when you don’t have any other of the five main senses to guide you.

My first (and only haha) girlfriend and I had what we to this day call “A creepy connection.” There were times where we would know, almost like ESP (extra sensory perception) where the other was. No way either of us could really know according to the general 5 senses, but somehow we knew. For example: we were studying together another friend. This friend got up and walked away to go do something. Few minutes later, girlfriend (fairly recently made normal friend at the time actually) falls asleep with the book in her hand and it fell to the floor and made a loud noise. Noise didn’t wake her up... I though it was funny so I silently stole away to go whisper the situation to our other friend. We both had a visually loud, vocally mute - hearty belly laugh. Moments later, girlfriend wakes up and looks around kind of dazed. I asked her - did your book wake you up? “No” she says. “I just knew you’d gone and wondered where you disappeared to, so I woke up.”

Odd eh?

Other times, I’d be waiting for her in lobby according to the segregated dormitory system of a Christian university where men aren’t even allowed into the general living area of women.
I’d think she said something to me, so i’d get up to look annnnd.... she’s not there.

Seconds later she walks through the door. “What’s that you said?” I ask her.

“I ain’t said nuthin’ foo” she responds (ok she didn’t actually say THAT but you get the idea)

There are other instances, but I’m not gonna bore you with them.

So anyhow the point is that I had a strange sense about this girl. She seemed just normal, but not. If I had to give her a colour... it’d be purple.

Cute - YAH! but there’s lots of cute people im not at ALL interested in here. In fact this is the first crush I can remember having in... we’ll there’s been another somewhat recently but I don’t wanna focus on that now.

I like people that perceive. People who are aware but don’t gawk. In China its sooooo common to be stared at. I still don’t like it.

She was eve’s dropping all over the place. She wasn’t staring, but at the same time was keeping track of what was going on. When my friend and I were playing cards at first, and she was minding her own business ~ she’d chuckle when she thought something was funny, but didn’t feel the need to insert herself in the situation.

Lord I love polite. ~ Can I just reinstate that?! I’ve learned to deal with a certain disregard to order and my imperialistic use of the word “civilization.”

Aside from that, once we started playing cards ~ personality really kicked in. Purple for sure.

I’m not even sure how to describe it ~ its not the same happy cute bunny persona that so many chinese try to put on. Lord I hate the word happy now. I hear it in Chinese every day and I just want to spit on everyone who says it. Seriously - these thoughts go through my mind. I start haukin’!

It was almost half-emo but not so over the top. BUT there were also those moments where genuine cheerfulness and real laughter would come through. ohhhh my. Now thats just fun.

She just was - she wasn’t trying too hard to fake it for a foreigner.

Who knows ~ Coffee is harmless right?

I’ve been reflecting on it for a few days now - why do I think I got myself a little crush on mystery girl.

There’s a few elements: first I think i’ve started to open myself to the idea of MAYBE dating someone. Before it was just no no no no NO! stop suggesting it people! I dont want it! Then I started to think, as you’ve all seen me do if you’ve been reading these blogs~ maybe I do want it. I dont. But maybe... hmmm.

I’ve spent so much time not wanting to date, for a number of reasons ~ which i’ll not fully expand here because its deeply personal and other things would just take too long. The big thing is I don’t want to waste my life on a fling. Everybody has those ~ I want something different.

I still want something different, but the more I watch, the less genuine pairs I see. I see lots of couples, but few that really fit together. The ones that do make me smile.

But more than wanting someone thats necessarily “my fit” - what I want is to try and figure out what that means.

I conclusion I came to a while ago that a big part of why I’ve not really been interested in most girls is that I think I was too busy looking for God inside of them. I was looking for someone who was “perfect”... and so help me its just not there. I don’t think theres really that YinYang relationship out there people! No one compliments you perfectly. But - there can be someone who complements you well.

A friend told me a few months ago, “Don’t worry about it, just keep rockin’ your swaggah.” Which basically means (for you old and or foreign people ^_^) Be yourself. (nowhere near as much fun to say as swaggah “swagger...”)

I want someone who is interested in getting to know me ~ but still wants to be themselves. it doesn’t need to be a girlfriend - certainly doesn’t need to be a wife.

Great authors like J.R. Tolkien, C.S Louis, Mark Twain, Robert Frost, all those random poets that I actually kinda hate all had their pen pals, people they could sound ideas off of and “go through life with” why can’t I?

Now there’s all of you. I love you ~ indeed I do. But I need a few more people on this side of the ocean, and I will expand my dominion in every which way thank you very much.

We have a phrase - make love not war. We say, “he’s a lover, not a fighter...” Why not be both? King David was ~ bit of a horn dog honestly, but for someone who took so many lives and was soooooo obscenely courageous on the field of battle, he was also really sensitive and humanly fragile - in ways most of us these days are not.

So what im saying is that I have know idea or plans for what will happen here. And thats what I want to leave it at. I just wanna see. And I want the freedom to see. I guess this is basically me trying to give myself that freedom.

I think “Hello Dolly” is everything im thinking of right now... b/c “Before the Parade Passes By” is running through my head.