After several days didn’t post anything, i feel a little bit guilty inside. I think having a blog and keeping it alive is similar like nursing a baby or growing a plant. It requires commitment and high responsibility, doesn’t it? It gives you satisfaction if your baby/plant grows well, the same if you get plenty responses from your readers, vice versa.

Last night we had a light chat with Mr. Xiao. He worked in Indonesia for 4 years at Bohai rig. Despite his room is in the same floor and exactly in the front of mine and fitrix’s room, we hardly know him. He found out that we came from Indonesia later, hence he is being kind to us, sometimes we thought too kind. A couple days a go, he invited us for a dinner in a moslem restaurant and he made every effort to find us a mosque for Friday pray.

 

Back to our chat with Mr.Xiao….we finally know the reasons on some strange things we encountered here. For ex. everytime we watched local tv channel, we always wonder why there’s chinese subtitle even if the languange is chinese. First we thought, maybe it was to accomodate the deaf to understand but….tet…tottt….we were wrong.The reason is because Chinese word characters is same all over China but pronounciation may differ a lot from one part to another part of China. Or the fact that Chinese always change everything into Chinese words/languange, even if it is a name of a person or a name of a country. For example, names Mary or David, in Chinese becomes Mali and Dawei. United States of America becomes ‘Mang Guo’….far different… but for Indonesia, it’s quite close ‘Uendo-nisia’. When Edwin and Suryadi came here, they tried to change their names into Dewen and Surayati….hehehe, funny isn’t it?


As we ever mentioned before, there are plenty of local tv channels and one channel is only for one segment. For ex. one channel for news only, one channel for criminal, one channel for children, one for music and so on.

In China, if you tried to go to traditional market to buy fruit for ex., do not dare to touch it without intention to buy it or you’ll get scolded by the sellers like what happened to us yesterday.

 

And if you were invited for a meal, be careful with your seat, don’t choose wrong seat, because each seat is intended for different people. A seat facing the door is only for the host or the big boss, then next to him right and left is for trusted people or relatives and the seat right facing the host or back to back the door is for the treasurer. And noticed that the big boss never turn the table to get the food, he only choose what is served in front of him or he have someone turned the table for him?? just our guess. During the meal, they never let our glasses empty, even if the glass is 3/4 full they still pour the drink and full it off. What a courtesy they have.

Another thing happens a lot during a meal is the ‘toast’ thing…..they toast to celebrate everything or anything??… from the one who get promoted to a simple thing like a neighbour  (pretty sure not all of them know the neighbour though) who just delivered a baby.They seemed always find a reason to toast. So if they say "bottom up" ……be ready to raise your glass, pound it to the table and raise it high together with the others. So many things regarding Chinese customs and traditions we learned day to day. Feels like we know China quite a lot, but we don’t…..just well enough that burglar, killer or corruptor are sentenced to death.

Dedicated to Mr. Sta*r*bucks, who inspired me so much….miss you!