It’s 7 AM. I’m leaving super-early to nab the 42 thousand props I need to teach today’s bunch of two year olds their class on the word “monkey”. However, in typical Disney-dysfunction the school is not open. Left with an hour to fill/kill I decide to take a walk to the park.
Now. Imagine what we’d find taking an early morning walk in the park in Leeds…
- Geriatric dog-walkers
- Joggers
- Flashers
- The recently flashed
- Crackheads and crackwhores
- Dog turds
- An occasional dead body
- More dog turds.
In Shanghai, it’s a whole ‘nutha ball-game. I saw…
- Old lady fan-dancers. All in velour tracksuits with HUGE fans in matching colours. Amaze.
- The most ever old people in one place since they filmed the last episode of Countdown. They were all doing yoga/tai chi, slowly making their way over the grass like a tide of zombies. Actually chilling.
- Three guys dressed as a Chinese dragon.*
- A ramshackle troupe of guys practicing their circus skills. Diablos, juggling, unicycling. Bloody mental.**
- A 28 piece (I counted) brass band. Just like the Black Dyke, but minus the Alan Titschmarsh affiliation. Home sweet home…
- Massive kites, jeweled in LEDs. At night I’ve seen these before. I did wonder if they were UFOs, but now I know it’s just geezers in the park.
- Some girl painting beautiful Chinese letters on the ground with what looked like a giant ear-bud. However, she was painting them with WATER. They were evaporating away seconds after she’d painted them. Life is just so….y’know…transient and….it all means, like…nothing in the end….y’know? Woah. Deep.
- Walking back to my school, I sit outside. Each Disney school has random letters outside the building. The letters outside my school are DIWAHJ. At first, I thought it said ‘Jihad’. Then I noticed the ‘W’. I toyed with the idea it might mean ‘White Jihad’ and that that’s Disney’s plan for Asia: fill it with Yanks and their culture is for the taking… But I thought it might actually stand for Walt Disney Is A Jew Hater. Or Walt Disney Had Anti-Jewish Inklings. I finally settled on Walt Disney Is A Jovial Holocaust Denier.
All this early morning thinking really drains a gal. No wonder I’m too tired to teach class now. Eeeurch.
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- Woah….Deeper than a thousand seas
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- Tired. Sweaty. Spotty. I have to live with this for a year. *die*
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- All your cultures are belong to us
* At this point I realize this list sounds a bit like one of the checklists on the back pages of a Where’s Wally? book. Not intentional, but I like it nonetheless.
** Sounds even more like a Where’s Wally? list now. Wow, Wally watchers.
My Chopstick Life 