"make these stories last,
i see shadows of who we used to be,
when i drive, drive so slow.. through this memory.."

Let's start with the usual critisism of asian made products and service, courtesy of the 3 weeks spent in China. As we learnt in commerce, one of the most common tactics of chinese clothing companies involve purposely INCREASING the orignial price of an item, later claiming that a few yuan dropped is A RARE EXCEPTION and already pushed beyond the limits of an acceptable selling price.

LESSON ONE: BARGAINING PRACTICE WITH MY GRANDMA--

step one- browse through rack of clothes, and one of the billion shop assistants will unfailingly come to your side and start recommending products

step two- pick out one which looks acceptable, and she will automatically start helping you try it on, with words about how good it looks with your great figure

step three- ask how many yuan. she will naturally reply trying to avoid your eye contact. Let's say, 60 yuan

step four- widen your eyes in horror and shout: "NEN MA GUI?? TAI GUI LA BA?" (she will ofcourse open her mouth to say how fine quality this piece of clothing is made, and how its branded by blah blah *cough*

step five- ask for 20 yuan cut. when she objects, pretend you dont care abot the clothing and say to your granddaughter in a loud voice: "NAH WO MEN ZOU, WO MEN QU BIE DE DI FANG MAI BA"

step six- walk away and turn back when she shouts just as you are about to leave the store: "nah hao ba"

xD

And I must say, those factory "PRODUCT DESIGNERS" should take a few more english lessons before printing jibberish ALLOVER ok-looking-from-far-away clothes. For example. That other day when my sister found this cool vest thing, and at night when i was walking behind her:

"Anita, what does it say on the back of your jacket? It says um..:

MEELS STRUCKS TO FLOAT

whole seld house monme PUNK ROCK, son of POST-PUNK sovsllon (EXPRES). so you were selling MUSIC in YOU mcontfrom'ndividusl PERSON (OOT). I'm taking NOWm we're GOING to BUY to STAGELLSo sfter you...

And to my AMAZEMENT, somothing otarted to MAPPEN

HAVE youboon WITH py chodssor"

WTF??!! ROFLMAO AHAHAHAHA -scratches moustache as question mark pops up-

Maths today? well let's leave it to another story for another day, hopefully by someone more technically advance in that particular area of academics >__>

The whole period was spent glancing at Anna's work, whilst attempting to remember fragmants of how to factise and defactorise algebra. Hm.

tc xx
lynette