Oh China, you got me again

China, China, China. Sometimes I wonder to myself how this culture has survived for thousands of years and hasn’t gone extinct. These are quite clever people, but their lack of common sense/organization/logical planning is as bad as mine. (If you know me well, you know my common sense is practically non-existent). So, I’m hanging out at a café just killing time until the power comes back on in the apartment building. For the next five days, we are living without electricity from noon until midnight. It wouldn’t so bad if it wasn’t as hot as the devil’s rectum in our apartments! Being in the apartment without fans or AC is like sitting in a sauna without the benefits for your skin. So we find out about this two days prior to it happening, which to China’s credit, is quite advanced notice for them. Some of us had the idea that maybe we’ll blow this joint and head somewhere air conditioned for the weekend. Ahhhh, but then comes the second notice.

Right next to the lack of power bulletin is the newest news flash: because of the holiday next week, you will have three days off! However, you must make up all your classes this Saturday and Sunday. Excellent. What puzzles me is this: the holiday, Dragon Boat festival, is not a new holiday. It’s a national holiday that’s been around for a while. So the government, or the school, or Big Brother, or whoever is making the decisions around here has known about this upcoming festival for, presumably, a long time. So why is it that the decision to cancel work and school and convert Saturday and Sunday to the new Monday and Tuesday is happening with less than a week’s notice? I truly don’t understand how people aren’t in an uproar. If this happened in the West, people would be shitting their pants. Imagine that the week of Thanksgiving the government decides that everyone can have Friday off but instead they must work on Sunday. If it wasn’t so irritating, it would be comical. If you are an anal retentive, schedule oriented person, don’t come to China for an extended period time. I’m used to flakiness and change of plans because, well, I’m a flake. I’m just not used to it at a national level. At the end of the day (in which I am sitting in the dark) I realize I just have to roll with it. Maybe this is China’s way of teaching me that things don’t always go as planned. Suck it up and move on. End of story. But damn China, working on the weekend AND no AC? That’s harsh. I guess you got me again.