Scintillating Chinese experiences!

Some interesting experiences .....
- Getting kicked out of my house!
- Having frog legs and dog meat!
- Verbal joust with the taxi driver - in Mandarin and winning it!!

Getting kicked out of my house…
So my company employs a rental agency and this agency finds a house for me to live in. My company pays the rental agency and the agency pays the actual house owner. Simple, right? You wish! The people in this rental agency is one of the most incompetent in this whole world, no strike that, if there is intelligent life form anywhere else in this universe, then I should say they are the worst in this whole universe!
What makes this experience more scary and interesting is that my friend was visiting me when this happened. I convince my friend to visit China telling her that China is so awesome and she should not miss it. To be true to that word, I put her through this experience and helped her become that much wiser! :) So she was home when the house owner barged in demanding that she vacate immediately or he would throw us out. I was at work at that time. Imagine, she was in China for 4 days and there are 4 Chinese people sitting inside the house and threatening to throw her out. I guess she is better than me in handling bad situations like these, she managed well, didn’t panic and called me at work. Luckily one of the guys spoke good English, understood she was new in town, so gave us time till I could come back home and get things sorted out.
The worst part of this story is that the agency kept lying to my friend to get her out of the house before the owner could barge in. One of the agency people calls my friend at home saying there is an electrical emergency and she needs to vacate immediately. My friend wonders whats wrong, everything seems fine. Funny part is right when the owner was sitting inside the house saying the agency didn’t pay any rent, the agency manager calls and says, "Oh, there is a water emergency in your house and we need you to vacate immediately". My friend replies, "What are you talking about? What water emergency? Your colleague just said electrical emergency." The manager tries to cover up, "Ohh, actually the water emergency caused the electrical emergency." My friend gives up and says, The house owner and his 'gundas' are sitting here and telling me the actual truth that you didn’t pay the rent!". And the managers goes, "Ahem….".

Moving on to more happier experiences….

Having frog legs and dog meat…
(hah, this post is out of order with the 'scorpion' post… still will leave this as is…)
On my list of interesting meats to try in China are Frog, Dog and Snake, for now. Of these, 2 are down 1 more to go. But after going to the Donghuamen Food street in Beijing, I think this list is agonizingly inadequate. I will have to add Centipedes, Beetles, StarFish and other exotic foods to this list.
Hearing my interests in these interesting meats, Mrs. Y took us to a nice restaurant in Shanghai and ordered Frog legs for us (us = the Nigerian Mr.J and myself). Hmm, I should say as long as you don’t think you are actually eating frog, its actually quite tasty. A bit crispy. On another occasion, Mr. X ordered dog meat specifically for me. Though I was happy to try it, I should admit dog meat was bit of a disappointment. It tasted like shredded chicken, that’s it. No drama to its taste whatsoever. Looking at my behavior, my colleagues and friends here have decided that I am the only Indian who has no reverence to my culture or religion. But hey, come on, enjoying God's creations is not irreverent!

Verbal joust with the taxi driver…
This happened in Beijing. This taxi driver tried to cheat me with a "sudu vacha" meter! For those who don’t know that phrase used for the Auto(3 wheeled Taxi) meters in India, it just means that the meter in the taxi runs as if it had a shot of caffeine mixed with a shot of Red Bull mixed with a shot of adrenaline! So the taxi meter showed 50 Kuai (Chinese Yuan) instead of the real rate of 20 Kuai! When he asked for 50 Kuai I started my joust using all the words I have learnt in Hanyu(Chinese) till then. I kept on arguing though I perfectly knew some of the sentences didn’t make any sense in that context, or any context for that matter! And since I didn’t know how to say 'Police' in Hanyu, I ended up saying that in English. Somehow he seemed to understand that word and finally gave up after arguing for a while. So there it is… my first verbal joust in Hanyu and winning it, though not convincingly!