New Friends

Life is not so lonely over here in Jinan because I've made some new friends! The one I'm closest to has got to be Belinda who's a fellow Singaporean. We clicked the moment we met, despite our 10-year age difference. But age is just a number, isn't it?

She's so sporting to allow me to take a photo of her while she relaxes her eyes with some fake cucumber pieces. She's also a great shopping kaki! She loves to shop about just as much as me, so these days, we would spend our evenings and Sundays at the mall. Belinda's boyfriend is a coach from the S-League and he is also a freelance referee. So whenever we go shopping, she would look out for referee jersey for him, but it's almost impossible to find one! We haven't had much luck. Soccer jerseys are plentiful, but not referee jerseys.

Next is Jonathon who is an American. We share the workload for the oral English class. He has been in Jinan for about 8 months already and he is able to speak and write in Chinese. What amazed me most was when I received a text message from him in Mandarin! Perhaps some credit has to be given to his Chinese girlfriend. Prior to China, he was living in Japan and he speaks excellent Japanese too! Some people are just so blessed to be able to pick up languages fast. His favourite catchphrases are 'Terrible!' for anything bad and 'Sweet!' for anything good. True enough, he's really sweet. On my birthday, he actually bought me a chocolate cake and a green tea cake. But on seeing the double layered cake that my boss prepared for me, he kept the cake till the next day for me.

Dressed in pink is Cornelia who's from Switzerland, but she has been living in Singapore for the past 5 years. She does not know what Hokkien Mee and Char Kway Teow are! How can anyone who has lived in Singapore for 5 years not know what those are??? She doesn't even know how to speak Mandarin except for 谢谢!

And to say that she is computer illiterate is the understatement of the year! I pity Belinda who stays next door to her and is like her personal helpdesk. Not one day goes by without her having problems with her computer. When we first came, she exclaimed, “There is no wireless in this hotel! That means I cannot use the internet!” Belinda and I just rolled our eyes at each other. Another time: “Why is my internet not working, Belinda?” You didn't even plug in the cable, duh! One more: “My laptop could not shutdown last night, so I unplugged it and let the battery die off.” Need I say more?

One other thing that Belinda and I could not figure out is why Cornelia thinks that all the Chinese men whom we had dinner with on my birthday are lechers. Those men are big shots who work for the government; one of them is my brother Sun who is the second secretary to the ambassador of England (or something like that). She refused to go with us to karaoke after my birthday dinner because she says that all they want is to have sex with us! I almost fell off my chair when I heard that! Belinda and I concluded she must have had some bad experience before with a married man. We also came to the conclusion that she has a crush on Jonathon. Other than that, she's a friendly lady who loves to chat!

The other 2 are my colleagues from China. Zhou Ting is a lovely and sweet young lady who is being harassed daily by Cornelia for computer problems in school. The last is Mr Wang Dong Fu, or we call him Mr Wonderful. He is like an old friend to me already because we knew each other from my last trip to Jinan. He got married 4 days before I arrived in China! His bride has the same first name as me!