Wednesday, October 27, 2010

day 41_an official alien

Today was "one of those days" or "just not my day" as we might say in English. Well, you know - they can't all be amazing, right? At least the day is ending better than it started.

AND!!! I now have my ARC <alien resident certificate> which is basically my pass to act like a local... rent a car, check out a library book, open a bank account, sign up for internet and cable service (sort of jumped the gun on that one...), etc! Yay. I did open my bank account today, and I have all of the (ahem) necessary wire information... So, that is a relief :)

Otherwise, it was the kind of day where you're in a hurry and nothing seems to go right... the MRT was running late, and the line was backed up all the way to the station entrance for some reason that people around me must've understood... but I was clueless because the explanation was in Chinese! Not to mention - I am so curious and nosey, I was dying to know what was up! Of course, this meant that I arrived at work late (when I had a deadline and planned to get there early), and for some reason my printer more or less uninstalled itself. Great. So I scrambled through the morning... then headed to the bank to open an account and the woman tried to explain to me that she needed all of the money in my wallet to establish the minimum balance, but she didn't speak English, so when she reached out and took every dollar I had and I couldn't talk to her, I almost had a melt down... Yikes! Thank goodness I brought my company accountant who interrupted that conversation when she saw my face and translated for me. We get paid once a month here - it is a little different than the US.

I wore my most fabulous shoes today (wore, past tense), which weren't quite as fabulous in the rain so I switched to - yes, my flip flops - I know you're one step ahead of me - that were in my...yes... shopping bag (I'm so local now you know), and thought "I should design a line of shoes called 'I wore'," as in... I wore these fabulous shoes and took them off! Women would still buy them. There is something about pretty shoes that just does us in (well, some of us... like my mother & I, for sure!)

Later on in the day, things started looking brighter, and by the time I sat down to my beef noodles at the little chinese shop near my house (that I now frequent), I was feeling pretty much back up to Lizzie standard. A nice warm bowl of tasty beef noodles... with really good beef, a dance workout at my apartment while watching the UK equivalent of 'So You Think You Can Dance', and a new post on my blog have pretty much done the trick. Here's to tomorrow, and hoping that it goes smoother than today. :)

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