• THE Lowly Peon
  8/05 @ 7:25am
  in Texas
• THE Lowly Peon
  8/01 @ 9:10pm
  absinthe
• Poppy
  8/01 @ 3:23am
  Eep! Good luck retrospectively, kate! Hope it went well!!

• Avalantern.com! (4)
  8/08 @ 6:19pm
• never pay for what should be free (3)
  8/01 @ 2:51am
• why I may never want to leave this lifestyle (4)
  7/31 @ 3:38am

• Current Albums
  3/23 @ 4:11am
  Will
• Musicals
  3/21 @ 1:45pm
  Benji!
• Coolest Guys Ever
  11/21 @ 5:56pm
  Benji!

priorities (of a commun!st country)

i went with my buddy and colleague last week to our shanghai office for a few days. it was crazy busy, and i've been tired as hell ever since (though that gobstopper i just ate picked me up a bit). shanghai is only about 80 minutes away from hangzhou by train (comfortable, fast, cheap, wonderful. i love it), so we always travel by train.

we were tired, hungry, hot, and a bit grumpy when we got to the station. being a compernolle, when traveling, everything must be as fast and efficient as possible: when using an escalator, links gehen rechts stehen (stand on the right, go on the left). when buying tickets, get your money ready before, rather than holding up the line while you fish for that extra 20 you just "know" you have in your purse somewhere. etc.

so when it came time to go through "security", i was ready to sit down and not worry about time anymore.

security in chinese train stations is merely an xray machine on which you put your bags, and a metal detector that probably hasn't been turned on in years. no one really pays any attention to anything, which is a bit comical considering they pay five guards to stand there and pretend to watch.

so my buddy went through the gate just after me. put his bags on the conveyor belt and walked through. he was even more surprised than i was when they stopped him and asked him to look through his bags.

i didn't want to get in the way too much, so i didn't bother. but i did hear her say open your bags, we need to look around. she went straight for his CD book. uh oh, i thought. as a chinese IT guy, he must have at least $5,000 of pirated software on those CDs.

she looked through each one -- Windows XP, AutoCAAD, MS Office Professional, etc -- and then let him go.

i asked what the hell just happened, and he said the security guard, at a train station which probably serves over a million people a day, was looking for adult movies.

June 15, 2009 @ 1:31am . 45 views . 4 comments