A Series of Unfortunate Events, or How China is a Great Place to Have Your Time Wasted
On the 1st of the month, I must collect charge cards (充值卡 - chōngzhíkǎ）to recharge the credit on my internet account. Unlike a cellphone, there is no way to charge your internet from a convenience store or supermarket, so purchasing the physical cards are necessary.
Let’s see how events unfolded (times recorded by the fantastic Moves app):
3:54 Leave house
4:09 Arrive at China Telecom Changning Rd branch, to discover the branch has closed down
4:13 Arrive at China Telecom Zhongshan Park branch, to find that it too has closed down
4:21 Arrive at Pacific Coffee to use the Internet to have a quick search for an alternative branch, find it’s full to bursting with people, and decide to head home to get my bike
4:34 Arrive home, discover that the closest branch is now at public transport-inaccessible Jiangsu Rd, so go down to get my bike
4:45 Arrive at the bike shed to discover that my lock has rusted shut, because the security guard didn’t want to bother fixing the leak in the roof directly above my bike. He lets me know he’ll ‘get right on it’, and I head back home to drop bike stuff off.
4:55 Back home for the third time, try to find an alternative route to the Jiangsu Rd store. Baidu Maps (the local equivalent to Google Maps) informs me that since the destination is very close, 'It is suggested that you walk’ (see pic), and withholds transportation information. Now have to take an age to load my VPN, so I can use Google Maps (blocked in China), and discover that all transportation methods are extremely inconvenient. Decide to walk.
5:21 Leave home on foot.
5:40 Finally arrive at Jiangsu Rd store, and buy my internet charge vouchers, over two hours after I left my house to do this 'quick errand’.
China - great place to have your time wasted.
This post was imported from my Tumblr, which I used for blogging between 2014 and 2015.
