shifty tour guide
i have not taken to "jason" too well ... we just get the feeling we're being taken for a ride by him ... we prepaid our tour fees, which included meals .... so when we got taken out to lunch yesterday by the garment maker/fashion designer jason and our bus driver conveniently joined us (tour guides never eat with the tour group) ... so this makes me wonder what he did with the lunch fee we pre-paid? i bet our friend "jason" just make a nice little payment to himself .... he's not even letting us keep the ticket stubs to our visits to museums and such .... he's one shady dude .... giving everyone the bad vibe. when we first landed, he asked me if i had a job for him in america! oh well .... just trying to roll with it .....
thank god cecilia and i found this internet place. we tried to ask for directions from our hotel, but "jason" wouldn't let us speak to the hotel staff, he just told us to walk around and we'll find one if we go "that way," pointing to the marshlands. so cecilia and i did our best international sign language to two blokes on the street and asked them for "internet" and "email" station. they pointed in a nicely-lit direction, so we headed that way.
we came to a nice hotel and decided to ask them. while waiting at the concierge desk a totally blitzed local with red eyes and a redder face screamed "HELLO!!!!!!!" to us and asked us what we needed. we did our internet/email universal hand signals and he totally got it and offered to walk us over. but this being a professional hotel, recognized that he was in no position to cross streets, let alone walk, let alone be conscious in this present state, so they assigned a bell boy to walk us over to internet land.
here's a side note ... the people here are taller than taiwanese, but skinnier. way skinnier. as in their belts go around them one and a half times. i am not kidding -- they have to wrap them around to the back belt loop. so this guy was a one-and-a-halfer too, but dressed in a snappy white outfit and dandy white cap. he took us up to the internet place -- we never would have found this place on our own -- so we happily tipped him with our hong kong money (you can use HK money here, since the rates are comparable to the chinese RMB -- HK $ is actually worth a little more!).
so this internet place is unlike any other we've seen. you know how i said we're in poverty striken land here? this is probably one of the most sleek, modern places i've been, including US! remember in that movie "9-to-5" where there were just rows and rows of desks with typewriters? it's the same idea here, but all desks with flat screen monitors, webcams and fancy headphones. there must be 300 workstations here ... music playing ... no lighting ... drinks available .... clean keyboards ... lumbar support chairs ... and it's about $1 U.S. per hour.
thank god cecilia and i found this internet place. we tried to ask for directions from our hotel, but "jason" wouldn't let us speak to the hotel staff, he just told us to walk around and we'll find one if we go "that way," pointing to the marshlands. so cecilia and i did our best international sign language to two blokes on the street and asked them for "internet" and "email" station. they pointed in a nicely-lit direction, so we headed that way.
we came to a nice hotel and decided to ask them. while waiting at the concierge desk a totally blitzed local with red eyes and a redder face screamed "HELLO!!!!!!!" to us and asked us what we needed. we did our internet/email universal hand signals and he totally got it and offered to walk us over. but this being a professional hotel, recognized that he was in no position to cross streets, let alone walk, let alone be conscious in this present state, so they assigned a bell boy to walk us over to internet land.
here's a side note ... the people here are taller than taiwanese, but skinnier. way skinnier. as in their belts go around them one and a half times. i am not kidding -- they have to wrap them around to the back belt loop. so this guy was a one-and-a-halfer too, but dressed in a snappy white outfit and dandy white cap. he took us up to the internet place -- we never would have found this place on our own -- so we happily tipped him with our hong kong money (you can use HK money here, since the rates are comparable to the chinese RMB -- HK $ is actually worth a little more!).
so this internet place is unlike any other we've seen. you know how i said we're in poverty striken land here? this is probably one of the most sleek, modern places i've been, including US! remember in that movie "9-to-5" where there were just rows and rows of desks with typewriters? it's the same idea here, but all desks with flat screen monitors, webcams and fancy headphones. there must be 300 workstations here ... music playing ... no lighting ... drinks available .... clean keyboards ... lumbar support chairs ... and it's about $1 U.S. per hour.
posted by christine at 7:40 PM
1 Comments:
you guys, come on! it's the one where you type on the invisible keyboard in front of you while saying "INNNNNTER NNNNNNET" ... and then you click your pretend mouse and say "EEEEEE-MAAAAAIL!" of course you must speak loudly, since the louder you speak the more they will understand you. this is also a universal rule.
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