Two great examples of doing what you want, many great lessons can be learned from the Chinese:
1. Fairly mellow clinic shift this morning. Dysmenorrhea, stomachache, the like. Herbs herbs herbs. Just when I'm getting ready to tune out and wait for the time to pass before lunch, a woman walks into the clinic room with a bag making strange noises. Now, strange and loud noises are nothing new--cell phones, yelling, things crashing to the floor are all white noise at this point. Our doctors will answer their cells phones mid-appointment, no big deal. But this sounds like chirping, and it was. This lady brought her new baby chick to the doctor with her, inside her purse, wrapped in a plastic bag. Everyone looked up to inquire about the noise, and the lady smiles and shakes her head "yes" and opens her bag to reveal a little yellow chick running around maniacally inside her purse. Hey, do what you want, it's china. After several minutes of laughter and joking we asked our interpreter if this was just rote hospital procedure. She turned out to agree that "the nurse might be a bit angry about the chicken".
I should say so. There's a chicken, in the hospital. But no one showed the patient, or her chicken the door. It continued to disturb all of the 2nd floor with it's chirping while she patiently waited for her appointment in the hall.
2. On the bike ride home there is this particularly noisy section where they are doing some building construction and half the road is covered with steel plates. The cars driving over it make the street sound like NYC subway tracks--it's loud. Today they were doing some work on this piece of road. A guy was going at it with a mallet, making a racket. I've never seen this construction technique before, but alright, what do I know. Once he bent the metal to his desired shape he whips out his welder and starts-a-welding. Mind you, there are no traffic cones or blockades or anything, just a couple guys, a mallet and a welder. As he starts welding, a shiny new white car rounds the corner and nearly runs into the welder. The driver lays on the horn, hoping to get the crew to move so he can pass, but no sir. The crew doesn't care how fancy your car is or how loud the horn. The guy just climbed under the car and continued to weld away. Eventually the car backed up and swerved around the crew, probably pretty pissed. Who needs language for a battle of wills? Your car horn and welder will do. But whatever, just another day. Do what you want.
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Oh my god, and I thought driving situations in Mexico were crazy...which they are, but that's pretty nuts about the construction. And the chicken!!!! So good. Hilarious.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of bad driving things, I spent two hours stopped in traffic with Dane and another member of the orchestra last night on our way home from a concert because a semi truck and a police car got into an accident. And the last possible priority is to move the vehicles so we can all get around. But it was a special situation-- apparently it was a hit on the cops from the drug cartel. It's common for cops to be killed in a variety of ways because they continue to try and stop drug trafficking. There's quite a complex relationship between the resulting violence from law enforcement involvement and the huge boost to local economy the drugs bring. Very few people down here use, so that aspect isn't much of a problem. All the goods are shipped to the U.S....