Nesting

What is a man's form of nesting?

I've been wanting to buy some things for a few weeks now. Some out of need (cell phone, bike bag), some out of vanity (tee shirts), some out of obsession (head phones), and some out of insanity (R9 honda scooter). I was able to accomplish nearly all of these goals, minus the scooter which Yang told me was pure insanity in Beijing and if I were to be that insane the least I could do is buy a real bike. This way our kids would have some semblance of pride in describing their father's death ("Well, you see, he was crossing on his scooter sanyuanqiao when his murse got entangled with a taxi's mirror and the subsequent fall from the overpass led to his death").

First stop was Yashow market, in the Sanliturn district of Beijing. It is a hotspot of tourists willing to get ripped off. Yang had brought me there on the pretext of baby clothes (btw, Melissa is no longer a name candidate, but Elisa is assuming it passes the jamba juice test) but I had designs on tee shirts. Right off the bat I saw one that fit my so called style. I said zhege duoshao qian 这个多少钱 (how much is this) and the sales girl (they are all young girls) said 180 kuai. The coached response when bargaining is too laugh at the first price and then start negotiating. But this time my laugh was natural and Yang and I walked away. No way, I was going to pay $25 USD for that shirt. As we got on the escalator the sales girl yelled in Chinese, "you tell me how much" and Yang said 40 kuai and I said brushed her off and said no more than 30. Deal. And sales girl wasn't very happy but i was for getting 1/6 of the original price. Yang decided to buy two tee shirts in an effort to appease the girl who none to happily said "of course you buy two for that cheap price".

Later at the same market Yang and I went separate ways. Yang to spend an hour in one or two booths fiddling over which pair of socks to by the new one. Me wandering the aisles of each of the five floors looking but not stopping. Not stopping, that is, until I found the bike bag i wanted. Yellow and looks like it would fit nicely on top of the kids seat on my bike. The sales woman at this bag store told me it was 380 something kuai because it was a zhende 真的(a real one, not a fake). I told her I wanted to see the fake ones. Anyway, I left and fetched Yang for the real negotiating. When we got back the sales woman was gone and in her place was a middle aged man. He started at 380, then 300, then 160. We had offered 80. When we walked away he agreed to 80 kuai and we went back and paid. Just then the sales woman came back. Turns out she and the middle aged man are married and it was clear who was the boss of that family. She was not too pleased with the 80 kuai deal. But a deal is a deal. We got our the bag...then feeling good about ourselves...maybe too good..we let them keep the 100 kuai for the bag.

It was handy we got the bag because yang had gotten enough kids clothes to fill it up.

Feeling good about my bargaining prowess, we headed across the street to the brand new Apple Store. First in China I believe and it just opened the day before. I promptly spent 1280 kuai (or 42.66 tee shirts) on a pair of headphones.