Indian Taitais

I like Indian people and they are a great source of revenu for my restaurant, but damn! Indians taitais can be annoying customers in a restaurant some times!

Today we got a group of 15 Indian ladies that came for lunch. Any group of ladies is already kinda of trouble regardless of where they are from. Most of the ladies we get in the restaurant are expat wives. They normally live in big houses with Ayis (cleaning Chinese lady), they have a van and driver. The Ayis take care of the kids. Drivers take the kids to school and to their afternoon extracurricular activities. Most of these ladies don't work and they also don't have to do any house work, because Ayi does it for them. So basically they don't have anything to do during most of the day. If they are not getting their nails, their hair or something else done, they tend to gather in groups at different establishments where they gossip in a loud manner. For some reason I still don't fully understand why, most of them are very cheap. Considering their economical status and the expat life styles they have, they shouldn't be too worried about money. My only guess would be that they feel some kind of guilt for just spending money all day long. These kinda lady is normally known as a "Taitai".

A lot of our business depends on these "Taitais". We really try to pull them to choose our establishment as their gathering point to spend some of their money while they gossip. This requires a lot of patience from the people hosting these gatherings. Taitais are very disorganized, everyone of them has an opinion and they all want it their own way. Also, there normally is a language barrier between the Chinese waitress and the group of ladies. This, added to the confussion of the ladies, becomes a disaster! While some of them are trying to organize things and order things to share some others are ordering just for their own. Some others aren't ordering anything because they are too concentrated talking while the waitress is waiting for them to decide what they want. Only taking the order takes for ages and then they complain about how long things took to be served.

Now, Indian Taitais can be specially difficult. A lot of Indians have special diets where they don't eat either beef; pork; beef and pork; chicken; beef, pork and chicken; or meat at all. There are also some of them who are vegans. It all depends on their beliefs or regional culture. So when you get a big group of people all trying to order with their specifications, believe me, it can be a PAIN!

At the end of their meal, trying to figure out who ordered what and who owes what, becomes another big problem. They count penny per penny until everything gets perfectly settled.

Anyways, there are also fun Taitais out there, that's for sure. Taitais that like to enjoy their taitai life in uncomplicated manner. Cheers for those!

Are Chinese really dumb?

As a foreigner in China we are always complaining on how Chinese are so dumb, inefficient and antiquated on their ways of doing things. But there is one thing where they are light years ahead of western civilization. What I'm talking about are "FURNISHED APARTMENTS".

We were talking about with a good friend of mine. The Chinese have figured out that one pretty well. When you live in a big city and you change apartments so often why would you like to also move damn couches, washing machines, beds, tvs, tables all that huge stuff that is just a pain to move. Some may say, "well, you can also get furinished apartments in the west", to which I answer "Bullshit!". If you want get a furnished apartment in let's say USA, you would have to pay such a high rent that is not even funny. Instead, in Shanghai, you move from apartment to apartment with your personal shit (which is still a lot) without worrying about breaking your back trying to get a damn cabinet down the stairs.

So are Chinese really that dumb...

My Granpa is sick

My grandpa on my mother side name is Jose Guadalupe Vargas. We call him Chato cuz somehow my grandma started calling him that at some point, or maybe it's cuz he calls all his grandsons Chatos. He's definitely been an exceptional man. He has dedicated his life to the well-being of his family and the ones around him to the point where he forgot sometimes to take care of himself.

At some point he was the richest man on his village in Zacapu, Michoacan. He had all kinds of businesses going on starting from raising pigs till the point where he had a factory and different kinds of retail businesses.

His big mistake was that he maybe gave away too much to his kids. So much that I think he spoiled them. I think he wasn't very good at teaching them how to keep producing money or that you have to work hard to earn it. What happened was that he lost it all. I'm not sure exactly how, but I'm pretty sure it was mostly his kids fault. All he has left is a few properties here in there. He lives off the rent and he still gives away most of that money to help out the his sons and daughters families that are struggling to survive cuz of bad money situations.

Just a few weeks ago he got lymphatic cancer. When they found out about it, it was pretty much spread already. So they took him to a public hospital where he gets the social security cover. These Social Security Hospitals in Mexico have very low standards of service and they get so many patients that they just can't handle it very well. In my grandpa's case he needed immediate attention cuz he was really dying! But it was the middle of the night and they didn't have a single doctor to take care of him. They didn't have bed where he could lay down, all the beds were already taken. They finally found something a kind of furniture that got improvised as a bed where he layed down. This "bed" was so small that his arms where hanging on the sides and since he was unconscious they had to tie his hands so they didn't just hang down there. They kept calling for medical attention without an answer, and he was just dying there. The family finally decided to take him to a private hospital. There he got proper attention and after a few days of critical moments he made it, even when the chances of survival were really damn low. My mom claims that the reason he survived shows how strong my grandpa is.

My father happens to be in a comfortable economical situation and he covered the expenses of the private hospital. He might not get any help from any of his brothers/sisters in law. The sad part was that when he was close to death, they were worried and fighting not about how to pay for a private better service, but about who would get what kind of inheritance from him.

It is really sad to see somebody who worked all his life, somebody who accumulated a lot of wealth, to be dying on public hospital and the ones responsible for it still trying to see what they can get from that awful situation.

Zup?

Hey!

Well I'm still in Shanghai. Now I'm running a Mexican restaurant in JinQiao Pudong. I love my job and I guess that gets reflected in the numbers of the restaurant. I have a new and lovely girlfriend from Michigan. We are going on a date tonight to eat sushi. It's nice to have those kinda date nights with the gf. I'm even a bit nervous about it... naaah!! Hope I can score tonight! =P

Cheers!