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Friends to go

2/27/2017

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Yesterday a message popped out on my cellphone screen reminding me to renew my Vpn (Virtual private network) service.  
Believe it or not six months have already past since when on a very hot day of August we landed in Shanghai and Internet stopped working !

Six months on I am happy here and
it all happened much quicker and smoother than I expected. Though my heart is still cringing every time I close my eyes and think about New York and I Know I will never get over it, here in Shanghai, where I still don't understand much of what's happening around me, I keep ordering the wrong food, I'm panicking when the translator app on my cellphone gets stuck and as first thing in the morning I check the pollution level, I am having a good time.  How can it be ?

One thing that really helped me to navigate through the adjustement process is to have quickly found new friends. And this is particularly easy in Shanghai for obvious reasons - you are an outsider who belongs to a minority. At least at the beginning, sticking to other people like you is inevitable and also a way to feel less stranded. Though with time you might find more things in common with a Chinese than a Swedish. 

The international school is typically the place where to fish for new friends. Most families are a mess exactly like you with cross cultural parents and kids who are confused and multilingual.  
Everybody is a guest here in Shanghai and doesn't know for how long. Everybody is struggling with misunderstandings and chopsticks exactly like you. The connection is immediate.

This time I got hooked up on a group of very funny and entertaining Italian women and of course, in less than a week, it felt like I have known them for years. They are now kind of my family here in Shanghai.
With them I'm once again experiencing what I call a “fast-paced friendship", a way of growing very close to people who just a couple of hours earlier were total strangers. Suddenly they become irreplaceable presences in your life with whom you end up sharing everything from trivial matters to deep thoughts. 
It is a phenomenon that happened to me a lot since living abroad. And this is why I'm never too tired to tell people, who are about to pack up and go and sad to leave lifelong friends behind and fearing loneliness, not to worry because they will meet strangers they will be even sadder to say goodbye to. They will find in them the best support to fully enjoy the expat adventure with all the ups and downs that come with it. 

In Shanghai my new friends are mostly Western peers. The language barrier doesn't facilitate the exchange with locals. However I do try my best to break the invisible wall that, also at school, seems to separate Western from Asian families (Chinese kids can get into the international school provided they have a double nationality) and in the end I managed to spend some time with a couple of Shanghainese moms which was enjoyable and enriching.

In Taipei it was much easier to hang out with locals. Taiwanese are very friendly and their English is generally almost academic compared to here. Kindhearted and welcoming, those I hanged out with really helped me to adjust and get by when I was still an unexperienced expat. Plus, they gave me a precious insight into a different culture as well as a new perspective to look at things and base my judgements.
Among other things it is in Taipei where I picked up the habit of constantly drinking warm water that my family back in Italy still finds kind of weird.

In New York City where once again I was an outsider surrounded by locals or by people who lived long enough in the Big Apple to be considered as such, I also haven’t met many expats. However New Yorkers, with some exceptions of course, are tough cookies. You must be first acknowledged, then trusted and finally accepted. Nothing personal but they’re in a constant rush from somewhere or to somewhere and it takes time before they even notice you. What could you expect from people who drink their coffee while walking ? How can they have time for you ? However, when you miraculously manage to grab a quick lunch together, make them relax and take a breath, they’re actually very likeable and quickly conquer your heart.

Montréal was just the perfect place. We lived in a wonderful neighbourhood where expats and locals are living side by side. Montrealers are also more laid back and relaxed than their cousins beyond the border. They actually sit to drink their coffee. There I met some wonderful people who have become dearest and precious friends.

Every time I left one place the hardest thing was to say goodbye to good friends I did not know when and where I could see again. Every time I came to a new place broken-hearted, I tried my best not to get attached to anyone anymore. Yet I did it over and over again. Why ?
As hurtful as it can be, this is the reason why I have been enjoying my erratic life so much and believe it's still worth all the fun and the bitterness.
We deeply love our friends and, while waiting for new ones, we virtually take the old ones with us like New Yorkers do with their coffee to go.

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Only the brave

9/25/2016

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Taobao "good luck" home page
Enough is enough, I said to myself last week. I temporarily stopped my daily urban excursions and, one morning, still wearing my pajama, I took up a new challenge : Sign in to Taobao, the local Amazon, the ultimate experience of Chinese online shopping.
After hearing for days and to exhaustion  : Do you like it ? I found it on Taobao - You should look for it on Taobao ! - You'll see how convenient Taobao is ..." I had to give it a try.
There was just a little but negligible detail : the Taobao website is only available in Chinese which, as we all know, is not one of the friendliest languages to approach.

For this reason, most expats they either wait for a local soul to help them out decrypting those little tiny scribbles or they simply give up. 
After waiting in vain for someone’s help, I decided to take the bull by the horns.
After all, yes, Chinese looks pretty hard because you can't event read it but if I was in Russia or even in Germany, with their never ending words, I would also be in trouble. Plus, nowadays, there are tools that come in handy such excellent translators you can download on your cellphone or computer. 
You just have to choose the right one considering that those supported, for instance, by Google, which is blocked by the Chinese Firewall, do not work or if they do, because you trick the system by using a VPN service, they drastically slow down the connection speed. 
I found Microsoft translator or Bing translator, which are better liked by the Chinese government, quite good and helpful. Together with a bottle of tranquillisers, to keep my nerves steady, they helped me defying the great monster Taobao.

​After a few attempts I managed to complete the registration and logged in. 
Now it was time to purchase something. I decided to risk only a few yuan and instead of a Prada bag, which is also available there, I searched for something cheap and familiar like bottles of San Benedetto sparkling water. The name San Benedetto was enough for Taobao to understand what I needed so, a second later, a page full of pictures of blu bottles in all sorts of packaging popped out. I clicked on the first option, totally ignoring the  gibberish all around the picture frame, because I was already too tired to copy and paste more words on the translator. Instead I just clicked on a big yellow button I kind of assumed the meaning of being "Pay for your order”.

Of course, God forbid the payment process could only be intuitive and easy enough to be figured out quickly. Unlike Amazon, on Taobao you cannot simply insert your credit card details and thank you very much for your order. No, payments on Taobao are processed through Alipay which is a third party service such as Paypal. And, of course, to Alipay you need to register too which I did, carefully inputting all the required information, and in Chinese of course, until I clicked a red button and I got a pop out window that filled me with a mix of enthusiasm and adrenaline : successful registration ! 

I was so excited that I thought, ​ok, this is it, I made it, I am a genius. I immediately texted my hubby to show off   and a couple of friends too, totally unaware that there was just a little problem : I actually never paid for the water. At the end so “Much ado for nothing”!
After completing the registration process I was supposed to set up a secret code in order to finalise complete the payment but somehow I missed that part.


Anyways, at that point my priority had become another, to log out of all the websites I signed in to. I started to look frantically everywhere, to copy and paste every possible command on the translator but I simply couldn’t find the right one. 
My kids came back from school in the afternoon and I didn't even looked at them, my eyes being stuck on the screen trying to solve the “Log out" riddle.
Only few hours later, when everybody was already asleep, I don't know what I touched but my username had magically disappeared. I was so relieved that I celebrated with a glass of wine and went to bed with a smile upon my face. As expected, 48 hours later, there was still no news of my San Benedetto water which was a bit suspicious for an express delivery, though from Beijing because I had not checked the vendor location :-)
I had to log in again and after another half a day of work with the translator, a considerable amount of sweat and swear, I finally clued in and realised what I still had to do in order to get soon hydrated. 


Now I’m aware there are women in this world who achieved more than purchasing water bottles online, though sparkling, but this doesn’t lessen the huge sense of pride I felt right after this epic exploit. 

Few years ago, I would never attempted such a thing. I remember cautiously approaching Amazon when in Montreal still afraid of messing something up. In Taipei, I even asked my Chinese teacher to explain me the functioning of our very sophisticated toilet in fear of being sucked down. Now that I’m perhaps more experienced I think it’s crucial when living abroad to break the invisible barrier holding me on the edge of reality and try to penetrate the new environment. This makes me feel less suspended and trapped inside a bubble and acts as a booster of confidence for further challenges along the way. And here there are many, I tell ya !
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