Day 7,
September 24
This morning when I went out there was one of those misty rains. By the time I got back home I was soaked, even though it barely felt like it was raining. I ran up and down Kaixuan road, which has lines 3 and 4 of the Shanghai Metro on an elevated track above it. There are buildings and greenery all beneath the pillars supporting the tracks, which makes it impossible to get to the far side of Kaixuan road except for at a few designated points. The far side is the interesting side. It’s a world reserved for cars, bicycles and delivery drivers stopping their electric bikes at the handful of businesses located there. For much of the road there is only a wall and two feet of sidewalk. The sidewalk eventually disappears once you get to Yuyintang, which I’ve written about before. That’s where I'd heard Zapp’s Dance Floor while stealing wifi from a McDonald's.
The view of the train overhead against the white sky feels like something a certain sort of person would use as the animated wallpaper for their Windows PC.
The only animated wallpaper I have experience is Kwame’s, who used a slideshow of a bunch of scantily clad big-breasted asian ladies as his wallpaper. He was the leader of the floor my friend Jay lived on in college, which I always found strange, because it was a floor for people in some organization for women in engineering. It seemed like a woman should be in charge of that.
Everyone on that floor was a freshman except for Kwame and Jay. They all liked pokemon (Kwame had weekly pokemon nights to watch new episodes of the anime — it had never actually occurred to me before then that Pokemon was a show that continued to get new episodes) and wore sweatpants with anime characters or k-pop singers on them. I spent a lot of time there because Jay was my only friend at the time. Usually when I was there, Kwame would invite me into his room for one reason or another. Sometimes there would be engineering girls there. Other times there would be Kwame’s weird nerd-boy friends, who gave me long bullet pointed lists of all the things they disliked about the games I made after their extensive play testing sessions. Sometimes we’d have hour long discussions beneath the glow of Kwame’s translucent-cased gaming PC.
One of those times in Kwame’s room, a girl I didn’t know came in to consult Kwame with some interpersonal conflict she was having. Kwame gave her some advice, and then as she was leaving she pointed to his computer and said “By the way, your wallpaper is really cool." Kwame immediately replied "Thanks, I know."
After getting home from my run I took a shower and I went with Xiaoxi to the clothing market at Lingshi Road. I bought weird super straight semi-translucent white pants with some colorful abstract-art-like design all over them for 10 rmb (about $1.50). I always aspire to wear clothes like this, and fail everytime. Now we're having dinner with Xiaoxi's friend Bing Bing and his girlfriend, which I didn't plan for. I suppose Bing Bing is my modern day Kwame. His girlfriend and I are both sitting in silence. He's giving Xiaoxi all sorts of questionable career advice as I write this about how if she truly wants to live again, she has to leave Shanghai. He ocassionally looks over me and asks if I know what some word means, and each time I say "no", even though I do.
The first time I met Bing Bing I was at a party for the opening of Xiaoxi's friend's store Terminal 69. He told me about some money making scheme he had, which I've forgotten. He spent the whole party sitting on the floor with Susu the Frenchman, taking turns pointing at a laptop resting on one of their laps.
I alternate between finding Bing Bing very annoying and very cool. He's a fashion person, though I never actually see him wearing anything particularly interesting looking. He's friends with everything "alternative" fashion storeowner in the city. His job is arranging the outfits for photo shoots. Sometimes he points in a particular direction -- say, at a child peeing on the street -- and says "look" in the most serious voice possible. Before you've had time to process what it is you're looking at he's already talking about some completely different topic.
I wish it were still raining. I want to go outside and get soaked. But every time I look over at the windows of this restaurant, they're clear. Not a drop of condensation. We ordered 9 dishes and half of them look like they no one even touched them. I'd picked one vegetarian thing for myself (Smelly Tofu) but everyone else kept picking other vegetarian things despite me being the only vegetarian.
I have no idea how I appear to others, once I've given up on socialization and just type things into my phone. I guess I'm a bad person.