Girl and City

I’ve been eating extremely well in China, which isn’t difficult given that everything¹ here is better than anything I’ve had in Canada times ten.

Let’s walk through a typical day of eating for me in Nanjing.

Breakfast starts at 5am² and is usually at a xiao chi dian which is kind of like a dim sum stand with road-side aluminum furniture. Sketchy? Yes, a little. Delicious? Definitely. Luckily, I’m not someone with a sensitive stomach and I have never gotten sick from eating in China.

In the last four days, I’ve had quite a variety of breakfast items: plain steamed buns (man tou), veggie or pork-filling steamed buns (bao zi), glutinous rice buns (shao mai), fried dough sticks (you tiao), soy milk or tofu soup (dou jiang, dou nao), congee (xi fan).

Some xiao chi items can be repeated for lunch, such as steamed buns. Nanjing has the best xiao long bao in the country, many would argue.

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1. When I say ‘everything’, I’m mostly referring to all Chinese food. [↩]
2. Everyone gets up really early here because mid-day and early afternoon is too hot to function, so that’s usually nap-time. [↩]

“You should see the way the girls in New York swarm around the geezers once they find out they’re bankers,” I said in between mouthfuls of fried rice. “It’s disgusting. They’re old!”
My lunch companion laughed. “But from the bankers’ perspective, it’s their only hope. I mean when else are they going to get any action?” GSB said. “Their hours are too long for them to have any kind of real relationship.”
“Why even bother having a relationship? Did you read that quote on Overheard at The Business School? ‘I don’t understand why people have relationships in The Business School. It’s like an extra-curricular you can’t put on your resume.’ It’s exactly like that.”
“So they don’t have relationships. They just have a few girls on their speed-dial that they can call. Call-girls,” he said earnestly.
“Are you being serious?” I could never be sure when discussing the banker lifestyle with a banker, since he would be joining their ranks in a few short months.
“Yeah. Well a lot of times when they have an event or when they go out, they don’t want to be embarrassed by not having a girlfriend. So they have a few regular girls that they call upon.”
I made a face of disgust. “Too bad it doesn’t work the other way around.”
“Why not? You could have call-boys. Just tell them how much you make,” he said, this time I was sure he was joking.
“And what, offer to pay them to be my boyfriend for the night, weekend, whatever?”
He laughed, “Yeah I guess it doesn’t work as well for girls.”
“The attraction of money and success doesn’t work in the other direction. Girls will be all over a successful, wealthy man, but guys aren’t the same,” I said, with a hint of bitterness. “Plus, it’s even harder for consultants than bankers, we’re on the move all the time.”
“That’s true. So you could have a call-boy in every city, however long you’re there.”
“I’ve already started collecting names,” I said, giving him a wink. If GSB played his cards right, he could be on my list. After all, he was going to be in Hong Kong. That’s just a short hop from Singapore.
“Really?”
“Yeah, I met a guy at a conference. GS Japan. If I have a project in Tokyo, I’m thinking we could hook up.”
GSB shook his head in disbelief. “You are something.”

I seem to amaze people, although I am at a loss for why. Maybe they just don’t see it coming – you know, innocent little me, planning to have boytoys in every major city in Asia? Or any other scheme I come up with, really.

Later that day…

“Let’s meet in the morning on Sunday and spend as long as we need to to get through these cases.”
“9am?” Someone suggested. “That’s when we normally have class anyway.”
“I don’t think I can make it for 9. How about 10?” I piped up.
“Why? Do you have plans in the morning?”
“Well… sort of,” I said sheepishly. My teammates looked at me, waiting for me to continue. Finally, I said, “I have to make breakfast. You know, weekend breakfasts are pretty elaborate, they take time.”
Everyone burst into laughter. Then, when they realized I was being serious, they stared at me incredulously. “Your plans… are to make breakfast?”
“Well, normally I can eat breakfast on the go. But on weekends, I usually make a big breakfast – you know, scrambled eggs, pancakes… it takes time.”
Now they were looking at me like I was an alien. What? Was I so crazy to want to make myself a good breakfast once a week?
GSB finally chuckled and shook his head. “You are…” he trailed off, at a loss for words.
As the rest of my group begrudgingly agreed to meet at 10, I smiled smugly. Maybe I was “something” but I was going to have a big yummy breakfast on Sunday morning, and that’s all that mattered.

If you have any sense of foreshadowing, you’ll know are only two types of posts that could follow a three-night sleepover with HB:

1. Juicy, emotionally confusing, and morally questionable
2. Sensible, uptight, and boring

You’ll be happy to hear that my post is of the first variety. While it ranks high in the entertaining category, it ranks low in the my-proudest-moments category. So don’t judge, k?

I arrived at HB‘s to find him vacuuming. Apparently, he cared about making impressions, although this was not the first time I’d stayed at his apartment. Neither of us had planned anything for the first night, so we had dinner with his brother at a Korean/Japanese restaurant nearby. Then, we engaged in our favourite activity: wandering around The City. We walked through urban parks and impromptu art displays, we sat down on benches and stone garden walls, we held hands and linked arms. We were completely in-tune with each other, and conversation flowed endlessly. He never mentioned his relationship status and I never asked.
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