There's no such thing as "just.."

I have had my fair share of bad days in China...most of which I have downloaded onto this site. But there was something not even I had discovered on the bad day scale until my very first work permit came through - that of a BAD CHINA WORKING DAY.

If shoe shopping, ordering wrong or being told to "Get out" by a taxi driver weren't bad enough I am, on some days, now faced with days at work that just can't come right. And they can't come right because I'm in the wrong country!

Case in point was a day I experienced last week...my uniform supplier had let me down for the umpteenth time, there had been a blow up of about 5 Chinese people and me in the reception area over a slight misunderstanding, budgets had gone awry and my translater refused to translate. When I presented my thoughts of frustration to my assistant and tried to convince her that life in China was more often than not extremely difficult for foreigners she took complete offense. I tried to explain that nothing is easy, everything gets passed down 3rd hand and simple things get lost in translation - in other words...there's no such thing as JUST in China; my assistant however refused to believe that was the case.

Since that awful day I have tried to picture what my working life was like in South Africa. I like to comfort myself into thinking that I have it harder here in Asia than anyone else working in an English speaking country and I suppose to a certain extent I do. But the truth is that those days happen to just about everyone at some point in their working life whether you converse in English or not. Most of what goes on in this office goes straight over my head but perhaps that's not such a bad thing. Perhaps JUST doing something has no place in a challenging work environment, which is the very place I want to be.