All things being equal

Been a busy weekend.

Friday night the Australian consulate had some kind of party and a bunch of people from work went. I forced myself to go even though I’m pretty antisocial.

I left after about two-something hours but not having won anything in the raffle. I think I ate 20 rmb worth of snacks, though. They had some good stuff. I talked with several people, though none with the consulate.

The last group was a bunch of China Southern pilots, who had been “reassigned” from Qantas. Apparently, Qantas did a “save face” kind of thing and instead of laying them off during a downturn somehow got them four-year contracts with CZ. Very weird.

Anyway, I was talking to this one guy in particular – he was a dual citizen, originally from Arizona but lives in Brisbane now – when I finally deemed it time to go.

As I was leaving, I passed by some of my colleagues and I pointed out to one woman that there was a bunch of a pilots in the corner, should she go and want to meet some men. She said, “Oh! You’re just so good at socializing!” I almost fell over.

No, I am not. But I try to go to a person who’s alone and engage him or her in conversation. It usually works and I don’t feel like a moron just standing there like a redheaded wallflower.

Thursday night, I was all over. We had a welcome party hosted by our Marines. I love our guys. They’d hate me saying this, but they’re just kids to me. I orchestrated a stocking stuffer drive for them at Christmas to show some appreciation and in general, treat them like human beings instead of these people who stand in our defense. Most other people don’t talk to them, which is a shame because they’re nice guys with stories as interesting as any other of my colleagues.

At their party, I noticed the people in my department didn’t even talk to the Marines, who were the hosts. I even asked someone about it afterwards and he said oh, he didn’t know any of them so he didn’t talk to them. Ahem! They’re hosting you. Say thank you!

But no. They didn’t, and for the most part, they didn’t even talk to anyone outside of my departments. I love those little get-togethers because I get to talk to people in the other departments. It’s my chance to go and talk to the computer guy, the social organizer person, the wife of the new guy, etc. Basically, talk to anyone and everyone who does NOT work directly with me. Those guys I see all the time.

But the rest of them, they were completely insular, to the exclusion of the hosts. It just bothered me.

Walking back with the social organizer person (there really is a job title for this, but it wouldn’t make sense to anyone who doesn’t work at the place), we discussed it. It just aggravates me that people treat some people better or worse than others.

One of the nicest compliments I ever got was from a blue-collar friend, who told me that I “treat everyone the same.” And honestly, I do try to.

There’s a thread on our office bulletin board (worldwide, not just here) that says we should hold doors open, in part, because the person we’re assisting could wind up being our next supervisor.

You know what? I don’t care about that. I hold doors open for people all the time, and I say hi to people all the time. I do not say hi to this person and not that one, though, and I am indiscriminate in whom I open doors for. Someone’s there, I do it. I don’t check their resumes before doing something nice.

Which might have something to do with what happened upon arrival at my apartment building after the Marine party. The social organizer person and I ran into an American in the lobby, headed up the elevator. We introduced ourselves and the lady told me she’d heard there was a redhead in the building and been advised to meet her, because she was really nice.

So that made my evening, honestly.

Really, I’ve been super busy this weekend, although I did get in a good nap this afternoon. After the Australian thing Friday, I got up Saturday and worked out and made pancakes as per normal, then met a group of 11 for a massive, massive lunch. (I’ve yet to attend a meal where we had just enough food. Normally, we have enough left over to feed a small army and this was no different.) We then traipsed by taxi to a laser tag facility, where we spent two hours sweating and trying to kill each other. Hadn’t done that in a while and it was a lot of fun.

Saturday evening, I went to the Opera House, which is on the next block, and saw “The Sound of Music.” Honestly, I cannot remember ever seeing the movie all the way through, although I must have. I knew almost all the songs.

Today, after working out and eating the rest of the pancakes and doing laundry, I went to Baiyun mountain, which is smack in the middle of Guangzhou. I went with one of the temporary workers. We took a cable car up and wandered around. It was not a whole lot of nature, but it was a nice morning/afternoon, and I was glad I did it. I’ve been meaning to but didn’t want to go alone.

Grabbed a bite to eat and came home for the wonderful nap, then decided to swim and do some R&R in the steamroom. When I do this, I just go down in a bathing suit and the fluffy robe provided by my landlord. (Housing is so awesome here!) And then afterwards, I stop by the tea room and have juice and cookies.

And then I ran into more colleagues, who were about to bust open some kind of dessert. They asked me to stay, so we hung out, drank tea and ate something really Brazilian and sweet.

So I really feel I have been all over the place this weekend.