Nothing Goes Quite According to Plan

This was the first weekend in China that I planned absolutely nothing. Before any more adventures, I need to buy our onward tickets from Xiamen. A second consideration is that none of my weekend preparations during the last two months have gone according to plan, and I'm a little worn out from ineffective planning. Time to go with the flow.

Our neighbor, Karin, had invited us to come along with her on one of her visa renewal forays to Kinmen Island, which is part of Taiwan. Yesterday, due to travel planning, I took a careful look at our visas. I was delighted to unexpectedly discover that they allow for multiple entries to China. I ran downstairs to tell Karin the great visa news. She responded with some bad visa news of her own. It must have been a visa kind of a day. She had woken up and realized that she had accidentally let her visa go until the very last day - TODAY.

After some mental wrangling and preparation, Hilda and Calliope set off with Karin to the Kinmen Island ferry. Within an hour of their departure, I heard the front door to our apartment swing open. This could only be bad news. Evidently, they had made it in time for the 2:30 ferry. However, all return ferries had been indefinitely suspended until the typhoon passed through. TYPHOON? Although typhoon sounds like an exotic weather phenomenon, it is basically the same thing as a hurricane. As Floridians, we are familiar with such things.

A friend called to talk about a text message he had received on his cell phone from China Mobile, his cell phone company. The message warned him of the typhoon heading our way. Hilda had also received a text message from China Mobile. The cell phone company sends lots of text messages, which drives Hilda crazy, because they are all written in Chinese characters, which means she rarely understands them. But consider this: the Chinese government is able to alert all of its cell-phone toting citizens about impending emergency situations. In the larger cities, just about everyone has a cell phone, so this is a phenomenal use of telecommunication technology!

Our neighbor, Karin, still had to deal with her visa issue, which turned into a long, drawn-out nightmare. I think the highlight (lowlight?) of her ordeal was when an official insisted upon a certificate for the typhoon. I guess he missed the memo when God stopped sending certificates for extreme weather events.

Side-note: Here is the derivation of the word typhoon in Mandarin. The pinyin for typhoon is TaiFeng. This corresponds to two Chinese characters - Tai, roughly meaning "too" in the sense of extremely, and Feng, meaning "wind". Where English derives typhoon from another language, Mandarin reuses simple words by compounding them to create more complex words.

Today, Hilda, Calliope, and I decided to spend the typhoon at a luxury hot springs resort in Xiamen - the one we hadn't yet visited. It looked geographically like a safer spot to spend the typhoon, since it is on the mainland. If you ever find yourself with a tropical storm/typhoon coming your way, I highly recommend spending it outdoors in baths of scented and colored hot water with people you love. The raging winds are fun to watch from the security of serene waters. And who minds the rain, when running from hot tub to hot tub.

On a whim, Calliope decided to get cupped - a therapeutic procedure which involves applying a vacuum suction created with a flame, alcohol, and glass cups. Immediately after the procedure, she announced that she will not be doing that again.

This weekend has driven home a recurring theme. I shouldn't get too attached to any plans I make during my stay in China. Nothing goes quite according to plan.