Yes, yes, this was indeed my only present during Christmas this year. I'm not bitter (I'm really not, I promise), after all, I'm in a new country with no family. And being on the road means that I don't want to be carrying lots of stuff.
At any rate, I wasn't exactly expecting presents. And I'm not really keen on gambling, in any form, so I wasn't going to buy 10 bingo tickets in hopes of winning some prize at the Chinese community Christmas party (skimming over the last four words, "Chinese community Christmas Party," I think I just read "Chinese Communist Party." Maybe I spent too long in my thesis carrel in college). But the father of the Chinese Catholic church in Milan was nice enough to give me one of his bingo tickets, so I could participate. There were tons of prizes, maybe fifty in total, so pretty much everyone could win something (or two or three somethings). All the stuff was donated by some of Chinese wholesalers, so it was a melange of trinkets, clothes, basically a random sample of things you might find in a Walmart. All of course, made in China.
Epilogue: A woman who was trying to be nice offered to switch my present, and I said "no, no, it's fine," but she insisted. I couldn't exactly insist further on keeping a pink spandex shirt for girls -- which might raise some eyebrows -- so now I have a nondescript black hat instead.
1 comment:
you are however sporting some very Asian ghetto hair. You like perhaps how my dad did in the 70's.
grins, i sent you a postcard, did it get lost?
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