Killers and Walnuts

Alright. It's that time again.

The last two days have been interesting. As far as the job goes, there has been little action at the residence. Because the Olympics have yet to start, the flow of guests, both foreign and Chinese, has been a slow trickle.

However, this has given me a valuable chance to get to know a lot of the staff and speak lots of Chinese. In fact, I feel like I spoke Chinese for about 8 hours straight yesterday while standing around the front of the facility.

Two of the girls who are always in the front, Ru Yun and her friend (whose name has just escaped my memory) are a lot of fun....they are always playing pranks on each other, telling me stories, etc. Yesterday afternoon at around 4:30 they discovered that the tree in the middle of the parking lot of the front courtyard was full of walnuts, so they had some of the maintenence staff jump up on a wall and knock down some of the nuts. Ru Yun was somehow able to magically open them with her teeth, cracking them in half with a quick chomp. They handed me some of the walnut meat, which was only about half ripe and softer than I'm used to eating in the US. They were tasty though.

Throughout the day they collected more walnuts, and gave me two to take home.

I may go get one right now actually.

Ok, I just cracked it open.

Anyway, the craziest part of yesterday, August 3rd, was when I had a conversation with that guy I was talking about the other day, the large, extremely serious, mafia-esque guy with the square head and huge, bone-crushing hands.

It turns out that he is not one of the owners, but the head of security of the Chinese staff there. That explains the intimidation.

(walnut is a little sour, honestly)

For a ten or fifteen minute period yesterday evening he stood within a few feet of me and just stared at me, as though he were testing me or judging me or something. After a few minutes, I saw his mouth move, but in perfect mafia-like form his voice was nearly inaudible unless I was directly beside him. So I leaned in and asked him to say it again:

in Chinese:

Him: "Which country are you from?"
Me: "America"
Him: "America? The American Basketball team and Chinese team face each other in the Olympics. The Chinese will win."
Me: "How do you know?"
Him: "America does not know how to play international basketball, Chinese do."
Me: "Well, we will see.
Him: "Why are you sweating so much?"
Me: "I'm foreign....and I'm not used to the humidity here."
Him: But I am wearing a full suit, and I do not sweat."
Me: "Yeah....I guess it just feels really hot here to me."

We continued on like that for a while, me sweating and him wondering why, and then he started to ask me how I knew Chinese. After talking about that some, he noticed my OMEGA Seamaster and said:

Him: "I like your watch."
Me: "Thank you, it was a gift from my father."

Pulling up his sleaves and revealing his thick wrists, he said:

Him: "I don't wear a watch"
Me: (pointing to his head) "You keep your time in there?"

He let out a scary bad-guy laugh.

We talked for a few more minutes, and then I asked him how long he had been working at the Residence. He took his two pointer fingers and crossed them in the air, which makes the Chinese character "Shi", meaning ten.

Me: "Ten years? Wow, that's impressive."
Him: "Yes, I've been here a while."
Me: "What did you do before working here?"

He then held up his right hand and formed it into the shape of a pistol, and then made the motion of pulling a trigger.

Enough said.