Most people who know me would say that I’m a not a destructive person. (That’s what I think. I suppose I’ll know what you think soon enough.)
Anyway, a personal anecdote from Haikou, Hainan:
Well, you know that my brother loves orchids, that he’s obsessed with them. He even talks to them sometimes, calling them “my darlings” or something equivalent to that. Naturally, when we got there, he went looking for the 花市. He found it on the third last day of the trip, near 解放西路, if I’m not mistaken, and bought a few orchid plants. (Incidentally, 新华书局 is along 解放西路. BOOKS! All of them Chinese though. DO YOU KNOW THAT I GOT A SET OF THREE FRENCH TEXTBOOKS FOR UNDER $11?! Sorry for that outburst, but it’s SUPER CHEAP! We bought SGD200 worth of books, that’s about 1K yuan. I got the Russian textbooks too, my mother bought Jap and Korean ones. Okay, enough of books.)
Besides buying orchids, he also bought a water pump/spray, those compact, handheld gizmos plant-lovers use for spraying fertiliser on their plants. It was about a metre long, maybe slightly shorter, made of a light metal, probably atomic number 13 (aluminium. No, it was stainless steel.), with a plastic nozzle at the end. All in all, it looked like an elongated balloon pump made of metal.
I discovered what was inside the primary metal casing.
So how did I exactly discover that? Let’s see. I was in the hotel’s lobby of sorts. The hotel had three main buildings, and we lived in the second block. So there wasn’t anyone on duty at the counter.The lobby had a set of sofas and a coffee table.
It also had a grandfather clock cum glass cabinet.
So I was toying around with the spray. One second everything was fine. The next?
All hell broke loose.
For some odd reason even I am unable to fathom, the spray just… broke into its separate components. BANG. Just like that. The outer metal casing went hurtling through the air. It banged against the glass door of the grandfather clock and rebounded, crashing down to the ground. I was left staring at the inner metal tubing. And the glass door…
Didn’t smash. Thank goodness.
A porter walked into the lobby at the moment. He was dumbstruck. But then he assessed the situation and found nothing to say, so he kept his mouth shut and walked back into the main building. I think he was too shocked to respond.
The nozzle, however, was shattered beyond repair. That’s what my brother thought. In actual fact, it shattered into a grand total of only two pieces, and could be repaired using duct tape fairly easily. Though of course that’s what he’d think. He didn’t scold me though. Not quite.
“你回去要换爸爸3元.” was all he said.
He bought another spray the next day.
omg your brother is so lovable not in person! i can see that cynicism runs in your family.
Does it?
That was funny XD
trust yong’s observation. anyway, being slightly cynical is good. Makes life more interesting.
I still can’t really imagine a guy saying endearments to Vanda Miss Joaquims . . .
eep! ate too many sweets. now a corner of my front tooth hurts >.<
oh, before my brother got braces. . .his front teeth seriously looks like front tooth. . .the other one was squished to another side of his mouth. and he still insists that the braces did nothing much to his monstrous teeth.
Hmm, am I cynical?
I have heard my brother saying “你要快点开花哦.” and “Come on, my little (CENSORED FOR YOUR SANITY).” many times before. Though he didn’t say that to Vanda Miss Joaquims. It might be to something like Spataglottis Plicata (don’t know if the spelling’s right.) and something Famarii, though.
Too many sweets = toothache?
I’ve never really tested that theory on myself.
gosh. that is so totally…but i sometimes do that too. to my fish. and they respond to my singing. i think it’s because i’m a horrible singer XD
but of course it’s a proven fact that plants flourish under love. you know water crystals become beautiful when you praise it. a japanese scientist found this.
So totally what?
Oh, you haven’t heard my brother sing. If he did so to his plants I bet they would all die a week later. Or perhaps a month?
Water crystals meaning 水晶? (Sorry, I’ve taken to typing Chinese lately. I think it’s because of the trip to Hainan.)
uh i think she meant water molecules XD seen under the microscope or sth..it was found somewhere in a science textbook. probably Chemistry Matters.
and i still dont get what is cynical. -.-
ooo..you went to china! sadly i dont think i can go back home this december..but at least i can go taiwan
you bro is so passionate about flowers ah? XD
and you are a bookWORM.
Water molecules look better if you praise them? Wow.
I know I love to chew through the pages of any book, though I probably wouldn’t leave them scarred for the rest of eternity. Because I’m, well, a bookworm.
Yes, my brother absolutely loves flowers, especially orchids.