The Police 👮 . The Dog 🐶 . And the Copy Guy 🖨 (a story of my day)

Well, yesterday was fun! (to say the least)

I woke up yesterday with a big headache,maybe it was the air conditioner that was constantly blowing on me or maybe a half of glass of wine that I drank before bed I don't really know. So I made myself a cup of coffee and slowly started living my troubles behind not knowing that bigger troubles were yet to come.

I got a call, it was a woman saying something in Chinese, I almost thought it was a commercial again and was about to say: Bu young xie xie (No need, thank you) but thank god I haven't forgotten the language completely so through the conversation I kind of figured out that it was POLICE and that they will come soon with a check up and they need copies of passports, visas and the apartment contract. (What if I didn't speak any Chinese?I feel sorry for foreigners who don't speak any chinese and also have to deal with this kind of stuff, what are they supposed to do in this situation?Police doesn't know any English either)

Once I hanged up the phone the music from Mission Impossible movie started to play in my head like: ton ton ton ton ton ton ton ton ton ton )))) I ran an eye over the messy apartment, a cup of coffee I haven't finished yet and my dog...My dog!She was eating, she looked back and dropped food from her mouth. Happy was mission number one to deal with. We don't have all the documents for her, since she doesn't have a passport with our names written in it, she is considered to be an illegal one in the family.

The registration of the pets for chinese and especially for foreigners is very very very difficult, not only it's about the places you should go and do stuff it's also the amount of documents you have to provide to make it work, including the original papers of apartment ownership which we don't own of course.So my motto here is - "Better safe, than sorry". I thought : "okay, I will just take my monkey to the pet shop where we usually take her for a haircut and then go copy those docs the police said they need".

I put a leash on Happy, found all the docs I needed and rushed out from the apartment.

While me and Happy were walking as fast as we could to the pet shop, people who were walking by, starring at Happy saying: 好瘦! which means - So skinny! usually we bark at them for that,but today we didn't really have time 😬😈

(Dogs also have bad haircuts, from a fluffy monkey Happy turned into a little mouse with a huge head😁.But at least she doesn't feel hot)

Before and After😂

You know when you expect and need everything to go smoothly and cooperate ,it goes right the opposite way.When I got to the pet shop it was closed, a big old fashioned lock was hanging on the door silently saying: "You are screwed, Damira!"😏

I decided to call the owner of the shop and ask where everyone was, when I got a hold of him he said that they don't work today because they have all gone to Shanghai.That was not really going with my perfect "crime plan" and I started begging him to help somehow, to send a person to open the place and put Happy for couple of hours there.He probably heard the despair in my voice and said he will send his friend to help me and open the door.The Chinese guy came and I checked at least one of the boxes I had in my plan.

Then, I needed to try and find a place nearby where I could copy my documents.Luckily, there was a small half tailor's workshop half copy place.I was happy I found something very close and didn't have to waste time walking with 100 degrees outside.The copy guy was very nice but his copying machine and skills were not promising at all, it kept breaking over and over again during the copying.One time it comes out too white, the other - too black 🤦‍♀️It took about 30-40 minutes instead of 5 that I anticipated.

I grabbed all the copies and ran home to cover Happy's tracks. Her bowl with water and food went to the balcony, her toys together with little black & white football she loves so much went to the drawer, her food to the cupboard and I was done before I knew it 😊👏

I started cleaning a bit to make it look like not piglets but pink flamingos are actually living in this apartment.

And then I sat and waited, I don't know why but it's always very stressful and a bit nervous when police comes to your house with a check-up.You are not a criminal, you didn't do anything wrong but it feels not so nice and exciting. It's like when you are walking out of the supermarket without buying anything it feels wrong even though you didn't do anything criminal 😂😂😂

The fact that police comes to your house and checks your documents and how you live there is granted, it's not a surprise in China. When it was G20 last year, police would come almost every week making check ups, asking questions, for instance : If we are planning to go out of the country or so, what do we do, where we work, how long are we going to live in China.

I mentioned in my previous post that it's relatively safe to live in China which means that Chinese government keeps an eye 👁 on everyone including foreigners 👀.I would even say: especially foreigners.They check and check and recheck and check one more time.All the documents they are asking I believe we submitted at least couple of times already,but I guess it's all bureaucratic.

Somebody finally knocked on the door,I opened. It was the same lady I saw couple of times before.She took all the documents and a picture of me sitting on the sofa for a report. This time I didn't ask to see the photo to make sure I look good on it, not this kind of time 😬

Once she left I ran to the pet shop to get my monkey.

When we got home we high-fived and both crashed on the sofa with relief.Happy put her feet on the table and turned on the tv and I started to play with my toys.Oi 😬, it was the other way around😁

She reunited with her beloved Donkey toy and took her beauty sleep she skipped in the afternoon, and I got to finally drink my coffee in a peaceful atmosphere.

That was my day.

What about yours?