I can’t use my electronic ID card to enter OR exit the compound and building where I live. Why, I’m not sure: it worked just fine this morning, but when I came home from work a few minutes ago, my card failed to release the locks so I could enter the compound gates, and didn’t work on my building, either. This is NOT GOOD, as I often take the wee doggies out for early morning strolls before anyone else is awake. There’s not a lot of foot traffic into my building, either, so I could in theory be stuck outside for hours with two stinking dogs waiting for someone to kindly let me in.
It’s also ominous as I am having a bit of a spat with the organization I volunteer with and they finally wrested my legal address from me. God only knows who is related to what around here: this is exactly the sort of low-level harassment that happens when you piss off an administrator who isn’t quuiiiiite sure just how many connections you really have. After my card failed at the gate, a “security guard” (aged about 12) “fixed” it on the computer scanning system they have. Yet, four minutes later, it failed to let me into my own building. I was having what I refer to as a Bad China Day, just a day when a lot of snafus were occurring, such as the internet not working at school, a parent dropping by during my one and only prep period, a meeting in place of a lunch break, and a minor traffic accident which caused a major traffic jam, so I was in a bit of a snit when I had to go back to the security guard and begged to be let in. His tiny school-boy face scrutinized me carefully for a minute while I shifted from foot to foot, heavy backpack full of papers to be graded growing heavier by the minute. Sure, he finally conceded, as long as you can prove you live here. Despite the fact he had registered me moments before, I’m the only foreigner, and I had my certificate of registration with me, he still didn’t want to let me in. His reasoning was simple: I didn’t have my passport with me. I didn’t have it with me because it was being processed with a new visa for an upcoming trip out of the country, but I did have a photocopy of it. This he rejected immediately, stating that I could have just made it up on a computer.
I quickly realized that being cross was not going to help the situation any, and in fact being in a snit was directly proportionate to how badly I had to pee at that moment. I’m sure the guard would have been as embarrassed as I would be if I started crying or wet my pants, but we were saved by the timely entrance of my landlady, whose sister lives in the building adjacent to mine.
Part of me wonders if this troublesome situation with the keycard is my own fault. About two weeks before the security guards accosted me as I was leaving the compound and demanded I sign a registration form giving my name, country of residence (Here: duh) and to write in the largest space – seriously, it was about 25 characters longer than the space for the name – “Assignation of Genitalia.” Well, I could guess that they meant gender, but I felt like being a smartass and wrote in the space, “What the hell does this mean” before trotting away. After all, I was legally registered with the police, so this was just a formality, right? Perhaps not. In any event, I was in one of those merry-little-foreigner moods where I just did not want to give information or be singled out for being a foreigner. Culture shock is an ongoing process and we can blame it on that, rather than on the true cause, which is that I’m probably just a horrible person. Regardless of the motive for being a smartass, as I flounced away from the security guard this afternoon, he said something odd which I now realize was, “Goodbye, Miss What the Hell Does This Mean” which translates into action as, “Guess what, Loser? Your card won’t work until you play nice.” Well played, Management Team, well played.
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