...and one thing about Scotland that is not so awesome

Before any of you get all hot and bothered about the title of the post, it's not about 'the people' or the traditions or the culture or the right to be independent or anything like that. In fact, unless you or one of your loved ones works at the Apple store in Glasgow, there is nothing in here that you can or should take personally, so, you know, cool your jets. (ha)

Although I was somewhat loathe to come back to the UK after two hot, blissful weeks on the island of Sri Lanka—by all accounts, paradise—I’m now quite happy to be in London. I always forget how much I like the place until I’m back; I’ll be striding along happily with hordes of people, coffee in hand, when I realise, Oh, right, I actually really enjoy it here. When Natasha and I were sat beneath a creaking ceiling fan watching the tuktuks of Unawatuna whiz by in the bold equatorial sun, I had questioned my sanity about the decision to move here next year and made a note to start looking into something based in Honolulu, but false alarm! I think I’ve made the right call.

Another reason I’m genuinely excited about moving here? The Mac store. Specifically, the one on Regent Street.

Generally, I have a hard time caring about technology (my mobile looks like something you would get with a McDonalds Happy Meal, made worse by the crack that appeared in the screen after I got it back from Tel Aviv airport security), but I love my Mac. A lot. Love isn’t even the right word; at this point, it has actually become an extension of me. The Chinese word for computer, diannao, is better suited, as it literally translates to ‘electric brain’, and my laptop is just a part of my brain that is outside my body. Thanks to the time my little electric brain and I have spent together, Apple has effectively hooked me for life. I could put something like ‘once you go Mac you never go back!!!’ here, but it made me cringe, so I’ll just leave it at that.

The trouble with living in St Andrews and Scotland in general is that the only Mac store is based in Glasgow (ominous music).

I will admit that there are some nice bits of Glasgow, yes, but for the most part, it’s difficult not to kind of despise it. Obviously there are no direct trains from St Andrews, so the only other choice is a two and a half-hour coach that takes you on a tour of the heart of Fife, and as you go through the heart of Fife, the coach accumulates a lot of people who, frankly, you would rather not sit with in an enclosed space. One of my more recent rides on the X24 saw a herd of about twenty-five local women in their late thirties embark, absolutely wasted, at about ten am from the beautiful town of Glenrothes (a total lie. Glenrothes is an armpit, has always been an armpit, and will always be an armpit.). It was their friend’s fortieth birthday, apparently, and they had decided to celebrate by being tremendously irritating. Armed with balloons, plastic water bottles filled with booze and luridly coloured mixers, pungent cheesy snacks, bad dye jobs, and a lot of excess flesh, they proceeded to make life hell for the next two hours. The low point? Either when they all started singing ‘Single Ladies’ at the top of their drunk Fife voices or when a particularly robust one started to perform a striptease (a shudder just ripped through my body). That was a particularly bad journey, but even without a flock of drunken chavs, it’s long, it’s boring, and it’s made worse by the fact that you know, at the end, you’ll be deposited in Glasgow. I’ve done it a few too many times and appear to have developed some kind of visceral reaction to the thought of it.










I suspect these people are in fancy dress, but they should give you a good picture of the kind of thing one has to put up with on the ride to Glasgow

So there’s that, you know, the whole five-hour return trip through some of Scotland’s shittiest parts. Not technically the fault of the Apple store. The same goes for the people soliciting for charity who roam the length of Buchanan Street every weekend, the very ones that scare the hell out of me by approaching purposefully with a big Joker-esque smile and leave me shrieking excuses about ‘important appointment pleasepleaseplease get away from me’. The Mac people can’t do anything about them, I don’t think.

But! The sanctuary provided by the modern and spacious floorplan and the gentle whirring of Macs en masse is deceptive, because it turns out that the people working in the Glasgow Apple store are kind of incompetent. Actually, really incompetent. Nice enough, most of them, but if their jobs are to help people with their computer needs, then they are painfully bad at their jobs.

The laptop saga is long and generally uninteresting, but the basic issue was that my poor little Macbook had to have its logic board replaced (I think this is the thing with the ethernet port and all that—very important). After being quoted a price that made the blood drain from my face, I left my electric brain in the hands of the Glasgow staff for a week. After a long seven days I made the journey back to Buchanan Street, where it was presented to me all new-looking and shiny and happy and functional. I took it in my arms and promised to never leave it again. Forty-eight hours later, it convulsed and then died. Made nauseous at the thought of going back to Glasgow yet again, I had it examined by a guy down in Edinburgh on my way to the airport who pried it open and said, ‘Jesus fucking Christ’. Apparently the logic board had been put together shockingly badly. Like wires crossing things that they shouldn’t, screws that were the wrong size, things that were making the topcase bulge outward as though an alien were living under there. I put in a few calls to the Buchanan Street store, during which I listened to a lot of easy listening whilst on hold and was then promised that someone would call me back. Needless to say, that never happened, so I bundled up my electric brain, which had now become a very expensive, delicate and cumbersome paperweight, carried it through Sri Lanka, and vowed to avenge its pathetic death by booking an appointment at the Regent Street store in London upon my return to the UK.

After showering off the grime accumulated from a three-hour train ride through the tropics and twelve hours of flying, I bounded out into the sunshine streaming through all of London and made my way there. Compared to the torture of getting to Glasgow, it was so easy I could have wept. It seemed as through one minute, I was hopping on the tube at Sloane Square and the next, I was making my way up the trademark translucent aqua stairs towards technological salvation. I’m never living in the middle of nowhere again.

Unfortunately, instead of arriving at 3.40 for the appointment I had booked from the hot confines of a Sri Lankan internet café, I arrived at 4.40. My timezones had been well and clearly scrambled by the overnight journey and daylight savings time, and as the laid-back guy in the official blue shirt told me that, erm, actually, my appointment was for an hour ago, I wanted to kick myself. However, he immediately promised me that he would make space and that I would be seen anyway—something would never happen in Glasgow.

I waited for maybe twenty minutes when he came rushing back to sit down beside me, sympathising, ‘You’ve been waiting for ages, huh?’ Considering that I had been without a laptop for a month, twenty minutes hardly seemed that long, but I proceeded to tell him the whole unfortunate tale, including the fact that I was leaving London on Tuesday and would either need it done by then or shipped up to Scotland. As transit-induced exhaustion started to set in, there was a great deal of hand-wringing, eyes cast upward in despair, some tears that were definitely more real than strategic, and a plaintive ‘I just want my laptop back’ to conclude. Now thoroughly mortified at my inability to tell time and to not cry in front of the Mac employees, I was led over to another laid-back guy in a blue shirt.

I braced myself for the worst.

His nimble and technology-friendly fingers danced over the machine a bit, and after a minute or two he looked up and said, ‘We should be able to finish this within a day, probably. As long as we have the parts.’ He checked to see if they had the parts. They did. ‘Okay, so that’s that.’ This is going far, far too smoothly, I thought. Suspiciously so.

Warily, like a fawn approaching a mountain lion, I asked him if I would be charged the £400-plus I had been told a new logic board cost.













How I feel when I ask about the cost for computer repairs

‘No, of course not. It should be ready by the time you leave for your flight on Tuesday. If you want to speak to anyone, call this number. We’ll get it fixed, thank you very much, and have a nice day.’ And I was walking back out the doors, blinking into the sun that was beginning to set over Regent Street.

It was so easy! So incredibly, unfathomably easy! After I had spent the majority of four years living in an isolated and wind-blasted little Scottish town, and with Shanghai seeming a world away, I had forgotten how gloriously accessible everything is when you live in a proper city. As I slid the key into the lock of my aunt and uncle’s house, which has always provided a lovely temporary home when I’m in London, I thought of all the wonderful things that accompanied life in civilisation. Indonesian food. Nightlife past two. Supermarkets other than Tesco and clothing shops other than Jack Wills and H&M. And, of course, a massive Apple store filled with people that actually seem to know what they’re doing, right at my fingertips.

(Art, music, theatre, diversity—all that is good too.)

Zai jian, Shanghai

Crying in public is, in a word, humiliating. The eyes go all puffy, your mascara runs, you feel emotionally naked, everyone around you starts shifting awkwardly, and there’s no better way to make people stare at you. And here in the People’s Republic, people tend to stare at me anyway. My white skin and yellow hair and blue eyes immediately establish me as a freak; let’s chuck in a few tears, because clearly I’m not weird-looking enough.

And yet here I am at the Pudong airport, in the middle of the night, four blazers, a scarf and a sweater next to me (I’ll explain later) and tears dropping off my face. Unfortunately, the heart does not care about these things when it is breaking. The sadness I feel at leaving China behind is so intense that I can actually feel it in my chest and my throat, a deep, pulling ache that won’t go away. Bidding Shanghai farewell is made slightly easier only by the fact that I know I’ll come back, but the pain is still there.

As anyone who has ever dropped me off at an airport/train station/bus station/ferry terminal knows, I have a horrendous time with goodbyes. I’m just bad at it, full stop. One of two things will happen. Option A: I drag it out for days, work myself into a state of deep sorrow and wallowing, and burst into dramatic funeral-style sobs at the check-in desk. Option B: in the days leading up to my departure, I procrastinate to the point that all I have time for is a fleeting ‘haveagoodsummer’ as I run down the street with frantically and badly packed bags hanging off every body part. Option B, I believe, is my subconscious way of avoiding Option A. I’m not sure if there’s a pamphlet or something on how to be less shit at saying goodbye, but if there is, I would love a copy.

I shall return, said General Patton. And so I shall. But when your heart feels like it’s been bruised, this sentiment is of scarce comfort.

Fast forward about ten hours, and I am back in the Doha airport. It’s autumn in Qatar, too, which means that it’s 40 degrees during the day instead of 50. Shanghai already seems so far away (which it is, technically—about 4000 miles), which is good in that I’ve actually left, so I can stop dreading it. Besides, since I landed in Doha, I’ve been distracted by this drunk Russian biznizman called, and I kid you not, Vladimir. Vladimir has about six gold teeth and proudly told me that he is part of the mafia and a krav maga master—you know, the martial art they teach to the incredibly fierce Israeli army? For the past hour, Vladimir has been trying to make conversation in extremely broken English, hold my hand, get my phone number, and have me visit him in St Petersburg. Wow, that sounds like a GREAT idea! I would tell him just to piss off, but the mafia connections and krav maga make me a little bit nervous. Maybe I should have pretended to be mute.

Anyway, my last few days in Shanghai may have been tinged with sadness, but they were satisfying. Shanghai is a great city for walking—rather, aimless wandering or ambling, which translates to sanbu in Chinese. I think that I’ve covered most of the ground around our flat, so I figured that it was only proper I say goodbye to all of my usual streets. In the days before my departure, the weather in Shanghai was been idyllic as well—sunny and a bit dry, with a cool breeze, and generally just perfect for being outside. Not to sound like a scrooge, but in Scotland, for much of the year, I hate being outside. It’s so incredibly beautiful, but it’s just too cold. So for the past few days, I’ve tried to savour the warm air and sun on my skin and remember what it feels like. Hopefully I can recall when I get caught in the St Andrews sleet without an umbrella (I’ve lived in the UK for three years; you would think bringing the damn thing with me would be reflex by now).

Embarrassingly, up until yesterday I had never been to Yuyuan Bazaar, which apparently is where all the tourists head straight away (as I found out when I waded through the throngs of Chinese and laowai alike). So I hopped on the metro and admired the delicate structuring of the pagodas and lavish decorations in the temple, all of which bring to mind the old dynastic China. One of my favourite Chinese traditional architectural features is the lines of animals marching along the upturned curves of the pagoda roofs. The more animals on the roofline, the luckier, or so the thinking goes. It was explained to me when I first visited Beijing, though, so I could be completely wrong. Whatever. I like the animals. From Yuyuan I made one final stroll down the Bund and watched the Pudong skyline burst into colour and light as dusk fell. The scale of the buildings is unreal—you have to see it to believe it. I’m not a huge fan of modern architecture, but it really is stunning. I’ve been to the World Financial Centre in all its second-tallest building in the world glory a few times now, but it has never failed to take my breath away. What really struck me, though, as I leaned over the railing and watched a black cargo ship steam its way down the Huangpu River, was the enormous significance the skyline carries. The sense of history weighs so heavily on you. Forget a picture being worth a thousand words; the face of modern China has spawned entire libraries of words. Deng Xiaoping, were he alive to see it, would be proud. I think.

As I was bidding the Bund adieu, I stumbled across a large half circle of Chinese tourists all staring at something on the ground. Feeling curious, I went to join them and was greeted by the sight of two dirty white hippie-wannabes, complete with dreadlocks, guitars and sense of obnoxious self-righteousness. They were strumming away and singing something (off key, naturally) with an upside down hat in front of them, clearly thinking that all the Bund's foot traffic would make it an ideal place for busking. You have to be seriously dim to think that China is a good place to do that sort of thing, but there they were in all their Asian backpacking glory. Sure enough, two police offers marched up to them and told them to get out (even if you didn't understand Chinese, it was pretty clear). I know it makes me sound like a bad person, but I laughed. I hope that, after I left, the two policemen told them to take a shower as well.

After my twilight farewell to the Bund and Nanjing Xi Lu, I savoured one last meal of good genuine Shanghainese food, which was a particularly sad occasion. When I was waxing poetic over the phone to my dad about epicurean Shanghai, he commented, ‘I guess you’ll be really and truly spoiled with regards to real Chinese food now—nothing in the West will measure up.’ I readily admit that I was a Chinese food snob even before coming to Shanghai, for which I blame/accredit growing up in the Bay Area. Now, I imagine, I’ll be unbearable. My apologies in advance.

I’ll admit that my last forty-five minutes in the flat was spent frantically chucking odds and ends into my suitcases and praying that they wouldn’t weigh more than twenty kilos (checked bag) and seven kilos (carry-on). I’d brought the big one down to the post office a few days earlier to weigh it, thinking I had most of my stuff in there. After fighting through the crowds of people shipping mooncakes for the mid-autumn festival, I had been relieved to see that it weighed in at a mere 16.5. Unfortunately, the aforementioned odds and ends actually weigh a lot. I’m not very good at gauging weights, but when I picked up the suitcases, they seemed a lot heavier than what they were supposed to be. As I berated myself for not just shipping a box back to St Andrews, I frantically started rearranging. Shoes are heavy, I figured, so I stuffed a few pairs into my ‘personal item’—the one thing Qatar Airways doesn’t weigh. My books—which are easily three or four kilos alone, went into a plastic grocery bag in a bad attempt to make them look like snacks. I was still left with the problem of my four blazers and wool cardigan, though, which I knew would add a few kilos. With a sigh I squeezed on the sweater and two of the jackets and folded the other two over my arm along with the grocery bag of ‘snacks’. Needless to say, managing the blazers, ‘snacks’, massive ‘personal bag’, carry-on and big suitcase was actually impossible. By the time I got to the check-in desk I was roasting in my myriad layers, and my arms felt like they were about to fall off from trying to carry everything. Plus I looked like I had a disproportionately bulky torso and had a sort of wild look in my eyes, as the hour’s drive from Puxi had given me ample opportunity to work myself into a worried frenzy about what I would do if my stuff was still overweight. Crying? Pleading student status? Paying off the clerk? Faking a heart attack?

As it turned out the clerk didn’t say a word. My heart slowed down to its normal speed, though I’m still carrying around the four blazers and cardigan.

Next stop, Heathrow. Then Edinburgh, and finally, back to my seaside home in St Andrews, which, last time I checked, wasn’t so popular with the krav maga master mafia thugs.