Back on my feet again.

My "week off" in Shanghai, which I had intended to spend sightseeing and doing fun stuff became a week of lying abed and draining my sinuses.
I was barely able to make it over to the pharmacy over at the Portman and get a pile of cold meds to try to get well, as being sick next week would suck.
I went down to the Big Bamboo to have my one real meal a day- otherwise I was surviving on Vegemite on toast and Tylenol Cold medicine.

Later in the week the weather took a little turn to cool... Temps in the 50s during the day. Nice, but like the ben dan that I am, I neglected to bring a jacket.

Three of the waitresses at 'Bamboo took pity on me and on Friday, as I was finally getting up and about, they dragged me down to Nanjing Lu to help me find a jacket.

(I knew this to be a lost cause as I have never found ANYTHING in my size in this country.)

It was quite a sight as the 3 twenty-year-old Chinese girls dragged me from one department store to another, leading me around the mens wear asking the sales clerks if they had anything at all for someone my size.
Most of the time we were just brushed off with a hand wave, but sometimes there was a bit of derisive laughter as they said no.

In the sixth or seventh place we went we finally found an old woman on the mens wear floor who had a lightbulb appear over her head and led us up another escalator...
We had a nice little parade- Old Chinese clerk, Ogre, 3 Waitresses, 2 more clerks just tagging along to see what was going to happen, and a Suit...obviously a manager looking out for his store, all trooping through the store.
She led us to an are populated by sporting clothes and warmup suits, where there were also some good-sized jackets... The clerk in that department took an appraising look at me and dug up a jacket and handed it to me to try on...
By this time we had a good 15 or 20 people watching.
No doubt they hadn't seen anything this entertaining on the 9th floor of this store for a good long while.
I put the jacket on...looked good for about 2 seconds, then it was appearant that the jacket was for a *short* fat guy, not a *tall* fat guy... The sleeves ended at my elbows. Not a good look, even for me.
The laughter that ensued at that bit of embarrassment lasted for a full minute as the clerk kept looking for another jacket...
She finally came up with one that was a reasonable fit...

I got a purchase slip then to go to another desk to pay, and upon returning, the girls were entertaining the crowd, once again at my expense...



Yes... two of them fit comfortably inside my jacket.

No doubt this story will keep many people entertained for day to come...

TBG - Moving to the Mayfair today...