Time-keeping

A bit of a frustrating time I had of it on Friday.

Getting off work at 5.30, I had been eager for a restorative drink and perhaps an early evening rendezvous with a few friends. Alas, no-one was game for this plan. There was a rival proposal, which - quite inexplicably - involved meeting a couple of hours later, and a few miles away (a few miles away from where we all work!!).

One of the disadvantages of working around the fringes of Beijing's Central Business District is that it is absolutely bloody impossible to get a cab between 5pm and 8pm. Particularly on Friday. And even if you manage to bag one, the traffic is often so gridlocked that it would in fact be quicker to walk.

So, if I was going to sign up to this later rendezvous, I was almost certainly going to have to walk for nearly an hour. Now although I noted over on Froogville yesterday that the daytime summer humidity seems to have been dispelled in the last few days (the stifling weather somehow breaking a couple of weeks earlier than usual), the nights still get pretty sticky when it's been hot during the day: as soon as dusk starts to fall, moisture oozes out of the city's every pore as lavishly as the sweat does from mine. This was such an evening. Not nice. Not conditions for walking.

But I walked anyway, because I didn't want to be denounced for unsociability.

The trouble was, the dinner venue was not precisely defined - I'd only been given the general locale. The time wasn't very firmly set either. It was supposed to be 8pm, but I knew I couldn't put much trust in that. And since I hadn't managed breakfast at all and only the very snackiest of lunches, I wasn't sure I could last that long. Hell, I was fucking ravenous before I left work. Damn.

So, anyway, I did my best to try to fit in with this nebulous 'plan'. I checked in with the guys shortly before 8pm (when I was about to arrive) and learned that they were now expecting to leave the (even more remote) bar they'd been congregating in "in about 20 minutes". 20 minutes later, I got a text message saying they were now working on 8.30 - another 20 minutes hence. And they didn't specify if that was when they were expecting to leave their current venue or to arrive where I was (probably at least a 20-min walk distant; 10 minutes by cab, if they could get a cab). It was becoming pretty obvious that they had no real idea of when they were going to arrive, weren't putting on any kind of hurry-up to try and meet up with me..... and might well not make it there until 9 or 9.30.

A major sugar crash is one of the few things that makes me really crabby and impatient. I gave up on them. I had got home (45 minutes, walking and subway) before I received word that they had finally arrived at the restaurant.

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Now, I understand how this happens. The 'plan' is nebulous, flexible. The drinking seems more urgent to some people than the need to eat. The people you're with in the bar are more 'top of mind' than the people you're supposed to be meeting later. The timing of departure is dependent on everyone finishing their drinks, and everyone is drinking out of sync.

All I ask is that you don't dick people around.

If this is the situation, don't say, "We'll be eating at 8"; say, "We're aiming for about 8." Don't say, "We'll be there at 8.30"; say, "We're hoping to leave after this drink."

That's not so much to ask, is it?

In Beijing, it appears, it is.

Because the distances involved in crossing from one 'happening' part of the city to another can be so huge; because travel times can be so difficult to predict thanks to the often appalling traffic; because social networks are so broad (you can hardly go into any bar without running into someone that you know) - social plans seem to be in constant flux, and nobody seems to think that breaking dates, inflicting multiple postponements or reschedulings on friends, running hugely late for everything is at all untoward.

It seems that no-one here can actually be arsed to make a plan and stick to it - and it does rather get my goat at times.

End of gripe.