My friend and colleague was over the border in China doing some wheeling and dealing. My friend is Chinese Canadian and by his own admission, there is no deal that can’t be made more favorable with a little haggling. My friend is pretty shrewd. He drives a tough bargain. He has a pretty good nose for opportunity and can ferret out a bad deal from twenty paces away. The problem wasn’t that his radar didn’t go off, it’s that my friend choose to override it.He and his friend Andy were approached on the streets of Shenzhen by a guy trying to sell them a new iphone. Nothing unusual in that. You get approached on the city streets of all the time.
Instead of walking away, my friend stopped to check out the phone. Granted, it was probably a knock off, but my friend was taken aback by how authentic it looked. It had the right amount of heft, it looked really good. It was fully functional. It ran beautifully. It was responsive and fast.“I don’t know Andy, I think this may be the real thing,” my friend said.
The man was asking about US $150 for the phone.My friend played with it for a few more minutes, weighing the phone and weighing his options. “I am going to go for it!” he finally said to Andy.
[photo by Elise VanNoord]
What a wonderful blog. I stumbled onto it while looking for international teaching blogs and I ended up reading it in its entirety over the past few days. My husband and I will be going to an international school in Beijing this summer, so it was lovely to find such a frank, humorous account of your family's time in Hong Kong.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for sharing your experiences. It's been a real pleasure to read.
- Sev