Nebulous Mooch

Today we renewed our lease. That wouldn’t be a big deal if our lease was through a company other than Coopers Estate Agents. When I think of real estate agents, I usually think of someone a bit older. That’s been my experience in the States. They’re usually retired people who figured out they don’t have enough money to retire, but here it seem like most estate agents are just out of high school. They’re like glorified  gophers or something.

Anyway, the gophers estate agents at Coopers don’t seem to know what they’re doing, or at least one particular agent doesn’t. Last time we had to renew, we went down to sign the lease and they had completely messed up. They had to fix it and that took a few days. By the time it was all fixed it was overdue for us to sign and the landlord was mad. They, of course, tried to blame the fiasco on us–the sleazy tenants.

This time, I wanted to make sure none of that happened again.  After I sent them the renewal letter, I called them on the first of the month to remind them that my renewal was coming up on the 11th. I was told that they would call me when the contract was ready so we could come down and sign it.

At the beginning of this week, I decided to call them to see what was happening.  I spoke to Steve on the phone. He said that the contract still wasn’t ready, but he would call me personally as soon as it was. Time passed. No call.

Me: Why hasn’t Coopers called me back yet?

My Husband: What do you expect? They’re all a bunch of teenagers over there.

Me: They’re not teenagers. They’re in their twenties.

My Husband: Close enough.

Today, I decided to call again just to check up on them. I talked to Steve, again.

Me: Hi. This is (insert name) at (insert address). I was just calling to see if my lease is ready yet.

Steve: Oh that’s been ready. We’ve been waiting for you to sign it.

Me: (shocked) Okay, I’ll be there today.

They’ve been waiting for me? I’ve been waiting for my personal call from Steve.

So we went to the office and Steve was there–he’s always there–talking to a customer. That’s fine. I have no problem with waiting, but we waited and waited and waited. He never once even acknowledged that we were there. Then a woman finally came out of the back office and asked if we needed help. We told her who we were and why we were there. She then takes our lease off Steve’s desk and hands it to use to sign and initial. Steve knows who we are. He’s seen us many times. If he had the lease sitting right in front of him why not take a minute, excuse himself from his customer and just hand us the lease. All he had to do was hand it to us so we could sign it. That’s all. We didn’t have to sit there for a half hour listening to him gossip and suck up.

Steve, Steve, Steve. When will you ever get your act together?

My husband has been playing for this show called “Monkey: A Modern Beijing Opera.” It features two violinists, smoke machines and space age outfits. Last week, I finally got to see this mysterious production. I had no idea what it would be like because when my husband practices it, he listens to the music through the headphones. I knew he had to sing backing vocals though. Sometimes when he was practicing, I’d hear him sing, “Martial arts master,” or “Monkey, monkey,” or just laughing crazily. I love to see any concert that he has to sing in.

I like to go to concerts to see what kind of people attend these events. This concert was in a tiny theater designed by very short people. The seats were so close together that even my knees hit the back of the seat in front of me. All around me were people who weren’t Chinese talking excitedly about some connection they had to China.

“Oh I was in China just last week and…”

“The last time I saw a Chinese opera…”

“My friend Mei Ling…”

“I ate fried rice for dinner tonight…”

My stepson who is particularly fond of Chinese propaganda songs kept trying to sing one to me much to my distress. I’m easily embarrassed in public.

At last, it was time for the show to start. Before dimming the lights they announced that all photography is strictly prohibited in the theater. Normally, I don’t like breaking the rules, but the violinists asked me to take pictures of the show. As soon as it was dark, I took my camera from my purse and tried to sneakily take some pictures. My camera is not made for this sort of thing so the pictures aren’t great.

I forgot to mention that he gets to wear a mask for the concert too. He’s the one with the bass. I guess he didn’t practice his backing vocals enough because the sound guy turned down his vocal mic during the show and I couldn’t hear anything he sang.