Days of Being LJ

Your management’s ticketing fiasco for your Sydney Concert leaves much bitterness. Of course it’s not your fault personally. No, you would never sanction the blatant ripping off of your fans by dodgy computer retailers in Chinatown, or hike up the prices of your tickets, not once but TWICE, or introduce tickets which are about three times the price of VIP Rolling Stones tickets at the Enmore. Really cause you’re so much better, Mick Who?

When your concert was announced people with connections were already booking their tix. Unluckily I missed out, so the week public tix were announced in early April, I rushed down to FuDaChi computer centre at Haymarket. I paid for two $168 tickets. The helpful man at the counter told me that although I was early, he could only guarantee me sections 28-29 since 26-27 were all taken. But he assured me that he will try his best to put me in those sections. He hands me a paper receipt from one of those docket type books, “Come back to collect your official receipt later today.”

I went back after work (luckily work is close enough).

“Sorry, official receipt’s haven’t come in today, can you try tomorrow?”

No worries, I replied, wasn’t too unusual, I’ll pop by during lunch tomorrow.

So the next day I used my hard earned lunch time to trot down to FuDaChi (of course Jay, in your case, some hapless assistant would be given this job).

“Sorry, official receipt’s still haven’t come in, could you try later in the week.”

Okay, see Jay, I don’t get that frustrated, because I expect this of dodgy Asian businesses. So I said, fine. And then I went back in a week.

When I finally got my receipt, I was told. Your tickets should be ready to collect on the 1st of May. Awesome I thought. However my enthusiasm waned when on the 1st of May I was told to come back 1st of June. I was starting to sense a pattern here, Jay, a certain sense of ineptitude. So I leave it to mid-June to go back.

“Oh sorry, they just sent us the tickets and I’m still allocating, can you come back later this week?”

As you can see Jay, my patience was running out. So I waited…again.

After work today, I tried my luck once more. Luckily I received the tickets…but…don’t you love how there’s always a “but” when dealing with Chinese, Jay?

“Sorry but we could only put you in section 36″

“WAh???”

“Sorry, the company only allocated these tickets to us, 不好意思”

I was absolutely dumbfounded. I had to think of what to say

“But, but…who got these sections then?” I pointed to the original sections I was promised.

“They were probably allocated to the sponsors.”

What, but didn’t you advertise yourself as the “THE ONE AND ONLY OFFICIAL JAY CHOU” concert store? Did you not promise those sections when I bought the tickets. You never mentioned section 36. HELL, if you mentioned that I would have gone to ticketek, paid the extra 8 bucks per ticket and received my tickets without any hassle long before you received your tickets.

See Jay, they used your name but they misrepresented the product. The lawyer in me would have gone ALL s52 of the TPA on their asses, but I didn’t. Instead I walked home, tail between my legs, the bitterest taste of gall in my mouth and two $168 tickets, which are worth about $60 each in actuality when compared to similar seats in a normal concert. See section 1, in the picture? I got 1st row, section 1 for $120 each to see the the Chili Peppers…Chili Peppers!

Hell I’m used to being ripped off for Chinese concerts. I’m the person who spent around 1k chasing Jacky Cheung around Vegas. I can hack it.

But Jay,

this is just 太过分了, I even sat through Secret for crying out loud, doesn’t that mean ANYTHING to you? I was going to respect you at your concert but you leave me no choice but to snipe at your lack of live skills next Friday night.

sincerely,

Your ever snarky psuedo fan

LJ

LJK life anger, chinese, concerts, dumbfuckery, jay chou, mandopop, music

I’ve been harbouring all this residual rage and I don’t know why. I should be totally happy and content at this time. I have a job, a stable income and creative pathways to pursue…so why am I fucking angry all the time?

This anger and resentment came to a a head tonight, after a particularly frustrating basketball match, where I didn’t play particularly well, armed me with enough rage to turn me into a customer from hell (albeit with good reason).

I got to the parking lot after the game with teamates in tow, bitching about the game and what not, handed over my ticket and a dollar for the fee, thought nothing of it, saw my change and picked it up along with the ticket.

I get to the gate, shoved the ticket in the machine, it tells me with robotic precision:

“You owe $4.00″

AW HELL NO!!!

So parked my car, pressed the intercom and all I can hear is the attendant’s thoroughly uninteresting phone conversation in Shanghainese. There was no way to reach him, so I bolted up to the ticket office. Of course at this point I really should have reversed my car and let the others behind me go. However I thought it was going to be a relatively short ordeal, I go up, he let’s the gate up, everyone is happy. Obviously it was not so short an ordeal, otherwise I wouldn’t be blogging this.

Anyhoo, I apologise to all those cars waiting behind me (Vero & Seets in particular who watched the start of the proceedings with great amusement)

I get to the office, guy asks…where is your ticket? In the machine I reply, hurriedly also explaining how I paid etc.

“You haven’t paid.”

“Yes I HAVE, I was just here.”

So he hangs up the phone and agrees to come down and once he does, takes my ticket out of the machine and says again,

“You haven’t paid.”

“Yes I have, would you like to see the two 50c coins you gave me as change for my 2 dollars?”

No response….then finally:

“Okay I’ll go check”

So he motions me to reverse out of the way and takes my ticket back to his office. I bid farewell to all the cars behind me and I park my car and wait for him to come back.

What seems like an eternity passes…I’m still sitting in my car. Why is it taking so long?

I decide to trudge back to the ticket office. I walk in and find Mr Dumbfuck counting all his coins for the day. Any better and I’ll be having four and twenty blackbirds baked in my pie.

I was speechless, the scene incredulous. Was he counting all his coins to make sure that he had ONE dollar extra for the day? I inquired, still slightly dumbfounded.

He kept repeating for me to wait, that he has to check. Enraged I spouted a string of phrases trying to censor the obscenities rising to the top:

“What do you mean? I need to leave, I can’t wait for you to finish counting ALL your coins for the day (5c pieces too, mind you), just give me the ticket. Look I’ll give you the extra dollar and just validate the ticket.”

He keeps counting and still tells me to wait.

“No it could be my mistake so I need to check.”

“If it’s your mistake then it’s YOUR problem, fix it in your OWN time.”

“So you can’t wait?”

I look at him like he was the biggest dumbfuck in the entire world

“NO!!!!”

So finally after bouts of half yelling and pleading with exasperation, I get my ticket.

I get in my car absolutely pissed off at the guile of this person. And what is the lesson today? Don’t drive when you’re angry.

Whilst reversing I forget to check behind and I run into a concrete post. big dent on the left corner of the rear bumper, cracked plastic on the tail light.

I knew some sort of shit was going to go down today, I had a pretty shitty day at work too, it was bound to blow into something big and when I heard that BOOM from the bumper, that was it.

So from one Shanghainese to loathe to one to love, I came back home and consoled myself by watching Zhou Li Bo with my parents. A post on him shall follow later, but for now all you need to know is that he is a very good Shanghainese standup comic.

I guess I could have been calmer and more patient in dealing with this situation. But there’s only so much calm and patience one has and my reserves are drying out.

The entire time I just felt like ripping into him in Shanghainese (a brilliant language to rip into people with), but I didn’t cause that could be construed and being a cunt to your own race, and I don’t like doing that, but if I had, it would go like this:

eh, pang you, nong le gaou sa a? non le gei di fen bi? Jiauo ghoo deng le gei, deng nong di wei zen le? non na neng ga 13 di? doo ming zhz nong ce cu eh jiauo ghoo deng. zen jing ming, ba ghoo piao zhi.

mando translation:

哦，朋友，你在搞什么？你在点数硬币， 叫我在等待，等你点完了。你这么那么十三点？他妈的，是你出错还叫我等。神经病， 把票给我！

LJK life anger, basketball, conflict, dumbfuckery, emotion, life