Category Archives: Chinese Wife

Chinese Wife, Our cute son, Travels

A Day to Remember

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Here is another little story I wanted to share already for a long time. I really do wonder why I didn’t write about it before but well better late than never.

This whole annoyance happened back in 2015 when we were flying to China. I had everything planned out on how we get from our home to the central bus station and from there to the airport. The day started even well (except that I was pretty ill back then) and we got our taxi to the bus station without problems. The bus also arrived in time and the entire trip to the airport went without problems. But then the nightmare started and it lasted nearly the whole day.

First of all my wife had the wrong residence permit with her (The Finnish one, not the needed German) but we were able to settle that after some time. The next problem was at the customs as we had some products with us for our customers. The line there was just huge and we saw the time running away to get to the gate. After the customs we were relieved as there was still time left but oh no, more troubles were ahead. One big trouble was the security check where we found out that one of the products was a mixer and we completely had forgotten about the nice blade placed within it. The option now was 1. throw the thing away or 2. someone had to run back to the check-in to get the bag with the mixer inside as an extra luggage.

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All is still well at the bus station

Turns out I was the one to run to the check-in and the staff was so friendly to declare that suitcase as an extra luggage for Nathan and thus it was for free. What joy I felt in that moment and I really did believe now all of our troubles were over. Well while as I had this brief moment of joy my wife had other struggles at the security check as her laptop had to be checked for explosives and this whole stress made Nathan a very very upset little boy. Upset equals a lot of crying and thus making it also very hard for mommy. Even these troubles we survived and we were looking forward to just relax a bit before flying to Helsinki.

Flying to Helsinki? Not going to happen! Just as we had few minutes to calm down we heard the announcement that the flight to Helsinki was delayed by two hours. Those two hours would mean that we miss our connecting flight to Xi’an. All the stress began anew and we rushed to the gate to get more information. There we were told that all passengers with connecting flights to China got a new flight via Lufthansa going from Hamburg to Frankfurt, from Frankfurt to Beijing and then for us from Beijing to Xi’an. All in all over 23 hours instead of our booked flight with only 10 hours! We weren’t happy at all so we had to go back to the check-in area to the Service Center to make some complaints. Result was that we still had to catch that flight to Frankfurt and we needed to hurry as the Gate was closing in 15 minutes. Now the problem was that we still needed to get our luggage from the Baggage Claims. In all the hurry (only 5 minutes left!) we forgot one suitcase but we wouldn’t realize that until much later. As we ran with the staff to the Gate we saw our plane slowly rolling away…

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Brief moment of rest before finding out that the flight is delayed

Now we had to go back to the Service Center. There my wife was already in a terrible mood and it escalated into a shouting match between her and some of the staff. Meanwhile I was busy entertaining Nathan somehow who got also grumpier by the minute. After what felt like an eternity we got another flight and this one was leaving once again in just 30 minutes. So all the running madness began again (I think I do not need to point out that we had to do the security check each time we passed between the areas + having the same stupid explosive check with our laptop). Half way through the running we finally realized that one suitcase was missing. Down I ran with the staff to the Baggage Claim just to find out after spending 20 minutes there that our suitcase had by now taken its flight to Helsinki with the delayed machine. By now we had in fact already spent 6 hours at the airport, running here and there with our 1 1/2 year old son without resting, eating or drinking something. Of course we missed our new flight as well due to the delay at the Baggage Claim.

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More than two days later Nathan is exhausted in FIL’s arms

Exhausted we had to go back to the Service Center once again and the staff there was not all too happy to see my wife again in front of them. I don’t know what all happened in the following hours but it involved me going down to the Baggage Claim to the Lost & Found desk to somehow find the missing suitcase which was by now somewhere in Helsinki (indeed it was kind of lost as the tracking number was gone), my wife having an emotional breakdown and Nathan getting very exhausted and more grumpy. In the end we settled for taking the next flight to Xi’an via Helsinki two days later. We spent 11 hours at the airport, running the whole day and did not eat or drink anything during the entire time. As we got back home we were just dead tired and went to sleep after eating a bit.

This has been thus far our worst flight experience as it was a day where nothing worked out at all, everything going wrong. Two days later everything went as smooth as it could go. I must also add that the staff at the Hamburg Airport did an excellent job by helping us out and not to actually trying to kill my wife.

What was your worst experience when it comes to flying/ being stucked at the airport.

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Chinese Wife, Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family

Family is the Best

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Over the past months, nay years I realized more and more that it is not only my dear Chinese mother-in-law who is a bit odd but pretty much the whole family. Not that every family has anyways their own oddities but I am just amazed about the abundance of sheer madness in my wife’s family. Yes, my wife has noticed it as well and has her own battles to fight because of it…on a daily basis thanks to the WeChat Family Group.

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Uncle, unknown relative, Granny and Aunty

There is not much to add about my mother-in-law. She is crazy and that’s it. FIL has also left the road of normal sanity years ago but that is due to living so long with his wife. Now there are few more family members I barely ever mention because MIL always took the spotlight but today is your lucky day to find out more about them (to some degree). So who we all got there in the closer (MIL’s) family ? There is Granny, Aunty, Uncle, little sister (cousin) and little little sister (cousin). The thing is I don’t even know their names except of the cousins. In no particular order they have their own traits or history such as the one who likes to touch other’s posterior, the one who was in prison for robbery, the one who has never money but still travels the world, the one all neighbours run away from and the one who one falls all the time for pyramid schemes.

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Yep, FIL does not look that happy to be sitting between the crazy ones

Sounds rough doesn’t it? I won’t link those points to anyone of them now as that would be just cruel but I think you might get now that MIL does not count as unnormal in the family. As I don’t want to go into the “special traits/ history” of the family I will just throw in some of the things I experienced with them. For example this spring we were all in China, even my dad was with us. We had only one family gathering and that was not even at Granny’s/ Uncle’s home as usual, because Granny was too embarrassed that my dad would see that apartment. Not that the apartment is small but pretty much in ruins as they have not even really cleaned up there for the past 8 years (according to my wife). So we had this family gathering in a Hotel which offered a huge buffet, even with Western food. I already wrote about this particular event in the post “At the Guangyun Lake” but I still have to mention that Granny ate two whole plates of raw seafood and guess what, she got terrible food poisoning. She never had eating such food before and there she just piled to plates to their limit and devoured everything in few minutes. My wife even warned her Grandmother about it but you know the drill about telling your Elders what to do in China, they won’t listen…

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Little little sister terrorizing a Minion

Another story is about Uncle. He is the youngest of the three siblings and the one living with his family together with Granny. A few years ago he got a well paid job at the company of one of his old school friends. After some time working there he/ his wife decided it is time to show some wealth and get him a Louis Vuitton wallet (or was it some business bag?). Here again my wife asked them if they are 100% sure about it and they answered “Of course, just go to the shop and take some pictures of the best ones”. So we went to the Helsinki LV store and the embarrassment for my wife began. She told the sales person that she is there to find a wallet? for her Uncle and needs to take pictures. She quickly found something nice and Uncle was happy with it immediately. That was untill my wife send  the price and the answer was like “is there perhaps something smaller?”, so my wife got the same thing a size smaller. Again Uncle and his wife were happy untill they heard the price. Here again their reply was “Is there perhaps something even smaller?” and yes there was actually something even smaller and cheaper. By then the sales person had already a questioning look on her face. You can guess what happened here again “is there something smaller?”. The sales person even showed other products untill they reached the key chains level but no, Uncle and his wife were suddenly not so keen about showing wealth any longer. Long story short, we spent nearly 3 hours in that store going through a multitude of different LV products were the most expensive was over few thousand Euros and downgraded slowly to products costing about 150 Euros. The thing for my wife was also she knew most of the staff there (many Chinese!) so it was a matter of losing face for her.

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Little sister, my wife and Uncle’s wife looking at something

Let’s talk about Aunty. She is the younger sister of MIL. That alone is already fact enough to feel sad for her. There are many stories as well about her but I will only tell you about the most recent one from a few weeks ago. Last week, it was a rainy day and my wife had just dealt with her competent MIL when Aunty sent her a picture of a sofa with the text “Buy me this one”. Nothing more, just a picture of a sofa without any brand or other hint where that might come from. After asking Aunty several times she still did not tell her the brand just “Oh, I saw this sofa here in the store and it says it’s from Germany so you MUST know it”. Yeah right, anything advertised in China by being Made in Germany must be known to my wife by now, can’t be that many products. After hours of sending messages Aunty basically wanted that we buy for her that sofa here in Germany and send it to China. Her train of thought was that the sofa costs in China roughly 2000 Euros so it must be much much cheaper in Germany and sending the sofa must be cheap as well. She was rather confused when she got to know that the sofa was only few hundred Euros cheaper here than in China and the delivery would be far over 2000 Euros. She hasn’t contacted my wife since then but I guess soon there will bet yet another ridiculous request.

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Has nothing to do with the family but I believe in Angient Health

Oh, I realize my time is up already (wife staring threateningly at me as I haven’t done the dishes yet) so the stories about little sister will have to wait. By the way, stories about little little sister won’t be published any time soon anyways as truth to be told she is still too young to know better so perhaps in another 8 years I might bring her up again in case things haven’t improved.

Have you ever felt that one whole family is pretty much out of their mind?

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts. Furthermore I also have a YouTube Channel in which some videos might pop up from time to time

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https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

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Chinese Wife, Crazy Family, Mom in Law

Real Competence

21 Comments

For a long long time I did not write any stories about my dear mother-in-law or the rest of the crazy bunch. Sure I did mention some of it in the post “Three Months Survived” but that was more or less just the basic stuff you might expect anyways from her. It is not that nothing happened all the time but I just did not feel like writing about it. I can’t say whether is was due to the fact that it all is so ridiculous or that I might become just a lazy blogger.

You all have read over the past years that my mother-in-law is a bit unique. She has her own view towards how the world functions, she is always right about everything and she brings chaos wherever she goes. Guess how it is to have such person also being responsible for some of the distribution process of our business activities in China. Yes you read it right, SHE is responsible and as you might imagine it is not going really smooth. To describe her tasks in a short and simple way: She receives boxes from us in which different products are already sorted in a way that she just needs to put them into a new smaller box and sends them to the customer according to the instructions given by my wife.

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I have everything under control!

There is really no way anything could wrong, am I right? I mean it is all sorted already and never anything went wrong when FIL was still doing it (he started working again this August so he can not do it any longer). I guess both my wife and I were just too positive and spoiled with the great work FIL was pulling off. There is currently really no week without at least two things going horribly wrong when MIL is doing the work. Remember everything is already sorted in those boxes we send to China and all she has to do is follow the instructions my wife sends her via WeChat about who receives what products and what little gifts to pack. I don’t even know where to start describing this whole disaster which brings my wife near insanity. I will give you only few examples which I can handle right now as thinking too much might give me another migraine attack.

I do everything right, even this dog agrees!

So how can dear crazy MIL do anything wrong? Oh that is so easy with her! Remember I just mentioned that she simply needs to follow the few instructions my wife sends her via WeChat such as which of the pre-packed products belong to which customer and the address. Nearly every single time it happens that some products end up at the wrong person as she never really reads the entire instructions. To make it worse she even has the nerve to tell my wife that she didn’t tell her good enough and it does not help that my wife even resends the same message again to show that everything was explained. Of course then MIL just blames her husband, even when he wasn’t around because it can never be her fault.

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Look at FIL’s hairs, at least now we know why he lost them all ever since getting married…

Another classic is that she just takes stuff out of the sorted products and gives them to some other people.  Yes, she just takes out some items and gives them to others not even seeing any problem that might cause for us when the customer is missing here and there some bought stuff.  Her excuses are usually “No no, it was not with the other things, it was just alone there so I thought it is not meant for anyone”, or “I gave it to X and Y so they can try it out, they might buy them also later”. With these fine ideas she has made my wife always so happy. Whenever I see this kind of disbelief in my wifes eyes I know that it has to do with her mother. That woman has a real competence in driving other people insane.

#Nathancuty in the claws of MIL
#Nathancuty in the claws of MIL

Last but not least of her showing real competence is that she does not even send some of the boxes, just keeps them at home. Then it is either the customer complaining after a while that nothing has arrived or actually FIL asking my wife why so many boxes are still at their home. When asking dear MIL why she hasn’t sent the boxes it is either “You didn’t tell me where it should go”, or “I didn’t realize that there are some boxes here”, or even “You stupid father has been hiding them!”.  In the end it is always either the fault of FIL or because my wife didn’t tell her what to do. It is just amazing to see what she is messing up all the time with this. We really would love FIL doing MIL’s job again but he started working full-time because “I can’t stand being whole day with your mother”. We know what he means so we can’t say anything about him working again at some company.

Do you know a person who can mess up pretty much everything?

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts. Furthermore I also have a YouTube Channel in which some videos might pop up from time to time

https://www.facebook.com/CrazyChineseFamily

https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

https://www.youtube.com/