Category Archives: Mom in Law

Mom in Law

Airport Adventures

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My crazy Chinese mother-in-law is back. I mentioned in the last post already that some destructive force is living with us once again and I have to say that so much has happened already in the past two weeks. I do not know how she does it but she certainly has this profound ability to wreak havoc where ever she is. It is not only about the stuff she can destroy without even trying it is also about the way she thinks (mentioned multiple times on this blog already). In her opinion there is only one way to do something: Her Way.

I know best

Though the title of this article is Airport Adventures is actually started already before she even reach any airport. Just two weeks before flying to Germany my wife double checked with her that everything is in order. This means that all necessary snacks for us have been packed (serious business!) and that she has all documents with her. Documents such as the invitation letter that she needed to get the Visa and also is required to have on person when arriving in Germany as there is our telephone number listed so the border control can call us when needed. This is important as MIL has messed it up before in 2014 when she was nearly sent back to China again. When you have such a traumatic experience you will always remember what mistakes to avoid – not MIL. She did not only forget about the whole invitation letter but she had thrown it away months ago! All she had to say way “I didn’t know that this is important”.  Well she also threw away her flight tickets because she had taken pictures of them with the phone so that should be enough according to her…

I bet her Marriage Certificate has been thrown away years ago

As you see we had our fair share of trouble already before she entered the plane. Needless to say my wife had to organize all the papers in record time and get them somehow to China in that short time period. After that my wife actually thought that the worst was over before her arriving in Germany, oh how wrong she was or let’s say how naive. The journey started pretty well as she got from Xi’an to Helsinki without any troubles. In Helsinki she then had to wait for nearly three hours for her connecting flight to Hamburg.

Yo, Granny is Crazy

My wife told MIL to send her a message when the boarding would start. Nothing happened within 5 min so my wife asked her again about the boarding and to take a picture of the boarding screen – no reply. Then 15 min before the boarding would close MIL said that the flight is delayed as there is no boarding. So my wife asked MIL yet again to take a picture of the boarding screen to make sure that she is at the right Gate – again ignored by MIL. Wife all nervous started to check on her phone about the flight and voila the Gate had been changed to another one just 20 metres away. Quickly she sent her mother about it and to rush to the new Gate. You can guess what happened. MIL did not listen to her daughter and still insisted that the flight was just delayed. Then when she finally went to the right Gate the plane had just left.

You can’t even imagine how furious my wife was. MIL had ignored all messages, it could have been all avoided by just taking a picture of the screen right in the beginning. MIL’s excuse was only “But I was at the right Gate, how could I believe that you would know  what is going on and which Gate to take?”. Through some miracle my dear Chinese mother-in-law got another flight to Hamburg a few hours later but it was all so exhausting especially as I had to pick her up from the airport around 1am instead of 7 pm.  This whole situation was so frustrating and I do not even dare to mention it again in front of my wife.

What is your worst Airport experience?

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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Crazy Chinese People, Mom in Law

Wonderful Relatives: There Are Never Enough Stupid Questions

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Every family has at least one odd person. In case of my wife’s family there are actually many of them and they all hail from her mother’s side of the family. Last year I introduced in this post Granny, Aunty, Uncle, little sister (cousin) and little little sister (cousin) and that there is certainly something weird going on in that family. The problem for my wife is that no matter how far away she is from them they can always contact her thanks to modern technology.

I Don’t trust Crazy Great-Grandma

 

Nearly every day someone from her family is contacting her. No, it is not about asking how her day was but about buying stuff or asking question about things they had bought in the past. The two worst of the family are MIL and Aunty. Those two seem to have no ability at all to actually to use their brain before asking certain things. The way they both think can not be understood by anybody else. Father-in-law gave up on that probably over thirty years ago as he does not care about anymore.

You tellin’ me that German shops don’t exchange expired products two years after purchase?

About two years ago Aunty bought some hair dye from Germany (we bought it for her and send it to China) and few weeks ago she starts asking questions about that hair dye. For one why the expiration date is so bad as it was only till end of 2016. Well, easy to answer for my wife as “Why haven’t you used it before?” and Aunty’s answer “I wanted to sell it here but no one wanted it”. Too bad for her but still why asking us about the expiration date…However the whole story went on as Aunty wanted to know how to use it exactly. Of course she expected my wife to know immediately how to use that certain kind of hair dye she sold two years ago. So my wife asked that Aunty takes a picture of the instructions. First two pictures where showing only a table and the third picture had the instructions in them but taken roughly from the other side of the apartment so you could not read anything. Aunty blamed then that the camera in her phone is not good enough. Then she wanted that my wife returns that hair dye and gets a new one. Really, she thinks that it would be for free to send it from China to Germany and that any shop would just return some expired product two years after it was bought? To this day she still does not understand why my wife is not doing it.

Not a skirt, her trousers!

Then let’s move to my favorite topic in this blog: My dear Chinese mother-in-law. Her stories are already legendary but there is always more. I mentioned in this post already briefly her interesting dressing style which is similar to a Circus performer. Recently she tortured contacted my wife about buying clothes. Apparently she was in some store and tried on several clothes. Some friend of her took pictures and those were sent to my wife so she could say which one was the best. As you might imagine the clothes were certainly very special. My wife’s comments where basically like “You look in this one like a begging monk from some mountain temple”, “You look like the clown we saw in the circus last year”, “Why would you wear a carpet?”, “How could they fit that much Brocade in that dress?”. MIL did not understand at all why her daughter didn’t like the clothes because “They cost each at least 1500RMB (~200 Euros), they are all great!”. Yes a high price always equals in her brain that it is great. Then my wife send her pictures of normal clothes she could buy but her concern was “What should I do when the clothes don’t look as good on me as on the model?” That was reason enough not to buy the clothes my wife recommended and she ended up with one of those weird dresses. Really I do wonder why she asks her daughter for her opinion when she does not really care about it at all.

Do you know someone asking stupid questions all the time?

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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Crazy Family, Mom in Law

Real Competence Vol. 2

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I honestly did not expect to write so soon again about the competence of my dear Chinese mother-in-law. Back in November I wrote about her most recent disasters and I must say it helped a lot to let it all out. However she did not stop there and the whole madness accumulated till now to unbearable levels.

All the misshappenings of her always have either one of these reasons

  1. She does NOT listen!
  2. She decides ON HER OWN what is best!

Usually I have nothing against when people decide on their own what to do as long as it does not affect us negatively. The problem is that each and every single of her own decisions has only created trouble for us.

I am in control of this
I have this situation under control!

Now I am going to tell you just one story which lasted for a couple of months. In those couple of months both of the reasons of Chaos happened. It all involved that we wanted to transfer some money from China to Germany. As over 95% of our customers are from China they pay in RMB and that money stays for a while there. We keep it always in China for a while as we have to wait for the best exchange rate. The thing is we are only a small small company and can not afford staff in China and thus in order to do all the money related things we are stuck with MIL. She takes care of all the money transactions and I know that sounds very scary. We wanted father-in-law for this job but MIL ain’t going to give any money into FIL’s care. So what could possibly go wrong?

First of all she told us one day “I can’t send this year any money anymore. The banks are only allowing X Amount of Euros per year per person”. Okay that sounds reasonable but that got us thinking how on earth other small businesses run by Chinese can possibly continue their work when they run out of money in between. So my wife asked around and they all answered that they have several accounts in the different banks so it is no problem. My wife told this her mother and she said it is not possible. Strange, very strange why would it be different in our case? After days of annoying MIL about this topic she then finally answered “Oh, I don’t want to exchange and send the money from the other accounts as they might have higher handling fees.” What? She knew about it the entire time and let us run dry on money on several occasions because the other banks MIGHT have higher handling fees? Why on earth would we care about few RMB higher fees when we have a business to run? My dear wife all furious asked her mother about it but no reply for nearly the whole day. Later that day she send a message “Oh, I had a long nap, didn’t see your messages till now”…a 6 hour nap, alright.

CIMG3068
I am the best, even this big fish knows it

Sounds bad? It will just get worse. The money we earn stays always for a few months in China due to the exchange rate. My wife checks daily when it might be the best time for changing it and then tells her mother to do so. Guess how often we got the reply “Oh, you should have told me sooner, I exchanged it just few days/ weeks ago”. Indeed she found thus far always the worst exchange rates and thus destroying some of our money. This is the reason my wife told her last time not to change all the money but just a small part of it. No, somehow that message never arrived in MIL’s brain as she did the exact opposite and now we get to the part where she sends the money to us.

Since the beginning of the year the whole banking system changed a bit once again and now you can only pick from a few “Reasons” when transferring money abroad. MIL told us all of those reasons we can choose from and it all didn’t really make sense. There was stuff like “Needed for travels”, “Buying an apartment abroad”, “Investment” and stuff like that. Mh, strange and none of the things we could select did fit our purpose. Again my wife did all kind of research and in fact there was one reason which fit our purpose but MIL never mentioned it. In order nothing could go wrong my wife got herself the form , filled it all out and send it to her mother to use when transferring the money. Now we got the money but hey: The reason did not fit at all with what was on the form and also the amount of money was wrong. Thing is MIL had ignored the printed form entirely and just freestyled everything. Furious wife sent MIL again dozens of messages which were not replied till the next day “I was at dancing class and afterwards I was just too tired to check my phone”. Too tired to check her phone? In fact she shared on WeChat (kind of the Chinese version of WhatsApp) all kinds of weird stories of other people for the whole day but she could not answer her daughters messages.

P.S. by now we got it more or less figured out with MIL when it comes to transferring money. However this whole story meant also countless of hours harassing the local tax office/ getting our tax statement right as MIL had messed up so badly.

Do you have experiences with people who do always the exact opposite of what you told them?

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/