Tag Archives: Crazy

The Madness of MIL Continues

We are now roughly two weeks in China and a lot has happened. The main part was that we were for nearly a week on a city tour with a tourist group. Though I have tons to say about this trip alone due to so many reasons I only have the madness of my mother-in-law right now on my mind.

As I have mentioned far too often is that she is a very strange person who is doing weird stuff non-stop. Besides that she is also a very unreasonable person who believes that everything she is doing is right and everyone else is wrong. No matter how clear it is for a normal person that she has done something wrong she is still able to twist the reality and comes up with all kind of explanation on why she is right. Even my father, who cannot understand a word from her, is frustrated and annoyed after this short time. To use his words “she is the devil in human form”.

Madness family with madness MIL

I know I know I should not force her madness upon you my dear readers but I can’t help it. So I am very sorry but now I start with just a couple of things we had to endure. You know when you are sitting in a long distance bus but the seating space is just too small? In this situation you are always happy when the person in front of you wont put there seat back. Now we were on such a bus with even less space than usual. In fact my dad and I couldn’t even sit in the normal seats and got the front row with slightly more legroom. It was so small that the average Chinese elderly tourist group male had problems sitting there. Everyone, really everyone kept there seats straight except on particular woman. The shouting started just half hour into the journey and I knew immediately who was involved. MIL and the rest of the tour group had a shouting battle as MIL appearently tried to put the seat back even though the knees of the person behind her were in the way. This whole thing was resolved after the tour guide joined the fight but me and my dad tried to pretend for the rest of the time that we didn’t know that woman. You would think that she saw her mistake and learned from it but no. To this day it makes my wife nearly cry as MIL doesn’t see what she did wrong and according to her it is her good right to put the seat back, no matter if the person is in pain behind her or not. She even says that she would let anyone putting the seat back even in case she would be the person crushed. My wife just said “you would scream immediately and kill the person”…

I will fry your brains as well

The other thing is her attitude when it comes to phone calls. It happened now multiple times that my wife called her mother to explain where we would meet in the city or similar things. This is all fine but MIL tends to hang up in the middle of the conversation and blaming then FIL for not telling her where to go or when. The thing is that with their phones there is not this usual “hanging up sound” so my wife never knows when her mother is hanging up. When asking why she is doing it MIL just responds with “why shouldn’t I hang up, you can just call again and ask if I got everything”. Last but not least it comes to eating. At one restaurant they had a chicken dish which was really spicy even for my wife. During the whole dinner MIL asked my wife why she is not serving him this chicken, really the whole dinner.  She just does not comprehend such things at all no matter how often you explain it. Can you even imagine how frustrating such behavior is?
Do you know anyone who is as crazy as my mother-in-law?

Bargaining

Bargaining – A skill highly common in Asian and Arabic countries…

In my own home country we know some kind of bargaining but it pales compared to what I experienced for example in China. wherever we went together with my mom in law to buy something she tried to get some extras out of it or to lower the price. You may think its okay if its something special like some a bit higher priced electronic equipment, but no, don’t be fooled. She bargains everywhere.

I remember from last year when she wanted to buy a new dust mob for the ever cleaning dad in law. We ended up going through several shopping malls and looking at dozens of different brands and models (I never imagined that product would be so popular in China, as I never see any clean apartments). The sales people tried their best to convince my nice mom in law to buy their product, they showed how easy to use those dust mobs are, how good they clean and so on. Now the thing is, the all have nearly the same price and the sales personnel went as far as giving even extra interchangeable parts which might get worn down after time. But no, they couldn’t convince her to buy it until one sales person offered another unit of some of the interchangeable parts and voila, mom in law bought it immediately.

Once again, as in so many other stories, a normal person might think that this aint so bad…okay…wait for this.

My wife and her mom were discussing about visa regulations. This is because next year our family will finally grow a little bit and mom in law will come to us for three months. Three months because that is the limit someone can stay in Europe with a normal travel visa from China. Both of them were upset because three months are not really that long and we really could use mom in law’s help for some longer time. My wife told her then that after few months break we will invite her again for another three months.

What was mom in law’s reaction then?

“Are you stupid, why waiting?”

My wife then.

“Because you need to get another visa after the 3 month.s”

Mom in law

“Dont be silly, I will just get a longer visa”

Wife

“But mom this is impossible, tourist visa in only valid maximum for 3 months.”

Mom in law

“No no, I will go to the embassy and talk with them, bargain a bit, because this is a special reason with the child so they will give me a longer visa.”

Wife o.O

“What? There is nothing to bargain, visas are fixed, you can’t negotiate on that!”

Mom in law

“Everything can be negotiated.”

Wife

“…”

One of the many examples. I guess I could come up with many more stuff like this about mom in law bargaining but it is just too much.

Anyone else has experienced similar weird stories with their Chinese or Asian families?