It's tomorrow now...

Madness ensues after work has finished. I was asked to stay behind to help with 2nd unit pre-production, something I was most willing to do since my boss is now the 2nd unit director. I asked him today if I would be given three credits – as assistant to the Executive Producer, assistant to Unit Production Manager AND assistant to 2nd Unit Director heh. He laughed. Pretty firm ‘no’ I have to say :) But all’s good. I am assistant to Tony Mark, and he is all those things.

But I digress. I was asked to stay behind and I did so, staying on another hour and a half, leaving at the not-that-late hour of 8:30pm. We drive out onto the country road in one of the many vans, and effectively smash into a lady on her bike. Lady is not hurt, bike is a goner. And in China, apparently, when there’s a traffic accident and police are involved, it is illegal to move anything at all, and therefore we are stuck in the middle of the road blocking traffic behind and ahead of us. Police are called.

Before the police were called, however, I was asked - by the Australian ladies of the production office - to give the lady 300 yuan to get a new bike. It did not appease her at all. I tried using my Mandarin but she pretty much refused to look or speak at me and began a tirade of Shanghainese which I could not understand. I had no interest in making anyone’s life easier, in fact it seemed like I had just made the driver’s life more difficult and therefore I scooted back into the van claiming a total disability in language because they were refusing to speak the one dialect we had in common.

I don’t know whether it is a selfishness, a lack of concern for fellow human beings or that I was preoccupied by work that I just didn’t care. I guess it was all three. I found it so strange that I just could not seem to care. My first reaction was whether or not anyone had been hurt. As soon as I found out that everyone was okay, I retreated into my world of motorcycle sequences for the 2nd unit visual script. Cold-blooded much.

Poor driver. He just wanted to take us home so that he could go home too.

Anyway, we called the production office not knowing what to do and whether we were overstepping boundaries by offering money – unfortunately I happened to be the only Chinese in the van and I most definitely have no idea what goes on in the Chinese culture of Shanghai, and so I was not of much use/help at all. And the production office very wisely decided she would let the driver and the lady and the police get on with it, and in the meantime she sent us another van. And so now we are hurtling down the expressways of China at top speed on a rainy night. For me – I’m sitting in the front – it’s a rather scary experience. Much as I adore fast rides, I’m not sure I’m up for it in this place where driving is one of the worst in the world.

I find it funny that it is Saturday today, it doesn’t seem like a Saturday at all. No day off tomorrow. No church. No day off. I shouldn’t complain, I had a day off yesterday.

I think the biggest worry of mine is that the driver will fall asleep.

Okay. My eyes are closing. I guess I should sign off here… and post this tomorrow. Hugs. God bless.