The Odyssey of the Chair

So after I got my washing machine fixed yesterday I decided I wanted to get a new computer chair. Seeing as how the TV is entirely in Chinese, for some reason I can't get CCTV 9 the English language channel, I spend pretty much all my time in my apartment in front of my computer. The chair already in the apartment would be fine for most things but was just too hard to sit in all the time. I asked Sunshine, the student who I had meet when I first came to Alaer since we had seen some chairs in the store where I bought a modem. It took us a long time to walk to that store the time I got my modem but this time with bikes we got there pretty fast. First I wanted to look around another close by store to see if there was a drier I could buy, both Sunshine and the person in the store thought the idea was ridiculous. Failing to get anything like a drier we proceed to the store with the computer chairs. The chairs they had seemed fine but I was worried they were a little short seeing as my desk is fairly big.

Sunshine suggested that we go to another furniture store which he described as a "little far." I thought he meant that it wasn't too far, but I think he just meant it was far but he didn't really want to say that. We proceeded to bike down one of the two main streets in Alaer, which compared to Changzhou is basically empty of traffic. It took quite a while to get there and once we got close we got a little lost trying to figure out where the right turn off was. When we finally came to the right store there was a chair that seemed pretty good. It only cost about 170 RMB so I decided to get it. The real problem now was how to get the chair back to campus since we had our bikes. Sunshine suggested that was get a cab and put one bike and the chair in while the other person biked back. The problem was that there were no cabs near where we were. Sunshine some how managed to bike a little down the street while using one hand to hold the chair onto the back of his bike. We eventually found a cab but realized that a bike would never fit in the back. Instead we just asked the cab driver to meat us at the school gate. I suppose she could have just taken off and kept the chair but Sunshine seemed to think this was a good idea.

We biked back pretty fast and finally met the cab at the school gate with the chair. Sunshine then again managed to get it up onto the back of his bike to take it across campus. It was a pretty long and difficult journey to get a chair. The irony though is back in my room later I discovered that I don't really like this chair much. It's designed in such a way that you sort of lean back, which is difficult for using a computer, but the real problem is that the front edge of the chair is a little higher then the back so the front presses into the back of my legs. Maybe after I sit in it for a while it will even out a little, but if I have to get another chair I'm never telling Sunshine since he worked way to hard to get this one.