sort of like flag football

Whenever I'm thrown into a new social situation, I always try my best to really put myself out there and get to know as many people as I can in a truly genuine way. This isn't always possible of course, and when it's not possible, I like to come up with little games I play in my head. Not like "tic tac toe" or "hide and seek"....more like...social experiments. But even that doesn't describe it really.

Let me give an example. My sophomore year of college I was taking a general ed Western Civ course with a sorority sister and there was this dude in there that totally intrigued us. Usually he came to class clad in a full-on business suit, but other days he wore pajamas. No matter the outfit, he always skateboarded. This guy was a mystery. He was so much of a mystery that we didn't even know his name.

So we made it our little semester project to get to know him, and since I was the ballsy-er of the two of us, I made the first move by asking him if he wanted to work on a group term paper together. He did. We learned his name (Gary), found out that he was a 9th year senior or something, was married to a waitress at Applebee's, and basically was a total douche. He brought us chocolates in the shape of nipples for our first meeting on the term paper. He insisted his wife made them, which made the whole thing even more bizarre. There was a lot of laughing that evening, and not the "with you" kind, it was more the "at you" kind, but he was so clueless I'm sure he just thought we found him hilariously entertaining and fun to be around.

Flash forward four years to 2008 to Shanghai. The location and people may have changed, but the game is still the same. Red flags? Bring 'em on. I'll completely ignore them then make it my personal goal to change them. Perhaps I'll eventually learn that people don't change, but for now it's still slightly amusing to me to meet kooky people and try to figure them out. We'll see how long the amusement lasts until it becomes complete annoyance, with Gary it lasted two weeks. He was much more interesting when he was a mystery.