Shanghai roses

March 2, 2012. Written in Kunming, China.

Shanghai roses

Sometimes, life can change incredibly quickly. One day, you meet a German guy in a small eatery near the coast of Xiamen, and one month later, you see the same guy as a busy embassy employee now wearing a suit running the streets of Shanghai. My new friend, Matt is on an internship for a few months at the German embassy of Shanghai as a break from his life as an exchange student at the university of Xiamen. A break though, may not exactly be the right word. In Xiamen, Matt used to have a relaxing life full of kite-surfing and eating delicious seafood. Now, in busy Shanghai he works from early to late every weekday. Except for the fact that he obviously had gained weight since last time, he seemed to be doing fine and enjoying his new life full of precious first time experiences here.

He had mistaken the time the embassy would close, and therefore came running to the place where I was waiting for him to tell me that he had to go back to work again. I walked back with him to the German embassy, and waited for something like 15 minutes to see him come back. We headed into a local bar to do a beer while discussing on what to do together in the weekend. After this, Matt told me that he had to go to a birthday party for the daughter of an embassy collegue later in the day. He wanted to buy some flowers for this girl, but I told him that I thought it was going to be pretty difficult to find them in a neighborhood like this.

I turned out to be wrong though, because when we  left the bar, there was a little shop with roses in front of the entrance right across the street. Of course these roses were leftovers from Valentines day, because that was just one or two days ago. Matt bought 10 roses and asked the lady to make a nice bouquet of them. This not being a flower store, the lady obviously had no experience in doing so, but tried hard nonetheless. After some unsuccessful tries, the lady finally made a rose bouquet that I would call creative to say the least.

A German guy with a roses bouquet in Shanghai, how romantic can things be!