Game time with the guards

Bike parking in China.. not always so organized...

I live in one of those fancy looking complexes that has about 468634863248 Chinese guards working 24-7. I have felt sorry for them since I moved here. Their job must be one of the most boring jobs there is. There are always at least 4 of them at every gate, although only one can press the button that opens the gate so that cars can drive in/out, so the other three are just standing there. Or, OK, sometimes they ask where the car is going. But that's still only work for two people (that one person could have easily handled. Pressing a button doesn't require that much effort, after all), meaning that at least two people are just standing there, with their backs straight, staring blankly into the air. Anyways, seeing how little they have to do, it doesn't surprise me that they have to dig deep into their minds to come up with something to do to make time pass.

For the last 4 or so months, they have taken a special interest to me and my bike. In fact, we nowadays have this sort of game that we play, that is called: "hiding Jonna's bike" or, "making it hard for Jonna to access her bike in the mornings."

It's a fairly simple game, with no specific rules, and it goes like this: when I come home, I park my bike somewhere at the large bike area that belongs to our building. I always try to go for a quite open spot, as I know it can get really crammed by the time everyone else has parked their bikes/ scooters/ electric bikes/ mopeds/ you name it (anything with two wheels goes here).

Then, the next morning, I come down (normally in a big rush as I tend to be late -a result of me being a morning blogger), only to find that my bike has been moved. And then the game starts! I have to locate my bike that can be anywhere within the bike area. Normally there are at least two guards watching me, smiling discreetly, while they are pretending to be busy arranging some plants (?). The first time we played this game I wasn't prepared (you see, they didn't really notify me), and when I realized that my bike wasn't where I'd last left it, I sort of panicked, thinking it had been stolen. It was pure luck that I (on my way to walk to the gate and try to get a taxi to school) spotted it and realized that it had been moved.

Nowadays, I know that the bike won't be where I last left it, and to be honest, it's not that hard to find (I think my maximum search time is something like 3.5 minutes). The guards have also noticed that, so now they have engaged in a new game, that I don't enjoy as much as the other one. This one is called: "making it as hard as possible for Jonna to retrieve her bike" and it goes like this: over night (or whenever I am not there) they put my bike in a little corner, that fills up with scooters, bikes and you name it... when I come to get it in the morning, it is close to impossible to get to my bike unless those scooter owners have left before me (and normally they haven't). 

I'm not too fond of this game, especially not when I find my bike crammed between two big, fancy looking scooters (with those annoying alarms that sets off if you just look at the scooter for too long), and bikes both in front and behind it. There have been days when I've been thinking: "No way, I'm never going to get that," but then somehow, it always works out. Either I do a brave, lifting-my-bike-attempt, while setting off fancy looking scooter's alarms. Or, sometimes the guards take pity on me. They see that I might not have gotten my 7-hours-beauty-sleep and that I am not in the mood for game playing/bike lifting and loud alarms at 8am in the morning -and therefore they decide to help me by getting the bike for me. Every time they do I get all grateful and thank them about 100 times, and they look all proud and happy, even though I know it is them who put the bike there at the first place. But, I can tell it makes them happy to feel useful, so I never make a fuss about it. I mean, if I was working at that gate, I would probably start hiding other people's bikes too.