We went home, leaving our Bosses to sort out the mess of their miscommunication and assumption that being tired and feeling as cared-for as a used condom was motivation for us to spend our money getting to perform at a venue where we are invisible to the audience.

20th June, that also was supposed to be the day we got our overdue pay-the verbal agreement says 15th, but when the Boss came back at 1:00 am, it was understandably not the best time and mood to broach the subject.

On 21st he returns with a new ride, which we thought would take us to the Elephant Club for the evening show as its first activity.

Instead, we received the bittersweet news that for not appearing the day before, the management had terminated our engagement there.

Bitter in the sense that our verbal contract says we are paid 100yuan per day's work, so this means our salary is going down.

Sweet because if it got our Bosses to sit and standardize how they treat us and how much they expect us to do for our pay, then Amen.

The new car instead went to return with The stuff we had not taken with us to Shandong. It was the majority, which was good for it gave him exercise lifting-he needs it for his drooping belly, and also because in Shandong we would have carried it all for nothing had we heeded Reverend XP's suggestion/order to carry as many drums as we could each carry.

Elephant brings to six the number of places we have been evicted from for Boss-originated chaos. There was the Catic hotel near the Bird's Nest, a club in Nanning, Damingxidujiacun Hotel in Huairou, Ciro's Pomodoro in Sanlitun,  and the SaoMiaZhu club in Zhangjiakou.

With our new-found free time, now we watch movies along with Africa's run of negative luck in the World Cup, play pool both by daylight and fluorescent light, eat, sleep, and wait to be paid to fulfill promises of financial help to our near-and-dear in Kampala.

We are also waiting either on a contract or for tickets back home for those of us who have told Reverend XP not to renew our visas if by the time they expire we have no written contract with either one of our two employers.

Chinese lessons for me are at half-speed now since increasingly it looks like our days here are numbered, plans to choreograph new performance material are on hold till we know whether its to plane or stage that we go next, and also wait to see how much salary we receive after all the trumped-up reasons for deductions.

I also have more time to devote to the obsession that the challenge of caring for my hair has become. Like Biblical Samson, I now believe if I am successful at maintaining hair uncut for a year now, I will equally be focused on other things provided there is no Delilah to cut if off.

For now I sport a ka-Maria a.k.a back-bush which is easy to maintain if one can stand the taunts of how like my girlfriend I now look, and of how my mother may be unsure if she registered the wrong sex on my birth certificate. blog comments powered by Disqus

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