An October Post

I cannot believe October is almost over. Between a non-working computer, a virus threat and a visiting (non-English speaking) mother-in-law, I have been away too long from the blog pages. I have also been trying to "be the model" and keep Conrad away from the computer by staying off of it myself. Good in theory, but not necessarily for my psyche. Or my blog schedule. Am trying to get caught up and stick to my minimum one-blog-a-month goal, so here goes.
Many of you asked how it all turned out so I will start with the follow up on the story of Conrad's day as a professional actor. I laughed last time about how it was turning out to be a full time job, but the craziest part was when Sophie, the Agent, called us the day before to tell us Conrad had to be at the park at 5:30 in the morning for the shoot! I told her that was nuts and if the client had any clue at all about children they should know they would never get anything good out of kids at 5:30 in the morning! Eventually she managed to get them to push it back to 6:30. I have to say that aside from the early hour I was really dreading it because I imagined it was going to be a lot of standing around, waiting for a few minutes here and there of actual shooting. The last audition shoot that we attended Conrad met the 2 other Western boys who would be participating, one German, one Italian, but they managed to speak enough English between the 3 of them to spiral each other totally up out of control. They ran around the production company’s offices at 6:30 in the evening while the other parents and I cooled our heels for over an hour, (and Heinz waited on the other side of town for us to pick him up from work) waiting to see if they had all the footage they needed for all the pre-shoot techno junk. I’m usually one of those parents who is trying to get my kids to sit down and shut up in someplace like an office but I didn’t stop them because my philosophy was that if the boys got rowdy and loud enough, they’d want to get rid of us as soon as possible. It didn’t seem to work, no one seemed to pay any attention to the hooligans, and we still had to wait well over an hour to be released from a 10 minute photo shoot!

So commercial day dawned and Conrad and I headed out to Century Park and, as I said, I was dreading it, expecting it to be a lot of standing around for 3 minutes of filming, and 3 little western boys soon wanting to do nothing more than run around like hooligans. I feared at the end of the day Conrad would be bored out of his gourd and full of energy from having just stood around all day. All I knew was that the client wanted a sunrise shot. Well, when we got there, we saw this big arch set up and soon learned that the shoot entailed the kids standing at the top of the hill and running about 150 yards down through the arch. Over and over. And over. And over. No standing around for these kids! It was brilliant! I jokingly said to Sophie “Can we do this everyday?”

About 45 minutes in, the little Italian boy was dripping sweat, saying “Daddy, can I please go home now?” It was very interesting because naturally most of the instructions were given in Chinese. They would count backwards from 3, then yell “Run!” (San, er, yi, pao!) And the 4 Chinese kids would all take off, and the 3 Western kids would kind of go “Wha, what?” and then take off after the Chinese kids. So the Chinese kids always “won” and I couldn’t help but wonder if that was by design, to some degree. But they were generally very good, taking care of the kids, giving them breaks and lots of water. It was a really hot day.

Conrad and his agent, Sophie

The professional gets into the zone

Action shots!

The talent takes a break

It was a beautiful day in Century Park, with views to downtown Shanghai

We ended up being there until nearly noon. Viv had stayed home with Heinz and when he went to work he dropped her off with me at the park so at least only one whiny kid had to get up really early. 

She does her own version of the commercial...

...and has her own adoring fans

and no trip to a park in Asia is complete until you see a bride and groom getting their picture taken!

Conrad made a few dollars and we’ve put it aside for him and all in all it was fun, and we would consider doing it again. We’ll see if Sophie calls us!
And now we are on to Halloween. Last weekend one of our neighbors hosted a pumpkin carving party.

Halloween is actually quite big here, in the expat bubbles. I think the general rule that, "if we can make money off of it we'll jump on the band wagon" holds very true here in China. As I have said before Commercialism is alive and well in this Communist country. And profitable! You don't want to know what I paid for that silly pumpkin! But it was great fun carving it (Thanks Emi and Tres for having us all!) and it's nice to maintain our own customs alongside the new Chinese ones that we discover. Our neighborhood has planned to trick-or-treat Saturday night and have a big block party afterwards. Conrad is going to be Spiderman, in a borrowed costume and Viv will (maybe...) wear a dinosaur costume that I had bought a few years ago. (Aunt Vickie, we wish we had the M&M and Little Bo Peep!) Funniest part, we will go around with Conrad's best friend Kanon and his little sister, and guess what they are wearing...Spiderman and a dinosaur! Our neighborhood is really getting into it, I'm surprised how many foreigners have also adopted the aspect of Halloween so it's really going to be a lot of fun.
In the meantime we are 3 1/2 weeks into Heinz's mom's 6 week stay. I know she is really enjoying being with the kids but with the language issues, it has had it's awkward moments. Mein Deutsch ist nicht sehr gut in diesen Tagen (my German is not so good these days) and it really gets interesting when I use my limited German with the Ayi and my more limited Chinese with my mother-in-law! I eventually get a good laugh out of it, and really I think the Ayi does too. I think she gets a good laugh at my expense on a regular basis anyway!
We hope you all are well and that you have a safe, fun and Happy Halloween in your part of the world!