Drongos

Note: I am ranting in this post. If you don’t like reading anything negative, there are heaps of other blogs out there. I believe I do have the right to not like every human to be patriotic or loyal.

On our way to buy groceries on Saturday, we went to cheer on the diggers parading down St Kilda Road. M stepped away a little to help me take some photos and I was approached by a guy talking about the weather. Small talk is never my forte but I tried my very best to be sociable. As I was in the middle of expressing how delightful it was that the rain stayed away as opposed to what the weather man had predicted on the evening news on Friday, the guy looked at the people around me before calling out “Ngeee-Hoa” repetitively. I was glad when he started to walk away but he came back yelling out the same words over and over. He looked amused. I know what he was trying to say. (To those who are a bit confused, the guy was trying to say “Ni Hao” – a Mandarin Chinese way of saying hello.) I suppose I should be grateful that this human was so friendly but he wasn’t. He sounded more like he was trying to make fun of me. I was very tempted to call out “Konnichiwa” but I was sure that M wouldn’t be impressed if I had created a scene or worse, ignited a war. LOL.

After lunch, we dropped by Target because I wanted to find out how the children’s jeans with the adjustable waist are constructed. My next sewing project is a little denim skirt. I was at the little boys department by myself because M was browsing in the basement. Situated right opposite the little boys department is the children’s sleepwear department. I was studying the adjustable waist of a pair of jeans when three shoppers (a couple and a female friend) walked towards my direction. There were no kids so there wasn’t a need for me to do my ‘civic duty’. They stopped near a rack of polar fleece sleep suits (aka blanket suits). The female friend picked up one and said, “Oh my God. This is a size 4!” The couple said something when I realised that their friend was eyeing me like I was some kind of a bug. The female friend checked the label of the sleep suit she was holding and then declared loudly, “It’s made in China! Of course… They just don’t get it. They just don’t get what we need.” The other woman then said, “That’s just not right. Who would wear that?” As they walked away, the female friend gave me another once over. Seriously what did I do wrong? And duh, it’s a well known fact that most clothing these days are made in China. The country is like one big factory, manufacturing what others had ordered. The Chinese is known to have invented a lot of things but that sleep suit is probably not one of them. They have been around for a long time and just because it’s a sleep suit/coverall doesn’t mean that it is only made to fit the under 12 months of age crowd. They do come in larger sizes to fit pre-schoolers and lower primary kids to cater to different home environments. I have seen it used as an alternative to a dressing gown to keep kids warm during breakfast. (Dressing gowns can be annoying if the ties keep getting untied.) Not all Melbourne houses are heated in Winter like a day at the beach on the Gold Coast.