Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Planet of Women

A supplement to my last post;-

The main reason why I gave up on trying to organise a celebratory get-together for my birthday this Saturday was that I suddenly realised just how huge an imbalance has arisen in the numbers between my male and my female friends.

It's not that I don't have male friends any more; but rather fewer than in the past, I think. Many have left Beijing. Of those that remain, a number have become so tied up with work and/or girlfriends that they have little time for socialising any more. Several more (including my oldest buddy here, 'The Chairman') work at weekends administering the IELTS English exam, and are regularly sent away to other Chinese cities for this. And a few (poor, misguided souls!) would rather be watching rugby this weekend than hanging out with me.

So, the number of men that I could rely on to join me for a night out this Saturday was: 0.

The number of close female friends I would have liked to have invited was at least 7 or 8. But only a couple of them have boyfriends (and even these are absent most of the time), so I really was looking at being the only man in the party. Lucky me, you may say! Well, perhaps. But not so lucky for the ladies - they like and expect a reasonable balance of numbers between the genders. I just didn't feel I could keep them all adequately entertained on my own.

How did I get myself into such a situation? Now, there's a question....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As a child, I never encouraged activities to mark my birthday (strong philosophical opposition… I was quite the thoughtful 8 year old) but as you say, expat life tends to make us find any and every excuse to bring friends together (and maybe I’ve mellowed with age)

Though, recently, I’ve found myself off on some adventure in a far-away-land on the actual day and never got around to a pre- or post-adventure gathering (perhaps I too found balancing the genders too much work)

Anyways, it’s not too late for you to change your mind. You know what I am up to on Saturday and we could certainly find a way to paint the town red after the last twang of the sitar.