Every day is an adventure at Wokai's office in Beijing...

Casey

I have many more substantive blogs to come in the next days about things like Wokai's website launch, developments in the organization, and new events in China microfinance, but I just wanted to briefly document an experience that we had yesterday in the office.

I was sitting at my desk yesterday afternoon, answering emails, and the lady who cleaning came out into our main office room holding a red bucket. Naomi and I both lift our heads in semi-annoyment, assuming that she's bringing out the bucket to tell us that, yet again, we lack some essential cleaning supply. She keeps on repeating "da-si". Both of us figure that "da-si" must be the newest disenfecting cleaning fluid...She begins repeating "danger" and finally gets our attention.

We look in the bucket, and there in front of us is a deadly scorpion! According to our Ayi, the scorpion had inhabited our bathroom for quite a while, which can be proven by the fact that there are no cobwebs to be seen, meaning that there are no spiders, all of which were eaten by our scorpoion. She goes on to explain that our scorpion was highly venomous. If someone were to be bitten by this type of scorpion, they would need an immediate expensive medical treatment, otherwise the bite would be fatal...

Apparently, “da-si" was not the newest cleaning product, but instead 打死, meaning "we have to kill this or it will attack one of us". Luckily, Chris Glen, our valient Beta Testing coordinator and intern from Idaho did the deed and we're scorpion free unless there are little babies running around.

Comments

[Jake de Grazia]

You should have tamed her and made her your mascot/guard dog. Hopefully her babies will be just as snuggly and ferocious as she was.