The Tickets

Day 96 (30th of May, 2016) – Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, China

I woke up in Nanjing bright and early at 6:30am in order to log onto the ‘Splendour in the Grass’ ticket resale. For those of you who don’t know, Splendour is a 3-day music festival near Byron. This year, not only does it sport one of the best line-ups to reach Australian shores in some time (The Cure, The Strokes, Flume, Courtney Barnett, Sticky Fingers, DMAs and Hermitude just to name a few), but it also coincides with my visit home. Of course, I didn’t know that I would be in Australia when the tickets first went on sale, and so I didn’t think to buy any in the first release.

As some context, Splendour is one of the first concerts in Australia to channel all second-hand ticket sales through an official resale service. The tickets are resold for face value, minus a resale fee which goes into the pockets of Moshtix (the ticket distributor), presumably. That service opened this morning, meaning that it was my last chance to get tickets from people who no longer needed theirs. So, after rounding up some friends who were interested in coming, I was put in the queue of the online waiting room where I would try and snipe five tickets and camping passes.

As soon as the gates opened, I got in. In an act which was the online equivalent of throwing all my money at the computer screen, I sifted through all ten of my tabs to buy as many tickets as I could. Out of the rush, I secured four tickets and three camping passes. I was thrilled, and rushed all of my friends to quickly pick up the other ticket and two camping passes to make the balance. In the chaos, one friend was able to buy a ticket before everything sold out.

We were overjoyed. Although we weren’t able to secure enough camping passes, we still obtained five tickets when hordes of people were complaining online that they hadn’t been able to secure even one. So, I embarked on my quest to offload the remaining three camping passes, and to try and get a profit along the way if I could.

In Australia, unlike in some other countries, scalping tickets is illegal. It seems to be a rarely enforced law, though, with people openly advertising on every sold out concert’s Facebook page that they are selling their tickets for big mark-ups. I decided to follow suit, and posted on the Splendour page advertising that I was selling my three camping passes. I considered myself a smart enough economics student to know that low supply and high demand meant that I ought to be getting a lot more for my tickets than what they were at face value, and I didn’t like the idea of having to lose money through a resale when I could just as easily sell it privately.

I instantly received dozens of messages. Once I had put all the potential customers into a group chat to bid against each other, a person came out with the winning bid of $650. The camping passes were worth just over $300, so I agreed without second thought. We organised that I would put the tickets back through the public resale pool at a low-key time in the early hours of a morning later in the week once the hype died down. That way, the names on the tickets could be changed to theirs and the chances of the tickets being snapped up by someone else would be minimised.

The ordeal was over until later in the week, or so I thought…

In order to document my day chronologically, I will return to the issue of the tickets. I had time for a brief breakfast near my hotel before I caught the metro out to Nanjing South Railway Station, where I boarded a 10:45am train to Xuzhou. As I’ve said before on these blogs, travelling by train in China is almost always a very pleasant experience. This one was too, and it was the perfect amount of time to memorise my vocabulary for a topic test in the afternoon’s class.

After arriving back at the university and indulging in my favourite Shandong cuisine, I washed practically my whole wardrobe in order to sterilise my clothing from the week gone by. Just before moving into class, I was greeted by this ugly email:

Hi Xavier,

It has come to our attention that you are attempting to sell your Splendour in the Grass tickets illegitimately over Facebook.

As per the terms and conditions of sale;

“Tickets may not, without the prior written consent of the Organiser, be resold at a premium or used for advertising, promotion or other commercial purposes (including competitions and trade promotions) or to enhance the demand for other goods or services. If a ticket is sold or used in breach of this condition, the bearer of the ticket will be refused admission and the Organiser may take further legal action against any parties that have breached this condition.

All 7 tickets within your order will now be cancelled without a refund due to you breaching the ticket T&Cs. The Splendour in the Grass legal department is currently reviewing as to which course of action they will take beyond this point and once a decision is made, moshtix will be in contact with further details.

Thanks.
Moshtix Customer Service

My heart sank. The words ‘without a refund’ were burned into my mind, and it made it incredibly hard to focus in class, and even harder to get to sleep. This must be what it feels like to be a problem gambler who’s just lost his child’s university funds on a bet.

The explicit (albeit likely empty) legal threat also played on my mind.

I quickly composed two reply emails just before getting stuck into the three hours of tutoring I had booked in the evening:

Dear Moshtix,

It is with much sadness that I have received the notice of a cancelled sale.

Having read the terms and conditions before the purchase of my tickets, I had assumed that the following clause only resulted in a revoked sale after the act had been committed:

“Tickets may not, without the prior written consent of the Organiser, be resold at a premium or used for advertising, promotion or other commercial purposes (including competitions and trade promotions) or to enhance the demand for other goods or services. If a ticket is sold or used in breach of this condition, the bearer of the ticket will be refused admission and the Organiser may take further legal action against any parties that have breached this condition.”

I’m no lawyer, so maybe my knowledge is too elementary, but an analogy that I think I can compare this situation to is saying “I might steal a car” instead of actually stealing the car. Only in the latter case has a law been broken.

If I am mistaken, then that is very much understandable. But in the meantime, it would be much appreciated if you could reconsider your decision to revoke my tickets considering that I don’t believe that I have breached your conditions.

Kind regards,
Xavier Eales

And a second, in my haste:

Dear Moshtix,

In addition to my last email, I would also like to propose another idea. I understand that the terms and conditions may have been breached for the 3 camping tickets which I attempted (unsuccessfully) to sell over Facebook, but must all 4 other tickets also be revoked? After all, they are for my group of friends who by no fault of their own are now embroiled in this.

Of course, this request is coupled with my unreserved apology for trying to undermine any authority.

Kind Regards,
Xavier Eales

I’m taking the risk of being perceived a smart-arse, but I think it might be the only chance I’ve got. And further, I think I have a case. I’m going to bed thinking about how many hours of tutoring it’s going to take to bounce back from this slip up, but that’s life after all. We all make mistakes.

Day 97 (31st of May, 2016) – Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, China

I woke up to a reply from the people at Moshtix. Despite their firm position, I’m relieved that I’m not speaking to a robot. Now that I have a guarantee that someone is listening, I’m thinking that I can surely convince this person to see some reason.

The reply was as follows:

Hi Xavier,

Thank you for your email.

It is illegal to resell tickets privately for commercial gain- i.e for more than face value, and we have sufficient evidence to prove your intent to do so. The cancellation of the tickets was done for the safety of the new purchaser, as once any funds have been transacted outside of moshtix, we are unable to refund or assist the innocent party.

It was at the discretion of Splendour in the Grass to cancel all tickets within the order, as any order containing a flagged ticket can be cancelled at any time to prevent further scalping.

As previously stated, the Splendour in the Grass legal department is currently reviewing as to which course of action they will take beyond this point and once a decision is made, moshtix will be in contact with further details.

Regards,
Customer Service Representative

I quickly typed up my response:

Dear Moshtix,

Thank you for your prompt reply. As an 18 year old currently on his gap year in China (and planning to return in July for a visit), the $2000 used to purchase these tickets is fundamental in supporting me in the pursuit of my studies and travels. As such, it is in my best interests that this is resolved quickly.

I understand that it is illegal to resell tickets privately for commercial gain.

It seems that we have both agreed, however, that I have not done this. We also agree that I showed intent to do so, but the act was never carried out. Furthermore, I can understand why these tickets may have been cancelled for the safety of the purchaser. But unfortunately, your own terms and conditions never allowed for the arbitrary cancellation and non-refunding of tickets which had not yet been sold.

As such, there are two crucial things which I fail to understand, and which I would much appreciate a prompt response to:

1. For what reason is no refund provided, when in your terms and conditions it never stipulates such a punishment.
2. For what reason are 4 other tickets cancelled when you don’t have ample evidence to show that they were ever the subject of the intent to be sold privately.

Let me quote the only part of the terms and conditions relative to this case for you once again:

“Tickets may not, without the prior written consent of the Organiser, be resold at a premium or used for advertising, promotion or other commercial purposes (including competitions and trade promotions) or to enhance the demand for other goods or services. If a ticket is sold or used in breach of this condition, the bearer of the ticket will be refused admission and the Organiser may take further legal action against any parties that have breached this condition.”

The rubric for taking punitive action which is stipulated above seems to be contained in the following phrase: “If a ticket is sold or used in breach of this condition”. The ‘condition’ in question, to remind you, is “Tickets may not, without the prior written consent of the Organiser, be resold at a premium or used for advertising, promotion or other commercial purposes”.

We have both agreed that I have done neither of those things. So please, explain to me again why you have come to the decision to strip $2000 off an 18 year old, effectively disabling him on the other side of the world. And furthermore, why did it ever become an option (against your own terms and conditions) to cancel 4 concert tickets which objectively never came close to breaching the terms in conditions, in that an intent to sell them for commercial gain was never shown.

It’s times like this when corporations start throwing their weight around against their very own terms and conditions that organisations like the ACCC come into play. I would appreciate a quick resolution to this in the form of a reinstatement of the relevant tickets (preferably), or a full reimbursement so that it does not come to this.

Kind Regards,
Xavier Eales.

Taking a more threatening line at the expense of evoking empathy is a risk. I’m banking on the fact that whoever is reading these emails will get a little scared, show his manager or the legal team and receive a response along the lines of “just give him his money, it’s a waste of time to deal with this”.

I must have checked my inbox at five minute intervals all day.

After asking some more people for help throughout the day, I’ve discerned that pushing the argument of Splendour not having the right to revoke my tickets was possibly not as strong as claiming that they aren’t allowed to keep my money. Apparently, hidden somewhere deep in standard contract law, a party may be allowed to revoke a contract if ample evidence has been shown of an intent to break the agreement. So, I formulated a plan that if I received a response which was not going my way, I would take a line which emphasised my need for the money and how I saw it as only fair that it is returned to me.

Meanwhile, intense hours of tutoring continued for me throughout the evening, which served well in taking my mind off what was at hand.

I’m still maintaining my daily goal of always engaging in a full length conversation with someone outside of class hours to make new friends and to practice my Chinese. As usual, I tried my stunt of sitting down with someone in the canteen and trying to start a dialogue with them.

This evening, that conversation was a catastrophic failure.

Sitting down opposite the only person in the canteen (it was late), I began the conversation with: “Hi! Could I sit with you and have a conversation to improve my Chinese?”

Normally people respond very well to this line. Chinese students are almost always more than happy to help a foreigner in learning more about Mandarin and Chinese culture, especially since there’s relatively few Westerners who learn the language.

The answer I was greeted with, though, didn’t reflect that.

“Oh, hi.” she said, returning to browse social media on her phone beneath the table.

“Where are you from?” I asked, trying to get through the normal introductions.

“Qingdao,” she muttered, hardly glancing up from her phone.

Normally questions like that get reciprocated, but I decided to fire another one to see if she was just nervous.

“That looks like a nice dinner,” I remark, hoping she’d tell me what it is so that I could order it next time.

“No, it’s not nice.”

I love the Chinese way of being direct (except when there’s something to hide), but in situations like this it can just wreck a conversation.

I couldn’t decipher from her face whether she was nervous, just wanted some alone time or genuinely wasn’t interested. Part of the reason I couldn’t tell, though, was because her face was permanently angled down towards her mobile.

After that incident, I gave up pursuing another conversation. I regret it in retrospect, because I didn’t practice as much Chinese today as I would have liked.

Day 98 (1st of June, 2016) – Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, China

It was at precisely 1:42pm that I received one of the most relieving messages of my life. Tom Garraway, who it turned out had been messaging Splendour independently to try and take an empathetic line, had been sent a message indicating that I would receive my refund. It was odd that they didn’t notify me first, but nevertheless I was overjoyed.

An hour later, I received this email:

Dear Xavier,

The Splendour in the Grass legal team have decided to refund the cost of your ticket order in full. Unfortunately, due to your disregard of the ticketing T&Cs, we will not be reinstating the 4x event tickets and 3x camping tickets included in said order. If you and your friends would still like to attend the festival, we suggest you try your luck by using the official Resale Facility which will be open until Monday 18th July.

I certainly dodged a bullet there.

Whilst I would have preferred my tickets to be returned, I am just relieved that I’m not so out of pocket.

But I’m not going to stop there. I can’t stand the thought of not going to the festival. So, I spent the afternoon brainstorming every way in which I could somehow get my hands on tickets. A few ideas surfaced, but I put the task off until tomorrow.

Origin was in the evening. Some traditions don’t fade even when you’re so far from home. I set up my online stream, bought a take-away meal and donned the only blue shirt I have. It was a low scoring match and one that I didn’t really care for, to be frank. But then again, I’ll likely stop saying that once NSW start winning.

Day 99 (2nd of June, 2016) – Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, China

Today was a standard full day of classes. I napped in between to recharge both my physical and mental batteries. The feeling I have coming out of these classes is the same ‘brain-fried’ sensation I used to get coming out of long exams. They are really taxing in that there isn’t a minute where you can relent from trying to decipher the meaning of what’s being said, otherwise the bigger picture of the lesson may be compromised and you’ll get nothing out of it.

I was helped through class by a bottle of green tea. I’m surprised that I don’t see this iced tea flavour in Australia.

IMG_4168

In the afternoon I executed my backup plan for getting tickets to Splendour. I messaged a guitarist of one of the smaller bands playing who I’ve met in the past (he shall remain nameless for obvious reasons), asking if I could buy any freebies he might have. He told me that an industry link for ticket sales is being released soon which he will give me access to.

This just might work!

Today I began filling out the applications for various colleges which I’m applying for next year. I’m still weighing up all of my options, but I would prefer not to burn any bridges too early and apply for everything.

For dinner, I walked to the nearby pedestrian mall for some noodles.

My pronunciation of “take-away” must be poor, because I’m often asked to repeat myself when I say it. This time, I said “just put my food in a plastic bag so I can eat it at home”.

They took that literally.

To make matters worse, when preparing the noodles back in my room, my bowl was far too small. They overflowed and beef soup spilled all over the floor and under my desk.

With only a month left of living in my dorm, I’m faced with many tough decisions of whether to give something a thorough clean/repair, or to wait it out until I leave.

It looks like I might have a sticky floor for the next month…

Come to think of it it’s probably best if I give it a quick scrub.

Day 100 (3rd of June, 2016) – Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, China

On the way to work to collect my class timetable for the weekend, I caught the wrong bus and didn’t realise for about twenty minutes. When I realised that the roads I was seeing weren’t familiar, I asked another passenger if the bus was the 11附 like I had assumed. I was told that it wasn’t and was laughed off the bus (in good spirits). It’s mistakes like that which counterintuitively improve your experience in China – they get you into situations which require unique conversations, further improving your language skills.

I eventually made my way to the school. My suspicion that they are working me hard right before I leave was confirmed when I was given a class timetable with some of the most intense hours I’ve ever been asked to do. All of the classes were with just three teachers instead of the usual seven or eight, leading me to think that maybe I’ve been requested or vetoed by some teachers. I shouldn’t overthink it, but I’m sure there’s some timetable fudging going on in the office.

After tutoring in the evening, I headed out to find some dinner near the university. I couldn’t stand the thought of eating alone on a Friday night, so realising that I had the power to change that, I messaged a Korean friend of mine. He said that he was at a Korean BBQ restaurant on the other side of town. So, I jumped in a taxi to join him.

The dinner was spectacular. It was the most I have eaten in months. The Korean students come here because they say that it’s as authentic as a Korean dining experience gets in Xuzhou. They don’t miss the small details, apparently, like gum at the end of the meal which is common practice in Korea. The meal was also eaten cross-legged.

It’s an entirely different experience eating a cuisine with people of that culture. So many dishes have stories, feelings and attached to them. Hearing about those things while actually eating the food is an experience I would pay for.

Following dinner, the Koreans were intent on heading to ‘Muse’. Muse is the only bar in Xuzhou which would fall into the category of what we’d call a ‘club’. It is full to the brim with foreigners (mostly Russian-speaking), and plays exclusively Western music. The Ukrainian students from our school were arriving there at about 12:30am, meaning that we had some time to waste before getting there. I took everyone to ‘Fusion’, the bar in the city centre owned by my colleague at the English school. It’s a great little establishment with a beer garden underneath the surrounding towering skyscrapers. The have a good collection of foreign beers, even going so far as to stock VB.

After a few drinks at Fusion, we moved onto Muse. It was a great night, especially since I was finally able to properly meet the Ukrainian students who up until now I haven’t associated with much. Despite their open disdain for Russia, all the Ukrainians certainly had an identical drinking culture. The Russian spirits and iced tea was flowing. Following Tony’s advice of ‘no shots’, I refused after I felt like I’d had enough to drink.

At one particular point, they were pouring everyone’s glasses and I politely declined. The guy pouring it insisted and started moving to pour, so I put my hand over my glass and I gave him a more firm “no”. He looked at me in the eyes, looked back down and started pouring directly onto my hand. It was an awkward few seconds of standoff before I removed my hand and he filled my cup. After the cheers I resorted to my normal method of avoiding drinking if I’ve already reached my limit. I took a sip, then holding the cup under the table I began to pour it on the floor. As I was doing just that, I was interrupted by a Ukrainian next to me giving me a nudge. I was accidentally pouring my drink all over his shoes. I was caught red handed.

“What are you doing! What a waste of money! You’re too drunk to hold a cup,” he yelled.

Sensing that an argument was approaching I simply apologised, but deep down I couldn’t help but appreciate the irony in that ‘being too drunk’ was the very reason I declined the drink in the first place.

Other than that, it was a great night.

I was pulling out the moves as usual.

1

Of course, I knew that going out wouldn’t serve me well for work the next day. But, so be it. It’s a gap year.

The night left me thinking that there is an untapped collection of foreigners in Xuzhou who I can follow at any point in time. It’s odd because, as much as I complained about loneliness at the beginning of this trip, I have grown to really enjoy spending a lot of time on my own or immersing with the Chinese. So much so, in fact, that I don’t think it would be a wise decision to become too attached to other foreigners during my last month in the city. It’s not that I’m being antisocial, it’s just that I feel like I have plenty of time to go out every weekend in Shanghai. My priority in Xuzhou is improving my Chinese, and foreigners don’t help with that.

Day 101 (4th of June, 2016) – Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, China

When teaching English today, my first class had a student who cried the entire time. This happens every now and again because the students are very young, but I was actually warned about this one before I started the class. Her mother had emailed the school saying that she might be teary because she was scared of foreigners. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. I have never seen so much fear in a young girl’s face than when she saw my excruciatingly white skin. Eventually, I managed to win her over with the lure of stickers and by demonstrating with her friends that I wasn’t somebody to be scared of.

The whole ordeal was completely understandable, but it left me thinking about how amazing it is that there are some parts of the world whose exposure to other races is so limited that the unfamiliarity of an outsider genuinely scares them (at least at a young age). It’s an interesting part of the human psyche that we naturally feel threatened by things which we haven’t had much exposure to. There’s documentaries, for example, of researches travelling to the Amazon to try and make contact with ‘uncontacted peoples’. Having somehow escaped communication with anyone beyond their own kind, the tribesmen and tribeswomen thought that the outsiders were ghosts, and treated them with hostility before accepting them after their differences were reconciled. In a way, that’s a microcosm of wider society as countries begin to realise their place in a globalised world as opposed to being completely isolated.

I rushed home from work to get stuck into three hours of tutoring, which rounded off the day of work. I was incredibly tired afterwards, and vowed to send one more email before going to bed. That email turned into a much larger project, and I the ample sleep I crave so much will have to wait until Sunday night. The jobs I ticked off my to-do list tonight were things I would have had to do at some point anyway, though. It certainly wasn’t procrastination.

Day 102 (5th of June, 2016) – Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, China

I didn’t want to blog about it yesterday in case I was wrong, but it’s now confirmed. I woke up this morning to the devastating sight of Joof the Turtle’s limp and motionless body in his bowl. I have convinced myself that his passing is not an indication of my slightly subpar turtle rearing methods, but rather as a consequence of old age.

He will be forever missed.

After weighing up cremation or burial, I laid Joof to rest in the temporary graveyard of the dumpster outside our dormitory. It’s a cruel way to go, but I see few other options.

After shedding a single manly tear, I embarked on the Sunday morning bus journey to the English school. On the way there, I received a message from my boss saying that most of the day’s classes (until 2:30pm) had been cancelled. I was happy (my pay will be unaffected), but it does seem awfully suspicious. I’d say that there were some demo classes going on in the building for prospective students and their parents, and that raises the potential of there being a problem regarding visas. So I think my boss told me not to come in to play it safe. In any case, it doesn’t affect me.

I was stuck in an awkward situation in that I couldn’t return to my room since normally my roommate and his new Chinese girlfriend watch Netflix together on Sundays, and so I tried to waste time elsewhere.

While rerouting my journey back to the university, I came across a memorial and museum which I thought might be worth checking out.

The site is a tribute to the Huaihai Campaign fought in and around Xuzhou, which was one of the three largest scale campaigns of the Chinese People’s War of Liberation. This war was fought between the Communist Party of China (the current government of the PRC), and the Kuomintang (the origin of Taiwan’s current government) who were backed by the United States. The Communist Party achieved a decisive win in Xuzhou, and the museum provides an insight into the events of the battle.

Outside the main museum building are artillery, planes and tanks which were used in the war.

In front of the cannons was a stern warning.

“Please don’t operate the weapons at will to acoid [SIC] you being hurt.”

And point #4 is arguably the worst English I’ve ever spotted on a sign: “Plesae keel thearena ckean,don’t spoy or rubbisb at throw runnosh.”

The most entertaining part of the museum was a big revolving chamber which showed a large model of one of the main battles of the campaign.

The memorials outside were quite a site. It’s amazing that for such a big area located so close to my university that I’ve never been to visit.

There were lots of elderly people practicing tai chi and different Chinese martial arts. See if you can spot them here.

For lunch, I went to one of the cafeterias. I chose to try the university’s interpretation of chips, which were predictably quite bad. I’ll stick to the Chinese food in China.

To fill up time before going to work, I stopped the coffee shop for a drink while I churned some administrative things done on my computer.

When I eventually went to work, I only had two classes left to teach. In one of them, my teacher’s assistant was the strict one who has a soft spot for corporal punishment. Funnily enough, I enjoy teaching with her a lot because I can take a back seat in terms of the class planning. She’s a bit of a control freak but I’m more than happy to surrender input into the class activities.

The one thing which I don’t like about teaching with her is that she occasionally drops a comment that I shouldn’t speak any Chinese. I try to limited the amount of Chinese I use for the students’ benefit, but there’s a ceiling to the amount of English you use until simply everything is going over their head. A lot of people have a misconception that you can just ‘pick up’ a language by being exposed to it. It doesn’t work like that at all. You can only ‘pick up’ new words if you have at least some idea of the context surrounding them, and you can ‘fill in the gaps’ so to speak by inferring the meaning of unfamiliar words. Four year olds are too young to do that, and my own memories of sitting in primary school Italian classes and always resenting them affirms this.

In this particular class, I was trying to organise a game of ‘eye spy’ since we were learning about colours. That’s a game which requires a bit of explanation for such young children who have never played it before, and after trying in English I realised that they wouldn’t understand. The words ‘eye’, ‘spy’, ‘colour’, ‘point’, ‘choose’ and ‘say’ among many others were all essential in explaining the rules, and my charades are only so good. So, after explaining in English, I then repeated the rules in Chinese so that they could match up the meaning with my explanation, thereby accelerating their ability to ‘pick up’ the language. This time, my teacher’s assistant really took a swipe at me.

“I have told you many times not to speak Chinese. Don’t do it again.”

I was scared straight. Thinking that I might get a smack of my own, I obliged. From the minute I stopped speaking any Chinese, the class descended into madness. Students who were already on the fringes of the class suddenly became completely unengaged and began doing their own thing despite my most charismatic teaching. Eye spy only confused everyone, and the students began talking to their friends instead of listening.

It’s incredibly frustrating when there seems like such a basic solution to a problem is right in front of your face and yet you’re prevented from using it. The reality is, though, that the ‘teacher’s assistant’ is in fact in charge, since it’s their class when I’m not there. So, I don’t really have a choice.

After another three hours of tutoring back at the university, I boarded a bus to the city centre where I am going out for a drink with some of the (more civilised) Ukrainians. I’m publishing the blog from the bus.

I trust you’re all well and it won’t be long until I’m home for a visit.

Until next time,
Xavier.