China
I needed an alarm clock so I was taken to the local department store by my translator. Bear in mind that this was a village in the middle of nowhere whose main contribution to the local economy was mud and deformity (numerous chemical factories nearby).

The shelves - in the best communist tradition - were mostly empty, with the odd opened box or clearly broken plastic knick-knack sitting forlornly upon them. And these were not Chinese-made goods - they were made in places like Chad or Somalia and imported into China as cheap goods.

An alarm clock was clearly too much of a specialised item to appear on the shelves, so we had to ask for it. The shop assistant - a kind of animated scarecrow with cat-licked hair and dishevelled clothing - took a candy pink plastic alarm clock out of the paper (not cardboard) box and fiddled with it for a while as if it were Swiss watch mechanism. And it began to beep.

And beep and beep and beep. No matter what he pressed, it would not stop and his face was a mask of idiotic consternation. So he put it back into the box and handed it to me. Still beeping. "That'll be 10 yuan please sir."

I held the still ringing alarm in my hand. "It's broken."
"No it isn't. Listen, it's ringing happily away."
"All the time. It won't stop. Am I supposed to set it to become quiet when I want to wake up?"

No use arguing with the Chinese. The box had been opened and that meant I had to buy it. Like it was a jar of truffles or something. So I had to fork out just to stop him screaming and simply tossed the clock into a bin as I exited the store. It cost about 7p.

Ultimately, I was woken up about 5.30 am sharp each day by the outdoor indoctrination aerobics the students were forced to perform under the red flag.
(frankspencer, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 9:29, 3 replies)

Hang on a minute...
...didn't his daughter get her tits out or something?
(emadex thinks the world will end on, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 15:33, closed)

Yeah
Serious stories from frankspencer- whatever next? Me winning the qotw?

Hold on, that's already happened...
( jim_bob can herd cats., Fri 4 Jan 2008, 19:26, closed)

what, you too?
i didnt need an alarm clock in China but i did get woken up in the morning when i lived next to the school - they'd play this military marching style music with a very upbeat overtone while the kids hared round the corner from my bedroom to fill up their water flasks for the day. all 2000 of them. i kept my curtains shut after the first morning when i realised they could see me through the windows at 6am.
(zenmeban thinks the weather could be better, Sun 6 Jan 2008, 23:51, closed)