So we had originally been planning to take all our stuff with us on this move back. When we first made the move over some year and a half ago, we managed to fit into 8 suitcases, including carry-ons. We had a little trouble with getting one of our carry-ons to count as a carry-on due to size constraints, but since we were all coming to the same city we left whatever suitcases we couldn’t bring with my father to bring over for us like a week or so later when he went to China as well. Now he offerred to do the same, but since we’re going to NYC it wouldn’t have worked out quite as conveniently. And obviously, given the length of time, we’ve acquired some new things. So as I said, we had been planning to take all of our stuff with us on this move back, as in on the plane, and just pay the 150USD per luggage fee to check in more than 2 pieces per person. Well, little did we know how much stuff we actually had it turns out we have 10 pieces of luggage, NOT including carry-ons. At 6 pieces over that’s 900USD, plus 60USD because one of them was over-weight also (the one with the books). Pricey.

So began the entire process of figuring out how to ship everything, as slowly and cheaply as possible. We did some research online, and there were some forum posts about how to do this, but I found them to be rather uninformative actually, though they did provide the basic framework necessary for us to figure out the rest as we did. I will post everything we now know about shipping boxes from China to the US to save you all the research in the future.

1. The company you use is China’s normal Postal Service, called like China Post EMS or something like that. You see locations for them all over the place. Their hours seem to be pretty normal, no break in the middle of the day for lunch, and I think open 7 days a week. Don’t bother trying to call their telephone number unless you speak very good Chinese or have someone to translate for you (I’m not even bothering to put the number here as it was useless for us, I got a translator; it’s a massive phone tree that I couldn’t navigate to save my life).
2. You do NOT need to go to any special location (it was hinted at in the other forums that you need to go to the fancy international one out in the East part of town but we just picked the closest one to us right next to the Drum and Bell Towers).
3. There is no pick up service for your boxes, gotta get them to the post office yourself. There are also no dollies at the post office to use. We managed everything in 2 cabs with 3 people riding as well, so figure 4 large boxes per cab.
4. You DO need to use their special shipping boxes. They come in 3 sizes, but we just got the largest, which cost 12RMB each. The box construction is good if excessive (all the flaps overlap instead of fitting together), but it felt very sturdy and strong. They’re oddly shaped though, kind of thin and tall, but overall probably as big as the large sized UPS boxes in the states. You can buy them before hand so you can pack at home but you CANNOT seal them as they need to be inspected, however cursorily, by the post office staff.
5. The cost to ship is about 5RMB for a shipping label (more on that later), about 85RMB for the first Kg, then 20RMB per Kg up to a MAX of 30KG. Most of our boxes fell within the 10 to 20Kg range, though the box of books was actually 30Kg. This meant our cheapest box was just about 200RMB and our most expensive was just over 600RMB.
6. The shipping label they make you use is in septuplicate, if that’s even a word, meaning there are 7 CARBON COPIES. I suggest you write down AS HARD AS POSSIBLE so you make it through (we didn’t, and had to retrace all of them). They want the shipper’s address (return address) in Chinese and the shipping address in English, though it’ll need the words 美国 (US, “MeiGuo,” in Chinese) written as well.
7. You also need to have written on the box the Chinese shipper’s address and English shipping address with the Chinese for US. For those of you who are like me, you’d want to make this as clear as possible and probably even print them from the computer. DO NOT TAPE THEM ON BEFORE HAND, as these labels need to be on the side where they put 3 Chinese seals and it seems to be random which side of the box that will be. Plus, they do the fancy thing where they wrap the boxes in that thick plastic band in a criss-cross pattern that makes it really strong, but if you label your box first, these might cover up vital points. We didn’t know this, and ended up writing on the box where we could the relevant addresses in ball point pen. This on top of the re-traced 7 carbon copied shipping label means our addresses are probably not as clear as they can be, but ya do what ya can…
8. They don’t really examine the contents, just kind of quickly glance over everything. The shipping label (the 7 carbon copy one) also needs you to do a customs declaration on it of items in the boxes. Feel free to generalize (the post office staff wrote “clothes” and “books” for all of ours, and either “30″ or “20″ for the quantities of each).
9. Once everything’s labeled and sealed and wrapped and ready, you pay at the counter, they hand you a copy of the receipt, seal the rest of the label onto the box, put them in large cloth bags for the mail carriers to handle, and you’re done!
10. In total we paid just under 3100RMB, which amounts to just over 50USD. We’re still over one piece of luggage because we just wanted that much stuff with us (we shipped non-important things that we both don’t need immediately or will mind too much if we lose permanently), so add in 150USD we’re still only at 650USD as compared to the 960USD we’d have had to pay if we wanted it all with us, plus the added hassel of having 10 pieces of luggage to get to and from the airport and cart around (remember you need to claim everything when you land in the States if you have a connection, then re-check for the connection). In short, well worth it, and if you can ship everything, meaning minus the extra luggage like we have, even more worth it.
11. Apparently you can track these by box label number online (there’s a barcode on the receipt), but I haven’t tried that yet. That will be next and I’ll update this post accordingly. Also, it will take just about 2 months the guy said. I will also update then when we receive everything (I hope).

All in all not the worst process I’ve ever been through, they were all very helpful, but it took a couple of hours mostly because we had so much that couldn’t be done until you got to the post office. And not that we’ll hopefully ever need to ship things by mail anymore, but at least I’m now pretty well versed in how. The big hope is that everything gets there, but I’ll update this post accordingly when I know more.

As the rest of the post says though, we only have 2 days left, and my sleeping schedule is completely whacked. Yesterday was spent taking care of all this shipping stuff, and the day before was packing it all and the rest of our suitcases. We are actually basically completely ready to go, just some very minor small stuff to put into carry-ons left. We’re going to the Great Wall in just over an hour (yes, I should maybe sleep?). We’ve managed to delay going until now, but well, we’re leaving, so I guess we should. We’re going with a tour group leaving out of one of the local hostels. Tonight when we get back we’re going to take care of some last minute purchases, then tomorrow, on our last day, we can hopefully hit up the 798 Arts District, some place I’ve really wanted to go, then it’s Adios China! We’ve been trying to also get in the last of the Chinese food we’d want to eat. Last night was Indian food :P

First, we’re moving back to the States! NYC to be specific. That’s what the countdown is for. We leave early morning Christmas Eve for our new but temporary home in the Upper East Side at 75th and 3rd. We have many exciting and grand plans regarding getting jobs that actually pay when and what they say they will yet aren’t that overbearing on the rest of our lives so that we’d have time to maintain an active non-work life in the evenings and on weekends and take vacations throughout the year. I have grand plans for a balcony where we can grow fancy vegetables and set up a fire pit on which I intend to cook hearty soups with my cast iron pot, skewer vegetables and meats, grill different kinds of fish in one of those neat looking fish-grilling-baskets, and roast marshmallows, all under the glow of any and all seasonally appropriate skies. I’m going to be more revealing here than anywhere else public on the inter-webs, but you know, I’m feeling excited about these new prospects so any unforeseen consequences of my openness be damned. We’re also going to be stopping off first at Maria’s parents place in Ohio, and though it’s seeing her side of the family again in a relatively short amount of time, we feel its appropriate as it’s quite close to NYC and we intend to take possession of her parents old minivan. Yes, I will be driving a minivan, feel free to start the ribbing on that one. But I’d just like to point out the obvious benefits of one:

1. we can carry STUFF! (Costco, free stuff from Craigslist, people, moving)
2. we can go on ROAD TRIPS (which I love, and if necessary even sleep in the van)
3. it’s obviously free (they have more cars than drivers right now)
4. it’ll be reminiscent and nostalgic of those days when I owned a pickup truck, but minus the tiny little seats in the cab that faced each other whenever I tried to haul more than 2 people

We’re in the gigantically messy process of packing up our entire lives, once again, like we did a year and a half ago for our move to China. Feels kind of full circle in a way. We were lucky, having never settled that well, which was actually a problem in and of itself but at least it’s come to benefit us now in that though we’ve acquired some more things than before, we still don’t have that much stuff. We used to fit in 8 suit cases, we now fit in 10, and we still don’t have furniture. That means our temporary apartment in NYC is actually furnished (thanks to you know who!), and we’ve tentatively given ourselves 2 months to figure it all out, permanent jobs, permanent apartments, permanent routines, etc. This does also mean that we may have to remove our blog from the expat blog listings, but I’ll comfort myself by creating new NYC centric categories and tags. I will most likely still be working within the web programming field, and Maria’s thinking of re-entering law or perhaps finance. We will both of course still work with our fancy little Enterprise Consulting company in whatever fashion that “work with” may mean.

The explanation for the lateness of this entry is that we’ve been kind of sub-consciously messing up our sleeping schedules, I think so that we’ll have an easier time when we get to the States adjusting to US time again (civilized time?), but it’s not been easy these past 3 weeks actually, ever since we got back the last time to China after Thanksgiving. Immediately after landing we found ourselves smack in the middle of final negotiations to close our JV VC deal, a process that involved many Chinese lawyers and lots of legalese and staying up to the middle of the night every night hammering through all the details involved and trying to explain it all to our partners who aren’t native English speakers and were giving themselves headaches just trying to parse the individual sentences. I discovered I have quite a knack for this stuff actually, an innate ability to understand those massively long and complex legal sentences, and if nothing else I provided good translation services because wouldn’t you know it, though the JV is international and the governing documents are in English (and even governed by NY law), Maria and I were the only people with any thorough command of the English language and the negotiations even happened in Chinese, something brand new I’ve never experienced before in my life. Lots of fun, though insanely tiring, and happening all at the same time as my IFC concert. When it rains and all that. We did close, on time even, or basically, terms and conditions met and documents signed and all, and I had my concert, which I mentioned in an earlier post was a success, then I had another concert in Shanghai of all places which I also mentioned, and we go to see our new Enterprise Consulting company’s facilities at that incubator (which I also mentioned?), and well, the sum of it all was that in the span of 3 weeks, we’ve managed to:

1. negotiate and close a JV VC deal
2. sing Handel’s Messiah twice in Beijing with the IFC
3. sing Handel’s Messiah twice in Shanghai with the IFC
4. inspect our company’s holdings in Shanghai (at least some)
5. end Maria’s MBA program (I won’t say more than just this stated fact, though there’s obviously SO much more details that can be had here, but suffice it to say we’re obviously not continuing with the program if we’re leaving the country)
6. pack and finalize moving details
7. sing at the British Ambassador’s residence (did I mention that? We sang carols. It was good)
8. move all the furniture in the apartment back the way it was (we had optimized it, but now we need to un-optimize it since we’ve not going to be using it)
9. have a tiny little family oriented engagement party (yes, that’s the other thing, we got engaged! I don’t want to dwell too much on this point either as I’m kind of running out of blogging steam, but it’s self explanatory isn’t it? We’ve been together for almost 3 years now! This upcoming February! And we look forward to the infinitely better water pressure and hot water temperature that the States has to offer)
10. have a massive Beijing friends oriented engagement/going away party in which we either drank through or gave away all of our remaining booze, of which there were, and somehow still are, lots
11. actually get my work visa and residence permit (yes, I realize the irony involved in 3 days before leaving a country finally getting the necessary paperwork and documents in place to stay in said country easily and indefinitely really. Let’s chalk it up to “well now I can come and go as I please”)

What else happened? I think that about sums it all up. The plan for these remaining days is to finish our packing, close some necessary accounts (telephone, internet, cell phone), actually ship everything we want, then do some last minute tourist stuff like see the Great Wall and the 798 Arts District. It takes something like moving out of the country to really motivate you to do those little touristy stuff that you never had a chance or the motivation to, though that’s mostly me. Maria’s been wanting to do these things for ages, but I guess we had planned to be here for a lot longer so there was almost always more time. Ah well, we’ll take care of it. I also plan to, once we’ve finished getting everything shipped, have a proper blog entry on the details regarding said process as at the moment the inter-web’s information regarding how best to cheaply but slowly ship your material from this country to the States is limited. I will rectify this missing bit of much needed information. Oh, and in the process of packing, I managed to kill one of my computer’s hard drives, but it’s ok, it was the system drive which for some stupid (but in the end alright) reason also housed the backup of the system drive. Chalk it up to me forgetting which partition sat on which physical disk, but it means I actually didn’t lose any DATA, of which I had a lot, and would have been very sad were I to have lost it. My RAID drives are fine, my one off data drive is fine, I only lost my system and the backup of said system. I couldn’t have actually planned it any better if I were trying, otherwise I could have lost my one off data partition…I hate data loss, and considering I was very careful with the drive even and can’t imagine why or how I managed to mess it up so much, it really just points out and highlights once again the necessity to own a massively large NAS. I’m shooting for the 8-bay QNAP NAS with 2TB drives. Haven’t decided what RAID level I want though, maybe just Mirroring, maybe 5 + hot spare, maybe 6 + hot spare. At minimum, with Mirroring, I’ll still have 8TB of storage versus my piddling little 1.5TB now, and it will be wonderful. Today was the first time I realized but Maria pointed out how there’s a sort of religious aspect to technology. It’s “thank God” I didn’t lose my data, and the appropriate feeling of “relief” and “fulfillment” from having a really good plan and system to handle it all. It’s like “fate” or “destiny” that I messed up where my system backups were stored, otherwise I would have lost data. So once again I thank whatever technology God(s) there may be.

Oh, and I fully intend to keep up my QQ accounts. Gotta grow and steal those vegetables, those “farm” animals, and now maintain my little vegetarian restaurant.

It’s been a busy month though, to my credit. The last entry was just before we decided to head back to the States again. What happened was, on the 18th of November, my visa proper expired, as in, no more entries, no more time in China, do not pass go, if you stay in the country you will go to jail and you do not want to go to a Chinese prison. So right around my 27th birthday (yes, that happened also on November 15th), we left. It took a bit to figure out where best to go, but we decided on NYC. Maria processed her student visa there, it’s close to her sister and nephews, I have lots of very good friends there as well, so it seemed the most logical choice. We even managed to secure a nice place of our own to stay in through friends we made in Beijing of all places, a lovely young couple passing through when I still ran that restaurant way back when, and whom we visited in Hong Kong over the summer. Lots of other things happened though while we were in NYC, but I’m not sure I’m allowed to tell you yet. But Maria and I had a lovely time there, and we had even said that we should go to NYC together, spend some time wandering around a city that in the end, I love.

After that, we actually succeeded in me getting my work visa, but now had to apply for a residency permit. We made a last minute decision to stay on through Thanksgiving since it was just around that time anyway, and hitched a ride with my Emily out to Maria’s parents place in OH. I’ll get around to why we decided to extend our trip later, when I’m allowed to, but suffice it to say we wanted to, and it was lots of fun, and involved good food, good times with her parents and family, midnight shopping with her best friend on Black Friday, and more. I’m glamorizing right now, what happened that is, because it’s the best way to do it while being much too warm and cramped on this bunk bed in the train.

We did go back to China though, it was inevitable, and I had my Beijing IFC concert, which was a success, immediately after which I had this past concert in Shanghai. So you see, I’ve really been rather busy!

November 15 – 27th Birthday
November 16 – Fly to NYC to get China work visa
November 21 – Decide to extend our trip in the States through Thanksgiving
November 27 – Fly back to Beijing
December 5 – IFC Beijing concert
December 7 – Take train to Shanghai for IFC Shanghai concert
December 10 – IFC Shanghai concert
December 12 – IFC Shanghai concert
December 12 (now) – Take train back to Beijing from Shanghai

You see, busy! Plus we had flaky internet the entire time, really put our tether through the ropes. And now I think I’m feeling motion sick, so I’m going to stop. There will be more though, and photos, and Core WordPress updates, and tagging this post since the tether’s being flaky. All in good time.

I’ve switched themes again, to more properly reflect the colors of Fall that are all around me here in Beijing. Thankfully though I caught it; it’s already basically Winter and a brisk cold and wind have settled in. For a while though the leaves on the trees were a bright and deep red and yellow, falling with every gust of wind. I had thought that if I had the time to pick together the necessary photos and color palettes I’d code the site to automatically switch depending on the season, to reflect the seasons, or perhaps if I had the proper photos to depict all the different moods of someone’s weather, then those. But that feels like a chore, and more effort than I’d want to expend at the moment.

We’ve been taking some lovely photos though of the season, though most of them are on Maria’s phone. I hope to find the time to get them off and onto here soon.

Let’s see, my other sites are all up and running now: photos, music, blog, portfolio. I should add a proper link to all of them from here. And though our server in China has somehow stopped serving up sites, there’s lots of work on there that I’ve been working on. Hopefully that technical issue will get resolved soon, though it’s actually beyond my abilities to diagnose at the moment.

The point of this post though, despite general updates about whatever and anything that’s been going on, I still need to find a new project to focus on. We’ve taken delivery of my grandmother’s old piano and I’ve been able to practice playing more and that’s been quite fulfilling. Though last night for the first time one of the neighbors came up and knocked on our door, saying that it was too late and too loud to play. I suppose it was quite late, but there’s a part of me that still prefers a later schedule in general over an earlier one. But the days have been very pretty, and I’ve taken some nice long walks with Maria. So despite not having gotten much sleep in general, I’m staying up all these days so that I wouldn’t be on a different schedule from her. Her school’s been quite busy, the first semester almost coming to an end, her midterms finishing up soon. I spend my days spending as much time as I can with her, travelling to and from her school, then during the times when she’s in class working on my little “projects,” such as they are. Again, I need to find a new one.

My visa woes have finally come to a head. I have 8 days until I need to actually leave the country again, unable to get another extension, the only reasonable recourse to finally get my working visa so that I wouldn’t have to worry about leaving the country again for at least a year. Those prospects are a little bit spotty, but they should work out. The only difficulty is that I need to actually return to the US, which is something I’m not looking forward to. I’m thinking maybe of heading to NYC instead of LA, see some friends, get in some sights. We had thought that maybe it’ll be possible to just go to Hong Kong instead but according to their website, you need to go to your country of residence to process this new visa. And the worst of it is that as soon as I get this new work visa, pay for it and all and bring it all back into China, I’ll have to turn it in for a residency permit thus canceling my work visa. It’s a really pointless process actually, but one that you nevertheless have to follow. Sigh, we’ll know soon though. I think I’m going to make the executive decision that today is the last day I’m going to fret on this. I doubt I can go anywhere but the States, I’m decently sure I can go to NYC, so I guess I’m going to NYC.

I’d forgotten my mother’s birthday also, the 5th, which means that soon it’ll be the 15th.

I’ve also created a couple of other sites to showcase some work. At current count, there are:

http://portfolio.textures-tones.com (web portfolio)
http://photos.textures-tones.com (photos)
http://music.textures-tones.com (music, very initial stages, coming soon)
http://www.textures-tones.com (this site)

There are some other sites I’d like to put together, some things for Maria and her school, some things for the IFC, etc., but those I guess are in the idea only stage at the moment.

Putting personal programming aside, I’ve now got a part time programming job for a company called Pixology Studios, Ltd. They do great print design, and I’ll be working for their web side. I’m also in the process of moving all of FTC’s websites over to a new server down south. I kind of wish I had a little bit of notice before they just unplugged the old server and so some websites have been down for over a week now, and I had to grab database stuff off the old server which we only took delivery of into Michael’s office a day ago or so. Either way, you do what you can. But I mean, the point is, I’m actually racking together a decently large web presence of sites I’ve designed and coded. I’m decently impressed with myself.

Putting all programming aside, the point of this post was that I’ve now also started a hand written journal on the side. I find the process of doing something by hand, something slower, to be appealing. Plus, I have so many half finished journals and sketchbooks I’d like to see what it feels like to actually one day finish one. I also have lots of recycled journals and sketchbooks that use to be half finished but just had half the pages torn out. Still not desirable. That content will not be translated here. I’m also writing a short story, something I’ve wanted to and had the idea for for a while now, about the nature of loneliness and how it affects our perception of the world around us. But my mother had suggested that Maria and I write a screenplay, and though it didn’t work out too great the last time I tried this with my ex, and though I don’t make it a habit to take my mother’s suggestions, I am nevertheless also writing the screen play version of the short story. It’s kind of funny actually. I have 2 files on my desktop, one in Word and the other in Final Draft format, both at the same points in time story wise.

I’d like to think I’m a good web programmer…

And I suck at tagging things…there really needs to be a system already in place even before the first tag gets created, otherwise it’s just chaos.

1) Smartphones in China:

So…you have available all major brands and operating systems, and the good thing is you can get them all unlocked, though that’s less of a positive nowadays since the States are making providers do so themselves. Symbian S60 is out of date, and they’re not going to update it anytime soon, and I’d rather not dump a wad of cash on dying technology. Windows Mobile 6.5 is out of date, and Windows Phone 7 is slated for the end of the year. Again, no reason to dump a wad of cash on something out of date that won’t get updated. That leaves Android and Apple. Both very good platforms, just a question of what we need right? Right, the point is, we bought a smartphone for Maria so that she can keep track of her email and calendar while at school because they don’t have free internet on campus, which is another point of griping to come to later…First, China SUCKS! Ok, now that that’s out of the way, it’s because there’s no such thing as a non-grey market phone. It’s because in China technically WiFi is illegal…China has their own proprietary “secured” wireless technology called WAPI, and they had petitioned the IEEE to adopt it as a full on wireless platform, but since China refused to let the IEEE people examine the WAPI protocol under the pretense that it’ll compromise its security, they adopted 802.11i, I think? Whatever. So all those fancy phone that have wireless on them, don’t, in China, and if they do, they need to run unofficial software and firmware. I bought a Motorola Milestone (Droid in the States), and found out they had some “itfunzterminatorIIeclairmod” firmware installed that just sucked. It was laggy, nothing worked, and it ran the battery quick as hell. When I went back to the store to ask what this was, it turns out that all Android phones in China have this installed. So I asked if Apple phones ran proper software, and apparently it doesn’t either! Now this is all changing, so it’s not that big of a deal per se, it’s just inconvenient at this moment, seeing as how I’m not running a custom built ROM on Maria’s phone and there’s no good way around it. But as I said, it’s being fixed…because WiFi is just so prevalent in this country, I don’t know of a single WAPI hotspot…An unexpected benefit of this though is that I’m not well versed in flashing Android phones and installing 3rd party ROMS, and I can run 2.2, though it’s not released yet.

2) No wireless on campus:

This one’s gonna be short and to the point. There’s no free wireless internet on Tsinghua’s campus. Anywhere. You can buy “limited” and “domestic” internet access for 5RMB a month, otherwise it’s by the KB for “normal” internet access. At this point, we’re using Maria’s phone as a wireless hotspot.

3) Visa woes, still:

I still don’t have my visa! I’m running out of time and entries. At the moment, I don’t have a single entry left, and so am unable to leave the country without having to go back to the States and getting a brand new visa. I’m not sure what’s so complicated about it all, everyone else has work visas. Right now the holdup is that apparently the Chinese bureaucrat can’t add together the dates of all my previous jobs to see that yes, I’ve had more than 2 years of work experiences. It’s so unreasonable to expect them to understand that having one job from Jan. 2007 to Jan. 2008 then another from Jan. 2008 to Jan. 2009 means TWO years of experience (hypothetically here…sarcasm intended).

So, and to clarify, I, officially, have now never worked at RH and instead was working at VSM from January 2007 to September 2009, and I have a signed verification of past employment to this effect.

Bah.

Hopefully though, we’re over the major hurdles, and I’ll have my visa soon, and I won’t have to keep leaving the country, and I’ll be able to get my drivers license because I really want to take a nice long road trip again.

Related to visas, remember when I turned down a proper job because my father said he could hire me and pay me consistently? The second time I put my faith in family? I’m regretting it…

4) Chinese people’s non-existent sense of personal space:

And this wouldn’t be an issue if not for that fact that the majority of people in this country are men seeing as how “everybody wants a boy” and what not. I mean, I wouldn’t mind people not having a sense of personal space if they were all decently attractive Chinese girls…anywho though…it’s been grating more and more lately, and is just making me very uncomfortable, especially on the subways. Rushhours in this country are insane. There are attendants on the platforms shouting into blow horns to “use all your strength to squeeze into the train,” and they’ll give you a helpful shove as well, and are half a step from literally pushing you on top of the other passengers to occupy the headroom that’s “wasted.” But it’s probably a cultural thing, how these people were raised, but they’re very touchy feely, people of the same sex that is, which is also just weird, but there’s plenty of room on the train even or the platform and for some reason they still have to brush up against me and where I’m standing, though there’s plenty of room for them not to, and it’s getting harder and harder to restrain this seething desire in me to elbow them really, really, really hard, and pretend it was due to the rocking of the train or something. I’ve been cursing a lot lately under my breath as a more reasonable outlet, that’s what’s kind of nice about a country where people don’t really speak the language you’re cursing in. But the point is, they should just stop touching me!

5) Still sick:

Hmmm…I’m kind of tired now. The reason I was awake in the first place was because we’re still sick and Maria had a coughing fit and woke the 2 of us up. We had slept for just about an hour and a half, which unfortunately counts as a nap for me, and so I think messed up my sleeping a bit so I couldn’t fall back asleep. But that was a couple of hours ago now also, and I’m feeling it again, which is good because we have a early day tomorrow, and I think the simple monotony of typing and writing is having a soothing effect on me.

6) Non-complaints:

On a completely non-complaining note, we’ve been in China for 1 whole year! Happy Anniversary to us! We’re going to celebrate this weekend :)

We managed to get through a Mid Autumn Festival (when the Chinese people all eat moon cakes) without eating a single moon cake! (they’re kind of gross, especially the new flavors like Oriole or meat…)

The IFC also had its first ever Gala Evening on September 11th. Inauspicious day I know, but it doesn’t seem to have made much of a difference in this country. It took place at Capital M Beijing, a very lovely restaurant at Qianmen actually. I was surprised by how fancy it was on the inside, and it had a huge patio with wonderful views of the gates and the Forbidden City. Perfect on a warm summer evening actually, very comfortable. The food looked good, though we didn’t actually eat any. I was there as a volunteer for the IFC, helping coordinate the evening, handle registrations, payments, attendee corralling, and singing even. We sang 3 songs between courses, to general appreciation. Either way, this just means that it was a very long and tiring day, but still nice! We’re thinking of heading on back to the restaurant at some point, get a nice, fancy dinner. Or apparently they have a lovely Sunday brunch special on the patio, which sounded like fun also. Another member of the IFC, Amanda, suggested it, because the price is like a quarter of the normal dinner prices, but the food is still good, and there are champagne cocktails.

Otherwise, my father has succeeded in selling off the rest of his shares in the restaurant, 25% of which the sales revenue goes to Maria, at some point, which will be great. I have a job offer jointly from FTC/Matrix, my father and cousin’s, respectively, companies, though they haven’t paid me anything, and have kinda gone silent as far as work for me goes. I was supposed to go on down south a bit to put up some wireless sensor network thingie, work on some remote medicine stuff, etc., but apparently there’s been some miscommunication between the multiple parties and what responsibilities were meant to be delegated, and I kind of feel like I’m left out in the blue with nothing to do, and maybe nothing coming to me. I was supposed to be paid already, and again at the beginning of October. I even turned down yet another job offer from another company because of this, and it’ll actually really piss me off if I don’t get paid. I made this mistake once, turning down a job for the job at the restaurant, and this is the second time I’ve turned down a job for some family opportunity and if it doesn’t work out well, huh, I guess that’ll just suck, short answer, huh?

Either way, it does feel like things are coming together, school, relationship, job, apartments, visa, etc., which is absolutely great actually. It’s taken a bit, but maybe it’ll start working out soon.

I also hadn’t blogged in a while, which is mostly the point of this entry. We’ve been sick, that’s all, and very, very busy. But as I look at the last post date, it hasn’t actually been that long somehow, just like, a little over a week. I wonder if it’s really the fact that being sick, being unable to sleep, being generically uncomfortable, has just made the time drag. Though we had a good time last week, hanging out together, sick, at home, watching movies and TV. I guess this week’s a bit different now, and everything feels more, specific in how they bother me, like the sickness, the lack of commitment from my “job,” because Maria’s started classes and is much busier during the day, and it would be great if I had things to do during the day as well as I had planned on it, but well, I’ve already written about how annoyed I am at my family, and I guess I may get even more annoyed at them…what does it take to have a steady job eh?

But the “as promised” bit is that at some point I mentioned I’d consolidate into a separate MP3 player all the songs I recorded for her while she was away, and I have. I mucked around in WordPress, though about writing a custom plugin to generate the XML playlist file, or forcibly access and muck around in the MySQL, but both solutions seemed, complicated. Instead I’m using the built in WordPress functions to grab the data, format it properly, then just copy and paste it into a static playlist file. [shrugs] Not nearly as elegant, but sufficient and simple, and it’s even more important as I just realized my “Maria in NYC Music Project” posts don’t actually say what the song title is that I recorded for the day so there’s no easy way to browse, but it’s up now, the new MP3 player that is, and that’s the salient point of this post, so I’m going to go back to hacking up a lung and not being able to sleep.

The most important and currently relevant thing is that I’m not feeling too well. Real nauseated for some reason. I had decided to go out and bike, it being the middle of the night and presumabely cooler and everything, but when I got out, about half an hour out to be precise, some odd combination of odors really overpowered me to the point where I felt like throwing up, not something good to do while biking I don’t think, not that I’ve ever done it before. I think the problem was that it had gotten really humid somehow. There’d been a cooling trend this week, and I’ve even been out and biking during the day and felt quite comfortable, but this evening the humidity had returned and it was just kind of putrid out, for lack of a better word. That plus the odors just put me over. So I high tailed it back, drank some iced green tea, lifted some weights, and after a cold shower felt decently better. The other issue is that, yes, it’s the middle of the night. My sleeping schedule’s messed up again, I’m not quite sure why or how this time. All I know is that a couple of days ago I was getting real tired in the early evenings, like 6PM or so, and just fell asleep, and that started the cycle of messing it up. Ah well. It’ll be alright, hopefully. The other issue is that I might have eaten too many pomegranates and that might have contributed to my nausea…these were the ones that I bought the other day from off the street and they were very good actually. A little different from US pomegranates, they’re light green on the outside and a much lighter pink on the inside. The individual um…whatever they’re called…were larger also than the ones in the States, packing more juice. I also find the process of pulling individual whatever they ares one at a time out of the fruit very relaxing and satisfying also. I’d go through an entire fruit, putting all the whatevers into a small bowl, then just chow down on them one big mouthful at a time. Um, but the consequence of which might be that part of why I was and am nauseated might be due to the odd combination of a weird sleeping schedule, over-fruiting on pomegranates, high humidity and heat in the middle of the night, and the plethora of odd odors that permeate this city in the Summer. Speaking of fruit though I’m also almost out of mini watermelons, which were also very good. One issue was that 2 of them had already split they were so crisp on the inside, so that’s why I ate them so quickly. Real good watermelons. I just make one small cut with a knife, then it’s crisp enough to peel apart with my bare hands. Lovely fruit in this country! I’m waiting for the citrus fruits to come back, and I’m sure Maria’s waiting for that as well. That should hopefully be soon. Right now the fruit in season seem to be grapes. Nothing else too specific seem to be overly prevalent.

I’m going to be taking care of my in country tourist visa renewal next week. I’m about at the end of my year long multi entry visa, it expires at the end of the month, the 20 something I think. And seeing as my work visa isn’t ready yet, the best solution at the moment is to essentially stall for more time from the Chinese government. We had looked into this before, decently early on when it seemed our work visas wouldn’t come through, so I know what’s required to get the in country renewal. I need to be registered in a proper Chinese household (specifically NOT a hotel otherwise I need 20K RMB or so in a bank account), fill out some forms, hand in my passport for processing, and wait a few days, after which I should be sporting a brand new 90 day single entry tourist visa. Pretty interesting actually considering how relatively easy it is. This means that any tourist can get a normal 90 day visa, then renew in country, and be allowed to stay for essentially half a year. Though I guess at this point all of this is theoretical, I’ll have proper information on how easy it actually was at the end of next week. Although my father also said that someone is “working” on my working visa again, so that might also come through. It does seem like things with my father may come together decently soon. He’s working very hard, every day, running all around the country, so who knows, maybe I’ll get paid soon and have a fancy new work visa. There’s always some chance eh?

Maria’s going to be home REAL soon now, within a week basically. I really can’t wait until she’s back. It’s been real lonely without her here. When she’s not around I also kind of don’t interact with other humans either. I guess we hadn’t yet gotten around to making many new friends in China yet and this point really hit home when she left. There just aren’t that many people I know anymore with whom I can go out, hang out, even speak to. I feel like both my command of English and Chinese have disappeared these past few weeks. It was quite noticeable when I was out with the apartment agent, during which time I spoke both Chinese and English and didn’t quite feel eloquent using either. Speaking about apartments though, I’m facing a slight dilema at the moment. I want to get a new place for Maria and I, but when you factor in fees, deposits, and the first couple months up front, I figure we’ll need 20K RMB to move in to a new place, a sum which I obviously don’t have. I’m going to try some other routes in finding places and hopefully shave some of those fees down so that I won’t need that much money up front. I also negotiated to be paid that much from my father for a web project of his, but he obviously hasn’t paid me yet. I’m going to talk to him about that tomorrow and hopefully get a timeline on when I might get paid. But I guess put shortly, it’s at least decently possible that we’ll be in a new place and neighborhood soon!

Which is exciting I think. The idea is to be close enough to campus so that Maria can walk to and from her classes, which means we’ll be in the Haidian district, the North Western one. Beijing actually has a surprising number of universities and they’re all up there. Off the top of my head, there’s Tsinghua University, Peking University, the Aerospace University, some kind of Forestry University, whatever that is, a Farming University, Beijing Language and Culture (Cultural?) University, some other one that’s across the street from that one, a People’s University, a Normal University (again, whatever the heck that is), and uh, that’s all I can recall at the moment. So yeah, all up there, basically right next to each other. Pretty neat, it makes its own kind of university town, though on a much larger scale. Haidian is also where all the electronic stuff is, also the technology part of town, so the geek in me finds that real neat. Plus, it’s far enough north, and big enough which is the more important part, that it reaches out to where there’s a lot more space between the buildings so it feels a lot less crowded. The farm is up there for instance. It’s quite foreign due to the universities, with lots of foreign students wandering around, but I’ve not yet decided whether I like that fact or not. I guess there’s a part of me that doesn’t quite like being around foreigners that much. Ah well. There should be lots of street fold though because despite the large influx of foreigners there’s a massive amount of local Chinese who run support for all of them and they enjoy their street food. Plus, we’ll be close to the Walmart, which will be wonderful. Quite unlike Walmarts in the States, but that’s how it is in this country with all major Western chains. The IKEA for instance, is also terribly much more interesting than the IKEAs in the States, not that the IKEAs in the States aren’t great also, but it’s an entirely different experience here.

I think it’s all mostly a question of scale. These things are are just much bigger here! Imagine a normal Walmart Supercenter in the States, with the groceries and everything, then stack 4 of them on top of one another as the ones in China are all multi-leveled up the wazoo. Same thing with the IKEAs, though IKEAs are multi-level in the States, these are just again, bigger. And they’re more of almost a social thing for people to do. Lots of the shoppers are kind of just hanging out, especially at the IKEA where you’ll find people taking naps on the showroom beds or sitting around tables in the cafeterias for HOURS. The only time I was there it was so crowded that when asking a group of people if they intended to leave so that we could find a table to eat at, they said no, it’ll be a couple of hours still. We eventually did find a table, but still. Hours? In the IKEA cafeteria? My mother has this really funny video. First we’re close up on a sleeping child, very peaceful looking, in a comfortable bed, then we slowly zoom out and all of a sudden a random person walks across the shot and we realize we’re in an IKEA and it’s a showroom bed we’re looking at with a sleeping child in it and dozens of other strangers milling about, looking at furniture, writing down notes, etc. I should get a copy of that video. It’ll be great to post here.

Wow I’m tired all of a sudden, and I’m not sure I’ve written anything of note or interest. I think I’ll post this now and actually go to sleep. Hmmm…wonder why I’m so tired? Ah, can’t yet, I just remembered I need to call my mother. Still, no reason not to post this while I do that. More to come later!

1) I repaired my bike today. I hadn’t ridden it for close to a month, and it’s been raining, then hot, then humid, so it was in very, very poor condition. I had to get one of the tires replaced, the inner-tube-y thingie replaced, and the chain replaced. This ran another 80RMB. So far, on top of all the other repairs done to the bike, I’m at 320RMB so far invested in this bike. You know what’s interesting though, it’s really much easier to ride now that I’ve had it fixed up a bit! I had noticed the last couple of times I’d ridden in it a month or so ago that it was exceedingly difficult to ride, get up to speed, or keep speed up. It’ll just grind. It’s so easy now though!

2) Once repaired, I rode it around, quite exhilarating actually because the weather’s gotten a little better. I overheard some people talking who said it felt like Fall all of a sudden, and I’d have to agree. It’s still hot out, but far less humid, to the point where it’s actually reasonable to be out despite the heat! I guess it really is because of humidity that it’s so miserable in this country. I knew it had something to do with it because I’d never minded the weather in the States when it would get just as if not hotter in LA, but it was always a dry heat, a good kind of bearable heat, not like this crappy humid heat where you work up a sweat just walking down the block. Bah!

3) Ah I also biked by BICD where Connections is to pick up some mail. There weren’t any, my father had picked it up apparently. The point though…the restaurant’s open again!? I spent a long time thinking to myself as I stood in line buying a chicken roll “I don’t know how I feel about it.” But then I realized, I feel bad about it, angry, betrayed. I can’t believe they opened the restaurant again!? These people are insane, and I think I really don’t like them. They cheated us, out of money, out of time, out of effort. They shouldn’t have re-opened the restaurant without telling us, and if they were going to, I’d like to think we’d have some say in them. They owe us money! Hmmmmmm…

4) That’s all that’s really going on now, though I bought upgrades for my laptop HD and RAM, and Starcraft II should be coming soon! :) I also had a REALLY good talk with Maria and that made me REALLY happy!