Today’s song is Plainclothes Man by Elliott Smith, or rather Heatmiser, but I’m still gonna say Elliott Smith because he wrote it and sings it but just so happens when he was a part of Heatmiser and it came out on a Heatmiser CD.

P.S. I think I chipped a tooth…

I’m in a right sort I tell ya. I didn’t make it to my concert, which seemed ok, though I really wanted to go and had gotten everything ready for it even. But the time came to go, and I just didn’t want to move. The sun through the curtains was exacerbating a terrible headache, and I just wanted to curl up in bed, which is what I did, what I have been doing, and what I intend to continue doing after I post this. I feel like I haven’t spoken to a human being in person in so long. I texted the appropriated people and got appropriate responses saying I wasn’t going to be there. Cary always emails me now when there’s things he wants me to do. He incidentally responded to my response asking to be paid for July, but he skipped over that part of my response and just talked about other things. Is this a bad sign? Have I talked about this already? My father has always been like this but he just sends me very long essay length emails updating literally everything that’s happened since the last time he sent me an essay. And I talk to Maria online, and I blog here. I really want to talk to somebody…

I do have an interesting new project to do for Maria. She’d like me to either post or email her some of my fantasies about the future, the life we’d have together. I think it probably more appropriate to email those to her rathe than actually post them here, but I can introduce a couple of topics that I’m sure to touch on:

1. Where we’re living, what city, what country, what part of what city, whether apartment or house.
2. I’m really big on interior decoration, so as silly as it is I have details for even the tiniest minutiae of where we ultimately live, floors, carpets, tiles, back splashes, kitchen layouts, bathroom layouts.
3. What we’re doing during the week, our jobs, day jobs, part time jobs.
4. The trips we’d take during the weekend, driving cross country across China, the food we’d eat, the food we’d cook.

This probably covers the broader outline of what it is I will email her. I’ll look over them after they’re written and if appropriate I’ll post here. It’ll be interesting to see if any of these can come to fruition…

I’m also sick…which is really unfortunate. I was off and on sleeping all day in a half daze, unable to do anything really. Quite miserable, so this is all I’m gonna say right now and I’m going back to sleep.

I also realize that I’m not tagging these project posts and just categorizing them even though I guess it may have been appropriate to tag at least some of them whose contents reflected more than just the project…ah well.

Today’s song is “Cecilia” by Simon and Garfunkle.

Surprisingly I’ve managed to record enough songs to last me until Friday. I keep thinking I’ll run out, but browsing rather aimlessly through the internet I keep finding more songs to record. This bodes well.

Today’s song is “She Says” by Howie Day.

Incidentally, I can feel my computer slogging down and down after extensive use. I think I’d like to upgrade my RAM and my HD. These should be relatively inexpensive upgrades and should let me squeeze at least another year of usability out of this laptop. How long’s it been…3 years come January 2011? I should be able to double the RAM to 4 GB and triple the HD to 500 GB. That’ll last me. But then I’ll need a larger external for my Time Machine backups. Hmmm…

[Edit]

Great…apparently I can install at most 3 GB of RAM…who the allows and optimizes for dual channel RAM but then requires un-matched pairs to achieve the max. memory?

The reason I’m late though was because I was sleeping. This will be Saturday night, when I went to sleep decently late, but not very late; I’m trying to get onto a normal schedule you know. But I was woken very rudely Sunday morning by the sun as I’d forgotten to close the drapes and Maria was sending me a message on the computer anyway so I figured I’d talk to her, and talk to her I did, at length, and the entire notion of getting any more sleep was forgotten, until I got off the computer talking with her at which point I closed the drapes and was about to embrace once again the comforts of sleep when there came a knocking at the front door.

I’d forgotten, but people were coming to install new drapes in the upstairs bedroom for my mother. I threw on some clothes, and half an hour later they were done though they tried to get money out of me. I told them, no, take it up with my mother. I was about to go back to sleep again when there came a ringing from my cell phone, it was my father, and when I answered he was all out of sorts and very frantic.

Apparently he’d locked himself out of his new apartment, was on his way to my grandparent’s place for lunch, but needed both his keys and some very important documents that were in his locked apartment delivered the keys to him and the documents to some poor sap waiting in the sun on the street. Since I was the only one with another set of keys, it fell to me to accomplish this. So off I go, jumping in a cab, and heading over. Finding what my father needed was easy, as was finding the guy to give the documents to, and when I had done what was asked of me I was once again looking forward to coming home and going to sleep when the guy who received the documents indicated that they were not complete, that my father had forgotten to sign them, so off I went to find my father to get him to sign the documents so that I can give them back to this guy.

My father was at my grandmother’s, close enough to where I was, but when it became known that I was going over there anyways to get his signature, along came the obligatory “stay for lunch” invitation, and apparently my cousin and his wife were there also, so how could I refuse, who cares if I wasn’t hungry and just really tired and wanting to go home. So I got his signature, gave it to the guy, said a grateful goodbye to the guy, and went back to my grandparent’s place and stayed for lunch, which was pleasant, though I was exhausted.

One topic of conversation we touched upon at lunch was exceptionally amusing and along the veins of a conclusion that Maria and I had come up with that they should just leave written Chinese to the scholars and artists and have the normal, everyday Chinese just use English, because people are forgetting how to read and write anyways since most of the reading and writing they do is on the computer now so they don’t have to actually do any of the strokes themselves. Plus, Maria and I often have difficulties distinguishing the subtle difference between two character, and lo and behold, so apparently do the Chinese.

Two brilliant examples came up while at lunch.

1) For a college examination, a student was asked to write an essay on why they should be afraid of ghosts, or something like that. They misread the question (in Chinese) and thought they were asked why they should be afraid of rabbits, and spent the next very confused 2 hours crafting a response on fearsome rabbits.

2) For yet another college examination, a student was asked to do a bit of Chinese to Chinese translation on the topic of some army person returning to their base, or something like that. They misread the block of text (in Chinese again, of course) and thought that the person wasn’t returning to base, but rather to France. The misreading is even more inappropriate when given that the block of text to be translated was historically contextual to a period in time when “France” as we know it didn’t even exist yet so there was no way for this person to have been returning to it.

So take that Chinese as a written language!

And then it was 4pm on Sunday afternoon, and I was just getting home from my impromptu adventures, at which point I quickly sent off an email to Maria and collapsed into bed to wake up, now! 16 hours later :) I’m so proud of myself. But I fully expect that I am now on a normal schedule, because it was 8:15am when I first got up, a very appropriate time, mostly of my own accord though partially because my iPad was ringing off the hook with email notifications. The IFC had sent another mass emailing out to all their peeps and I was getting all the out of office bounce replies to my Inbox. Really annoying actually…

Today’s song is “Say Yes” by Elliott Smith again. I’m gonna have a devil of a time coming up with more songs to record, I’ve already gone through 28 of them!

I worry about them, a lot…I worry they’re too cold or too hot, not eating enough, that their water is fresh enough, that there’s enough water, too much water, enough room for them to move (do they move?). I’m a mess trying to take care of them! I know absolutely NOTHING about turtles, from something as basic as whether or not they can breathe underwater which determines how much water I put in their bowl and whether the rocks are protruding enough out of the water surface…Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I’m not going to write much more, though a few blog updates. I changed the blog description, and I finally made an “About” page, or more precisely, I updated the “About” page as it existed before but had just what the initial WordPress install put in it as content show casing the Pages system. Not that interesting I’m sure, but something new.

I also had my brief phone interview, which I think went well. I spoke with a lovely girl from the Guggenheim and we agreed to touch base again next week. Of course, I’m not holding out hope as things haven’t always panned out this past year or so, but still, here’s hoping. It would be nice to be in New York again.

The goldfish also keeps making noise in its bowl. I wonder if it doesn’t have enough room so is shaking around unintentionally, or maybe it’s trying to escape! I hope it doesn’t try to escape…it’ll be very disconcerting to hear a weird, wet, splat on the tiled floor in the middle of the night to find it’s an escaped goldfish…

Today’s song is by Elliott Smith again, and is “Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands.”

But finally they did come and go, and measurements were had, and I went and met with Cary for a few hours in a hotel lobby of all places that’s adjacent to his office building. I realized as I was leaving after we had finished that I hadn’t formally negotiated the next chunk of payment I’d like to get from him. I will have to send off an email and rectify this situation, as it’s near the end of the month, and I’d like my measly pittance.

Also, over a month ago, I had applied to some jobs in NYC because there were great uncertainties about where I should be, and there still are. It was a fun sounding PHP Programmer position at the Guggenheim, and I figured why not. I think I was mass emailing job vacancies at that point. Well lo and behold, I actually got a response yesterday, and they’d like to at least have a preliminary chat on the phone, so I’ve arranged to speak with them at 3:30PM Eastern time, meaning 3:30AM my time, which is actually why I’m going to go to sleep real soon, though I haven’t decided if I want food yet as I’ve not eaten all day. But I’ve ingested lots of liquids.

I’m also moved back into the downstairs bedroom, for good this time, at least until my mother leaves. I finally have a room, a bed, and a desk again. I also find myself now the caretaker of 1 goldfish for the other had already died, and 2 turtles, and I admit myself at a complete and utter loss as to how to take care of turtles. Simple questions like, can they breathe underwater? I need to know how much water to put in the big bowl…

I also did some recording today, enough to last me until Sunday night, after which I will need to record at least 4 more songs to tide me over until my mother leaves and my privacy is secured. I think I’ll take care of those tomorrow. I actually have surprisingly little on my plate at the moment. I took care of what I needed to with Cary, my mother and relatives are gone to visit even more relatives, the IFC web work is put off until next Friday, and I’m alone. Hmmmmm…I think I’ll look up my father, see how he is, see if there is any good news on those fronts for us.

Today’s song is by Elliott Smith, and is called “Baby Britain.” I was on an Elliott Smith kick so the next 2 songs are also his. It’s kind of hard though, to find non-weepy Smith songs, not that I don’t like those, but I don’t think they’re appropriate to record for my Maria.

I do have to do some work for Cary though who wants me to show up at his office at 10AM tomorrow morning…I wonder what’s up. He sent us a fancy timeline of things he’d like to roll out and it feels more and more like my role will soon no longer exist. Hmmm…well this was supposed to be a one off thing in the first place, and it’s extended into its third month so I guess you take what you can get. Plus, I wouldn’t take the pay he’s giving me if this were a permanent thing so I guess it’ll come to its natural conclusion soon.

My sleeping schedule is incidentally a wreck. I’m half nocturnal/half diurnal at the moment sleeping usually around 4AM and getting up around noon. I should really fix that huh. I think tomorrow may be the day when it gets fixed whether I want it to or not because I need to get up early to send my mother off to the train station, then I need to head over to Cary’s place. Even if I don’t sleep tonight until very late, or at all, I’m probably booked solid tomorrow well into the late afternoon at least and I’m sure I can come up with some things to occupy my time until evening and throw my sleeping schedule back on course. I still sort of have a headache though…and China is really warm and humid at the moment, uncomfortably so, 85 and like 100% humidity right now at 9PM even. Unbearable. I took a walk to buy some more electricity and was just exhausted by the time I got back. We also ate dinner at the dumpling restaurant down the street and made the mistake of sitting outside. This was definitely one of those evenings where the cool of the air conditioned interior outweighed whatever people watching benefits were to be had.

My father is incidentally heading back into town late this evening. I guess he extended his trip a good bit, but this means that I should be able to speak with him relatively soon and maybe have some good news for all. We still need a chunk of RMB before we’re able to pay for Maria’s tuition in full; I think the money Cary’s paying me at the end of the month should be able to cover about half of that, so the rest we should be able to throw together relatively easily. Here’s to hoping everything gets together!

I’m late in posting this, and it’s really late in the middle of the night because I was working well past 2AM with my choir director on IFC web stuff. We spent like 6 hours on it total. The good news is that I got treated to a nice Italian dinner and we drank through a bottle of wine while working. The bad news is that this is out of the kindness and generosity of my heart, of which there are apparently no bounds ;)

I’m not going to write too much because I still have a headache like last night. I slept very fitfully, spent the entire day half asleep/half awake hiding in the darkened upstairs with the curtains drawn because I just couldn’t quite face anything all day. I did manage to drag myself out of bed though for my meeting with my choir director, but aside from that it was quite an unproductive day of general suffering on a couch. I also hurt my thumb breaking a nail and am typing really oddly on it trying to avoid the right hand corner of the nail as best as possible so I’m kinda gimpy when I hit the space bar…I hope to rectify these situations as soon as possible, but that does involve me not writing too much and getting to bed!

Tomorrow I’ve been tapped to do a multitude of web work for three different parties no less, only one of which is actually paying me, and a minimal amount at that. And none of these are simple run of the mill projects. One is my father’s now massive and multitudinal enterprise consulting website plus sister sites plus children sites, in multiple languages no less using frameworks I’ve developed myself, another is Cary’s electronic medical record site, which again, is massive and using a homegrown framework, and the other are the IFC sites, of which apparently there are also lots, and this one I anticipate the main sticking point being that it’s someone else’s framework, or more precisely Joomla, but developed by someone else and I’m just here to hack my way through it and make changes. Sigh, when will I get paid?

I’m also still without a proper job, without a proper visa, without a proper apartment, and the love of my life is out of town and will still be for a month. Plus my mother’s in town, and staying with me…

Either way, life goes on, one day at a time, blah blah blah put one foot in front of the other and charge forward with a smile on your face :), which I do have at the moment, despite the headache.

Today’s song is Miss You Love by Silverchair.