textures | tones

i apologize for the lack of capitals in this post, but i’m posting from my ipad and i disabled the auto correct feature because i found it to be less than intuitive about what i actually wanted to type. i also apologize for the general lack of posts on this here blog, but we’ve both been quite busy in one way or the other, more so in the one way for her and the other for me, but what can you do. and i’m mostly posting now because maria asked me to, and thought it might be good for me, and even jokingly said that it’s close to the only way that she’s able to find out what’s going on with the sean. so here goes.

i would like to comment a bit on the odd day to day expenses that occur in th is country. now it is very cheap, unreasonably so even, to eat out, buy groceries, cook, find entertainment, see friends, etc., so that in general, one does not actually need to make a lot to live very well. we buy massive bags worth of fresh produce for less than 30rmb, all the groceries we could want for less than 50rmb, plus fruit and freshly prepared cold chinese salads and we’re looking at no more than the equivalent of 20 dollars and we’re set for at least a week. by some estimate, one only needs a quarter of that to live very comfortably in this country. but then, there’s rent.

now maybe i’m unreasonable, but i have a certain standard that i find hard to give up, especially when it concerns the place that i call home, the bathroom that i do my business in, and the kitchen that i prepare meals for the ones i care about in. you can rent a place very cheaply, no more than 30 dollars a month, but it will be underground, is a literal room, have a shared bathroom with no gauranteed hot water, no gaurantee of windows, and definitely okitchen htough you can bring your own electric stove and many people do. that’s the bottom of the pole.

and then there’s the chinese style apartments which are, for most intents and purposes alright, but shoddy, feeling like they’re falling apart, and they are, with no regard for the common spaces of the buildings meaning you can be on the highest floor and all the lights will be out in the hallways so you’ll feel like you’re living in a cave. and the bathrooms, lord save me from the bathrooms. so that’s like, the middle, wh ich, unfortunately, from a standards point of view, i find difficult to accept.

now i realize this might make me seem like a snob or something, but for the same reason that i never understood why people don’t care about the quality of their hotel rooms while on vacation based on the flimsy pretense that they don’t plan to stay in that that often didn’t and doesn’t make sense to me i mean, you need a place to stay right, some place comfortable because what happens if you’re sick or too drunk you don’t want to passout in a trash heap i can’t come to terms with an apartment that i dread the thougt of taking a shower in, which is most chinese apartments. but that makes up the middle tier as far as quality goes.

then there are those places meant for foreigners to stay in, built from the ground up for them, and are of decent quality. noe i say decent only because even they could use a good bit of work. one common complaint is the abundance of mold on the walls of even the most expensive, and i do mean most expensive as these places can run for close to western prices, of places just still feel like they are falling apart, and they are. but, you can find places that will satisfy my standards, but again, they’re expensive.

which brings us to the point that i find myself in an odd employment state. you see, i’m no longer. the foreigner who’s willing to relocate and work in beijing, i’m the foreigner who’s already here and is looking for a job, with the major difference being that while the former has an allure of self sacrifice, and thus the appropriate compensation to go along with what ever jobs may fall under that category, the latter does not, and will pay close to absolutely nothing for work that in any other country will earn me a decent living. bottom line, i can’t make more than 700 dollars a month doing full time programming work in this god forsaken country. now that isn’t actually bad by chinese standards, and were my only goal to pay for our day to day expenses, i’m golden, but i need to pay for rent, and i need a place that i am comfortable taking a shower in, and that’s where the conflict comes into play, namely i for the moment just, can’t.

and the irony of it all, my father just got a new place in beijing and it meets our standards, and is cheaper by far than anything else out there we’ve found, but is in the wrong part of town, and i think that makes all the difference.

but the plan is to continue searching, both for a job and an apartment, and i think we’re going to venture way the far out of town to a place that’s still subway accessible, and easilly accessible might i add, but hopefully very inexpensive by virtue of it being far away, and we might be lucky out there.

let’s see, other problems that plague the sean. he needs to leave again out of the country by july 15 to get on his last entry into the country. and this will be the last one as his visa expires at the end of august, as in proper expires and he will need to go back to the united states to get a new one, which he really does not want to. for reasons beyond his countrol and knowledge and patience to sort through his working visa still hasn’t come through, and neither had maria’s, but she no longer needs to worry because a) she’s going back to the states anyways and b) she will get a student visa through tsinghua. the sean’s plan though is to get on his last entry, as cheaply as possible, then at the last mi nute switch while in country to a 90 day single entry visa, which he knows he can, so he cwn stay in the country until the end of november by which time hopefully some other, better solution would have presented itself. at the moment he doesn’t care which: his father comes throug, he gets employed elsewhere, or he pays somebody 1000 dollars and they give him the visa in that shady, underhanded, sort of grey area kind of way. it really doesn’t matter.

back to i here, i think. i had also planned on joining maria in the states and nyc for her internship this summer, but the feasibility of it is minimal. the expenses unfortunatly just far outweigh the gain, and if i go, i have to plan on staying, which is a decision i’m not yet ready to make. i definitely want to be here when maria starts her school so if i head back to the states it will be after that so no point making the expense now. startup expenses in general back in the states is also just in general prohibitive so even if i wanted to, maybe the best i can do is go back to los angeles which actually doesn’t sound that appealing. i’m kinda holding out that china will still work out in a bit way and we’ll all make our personal fortunes here and change the world for the better.

which at least there’s still a chance of, and having lost most of my steam for blogging, i will end here by saying that no matter what, the sean is trying to be optimistic, and hey, he hadn’t thought of this but maybe he and maria can get married; that’ll solve his visa problems.

oh and the restaurant is a complete bust incidentally. to summarize in the quickest way possible, there’s been management issues from the get go, the owners no longer like each other, for some reason one half viewed my desire to no longer be their full time employee as a sign that they should exit the business as well so they gave my dad some time to find someone to buy them out, and since it obviously didn’t happen fast enough they’ve been threatening to close down the business and then wanted to buy us out which, well, hey, seemed like quite a good deal actually because we were done with the stupid thing anyway and didn’t want to have anything to do with it and if you’ll listen to my father about it, he’s convinced the entire thing was a conspiracy to get the entire business by the other half owners at a greatly depreciated value by driving me out, driving the restaurant down, then lording over us the fact that they have more money to convince us to sell out to them, but things really came to a head when, afraid that they might steal our business licenses my father put up fake copies on the walls and, lo and behold, the next day they were stolen from us, and then when maria and i went to go check our mail because we’re using the restaurant as our mailing address because it’s convenient we find that they had changed the locks on us and were no longer able to get in, and that they had fired all the staff and closed the restaurant without telling us! what is wrong with these people? they were just in the middle of negotiating how to buy our half our when all of a sudden, chaos. so now maria and i have no place to get our mail which is a) a shame and b) just inconvenient as far as timing goes because we’re expecting her all important actual enrollment confirmation packet from tsinghua which should also have the confirmation that the chinese government is going to pay for all her tuition and housing and give her a monthly stipend to live on in. that was sarcastic by the way, though it’ll be cool if it happened that way, but we are actually waiting for this packet and it’s being sent to the restaurant and we’re not sure how to get it anymore because these people are insane!

…

so here’s to hoping it all comes together, heh, and that those we’ve wronged or disappointed in the past may forgive and move forward with us towards a brighter and better future.

I’ve not had any dreams lately, at least none that I can remember. When I just wake up, and I know I had a really good dream, one full of wonders and fantasy and whatever else makes such things perhaps a bit better than real life, it slips away, much quicker than before, well before I’ve had a chance to write it down. So I mean, it’s an excuse really, but this is why I’ve not written down any dreams lately. Also sometimes they’re just mundane, like the one where I dreamed Maria said one thing to me and it turns out she actually said another or nothing at all, ones that happen after I’ve moved from the bedroom to the couch to continue sleeping so that I can keep her company, albeit unconsciously, probably after the point in the day when one should still be asleep and so perhaps my punishment is boring, normal every day dreams. And maybe it is a punishment; maybe I should pay more attention to real life.

Which lately hasn’t been all that great. Lots have happened actually, and I can’t believe it’s been twenty days since I last posted anything, since anybody last posted anything here. I wonder if it’s possible to get my membership with expat blog revoked? It’s not like I’ve been doing anything horribly expat-y lately, though we did buy a water cooler, and that was an adventure in and of itself.

So Maria had been feeling dehydrated, and so have I frankly, and the water in China is a little dodgy and though you can boil it and clean it of whatever bacteria might be in it, we couldn’t help the film of sediment that formed on our water kettle nor the layer of detritus on the bottom of our water bottle into which we poured our boiled water. This meant we didn’t have much faith in it actually, and have substituted water when thirsty with perhaps not too healthy, sugary others. So we had talked about it a while ago, but the solution was to purchase a water bottle, one of those big ones that you see on the backs of trucks being delivered in the States. I had fond memories of using one the last time I was in China because it provided instant hot water and was a perfect means of re-constituting instant noodles. I only just recently realized, since it’s gotten to be summer and the weather is hot and humid in Beijing, that you can also get instant cold water and so have a nice refreshing beverage whenever called upon. But this was some time ago, the discussion I mean, about getting a big water bottle, so we revisited it recently and decided to actually go forward with it.

So in China, it’s a pretty easy thing to do. Just down our little alley there’s this guy that sells these big jugs of water. They weren’t open that day actually, so it was their loss, but we found another guy selling the exact same thing serendipitously actually on our way to the supermarket. Apparently they’re just everywhere, and they all do basically the same thing, and they all have a guy driving around a three wheeled bicycle that takes these things and delivers them to you. So we go into this little hole in the wall store, filled with big bottles of water, and the guy is very nice in that salesmen-sy kind of way and he lets us sample the water and he explains how it’s the best kind of water there is and he says they’re having a special where if you buy ten bottles they’ll give you two more for free. Whatever. The point though was that it was easy. He had the machines there that provided the instant hot and cold, he had the bottles of water, he had the guy to deliver and install it all, and a quick exchange of money later and we were on our way to fresh water heaven. We’ve a phone number to call whenever we need a new bottle and he’ll send the guy on his way, and he’ll maintain our water machine thingy for a year. Obviously the point’s a little moot since we’re hoping to move by the end of June, but apparently it’s a universal machine, capable of housing and carrying any and all kinds of big water bottles, so we’re good. It’s humming away happily as I write actually, and it breathes; every now and then you’ll hear it gurgling pleasantly. In short, everyone go get a water cooler! Huh…I just remembered that those things are called water coolers…

So that’s the bit of China that’s kind of non-bloggy and kind of expat-y and I hope it justifies my existence in the expat blog directory listing.

Since I last wrote we’ve also attended a friend’s wedding up in San Francisco. We needed to get out of the country anyways to enter on our next visa entry and Maria was running her first marathon in the States, which turned out very well. Fully expect to see some more milestone updates later on but at the moment I’m a little fuzzy on all the dates. But the wedding was nice, I got to see some of my family and Maria got to see an extensive bit of hers. We were apart for two weeks, and it killed me. That was when I was doing the whole nocturnal living thing as evidenced by my previous posts about biking in Beijing in the middle of the night. Not exactly the pinnacle of healthy living here. I’m hoping though for things to regain a semblance of sanity and normalcy soon.

The restaurant is also fast out of my hands, hopefully, I pray. Skipping over all the pertinent details because they’re not mine to disclose, but the headache and stress of having to deal with being in the food service industry may soon be behind me. That does mean I’m still out of a job, and have been for a while, and haven’t been paid by anybody for a really long while, and the whole process has still nevertheless sucked this transitioning out of my hands and will probably suck long after the actual transition takes place, but um, it’s still a load off, and will be even more so of one when I have my high paying power job that lets me live the life of luxury in this town, no sarcasm intended, obviously.

And speaking of jobs, I had the world’s worst interview today, ever. Not only was it for a job that I applied to a very long time ago and so now have absolutely no recollection whatsoever of what it was about, but they had layered themselves in so many different company names an recruiters and go betweens that I had no idea who I was even applying for a job with. It was an hour away by subway, out in the bums of nowhere, though it was really pretty, kind of tropical looking on the ride out due to it raining today, and when I get there I knew immediately it wasn’t going to work but had to still sit through it all, much to my general embarrassment. See, I knew at once that it was a Chinese company, without even a hint of foreign-ness to it. There were no English signs, there were no foreign employees, and you could just feel that tinge of Chinese laziness in the air where they hire a bunch of people with credentials on paper who all they do is the least necessary, if that. I’ll come out and say it now: the majority of Chinese employees try to get away with doing as little as possible. Maria just read somewhere recently that Chinese greed is only outweighed by Chinese laziness, and it’s true. There’s a whole floor of people sitting in cubicles, everyone looking at their own computer screens, all messing on the internet in one way or another, without so much as a word being spoken to anyone, without that sort of collaborative creativity and productivity one feels in US offices. Just with that, I knew I wouldn’t want the job, but apparently they didn’t want me either. Ah the other thing was the actual applications I had to fill out. First, there was a questionnaire and one of the questions was in Chinese; obviously a test of my literacy which I obviously failed. Second, all the boxes to fill in information like “name” or “relation” or “previous employer’s name” where too small; you couldn’t write the English in there even if you wanted to. Obviously meant to accept Chinese characters only, and obviously another count on which I failed. Then there were the questions about HTTP protocol and DNS lookups which I actually just don’t know, so obviously I’m not qualified for the job either but I don’t actually remember because it’s been ages since I first applied and these people put so many buffers between the actual job and me I went in completely blind. So there wasn’t even a real interview. Some guy came out, said thanks for coming out, said I probably wasn’t qualified, asked if I had any questions, and that was it. Hours of my life wasted in what is probably the biggest job interview fail of my life. I’ve been failing a lot really, and it’s kinda putting a crimp in my self esteem.

But the pluses do also exist. I’m doing some freelance programming work which allows me to flex some of my programming muscles. I’m doing some music work for pay as well and that’s always a good thing. There are a few social events on my calendar coming up with people whose company I enjoy, and I at least am very excited by my father’s and Maria’s business opportunities coming right over the horizon. I’m hoping for lots of good things from them.

A bigger short of it though is that I’m not entirely sure I’m happy, but I’m hoping to find what I need to fix that so that I can be, so that this opportunity which has been afforded me and which I have undertaken with Maria, my partner in all of this, will have ultimately been beneficial. Um…so that’s the meaning behind the title, actually. I’d like to enter a process of discovery and more specifically, rediscovery, of all the things in life that I love so that I can share them with the person I love.

So last week was the final week of rehearsals for the IFC before we performed on Saturday. The last week of rehearsals is always at the Children’s Palace (ShaoNianGong), right behind JingShan Park, less than 3km away from my apartment. Unfortunately, rehearsals are at 6:30PM, right when rush hour hits this wonderful city that I live in, and it is IMPOSSIBLE to get there. At worst, the last day of rehearsals that Friday, I spent 1 hour and 45 minutes sitting in the cab, 1 hour of which was below the minimum speed at which the cab is considered “stopped” and I get charged a different rate. I could have walked there and back in less time. This just sort of reinforces what I’ve always known to be true: there is absolutely no reason not to either walk, take the subway, or bike to where you need to go in this city. Obviously walking has its pitfalls; some places are just too far, and the subway doesn’t reach everywhere. So lo and behold, the perfect solution: bicycling.

Apparently bicycle theft is rampant in this city. I’ve heard stories of gangs of thieves who specialize in stealing one particular type of bicycle. Due to this, I decided to go the cheap route when purchasing my bicycle in case it ever got stolen. So I had one of my staff help me and we walked to one of the nearby bicycle shops and there it was, the most beautiful bike I’ve ever seen in my life, for just 170RMB (not really, but it was that cheap). Add a basket and a lock and I evened out at just about 30USD. Very excited to finally own a bicycle and the new possibilities it opens up for me, I decided to bike to my father’s home and visit him and my grandmother who’s out of the hospital now. It’s just about 5 miles each way, and I made it in just over half an hour each way. It was great! So much fun actually, sort of reminiscent of the times I spent biking in New York City.

But then the honeymoon ended, one 10 mile bike ride later: the seat was starting to break, to the point where it was being bent in a very “awkward” way if you know what I mean, with the front pushing precariously upwards…And I’d also noticed that the pedals weren’t spinning very smoothly either; they kind of had a jerky sort of feel to them. But I ignored these problems, since I only paid 30USD for the bike, and put it away for the night in the little courtyard in front of my apartment. I was actually a little bit paranoid, but then once again reminded myself that I only paid 30USD for it.

The next day, today that is, I decided to bike out to the Western Academy of Beijing, which is about 18km away, just over 11 miles. I wanted to see if it was doable and in how long because there’s at least a chance I might be working there doing IT work for them. I make it half way there, the long way incidentally because I got pretty lost on the way, and one of the pedals breaks! Thankfully there’s a bicycle repair guy just at the street corner where I broke down and he fixes it for me but the whole incident kind of spooked me and I decided to just bike home and forget trying to make it out to the school. I still got about 10 miles of biking in, which is good, but the bike quite properly breaking down at just over 15 miles of total riding is a little…pathetic. I talked to the bike repair guy and he said that if I’m doing long distances, the bike I had will not be adequate; it was only meant for short distances.

Well, you live and learn I guess! But that means I’m going to need to buy a new bike later! Next time I get that cheap, somebody slap me.

As far as other updates, as I mentioned I was in a concert this past weekend, one in Beijing and the other in Tianjin. This is the first time I’ve been to Tianjin also; pretty neat city, it’s only like an hour away by car and half an hour by high speed train. It’s also a port city, which Beijing unfortunately isn’t, and on the way out I could smell the sea breeze and that was very refreshing. Being a port city though means that there’s actually a lot of Western influences in the city, maybe even more so than Beijing, especially in the architecture. For instance the concert hall we sang in reminded me very much of a European opera house. All in all the concerts were good, despite how weird the music was, and Maria and her friends like it as well.

Speaking of whom, Maria left this past Monday for the States. She’s going to visit her family and friends and run her first marathon in Cincinnati! I’m really excited for her and wish I could be there, but I’ll be seeing her relatively soon on May 10th when I also go to the States and we both go to attend Miguel’s wedding in San Francisco. It’s pretty convenient because this also allows us to get on the next entry of our Visa, though this is hopefully the last time we have to do this whole Visa renewal thing because our work Visas will be ready by then, fingers crossed. I also hope I have a job waiting for me when I get back…

I’m also going to try out the Chinese Medical System this Sunday! Woot! Not? I don’t know what to expect really, but it’s been over two years since my last physical and I figure it’s time to get one again. I had called some US doctors about taking care of it when I was in the States, but they wanted to charge me 1000USD to do it! I guess I had no idea how expensive these things were because I’ve never done them without insurance before but that’s what happens if you pay out of pocket apparently. So I discussed it with my cousin Michael in China and he suggested this chain of clinics in Beijing called CiMing that specialize in nothing but physical examinations. The prices are great, beyond great. For less than half the price of the US exam I can get so many more procedures done, not that I’d want to. I’m hoping to not have to spend more than 100USD actually to get everything I would’ve gotten in the States and more and thus satisfy my own paranoia about not having had a physical in a while.

Aside from missing Maria quite a bit and not having all too much to do these days, well, since I’ve not that much to do, that’s about all I have to write about for now. I have more I should write down but I’m feeling really lazy and probably a bit depressed, but that’s alright. Things will be better when they’re better.

Hard to believe it’s been a week since I last posted anything, and even longer since I last posted anything of any substantive meaning. The short and only answer you’re getting is that I’ve been feeling a little off, emotionally, and it’s made it difficult to muster up much if any excitement for anything. However, I believe this to be a temporary state of affairs, and I expect that it will soon make it over that proverbial hill and it will be smooth, clear, fine sailing from then on. Maria has been very supportive and for her sake, for our sake, for her support, I will write this entry, and a couple of extra, and introduce a brand new idea into my blogging repertoire as a reward.

The idea being I think I’ll start keeping track of my dreams. It’s really that I run out of or lose interest in the things I’m writing about rather quickly, so I find it best to have multiple things to write about. Of course I am not abandoning my trip down memory lane project, I am simply adding another parallel project, something to help me vent my writing steam so that it doesn’t pent up yet is less restricted in that I have other topics now. So dreams. Plus, many people have suggested I keep track of them, and my dreams are rather brilliant if I do say so myself, and Maria likes them a not, so hey, what the hell.

Also, as a general update, here goes:

1) Maria got in to both business schools she applied to! Yay! She now has a choice :)
2) The restaurant is sucking, business wise, and there are many things moving and shaking within that realm that I’m not currently at liberty to say, but suffice it to say that there are many exciting things about that hopefully just around the corner as well.
3) My concert is next Saturday; hard to believe I’ve only a week or so left to fully learn all the notes; just kidding.
4) Maria leaves for the states in just over ten days :( Booooooooo! Whatever am I supposed to do with myself for two weeks in Beijing, unemployed for the most part no less?
5) Lots and lots of web projects to do, though mostly for free. The Connections restaurant site is up, I’ve made a Document Management System for Maria and my father, and I will soon be revamping and redesigning literally all of my father’s company’s sites, for no pay; again, Boooooooooooo!
6) I’ve also gotten quite wrapped up in the inner machinations of the choir I’m in. At the moment, it’s all volunteer on my part, but I hope to be able to fully insert myself into their circle and ultimately be compensated for my efforts, which thus far has included taking on their ticket sales, to the point of actually going around to people’s homes and tracking them down to give them their ticket and take their money and agreeing to escort around the composers of the piece we’re singing. Not that I don’t do all of this out of the graciousness of my heart, I do enjoy doing it, but my finances are very tight at the moment; though I look forward to being compensated for working with the Youth choir in May, which apparently I will be; I wonder if I can get that to be a full time thing?

Otherwise, life trudges on, the adventure that it most definitely is; my father has become enamored with the iPad, and we’re wondering if we should get one. Both our power cords are dying, and my battery is as well. Hard to believe but my laptop is two and a half years old! Time sure does fly; I wonder if I should get a new laptop…maybe I’ll drool a bit at the new computers that are available, though, and hold your breath, I’m thinking of switching back to a PC!

Maybe Sean is rubbing off on me. Today I feel like treating this forum like a diary. I wrote an entry, but then I deleted it for being overly confessional; I guess this replacement is kind of personal too, though, so maybe that’s just the way of it, today. :)

Either way. I am pleased with Sean’s memory-recording entries; in fact, I think both he and I benefit greatly from his blogging in general. I feel a little guilty taking from him in this way, without giving much back.

I skipped my run yesterday and today; it is raining, and the air is smoggy. Sean and I did a bit of walking (and have been doing so regularly as he’s been available more lately), and when I got home I wanted to do some project organization–and screwing around on the net–and I wanted to drink tea and be warm and dry. We have had a couple of excellent outings lately, seeing Alice in Wonderland at Wangfujing and having our first Chinese sushi experience in the mall there, and I thoroughly enjoyed today’s sushi venture at Sushi Express (we’ll be going back, for sure). I should note that Sean doesn’t eat sushi, and he finds things to eat at these places so I can be happy. Such giving does not run rampant in the general male population, I fear.

Home is still where I get stuff done in China, though. I’m planning a study blog, intended to supplant my diary as a record for my response to things I read, especially about business and about China. I’m also making some effort to organize my study of Chinese and of characters, and to organize information I have about businesses in which I am, however indirectly, involved. I’m also thinking about (and, mostly haphazardly, researching) degrees, schools, and jobs. I’m still throwing around a lot of ideas, and trying not to be too influenced by the opinions of others. In addition, right now I have a lot more information about Tsinghua than BiMBA, and I cannot weigh the programs against each other without correcting the imbalance.

Still, I feel like a lot of effort is reaching its conclusion, and I’m satisfied to be planning for the next segment. Hopefully I’ll hear back from business schools in the next couple of weeks. In an ideal world, I’ll hear something about scholarships, too, but I don’t really expect to until summer (and even then, I need to be really lucky!). These days I need to plan my summer studies, and any business/law projects for the summer as well. I need to buy plane tickets. In April, I’ll go back to the States for a bit. I’m looking forward to executing the next round of plans upon my return to China.

I’m excited about a few different things I’m working on, and I have fantasies about how everything might turn out. I suggested to Sean that we record what we think life might be like a year from today, even in a few different versions. Still, sometimes I feel discouraged. So much is still uncertain, and sometimes I feel like I have little to show for the six months I’ve been in China. I also worry about Sean being happy here. He hasn’t yet secured employment that he likes. I’ve been surprised that not having a steady job hasn’t bothered me lately; I thought it would (admittedly, it did a few months ago, though I really haven’t regretted leaving the firm). Maybe I’ve matured past that point, maybe I worked enough at the firm to make up for a few months of relative idleness, or maybe all this stuff I’ve been messing around with has been an adequate substitute. Possibly the fact that I have a long-term plan has trumped most of my discomfort with lack of a short-term one. I can come up with a dozen more reasons, too, but regardless, my happiness has been much more affected by my worry about Sean.

The other side of town

…or “why I suck at it.”

So it’s quite late, and I’ve been tossing and turning in bed for a good while now. The issue is that I’ve been all of a sudden sick again, and it’s not been that great of an experience. I really do believe it’s due to the sudden changes in the weather and ambient temperature as opposed to any drastically low temperatures in and of itself; I don’t think my bodies knows what to do when things keep changing! It prepares and is ready for it to be warm or cold, but it can’t handle the shift, and so dies, metaphorically.

The point though, is that while I’ve been sick, I’ve been either not very productive at all, or decently productive on some of my web projects. So assuming I spend half my time productive, half of it not, and a good potion of the rest asleep or in a daze, accounting for time to spend with my Maria of course, I should have time left everyday to blog. Right? So why is it that I don’t, and why is it that it’s been nigh on three weeks since anyone’s updated this blog?

I think it has to do with the actual concept of blogging. Before now, as in, literally a couple of minutes ago, I was suffering quite contentedly in bed, unable to sleep, dreading the possibility that I might be disturbing Maria’s rest as well. And my mind was racing. I was thinking about my restaurant’s website (which isn’t up yet), my art website, which is up here, and some new stuff I’m planning to do for my choir, which, obviously, isn’t up either, neither is the West Campus site. Incidentally, this would be the first time I’m plugging my art website…everyone go and look at it! It represents the “best” of Beijing’s urban youth, or so the propaganda page tells me.

West Campus, incidentally, is a school I’m starting in Beijing! It will at first only offer year long intensive Chinese language and culture courses, hopefully starting Fall 2010, but will move on to offer full study abroad options for a liberal arts education, hopefully with a Fall 2011 availability so we can start searching for partner US institutions. Grandiose, no? They also get a website, one to provide information, brochures, contact information, and a way to register online…hmmm…I wonder if I’ll get paid for any of this web work; they’re all decently complicated…

Um…but yes my mind was racing, and I was even mentally ranting to myself, “hmmmm…this would make a good blog post.” So here I am, finally. Partly also due to he fact that I got tired of lying in bed unable to sleep and I wanted to spec. out the requirements for the IFC website.

So what this post will be about then is just a mish-mash of everything’s that’s been going on, with the hopes that it will make some greater sense, and that it will in some small way make up for the lack of anything interesting floating around here. Ah I’ve also modified the layout a bit to have static headers and footers; I’m not sure I like it…

So I think the restaurant’s a good place to start. We’re switching owners. My aunt and uncle, God bless them, are no longer going to be working with us, thank God. This means that we have to find somebody to buy out their 50% stake in the restaurant for $$$K, plus work out some way to repay the $$$K RMB that they “loaned” to the business to cover operational costs. Without going into too much of the details because I’m not entirely sure I’m at liberty to say at the moment, it’s being worked out, and it should be good.

What I am most excited about is the possibility of greater interactions with a local farm that my father is associated with. This should allow us to get good dairy and meat supplies, plus develop new foods like homemade cheese! I’ve been missing cheese in this country, and I have grandiose dreams of being Beijing’s one and only source for freshly made mozzarella. There is also the possibility that we may partner with another good friend of ours and jointly open yet another restaurant in the same complex as Connections. This will be a all vegetarian restaurant, specializing in fresh juices, fruit and vegetable cocktails, and entree size salads, something wholly lacking in this country. This will also entail greater cooperation with the farm as we will need to grow the entree salad vegetables, things like endive, mescalin, arugula, also things either lacking or inconsistent in this country, and which I will even admit to missing. Again, I have grandiose dreams of being Beijing’s one and only source for fresh, home grown, specialty vegetables.

I am also leaving my role as full time manager of the restaurant, mostly because it’s too time consuming. I have faith and confidence in my staff and the training I’ve provided them, and will still be on hand in a very part time manner, perhaps a couple of hours every other day. I’m going to promote on waitstaff and one cook to be my eyes, hands, and ears while I’m away, and they will be responsible in my absence. We’ve been kind of operating this way for the past week, mostly due to circumstance since I was sick, but also due to premeditation because I was just sick of being there 91 hours a week, and things seem quite smooth. Again, I have faith.

The only other thing interesting about the restaurant is that I think I’ve finalized with my choir, the IFC, the option of using Connections as their “home away from home,” or “home base,” the most pertinent bit of which would be the using of it as their ticket distribution hub. I needn’t tell you all the great benefits this entails. I had always wanted a stronger tie between the restaurant and my choir, and this provides it. Part of the reason why I got a piano for the restaurant was so that there can be impromptu rehearsals, sections, or other music related events, open mics, sing alongs, etc. that can happen at the restaurant and involve the choir. If I can be the one and only place to get tickets for our upcoming concerts, then that’s a step in the right direction. The website I’m spec’ing out for them is to give them the ability to handle online ticket sales on their own without using a third party service that charges an obscene service charge per transaction. Plus, it looks like my Epiphany music center idea may come to fruition at some point relatively soon as well, and all these things will work so well together I just know it.

Which is a great segue for that topic! I got Cary, my father’s business partner, interested in Epiphany. I think he’s always been half way interested, though no one’s taken the initiative to develop it really. My father had done some work, and I’ve built off of that to come to where we are now. Again, without going into too much details because I may not be at liberty to say, but it’ll be good, and it’ll be THE place to go for all your classical music needs in the “heart of Beijing” so to speak, or so the propaganda page states ;)

Also since I am no longer going to be the full time manager at the restaurant, I’m relegated myself to the status of “owner,” which means I get paid when the restaurant is profitable, or if and when that is. This means I’ve been on the prowl for a normal job, hopefully something in a programming vein. I had interviewed with and received a very decent job offer from Pixomondo, a visual effects company opening their Beijing office. Unfortunately, the timing had sucked because I was just getting deep into the running of the restaurant so I turned their offer down. Or more, I didn’t respond when they asked me if they could negotiate my offer with me…my defense on this issue is that I was really busy, as I’ve always been, and it was during New Years so things were extra hectic. But yes, I should have gotten back to them no matter what and it’s my bad for not. The point also being then that I feel awkward approaching them again since I sort of brushed them off earlier. I’ve also interviewed with Wokai.org, a micro-financing company. They’re in first round interviews, and they’re supposed to get back to me. And if any of you reading this know of any good PHP Programmer jobs, let me know! I’ve already been thinking about posting to this blog post photos of my new Connections menu, I think I’ll also post my resume. I NEED A JOB!!! PLEASE HELP!!!

Our visas are also expiring, again. This will be our, what, third entry? Haven’t figured out where to leave to yet, but need to soon, we have just under a week left to clear immigration. Part of the other reason a “normal” job sounds appealing is that they should be able to help me sort out my work visa issue. At the moment, the stand still is that VS Media hasn’t gotten back to me yet on my employment verification letter, which is the last thing I need before one round of work visa applications with my father can be filed. They’ve sort of fallen off the face of the earth at the moment, I wonder if they’re alright…But since I’ve stepped back from the restaurant, this next trip promises to be much better, and longer, and more fun, I promise, my dearest Maria. I know I’ve been sucking lately, being sick, being busy, but I promise better times ahead.

Whoo I’m on a roll aren’t I! And real tag happy :)

Regarding Maria, since a lot I’m not at liberty to myself say, I will say that she did very well on the GMAT, finished her MBA applications to Tsinghua and BiMBA, is plowing her way through her Chinese government scholarships, was NOT late for any scholarships at Tsinghua or BiMBA, and has many promising projects coming up involving Chinese lawyer and my father. And that’s all I’ll say.

Let’s upload that menu now shall we? And don’t laugh at the over the top English; it hasn’t been edited yet.

Let’s also get the resume uploaded shall we? Download now

And now I’m feeling a little dehydrated and shaky. I should probably stop now as I think I’ve got most things covered, and those that I haven’t, I’ll try to list out real quick. I also need to upgrade this WordPress install before I’m finished.

1) We’re still looking for an apartment. We’ve had a reprieve because my mother’s not coming until June, but that’s feeling like it’ll be here real soon. We’re playing around with the option of living in the complex that Connections is in because we have so many things going on there (Connections, Epiphany, the new vegetarian restaurant), plus we also want to start our own business so it seems also appropriate, but there’s a lot of logistics involved with that mostly due to the fact that it’s commercial real estate and so is more expensive and lacking a kitchen and plumbing.
2) My best friend from high school’s wedding is coming up in mid-May, so we’ll be both going back to the US around then. Maria’s going to go earlier, see some family, and run her first marathon in Cincinnati! I will, unfortunately, be unable to attend. But this should mean we’ll have exciting things to look forward to come October and the Beijing marathon :)
3) I only need 40 some odd words to get to 2000 at this point, so I’m just stalling and rambling until then. It seems like a nice, round, number, and may very well be the longest blog post we’ve had. I had been toying with the idea of separating this one entry into multiple entries, and just post them all at the same time. But that also felt stupid. Not that this monster of a post isn’t stupid in and of itself, there’s just no lesser evil with those two choices…

Edit:

Already had to correct a couple of typos, and I just realize I never tested the new sites I’m developing in IE, because I don’t have access to IE anymore! I should get around to that huh…?

I’ve come to realize that this whole “pay as you go” schtick might be getting a little out of hand, especially in China. I’m prepaying my cell phone, my internet, my electric bill, my gas bill, my metro card, and if I want satellite TV, I’ll be prepaying that too. As Maria put it, it’s a country with little faith in credit. I mean, how hard can it be for them to TAKE the money from me, instead of making me go and pay them for it? So for the utilities, there’s this card (which I’ve yet to find, it’s in this apartment somewhere…) that I take to the bank or some place and have it filled with some amount of money that translates somehow into a “unit” of usage for the respective utility. Then at the respective utility’s meter in the apartment or building, there’s an indicator that shows how many of these “units” are left and if it’s low, I can swipe my card at it and it’ll refill it.

I know, the original point was for convenience, same with the cell phone (I have to text “YE” to some number to check the balance, then call some other number to refill it using a card I buy from a newspaper stand…?…), but I’m finding it to all just actually be a complete pain! Why can’t I give them my bank account, and they’ll just bill me, like it is in EVERY other civilized country that I’ve been in? I don’t want to have to go out and make sure I fill my cards, of which I’m going to have many, and make sure to swipe it in front of the electric meter or I’ll have my power turned off. Just take my stupid money, please!

So that was the rant against prepaid stuff. Just as a point then, in case anybody is reading this…

Gas and electric utilities are prepaid, you’ll see a meter that indicates how many “units” you have left at the meter. If you’re low, below 200 for electric, I don’t know what for gas, you can swipe your card at it and it’ll refill it. You get this card from I don’t know where, and you refill it at a bank. It was much easier in the States when they just took money out of my checking account.

Cell phones you can buy from any China Mobile store, and you can pick the type of plan you want. There are two kinds of prepaid, plus one that’s more traditional and akin to the contract plans in the states. You refill your prepaid phones using cards you buy from newspaper stands and the likes. There’s a scratch off spot that’ll have a special password code that you enter when you call some number from your phone and this’ll add the balance.

Only locals, meaning people with ID cards, can sign up for telephone and DSL service. There’s a form in triplicate that needs to be filled in, all in Chinese, then you take it to a guy behind a teller and they give you what you want. Since it’s DSL, and DSL only, you’re bandwidth is limited by the type of line that’s in place, and since my current apartment, great though it is, is in a very old part of town, my available speeds are limited by the old lines. Of course, I can shell out to replace the ENTIRE block’s lines, but that’s a whole other can of beans… The real problem with this method of signing up for phone and DSL service is that if you want to make any changes to it, you need to bring along the original person that registered it for you. So when we first got to the apartment, the service had lapsed for some reason because somebody wasn’t paying it for some reason and I had no idea who it was so when I went to the telephone bureau or whatever it was called with my cousin to try to sort it out and get our service reinstated, they couldn’t do anything because we needed the original person who registered it there with us, and of course, we have no idea who that is! Apparently, if we were unlucky, they wouldn’t have been able to set up service without this “person” there. So I spent a harrowing afternoon and much time on the phone trying to track down who the original person was, and if they’d be able to come with me to the telephone bureau to sort things out. Obviously, we were lucky, and that particular branch of bureaucracy decided to ignore the original person. But still, it’s pretty annoying.

And now the phone doesn’t work for some reason even though I’m sure it was working when the people came to install my service and I had originally thought that since there was a slot for batteries and no batteries that getting batteries would fix it but it didn’t and now I have no idea what’s wrong with it and I just want a landline phone because I’m paying for it damnit and it’s free to receive phone calls so it’s cheaper than my cell phone to use if someone’s calling me and now my father thinks it’s the new DSL line that killed it and if that’s the case, then I have no idea what to do…

So the word of the day is…CONVOLUTED!

But as the title says, EVERYTHING’S GOOD!

Everything is actually so very good, it’s absolutely great. It’s been three weeks, and even longer soon and we’ll be celebrating our one month anniversary of moving to China. Impressive how quickly the time has flown.

Perhaps our greatest triumph of recent note is acquisition of cheap produce. And I mean CHEAP. For the equivalent of $1.50, we purchased 3 lbs of bok choy, a bulb of garlic, a huge thing of ginger, one whole leek, 1.5 lbs of spinach, 5 tomatoes, and 1 head of napa cabbage. For the equivalent of 20 cents, we bought a block of fresh tofu. We also got 6 eggs, and two apples, spending in totality less than 3 dollars. And everything’s fresh. We had originally be stymied when it came to purchasing produce because, I suspect, we live so close to the center of town, where it’s very much a tourist part of town, so the usual on the street vendors of vegetables are lacking. So I did some exploration, clued in by some sightings of produce that Maria had this morning on her run, found that what she saw was actually people selling non-edible plants, wandered around randomly some, and came upon this trove of edible greenery, tucked away in some completely out of the way alley.

So that’s part of the everything’s good.

Another part of what’s good, though this may be more neutral in its respects, are all the “businesses” we’re involved in, and the quotes are there to indicate some vacillating on my part in declaring these are viable, things that I want to be involved with businesses, or “head in the clouds” type things that may be best touched with a ten feet stick.

But, to count, we are, I am, Maria may be or is (I’m lumping things together):

1) Becoming part owners of a Western style restaurant, of which I will be the general manager of. This restaurant will need to be renovated and retrofitted from its original inception into an “All Day Breakfast” and “Burgers and Pies” place, with alcohol. I have a plan to make this a 2 million yuan a year business (that’s 300K US) and to have it be self sustaining within a year so that I can move on to more important things, like expanding the restaurant onto the GORGEOUS roof that we have open to us.

2) Creating a online gallery and silent bidding system for the world at large to purchase “Young, Urban, Beijing” original art created by the born in the post 1980s crowd.

3) A good bit of fund raising, apparently…

4) Something to do with Swiss helicopters…?

5) Something to do with proteins…

6) Editing essays and/or teaching Legal English.

Obviously, some of these have more well formulated actual ideas than others. It’s all a lot of fun, but quite busy heh.

Um, but everything is good, and it’s late, and I can’t sleep, but I really should, and my schedule’s all messed up but I intend to fix it, if I have to stay up all night I will fix it. The idea being, I will get up tomorrow, if I sleep, and stay up all day, and I’ll be right as rain again.

Speaking of rain, the weather’s been lovely here! Perfect Fall, actually, something I realize I’ve not seen in a while.

So it’s getting close. So close it’s driving me crazy. There aren’t really that many things left to do, but for me, it’s like the last week doesn’t count because we’re going to head up north for a little vacation, and I work during the week until then and I’m sort of counting those days lost. Plus it’s hot. The LA heat has finally, belatedly, graced us with its presence with a keen ear to the fact that it’s many months late and now must make up for it. But we have a fan. Finally we have a fan.

What’s left are truly the logistics: Visas, plane tickets, insurance policies. Packing’s an obvious one, but I think it’ll all fit. And the unexpected benefit of moving to a place that so many of my family members oft travel between is that should there be anything we need, anything we’ve left, it can be brought over.

We are planning a short vacation though, up to Carmel probably. Sometime during the week when it won’t be crowded; we’ll go to the aquarium. I am also quite convinced that work will implode without me, but that’s between you, me, and the bed post.

We have nearly exhausted the available supplies of travel books related to China and/or Beijing in the local bookstores. I think I’ve mentioned this before but it may be time to seek out online resources, at least online bookstores, though in all fairness it may be a little late for that as well. There are only 3 weeks, 2 days left before we go. I hope Maria can handle the consulate on her own…

She’ll be watching my sister next week, for a few hours during the day. We think it’s a plot by my mother to steal some of her time away alone. I more personally think it’s a ploy for her to see me as well because she knows I’m the kind of person who’ll want to drive Maria; get the girl, get the son. I think I’m wising up to her wily ways, but I’m not entirely sure if there’s anyway around them.

I’m hoping that the imminent implosion of my work will cause them to beg me to work for them remotely. Otherwise, I’m actually worried about getting a job in China. I have to be careful not to fall into the category of “Local Worker” lest I settle for a “Local Wage.” I’m actually feeling kind of useless as far as my skill sets go. And I can’t remember how many people have called us crazy to leave our jobs in this down economy. Maybe we’ll win the lottery and the point will be moot.

We bought one piece of luggage today, and I’m betting we can get one of the three boxes of “Maria clothes that she wants in China but doesn’t need in LA” to fit. I guess these are exciting times I live in. I’m hoping for massive success beyond compare.

So I’m changing the countdown. It had been until September 11th, 2009, which by the way I’ve been horribly off on; apparently it would have been “Countdown: 2 weeks, 5 days,” only 19 days to go, “to go” being until I leave my job at VS Media; I thought it more appropriate to countdown to the day we leave for China, which, barring anything horrendous or tragic, will be September 21st, 2009, ten days later. So 4 weeks, 1 day to go.

And not that anyone would’ve noticed yet, but I’ve transitioned the blog out of Blogger and into my own private domain with a WordPress install. As well as Blogger had been treating me, as a blogging software I actually found it lacking in certain key areas, primarily “post privacy.” Did you know that in Blogger everything’s either published and public, or not at all? Hardly reasonable, especially after discussing our online presence further with Maria, there are just some things that we don’t want all or some people to see. So I stayed up last night much too late getting this up and running. I was also much too tired to code my own layout, and you know, it’s been a while since I’ve poked around the underbelly of WordPress, but they’ve got some pretty nifty new features, so the point is I didn’t want to go through the hassle of dealing with a brand new layout so I just too someone else’s and customized it.

But it’s a much more full featured blogging software; I hope Maria doesn’t have any problems using it. Same as before with the Blogger location, I will be tweaking and updating things as we go; I think a “Contact Form” might be appropriate, or a “Contact Us” page.

There’s not too much to say right now. Tomorrow will be the first day that Maria is out of work and not otherwise occupied with family. I worry that she’ll be bored, or that she’ll run out of things to do. I’m dropping her off at the subway stop near my father’s house, and from there she’s going to go to the Downtown LA YMCA to get a workout, then spend the rest of her day studying for the GMAT, looking over her “Learn Mandarin” book, and other logistical slash administrative stuff. I actually envy her; I’m really quite done and over with work.

And I just noticed that this WordPress isn’t configured properly as far as Timezone goes.

We hashed through a pretty decent financial plan as well, whose details I will tactfully leave out. We also have a pretty decent exit strategy for this country, and though I am impatient, we’re going to stick with it. I’m a little worried about China though, especially after speaking with my father earlier today. He claims he’s just “excited,” but I think he’s worried. He’s not sure if we’ll be able to find jobs in China, and I think he grossly overestimates the benefits of the internet in procuring said jobs. He’s managed to shake my own confidence in our abilities, something he’s fairly good at doing. I suppose that might be considered a positive in some ways; at least he’s giving me, and us, pause, making sure we’ve actually got it all figured out.

I still think the best thing to do is to sort it out once we get there. Our resources will be greater, our feelers better able to reach further and deeper into the under mire of this new world into which we are embarking. I want to stick to our original plan. I’m just so impatient to just leave already! Maria and I did manage to find some websites online, based out of China (by the way, Chinese website are just horrible! It’s like, nothing you’ve ever seen before I assure you), that have some promise in some of the posts they have. It’s got me motivated enough to have updated my resume properly. Ah, and you know, I think this is a good place for a link, something I’ve been promising to do: Have you ever seen such, crowding?