Last I wrote we were still in China. We had just finished packing up and shipping 8 boxes to Maria’s parents house in Ohio. Not all too much happened after that. We finished packing into suitcases, cleaned the apartment up as best as we could, left a whole bunch of empty suitcases, chocolates, posters, and maps for my father to deal with, closed our Chinese cell phone and internet and apartment telephone accounts, gave my cousin free reign to root through our pantry and kitchen for any leftover non-perishables we had left like flats of coke and sprite and diet coke left over from the party, and were hauled by said cousin also in the middle of the night in his Nissan versa hatch back that luckily fit all our luggage because we ended up being one piece over anyways to the Beijing Capital airport for our flight back to our home, the good old US of A, quite possibly in the end, the best place to live in the world. And this is sort of a rant here but I’ve been reading many articles online touting the possibilities and progressiveness of countries in Africa and Asia and how they’re the next frontier for science and technology because they don’t have the vestiges of old industry and commerce in place already so it’s easier and quicker for them to innovate and it’ll be better for all of us if the States would just be more like them but you know, those columnist tools don’t have a clue what they’re talking about and it’s so obvious they’ve never lived or even set foot in these countries that they speak of so fondly and that if they had spent any decent amount of time in these countries they’d know that well, it’s just not true, and the States is just, for all its faults and there are many, better. Let’s leave it at that.

The flight was painless, despite the blizzards that were happening across the Northeast, and after a relaxing layover after much careful scrutiny of my computer parts and electronics filled carry on by the TSA we landed very much on time indeed in Toledo, barely minutes before Maria’s parents arrived to pick us up in the van we will soon, and have as I write, inherit. And I realized that I’m not entirely in control of who reads this blog and all and that some of these faceless masses out there may actually include my parents perish the thought, but though I had the option I didn’t want to go back to LA and spend the holidays there. It was so nice being in Ohio. In no particular order, here is what we did:

• Visited my Emily in Cleveland and had lunch at a Irish pub, went to the Cleveland Museum of Art, and had coffee at one of the local hippie chain coffeeshops.
• Ate at Wilson’s (the Findlay burger joint that all the local politicians go to for photo ops), ate at Olive Garden with Maria’s Sarah, ate at Cracker Barrel with Maria’s Sarah and family (still my favorite country restaurant that’s distressingly absent from both the Eastern and Pacific timezones), ate at Mendoza’s (a wonderful hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant that’s apparently been there since Maria was in high school though she never knew about it), ate at Marie’s (a breakfast and lunch only place with wonderful skillets), ate at Dietz’s (I think I spelled that right but they have marshmallow topping for their ice cream), ate fancy pizza with Maria’s Sarah again to ring in the New Year, ate at Oller’s (and survived!).
• Walked around town.
• Had a lovely Christmas meal with Maria’s family after picking her grandmother up from Ada (think ONU)
• Decided seriously whether or not it was worth buying an entire, historic building in downtown Findlay (the Finder’s Records building) for 650K negotiable. In the flood zone, yes, empty since the 1960s, yes, in need of extensive renovation, yes, probably flood damaged from 2007, yes, but it’s HUGE and (in my mind) CHEAP! I’m thinking PBL headquarters come 2012 or 2014.
• Visited Maria’s Sarah at the library and decided I need to get a library card one of these days.
• Received lemon bars by mail.
• Saw Tron: Legacy as a matinee at the Carmike.
• And probably many more things that I now forget.

As I mentioned, we spent New Years with Maria’s Sarah, watched the whole TV thing, sent my Emily a text message. It was, in short, a lovely week.

We drove to NYC on January 2, 2011, officially starting this new, probably wonderful, chapter of our lives, and I think I have it in me to finish off and bring everything, in writing, up to date.

As we drove, and it’s a drive I’ve done many times in the past as well though we were thankful that my old GPS Daniel still worked like a charm (but I should update his maps), we listened to Maria’s MCLE, which is a lawyer thing having to do with the requirement that she keep up to date on new changes and issues in the law. Honestly, interesting, surprisingly. We made good time and met with France’s brother Jamey at our current home on East 75th St., lugged everything upstairs into our albeit small but currently exceptionally comfortable studio apartment, then drove the car down to our parking garage located on East 40th St. We got a good deal. Since then, and in no particular order, we’ve:

• Walked the blocks between 40th and 75th St. and 2nd and Madison Ave. countless times as we’ve explored, met with recruiters, took interviews, wandered, etc.
• Signed me up with 2 recruiting agencies who as it turns out are owned by the same parent company so lo and behold was I surprised when I could login to both sites after having only created one account with them but that’s a long paragraph for later, oh and took many interviews with them as well.
• Toured the Harvard Club, which we are eager to join.
• Went to the Costco up at the Stew Leonard in my old stomping grounds to pick up some non-perishable essentials (like Gatorade) and get Maria an eye exam and glasses/contacts prescriptions, got some stuff for my Emily, then did our laundry at good old Greystone Ave. (yeah our current complex doesn’t have a laundry facility).
• Switched us over to a non-contract family plan with T-Mobile and bought Maria a G2 cell phone, and since we don’t have internet you will not believe how much data we’ve been chugging through on the tether, I’m talking gigs…but it’s good to be on proper phone plans again, this whole pay-as-you-go thing is way overrated.
• Bought Maria a new laptop! A giant, 17+ inch Dell (yes, we’re switching back to PC from Mac, and Maria is loving it), and spent much time geting everything installed and copied over and put into place and customized so that it’s usable, and we’re not done yet, still have her iTunes and iPhoto libraries to copy over.
• Scoped out the neighborhood and went on delivery/takeout menu hunts with much success.
• Watched TV (on the computer)
• I’ve been on 5 job interviews with 3 more planned for the next couple of days, and more, and Maria’s been very successful at getting feedback on contract/temporary lawyer work in NYC.
• Maria’s been loving her runs here and is getting back in shape and into her normal running routine, and we even have a half marathon planned in the next 2 weeks! The NYC Half Marathon!
• Given our penchant for walking, we managed to go an entire week without buying a metrocard! At one point I walked over 100 blocks getting from interview to interview before I finally gave in and we’ve ridden it only twice so far. I guess we may not need to get monthly passes just yet.
• And like before, I’m equally sure many more things probably that I’ve just forgotten but there are so many more things in the works like visiting Maria’s Emily up in Boston this weekend and mini golfing. Oh, and can’t wait until Frances is back ’cause we’re gonna do a little house warming party. It’s gonna rock this world.

Things to do though include getting involved in music again, ultimately finding a job and the right apartment for the job (hopefully one with either a balcony, patio, garden, or all of the above so that I can have a fire pit), the continued administration of our business, purchasing a NAS, really getting settled and back in the groove of seeing friends especially and I’m serious when I say I want this to stick.

And this is just a mental note to me so that I don’t forget about it all, but man, these recruiters, these companies, these non-contract jobs, whoo what a riot they are! (hint hint)

Oh and I want to implement a new design for the blog. A new design for the new year. A new design for the new city that we are living in. Expect it soon. And that’s a wrap!

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…)

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.

I suggested to him (after he disposed of some subpar fruit pieces by tossing them to the side of an alley) that he is becoming more Chinese. Putting aside the disputed question of whether he would have utilized the same disposal method in the States, I think he thinks any change in his behavior is a necessary or at least reasonable adaptation.

How Chinese do we want to be? There are clearly many points of life here, even so far, that are superior to life in the States. For one thing, despite my unfamiliarity, metric is more logical and I should get used to it. More importantly, the environment encourages some salubrious habits. One can walk to a store to acquire supplies; produce is cheap, and at least some of it is cheaper than some processed food. I also appreciate that the ready correlation between energy and water use and a bill for it encourages awareness and conservation. (Of course, maybe this is no different from how many people live in the States; but I had a ridiculously inflated flat-fee utility bill, which encouraged me to get my money’s worth.) I’m not expected to maintain a personal automobile, a circumstance I often felt guilty about in the states. I didn’t want to drive a car, didn’t want to worry about it, didn’t want to have to return to my starting point if I took a trip, didn’t want to pollute, would rather get some exercise, would rather be able to drink without determining whether I’d need to go anywhere in the next few hours, and didn’t want to pay insurance (which is clearly a massive, and massively inefficient, scam). Plus, Beijing subway kicks L.A. subway’s ass.

I’m not stressed out. This is good. Of course, had I quit my lawyer job and taken up studenthood in the States, I would likely also be less stressed. It’s certainly cheaper to be a student in Beijing than in L.A. (On the other hand, I must be nuts: I still can hardly say anything to most people, can navigate only in a very limited way, and almost get hit by various motorized vehicles all the friggin’ time.)

But. I’m not such a big fan of everyone spitting in the street all the time. Not a fan of adults peeing in the bushes at the park when there is a public toilet in view, if not within 10 meters. Not a fan of people throwing their trash to the ground, even though in most parts of town it seems that someone else comes along and cleans it up reasonably promptly. I’m getting used to the pushing/shoving/no personal space thing…but I still wish people would form an orderly line so I didn’t feel like I had to push/shove/breathe down the old lady’s neck myself. I wish people would maintain awareness of others using the sidewalk and make some effort not to obstruct others’ movements. I guess what I’m saying is that I’m willing to resist. I have my standards. We’ll see how long that lasts.