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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1) Smartphones in China:

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

2) No wireless on campus:

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

3) Visa woes, still:

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

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

Bah.

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

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

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

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

5) Still sick:

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

6) Non-complaints:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Maria has been invited to interview with both BiMBA and Tsinghua! I take this as a very good sign. She’s also basically finished with her Chinese Government scholarship application; those will go out to the States tomorrow. Since she started working on them there have been additions apparently for which she is also qualified so she may compile the necessary documents for those as well. Given our liking of Hong Kong, more on that later, I think she’s also going to apply to CEIBS, an international MBA program based out of Shanghai; much more expensive than the others, much more heavily focused on the finance side of things, much more recognizable to foreigners though less prestigious to the Chinese, but it couldn’t hurt to apply. She is also thinking of going into business with my father, though I think the “thinking of” is a little outdated since my father’s already added her to his business’ website and printed her new business cards for the new company. She is a “General Partner/Legal Associate” for a new portfolio company my father is starting to hold the myriad of other businesses he’s involved with. More details later, or not, if I’m not at liberty to say. All in all though, things sound very exciting for Maria. She’s also going back to the States around the end of April to see her parents, her sister, her nephews, and run her face marathon in Cincinnati, which, sadly, I will miss. But I will be cheering her on from over here, and eagerly awaiting her next marathon in October, the Beijing Marathon.

As far as myself goes, not much has happened. I’ve fully stepped back as full time manager of the restaurant, which is a good thing. When we left for Hong Kong, everything at the restaurant functioned smoothly as far as I’m aware so I’ll take this as a good sign that they don’t need me there every day so I can instead manage from afar and direct through my two supervisors I’ve promoted. Basically, I took one cook and one waitstaff and gave them more responsibility and money so that they can implement my policies and oversee the other employees. I will then direct the overall direction and come up with strategy and have them put them into action. I think this is the best way to handle it. Though I must say the whole process of having David and Yang Zhi exit the business and finding new partners is a total pain in the ass! Remind me never to do business with family. Oh, right, I still am, and am still planning to. Huh. But that brings up the complete and utter mess that is Chinese business bureaucracy. So I have checks that I can write on behalf of the company, and it pulls money out of the company’s bank account. These checks are individually numbered, have a stub, are in triplicate, and when I write one, I need to fill out a special check writing receipt, also in triplicate, fill out a special check writing ledger, and fill out a general money paid out receipt indicating it was by check, also in triplicate, and this receipt I have to fill out whenever I pay money out regardless also. I also have three “stamps” or “seals” or “chops,” each one for a different thing, one of which is used whenever I write a check by the way. The others are used whenever I issue a receipt to a customer, and the last one is whenever the company engages in business with another business through a contract. We’re talking old school, stamp it on a red ink pad first kind of seals, like in the yea olden days. I also have another ledger that I’m supposed to use to indicate money paid in and money paid out every day. I have another ledger that’s for keeping track of money in my bank account, which, by the way, I’ve never had to keep such records by hand ever since I’ve had a bank account, that’s what computers are for right? I will also soon have a specially designed printer that’s meant to only print receipts, and this will cost thousands of RMB and come equipped with a USB dongle that I need to give to the local tax bureau at the end of the month for proper accounting. That’s just a small sliver I’m afraid of the paperwork that now surrounds me.

Also regarding paperwork, our work visas may finally come trough. This last trip to Hong Kong was to get us on our third entry into the country, and this may be the last time we need to do such a thing. The only things missing from the work visa application were some work verification documents I needed and have thus obtained. The entire packet should get submitted relatively soon and with any luck, come this next time when Maria goes home to run and I go home and we go attend Miguel’s wedding, we’ll be coming back on our work visas and won’t have to leave for a year at a time, though of course we can leave if we like for vacations and such.

Hong Kong was great. We wanted to take some more time and actually make this visa trip into a vacation, so we were there for four days and three nights. We found a nice hotel in a nice part of town, though it wasn’t as nice as we thought it would be. First, the beds were hard. It’s my theory that all Asian beds are hard because the Seoul beds were hard, all Chinese beds are hard, and now Hong Kong beds are hard; I think a pattern is emerging. Second, there was no free internet, which is quite inexcusable considering we could get free internet in the subway stations. Third, the power adapter they provided us sucked! I had to jiggle it this way and that before it’ll work and when it did, it needed to be propped so that it wouldn’t wiggle back to a resting position and NOT work anymore. I ended up putting it on top of our suitcase and holding in place with a pair of pants.

Hong Kong was also humid, in March. Wow. I can’t imagine what it must be like over the summer. But it was warm, which was a nice change, but it reinforced my dislike for humidity. I think I just don’t like sweating. The food was very good though, and we took this opportunity to indulge in some good old fashioned Western food which isn’t available in Beijing. First, we gorged on Mexican food. We ordered a bucket (red six) of beers, nachos, chicken wings, a chimichanga, and two enchiladas and were stuffed! Next we gorged on Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. Yes. From the movie. This was on top of the Peak by the way, the highest point in the city with an utterly breathtaking view of the harbor and skyline. Apparently, if we paid 25 HKD more we could have gotten the unobstructed view, but I found it difficult to justify paying money for a view. The ride up to the peak was quite eventful as well: it was a funicular, and at times the grade was over 45 degrees steep.

Hong Kong itself is a city built in levels, with the world’s longest escalator connecting two of them. Lots of fun by the way. It’s very dense, and very tall. It reminded me of LA, San Francisco, and New York, all the cities I love. San Francisco for its hilliness, LA for it’s views of buildings when you’re in the midst of them, and NYC for the sheer verticality and density of it all, plus the mixture of the old and the new living side by side. If you add all these together, you would technically have the perfect place for me to live. It’s even cheaper than those three cities. But it’s humid! And there’s a monsoon season! NYC is also humid, but only for certain, specific, and short times in the year. For instance, NYC is not currently humid. Hong Kong is! All that aside, it was a beautiful place, and we got to hang out with some random Americans I met in my restaurant and struck up an acquaintance with. Very nice people, but very young; I just realized that I’m turning 27 this year, and the guy we went to visit, his younger sister was in town and she is a whole decade younger than I. We also hung out with his girlfriend and their friend from Australia. Good times.

I’ve kind of forgotten what else I wanted to say. I’m hoping to also churn out two more blog entries tonight as part of my writing project. I’m also a little unable to sleep.

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 VSM 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…?

But, like the title says, it means we’re off to Seoul, again, tomorrow, for even less time than last; we leave Thursday, come back Friday. The tightness of the travel schedule had originally been to accommodate an activity the IFC was going to participate in. They had been asked to perform on Beijing TV, nationally broadcast no less, but the BTV people wanted a large showing of foreigners, and what with it being the holiday season and all the IFC just couldn’t scrounge up enough singers, though of course I signed up since I have no life and no reason to leave, though I kind of do actually; it’ll be nice to get to go to Bangkok. Either way, they cancelled on me last week, after I’d already gotten our airplane tickets, so what can you do.

Since we’ve been there before though, we’re kind of nixing the whole “tourist in Korea” thing and opted to stay in a hotel real close to the airport and will just camp there. It should be fine; Maria managed to find a very nice looking place for a good price. Hopefully we won’t have to run this whole gamut again, and the only thing we’ll have to do is leave the country so we can enter on our working visas. Though that in and of itself may be difficult as the process seems to be, as mentioned before, much more difficult than before, and we will most likely need to return to the States of all places to get it.

So it used to be easy, very easy. There’s a whole long list of things you need to apply for one, ranging from a translated resume, a translated offer letter, and the offer letter needs to be for a “fancy” position signed by a “fancy” executive of the company inviting you. Oh, your resume needs to be “fancy” too so it seems justified that your skills are needed. All these things in the past used to just be for show but apparently someone actually looks at it nowadays. They want our ORIGINAL college degrees (pain in the ass), and they need actual signed work verification letters from EVERY employer on your resume. Can’t be emailed, can’t be faxed, can’t be copied; needs to be the actual damned thing. So we’re left in the position where ok, I’ve a lot of employers on my resume so that it can be “fancy,” but I don’t want to track down all of them and ask them for this silly work verification letter. Sigh. On top of all this there’s a health inspection that we needed to have done, and have; thankfully that was relatively painless, and it’s convenient to know we’re healthy, though it was expensive for just a sheet of paper. And they really go over board with the health inspection! They took lots of blood, did an EKG, did an ultrasound, took an x-ray, checked your hearing, vision, general physical health. Sigh, again. It’s in process is the point. A long process.

Ugh and it’s gonna be so expensive to have to leave the country this many times! There’s Miguel’s wedding, there’s Kelly’s wedding, and some time between the two there’s the last time we have to leave the country back to the States to get our working visas. It’s actually I just don’t want to go to the States heh. And I’m sick again damnit. This city has been very cold lately, so business also sucks. Heh and I haven’t had time to blog so I’m doing it now.

Business is actually alright. It’s surprising but for a restaurant in China to be profitable it just needs to make 1500RMB a day. That’s just over 200$. It sounds small, but when you’re only charging 30RMB per dish, you’d need to serve 50 people at least, per day, which given how cold it is, is no mean feat. Ah either way.

1) Everything’s expensive there, basically the same price as in the US, but in won, which makes everything looks horribly expensive because it’s just about 1,000 times more worthless than the dollar. So a can of pop will set you back 1,000 won…

2) Hotels, transportation, entrance fares, etc., i guess this means durable goods and services, cost the same as the US. Our hotel was 135,000 won a night and it wasn’t that good. Food’s thankfully cheaper, especially the good Korean food, with lots of yummy sides!

3) It is quite a short flight from China, so if you really need to sort out your tourist visa and get in on your next entry, it’s not a bad choice, though, as mentioned, expensive. It only takes like two hours, and there’s good public transportation from the Seoul airport. But it’s far! ICN, the new one, the only international one, is 75 km away from Seoul. It takes an hour and a half by public transportation bus, probably longer by subway (we didn’t want to try it), and supposedly an hour by taxi, but that’ll set you back 100,000 won, or 100 dollars.

4) Do take the subway to try to get around. The maps are convoluted, they actually try to draw the lines to scale and have every little turn show up, but they go everywhere, are quick, inexpensive, and relatively frequent, though not as frequent as Beijing’s. Seriously, the maps suck; they’re dense, they’re angular, and one map doesn’t look the same as the next so there’s no consistency and where a station was on one isn’t where it is on another. It’s just all wrong. And the colors all look the same to me…

Seoul Subway map v1 of infinity

Seoul Subway map v2 of infinity

Otherwise the subways are more than sufficient as a means of getting around; certainly better than LA’s ;)

5) They do all sort of speak English, sorta, kinda, not really. I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of going to an Asian country that I don’t speak the language in, this is why. It’s like, there’s lots of good looking street food, but I can’t ask if it’s vegetarian for Maria to eat. The good news is that the language is not tonal like Chinese, so you can read and pronounce it as it looks when written in English. The written language also looks pretty good; I think Maria and I had figured out some of the underlying patterns by the time we left.

6) We were able to get street food though, and very good ones: baked goods shaped like a fish with sweet red bean paste in it. The lady was making them on this huge, rotating waffle iron type machine with fish molds on it. We had been walking around for a while that night actually, looking for street food, unwilling and not ready to call it a night without more dessert.

7) In China, anyone staying the night has to register within 24 hours with the local police department; tell them you’re here, where you’re staying, give them a photo, etc. These usually last for as long as your visa allows you to stay in the country. So like good little foreigners, we had registered immediately when we first got there, and like good little foreigners, we had left the country before both our visa and police registration had expired. We assumed that this meant we had some leeway on the whole “24 hours, must be registered” thing, because technically our previous registration hadn’t expired. NOT TRUE! Apparently, it’s whenever you enter the country, you have 24 hours to present yourself to the local police department. Not that anyone gave us trouble with it since we were a full day late, but, well, I can see problems arising.

8) As far as personal updates go:

a) My IFC concert has been postponed due to difficulties in getting the required government approval to sing Handle’s Messiah
b) Renovations at my apartment may finally finish, next week; there’s light at the end of that tunnel
c) I’m not sure I want to work for my father anymore…but that’s a much more complicated matter that I’m not sure I want to touch upon here
d) My great uncle passed away Monday morning. He’s the first of my relatives to pass away for me, and the first funeral that I will be attending this coming Sunday morning
e) As great as this apartment is that I’m staying in, I’m not sure I want to any more either, considering that at some point my mother and her entire family will show up, and most likely for a lengthy period of time.
f) I am still sick. Blah.

We were originally supposed to have switched to working visas (“Z”) by now already, but somewhere along the processing line, the ball was dropped and we’ll have to start that process over. Once that’s done though, we should be able to stay in the country for a year at a time, maybe even two depending on how we do the renewal. But that will have to wait.

We were going to try to extend our tourist visas. The longest you can stay in the country on one of those is 90 days, and we’ve only been here for 60. I went down to the local visa issuing bureau, another one of those monolithic buildings in architectural praise of the all mighty power of bureaucracy, and, if I gave them a good reason why I wanted to stay, they’d let me, for another 30 days. The problem with extending it though is that it will void my current multiple entry visa. I think something along the lines of you’re only allowed to hold one visa into the country at a time, and the extension will count as a brand new 30 day tourist visa. Now we don’t want to lose our multiple entries, because it’s convenient. Plus, on top of voiding our current visas, we need to have a domestic bank account, in our name, with $3000.00 on deposit, each. Granted we need domestic bank accounts in our name anyways, but there’s just not enough time to process all of this! And I have to wonder, what tourist would have a local bank account, in their name, and that much cash when you can just use any ATM to get money from your US accounts?

The other option was to get an “F” visa, which is for foreigners coming with intent to find a job, which lasts for six months. That’s its own bureaucratic nightmare, needing certified letters of invitation from a company, etc. The grand plan had been to take a 24 hour train down to Hong Kong, which counts as leaving the country for some reason, trying to apply and get an “F” visa while there, and failing that, just come back into the country on our next “L” visa entry.

Then we were thinking of flying down, because we don’t have enough time to devote 48 hours to travel.

Then the “F” visa option was starting to sound stupid and not worth it, and my father assures me he’ll have our “Z” visas squared away as soon as possible.

So now, we’re going to Korea! Woot? I’ve never been there, never had any plans to go there, know nothing about how to get there, what to do when we’re there, etc. But we did get a really good price on the airplane tickets. Unfortunately we were unable to book a flight there and back on the same day (it’s only a two hour flight to Seoul) due to the last minute nature of our booking. So we get two days and two nights in Korea. Again, woot?

To sum up then:
“F” visa: stupid.
“Z” visa: get it ASAP!
“L” visa: multiple entries, good, losing said multiple entries for an extension, bad.

It’s my fault, really. I should have been better on top of what was going on with our working visa process. Ah well. It’s actually a horrible time for me to be leaving the country right now. My restaurant’s renovation is nearing completion, so is my apartment’s, hopefully, I have two concerts to give within the next two weeks, and it’s my birthday. Ah well. It’ll be sorted. At least it’ll be a mini-adventure to Korea!

Edit: apparently Obama’s also visiting Seoul…….??????