Good Morning America

Good Morning America.

It's 11:43 at night and I just finished my Chinese homework. Today is Wednesday, and I spent the bulk of my day at my internship, from slightly after 10 when I arrived until after 6. It's fun to be in the middle of projects, doing real work that people get paid to do, but it sucks not getting paid to do it. And it can get boring and repetitive. My boss Jason is trying to keep me entertained. He told me he'd have me talk to an Italian restaurant boss who speaks bad English in the afternoon but that never happened. Part of what is so tiring though is the 40 minutes or more it takes to ride the taxi in and out through logjam traffic, which is still much better than the hour and a half I was doing commuting by metro before.

When I got back to my room me and Joker ordered some mapodofu and kung pao chicken from 川香馆, I watched some South Park, listened to Infected Mushroom, enjoyed the comforts of home from afar. Joker got his Xbox about a week ago, shipped from home, and he's been playing all sorts of games 24/7. He's a Grand Theft Auto addict. He's also been playing Left for Dead, Call of Duty, and all such hack slash and shoot games. I've been playing him in Street Fighter 4. I'm always the Japanese sumo wrestler named Honda cause he's kickass. I promised I would introduce Joker to Fallout 3. It was...wait guess...5 kuai! That's less than a dollar. For a $50 game. The Chinese are ripoff artists, and I love it.

I've been on a crazy schedule, and though I could continue I've more or less decided to drop my Thursday class. I need the afternoon tomorrow to start making phone calls for internships, which I've been meaning to do since Monday. It's a little unfortunate cause I like the class, but having a class or internship for 6+ hours every weekday is too much, and the workload is sure to increase.

This weekend we have an organized class trip to some "culturally relevant" places around Shanghai that aren't extremely well known: Shaoxing, Xinchang, and Hengdian. Five of the 39 Chinese roommates we selected by ballot to join us Americans, and Joker apparently just missed out, coming in sixth. Its probably because we sit in our room every day playing Xbox. Or maybe its because he's a sexual deviant and the devil incarnate, both of which are completely true.

As the semester proceeds and midterms approach, I'm getting excited for the Hong Kong trip. We'll be going to Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and Macao, all within a week. Leaving America on December 21st of last year seems like forever ago. And I have nothing but warm memories of my time in Hong Kong. Those Chinese people can speak English and have manners, and still everything is cheap--though not quite as cheap as here. Shanghai is amazing too, but its part of China, and the vibe is completely different in Hong Kong. Here everything is delayed gratification. Play is for the foreigners, the students, who flood enormous club dance floors. It's all about the future here, even for me. Hong Kong is (still) the now. Come earlier April, I'm there, perhaps hanging with Gary and Chris at a local bar shelling peanuts and downing Hoegaarden like just three long months ago.

I serially miss people from home. No use in naming names, because I'll inevitably leave people out. But the things you learn from people stand out more clearly when you have to create a new life on your own. No doubt a lot of people have taught me a lot of things. And there are people here I'm learning from too, which to my mind is absolutely incredible, and I count myself lucky.

Thinking about this blog, it occurred to me during a shit break I just took how unusually frank I am when writing stuff down. In fact, I don't think I have much to relate, nor many people interested in hearing it. I set up this blog to keep in touch and communicate with people back home, but I don't hear back very often. I can't post pictures. And to post anything at all I must climb the Chinese Firewall. But it can be therapeutic to verbalize a string of thoughts in text, even without anyone on the other end, and I'm betting I'll be looking back someday at my entries from the comfort of my warm room, when "China" is just a 6-month linguistic, cultural, and experiential impression on my mind.

From China, this is the Italian explorer signing off.