The Wandering Monkey

I just dropped off my friend Janet at the airport. She and her husband came out to China during this past week to visit. They stayed with me most of the time except for two days in which they traveled to Beijing for sightseeing. It was very interesting seeing her again. Janet and I met in our first semester of our first year in college. We were both in the engineering calculus, and one day she came up to me and said, 'You know, your turtleneck really matches your eyes..."

We became good friends and kept in contact througout the entire college experience. Very often weeks would go by when we would not see each other, but at any given moment of any day I'd drop in on her or she me. At some points we had a regular group of bar-hoppers who made runs to the industrial-music C-Street bar in Champaign (Tuesday nights only!).

We have not seen each other since shortly after graduation. I sent an email to her when I was still living in San Francisco, preparing to jump out to points unknown. She's done pretty well for herself. She's had some children's books published and runs a literary journal. She and her husband live in a house in the Chicago area.

During her visit, a few interesting things happened. On the first full day, I took them out to the Pudong section of Shanghai, where all of the tall, modern buildings stand. Janet is a avid photographer and took hundreds of shots all during the trip. When we returned to my apartment, I realized I'd left my cell phone and missed four calls, all in quick succession. I tried calling them back, and only one number worked. It was from Shanghai TV, but it was the receptionist and I had no idea who to ask for.

Whoever called me called my dance partner afterwards, and I go the name of the TV show and the person. With this, I called the receptionist again and reached her. They wanted to come to our swing dance class and film it. This would be to play on three stations out here; the Chinese-language Dragon TV, the English-language CCTV 9, and a business program. This last one made me a bit nervous as we're really not a business, just a social club. But it got me to thinking.

I figure the time has come to create a business around swing dancing and promote it here in China. We'd need to create one before the Shanghai Lindy Exchange (which a local paper has dubbed, "SHLX"). So if we're going to make one, might as well do it now and get the paperwork and hassles out of the way. More on all of that later.

So, as I'd said, I just dropped of Janet and her husband at the airport. I'm at my usual Internet Cafe today. They've done a lot of improvements since I first came here. About half of the computers have flat-screen monitors. And they've just re-done the lights and pillars with some new construction. It looks pretty good. I've got about two hours to kill here, maybe less. I should get to the gym today and give myself ample time to prepare for this filming at the dance studio.

It's a little after noon now. The class begins at 6pm. Hopefully the crew shows up! You never know. But I will put in another entry about this later, for sure.

Peace,
-J