The Wandering Monkey

I'm back in Shanghai.  I've been here about two weeks, and here how it's gone.

 

As soon as I arrived, I realized my home apartment sucked.  After spending a month in America, living in the houses of my friends and relatives, I had re-familiarized myself with the usual ways of life of which I been accustomed. 

 

When I returned, I found my home had no insulation to speak of.  The single-pane windows did not even seal properly, leaving gaps you could easily fit five a stack of five playing cards through.  I was on the 15th floor, and the wind was really significant.  Inside this home, there was the large bedroom, which contained said drafty windows.  There's also the bathroom, and small eating area, and a kitchen.  In the entire setup, there was only one heater, and I found out that it's 'heating' function didn't work.

 

Furthermore, the other aspects of the place became more highlighted: front door did not close unless you pulled it shut five or six times.  The hot water in the would not run in the bathroom unless you ran hot water in the kitchen sink at the same time.  The elevators to get up to this luxury apartment stopped working around midnight.  In order to get up after that time, you had to ring a bell and wake up one of the Chinese old ladies who worked the elevators.  (This makes for an interesting footnote.  In some old buildings, they have an operator pressing the buttons.  A woman, usually, and old, usually, sits in the elevator all day long and presses the button when you walk in.  There were guards at the entrance, so I'm not sure exactly what their purpose was.  If you did press the button and wake them up to use the elevator, you sure did hear about it the next day.  One old lady I found particularly unpleasant would yell at me in Chinese while I took the elevator down the next day.  She'd hold up her watch, or an amount of fingers indicating the exact time I came home last night.  It's comical, yes, if you don't have to be the one living there!)

Anyhow, combine the problems I had already had there with the fact that it was zero degrees centigrade, and I decided I had my first job.  I had to get a new home.

I'll spare the details, but I'll say that it was one of the more difficult moves I had arranged.  I found a new apartment easily enough, but getting out of the old one proved a big hassle, and also expensive since I was breaking a lease to do so.

So, I have the new apartment.  It has heat, insulation, a nice main room, and its just a little more expensive than my last.  I have a roommate, too, for better or worse.  But he seems OK and he also seems to work all the time, so it will be sometimes like having a place of my own.  At the moment, as a matter of fact, he's gone on a two-week business trip.

Once I had resettled myself (including moving all my stuff completely on my own one morning), I set to the business of letting people know I had arrived in Shanghai.  My birthday was approaching, so I sent out an invitation to everyone I could think of to join a birthday party.  I did not expect most of them to come, since it was short notice, but I did get to let them know I was back in town.

Since then, I looked into the swing dance situation.  I wanted to see this picture: Everything is fine, the assistant instructors and capable and willing to take over the classes, I can focus on something else.

This is what I saw: Classes were OK, but the teachers were not all that enthusiatic about teaching.  I have two assistants.  One is good, relialble, and will do what he can to help, but he's going to college and getting a full-time job, so he may be very busy.  The second is a very good dancer, but is becoming more and more unreliable.  Of the four classes that happened while I was gone, one was cancelled due to Christmas, and one was run by an guest teacher.  Of the two remaining, she took one off to attend a personal function.  And since then, she's been 30 minutes late for one of the two lessons we've had since then.

So this setback on my plans hit me pretty hard.  It was very disenheartening to believe I could walk away from the swing effort, only to find that I'm right back to where I'd started from.  It really hurt, felt very frustrating.

Anyhow, I sucked it up, started teaching again, and here we go.

So then, on to part III: The job search.

I met up with a guy who's trying to put together a game company.  It's purely speculative right now but working with the business plan is getting me sharp and back into mental shape again.  It also has lead me down a path to meet some new people, and get reacquainted with some I have not seen for a while.

The last thing to report is that we're getting ready for a dance performance.  We have a big performance, and in the last couple of days we've been getting ready.  Hopefully something will come from the performance as well.

Ah well!  I'm going to bed.

-J