The Wandering Monkey

Today is Friday night.  I went out late last night, and I am going to an early-morning Mandarin lesson, so tonight I'm taking it easy.
I'm still feeling a little sensitive about the ex-.  It's still just sinking in the implications of our separation.  I think that in the back of my head, I had actually hoped she would have wanted to get together again when I came back.  As stupid as this sounds, I was a bit surprised.  I think that's the crux of it.
While I am seeing a lot of friends here, and I do have my job search to keep me occupied, it's much colder without her in my life, I feel.  I'm not going to dwell on this any further, but to say that there were reasons we broke up in the first place, and I should trust my judgement at that time which told me to get out.
Today I went shopping.  This sounds trivial, of course, but I went shopping in Chinese (the language, that is.)  I was pleased to find that I actually have improved quite a bit.  I can hold a decent conversation with people now, and also I'm much better at learning new words just through conversation and asking people questions.  Today's words are:
pi3 dai4 (belt).  Measure word: gan4.
Interestingly enough, the word "pi" (pronouced 'pee') is the same word used to say 'skin' or pifu.
The other word of the day is hong2 lu4 deng1.  Traffic light.
Literally, this means "red green light".  Cool, huh?

I had dinner with the operator of a local expat website.  The website is known by just about everyone in the Shanghai community.  Its used to find events, personals, sell things, and so forth.  The operator is the guy who helped me find my Shanghai apartment.  I took him and his wife to dinner as thanks for that.  Because of him, when I landed I had an awesome apartment waiting for me.  Talk about cool.
In our dinner discussion, I talked to him a lot about how much things have changed in just six months.  People are different, almost every interpersonal dating relationship is different.  The swing dance locations are different, and the people are *mostly* different.  He said, 'why dont you write up that as an article?  We'll post it on the website.  You can even put in at the end, 'if anyone needs and EDI coordinator please call Jimbo.' "  Of course, I accepted.  I haven't written anything yet, but I'm not going to turn that down.
Ah yes, lonely.  I was not lonely when *she* was in my life.  Crazy, maybe.  Frustrated, maybe.  But not lonely.  I felt there was someone there, specifically for ME.  Someone who cared a great deal, and, well, I said I would not dwell on that, didn't I?
Tomorrow I get up early in the morning and go to a Chinese bookstore.  I meet with one of my tutors, and we pick out a book.  Tonight I watched a DVD.  Did you know you can watch Apocoypto with Russian language subtitles, and you still understand the entire story?  Its true.  You can even understand the meaning of the dialog in most every part.  Of course, that movie was pretty straightforward.  The typical story of boy meets girl, boy has baby with girl.  Boy has another baby soon about to come out of girl.  Boy hides baby and girl in bottom of pit.  Boy is carried away to be sacrificed on a Mayan pyramid.  Boy is saved by a total eclipse of the sun, and boy runs-runs-runs-runs all the way home to girl and baby and new baby.  Oh, and then the Westernerns come.  Hope I didn't ruin it for you.  Still worth seeing.
Trying to sleep now.  Should be easy enough.
Peace,
Jim