Part 1: A Prelude to Chaos
We knew going into it that we were in for some serious hospital time in the coming months. After all, Nancy was pregnant, and the only thing more certain in pregnancy than regular doctor visits are wild, unpredictable mood swings. Little did we know, however, just how very much time and energy we’d be spending in those labyrinthine, white-washed hallways and exceptionally uncomfortable beds. What we were expecting to be a relative straightforward in-and-out delivery, would ultimately span months (and months’ paychecks) post-delivery. Months spent in the most curious, surreal, and frustrating of circumstances: a naïve Montana boy trying to navigate the impenetrable bureaucracy and maddening inefficiency of the Chinese medical system. This ongoing twilight zone is what I’m attempting to document here, for your entertainment, and the remaining vestiges of my own sanity.
We were in the final stretch of pregnancy (stomach pun intended)… when those monthly visits have shifted down to one every two weeks, and then to weekly. Nancy (and therefore, I) had wanted a natural delivery. This desire was as cosmetic as any other reason. She wasn’t sure what kind of incision they might use, and feared she might never be able to wear a bikini should they decide to give her the ol’ vertical cut. Add to that the natural inclination to want to avoid unnecessary cutting of any kind and, well, it was an easy decision to agree with.
The ultrasound technicians, however, alerted us to a potential hiccup in that plan. Now before I go further, let me explain that we weren’t able to see any pictures of the ultrasounds. No pictures, no motion, no nothing since about week 12. The reason was they were legally required to withhold the gender of the fetus to the parents. The rationale? One of those kooky side effects of a one-child policy in a gender-preferenced society. If you only get one shot at a son, for instance, you may be less than thrilled to learned your bun in the oven’s a girl… and you just might decide to start over. Though far less common nowadays – at least among the urban middle and upper classes (who can often afford the tax on a 2nd child) – it is still a very real concern… especially for the hundreds of millions of working class families for whom the cost of an abortion is far lower than paying the tax for a second flip of the gender coin.
Of course, that doesn’t really stop too many from finding out. Though doctors and hospitals face steep penalties – such as being fired and fined – for revealing the gender to the parents… there are plenty who still do. Some “black market” doctors are more than willing to “let it slip” for the right price. Or, in my case, the holder of the right passport. That’s, right, the president of the maternity ward, and one of the chief delivery surgeons at our hospital was willing to tell me (in a hushed voice, just to add to the air of illegality… in spite of the fact we were alone in his office at the time) the gender, because…well… I wasn’t Chinese. I wasn’t one of the people they were worried about doing something nutballish. Though I have to imagine the fact that ours was a boy also had something to do with it.
Anyway, as I was saying, the ultrasound technicians commented to Nancy (I wasn’t allowed in the room… or any of the testing rooms) that the baby was “big,” “not small,” and had “very long legs.” Our doctor, after dutifully taking a cursory glace over the data, confirmed that indeed we had a “big baby.” This didn’t really come as a shock to either of us. We’d been watching her belly button pop and her stomach expand past its stretching point. Long ribbons of purple scar tissue now made a kind of pinstripe pattern up and down Nancy’s poor stomach. We made the appropriate sound of interest and this “new” revelation. After all, I figured, we were paying an extra 300 yuan per visit to see this guy… we should at least pretend like we were getting something out of it, other than a slightly shorter line, and waiting rooms that didn’t double as janitor’s storage closets.
The conversation we’d figured was going to be brought up at some point… was brought up: an elective C-section. Though the baby wasn’t considered to be “too big” to try natural delivery yet, he was considered borderline. Additionally, her uterus had produced an overabundance of amniotic fluid, which was causing Nancy do swell even further. Nancy, however, stood firm. She wanted a natural birth, unless it was truly necessary to have it be otherwise. Solemnly, the doctor nodded his head. I looked closely, but couldn’t find any dollar signs in his eyes. Clearly, he’d been in this game longer than we had, and knew how to hide any disappointment he might have had. After all, it was only the 3rd quarter, and one never knows what might happen in the 4th.
That 9th-inning game changer manifested itself as the umbilical cord wrapping itself around the baby’s neck a few weeks before the due date. Though it remained loose, and after a few days unwrapped on its own (as is often the case), a big enough of a fuss was made, and enough worry was stirred up to cause us to be the ones to reintroduce the possibility of a Caesarean. By this point, Nancy was over it. The romance of pregnancy was not only gone… it had changed its phone number and email with no forwarding address. The bump in her stomach had gone from a butterfly flutter, to rampaging xenomorph ready to burst out of her chest before being hunted down by Sigourney Weaver. She wanted it O-U-T.
The solution would be twofold. First and foremost: a definite deadline. Baby’s appointed due date, as it were, had flown by. Apparently no one had given him the memo. So we decided to set a firm, but loving, eviction date. If he didn’t come out by the end of August, we were going in after him.
The second step was long, daily walks… hoping Caelan would take a note from Newton’s apple if we did enough laps around the park. Alas, gravity was booked solid at the time, and couldn’t fit us in. It would be a c-section, a 6 hours wait, and the most uncomfortable bed ever to grace this green earth that would finally see baby Caelan out of the womb and into our arms.
Stay tuned for part 2… same bat time, same bat blog.
(CS) TAW Out.
The lycanthropic jottings of my fourth year prowling the Chinese moonlight.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Dr. Strange-Brew (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tea)
So here we are: November 3rd (or 4th in Shanghai). The dust has cleared, or at least settled enough to get an idea of all that happened. And oh, no! Obama Chastened! Democrats Routed! Obama Takes a Shellacking! Democrats Bent Over a Tree Stump and Sodomized! What will this mean for 2012? Does this signal a paradigm shift in the American electorate? Was the John Cusack movie 2012 right, and are we going to be swallowed up by the Earth thanks to those damn Aztecs?! Will we finally be able to believe it’s not butter?!
WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?!!?!?
So, in the wake of – what I could only assume from news reports – this sign of the end times, or at least Democratic end times, I wanted to pull back a little bit. Maybe it was a lingering aftereffect of the Rally to Restore Sanity… after all, nothing that weird and trippy can be without the risk of flashback. Whatever the reason, it seemed that the hivemind mentality that had seized control of most media outlets and commentators maybe, just maybe could have been overblowing this a little – difficult to believe, I know.
And so, amid the shouting matches between outlets such as CNN and Time, seeing who could make the biggest mountain out of this molehill, I wanted to find out for myself… was it really that bad??
Well… no, not really. Getting past the attention-grabbing and thoroughly sensationalized headlines (“Obama Forced to Wear Leather and Become GOP’s Gimp!”…. alright, I’m making that one up), the news organization tended to cop to the fact that, in actuality not a whole lot had changed. If played correctly, this could even help Obama by allowing him to deflect responsibility for the state of things, rather than owning all of it. Being able to say, “hey it’s not all my fault!” certainly can’t hurt when contemplating a re-election bid.
A certain CNN article called this a “rout,” which is defined on Wikipedia as “a chaotic and disorderly retreat … resulting in the victory of the opposing party, or following defeat, a collapse of discipline, or poor morale….[and] provides the decisive victory the winner needs to gain the momentum with which to end a battle (or even campaign) in their favor.” Makes me wonder which dictionary CNN was using… losing ground is not the same as being so utterly defeated that people simply break and run for their lives. I’ve yet to see videos of Democrats fleeing the Capitol building, stampeding over their fellow senators all pell-mell.
The fact of the matter is that, while it certainly wasn’t a great day for Democrats in Congress (or the White House), it also wasn’t some massive shift in power. The House was taken by Republicans, yes, but Boehner hasn’t exactly acquired a rubber stamp. 55%’s a solid majority, yes, but by no means some enormous popular mandate. Contrast that to the Senate where, thanks to the Tea Party’s and Christine O’Donnell’s kooky efforts, even the “immortal undead” Harry Reid retains his majority leader status. Both houses were the Republicans’ to lose and, well, 50% isn’t exactly spectacular. Incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner (oh the puns are just too easy there) can talk as much as he likes… but even he knows how little power the House has even in the best of times. Not to mention when it’s your party’s sole foothold.
But let’s take another tact: history. Is this some tidal wave of incoming Republican power, ready to sweep Obama and his “hopey-changey” stuff away in 2012? Again, not really. Look back at the midterm elections of yesteryear, and it becomes obvious that this was almost inevitable: in 2006, George W. Bush saw both houses revert to Democratic control, losing 30 seats in the House, and 6 in the Senate. Bill Clinton (in a much more apt example, given his situation at the time), saw in 1994 a 54-seat loss in the House, and waved farewell to 8 seats in the Senate. 1982, Reagan saw 26 House seat go D, and then 8 Senate seats in 1986. 1974, Ford: -48, -4. ’66, Johnson: -48, -3. In 1954 Eisenhower lost 18 and 2, but then lost another 48 and 12 in ’58. Truman, Roosevelt, Hoover…. on and on it goes. The thing to take away from this election is that it’s perfectly normal. You’d almost go so far as to call it the “rule.” 2nd year of presidency? Be prepared to lose one or both houses of Congress.
It’s the exceptions that one needs to watch out for. If you’ve suffered minimal congressional losses, you are either headed for an early exit from the White House (George H.W. Bush: -8, -1; Carter: -15, -3; Nixon: -12, +1), are about to get shot (JFK: -4, +2), or just had planes fly into buildings (2002, George W. Bush: +8, +2).
The question then becomes: why? Why is it almost inevitable that such rapid and dramatic shifts in power take place with such startling regularity? The answer is that, despite what is constantly screamed from TV, campaign ads, and the Houses of Government, or what is blared obnoxiously through your radio… America has been and remains a fundamentally moderate nation. Setting aside the frothing-at-the mouth Tea Partiers, or the equally crazy Code Pink and Greenpeacers on the Left… Stewart’s Rally on October 30th showed us that we’re not all as crazy as we sometimes seem we are. Caught in the middle of the two screaming children on either side of us, there is a vast swath of Americans who are largely ignored and forgotten by most…. even themselves. In this increasingly polarized and toxic political environment, it pays dividends to portray your political opponent as the devil incarnate… or maybe a witch, and it looks piddling and weak to say, “maybe I disagree with your ideas, but you seem like a reasonable person.”
But that vast, silent middle-child of the American public does assert its quiet will in elections; moderating the outrageous positions of both fringes… by routinely removing the ability of a government to act as a unified body. As soon as a political party comes to hold too much power, its rug is yoinked out from under it by the electorate. America is a country that, by and large, likes two things: a divided government, and blaming the people in power. These two objectives work in remarkable synergy to keep the keel more-or-less even. Far from Glenn Beck’s crazy-Mormon prophesying that the Constitution is “hanging by a thread,” it’s in fact working as intended. The U.S. Government was designed to be an impossibly frustrating Rubik’s Cube, pleasing no one, annoying everyone… and making sure no power hungry individual or group can shove too much, too fast through it’s narrow, crooked gullet. In this respect, the Government, the Constitution, and the American public are very much working as intended… or perhaps more accurately, “broken as intended.”
The one aspect of American society which truly seems to be in a worrisome state, threatening to throw the rest out of balance as well, is the 4th Estate: the media. Enshrined and protected for the very purpose of supplying an outside foil to the machinations and self-serving platitudes inherent to government, it now operates more like the sideshow act of the local circus. Let the biggest freak win! Let he or she with the most uninformed, ignorant, jingoist sentiment take all! In a media environment in which new-Earth creationists are presented as just as reasonable as the entire scientific community, or Joe the Plumber is paired against a foreign policy expert… it’s easy to see how the aberrations start to seem possible, even normal… even, perhaps, right. A media environment which simply further amplifies those who already go out of their way to shout others down… isn’t just unhelpful to the nation and its democratic government, it’s downright destructive.
A democracy’s lifeblood is the ability of the populace to remain informed of relevant information. But when the crying clowns and dancing grizzly bears are allowed to run the show, that lifeblood is quickly polluted into a toxic sludge of newspeak: where up may very well be down, and black seems just as likely as white. The irrational fear news organizations have developed of being perceived as “biased” has become the very monster it initially sought to contain. By giving the kooks and whack jobs a far bigger platform and voice than they deserve, the new has in effect distorted the perception of reality, and the ability of the public to discern what is real from what is propaganda.
So, as we move past this long, winding headache of an election cycle… in that ever-so brief period of a month or so before the babbling bobble-heads of Fox, Time, CNN, MSNBC et al begin their coverage of the next election (after all, 2 entire years is hardly enough time to effectively cover all that baseless and ultimately pointless speculation), let’s take a moment and a deep breath. No, the world isn’t over. No, you’ve not received some incredible popular mandate. No, government/society isn’t magically going to turn itself around overnight.
And during that breath, let’s resolve to try to tune out a little more of the mindless drudgery that’s come to define both American politics, and the laughable excuse for coverage the modern media provides.
No, Democrats are not fascist-socialist secret Muslims out to eat your freedom and children for breakfast and pull the plug on grandma before setting an American flag on fire.
And no, the Republicans are not looking to enslave us to corporate interests while drilling to the center of the earth and teaching that Jesus rode a dinosaur to work after the Earth was created 6000 years ago, all the while selling us healthcare that proffers us to “die quickly in the event of illness or injury.”
By and large, we all are trying to do the best we can in these trying times. We simply have very different ideas about how to go about that. That doesn’t make us bad, or stupid, or evil, or heartless… it makes us different. And it is the recognition that, while we have and always will have these sorts of differences and disagreements, it is ultimately our commonalities that bind us together far closer than any policy disagreement could wedge us apart… that ultimately defines the American experience.
(CS) TAW Out.
WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?!!?!?
So, in the wake of – what I could only assume from news reports – this sign of the end times, or at least Democratic end times, I wanted to pull back a little bit. Maybe it was a lingering aftereffect of the Rally to Restore Sanity… after all, nothing that weird and trippy can be without the risk of flashback. Whatever the reason, it seemed that the hivemind mentality that had seized control of most media outlets and commentators maybe, just maybe could have been overblowing this a little – difficult to believe, I know.
And so, amid the shouting matches between outlets such as CNN and Time, seeing who could make the biggest mountain out of this molehill, I wanted to find out for myself… was it really that bad??
Well… no, not really. Getting past the attention-grabbing and thoroughly sensationalized headlines (“Obama Forced to Wear Leather and Become GOP’s Gimp!”…. alright, I’m making that one up), the news organization tended to cop to the fact that, in actuality not a whole lot had changed. If played correctly, this could even help Obama by allowing him to deflect responsibility for the state of things, rather than owning all of it. Being able to say, “hey it’s not all my fault!” certainly can’t hurt when contemplating a re-election bid.
A certain CNN article called this a “rout,” which is defined on Wikipedia as “a chaotic and disorderly retreat … resulting in the victory of the opposing party, or following defeat, a collapse of discipline, or poor morale….[and] provides the decisive victory the winner needs to gain the momentum with which to end a battle (or even campaign) in their favor.” Makes me wonder which dictionary CNN was using… losing ground is not the same as being so utterly defeated that people simply break and run for their lives. I’ve yet to see videos of Democrats fleeing the Capitol building, stampeding over their fellow senators all pell-mell.
The fact of the matter is that, while it certainly wasn’t a great day for Democrats in Congress (or the White House), it also wasn’t some massive shift in power. The House was taken by Republicans, yes, but Boehner hasn’t exactly acquired a rubber stamp. 55%’s a solid majority, yes, but by no means some enormous popular mandate. Contrast that to the Senate where, thanks to the Tea Party’s and Christine O’Donnell’s kooky efforts, even the “immortal undead” Harry Reid retains his majority leader status. Both houses were the Republicans’ to lose and, well, 50% isn’t exactly spectacular. Incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner (oh the puns are just too easy there) can talk as much as he likes… but even he knows how little power the House has even in the best of times. Not to mention when it’s your party’s sole foothold.
But let’s take another tact: history. Is this some tidal wave of incoming Republican power, ready to sweep Obama and his “hopey-changey” stuff away in 2012? Again, not really. Look back at the midterm elections of yesteryear, and it becomes obvious that this was almost inevitable: in 2006, George W. Bush saw both houses revert to Democratic control, losing 30 seats in the House, and 6 in the Senate. Bill Clinton (in a much more apt example, given his situation at the time), saw in 1994 a 54-seat loss in the House, and waved farewell to 8 seats in the Senate. 1982, Reagan saw 26 House seat go D, and then 8 Senate seats in 1986. 1974, Ford: -48, -4. ’66, Johnson: -48, -3. In 1954 Eisenhower lost 18 and 2, but then lost another 48 and 12 in ’58. Truman, Roosevelt, Hoover…. on and on it goes. The thing to take away from this election is that it’s perfectly normal. You’d almost go so far as to call it the “rule.” 2nd year of presidency? Be prepared to lose one or both houses of Congress.
It’s the exceptions that one needs to watch out for. If you’ve suffered minimal congressional losses, you are either headed for an early exit from the White House (George H.W. Bush: -8, -1; Carter: -15, -3; Nixon: -12, +1), are about to get shot (JFK: -4, +2), or just had planes fly into buildings (2002, George W. Bush: +8, +2).
The question then becomes: why? Why is it almost inevitable that such rapid and dramatic shifts in power take place with such startling regularity? The answer is that, despite what is constantly screamed from TV, campaign ads, and the Houses of Government, or what is blared obnoxiously through your radio… America has been and remains a fundamentally moderate nation. Setting aside the frothing-at-the mouth Tea Partiers, or the equally crazy Code Pink and Greenpeacers on the Left… Stewart’s Rally on October 30th showed us that we’re not all as crazy as we sometimes seem we are. Caught in the middle of the two screaming children on either side of us, there is a vast swath of Americans who are largely ignored and forgotten by most…. even themselves. In this increasingly polarized and toxic political environment, it pays dividends to portray your political opponent as the devil incarnate… or maybe a witch, and it looks piddling and weak to say, “maybe I disagree with your ideas, but you seem like a reasonable person.”
But that vast, silent middle-child of the American public does assert its quiet will in elections; moderating the outrageous positions of both fringes… by routinely removing the ability of a government to act as a unified body. As soon as a political party comes to hold too much power, its rug is yoinked out from under it by the electorate. America is a country that, by and large, likes two things: a divided government, and blaming the people in power. These two objectives work in remarkable synergy to keep the keel more-or-less even. Far from Glenn Beck’s crazy-Mormon prophesying that the Constitution is “hanging by a thread,” it’s in fact working as intended. The U.S. Government was designed to be an impossibly frustrating Rubik’s Cube, pleasing no one, annoying everyone… and making sure no power hungry individual or group can shove too much, too fast through it’s narrow, crooked gullet. In this respect, the Government, the Constitution, and the American public are very much working as intended… or perhaps more accurately, “broken as intended.”
The one aspect of American society which truly seems to be in a worrisome state, threatening to throw the rest out of balance as well, is the 4th Estate: the media. Enshrined and protected for the very purpose of supplying an outside foil to the machinations and self-serving platitudes inherent to government, it now operates more like the sideshow act of the local circus. Let the biggest freak win! Let he or she with the most uninformed, ignorant, jingoist sentiment take all! In a media environment in which new-Earth creationists are presented as just as reasonable as the entire scientific community, or Joe the Plumber is paired against a foreign policy expert… it’s easy to see how the aberrations start to seem possible, even normal… even, perhaps, right. A media environment which simply further amplifies those who already go out of their way to shout others down… isn’t just unhelpful to the nation and its democratic government, it’s downright destructive.
A democracy’s lifeblood is the ability of the populace to remain informed of relevant information. But when the crying clowns and dancing grizzly bears are allowed to run the show, that lifeblood is quickly polluted into a toxic sludge of newspeak: where up may very well be down, and black seems just as likely as white. The irrational fear news organizations have developed of being perceived as “biased” has become the very monster it initially sought to contain. By giving the kooks and whack jobs a far bigger platform and voice than they deserve, the new has in effect distorted the perception of reality, and the ability of the public to discern what is real from what is propaganda.
So, as we move past this long, winding headache of an election cycle… in that ever-so brief period of a month or so before the babbling bobble-heads of Fox, Time, CNN, MSNBC et al begin their coverage of the next election (after all, 2 entire years is hardly enough time to effectively cover all that baseless and ultimately pointless speculation), let’s take a moment and a deep breath. No, the world isn’t over. No, you’ve not received some incredible popular mandate. No, government/society isn’t magically going to turn itself around overnight.
And during that breath, let’s resolve to try to tune out a little more of the mindless drudgery that’s come to define both American politics, and the laughable excuse for coverage the modern media provides.
No, Democrats are not fascist-socialist secret Muslims out to eat your freedom and children for breakfast and pull the plug on grandma before setting an American flag on fire.
And no, the Republicans are not looking to enslave us to corporate interests while drilling to the center of the earth and teaching that Jesus rode a dinosaur to work after the Earth was created 6000 years ago, all the while selling us healthcare that proffers us to “die quickly in the event of illness or injury.”
By and large, we all are trying to do the best we can in these trying times. We simply have very different ideas about how to go about that. That doesn’t make us bad, or stupid, or evil, or heartless… it makes us different. And it is the recognition that, while we have and always will have these sorts of differences and disagreements, it is ultimately our commonalities that bind us together far closer than any policy disagreement could wedge us apart… that ultimately defines the American experience.
(CS) TAW Out.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Move'd!
That’s right, it’s officially over. I realize that in the chronology of this blog, it was never mentioned as actually happening – or if so, only in a vague pre-planning what-if scenario that I never thought was going to actually happen. Still, there it is. Against all odds, Nancy managed to find and secure a new apartment. And what’s more, it was right across the street! So, in a sort of text-based, quasi celebration, I present – in no particular order – things which occurred to me during the move.
Moving to someplace close by sounds good in theory. In practice, however, it makes no difference. In fact, it’s actually more difficult, because it’s harder to justify hiring movers to lift your heavy bags for you. It seems like it’d just be easier to do it yourself. It isn’t. It’s cheaper… not easier.
Moving is best done when your wife isn’t 8 months pregnant. Not really much explanation needed. She’s not even good at moving herself right now, much less anything else. I’ll give you two guesses who got to pick up the slack. ((Hint: it’s me))
Knowing how to change the tire of a BMW comes in handy when your cousin in laws (who let your wife borrow his car) is ripped in half by the broken edge of a curbside flowerpot. Who’d’ve thunk? So yes, myself, a daywatchman, and some random potbellied guy pooled resources and traded hand-signals and managed to successfully change the tire, on a slight incline, after only 2 failed attempts (first attempt: jack was in the wrong spot, slightly bent the bottom of the car [don’t tell cousin]; second attempt: car slid off the jack [look out!]). All this before a typical Chinese mob of curious/bored onlookers. Yes, thank you, thank you. We’re here ‘til Thursday. Try the veal.
My darling could easily open a thrift store. Seriously, I’ve discovered she’s borderline packrat. She has an insane amount of… stuff. All kinds of stuff. Clothes, shoes, hardware, books. All of it in huge amounts, and most either never used, or worn/used once and then packed away forever… until the next move. I’m pretty sure she could compete book-for-book with the local Xinhua bookstore.
She’s good at packing… too good. What does that mean? It means that she’s able to fit a lot of stuff into a small space. Which sounds good in theory… until you (I) have to lift it. I’m fairly sure that if some of those boxes were packed any denser, the sheer mass would’ve overcome the electron-degeneracy pressure and collapsed into a black hole.
Once settled in your new environment, it is important to establish your position as the apex predator. I’d had a few bitty roaches to deal with in the old apartment, but apparently across the street is where the big’uns are. There are some seriously massive cockroaches here. They’re disgusting. Fortunately, that’s nothing a big bottle of Raid and a quick trigger finger can’t correct. Next on my to-buy list: roach traps so I don’t have to manually hunt down each one.
Being nice to your prior landlord pays off. Not only did she let us out of our contract early with no penalty, but she gave us back almost our full deposit fee. 3500RMB in the middle of the month is a GOOD feeling!
The landlord/tenant relationship is like a blind date. A blind date that you are contractually bound to have for the next year. You might get a great one – like our last one, who was more than accommodating… or you might get ones like our new landlords…. Who Nancy refers to as “xiaoqi gui,” meaning “greedy demons.” Our new ones, for instance, made several assurances – internet, 2nd bed, cleaning out their crap, laundry-drying poles – that once the documents were signed, they suddenly seemed to have a rather severe memory lapse about. Only after days of conversing, pleading, cajoling and, finally, essentially calling their liars, did we get most of them done. Internet was still an issue, though. We ended up just going and buying it ourselves. Apparently, the concern was that we’d cut and run after a few months, and they’d be stuck with paid-for internet in their vacant apartment. Laying aside the fact that any future tenant would also want internet, the truly ironic part of that line of reasoning is that by pissing us off so much over it (saying you will, then saying you’re busy, and then saying you never said you would), they got us rather close to just saying “screw this, it’s not worth it” and looking for a new apartment all over again.
Unpacking is hard when the World Cup is on. Yes, I know we’ve got boxes and boxes to unstuff… but Slovenia is playing New Zealand!
What’s that sound?! That one… the one you can’t hear? That’s the sound of not sleeping right next to a busy Chinese intersection…the sound of silence. It is amazing what living on the not-street side of the building does. And it’s equally amazing just how used to constant traffic noise I’d grown. The only sounds from our windows now are the occasional crickets. I’m beginning to get used to it now, but for the first few nights, I had problems sleeping because it was just….too… quiet!
(CS) TAW Out.
Moving to someplace close by sounds good in theory. In practice, however, it makes no difference. In fact, it’s actually more difficult, because it’s harder to justify hiring movers to lift your heavy bags for you. It seems like it’d just be easier to do it yourself. It isn’t. It’s cheaper… not easier.
Moving is best done when your wife isn’t 8 months pregnant. Not really much explanation needed. She’s not even good at moving herself right now, much less anything else. I’ll give you two guesses who got to pick up the slack. ((Hint: it’s me))
Knowing how to change the tire of a BMW comes in handy when your cousin in laws (who let your wife borrow his car) is ripped in half by the broken edge of a curbside flowerpot. Who’d’ve thunk? So yes, myself, a daywatchman, and some random potbellied guy pooled resources and traded hand-signals and managed to successfully change the tire, on a slight incline, after only 2 failed attempts (first attempt: jack was in the wrong spot, slightly bent the bottom of the car [don’t tell cousin]; second attempt: car slid off the jack [look out!]). All this before a typical Chinese mob of curious/bored onlookers. Yes, thank you, thank you. We’re here ‘til Thursday. Try the veal.
My darling could easily open a thrift store. Seriously, I’ve discovered she’s borderline packrat. She has an insane amount of… stuff. All kinds of stuff. Clothes, shoes, hardware, books. All of it in huge amounts, and most either never used, or worn/used once and then packed away forever… until the next move. I’m pretty sure she could compete book-for-book with the local Xinhua bookstore.
She’s good at packing… too good. What does that mean? It means that she’s able to fit a lot of stuff into a small space. Which sounds good in theory… until you (I) have to lift it. I’m fairly sure that if some of those boxes were packed any denser, the sheer mass would’ve overcome the electron-degeneracy pressure and collapsed into a black hole.
Once settled in your new environment, it is important to establish your position as the apex predator. I’d had a few bitty roaches to deal with in the old apartment, but apparently across the street is where the big’uns are. There are some seriously massive cockroaches here. They’re disgusting. Fortunately, that’s nothing a big bottle of Raid and a quick trigger finger can’t correct. Next on my to-buy list: roach traps so I don’t have to manually hunt down each one.
Being nice to your prior landlord pays off. Not only did she let us out of our contract early with no penalty, but she gave us back almost our full deposit fee. 3500RMB in the middle of the month is a GOOD feeling!
The landlord/tenant relationship is like a blind date. A blind date that you are contractually bound to have for the next year. You might get a great one – like our last one, who was more than accommodating… or you might get ones like our new landlords…. Who Nancy refers to as “xiaoqi gui,” meaning “greedy demons.” Our new ones, for instance, made several assurances – internet, 2nd bed, cleaning out their crap, laundry-drying poles – that once the documents were signed, they suddenly seemed to have a rather severe memory lapse about. Only after days of conversing, pleading, cajoling and, finally, essentially calling their liars, did we get most of them done. Internet was still an issue, though. We ended up just going and buying it ourselves. Apparently, the concern was that we’d cut and run after a few months, and they’d be stuck with paid-for internet in their vacant apartment. Laying aside the fact that any future tenant would also want internet, the truly ironic part of that line of reasoning is that by pissing us off so much over it (saying you will, then saying you’re busy, and then saying you never said you would), they got us rather close to just saying “screw this, it’s not worth it” and looking for a new apartment all over again.
Unpacking is hard when the World Cup is on. Yes, I know we’ve got boxes and boxes to unstuff… but Slovenia is playing New Zealand!
What’s that sound?! That one… the one you can’t hear? That’s the sound of not sleeping right next to a busy Chinese intersection…the sound of silence. It is amazing what living on the not-street side of the building does. And it’s equally amazing just how used to constant traffic noise I’d grown. The only sounds from our windows now are the occasional crickets. I’m beginning to get used to it now, but for the first few nights, I had problems sleeping because it was just….too… quiet!
(CS) TAW Out.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Oh North Korea, You Silly Bitch…
When I turn on CCTV 4, and it’s reporting on the latest idiocy of the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea and it’s Dear Leader Kim Jong Il… it confirms beyond any shadow of a doubt that it truly, irrevocably, has screwed the pooch. Make no mistake, when your one and only ally in the entire world has not only thrown in its towel, but begun broadcasting to its own citizens your latest blatant breach of international law, murderous rampage, warmongering, and shoddy attempts to deny said murder/warmongering (all wrapped into one), you’ve effectively run out of options.
Now don’t get me wrong, China isn’t exactly mobilizing the People’s Liberation Army at this news to, er-hem, “deal with” its protégé-gone-psychopath. Nor is it even being entirely straightforward in transmission of information (I know, big surprise). Rather, it’s presenting both sides of the situation in (relatively) equal light. Now for most of us, – excluding Fox News devotees – such a display of gross journalistic bias in favor of the shoddy, fabricated, utterly transparent lies generated by a discredited regime is an affront to our intelligence. But this is China… where the state doesn’t control the media… the state IS the media. The mere act of even mentioning the situation at all – much less presenting the S Korean/American version of the story as a possible, even likely scenario – is tantamount to bitch-slapping Kim Jong Il in front of the entire Chinese population.
I know my darling wife would disagree with me – rather pointedly – on the assertion that CCTV is anything but a straightforward, honest, responsibleorgan of the Party media organization. I know otherwise: I’m currently about 7 months into a year-long subscription of a VPN (Virtual Proxy Network) so I can get around the information blockade the PRC has built to keep out unwanted facts… and Facebook, can’t forget Facebook.
Meanwhile, Hilary Clinton has scored huge diplomatic points in the country with her visit. She and her message – the US/West’s and China strong and continuing relationship, and the egregiousness of this attack by the North - are being played up. Try finding much more than smoke and shadows regarding Dear Leader’s recent visit to Beijing – apparently bumped a half a month later than initially scheduled because China was concerned meeting with Kim before meeting with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak would send the wrong messages. On CCTV? I think not. He was there. Maybe. Apparently there may or may not have been a “hello” exchanged. It’s not really certain.
So, as my continued “cannot connect to facebook.com” attests, this has less to do with any sort of marked change in the Chinese news system, so much as it reveals the monumental mountain of feces North Korea has waded chin-deep into. When even your bestest best (and only) friend is distancing itself from you to its own people when it doesn’t have to, and motioning that it will accept and support spanking your tantrum-y, whiny bottom via the UN Security Council tightening sanctions, the charade has definitely unraveled. Emperor Kim is wearing no clothes. He and his entire regime are clad entirely in bullshit; and not even the Chinese media is willing to look the other way and compliment his attire anymore.
(CS) TAW Out.
Now don’t get me wrong, China isn’t exactly mobilizing the People’s Liberation Army at this news to, er-hem, “deal with” its protégé-gone-psychopath. Nor is it even being entirely straightforward in transmission of information (I know, big surprise). Rather, it’s presenting both sides of the situation in (relatively) equal light. Now for most of us, – excluding Fox News devotees – such a display of gross journalistic bias in favor of the shoddy, fabricated, utterly transparent lies generated by a discredited regime is an affront to our intelligence. But this is China… where the state doesn’t control the media… the state IS the media. The mere act of even mentioning the situation at all – much less presenting the S Korean/American version of the story as a possible, even likely scenario – is tantamount to bitch-slapping Kim Jong Il in front of the entire Chinese population.
I know my darling wife would disagree with me – rather pointedly – on the assertion that CCTV is anything but a straightforward, honest, responsible
Meanwhile, Hilary Clinton has scored huge diplomatic points in the country with her visit. She and her message – the US/West’s and China strong and continuing relationship, and the egregiousness of this attack by the North - are being played up. Try finding much more than smoke and shadows regarding Dear Leader’s recent visit to Beijing – apparently bumped a half a month later than initially scheduled because China was concerned meeting with Kim before meeting with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak would send the wrong messages. On CCTV? I think not. He was there. Maybe. Apparently there may or may not have been a “hello” exchanged. It’s not really certain.
So, as my continued “cannot connect to facebook.com” attests, this has less to do with any sort of marked change in the Chinese news system, so much as it reveals the monumental mountain of feces North Korea has waded chin-deep into. When even your bestest best (and only) friend is distancing itself from you to its own people when it doesn’t have to, and motioning that it will accept and support spanking your tantrum-y, whiny bottom via the UN Security Council tightening sanctions, the charade has definitely unraveled. Emperor Kim is wearing no clothes. He and his entire regime are clad entirely in bullshit; and not even the Chinese media is willing to look the other way and compliment his attire anymore.
(CS) TAW Out.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Making ends meet
I find myself utterly alone, staring into the blackness that has consumed my existence.
No seriously, Nancy's taken a trip down to Wenzhou few a few days and it's nighttime here. Jeeze, where'd you think I was going with that?!
Nancy's catching up with friends, family, and getting the appropriate paperwork filed in order to have the baby. That's right. Apparently they won't let the little bugger out until she's correctly crossed all the 十's and dotted the 工's. The most perplexing thing is that, as a Wenzhou native, she cannot get any of this - marriage, child paperwork, etc - done outside of her home province. Meaning that it's a trip back every time something new needs to be signed. At one point such a system would've struck me as a ridiculously arcane and needlessly inefficient and time-wasting procedure. But after almost two years here, I know the truth: China is, in fact, simply one giant inefficiency-producing machine. And it doesn't operate on diesel, coal, or nuclear fission. Instead, it uses redundant paperwork as its fuel - nay, lifeblood.
Work continues. I've finally reached the point where I've exceeded my contractual teaching hours, and stand to make additional money for the hours they give me from here on out. As such, I've stopped getting frustrated as they pack my schedule ever-tighter. 1.5 hour class at 4 on Sunday - which pushes me 1.4 hours over my 17.33? Alright... that works out to an extra 800+/month. And with the upcoming (and retroactive) change to the contract, they're now calculating over-hours monthly... rather than the prior system of calculating it in 6-month intervals. That was just stupid.
Still, I've just about reached the limit of my available hours... which is to say, almost all of the time slots where there actually could be a lesson now have one. Everything else is too late and/or is on a school-day.
And that brings me to Plan B: tutoring. I recently went in for a quasi-interview/meeting with a tutoring agency called LinguaTutor. It went well, and they've already given me a student. An 8 year old. I'll be going to her house and meeting with her tomorrow. I'm still feeling the agency out, but it seems pretty legit. We'll see how this works out during the week... and hopefully be able to fill my remaining time-slots with students a little closer-to-home than this first one, which stands to be a hefty train ride away... in the opposite direction of my work :P
(CS) TAW Out.
No seriously, Nancy's taken a trip down to Wenzhou few a few days and it's nighttime here. Jeeze, where'd you think I was going with that?!
Nancy's catching up with friends, family, and getting the appropriate paperwork filed in order to have the baby. That's right. Apparently they won't let the little bugger out until she's correctly crossed all the 十's and dotted the 工's. The most perplexing thing is that, as a Wenzhou native, she cannot get any of this - marriage, child paperwork, etc - done outside of her home province. Meaning that it's a trip back every time something new needs to be signed. At one point such a system would've struck me as a ridiculously arcane and needlessly inefficient and time-wasting procedure. But after almost two years here, I know the truth: China is, in fact, simply one giant inefficiency-producing machine. And it doesn't operate on diesel, coal, or nuclear fission. Instead, it uses redundant paperwork as its fuel - nay, lifeblood.
Work continues. I've finally reached the point where I've exceeded my contractual teaching hours, and stand to make additional money for the hours they give me from here on out. As such, I've stopped getting frustrated as they pack my schedule ever-tighter. 1.5 hour class at 4 on Sunday - which pushes me 1.4 hours over my 17.33? Alright... that works out to an extra 800+/month. And with the upcoming (and retroactive) change to the contract, they're now calculating over-hours monthly... rather than the prior system of calculating it in 6-month intervals. That was just stupid.
Still, I've just about reached the limit of my available hours... which is to say, almost all of the time slots where there actually could be a lesson now have one. Everything else is too late and/or is on a school-day.
And that brings me to Plan B: tutoring. I recently went in for a quasi-interview/meeting with a tutoring agency called LinguaTutor. It went well, and they've already given me a student. An 8 year old. I'll be going to her house and meeting with her tomorrow. I'm still feeling the agency out, but it seems pretty legit. We'll see how this works out during the week... and hopefully be able to fill my remaining time-slots with students a little closer-to-home than this first one, which stands to be a hefty train ride away... in the opposite direction of my work :P
(CS) TAW Out.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Google vs. China: The Thoughts of a Laowai Caught in the Middle
So Google China has officially taken its ball and gone home… to Hong Kong. That’s right, in what news organizations all over the world are sure to trumpet as a major victory for the Human Rights debates that continues to swirl around the People’s Republic, Google carried through on its threat to stop censoring its content for the Chinese government.
Whoop dee doo.
Now don’t get me wrong, this does make for a decent melodrama. Idealistic youth from the West falls in love with a mysterious and secretive beauty from the East. Sparks fly, emotions run hot, and things are said that cannot be unsaid. And bam, before you know it the Western youth’s naïve visions of saving his jaded lover from her sordid past are dashed, he runs off into the cold night and finds himself in bed with her sister and a monumental headache.
Or something like that.
To be honest, this whole affair is just so much ado about very little. In the end, neither Google nor China can be called the winner – but nor can either of them truly be called the loser. Both played chicken with each other, and in their own different ways, both of them hit the oncoming train.
I’ll elaborate: Google has lost a vast potential market… at least for the time being. Though its share of the Chinese internet search pie was tiny – a mere 13% - next to the Chinese juggernaut called BaiDu (which has pretty much all of the other 87%), that was 13% of something on the order of 128 million users. That’s over 16 million users lost as of today. Not even to mention the fact that there’s another ~1.15 billion people in China who have not yet started using the internet. Not that they all ever will, mind you. Merely pointing out a vast potential for expansion.
But don’t worry. In spite of the dire “warnings” from Chinese netizens (most of whom, it is safe to say, are being paid by-the-insult by the Ministry of Propaganda) calling Google, Clinton, Obama, the CIA, and anything else they can think of “evil” and “bad” and doomed to failure by pulling out of China… I don’t foresee the behemoth that is Google Inc. being taken to its knees by a loss of potential market share. Sure, there’s the real market share loss at present, but I doubt anyone in Google was overly shocked that this had happened. It was an exploratory enterprise into an emerging market, not the cornerstone of their operations.
And this was hardly the first tiff the internet company has had with the Great Red Dragon. Almost before the ink had dried on their license to operate in China in 2006, the Chinese government was taking potshots at the company. Time and again, Google was accused of promoting pornography, disharmony, and stirring up ill-feeling in the Chinese people. And this was before the Chinese government got around to hiring two-bit hack hackers to bumble their way into the company’s mainframe to look around for private email addresses. Suffice it to say, it’s been a rocky road for these two would-be lovers.
Truly, if one stops to really look at the two parties and their respective world-views, this becomes more a tale of star-crossed-ness than any Montague or Capulet could ever hope to top. Google has quite successfully taken up the mantle of Information Freedom. The freedom to search for news, opinion, politics, entertainment, clothes, porn, and pizza from the comfort of your living room and the semi-anonymity of the internet. Hell, with Google Earth and Google Maps I can tell you which half of your garden you forgot to put the sprinkler on, and that you really ought to close your curtains when you’re jumping on the bed nude. It’s a brave new world where you’re only as private and anonymous are you are aware and able to control your presence and information.
Compare this to the Glorious and Harmonious People’s Republic of China. In spite of marked reforms over the last several decades, it still remains an authoritarian, one-party state. Information remains tightly controlled, and the media organizations are all quite literally organs of the government. Moreover, this is nothing new for the Chinese people. For them in many respects, the CCP is merely the Red Dynasty, which followed the Qing Dynasty, which followed the Ming Dynasty, etc, etc. The currently stability of China is in large part due to information control. Sure, some more educated may have heard stories about bad things happening in the west of the country – faraway remote places like Tibet and Uyghur – but they’re told time and again by all official sources that there are just a few bad people out there – bad people who want to kill and blow things up. Most of the population is perfectly content, perfectly happy with being Chinese, and actually treated better than the average Han. The point being, if all news is good news for you, why question it? Most people simply trust that ultimately the government is working for the betterment of the Chinese people as a whole (a view supported by the rapid growth and changes in lifestyle for the better), and that if they’re not told about some things as a result, then it must be for the best. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? Why do foreigners always want to start arguments about the things we’d rather not think about?
China, though, has also lost out in this tiff… though it may not truly feel it for a while, if ever. The Chinese – both people and government – very much want to be seen as an important and equal member of the world community. The 1800’s and 1900’s were a long, hard, brutal period for China, most of which it was either a global laughingstock, a conquered territory, a war zone, or all three. The Chinese want – no, need – to be seen as an equal - a great country ready to finally take its place among the big dogs of the world. That’s why they went all-out for the 2008 Olympics, and why they’re going all-out for the 2010 World Expo. And this spat does that ambition no favors. Google’s maneuver places China in the very uncomfortable position of have to say very clearly: “we are going to censor information, whether you like it or not.” That doesn’t exactly make for great press. The view of China across the world has taken a dip in light of this; while Google’s image has actually been lifted because of it taking a “brave stand” against censorship, in spite of the hit it might take in profits. Personally, though, I’m one to believe that any press is good press… and a short-term dip might just turn into a long-term growth when you can manage to make yourself a moral David against a censorship Goliath in the process. On the other hand, the world needs China good-graces and production capacity more than it need to poke it in the eye over information censorship. China's not in a position to be bullied about how it handles information within its own borders. In all likelihood, this tempest in a teapot will rapidly spin itself out.
So we’ve finally found out what happens when the Unstoppable Force meets the Immovable Object: a fizzle. Because that’s what this really is. No earth-shattering change, no Berlin Wall coming down, just a temporary server in Hong Kong for a few days before that too is either blocked out entirely, or just slowed and censored all to hell. The only ones truly affected are the employees of Google China, and those 13% of Chinese-language internet search users. For the employees, another job surely awaits. For the Chinese searchers, Baidu beckons. And for the rest of us, English Google still runs fine… and even if that stops working, I turn on my proxy just like every time I want to check Facebook. And the world goes right on spinning…
(CS) TAW Out.
Whoop dee doo.
Now don’t get me wrong, this does make for a decent melodrama. Idealistic youth from the West falls in love with a mysterious and secretive beauty from the East. Sparks fly, emotions run hot, and things are said that cannot be unsaid. And bam, before you know it the Western youth’s naïve visions of saving his jaded lover from her sordid past are dashed, he runs off into the cold night and finds himself in bed with her sister and a monumental headache.
Or something like that.
To be honest, this whole affair is just so much ado about very little. In the end, neither Google nor China can be called the winner – but nor can either of them truly be called the loser. Both played chicken with each other, and in their own different ways, both of them hit the oncoming train.
I’ll elaborate: Google has lost a vast potential market… at least for the time being. Though its share of the Chinese internet search pie was tiny – a mere 13% - next to the Chinese juggernaut called BaiDu (which has pretty much all of the other 87%), that was 13% of something on the order of 128 million users. That’s over 16 million users lost as of today. Not even to mention the fact that there’s another ~1.15 billion people in China who have not yet started using the internet. Not that they all ever will, mind you. Merely pointing out a vast potential for expansion.
But don’t worry. In spite of the dire “warnings” from Chinese netizens (most of whom, it is safe to say, are being paid by-the-insult by the Ministry of Propaganda) calling Google, Clinton, Obama, the CIA, and anything else they can think of “evil” and “bad” and doomed to failure by pulling out of China… I don’t foresee the behemoth that is Google Inc. being taken to its knees by a loss of potential market share. Sure, there’s the real market share loss at present, but I doubt anyone in Google was overly shocked that this had happened. It was an exploratory enterprise into an emerging market, not the cornerstone of their operations.
And this was hardly the first tiff the internet company has had with the Great Red Dragon. Almost before the ink had dried on their license to operate in China in 2006, the Chinese government was taking potshots at the company. Time and again, Google was accused of promoting pornography, disharmony, and stirring up ill-feeling in the Chinese people. And this was before the Chinese government got around to hiring two-bit hack hackers to bumble their way into the company’s mainframe to look around for private email addresses. Suffice it to say, it’s been a rocky road for these two would-be lovers.
Truly, if one stops to really look at the two parties and their respective world-views, this becomes more a tale of star-crossed-ness than any Montague or Capulet could ever hope to top. Google has quite successfully taken up the mantle of Information Freedom. The freedom to search for news, opinion, politics, entertainment, clothes, porn, and pizza from the comfort of your living room and the semi-anonymity of the internet. Hell, with Google Earth and Google Maps I can tell you which half of your garden you forgot to put the sprinkler on, and that you really ought to close your curtains when you’re jumping on the bed nude. It’s a brave new world where you’re only as private and anonymous are you are aware and able to control your presence and information.
Compare this to the Glorious and Harmonious People’s Republic of China. In spite of marked reforms over the last several decades, it still remains an authoritarian, one-party state. Information remains tightly controlled, and the media organizations are all quite literally organs of the government. Moreover, this is nothing new for the Chinese people. For them in many respects, the CCP is merely the Red Dynasty, which followed the Qing Dynasty, which followed the Ming Dynasty, etc, etc. The currently stability of China is in large part due to information control. Sure, some more educated may have heard stories about bad things happening in the west of the country – faraway remote places like Tibet and Uyghur – but they’re told time and again by all official sources that there are just a few bad people out there – bad people who want to kill and blow things up. Most of the population is perfectly content, perfectly happy with being Chinese, and actually treated better than the average Han. The point being, if all news is good news for you, why question it? Most people simply trust that ultimately the government is working for the betterment of the Chinese people as a whole (a view supported by the rapid growth and changes in lifestyle for the better), and that if they’re not told about some things as a result, then it must be for the best. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? Why do foreigners always want to start arguments about the things we’d rather not think about?
China, though, has also lost out in this tiff… though it may not truly feel it for a while, if ever. The Chinese – both people and government – very much want to be seen as an important and equal member of the world community. The 1800’s and 1900’s were a long, hard, brutal period for China, most of which it was either a global laughingstock, a conquered territory, a war zone, or all three. The Chinese want – no, need – to be seen as an equal - a great country ready to finally take its place among the big dogs of the world. That’s why they went all-out for the 2008 Olympics, and why they’re going all-out for the 2010 World Expo. And this spat does that ambition no favors. Google’s maneuver places China in the very uncomfortable position of have to say very clearly: “we are going to censor information, whether you like it or not.” That doesn’t exactly make for great press. The view of China across the world has taken a dip in light of this; while Google’s image has actually been lifted because of it taking a “brave stand” against censorship, in spite of the hit it might take in profits. Personally, though, I’m one to believe that any press is good press… and a short-term dip might just turn into a long-term growth when you can manage to make yourself a moral David against a censorship Goliath in the process. On the other hand, the world needs China good-graces and production capacity more than it need to poke it in the eye over information censorship. China's not in a position to be bullied about how it handles information within its own borders. In all likelihood, this tempest in a teapot will rapidly spin itself out.
So we’ve finally found out what happens when the Unstoppable Force meets the Immovable Object: a fizzle. Because that’s what this really is. No earth-shattering change, no Berlin Wall coming down, just a temporary server in Hong Kong for a few days before that too is either blocked out entirely, or just slowed and censored all to hell. The only ones truly affected are the employees of Google China, and those 13% of Chinese-language internet search users. For the employees, another job surely awaits. For the Chinese searchers, Baidu beckons. And for the rest of us, English Google still runs fine… and even if that stops working, I turn on my proxy just like every time I want to check Facebook. And the world goes right on spinning…
(CS) TAW Out.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Catching Up
Actually, i'm not sure why I both with such a title. There have been long pauses in between almost every one of my posts; after which I go through apologetic motions like I've inconvenienced you the reader. In reality, I'm sure your world kept turning... even without my ironic quibs and song fragment closers. Shocking, yes? Regardless - or as we say in my home state, irregardless - I'll be taking on a less apologetic tone regarding the long periods of silence between posts. So there. It's not you, it's me.
Life certainly has a way of making a hairpin turn at the least expected moment. Twas the night before Christmas - more or less - and Nancy and I got an early ... erm ... surprise. And no, it wasn't the GI Joe Battlecruiser I'd been writing Santa about. Rather, it was a blue line on a stick. That is to say, we found out Nancy is preggers.
You think you're surprised? Ha! I'll see your surprise and raise you flabbergasted. Nay, all in.
So we made a rather quick jaunt down to Nancy's hometown of Wenzhou - after an even quicker trip over to the US Consulate - to make it official. Which meant, more than anything else, having the appropriate paperwork, with the appropriate red stamp, and then filling out yet more appropriate paperwork and getting appropriately stamped (red, of course). The culmination was taking an oath to the state. Romantic, I know. But hey, they did give Nancy a dozen roses, so that was nice.
Don't worry, though, we're fully planning on having a true celebration with family/friends/party-crashers/pet goats/etc... just, later. When we've had some time to get everything in order. Jeeze, don't get so impatient!
(CS) TAW Out.
Starved of oxygen
Life certainly has a way of making a hairpin turn at the least expected moment. Twas the night before Christmas - more or less - and Nancy and I got an early ... erm ... surprise. And no, it wasn't the GI Joe Battlecruiser I'd been writing Santa about. Rather, it was a blue line on a stick. That is to say, we found out Nancy is preggers.
You think you're surprised? Ha! I'll see your surprise and raise you flabbergasted. Nay, all in.
So we made a rather quick jaunt down to Nancy's hometown of Wenzhou - after an even quicker trip over to the US Consulate - to make it official. Which meant, more than anything else, having the appropriate paperwork, with the appropriate red stamp, and then filling out yet more appropriate paperwork and getting appropriately stamped (red, of course). The culmination was taking an oath to the state. Romantic, I know. But hey, they did give Nancy a dozen roses, so that was nice.
Don't worry, though, we're fully planning on having a true celebration with family/friends/party-crashers/pet goats/etc... just, later. When we've had some time to get everything in order. Jeeze, don't get so impatient!
(CS) TAW Out.
Starved of oxygen
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