Musings of a Saturday Evening

July winds down towards its conclusion, and – save for the hellacious heat/humidity combo – it scarcely seems summer’s almost come and gone already. There was, not too terribly long ago, a drastic schedule change between summer, and those other three forgettable seasons. Now, - again, save for the mercury levels that would have Beelzebub sweating – it’s all just one relatively undifferentiated week from another.

It was yesterday that I officially renewed my contract with Longman Schools in Shanghai (I’ve been advised not to use "re-signing", as all too often I omit the hyphen, and it looks like I’m quitting). I’d made an appointment for 1:00, and soon found that apparently so had everyone else in the company. Shuffled from one office to another, and then shunted out of that because some hypersensitive Chinese teacher found my silent contract-signing too disturbing for her lilac of a student, it took a good 45 minutes to complete what would have, under normal circumstances, taken 15, maybe 20.

It’s the rare occasion that I’m exposed to other campuses. I’ve managed to carve an extremely insular niche at my own Chunshen campus, and consequentially am only occasionally exposed to the “rest” of the company. So infrequent is it that it can become all-too-easy to forget why I’ve spent the last two years doing so. This was a reminder. These people are crazy, and I’m lucky enough to have shielded myself from the majority of their nuttiness.

Still, I’ve come to the tentative decision that this may well be our last year in China (this is not, by the way, a unilateral decision). As accustomed as I’ve become to the country, there’s still a large piece of me that longs to return. This is assuming, of course, that there will be anything more than a smoking ruin to return to. That’s in large part why I signed on for another year. My intent is to try to ride this whole suicidal populist groundswell out from a safe distance. If in the next week or two the whole thing willfully goes to shit, well, viva la China. If somehow this whole default catastrophuck blows over, then homecoming is a very real option.

I’ve managed to complete my preliminary iteration of my Apples to Apples clone, and now just need to find the time to get it printed on the company’s dime. I’ve not done a page could, but 20+ full color would not be surprising, potentially double-sided… and then there’s lamination to consider. Makes me thankful I can write this off as a company expense.


(CS) TAW Out.

I'm glad I didn't know the way it all would end