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.
The lycanthropic jottings of my fourth year prowling the Chinese moonlight.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
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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