I hate to wake you up and say goodbye

Countdown to departure: 0 days
Countdown to culture shock: 185 days

Leaving in just a few hours here...

I have to say, as I was hinting at before, I see this cold I got as something of a blessing. I am about 75% recovered now, and it has given me something really concrete to focus on over the past few days, when I could have easily been spending my time obsessing over the trans-Pacific threshold.

I have created and roughly "set up" a new blog, which will hopefully be accessible from China. I haven't had much time to tinker with it, but I hope to get it up and going as soon as I get the chance.

The new blog can be found here: http://321cultureshock.wordpress.com/

Excelsior!

Actual problem

Countdown to departure: 3 days
Countdown to culture shock: 188 days

Most of the posts I've thought about making on here (and I imagine most of the posts I actually made) have either been about my emotional state or vaguely worded revisitings of the plans I've been struggling to make. Now, with three days to go, job quit, visa obtained, medical insurance (almost) purchased, I actually (maybe) have something substantial to report: I fear I'm getting sick.

It's a wonder my immune system has held out so long, battered internally by the upheaval of the past several weeks, and externally from working in a pharmacy (for crying out loud). And now, alas, I went to bed with a sore throat and have woken up with a moderately sorer one. So with this and this and a bit of this, I'm doing this and hoping I don't have this.

Siniticism

Countdown to departure: 6 days
Countdown to culture shock: 191 days

I'm thinking about when I return to university, even though that's far off. If my time in China goes as planned — "as planned" meaning simply that I am functionally bilingual when I return (though it would be nice to have saved up some money too) — I'm thinking I might push for my school to authorize me to change my Linguistics major to become their first Sinology major. By that point I will surely have the tools I need to get on the ins with the Asian Studies department, and will have proven my devotion to the field at least enough to validate my petition. It may ultimately be more practical for me to be a Linguistics major with a Chinese minor or some such permutation, but it would be nice if my degree were to be in the one field I can actually envision myself devoting my life to at this point in time.

One Week

Countdown to departure: 7 days
Countdown to culture shock: 192 days

I will go to Beijing alone and work as a private tutor. The arrangements are more or less in place: I get my visa on Wednesday, and I have given notice at work (my last day is Thursday), Tom will have his friends whisk me off to the apartment when I arrive, and then send the first couple of clients my way; from that point, I'll have to find the rest of my clients on my own. Fortunately I already have a handful of contacts in Beijing to help me out.

My personal growth the past couple weeks has moved beyond meditation to real life lessons. Damaging my parents' car twice in that span of time is distressing to the point of hilarity; the first incident ate up all of the funds I had meant to use for my travelling expenses, the second has left me in debt to both my brother and my best friend. But dealing with a brush with death and that encumbering sense of regret that comes with game-changing mistakes easily avoided have left me wiser to an extent that could very possibly save my life in a place where risky choices will be all-too-tempting to make. And I find comfort in that.

So let my last week begin. Here goes nothing.

Reboot

Countdown to departure: 13 days
Countdown to culture shock: 198 days

Guess what? Things changed again!

Oy vey...

I'm sorry to be so sparse on details, but after a 2 1/2 hour meeting with my wonderful friends (Tong, Tom, & co.) tonight (including a conference call with my would-be boss), I have decided on a new course of action. Although this boss seems like a nice guy, the consensus among my posse is that certain methods of his may imperil me, or at least force me to be looking over my shoulder while I'm in China. He has refused to budge in what he's doing, but I have to be self-respecting and decide that this is unacceptable. I have decided to draw a line in the sand.

I am not certain what I will do if he accepts my ultimatum, since it is really just an attempt to turn down the job without losing face. My new plan, which really offers me a lot more freedom, is to bypass the backroads and go straight to Beijing; as was originally discussed, I can stay at my Tong & Tom's house there. Somehow they didn't realize that private tutelage is a desirable form of employment to me; now that they know it's my bag, they are eager to hire me out to their friends in Beijing. This is pretty darned ideal. I'm stoked.

I also have an incredible amount of stuff to get done in the next 12 days. Tong says now I "don't have to worry". Pfft.

Pre-Closure

Countdown to departure: 14 days?
Countdown to culture shock: 199 days?

I cannot enumerate all of the various ups-and-downs in my preparations that have happened since my last post. Suffice it to say, the statement, "every day I wake up, my life gets more complicated," has continued to ring true. I'm holding a conference call with my boss and some of my Chinese friends tomorrow night to try to get things cleared up once and for all.

The aspect of the complications relevant to the question marks above is thus: the delays in my visa application have introduced the possibility that I will have to change my flight to a later date. Unfortunately, the super-cheap ticket I found was at the very tail end of the off-season; consequently, the fee for changing it would run in the order of $500 (which, if you recall, was the cost of the ticket itself). There are plenty of pros to changing my ticket, but it would be nice to just have this over with as-is.

By tomorrow I'll probably have an idea of how things are going to play out.

The Story Thus Far

Countdown to departure: 18 days
Countdown to culture shock: 203 days

The story thus far is that every day I wake up, my life gets more complicated. While walking home from work, I found the solution to a lot of the questions I've been asking myself in the same place I usually do (and yet it somehow always seems to surprise me) - I took a different route. With all of the things on my plate, it dawned on me on this particular walk (amid the smells of gravel and cherry trees) that I need to start laughing stuff off. When I first started studying Taoism, I jotted down these lines:

To learn a little about Tao
Take what I write into your heart
And laugh

To learn much about Tao
Take what I don't write into your heart
And laugh some more

And this is the thing. I can look at the things in my life and justly classify them as irksome, interesting, providential or all-too-typical, but unless "funny" is in that list, I'm not going to know peace. And frankly, it is funny that just when I thought I would have enough money to make all this work, I went and did a few hundred dollars of damage to my parents' car. It's funny that my visa application has gotten so wrapped up in red tape that I may have to rethink all of my plans. And it's certainly funny that worrying about these things has left me so scatterbrained that I tried to order a lunch special from a restaurant at 8:15 this evening, and then had to be reminded by the waiter to pay a tip when I left.

And I'm not being sarcastic in the least. Whatever comes of these plotlines, they'll bust a gut when I tell my grandchildren about them.

UPDATE: I think this is an apt illustration of what I've been thinking about.