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.

Ornery

Countdown to departure: 20 days
Countdown to culture shock: 205 days

I've had a reasonable few days. I think I'm emotionally drained. The party was pretty fabulous, I enjoyed myself a lot, but besides that I think I may be avoiding my immigrant friends. I haven't really been feeling positive or negative emotions about going, just mostly neutral. I wish I could just sit down, flush myself out, see this thing from all sides at once and know how to feel about it.

I don't know what it is that so gets on my nerves when people talk about things like "phases of cultural adjustment". (The theme of this blog is admittedly poking fun at the concept.) Well, I suppose if I dig deep enough, I actually do know what it is: a) I loathe determinism and b) I'm hypersensitive to perceived insults to my intelligence. When someone states that because of my station in life — because of any factor that they, not being me, could observe — that they can predict what I'm going to think, how I'm going to feel, and (most perniciously) what I'm going to do, I raise my hackles and perceive it as an assault on my free will. And when somebody insinuates that I would undertake an endeavour such as this unthinkingly, assuming perhaps that someone not paralyzed by the worst case scenario must not be aware of it, it tweaks my insecurities and provokes a rather primitive instinct to "act smart" (e.g. by writing blog posts like this).

Hmm.

I guess that's all I have to say about that. I've got issues. I want to be able to experience this without overthinking it, and that would be a rare thing for me.

I'm waiting to hear back from my boss about some changes to the visa regulations. I really hope this isn't going to be a problem.

Sunny side

Countdown to departure: 23 days
Countdown to culture shock: 208 days

So it's party day today, and I've got food to make. I suppose it's a commentary on the state of Western culture that the "Western dish" I was asked to bring will in fact be a (westernized) Thai dish.

Concerning the events of yesterday, pursuant to a good long nap immediately after my last post, a very pleasant evening with my family, and a weekend-sized sleeping-in last night, I feel my brain and spirits have recovered.

I thought it was "the thing to do" to place all of these expectations and anxieties on myself now that the big date is approaching, but I think I need to take a more Daoist approach here. A conversation with my parents elucidated that, as little as yesterday's interactions may have done for my conversational Mandarin abilities, they offered me invaluable cultural insights. (We were talking mostly about lifestyles, politics, philosophy and religion.)

The benefits of living in the moment will be spoiled for me if I set too rigid of a definition of what it means to be responsible. I need to relax and play things by ear and get back to thinking of life in terms of relationships instead of timelines.

Trepidation

Countdown to departure: 24 days
Countdown to culture shock: 209 days

Where is my discipline?

I went to Tong's today to practice, and wound up talking to her for six hours. I don't even want to get into everything we talked about - anything I could think of to keep from doing what I knew I needed to do. By the time we got down to studying, I was so burdened with guilt and exhaustion that I only had about 10 minutes of energy left in me before I had to leave.

Right now I'm just so... ugh. So worn down. Cross-cultural communication is a bitch. Already feeling like I don't want to leave the country. I don't even want to leave my bedroom. I'll let you know tomorrow when the feeling passes.

Got a party-full of Chinese people to meet tomorrow night, going to need some hardcore rest and meditation in the meantime.

Event Horizon

Countdown to departure: 26 days
Countdown to culture shock: 211 days

Ticket booked for May 10th, a couple days earlier than I was assuming as of the last post.

It seems as if Blogger is blocked in China at the current time, so when I make the move, my blog will have to make the move too, perhaps to one of these sites:
http://blog.sina.com.cn/
http://blog.tianya.cn/

I was going to write an essay explaining my little adventure, but I have been stricken with an especial sort of fatigue since I found out about the job on Sunday. Perhaps this is all more than my subconscious can bear? Pillow first, ask questions later.

Awakening

Countdown to departure: ~28 days.
Countdown to culture shock: ~213 days.

If all goes as planned, today is the day I buy the ticket. Once I have spent all my (paltry) savings and today's paycheck on a plane ticket, I'm going to China, job or no job. Fortunately, the job opportunity seems very sound, and no more than a perfunctory sort of paranoia is probably warranted.

As my weekly Chinese practice sessions with Tong have now resumed in the form of daily Chinese crash review sessions, I am reminded that the experience of assimilation, even when voluntary, is not ostensibly pleasurable. It's a feeling of constant ignorance, no matter how much progress you make.

Well, it's not like I'm going into this experience with any illusions that it won't be humbling.

More thoughts when the deed is done. Later, comrades.