From the Super Bowl

You Happy Few,

I'm writing this from a smoky expat bar while watching the Super Bowl, and it's halftime. I think it's a sign that I'm getting old, but I nearly cried when The Boss sang "Born to Run". Although some of that sentiment is likely understandable (they don't call him the boss because he signs your paychecks), this is not an isolated incident. No, dear reader, I also nearly cried at church last Sunday, and while watching "Slumdog Millionaire" (in my defense, I'm in the process of adopting a South Asian child, who, absent our willingness to adopt her, may have wound up in an orphanage, and the orphanage scenes in that movie are hard to watch anyway), and bawled my eyes out, alone, watching the made-for-TV version of Flight 93 (remember, Dear Reader, no one I know died in 9/11, and I was on a plane but out of danger that day). I expected that the passing years would bring weight gain (yes, I've gotten a bit doughy around the middle, and am consistently over 180 pounds for the first time in my life), but not leaky eyes.

Anyway, I think I should technically be at work now (it's 9:25 AM local time, and we're only at halftime), but since I am technically teaching staff but don't do as much teaching as the average teacher, I often fall through the cracks, and it's a teacher work day, so my truancy will almost certainly go undetected.

Well, I am down to the dregs of my battery on this thing, so I will leave with the familiar promise to write more that I had meant to do this time, well, soon, but you should know better by now.

Housekeeping

So, it's late Sunday night (actually early Monday morning), and it's too late to do anything of consequence, but yet I don't want to go to bed, so... (can you bracket all with "so's"?) I'll write in my blog. I really do need to do this more often. I often have these moments that will make me pause and say, "that's blog-worthy." One of those happened the other day, but now I forget what I wanted to write about. I remember having that thought one of the several times I was riding bitch (sorry for the language, but that's what it's called) on the back of my friend's/boss's illegal moped to go meet with college counselors at international schools back when I was still working at the Princeton Review. I thought, this is so strange and off-putting - I must write about it so that some of my relatives might read it! Sounds silly now to write it, but those are the types of things that go through my head.

Anyway, let's get the housecleaning out of the way. The baby just started on solid food, and now that she's over the initial frustration that rice cereal doesn't flow as freely and consistently as does formula, she seems to actually quite enjoy it. I don't see how; I tried some, and bland would be a kind way of describing it. Is there ever a point in our lives when our parents finally start feeding us something with flavor and we say to ourselves, "where has this been all my life?" Do we resent our parents for giving us this stuff, all while cooing and saying in falsetto voices, "Yummy!", or whatever else we say when babies are eating?

She's also sleeping through the night with some regularity, which is fun, but strangely disconcerting. Why disconcerting, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. Back in the halcyon days when she'd get up on a pretty consistent basis, you knew if you were getting up with her or no. When she got up twice a night, it was certain that you'd be up, and the only question was when. Then, when it was once a night, it'd be every other night, so your head would hit the pillow, and you'd know that either you'd be interrupted or would get to roll over blissfully when the cries inevitably came. Now, you know you probably won't have to get up, but until she does wake up at night some night (Alicia and I are on a pretty strict rotation), the proverbial axe is hanging over your head, to fall at what time you know not.

Another piece of housekeeping: we had two doctor's appointments on Friday, and we found out that Alicia is carrying a male heir (it's not as satisfying knowing your name will be carried on when your last name is Jones - I mean, you figure if you don't cover it, some other of the legions of Joneses will pick up the slack. Now, if your last name was Banjoface...). The doctor was rather coy about it; she said things like, "here's the bladder, and here's something else ... (pregnant pause - pun partially intended)". I suppose she meant for me to get it, or see that that indistinct blur on the bigger indistinct blur was, without a doubt, a penis, but I wanted for her to tell it to me straight, which she eventually did. Then I called Mom and played a song through Skype that - surprise! - didn't come out clearly, so she thought we were being attacked by some angry dude that presumably sounded a lot like Jack White, and called us back crying and worried. Anyway, the next appointment was a baby appointment, and we found out ow she ranked compared to other babies (for those interested, 90% height, 75% weight, 25% head circumference). This seems pointless to put your baby on this ranking scale, as it causes both unjustified pride ("Our baby is taller than 90% of all babies!" - yes, I think one of us actually said something like that) and worry ("Is her head too small? What does that mean? Is she destined for a lifetime of pin-head-dom?") They also gave her two shots, and they actually brought in two nurses so she'd get jabbed simultaneously, so she'd only freak out once. As Zhang Yi Mou said when a Western observer marvelled at the prodigious amounts of people used for the Opening Ceremony, "This is China. We've got people."

So, we've gotten a fake Christmas tree, since there's good news and bad news about buying real ones here in Shanghai: Good news - They're lovely and imported from Denmark. Bad news: even the small ones are several hundred dollars. We're actually quite crushed that we can't go home for Christmas. We're gonna try to have some friends stay over and have a proper Christmas morning, but I don't know how many will show up. It sucks have an undocumented alien for a baby. I mean, heck, you can't even get turned down for an American visa (I imagine there's a risk she'd take some hard-working white person's job if she got to taste the sweet American air) if she doesn't even have a passport.

On that note, supposedly the baby-daddy (that sounds so much better than "biological father") is going to grow up and do what he should do and get her documents so we can finalize the adoption in Palau, as he was reportedly suffering from acute renal failure (if I had a nickel for every time I used that excuse...), but, then again, he was supposed to call me tonight to explain himself, but didn't. Surprise, surprise.

Anyway, I'm getting a little loopy (getting?) from the fatigue, so I'll go to bed and you leave with a likely dishonest pledge to do this more often. Peace out, word to your mother.

Did you miss me?

Dear those of you who because of family obligations read this,

It's been a while, hasn't it? Don't respond to that question; we haven't perfected fully-interactive, answerable blogs. Anyway, much has happened since my last blog, but much of it should be known to many of you, so I'm not sure what exactly to write about (some may point out that I often have that affliction, and while I will not argue that point, I will ask that for the duration of this post, you keep your stinging but correct rejoinders to yourself). Well, here goes.

We have a baby, Abhisneha (for tips on how to pronounce it, go to Alicia's Facebook page - I won't recount it out of laziness and a faint desire to have you get in the habit of checking it for updates on our lives, as she updates it far more often than I do this). She's living with us in an arrangement that I hope may accurately be termed "for good" (with a double meaning of "for her and our mutual benefit" and "permanently"), but I'd be irresponsible to pretend that there won't likely be serious complications and significant bumps in the road on the way to her being officially ours and American-passport-holding. Please rest assured that we are basing our actions at least partially on the advise of an attorney, and have what we feel to be a reasonable prospect of success in this regard.

She is small and gorgeous, and reasonably agreeable (I think) as far as persons of her age go. She seems to have gotten over her earlier gas problems (as she is a girl, I feel as if I have embarrassed her by saying that she had a gas problem, even though she can't yet read or write) that previously gave both her and us sore vexations. She's not yet sleeping through the night, but we feel pretty ok about the fact that she is only getting up twice a night now. She has taken to the stroller well, and we've so far been successful in taking her out to eat with us (we eat, she sleeps and/or eats, but not the same things that we eat - she still has a rather monotonous diet).

We have some rather entertaining stories to tell about how the whole baby-placement process has gone, but that will have to wait until a future post (not to build suspense - how can I count on suspense after not posting for well over a year? - but because it's late and I should have been in bed hours ago). I think I may post something on my ruminations on the current political climate in the States (Abhisneha watched some of the recent debate with us and seemed to perk up whenever McCain was speaking, which really scared us. We later made ourselves feel better by telling ourselves she was just wiggling so to passionately disagree or something like that. Even if she was truly impressed, we can chalk it up to the follies of youth) and perhaps some sort of post-Olympics ramblings about China (to any "cyber police" who may be reading - who am kidding, why would even a Chinese censor waste his or her time reading this? - I don't think anything I plan to say will be deportation-worthy, even given your possible hypersensitivity) and perhaps a bit of expanding on "work's going fine". Or, just as likely, maybe none of that will happen and it'll be a year or so again before I put anything up again. However, if I were a betting man (I'm not, I'm far too cheap and a bit too risk-averse to be), I'd bet I do write what I've threatened to write, only because I like the sound of my own voice and am just arrogant enough to think that what I have to say on the matter is worth publishing, even given that few, if any, people will read it. We'll see.

Well, farewell for tonight from the blogosphere (I love using words that end in "-osphere"), and thanks in advance for reading again after I had at least possibly, but likely didn't, marginally broken your heart by not writing for so long (if you put anything approaching many of your emotional eggs in such a unimportant and fragile basket as my blog, please immediately pester your friendly neighborhood psychiatrist for the really good pills). Bye!

this post title will not include the word "so"

Hello, World - or at least the small percentage thereof which reads this thing. Well, we're back. Remember how I told you that when we got back, the internet was down, because of the earthquake in Taiwan? (Psst - if I didn't tell you that, well, I just did). Well, the internet is still excruciatingly slow, and I blame the government. I've become sure that the Chinese government is taking advantage of the situation to constrict the flow of the internet even further. I just lack proof, or even any reasonable explanation to support my thesis. This belief is perhaps just a symptom of a larger disease of general annoyance with the way the government works here. I'm tired of not being able to access certain websites, even harmless ones, and especially the ridiculous regulations regarding repatriating our earnings. I mean, I guess I should be grateful, at least in a historical context. Years ago, I would not have been allowed in China, and even were I allowed in, I might have had to move all over the place according to the whims of the government (I heard a story about an early American family here that had to move far away on very short notice when the Chinese govenment cleaned Shanghai out of foreigners in the 90's, although our rental agent told us that recently the local government uprooted all the foreigners in a two-kilometer radius to accomodate the arrival of former Chinese president Jiang Ze Min, who apparently didn't want to see any whitey faces when he did his Tai Qi in the morning). And all this is to say nothing of the often much worse fate that befell the Chines people for so many years. It just seems that the Chinese government has followed the same arc that punk rock has. Let me explain. At first, punk rock was about anarchy and rebellion, then toned itself down a bit and was just about teenage angst, and now the "punk rockers" sing in voices that sound almost falsetto and can't seem to muster anything more "hard-core" than whining about boring jobs and unrequited love. The Chinese government used to kill millions and resettle many more millions to remote parts of the country, and were quite good at truly terrorizing their populace. Now, they only seem capable of minor annoyances, and the thing people most fear is the taxman. Why do I bring this up, you ask? Well, I want to send money back to the States to pay our bills that we must pay in US dollars, like credit cards and student loans. Well, the RMB is not fully convertable and China severely restricts the movement of their currency outside of their country (all while buying all of our treasury securities), so the process to actually do so is quite byzantine. You must take a copy of your passport, your bank card, a stamped copy of your employment contract, and your monthly government-issued tax form to the bank in order to qualify to send money anywhere outside the country. Then, you must fill out a bevy of forms, and hop between several counters, pay RMB 200 (about $25), and then your money is on its way. Then, three business days later, the money shows up in your account (if all goes right), minus an additional $25 deduction our US bank charges us for the priviledge of accepting our money. So, needless to say, I've been looking for a better, faster and/or cheaper way to do this for a long time. And I finally found one. It turns out if you can get US dollars, you can send them to the US thru Western Union, and it only costs a total of $15 - $25 for the whole transaction, and it all goes thru in minutes, and you only need your passport to do it. So what's the catch? Well, you have to change Chinese currency into US currency, which is a cinch - if you happen to be Chinese. If you're a foreigner, you can't do it. Not like difficult, but like illegal. Oh, well, no problem, just ask a Chinese friend of yours to help you out. You walk to the bank with them, hand them the cash, they do their thing, and hand you back the money in dollar form. No forms to fill out, no special lines, no hassles. Heck, if your friend is reluctant to go through even this little bit of inconvenience for you, you can always sweeten the deal by offering to give them some money, or, better yet, offering to treat him or her to a meal at Pizza Hut (they worship that place), right? Wrong.
Alicia asked everyone she could think of to help her out, and they all refused. I mean, she told them she'd go with her to whatever bank they wanted, and would give them money to do it. They all declined, citing concern over handling that much money (it really wouldn't have been that much this month, even by local standards - this is a bit of a lean month after our recent jaunt in America) and, the real kicker: they were afraid that if they did it, the government might think they were making more money on the side, and tax them more. Uggh!
Anyway, I started work a couple weeks ago. I really like it. I teach English to Chinese adults in small classes, and instead of having to leacture at them and prepare lesson plans, the learning is mostly computer based, and I assess how well they've learned the material and how well they can use the new concepts in the classes, and then decide to pass or fail them. I mean, I have to be familiar with the topic and what they were supposed to learn, and i have to get them involved in speaking and listeng excercises in order to assess how well they are progressing, but it's not a real heavy load. I like it a lot. There are some annoyances, like the mindset that the typical student has. The Asian model of teaching and learning is very unilateral, i.e. the teacher imparts the knowledge and the student writes it down, and figures it out essentially on his or her own. There is also a large emphasis placed on memorization, and the system is such that the good grade, not the knowledge gained, is the important thing (which is certainly also true elsewhere). So, I get students who memorize passages and sound quite fluent, unless you ask the tough questions, and then they flounder and loose face. You're excited, because now here is a learning opportunity, but they are now so embarassed at having failed, they disengage. To them, the most important thing in learning language is acquiring vocabulary, and if they do not know the precise word for something, they panic, instead of coming up with an alternate way of saying something, they will shut down and ask their friend in Chinese for the word. They all have these little pocket electronic dictionaries, which they rely on as a crutch. Many of my students, when they get homework, will write their homework in Chinese, then use the dictionaries to translate the sentences back into English so they can read it in class, with predictable results. Some of the goofiest sentences I could imagine have come out that way. But, in all fairness, these students are faced with some great challenges in learning English. First, English is a difficult language to learn, and since theirs is so different, it compounds that problem. Their grammar is so simple that they really flounder with our comparatively complex grammar. Things that are commonplace in many Western languages, like the need to conjugate verbs, verb tenses, subject-verb agreement, and even plurals, don't exist in Chinese. Also, there are only a finite amount of sounds possible in the Chinese language, so many foregn words, even names, are phonetically translated into sounds that they can make. Know how your name is the same in English as it is in French, and Spanish, and most languages? It isn't in Chinese. So they struggle to pronunciate sounds that don't exist in their language, like "th", "v" and most words that end in consonants.
Anyway, I got invited to my first Chinese work function. Let me preface my description of the event by explaining how most employer-employee realtions go here. The Chinese are culturally attuned to hierarchy and differences in authority. You are keenly aware of how you stand relative to everyone else. In a somewhat related example, I was told during my interviews with this company that the company has the second best reputation among English schools in Shanghai. A bit strange not to have a modifier like "probably" or "about" in there with the rank, but the even stranger thing is that he then rattled of the top five, and everyone else, and I mean eveyone, is aware of these rankings and agrees with them. You just know that you're number two, and it is settled. Similarly, (and even less related to my intended point than the last tangent) Alicia was told, when she was complaining to one of her Chinese co-workers about her bank, that she shouldn't complain, because it is the second-best bank in all of China. And how did she know that it was second best? Well, everyone agreed on this, but the reason they all feel this way is that it is the second biggest bank in China by deposits. It reminded me of the passage in ˆBabbittˆwhere Babbitt passes another building that is a few floors smaller than the one he works in, and naturally concludes that this other building is also a few floors less beautiful than his. Anyway, my point is that you always know where you stand in China, and in your professional life, that is taken to mean quite a few pegs below your boss. Companies are quite paternalistic with their employees here. For example, you do not choose your bank at my company, and, indeed, at most companies. They make the deposits into a certain bank, and will set up an account for you in that bank. It is nice in that you don't have to navigate the annoying paperwork necessary to set up an account here, but if you were to mention that you might like to bank elsewhere, you are met with blank stares and an unwillingness to accomodate. It is also not at all uncommon to be told when asking a question that you don't need to know about that, or when you tell them something that contradicts what they just said, they will say, "well, you weren't supposed to know about that", and cease discussing it right there, but still stand firm with what they just told you. However, there are some good things about the paternalistic attitude. They try to appear generous, so every now and again, they will take you out and pay for an entire evening of eating and entertainment. Such an event happened just last weekend. They announced it by leaving photocopied announcements on each of our desks. We were going to a Brazillian barbeque place, and they wrote the address down on the sheet. I naturally assumed it was to be at a restaurant near where I worked (I had that day off, so I figured Alicia and I would just meet them there. Besides, how far away could the place be, since we were meeting at this restaurant right after when our center usually closes?) Well, when we were on the bus that would drop us off right near where I work, my boss calls me to tell me that even though the other teachers thought the restaurant was near a park, it isn't. Ok, I said, so where is it? Well, he repeats the address to me (and this address is on one of the main drags in Shanghai that runs the length of the city), and says it is a "little ways" from where we work, and maybe I should catch a bus to get there. Before I can ask which bus to take, he tells me that if I can't find the place, that I can call him. So we get off the bus near where I work, and try to figure out what to do. We can't take a bus, because all I have is the address, and the bus stops are not marked by where on the street you are, but the intersection. No one has told me what the nearest cross street is, so a bus is out of the question. So, then, is a taxi, because the taxi driver wants to know an intersection, not an address, and won't go anywhere without an intersection or landmark. And remember, dear reader, we are not in civilized places where all one needs to do is type in an address into mapquest and out come directions. So, I try to call my boss back, but he doesn't answer. So, we decide to walk; after all, how far can it be, he said it wasn't that far, and why would it be? Well, 30 minutes of power walking in nice clothes later, we arrive at the place. Turns out, the place was very close to one of the larger subway stations in the city, which is just 4 stops from where we live, but nowhere near where I work, and had I known where it was, I could have been there in 10 minutes on the subway instead of taking a bus and then walking. The things they don't communicate to you are at first astounding (and no, they can not be explained away by the language barrier, nearly everyone at my company speaks good English and I speak decent Mandarin), but then you learn to throw up your hands and say, "Well, that's China, this is going in my blog." We go inside, and we are greeted by a Chinese man who looks like he has dressed up like a pimp for Halloween. I'm serious; he is wearing a tiger print faux-fur jacket and a leopard print hat. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried - maybe he thinks all doormen in Brasil moonlight as flesh peddlers. Anywho, we find our party, but there seems to be no room at our allotted tables. My boss greets me and points to a table and tells me to sit, but there are my Chinese co-workers (again, who do speak English and know I work with them) who are sitting where my boss is pointing and are not moving. It is quite incredible how reluctant they are sometimes to talk to the foreign teachers, it isn't uncommon for me to be eating dinner sitting in between two Chinese staffmembers at work, and to not have either of them say a word to me, wll the while talking around, or rather, though, me. Finally, they do move after a few minutes (no exaggeration, we literally stood there for a good two minutes, repeatedly asking where to sit, and having my boss point, and no one moving, and not saying a word to us; rinse, and repeat). When we sit down and remove our coats and gloves, we survey the place. Turns out there is not a single Brazilian in the place. This is a bit surprising, because at most of the ethnic places here, there are some representative staff, i.e. much of the waitstaff at the Indian restaurants here are Indian. Even more surprising, the place is decorated with a lot of British memorabilia, like a British-style red phone booth and reproductions of European paintings. Even the "Brazilian" band, which consisted of two capable guitarists and one guy who alternately played the bongos and a saxophone, all of whom are Chinese, and wore cowboy hats, sunglasses and florescent yellow silky pullovers, giving them a look that was part Men Without Hats, part ZZ Top (sans beards) and part mariachi band - even they were playing Beatles songs (you've never seen weird till you see such a group sing "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" with Chinese accents and in a Latin style). The only parts of the restaurant that were remotely Brazilian were that framed Brazilian flag, and the copius amounts of meat being brought to your table on skewers. Some were quite good, and others were iffy, like the octopus, chicken hearts and cow tongue. There was also a buffet, which was only OK but entertaining, with the obligatory bad translations of dishes - I enjoyed the Fruit Rinds and Juice, which was just mango cut into shapes that looked like lightning bolts. It turns out that everyone else was headed out to go to a kareoke bar, but I had had enough of watching Asians make fools of themselves singing for one night. Anyway, like the little girl who was caught doing nothing in the sweatshop in Bangladesh said, I've run out of material. Do you like that joke? Made it up myself.

So you can come home again

Well, I suppose I haven't kept up my end of the bargain, dear reader. I promised, or at least hinted at making a commitment, to write again soon, and have not. Forgive me? Anyway, let's start where the last one ended. I didn't end up taking that job. I emailed the owner of the school and told her so much crazy stuff had happened, and I didn't want to work there. She called, and wondered loudly what had gone wrong, apparently oblivious to the long list of complaints I had sent her. I told her I'd be going to the other school to pick up my passport, which she said may not be possible, as they may have sent it off for processing for my alien work permit and work visa. I later found out that it had not been sent out as of the time of my email and the owner's call, but was by the time I got there. Coincidence? I didn't think so either, especially in light of the big guns they brought out for my visit. The had me meet ... their other White Guy! He was an utterly nice and reasonable Canadian (but then again, aren't they all?) who wanted to explain some stuff to me, and was trying to get me to stay. First, I likely needn't worry about the signing of the fake contract, as everyone does this and the lack of the correct dosuments was not going to be a problem, as the government is either so disorganized or indifferent, that there are many totally undocumented workers who live for long periods in China, virtually assured of little to no problems. He offered some examples that partially convinced me, and I've since had this confirmed by several other seasoned "China hands". It turns out, in fact, that Alicia's contract was also slightly fake. It said she worked for a parent company as a "consultant", rather than for the school. This evidently was to allow the school to do a bit of an end-around some obnoxious bureaucratic regulations; evidently the Chinese government wants you to only hire native PRC teachers, and feigns ignorance as to why you'd want native English speaking teachers for your international school, so you sign as a consultant, which evidently is code that the Chinese government accepts as enough to justify hiring someone with some skill that is absent from the local Chinese workplace. However, her contract does accurately desribe her job description, compensation, etc., whereas mine was a bold-faced fabrication. Anyway, back to my conference with Matt. He said he just wanted to know why I was unhappy, so he could help the company avoid such problems in the future. I told him I was upset that I was told many things that turned out to be, at best, misleading: I was told that I'd have a dedcicated English-speaking assistant, a set curriculum (i.e. one that I wouldn't have to either invent or wing, but that they'd provide and I'd implement and use), timely procurement of the necessary working papers, etc. Concerning the latter issue, he then revealed that all along the company had known it couldn't get my visa and work permit until after BJ quit (i.e. the week after I started) because they are only granted a finite number of visa sponsorships, and until BJ's was off the books, my candidacy couldn't even begin. I expressed what I still think was justifiable disappointment that I was just hearing this now, and offered this as further proof that any person in my position of sound mind would also decline to continue working for this company. He then started in on the smear campaign. He said that BJ and his girlfriend were miscreants and had been poor at their jobs and had left them in the lurch after quiting too quickly. He didn't seem to have any answers for my concerns that they had been unjustly yelled at for getting marooned in Thailand following the October 1st holidays, or that BJ's reason for leaving might have something to do with the fact that he was placed near one school and then made to work nearly one and a half hours away at another for only two and a half hours of daily work, and perhaps he was fed up with the same crap that was dogging me. Anyway, Matt went on to say that the principal of the school at which I was working was incompetent (in all fairness to Matt, he said it more diplomatically than that), and that perhaps this was the cause of many of my problems, and that he'd be taking a more active role in the areas that would concern me and the other foreign teachers. I suppose this revelation that my principal was unfit was meant to quell my concerns, but it had the opposite effect. Did I really want to work for someone whom her superiors though was stupid, and if she was knocked down a peg because of my compliants but remained the head of that school, wouldn't she resent me and make life difficult for me? So I walked out a few days later with my dignity and my passport in my hand, but unfortunately with less than three weeks remaining on my visa, and no job. As far as the job, I got a lot of interviews, and eventually landed what seems like it will be a good job (It starts when I get back from the states) teaching English to adults at what everyone says is the second-best English language school in Shanghai (the Chinese love lists), and in the meantime, as many of you know, I've been working part-time at a plastics manufacturer (they make the paper towel holders you see in public bathrooms) as an import-export specialist. As far as the visa is concerned, at first I planned on taking a quick trip outside the country, either to Hong Kong or to Seoul. You see, I had a multiple entry visitors' visa, which is good for a year total but only 90 days each trip, at which time you just have to exit, and then can re-enter to start another 90 days. However, I just needed to bring some documents, my passport and, of course, a big wad of cash, and I could be added as an accompanying spouse on my wife's visa and thus be allowed to stay a whole year without having to leave. We got what we thought were all the necessary documents from Alicia's employer, including a letter saying that she worked there and that we were married. I took that, and that's when I found out that they made a mistake in writing the letter on the schools letterhead, since she technically worked for the parent company, which is little more than a shell. So I had to go the next day with all the "correct" info, and a couple days and RMB 400 (about 50 bucks, but it spends like more here) later, I was an officially sanctioned temporary permanent resident.
So what else has happened since then (that was about a month ago)? Well, we've been working, Alicia more than I. Alicia had a big birthday party, to which she invited the entire staff of her school, and a complete stranger we met on the train who is black (I'm not racists, it's just that there about 6 black people here and probably like 20 in China) and from Mississippi who got sloppy drunk and couldn't keep her hands off of me. The night consisted of drinks at a wine lounge (read: a bar with couches), then an Indian restaurant, then KTV (it's karaoke where you get your own private room and TV where the lyrics are displyed behind a ridiculous and ill-fit music video). We bought you all presents, and for those of you who made requests, we tried to honor them, and if you didn't ask for anything specific, expect something tacky and Chinese. Also, we moved. We now live in a great neighborhood in a dodgy looking building with what Alicia says is a very scary elevator, but in a nice furnished (but then almost every apartment comes furnished here) two bedroom apartment with a fantastic view (we'll bring pictures). We found the place ourselves, and we were about to sign the lease when Alicia's boss said that Chinese law says that they have to sign the contract since they sponsor our visa. It turns out that was a bald-faced lie, and their involvement made a pretty easy process into quite the headache, and the management of the school recently told all the foreign teachers (t whom they are contractually obligated to give a housing allowance without any provision for how or where) that they'd have to let the company sign the contracts if they wanted the allowance. We got the landlord to put in some language in the contract to protect our interests, but we're not happy, and although Alicia likes her job on a day-to-day basis, she's strated talking about bolting for another of the many plentiful jobs for foreign teachers next year if conditions don't improve on the administration end. We moved in last Friday, and like it a lot. There are a lot of street vendors around here that sell obscenely cheap decent food (one meat bun or baozi for .6 RMB, which is like 7 or 8 cents), along with lots of western-style restaurants and bars, and a grocery store literally a few feet from our building, although I'm not quite sure about the cuts of meat they sell.
Anyway, we'll be leaving for the states in less than two days, so you'd better prepare. We're doing an huge East Coast tour, and if you live anywhere in between New York and Miami and you'd like to see us live, let us know, and we'll try to schedule a date in your city. Stops include: NYC; Philly; Lexington, VA; Charlotte, and Florida (some have repeat bookings and longer dates than others). We've already begun preparing for the reverse culture shock, we're not sure if we'll remember how to tip, drive, and bus our own trays at fast food places. There's no preparing for the jet lag, so if we doze off on you, I dunno, yell or give us caffeine or something. Anyway, goodbye till then, unless I get the itch to write sooner, which I'm sure you can tell by now isn't likely.

So, it turns out some people actually read this thing!

As the title suggest, my belief that no one read this was the main cause behind my failure to write for this for so long. As it turns out, some people do read it, although they seem to all be related to me. The Daily Zuo, the blog only a grandmother could love. Anyway, lots to catch up on. During the National Day Holidays (the week following Oct 1), Alicia and I, along with a group of friends, rented a bus and went to Hangzhou. There's a Chinese saying that goes, "Above the earth, there is heaven, on earth, there's Hangzhou" (the saying would have more effect if I hadn't heard this exact saying about a dozen other cities). It was pretty, but I didn't expect heaven to be so smoggy. It took about 2-3 hours to get there, and we got to see some rural China on the way, albeit from a distance. Our first stop was at a run-down internet cafe. You see, many of the passengers really had to pee. So imagine the patrons surprise when a van load of a mix of Westerners and Chinese show up to use the one smelly pit bathroom (yes, i said pit, the kind here where you just have to pop a squat and even provide your own toilet paper - many Chinese keep a supply in their pocket or purse for just such occasions). It wasn't so bad for me, as my equipment is such that I could do what I needed to standing up, but for Alicia? She dreaded it going in, and came out saying it wasn't as hard or awkward as she thought it might be, but in no hurry to try to repeat the manuever. Of, and when I said the patrons were surprised, I meant they could hardly be bothered from their pc games they were playing that all looked like Dance, Dance Revolution. Anyway, on we went to the attraction most of the passengers wanted to see the most: a Bhuddist or Taoist temple that had some alleged powers in predicting relationship fortunes (although it may be fairly said that the most interest shown by the occupants of our bus at any attraction in Hangzhou was the realization that the taxi meters started at only 10 RMB, as opposed to 11 in Shanghai. It is surely a strange fate that the Chinese lived in a Communist society for all those years; there is perhaps no other people on earth more naturally suited to capitalism in the world). As you might guess, I was the only male in the group of mostly single Chinese females (the were two whitey women). In true Chinese fashion, you had to pay to draw a card out of a box (and i think there may have been a discount it you tried three or more), and then some old Chinese guy in a robe interpreted it for you vaguely. I found out that Alicia and I are a perfect match, and that we will never be happy with anyone else, and that we might have kids in a year or more if we discuss it and both want one (child, that is). OK. There were other sites near that temple, which, like the temple itself, may have just been reproductions of authentically old stuff that was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. A lot of stuff here is that way, at least in Shanghai, which seems strange coming from a people that can't stop reminding you they have a history that is likely longer than 5000 years. Anyway, we walked along a picturesque but smogged-up West lake, and nearly dared to rent a boat and gondolier for an hour or so, but, alas, it was not to be, for reasons I forget, although I am sure they were of the type of objections that at the time seem weighty, but lated seem a bit trivial. So, without much further ado, we got back in the van (oh, I forgot, we ate a big dim sum luch in there somewhere, and saw a Masserati dealership, too) and headed back for Shanghai. The highways in China are of good quality, and there are no cops on them to control your speed, but I think there are occasionally radar-camera set ups that will mail you a ticket if you go too fast. There are plenty of connections to other roads, but they have not yet developed the plentiful fast-food-restaurant-cum-gas-satation developments that so populate exits back in the States. In fact, there is only one state-owned company that has gas stations, and, on the highways, supply of these outlets has not kept up with demand, so there may be miles and miles between stations, and when one gets there, one should expect long lines. There was, however, a restaurant, gift shop, convenience store, and live seafood market attached to the gas station where we refueled. The last item made particular sense; I can't tell you how many times I've stopped to gas up at an exit off of a freeway, and said to myself, "If only I could buy live crabs here..."
Anyway, as perhaps some of you know, my job i had lined up fell through. I was supposed to work part-time at a bilingual kindergarten, which, although not really bilingual (I would have been the only person there who spoke anything more than the most halting of English), at least it was a kindergarten (one out of two ain't bad). Lots of weird stuff went down there. I signed the contract on September 7th, and they were supposed to be working on my work visa and alien work permit even before then, without which, as you might guess, it is illegal to work as a foreigner in the PRC, and China's is one of the governments at or near the top of my list I have always dreamed of never running afoul of (Sorry, Libya). So, I first had to get a health check up to make sure I didn't have any ailments or diseases that would get me deported. On the day I signed the contract, the principal gave me a piece of paper with a number on it that I was to call to get an appointment. I called it, and it was a fax number. I called, and they assured me it was the right one; call back later, she says. I do so. Still a fax number. I call back, and she says the number she gave me is the fax number to the school. Why did you give me that, I ask. I don't think she answered, but then said I could see any doctor for this check-up. So I decide to ask Alicia where she went, and she said there is only one place you can go, and you have to have some forms from the school to get an appointment. Anyway, I get another call from the school, telling me that the owner will be in tomorrow, and she wants to meet with you, will you come tomorrow? At that meeting, we do the normal meet and greet chat, and the principal starts making copies of all the documents she needs (which she should have done when I signed the contract, although maybe she reserved those duties for when her boss could see her doing them), and then starts to criticize me for not yet getting my check-up done, although she doesn't say this to me, but to the owner, and speaks in Chinese, which she assumes I don't understand. Well, you know what it makes of you when you assume? Yeah, she looked like an ass when I responded in Chinese that she gave me all the wrong information, and that, not my intractable lazziness, caused my delay in getting the check-up. After that, the principal said little, but did manage to make an appointment for me and copy all the forms I needed for my appointment, although she still gave me the wrong address for the office i had to go to (for more info on the check-up, you can check the last entry). Then, once the results were in, I emailed and told them I'd be in on Friday to drop off the results, and the other stuff they just found out they need for my paperwork. I get there, and no one is there, except the guard who is hard to understand, owing to his missing teeth and strong accent, and who, when one arrives, one usually has to rouse him from sleep; he keeps a cot in the guard office for his downtime. Anyway, I leave the stuff with him, and get a taxi home (this is after I walk my bike back to the store to take it back; the bike wouldn't fit in the trunk of a taxi. I have since gotten a nice mountain bike, which works great, but is a huge magnet for theives, so I take it with me inside my apartment at night and use three locks on it when I have to leave it somewhere, as I had but two before, but someone nearly suceeded in filing through it when i had it locked up at night). Right when I get home, I check my email, and I have one from the school. It seems they just realized, after nearly a month, that a copy of my passport won't do; they need the real thing. It's now nearly 5 PM on the Friday before the weeklong National Day holiday, so I call to see if they're still there. No answer. I email and say I'll bring it wherever you want, as long as you promise you'll be there. No answer, so I have to wait for another week, bringing me to August 8, just five days before I am due to start work, and they haven't made any progress on my work visa or anything else I need to legally work there. I email the owner, and she replies that she doesn't know what's going on, and she'd try to find out. Never hear from her again (she was in Paris, poor girl). I go on the 8th, a Sunday, to drop off my passport. The principal isn't there. They have to send my passport to the other school across town for processing. I ask, will all this be done on time? I don't know, Cindy says (she's supposed to be my English speaking assistant, but her English is iffy). She promises to have the principal call me tomorrow. Monday comes and goes, with no call. On Tuesday I get a call; I need to be at my school by noon so they can take me to the other school to get my visa stuff squared away. I arrive at 11:20, and they yell at me in Chinese for being late (the Chinese language really is an effective one for conveying anger). We start driving, and for some reason, we stop at a nice Western-style hotel (a Marriott or something of that ilk), and the driver gets out. I ask the other lady on the bus what he's doing, and she tells me, but one of the words she uses I don't know, so I just sit there patiently. Every 10 minutes or so, either a police man or hotel staff comes up and tells us to move the van, and the lady in the van argues with them. After the third time, the lady goes in to look for the driver, and leaves me alone in the van. After quite some time (the whole affair wasn't a second under 45 minutes), both the driver and the lady emerge from the hotel, the driver carrying what looks to be some clothing wrapped in saran wrap. We then drive to the school, and they feed me decent Chinese food out what looks to be a metal dog bowl (I'm sure it wasn't, but it sure looked like one), and then I go up to meet with the principal of this school. She is excited to learn I speak Chinese, and starts to talk to me about my visa. I manage to relay to her that my Chinese is not yet good enough to discuss the bureaucratic ins and outs of Chinese paperwork, and she brings in someone to translate. They tell me I must sign a fake contract, which says that I am now the Director of International Recruiting for the parent company that owns the school, in order to get my visa before mine runs out (which it will do in early November). I do so, although it makes me feel uneasy to willingly try to defraud the Chinese government (see my related comments above). They also say that they will call me soon to go to the necessary offices to sign forms to get all my documents, and again and again impress on me the importance of lying to any Chinese officials who ask me what I'll be doing for this company - evidently the process for getting a visa for a teacher is longer, more annoying, more expensive, or something. They then tell me I can go home now, but they can't drive me back. They tell me they will drive me to a subway station, and that I can take a taxi back to the school to get my bike. They also asked me to take one of those small Fisher-Price playground slides with me to the other school; with which I must have looked odd on the subway. I was still having my doubts when I got home, and these only intensified when I got a call from Cindy at my school on Thursday (by the way, Cindy's just her Chinese name - I have no idea what her real name is), saying that the principal from the other school called, and said the passport pictures I gave them were the wrong size. Never mind that they'd had these pictures for weeks, and that they were the size they asked for. So, I got some new pictures, and brought them with me to school on my first day. When I got there, the kids lined up and started doing this crazy streching routine to some kiddie music, which I now understand is mandated by the government for pre-schools. Then, I got to talk to the teacher I was replacing: BJ from Canada. He took me to the first class, and I was just going to watch him today as we made the rounds with the different classes (the way it worked was this: there were three classes, arranged by age, and you spent 20 minutes in each class, then went on the the next. In the next hour, you did the same thing all over again, then went home). Cindy came in and they both left me alone with the class of 3 year-olds and the teacher who spoke no English whatsoever. I kept expecting BJ to come back, but the clock kept ticking, and still no BJ. Finally, the teacher unceremoniously handed me a textbook, which I can only presume meant that I was to start teaching, even though I had been told I wouldn't be doing any teaching today, and hadn't prepared anything. As such, I stayed seated, and the Chinese teacher started in on something, although she would periodically leave the room for some reason or another, at which point some students would follow her, and others would come over to explore me. She would then come back in and smack the kids on the head that had left the room (they're really into corporal punishment here) and get back to whatever it was she was doing. I resolved to walk out if BJ didn't return in 20 minutes, and 25 minutes later, he finally came back (yes, I still there, perhaps I chickened out). He then tried to introduce me to the children, but that often consisted of him pointing them out and saying their name, I would wave and say hello, and the Chinese teacher would pick them up and hand them to me, often with the child protesting vigorously (I can understand why; these kids didn't know me, and many hadn't seen many white people before). There was one black girl in the class, and they picked her up and shoved her towards me, yelling "American!" Evidently, they assumed that since we were from the same country, this little girl would really take to me right away. This logic evidently evaded this little girl, and she started screaming.
Then, we all had to go to the multi-purpose room, to celebrate all the birthdays that had happened or would happen in October. The teachers struggled with the A/V equipment for a long time, and BJ took me around to meet the kids, and to take pictures (it was his last day). Finally, the equipment got all plugged in, and the teachers put on some sort of kiddie video. Groups of children were brought up to dance along to different kiddie songs, and then they brought out a cake, which the staff served in little metal bowls that looked like ashtrays, with little forks that might otherwise be used for small blocks of cheese or cocktail weenies. Mostly, the kids threw these aside and ate out of the bowls like animals, getting frosting all over their faces. Then, it was time for me to go, but not before I found out that Cindy had been pressed into service as a regular teacher of one of the classes, so she would no longer be my English-speaking assistant, and no one else could do it. So, I suppose it's fair to say that I left with a lot to thin about that weekend.
This entry has, as I'm sure you have noticed, fair reader, gotten very long. I will give both you and I time to rest, and give you the exciting conclusion next time, on the same bat-channel, same bat-time, which is too say ... soon.

So Far

I guess the purpose of this post is to catch you up on what I haven't told many, or all, of you about my adventures in the Middle Kingdom. My Chinese is improving, but mostly my taxi Chinese. Getting very good at telling the driver to keep going straight, or to turn left or right, or the like. But just because I can generally understand their questions, and they can figure out what I'm saying, or, more importantly, I now have some idea of where I'm going, doesn't mean I've stopped having taxi cab adventures. One driver stopped the car to get out and pee, on the side of the road, no less. Another very talkative driver found out I was from Philadelphia, and seemed convinced that it was very famous for some sort of music, and at first tried to do some sort of pantomime of what the performance would look like, and then, when I said I had no idea what he was talking about, and that maybe he was thinking of some other city (Chicago? maybe New Orleans?), but then he insisted. He tried to sing what Philly was famous for, but if his explanations couldn't get me to understand, this Chinese man signing some sort of English songs wasn't going to do it either. He seemed disappointed, but concluded that even if I didn't know, Philadelphia was very famous in China.
Anyway, I got a job, as a teacher at a bilingual kindergarten. I start in October; I'm replacing a lovely Canadian who's transferring to another school. He assumed I was a stupid American, and didn't know where anything in his country was (he said, when I asked where in Canada he was from, "I'm from Ontario, that's about in the middle of the country." Most people here, when they learn you're from the States, assume you know nothing of any other country). Anyway, working there should be interesting. The staff isn't very bilingual, the title notwithstanding. The principal and I survive on an unsteady patois of Chinese, English, pointing and gesticulating. The school isn't too far away, but none of the cab drivers seem to know where it is, although they have no problem assuring me that they do when I get in the cab.
I bought a bike in order to get there and back, but the seat was very low (I suppose it was made with a shorter-legged populace in mind), and the handlebars would not stay aligned with the tires. I must have been quite a sight on the way home with my knees up to my chest as I peddled, and my handlerbars, overburdened with grocery bags, almost perpendicular to my tires. So, I borrowed my Filipino friend's wrench to raise the seat and tighten up the handlebars, but on its shakedown voyage, about 50 meters from our apartment, the bike gave a ominous groan, and the chain broke. Broke, not "fell off", not "got tangled", broke. I then sheepishly drug the bike back, with the tail of my bike chain tailing behind, much to the delight of the gawking locals (although, to be fair, they do stare at us all the time, not just when we make fools of ourselves. In fact, sometimes they also point and even breathlessly say, "Look, Americans!" Shanghai, in general, has a lot of waiguoren, or foreigners, but we live in the Western suburbs, so we're still a bit of a novelty out here). I plan to take the bike back tomorrow, assuming I can fit the ruin of my bike in the trunk of a cab.
There are a lot of bureacratic hoops to go through to work in China as a foreigner. You must have a work visa, and residence permit, and an alien work permit. In order to get the residence permit, you must first get a temporary residence permit, which might have been tricky and/or annoying, but my wife's employer, benevolently and having-much-foresight-ly, got that for me when Alicia (my wife), went to get hers. I guess they feel like they should really grease the skids for the spouse of their foreign employee, since, if their spouse gets deported, will their new employee stay, and if so, for how long? Most Chinese companies who hire foreigners, well, at least those who hire them as teachers, seem to be rather deferential to them, particularly if they are white, and especially if they are white and American. The owner of the company that hired me admitted that we (the whiteys from the Anglified lands that they hire) are the real draw for their schools, and thus they can, in turn, charge a hefty premium to their customers (read: parents) for the priviledge of having their children taught by real-live Yanks from a far-off land across the sea. I know in the next few lines I write, I will be straying quite far afield from my original point, but I feel like this bears telling. Many employers here in China are, in different degrees of forthrightness, rather discriminatory, which is to say, if you ain't a whitey, you needn't apply as a teacher. Chinese people feel like they are being cheated if they don't get a whitey to teach them English; no matter how good your English is, if you're Asian, Latino, or especially black (Chinese revere blacks, at least their basketball and rap, but fear them intensely), forget it. They are quite accomodating of their white folks; the makers of fake stuff often give you better prices (if you haggle, and really mean it; perhaps it is a status symbol to be seen selling to whitey), they will take you to the front of the line at the bank, and so on. Perhaps I'll tell the rest of my bank story later. Anyway, back to the bureacratic hoops. In order to get your work visa, you need a copy of your diploma, which I just got this week, and resume, and lots of other junk, in English and Chinese. To get the work permit, though, you have to get a "healthy checking appointment" (don't you just love English translations of Chinese, done by Chinese? I know I do; it brings us favorites like "Cowland Recreational Barbeque" - a restaurant), which costs about $90, and requires you to go this office building, and go through a physical exam a-la-conveyor belt. You go from room to room, getting blood drawn, then on to the eye exam room, and ultrasound (where they lube you up and stick a wand around your midsection, which I can only assume is checking your kidneys?), and so on. The rooms are all peopled with nurses who speak passable English and wear ridiculous uniforms (think 1950's TV nurses meets "flying nun" outfits), and get you from station to station with admirable efficiency. One weird thing is that you are made to take off everything above the waist, and wear a strange robe, and women and men waited on the rooms together in the same hallway (although there was only one person in a room at one time, and there were curtains and such to protect privacy). This was merely bemusing to me, but it seemed to really bug my wife when she went (maybe it was the doctor who, while examining her while she was topless, poked her stomach and said "healthy appetite").
Since I'm not working yet, I have to keep myself busy. I'm the house-husband (for those that can't figure it out, that's the male equivalent of the housewife), so I do most of the cooking, and I'm supposed to do most of the laundry and cleaning, and I did do most of it at first, but now it's about even, although I'll try to do more. I try to get out and run, and I've been playing ultimate frisbee with an expat group here. Alicia's boss also periodically takes me out to play basketball at this athletic club, and some of them aren't bad. But no one really knows how to finish around the basket, and it's mostly people just wildly driving toward the basket, throwing up ridiculous shots that go in more than they should. The passing here is way behind, too; they seem bewildered by long skip passes or bounce passes, but the defense is much better than you'd expect. I expected to be the tallest one out on the court, and I suppose I am, but there are often those about my size out there, too. I usually leave all my stuff that I think might be stolen in the car - you know, like my cell phone, my wallet, keys... Well, i took off my glasses after they got foggy, and put them under the bleachers, and when I got done, they were gone. Stolen. I don't know why, it's not like the thief can use them, but everyone tells me, and now I've seen, if it's not nailed down here, it'll be stolen.
Anyway, I guess I've written a lot, and this is getting long. Perhaps I should write more often, so they don' get so long. Till next time.