China - Week 50 (8/9-11): Getting Back on the Horse and Upcoming Plans

In my personal battle with inconsistency and lack of committment to projects I have noticed that the largest obstacle for me is re-starting my committment to a process once I have fallen off the wagon (so to speak).  I messed up a bit on Thursday and didn’t follow my plan and ended up staying up late, which caused me to sleep in late on Friday and sort of botched my plans.  However, I realize that this is just part of the process.  I messed up after 3 days, but beating myself up over it isn’t the answer — identifying the causes of the problem, working on coming up with solutions to those problems, and then reapproaching the issue from a fresh angle is the answer.

And so that is what I will do.  And while I made it 3 days into my program before botching up (which, to be honest, isn’t that bad for me considering my personal history of starting projects) I will aim next time to go longer than that.  And if I fall again, then I will do the same … each time aiming for a longer period of time committed to the process, each time addressing any problems that I see, each time re-evaluating my approach and working to fine-tune the process — until eventually I will have developed a set of habits that I can both be proud of, and which are a path to personal success and achievement.

In any case, tonight was quite enjoyable in that I got to hang out with some new friends.  Jia Jia invited me to come hang out with her, Satsuki (Japanese woman who owns a small juice bar and bakery in Pudong), Satsuki’s business partner (Chinese woman who lived in Japan for 2 years), a guy who works with them (Chinese guy named “Jerry” who was in the PLA for two years until he came to Shanghai from Anhui last December) and another Japanese friend named Yuuko (Japanese woman who plays really good jazz piano and opened her own jazz lounge and also a restaurant right next to Satsuki’s two businesses).  My dad met Satsuki and her partner when he was here in the spring so he knows who i’m talking about, but the rest of you have no idea .

Anyway, after we met up at Satsuki’s juice bar we walked a block to Ajisen Ramen (terrible service, by the way.  I have yet to have them not mess up my order) to eat.  Since Jia Jia is moving to Beijing on Monday she’s arranged for Satsuki and I to help each other with our language learning.  Satsuki speaks pretty much perfect Chinese as she’s been in China for the last 9 years.  And apparently I speak pretty decent English.  So I’m going to help her learn English and she’s going to help me learn Chinese.  Since her new bakery opens on the 28th she will probably be a bit busy until then, but I might try to drop by the juice bar from time to time to say howdy.  It’s just 5 subway stops from my house, afterall.  Only takes 25 minutes to get there.

After dinner we went back to Yuuko’s (or rather, Yamauchi-san’s) jass bar/lounge and she played some piano for us.  She’s pretty good and can play most of the jazz standards.  Then they made me play.  It wasn’t pretty.  I’m kinda rusty since I haven’t practiced since the time at George and Tami’s when I would try to relearn my music about 14 months ago or so.  But I went ahead and tried playing some stuff.  It was a bit embarassing and it didn’t help having Jia Jia calling out for me to “sing a song!” but I tried to bury myself in some of the music books and pluck out a few nice songs.  Eventually I went back to visit them and hang out.

The nice thing about being with a group of people who are bi or tri lingual, is that if I don’t know the word in one language, i can try it in another .. and then another.  eventually we’ll all understand what the person is trying to say.

Anyway, afterwards we left the lounge and Satsuki and I grabbed a cab back over to Puxi.  The cab ride was pretty cool.  We were speaking a mix of Chinese, Japanese and English (in that order).  If I didn’t know what a word was she said, she would tell me it in Japanese or, if she knew it, in English.  And I would talk to her and if I didn’t know a word I could try the other languages too.  It’s actually pretty helpful and I have a feeling it’s going to help both my Chinese and my Japanese in the long run.  I just need to be sure not to forget to help her with her English.

So, now I’m home and it’s about 20 minutes to midnight.  After a quick clean-up I’m hitting the sack and getting up nice and early to go to the gym.  Tomorrow afternoon I am showing my Ayi the way to my new apartment to see if she’s still interested in working for me or not.  And after that I’m meeting up with an old friend, Eri (she’s from Wuhan but speaks fluent Japanese) for dinner.  Sunday is mostly working on the TVCC website with a break in the afternoon for wushu at Zhang Yi’s.  I have to finish it up by Tuesday so I have to really get things taken care of with that site.  I might have to pull an all-nighter on Sunday or Monday to get it done but that’s okay.  Better to have it taken care of and lose some sleep than to stress about it any longer.

And here is the rest of the week:

*Wed - Fri: Pack up everything I own.

*Friday: Get they keys from the landlady and pay my rent payment.

*Saturday: Pick up jisue from the airport and finish packing up my place.

*Sunday: Move!  (Need to hire movers) And also get foreign residence certificate with landlady.

*Monday: Unpack!

And then things are gravy. Pretty exciting.  Change can be good sometimes.  I have a pretty busy fall planned actually.  Here is a quick rundown of what is in the mix until my birthday.

*September: Mainly staying in Shanghai and training / studying Chinese.  This is pretty much the only time I’ll be able to spend a big block of time at home until the next year.

*October: 1 - 8: Possible visit from DY / 9 - 13: Visit Japan / 14 - 19: Possible trip to Zhengzhou with Matt W. / 19 - 21: Possible trip to Xiamen with Matt W. / 22 - 28: Possible Training in Fuzhou with Matt W.

*November: 18 - 30: Possible Training in Jinan with the Shandong Team / 25: Friend’s wedding in Heze, Shandong

*December: 1 - 3: Trip to visit Beijing / 4 - 18: Possible trip to train in Tokyo.

Geez … I’ll barely be spending any time at home it seems.  Well, keep in mind that most of these things are tentative.  Things have a tendency to change quickly.  I will keep things updated as necessary.

And now I’m off to bed …