Undead Astronauts

How is everyone? Its been about a year since I have seen most of you guys. Sometimes the times seem to pass by quickly, sometimes it seems to pass by slowly. I thought it would be good to just give a brief update about my life here. Basically, life here in Shanghai boils down to work, the politics and dramas associated with that, my mishandling of numerous relationships, as well as befriending other overseas Chinese such as myself. My typical day starts with work at 9am. I usually get off between 6pm through 8pm. Every other day, I go to a local gym for about 1 hour and a half.

Most week nights I go to dinner with random dates or a girl that I am seeing at the time. Once ever so often I find myself free to enjoy dinner by myself, this is actually one of my most peaceful times. I would take a book and eat somewhere alone. I am currently reading Moby Dick, I wanted to get away from the science fiction and quantum mechanics stuff that I was reading last year and shift more towards literature. But as you can imagine, once every week or so does not leave me with much time to progress much through the book, I believe I am still within the first 50 pages or so.

I have been running more ever since last year. Every other day I run about 30 minutes at the gym and then maybe go to weights. I am starting to see my age, if i am not careful or eat too much, I can gain a few kg within 2 weeks and develop a small gut. Notice I have already shifted to using kg rather than pound.

I am usually never home until 10pm on weekday nights. Once I am home, I sometimes watch a DVD and then go to bed around 12:30.

On weekends, I usually spend the nights with friends having dinner, in bars, and sometimes in clubs. Karaoke is big here and I actually find it enjoyable now that I have learned the lyrics to a few songs. I suppose I am becoming more Chinese. We play ultimate frisbee on Sundays fairly regularly, then afterwards we usually go for a big buffet dinner, often involving Japanese food.

At nights when I have nothing to do I still go on Kongregate to play those addicting tower defence games. Although I have to say Desktop Defender is still the best (others include Gemcraft, Protector, etc).

Oh and sometimes I still watch Starcraft proleague replays as well as SC2 replays. I have a Xbox360 at home hooked up to a nice samsung HD tv, although I havent had much time to play it.

For RMB 150, I signed up for a Chinese on-line dating website. Prior to posting this, I spend almost 30 seconds contemplating the damage my reputation will sustain due to this public announcement. But, in the end, I did not wish to deny anyone the hilarity which shall inevitably ensue.

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We had a small talk, and by small I mean it dragged on for two days fully integrated with abundant supplies of awkwardness and guilt. I am moving all my stuff out today, luckily it wasn’t too much, (just some clothing) and my own place is only a few blocks away.  She was sad to see me go, and in an attempt to comfort her, I said that I would still be coming to visit all the time. She proceeded to ask that I didn’t take everything away as it would make her very sad. This is when the moment of sacrifice occurred. I don’t know why I did it, perhaps my mind was numb from the 2 day battle. My body was at that very moment positioned so that I was looking directly at it, and my mouth simply blurted out, “Don’t worry, I’ll leave my Xbox360 here.”

Why do you hate me so, mouth. Who is your master, and why does he wish to cause me such unnecessary pain?

Being a man of my words, I am forced to leave you behind today, my cracked and beloved child. I will try to visit you often, but do not worry, for before long I will attempt to rescue you from your predicament.

My friend’s girlfriend, a Shanghainese girl, recently gave him, an ABC,  an ultimatum.  By May, my friend needs to decide whether he will marry her or not. If he decides against marriage, or if he is unsure, they will stop seeing each other by May. Last week, the girl borrowed 2k from my friend. “To pay back credit card payments” she said. This week, the girl came around with a brand new double eyelid surgery. Guess where that 2k went…When asked why she got the surgery, the girl replied, “I did it for you, so I can look prettier for you!” I suggested my friend ask for a breast implant to go along with the eye lid surgery.  When they began dating a year ago, he msned me and wrote “hey, I am really happy with this girl, she is cute and actually offered to pay for our meals!” Now he says, “One of the things I don’t like about my gf is that she never pays for anything, it really has me wondering what would happen if we get married. Would she just quit her job and sit at home all day?”

I have been seeing this girl, I stay over at her place quite often in the past month. I have my own place, but I suppose its easier and less lonely staying over with someone else. She’s Chinese, from Harbin (Northern China) region. she is cute, street smart, does house-work, has a good job. Sounds great right, well one of the problems is that she doesn’t get along at all with my English speaking friends. She does speak English herself, but the cultural differences are fairly noticeable. A few days ago she asked me to pay for rent since I have been staying over at her place so frequently. I declined, “no thanks dear” I don’t think its the money issue that’s the problem, but the implications of me paying a girl’s rent. That kind of commitment has me reeling and seeing stars. She’s a good girl, but the cultural differences are pretty difficult to deal with.

You would be surprised, or perhaps you wouldn’t be. Good girls are hard to find, even in a city like Shanghai with a 20 million population. They can be 1)hot, or 2)smart, or 3)nice, or 4)rich, or 5)fun, or 6)culturally similar.  Rarely are they possessing two or more of the above characteristics.  Being a guy, I know how guys really think. You don’t need two or more of the above! you really only need characteristic 1.  If you had 1 + Any, you think you’re in heaven. If you had 2 of the above in addition to 1.  You should be buying a wedding ring right now instead of reading this rant. But what if you didn’t have 1? ahhhh, dilemma eh? what if you had say 2+3+4? What do you do???? Well I’ll tell you what you do, you begin thinking about your future, justifying that she would make a good mother, and she can help you build your empire. But would you really be happy, or would you feel like you are somehow settling? Alright, show of hands, you have a choice between a girl who is 1+2 or a girl who is 2+3+4+5+6, which one would you choose?

It’s amazing that I even have the choice to grapple over whether I want to accept a scholarship to a decent law school. To not at times acknowledge the view from such a perspective would be both short-sighted and stubborn. But of course I am often both those things.

I sometimes view my life as an endless series of cardboard boxes of which I must always unpack myself out of. My efforts often feel a bit futile, as after one box is finally opened another box remains there to unpack. But to not constantly work to open that box around me would just leave me feeling cramped, claustrophobic. Closed off from the world. And so all I can do is unpack, endlessly, such is the process of this life of mine it seems. It’s sometimes fun, tiring, rewarding, boring, new, repetitive. But it keeps on going, and so must I it seems.

And sometimes you feel as though you are going backwards in time and are feeling your way out of a box you’ve been in before. The texture, lighting, and general feel of the box are quite familiar. But you notice new things as well, like your size in relation to the box, how a certain area no longer feels as cramped, how maybe you can even stand comfortably within that box. That there are others with you in that box. That there are many others with you, perhaps some that you know. The box almost feels livable to you. But is it? That is a very important question.

So I havent posted in a while. The last few weeks have been very busy for me. I’m switching jobs, out of this Chinese law firm into a British risk management company. The nature of the new work seems very interesting, its call business intelligence and investigations. Essentially what that means is that they look into a company to see whether or not they are doing bad things. The bad things may include fraud, bribery, forgeries, falsifying documents, nepotisim, stealing company assests, etc. The clients the company would serve would usually be foriegn companies who wish to do business in China. They might not trust their Chinese business partners, or their suppliers, or even their own China branch managers and employees. The methods the company uses to investigate may include conducting interviews with relevant parties, doing audits on their documents, going through their emails, chat logs, other communications, visiting their facilities. Sometimes the client would be a country government who believes that the company has violated some kind of anti-corruption or anti-bribery law. The biggest example would be the US Foriegn Corruption Practice Act (FCPA). Last year the FCPA fined Siemens over 1 billion dollars. Apparently siemens had an elaborate system set up to bribe foriegn official. When they were discovered, Siemens cooperated to disclose all their actions, the discolsure along costed another 1.5 billion in attorney and consulting fees, all absrobed by Siemens. Apparently even though Siemens is a German company, the fact that their corruption scheme at one point funded some money in USD through a US bank, it was enough to give the US jurisdiction over the matter.  So basically a lot of international firms are now worried because its very easy to fall under the big umbrella of the FCPA. And as China is filled with corruption, the business has a lot of potential here.

That being said, I have been trying to negotiate the contract with the new place while keeping it a secret from my current firm. Sometimes it gets awkward because I always have to sneak out during the middle of the day to meet my headhunter or attend a meeting with managers from the risk management firm. But the final signing should be this Friday. And from there I will inform my current firm next week. That will be a giant mess as well.

Speed Dating

Last saturday I went to a speed dating event with Manuelo and another female friend who was Dutch Chinese from Holland (“dc girl”). The event rules stipulate that you have 8 minutes to talk to a girl, after 8 minutes, you rotate to the next girl. from 7:30 to 10, you should be able to talk to about 20 girls. I got there at around 7 and met my dc girl to first have a light drink while waiting for Manuelo to show up… (more…)