These past days I feel like I am just holding on … waiting for this miserable winter to end. Winters in China are exceptionally difficult because there is no escape from the wet, damp cold. Homes have no insulation, no heaters, no storm windows … cracks everywhere let the cold air in the hot air out … there is never a draftless room. Only at my job at my desk squinting as years of peeping screens start to take it’s toll do I feel truly warm. Somehow that saddens me.
Well. I also feel very warm in my bedroom. We have a small heater running basically 24/7 and we’ve started doing our work and eating in the bedroom because anywhere else is just too uncomfortable. Clothes don’t dry in the cold.
I have the money to rent a nice super duper modern place … or China’s equivalent at least … but I am saving money up because 2008 was supposed to be my last year here. Its 2011. I want out. The girls aren’t cute anymore. The chaos isn’t exciting anymore. it’s all become just … normal … now that my senses aren’t stimulated enough to make up for the lower standard of living … its time to go. i aint a kid anymore I guess. I want hotels and not bus stops to sleep in.
Stayed at my homies place the other night with the fam and he had bedbugs. We all got bit up, Stinky especially so. Anvil that broke the camels back. I am just keeping my head down and trying to save this cash. Its hard. There are more expenses than I know what to do with.
But at least I ain’t Coptic. Peep this essay I wrote about the Uprising in Egypt for ChengduLiving.
For work I have been concentrating on what I know best: the Southwest. Tomorrow I’ll have a page put together with a nice list of the posts I wrote for ChinaTravel about the Horse and Tea Trade Route and Chengdu. If you can’t wait that long, then check out all of my Chinatravel posts here. They aren’t just pithy “been there loved it” posts. Most of them are just me talkin.
