[Note to readers: This blog post is not intended to urge anyone to adopt any particular religious worldview. As my thoughts and opinions are constantly evolving and may not be identical with my past or future thoughts, each reader is encouraged to be brave in finding inspiration from all sources in order to find the best paths in his/her life journey.]
For any English teacher in China, summer is always the busiest season of the year. So I thought that once summer’s over I’d have more time to relax…I was wrong!
In September, my computer suddenly crashed. I took it to the nearby Apple store for repairs, and learned that not only do I have to register for an appointment to get the computer looked at, but that since I’m not a PRC citizen, they can’t help me register by phone or online! Luckily I’m fluent in Chinese and finally figured out the way to do it myself. After a few days or so I found out that the screen’s broken and that it’d take more than 4000 CNY to have it repaired, and since I can have a new computer for as little as 7800 CNY, I opted to buy a new one. I arrived on a Sunday to find everyone being very impatient to get their devices looked at–again, thank God I speak decent Chinese or I would’ve spent the whole day there never getting the chance to speak at all (when people are impatient, they never take turns speaking, it’s part of the PRC culture…)
OK so finally I bought the new computer, had the Word programs installed, transferred the data from the old computer. Two days later, I found out that my “enter” key often malfunctioned. I tried to get it repaired, but the serviceman wasn’t there. They told me that the original store could give me a replacement, but I found out from other Apple buyers that malfunctioning keys are part of the parcel of the newest Apple keyboards, and since I only need a toothpick to solve this problem, I figured that it’s not worth the trouble. I spent the month of September getting a visa extension, which took a whole month (my school has a problem with its business license extension, which affects the work permits of all foreign teachers)
October—the worst news of all: my PRC-bought computer is “affected” by the internet censors and couldn’t access a lot of websites that previously worked fine such as google, youtube, gmail etc. Even official exam websites are affected. I bought this computer and registered it locally with my own ID (my old computer wasn’t bought in the PRC) so sometimes some websites can be opened in the early morning hours, but once office hours kicked in, they would be blocked again. All this propelled me to take the GRE (an exam I have to take in order to go to grad school in the US) outside of the PRC, which means I have to suddenly adjust to a new climate (freezing winter weather to sweltering tropical weather…)
In the past few months I managed to get a few very good days, when there was absolutely no trouble at all, when I had lots of free time to think and write. Here are some of the essays I wrote during those all-too-rare days: