January 24, 2012

  • Shanghai

      
    I just sat through a completely loud and bright Chinese New Year celebration here. Fireworks everywhere. The displays here dwarf anything back home. It's understandable, this is the biggest holiday here. Everyone typically vacates the big cities to go home to their hometowns to see family. I'm pretty much the only one who fled their hometown. Consequently, I don't know many people here, at present.

    I have been here almost a month, now, and have set up base in a pretty small but still lively part of town. Any given street here is crawling with people, going about their daily lives. It's very.. normal.. here. At least in this city, it's not the misery dispensing police state that media and people with armchair, NPR-back world views back home makes it out to be. There is a cop on every corner, justabout.. but they seem to be doing their job: patrolling and intervening when something does go wrong, like the random fisticuffs that do sporadically popup. Either that, or their not giving a damn about the average person.

    I probably have to be the strangest thing people here have seen, but those in uniform don't give me shit. Not that I'm defending China but.. it's far different than what we seem to think, and you can only know that once you've been here and circulated in order to see that this place has ups and downs just like our place has em. The difference being that their hustle and bustle is alive and well.

    I've so far managed to connect myself with all necessary resources and/or improvise. The CNY shutdown of most small restaurants I usually eat at has forced me to acquire things to cook myself; I shall be blowing up the kitchen tomorrow afternoon :D . The maiden dish: two varieties of skillet-fried shrimp.

    I can't think of what besides salad I can eat as a side dish but this'll due. Everything resumes normal ops in about 5 days, but I think I'll try cooking more.

    I have plenty of money to survive on. I'm still making it from back home, also. I've conquered the subway and have access to all my native not-getting-lost references. I also have a phone :D . They're way less of a hassle and mess to get, here.

    I brought school with me, also. I aced another class last week but I don't know about the next class. You wouldn't think "Informal Logic" would be hard, but it's a challenge in comprehension most of the time. This might be another class that breaks my shuffle, to be honest. It doesn't matter, as long as I pass it. I was just trying to keep the A streak going. I bumped once in a class I didn't have to, already.

    I think I've started this year, the right way. The last 2 things I did back home where to hand off a bunch of gifts that I spent a good deal of effort picking out. I got to see a lot of happy faces on Christmas day. I spent my last night with CT and Vanessa.

    .. I left some premium icecream that they never ate, it seems. But we had dinner and drank quite a lot. Despite having tanked 6 shots of Disaronno, I woke the following morning, at about 4:30 AM, sharp and ready to go the last mile (or few miles) to the airport.

    I've battled various forms of anxiety about all the things I'm not familiar with, here.. but overall.. I'm at peace, just for the fact that I left so many troubles behind and they are as distant as this place and today once were.

    I'm having to relearn language, because I have no experience with "Shanghainese" (this dialect has a name, it seems).. and so my listening is totally thrown off. I'm able to interface successfully and speak understandably, at least.

    I've written back home and have relatively few pictures, but it doesn't matter. What does matter is.. I'm now sure that this was the right thing to do.. and my next objective is to tough out the remainder of my studies here, so that I can keep the peace that I've fought for.

    I still haven't found where exactly I'll settle and dig in further, but the invasion has only just begun.