Nocturnal Dreams

"Replicants are like any other machine.  If they are a benefit to the public, that is no concern to me."
Unfortunately, the world is filled with replicant and real people.  The replicants can be found by testing their reactions to empathy using a Voight Kampf machine.  Please comment here to receive a test and be accepted inside.

Planning my trip to Shanghai.  I want to go there and eat…and exercise… and go clubbing.  I want to see people, meet people.  I have nothing really good to wear, so I may have to buy some stuff there.  I am trying to get Gary to come with me because it really is his town.  He knows the places to go and the places to hang out in the city.  He could turn this into a REAL vacation if he is able to come along.  Some of the guys are sniggering in the office when I talk to him.  Gary is openly gay and he turns the gay meter up sometimes…..and I so…. just… do not care.  He can show me places to go where I won’t waste my time or my money.  And he is good company and he is less likely to be obnoxious like so many others.  Too many guys run off the women (and some of the other guys too).  I am friends with so many people that are like that.  And they are GOOD people, they have good hearts and would give you the shirt off their back and they are into interesting things, but their social skills are so bad….. so dreadful… they have no idea how what they are saying is being taken.  They completely unengaged from the look in the eyes of the people around them.  The look that says “I am bored”…or “This person is horrifying”.  Any other day of the week I would be patient.  But time is limited and I have no patience here.

( Plans...and other thoughts.... )

Mike was drunk and getting louder in the darkness. 

( How was your weekend? )

Wrote this after lunch today.  My mind is floating.  Often times they are written to a person that I have in mind. I then go over it and remove references to that person that I am writing to and post the rest for the readers here. 

Gary is a 26 year old civil engineer.  He has been here for two years.  He had come to China for one month at a time as an English teacher three times before when he was in college.  He has a lot of panache that is missing from most of the other expats here.  He dresses well, speaks Chinese and has a very sharp wit.  Any activity you choose to do would be better with Gary attending also.  He is also openly gay.  That may not be of a concern to you back home where you live or the circles you travel in, but it is not common here in the world of heavy construction and even more so in rural China which has more than an aversion to homosexuality.  Sometimes Gary plays it up by greeting people with “Neee-Howwwwwwwww” drawing it out so it sounds like he is checking you out.  Some of the burly gruff expats that are stereo types of “manly” men admitted they were bothered at first, but they quickly got over it.  Gary is very good at what he does and that is the only quality about a person that people seem to care about here with the Expat community….but more on that later.

Gary’s partner lived with him here for a year initially.  He is a chef back home in North Carolina.  His partner is setting up their home for Gary’s return in August.  Gary didn’t have much to say about the recent vote concerning marriage back home, he didn’t seem to care.  He is more concerned about his career, coming home and other prospective projects he wants to become a part of.  People can be very cliquish here, but I hit it off early with Gary.  He is originally from West Virginia and we talked about our far away land and how different it is from here. 

Lot is a very tall, lean, athletic black mechanical engineer with a shaved head.  He is also a very rabid conservative republican.  I saw him on the bus the other day reading Robert Greene’s “48 Laws of Power” and I told him how it was one of my favorite books.  He liked it too and we got to talking about politics.  I am normally conservative in my outlook on things, but even I encounter people that go too far into kooky theories.  I always try to steer away from such subjects, but I had never met a black man sound as right wing as Lot.  He made Alan Keyes sound like Noam Chomsky.  Lot is an ex-navy nuke reactor officer.  They are all trained engineers.  They all suffered a lot to get where they are today and they are paid very well for it.  They all gravitate towards any ideology that says they should keep more of what they made.  And Lot is a character too… full of sardonic wit.  The Chinese when they are searching for a word don’t say “um…um….um….”  They say “nega….nega…. nega”.  So one day Lot was standing next to a Chinese engineer who started saying that.  Lot’s eyes grew huge and he yelled at the man who he was two heads taller than “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU SAY!?!??!”  Luckily an expat that was familiar with the expression told Lot what it meant.  Lot tells that story now with a laugh.  Mark it up to cultural misunderstandings.

We have VERY diverse groups here that I work with.  Hamilton is of Thai descent.  He was born in New Jersey but he speaks three languages including smartass.  James and Arthur are both of Chinese descent, but both of them were U.S.Naval officers that served under Admiral Rickover himself.  Arthur looks like he could fit in here, but his Kansas accent is a dead giveaway.  We have several Romanian engineers that keep to themselves.  I saw one running on the beach.  As soon as he was finished with his jog he lit up a cigarette.  The Spanish engineers are all young, under 30 types that also keep to themselves.  They look at everyone and everything around them with a horrified expression.  They are horrified by the food, horrified by us other expats, the fashion.  They dress like they were going out on the town for a night of clubbing, even though they are coming to a nuclear construction site every day.  There is Richard, who looks like the Farscape villain Crais complete with ponytail, mustache and goatee.  He is an aficionado of Chinese women.  His son, Thomas, a reclusive, effeminate 15 year old that never wants to leave the apartment.  :/ I feel bad for the kid and the education he is receiving here.  He doesn’t do anything and rarely leaves the apartment let alone the village walls.  There are the two burly southern guys in their 50s that are 6’4”, weigh at least 350 pounds and probably a lot more than that.  They are loud except when they are eating which is most of the time.  They eat like fairy tale giants.  The other day at breakfast one bragged about how a “dubious” female masseuse said he had a large penis.  I was leaving and said over the table “Oh!! The nice lady that you paid… paid money… said you were large?  That was nice!!!”  I don’t need to make any more enemies here. 

All of these people except for one are republicans if you can believe it.  The only guy I know who is not is a 1979 graduate of the Naval Academy.  Bill is from a family of San Diego naval officers that goes back four generations.  The others expats are not your Bible thumping social conservatives, trying to flash freeze their changing culture through the power of law.  These are people that have worked their entire lives and sacrificed greatly in order to make a lot of money and they don’t want anyone to take that from them.  This is mostly the case for the older ones.  An expat “ronin” does not have a pension like some of the people have for working a lifetime at one company.  They have worked a few years for one company or project here and there for their entire careers.  What they make is more about cash flow than savings.  We have 60 year old men and women that come here and sign up for two years for half a million dollars.  You live here for next to nothing and when you go home, THAT can be your retirement.  Granted that a million isn’t a million any more, most of the elder staff sign up for four years at a time.  The money they earn can buy them a house when they return to the states and a comfortable living for the rest of their days.  Some of them don’t even come home.  They head out to Costa Rica or some stable country where their money can go far…and they do live like kings. 

“That is not my life” I keep telling myself.  I am here just for a short duration.  I hit a big milestone this morning at least weight wise.  Tomorrow I climb “Tiger Mountain”.  There are several temples there I’ll try to get pictures of.  It'll be good to be out of the village anyway, the power will be cut for 14 hours tomorrow starting at 5:30 AM.   A friend asked me yesterday why I wasn’t down about being here.  Granted I do NOT want to be here and I am ready to leave the moment an opportunity appears, but until then I am going to put the most positive spin I can on doing things.  Next week I get a little four day vacation in Shanghai doing business.  This is the hotel I am going to be staying.  http://www.skyfortunehotel.com/index-en.htm  Everything I have seen so far shows me that this is going to be a REAL adventure going here.  I wish I had someone to share it with, mostly so I can turn to them and say “Did this just happen?”

I should preface this by saying this was written in haste today.  It may not be grammatically correct or even make sense.  It was written during a bout of grief, several cups of coffee and antihistamines.  You may not like the things I say in it...they are probably not fully formed ideas, but somewhere in there, there might be.

( Too many thoughts )

I got a massage this weekend. I was a little nervous about the place I was going to since getting a massage in this country has so many connotations. But I was told that I could get a real and legitimate massage at our destination. The place was called “Rome Palace” and it honestly looked like a Roman palace with all the architecture to go with it.

The establishment was finely appointed and when we walked inside the foyer we were invited to take off our shoes and put on slippers. We were then issued wrist straps with numbers to account for everything we did. We then walked into a dressing room where we stripped down and put on something akin to pajamas. They didn’t have a top that fit me but the bottoms fit just nice. That was a bit odd because it is usually the other way around. The RP has a series of pools and hot tubs but we were not here for that. We went upstairs and had a beer in an area that looked like a banquet hall. I was not much for drinking a beer before a massage, I know that you just want to be drinking water after you get one and I didn’t want to be too dehydrated.

We were on the second floor only for a few minutes before we were led to the third floor. I gave a description of what I wanted and was then led to a room. Five minutes later a girl who looked like she was in middle school in a masseuse uniform entered and told me how to lay on the bed. I was confused with her instructions. She had to show me how I was to orientate myself. I laid on my chest with my face towards the foot of the bed.

In a lot of ways what she did was unremarkable. I was worried that she would not be strong enough to do anything, but she was more than strong enough. She worked on my back, then my legs, starting with my thighs down to my ankles. She had me turn over and she worked on my legs again, this time from the front. She also massaged my arms. Everything down to my fingers were massaged and she did this thing where she pulled at the fingers and there was a crack with each digit like she was cracking her knuckles. She finished by massaging my head. She put some kind of hot compress on the small of my back after she finished that area and used some oils with everything else. Fully one third of the massage was just hitting with small judo like chops. She used her knuckles and elbows a lot. I don’t think she ever tried to stand on my back and crack it. This lasted for fully an hour and ten minutes. She watched Chinese soap operas on the television as she worked. She looked bored whenever I caught a glimpse of what she was doing, but then I was just another customer.

Afterwards I went downstairs to the second floor where I sat in a recliner with a built in television set. I had a foot massage here that lasted 30 minutes. There are two places on my right foot that are sensitive. I bit down on a towel while the girl worked on them. She laughed when she saw me biting down. You could lay there in the recliner all evening if you want, but we went back down to change into our street clothes. Total cost? 281 RMB. It made the evening a lot better… especially since I can’t remember the last time I have had my calves massaged. It was very nice and I think I’ll be back here again on another weekend. The guys asked me if it was the best massage I ever had. I said "No, the best was given to me by Jemma Hartsouk from Florida years ago". I then went "wow, I haven't thought or spoken her name in so long.... I guess the night woke up that memory." LOL

What is hard about living in the other side of the world? You are isolated. The people that surround you that speak your language are all that you have. Of course you can email friends and family. Posting pictures is slow. You need a VPN to use facebook and twitter. Skyping can be done with faster connections. But is it not easy to just pick up a phone and call people. At $2 per minute, you just don’t. And you realize how disconnected you are with things.

I have lost two people that were important to me since I came here almost a month ago. Tonight I will lose a third. I had known him since we were teenagers in college, we are fraternity brothers. Actually he is my little brother in my fraternity, Phi Kappa Tau.  We lived in the same hometown for a while after school and then he moved out west and we lost track of one another. I got in contact with him again two years ago. We caught up online and played video games on Xbox live. Xbox live is a great place where you can spend time with people if you are playing the right game. Borderlands was our game, where Chris and I were seeking the fabled vaults of Pandora. Not long before I came to China he had some medical troubles and had to have surgery. The results were terrifying, he had extensive colon cancer. A fellow brother went to visit him and afterwards he asked me if I would be able to visit him. Two weeks out getting ready for my trip to China that could last five months, I didn’t have the time or money to go. I said I would be back by the latest in August.  At the time, there was no reason why I couldn't see him then.

I got a message this morning that he had taken a turn for the worst and that they were gathering the family to say goodbye. Shawn, a fellow brother, was in Africa as he told me this. Shawn’s work with the CDC takes him everywhere in the world.  He is often not home when he most wants to be. He knew every feeling that would be going through my mind. I sent him a message back and just sat in my room and cried for a while. What could you do? The company would not send me back for anyone other than a parent or a sibling. Getting tickets on short notice for an international flight can be difficult and they often run $6000 with fuel prices the way they are. Chris’s father had the exact same cancer. He was scared of getting it. He was scared when he did get it. I just sat there on my bed and cried thinking of him. That is the time when you realize that you have had no physical contact with another human other than a handshake since you have arrived here.

I got to work and opened Microsoft Word. I always write as I work. It is not a means of goofing off. It helps me keep focused. As I do other things, my mind wanders, so I write a few sentences and then go back to what I should be doing. Sometimes at the end of the day I have a document that is worth posting. Most days it is just garbage or disjointed. Today I wrote all of the reasons why it was great to be alive. Some profound, some stupid. But all of them were good reasons to be alive. Not every death is a sad occasion. If you have lived a long time and done many things, that is a life to be celebrated, one to be held up. A life cut short is one where the individual will miss out on much. And we will miss out on much not sharing those experiences with that person. My mind always goes to what they will never get to do, what they will never get to see, what they will never get to experience, what they will never get to say.

I have friends that get so depressed they lock up. They don’t go anywhere, they don’t want to do anything, they just isolate themselves and shut down. They give every reason in the world for why they "can't".  They wear that like a badge of pride because it is comfortable and it gets them compassion from some.  They have the means, they are physically able and I just want to jump up and down and scream “GET OUT THERE, you are missing out!!!!!" I know it is not the right thing to say to someone who is depressed, but it is always there with me under the surface.

I wrote and I wrote all day. I had to go to the site for a few hours twice today. At lunch, I ate my soup and thought of more things to write. I thought about this Roberta, a girl I knew in high school.  Hadn't thought of her in years.  I remembered hearing her play for hours classical music on a grand piano. I thought of friends that were far away. I thought of Zebby. I thought of scuba diving. I thought of my favorite meal, linguini with white clam sauce. I thought of the times I slept outside and watched the stars. I thought of Fiona, the bulldog puppy next door.  I thought of riding the trails on my bike near my house.  I had three pages worth of things worth doing, worth seeing, worth sharing, worth remembering.  I might post it someday... if I can merge it with the other pages of stuff that is similar in nature.

Life is so worth living, but no one is going to hand it to you. You will have to go out and get it yourself. And you will meet people along the way that will want it like you do. If they don’t want to swim in the same direction as you, that’s OK, there will be those that will. But don’t be a stop along the journey. Keep swimming, keep learning, keep improving, keep positive, keep giving, do the right thing….always. Don’t do it for a reward. Don’t do it for an expectation. Do it without any thought of a return other than the intrinsic experience of doing it. And along the way you will be surprised.

Tonight is May the Fourth, so I am going to watch Star Wars. And I’ll think of Chris and take it easy.

Service is interesting here.  You can get amazing service in stores and the most horrible service in restaurants.    I purchased a player for my television in my apartment at Jesco, their version of a Target store.  I was followed by an attendant in whatever section of the store I went to.  Whenever I touched something, they would quickly pull out a copy of it for me to look at.  In the case of my player, they put in a disc and showed me how it would look on a television screen.  When I decided on what to buy, they took me to a counter to pay for it.  They then took me back and opened one of the boxes and pulled out my player and plugged it in to show me that it was working correctly.  You leave with no doubt that what you are buying works and is what you wanted.  They even changed the language to English for me.  I was impressed with their service and how they took care of me.

Restaurants are a different matter though.  It is not for effort though.  In the Western styled restaurants, they don’t understand that you just want drinks at first… then maybe an appetizer and then your main course.  It is not their fault.  Not many of them speak English.  One server got so frustrated that we wanted to put two tables together to seat four of us that she quit being our server and had someone else do it. 

For the second day in a row I have made it a point to go on the track in front of my apartment.  The track is a quarter of mile in its circuit and there is a viewing stand on one side.  The stands have three sets of stairs with 18 steps each.  I ran the stairs up (and went down them a little slower).  I did two miles of that this morning and then went for a walk along the shoreline in Haiyang.  Yesterday I did four miles in the morning and the evening.  Running up the stairs is great for me and there is not much else to do here in this village.  That is not a bad thing from a fitness standpoint.  Lots of available walking, a gym and a track, what more do you want?

We unpacked our first shipment of material Monday at the work site.  We have enough to get started.  More should be here in a month’s time, but I eager to get it started and finished so I can go home.