karmic medicine

10:23am

In reply to my query the US embassy recommended I get fingerprinting done in the states.  SQUASH!  I can do that at the end of July and that might be then too late to submit for a student visa.  I could take an unpaid leave between now and July but my classes begin today and end in May.  I could go at the end of May.

I could also wrap this business up here at the end of May and return to the states.  And?  And do the paperwork and so forth and begin classes in September.  I would need something between June and September if this were to happen because leaving the job two months early is a bit of change I’d be giving up my friend, you’re not a baseball player who can walk away from 13 million bucks, seriously.    Summer schools are options, would you like to return to Harvard for eight weeks?  I’m so much more mature now than when I was there in 1999, ha ha.  Oh right, like they’ll take you on again, the director didn’t like me because my students gleefully announced they enjoyed learning English with me.   

Enjoyed?  They used the word ‘fun’ and that word used in the hallowed halls of ivory rang oddly inappropriate. 

I don’t know let’s check it out.

Men from the housing department came by to clean and make ready the air conditioner that hangs above my bed.  The heaters have been officially turned off, I guess we won’t have any more sub-freezing days, Lord help us.  I noted to the man in charge, the man whose name I’ve already forgotten, shame on you, about the one sharp knife in the kitchen and two rusty forks.  We’ll see.  I told him I bought the colander and he said he could reimburse me.   

Please, consider it a gift for the next schmuck, sorry next teacher.

How do you feel today, yesterday you were bummed.  I still am but it’s time to get ready for the bus and sticky gooey snot goes up and down my throat. 

9:51pm

I left the campus after I finished my classes around seven thirty and auto lights on the main road revealed men sweeping the dirt of the street and I don’t know what they were trying to accomplish other than make me cough and gag more than usual.  It has to be spring, it has to be this, palatable visible pollution and in two days rain is in the forecast.  I love rain but not this kind of rain, it’ll be a cold one, a flu baiting rain and I have to take something I don’t have, I should have stocked up in the Dubai duty free of cough medicine and other stuff, I’m running dry but my nose isn’t.

And I was told in a few weeks I’ll be teaching a bunch of fellas from the country’s largest telecommunications company.  This could be fun and whoa watch time fly a good thing but Lord I can’t work if I feel like shit.  My sinuses started aching right in the office, the slime quickly goes right down my throat if I sniff big, ok I won’t do that, people across China all looked up, wooah, one of us.

Do you miss those days in Tianjin?  Do you think the hoarking and spitting of huge green splotches by bicyclists this winter has changed since I was there 25 years ago?  Ha, really.  Tianjin 25 years ago.  I should post it on facebook, go ahead embarrass yourself, make someone laugh at your expense, perhaps I’ll feel better when I wake up tomorrow.  What?  How is there a connection?  Laughter is the best medicine and if only a few laughed at my expense, surely I should feel better, no?  Just coming at the karma with a new approach.  I’ll let you know how it goes.