Today's weather: High = 22 Low = 15
Sunny
This evening marks the end of an exhausting and emotionally wrenching weekend. Thankfully we have an easy day tomorrow (Monday) as the classes have been cancelled in the afternoon for a Halloween party. As mentioned in the last post, I have no fondness for this particular day and it may as well be a festival of the devil, with all these witches, goblins, zombies, demons, and so forth.
Nevertheless I'll get dressed up as my own costume of a suit and tie and take part in the afternoon activities.
This time of year, without fail, is when I get depressed. For reasons I can't explain, bad stuff always happens to me around this time of year. Even if it doesn't, there are the seasonal changes, the weather getting colder, the nights getting longer, and the fact that we still have almost 80 days of relentless work before the next real holiday: Chinese New Year.
As an aside I am getting tired of this rat race and have sketched a plan to quit this job after two years, then take a year off to ride a bicycle around Asia. The idea is that I'll bust my butt off and do a masters at the same time as working, then quit or take a year-long leave of absence once I have the degree. The alternative would be to take a year off teaching and do the masters exclusively as a student but what's the point of that? The way this plan I have in mind should work, there will be alternative income sources, and I can finance my travels that way.
The school gives us Christmas and Western New Year holidays but these are short little 3-day snippets. Still, they are a huge relief. The American Thanksgiving coming up in a month from now is the light at the end of the tunnel, as it were, marking the countdown when holidays are approaching. Haloween is just terrible as it doesn't mark any real holidays and there is no reason to celebrate this day.
Coming into this weekend I felt like crawling under a rock to die. Not only penniless due to a 2-month salary delay and major expenses needed at the start of a new school year , but facing a relentless workload at school, a stressful round of moving apartments , dealing with a bunch of other crap, and also a looming deadline for a 20-page masters degree project. And then some thief comes along and tries to steal the motorcycle right from outside the door of my new apartment at THIS time.
The optimism here, just like in all Haloween-related depressions I go through, is that when things get at their worst, they can only begin to get better from here. And today was the start of such incremental progress for the better. Out of the blue I received two love offerings from the two small groups I attend that are part of the SCF church here in Shanghai. In one group I am the leader, in the other I just take part in discussions. However, I simply was handed 500 RMB from people in each group.
This is something I'll go into more detail in my other blog, but I am a strong proponent of tithing to the local church. This is something that all Christians should be doing, and that is giving at least 10% of the income to the local church. It has taken me many years and struggles to reach this point in my spiritual journey, but I am now giving 20% and will do so for a long time to come. Maybe it's a way of making up for the past when I first didn't give anything to the church after I got saved. Or perhaps simply a habit that has developed. Ironically, my penniless situation over the last two weeks was related to giving whatever cash I still had left to the local church. Maybe it was silly, but I was holding out until the last minute when I believed that an offering would come in the nick of time, to which it did! Not only that, but I am convinced that God thwarted the plan of the thief to steal the bike as a result of the tithing. Now that's what I call an insurance policy! If this kind of topic intrigues you or makes you angry, then read my other blog where I will write a lot more.
Say what you want about tithes, offerings, and giving to the church, but what is amazing here is that the two love offerings paid for the *exact* cost of the bike repairs which happened today. All that was left over was 15 RMB which I used to get a Starbucks coffee.
Staying up until well past midnight trying to finish off my masters degree project on a Saturday night, it was with regret that I had to wake up early, on a Sunday no less. My Canadian biker friend had agreed to help me lift the bike into a taxi truck which was booked for 8am. This was really appreciated, and the security guard at the compound voluntarily got into the action too with a smile!! The guard and I are friends now.
The truck would take the bike and myself to the local Chinese mega-shop across town, where my Canadian biker friend would ride his own bike to get it serviced at a German specialty shop at 9am that day. Some guys have all the luck. His earlier suggestion was very good to deflate the air in the tires and put on more locks as a deterrent in case the thief were to come back.
Regretably, the Chinese mega-shop (Jiaoji Lu) was all the way across town. The 20km journey using surface roads in a truck was an exercise in torture. The trucks are not allowed to use the elevated 'gao jia' and must take the surface roads which are plagued with zillions of long and unsynchronized traffic lights. Even on an early Sunday morning, the trip took 90 minutes, and 40 of these minutes were stopped at lights. Not only could I have ridden the motorcycle there much faster, I could have gotten faster on a BICYCLE
Once at the shop, they had a laugh at my situation, all in good fun. Then there was a ton of work to be done. Replace ignition, re-seal the front forks, change the fork oil, replace stolen box, change fuel line, change motor oil, do some spot welding, and a whole lot more. The guys did excellent work, as they always do, as I have seen them so often. But still, as always, it took a very long time. I used this as an excuse to meet a girl for a date at People's Square. Long story, and again, will have to blog this later.
As an aside I'm getting severely behind on the blogs as just so much has happened to me this month.
The bike was repaired by the early afternoon and I then stashed it in the safety of our school's underground parking lot. I'm no longer riding it to my apartment complex and besides, it will be returned to the German guy who bought it off me by this Wed. And then, it's wait until May for a new bike.
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