Today's weather: High = 18 Low = 8
Partly Cloudy
Well this is just for me personally ... better hold my breath before applying this to current events!
Fittingly enough, just after I started typing this blog post, I got wind of breaking news that said North Korea launched artillery fire across the border onto a South Korean island, and then SK fired back. Yikes! NK has always been in the news for doing this or that thing, and the most previous dispute was the submarine attack. But this latest one is pretty hard to dispute blame, and it looks like the entire SK military is on high alert now and preparing for more attacks.
And in more local news, there was a fire that broke out in Shanghai last week and destroyed an entire apartment complex. Now the whole city is on fire alert and the mayor is launching a series of building code crackdowns. The fire was caused by poor construction work in a neighboring building, where the work was sub-contracted out to unlicensed welders who were hired off the street. The managers soon fled after this, although some 15 were detained. Most of the migrant workers fled back to their hometowns, or were left in Shanghai without any compensation after the fire. Needless to say, unsafe work practices and lack of fire prevention are rampant like this all over the country. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The hyper response and all this typical "after-the-fact" planning come from the loss of face that the mayor would experience after such a tragedy happened in a city that just hosted the EXPO. After all, this wouldn't make major news headlines if a fire happened in, say, an interior city like Chongqing (which did happen there about 6 months ago)
Moving over to Taiwan, my friends from that area say that an earthquake happened there recently and this has some effect on upcoming local elections. Apparently they are afraid of the next guy being elected who won't be as friendly with the mainland as the current leader is. Positive ties between Taiwan and the mainland are rather key, especially with all the recent developments. Especially the direct flights now between Shanghai and Taipei that only take an hour.
Despite these sorts of things, life for myself has been going very well in the last few months. I'm happy to say that I haven't left the city at all for two months strong, and have been fitting in very well. It's gotten to the point where I actually *want* to travel again now, and look forward to wherever the next trip is.
Most of this year was a total whirlwind of traveling, and I basically hit the airport an average of once every 3 weeks! Friends who do business travel would tell me this is easy, compared to flying once a week like they do, sometimes more. But the fact of the matter is that frequent flying is exhausting. I was getting mighty sick of airplanes already this year, and pulling off a schedule like my business friends do would drive me insane.
Air travel is so exhausting because of the total time you're traveling, not just the time in the air. All the stuff about getting to/from the airport, flight delays, security checks, etc. just adds stress, not the mention the fact that waiting around in airports, transfer halls, or on the tarmac is mind-numbingly boring.
Basically I didn't really start flying until I was 22 years old. So it was a neat experience and a lot of joy at first to do this. Things would be seriously wrong if it got to the point where I didn't want to set foot in an airplane again. I guess the point is that air travel first became a special thing for me, not an exhausting ordeal --- and I'd like to keep it that way.
So feeling like I can stay put in one place for awhile is quite refreshing at this point, especially with the recent positive successes that have happened.
Recently the school where I work got a very positive review and some great feedback related to that, and things are really moving forward.
The gameplan at this point is to continue staying in Shanghai until the New Year Break, and several visitors are coming here to see me for a change.
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