that stands for rough night, long day, good food. Rough night as in the devil mind came out to play and I struggled mightily. Upshod is very little sleep and plenty of misery. And the poem that I wrote below in the midst of it? Well, it is a little scary. I have absolutely zero recollection of writing the last verses. I remember the first two, but the rest came from something other than my concious thought. Am I losing it? Perhaps. Maybe that's part of the eschewing attachment though...
Another long day, and as I sit here at about 9:30pm, I have to work hard to reconstruct what exactly I did today. It has been a total blur here between the work and lack of sleep. I think we had a meeting this morning, then lunch, then another marathon session to talk about all the parameters of the project. Then a short break, then dinner with the head of the Ford Foundation in China. In other words, great stuff but again I had to be "on" full tilt the whole time. And do a lot of thinking. But that's what I get paid to do.
The semi-humorous moments were during my cab rides today. When our afternoon meeting was done I bailed on a shopping excursion choosing instead to come back to my hotel for the 2 hour break and rest and catch up on email (other work continues despite my working here). The cabbie didn't know where my hotel was, and after getting directions from two different hotel employees we ventured off. He was going in the right direction, but took a wrong turn and I knew it. Luckily traffic moves at a snail's pace at 4pm in Beijing, so I finally looked in my dictionary and said "you guai" (turn right). He actually listened, and we got to my hotel.
Then on the ride back, as we got close to the destination hotel, the cabbie pointed and I said, "dui" (correct). He laughed, and said, "dui dui laowai dui" (yes yes white foreigner yes). We pulled up and the fare was 12Y. I gave him 15Y and waited for change (you don't tip in China). He just sat there. I said "fa piao" (receipt). He gave it to me and I pointed at the amount. He grudgingly gave me my 3Y.
