Tuesday Night Chatter

Thanks to the brave who commented last time, again I welcome comments and questions, should you so decide to pass them on. They will be addressed in next week's edition of TNC.

Russ, I am not sure how the post office works, if it does, indeed, work. The post office is enormous and there are about a million windows, each one for something else, and the western forums are filled with horror stories of officers taking money for stamps and canning the letter, or overcharging, or generally being nefarious. However, I have also heard that friends have successfully sent and received packages and letters, and therefore I'm sure that the truth, as it always is, is somewhere in between.

The building is huge, and yellow, and has a wide parking lot in front, probably the only parking lot I've seen here (I forgot to mention in my post about traffic that the sidewalks are always mistaken for parking, and thus there is always someone backing into the middle of oncoming traffic). My box is in the very back, at the end of a hallway, in a wooden cabinet with the others. I have been told that sending stuff to the post office is more or less reliable but at least you are not trusting the letter to some tuk tuk driver who has no blessed clue where your address actually is.

As for subtle cultural differences, Tristen, I could probably write a novel but naturally most are escaping me right now. They come in quiet realizations and understandings, like the fact that you aren't supposed to touch people on the top of the head because that's where the soul apparently is. I also get the impression that people act very differently towards westerners and therefore some of those real differences are lost in the exchange. I will, however, try to note it as I go.

In the meantime, if having a cold means there is too much going on, then...there is too much going on. I am not too sick to do anything but enough to snuffle around my house and sneeze violently whenever I turn the fan on. I think it's also because my over-active hamster brain has been on double duty the past couple weeks and keeps me up long after I turn out the lights.

It's been a terrible weekend for the utilities; I was without internet from Friday night through Sunday afternoon, and without power from early this morning until around five thirty. Nothing fatal, but thoroughly inconvenient and required me spending more money than planned at the cafés for internet and today for lunch.

One good thing about the time, during which I groped about desperately for something to do with myself, was picking up The Fountainhead, which I had with me from the states and never felt like I had the energy to deal with. With nothing better to do, I've very much enjoyed reading and confess myself totally engrossed -- it's interesting, however much you know how you are being beaten over the head with the philosophy, it's still so fascinating. I personally think Ms. Rand spent a lot of time reading Nietszche...

I've been worrying about money this week. I did, in the end, quit the tutoring job with the four-year-old -- and don't regret it, but it does make paying September's rent a bit of an adventure, though I think it will be fine in the end.

I'm not afraid to admit it hasn't been a great week; I've been stressed, worried, and frustrated with the lack of internet, which serves to make me miss home all the more for having lost my permanent link with it. I'm not dancing, which always makes me grumpy, and the fusion project has inexplicably stalled, leaving me scrambling to figure out how to proceed and what really I'm doing/want to accomplish with my time here.

My saving grace has been my workshops. The first was good, the second better, and the third so far proving to be the best. I have four repeat students and two I already know; they are all great and interested and generally fantastic. Although I have no idea what they are saying to each other, I think they're hilarious. The kicker was today in class, when one of my students (one of two who have been there since the first workshop) startled me by asking during a break, "Yan, do you want to be a supermodel?"

"Absolutely not," I answered, but he said, "But why not? You're tall." And sort of as a hesitant afterthought, "And beautiful." Of course I preened.

They then proceeded to all flabbergast me in a very simple exercise about initiation (where in the body the movement comes from) with the incredible innovation, depth, and thought they managed to pack into a simple thirty second phrase. I swear, I have nothing to do with this stuff. I just open the door, and they come storming through.

So here I am. Very far away, and totally uncertain, but I am here. And as one of my favorite Zen sayings remarks, wherever you go, there you are.