Passing Time in the Storm

There's a storm warning today. The thunder sounds pretty scary. There might be a typhoon coming.

Yesterday I rode in a makeshift cab to Nanjing Dong Lu with some friends, you know, where there are some seats attached to a motorcycle. It was quite a scary experience. I thought we might die occasionally as we hit bumps in the road and drove so closely to real cabs but we made it.

I'm going to start doing some work for the Pudong Institute for the US Economy on my time off. The director is a PhD interested in US-China Relations and Economics so I'm hoping this will be a rewarding experience.

I can't believe it's the first day of September already. School has started in the States so I feel behind knowing I haven't done any of my work, in addition to knowing I've been here for over a month. I ended my rotation in Protocol and now am working in the trenches. I rather like it. I like Protocol too. It's two different crowds of people I'm dealing with, and both have their pros and cons. 各有所長.

I've decided I'm retiring from the pin trading business. The other day I coerced a volunteer into giving away one of his most precious limited-edition Barcelona lizard pins in addition to two of his other pins for my protocol pin and afterward he looked like he was about to cry. It wasn't a good feeling. I felt like a bully. Over some silly pins at that. So now I'm not trading anymore. I'm only going to take pins people give to me.

Being here in Shanghai, I've talked to a number of people about their viewpoints on general issues like politics, problems in society, the Expo, and so on. I don't know what to make of it. On one hand I feel like a lot of the younger folks I've talked to either don't care or are pretty brainwashed. One person told me he thinks the US invented GDP as a measure to lie to China about how best to achieve economic growth. There are other less sinister impressions people have given. Some people think the Expo is a waste of money and time, some people think it's great for China and its people. But who's actually speaking the truth is unfathomable. That's what happens when you talk to a society of people where the truth is dangerous to reveal.