All things being equal

Been a busy weekend.

Friday night the Australian consulate had some kind of party and a bunch of people from work went. I forced myself to go even though I’m pretty antisocial.

I left after about two-something hours but not having won anything in the raffle. I think I ate 20 rmb worth of snacks, though. They had some good stuff. I talked with several people, though none with the consulate.

The last group was a bunch of China Southern pilots, who had been “reassigned” from Qantas. Apparently, Qantas did a “save face” kind of thing and instead of laying them off during a downturn somehow got them four-year contracts with CZ. Very weird.

Anyway, I was talking to this one guy in particular – he was a dual citizen, originally from Arizona but lives in Brisbane now – when I finally deemed it time to go.

As I was leaving, I passed by some of my colleagues and I pointed out to one woman that there was a bunch of a pilots in the corner, should she go and want to meet some men. She said, “Oh! You’re just so good at socializing!” I almost fell over.

No, I am not. But I try to go to a person who’s alone and engage him or her in conversation. It usually works and I don’t feel like a moron just standing there like a redheaded wallflower.

Thursday night, I was all over. We had a welcome party hosted by our Marines. I love our guys. They’d hate me saying this, but they’re just kids to me. I orchestrated a stocking stuffer drive for them at Christmas to show some appreciation and in general, treat them like human beings instead of these people who stand in our defense. Most other people don’t talk to them, which is a shame because they’re nice guys with stories as interesting as any other of my colleagues.

At their party, I noticed the people in my department didn’t even talk to the Marines, who were the hosts. I even asked someone about it afterwards and he said oh, he didn’t know any of them so he didn’t talk to them. Ahem! They’re hosting you. Say thank you!

But no. They didn’t, and for the most part, they didn’t even talk to anyone outside of my departments. I love those little get-togethers because I get to talk to people in the other departments. It’s my chance to go and talk to the computer guy, the social organizer person, the wife of the new guy, etc. Basically, talk to anyone and everyone who does NOT work directly with me. Those guys I see all the time.

But the rest of them, they were completely insular, to the exclusion of the hosts. It just bothered me.

Walking back with the social organizer person (there really is a job title for this, but it wouldn’t make sense to anyone who doesn’t work at the place), we discussed it. It just aggravates me that people treat some people better or worse than others.

One of the nicest compliments I ever got was from a blue-collar friend, who told me that I “treat everyone the same.” And honestly, I do try to.

There’s a thread on our office bulletin board (worldwide, not just here) that says we should hold doors open, in part, because the person we’re assisting could wind up being our next supervisor.

You know what? I don’t care about that. I hold doors open for people all the time, and I say hi to people all the time. I do not say hi to this person and not that one, though, and I am indiscriminate in whom I open doors for. Someone’s there, I do it. I don’t check their resumes before doing something nice.

Which might have something to do with what happened upon arrival at my apartment building after the Marine party. The social organizer person and I ran into an American in the lobby, headed up the elevator. We introduced ourselves and the lady told me she’d heard there was a redhead in the building and been advised to meet her, because she was really nice.

So that made my evening, honestly.

Really, I’ve been super busy this weekend, although I did get in a good nap this afternoon. After the Australian thing Friday, I got up Saturday and worked out and made pancakes as per normal, then met a group of 11 for a massive, massive lunch. (I’ve yet to attend a meal where we had just enough food. Normally, we have enough left over to feed a small army and this was no different.) We then traipsed by taxi to a laser tag facility, where we spent two hours sweating and trying to kill each other. Hadn’t done that in a while and it was a lot of fun.

Saturday evening, I went to the Opera House, which is on the next block, and saw “The Sound of Music.” Honestly, I cannot remember ever seeing the movie all the way through, although I must have. I knew almost all the songs.

Today, after working out and eating the rest of the pancakes and doing laundry, I went to Baiyun mountain, which is smack in the middle of Guangzhou. I went with one of the temporary workers. We took a cable car up and wandered around. It was not a whole lot of nature, but it was a nice morning/afternoon, and I was glad I did it. I’ve been meaning to but didn’t want to go alone.

Grabbed a bite to eat and came home for the wonderful nap, then decided to swim and do some R&R in the steamroom. When I do this, I just go down in a bathing suit and the fluffy robe provided by my landlord. (Housing is so awesome here!) And then afterwards, I stop by the tea room and have juice and cookies.

And then I ran into more colleagues, who were about to bust open some kind of dessert. They asked me to stay, so we hung out, drank tea and ate something really Brazilian and sweet.

So I really feel I have been all over the place this weekend.

Jump on a plane, take in a movie or two

Headed out this three-day weekend to Taiwan, a fairly close location that China believes to be Chinese but Taiwan does not. I entered on my blue passport and hope there are no issues returning. I did get the “You’re going to Taipei? Diplomat?” from the immigration guy leaving China (done on dip passport, which is what I have to do) which is not normal, but that’s what we’re supposed to do. There IS a direct flight, so it’s not disallowed; I think it just raises eyebrows.

But I’m only here as a tourist, even though I am a lousy tourist. I did see some of the historical sites – a museum here, a memorial there – but have so far spent most of my time at the movies.

I met up with a friend who works here – there’s an NGO here I know about and I’d met this person before; we do kind of the same stuff – and she mentioned that she was going to go to a movie on Saturday. As my movie-going options are limited, I said I’d love to join her.

Well, her top choice – a Meryl Streep Disney movie – wasn’t here like she thought it was, so her second choice was Liam Neeson’s “Taken 3,” which should have never happened. I mean, at its worst, it’s Liam Neeson on a big screen, so how bad can it be, right? Well, it was at its worst.

But it was better than that. The regular movie was sold out, so we plunked down the equivalent of $15 US to see it in “4D.” I’d never heard of it before. (I don’t even know what “3G,” is, so this is not a surprise.)

Apparently, it means “moving chair.” It’s the equivalent of a lesser Disney ride. In some kind of weird choreography with the movie, your chair alternately – and sometimes concurrently – vibrates, pops up, down and/or side to side, shoots bursts of air by your ears (this is in time with the gunfire), puffs smoke up (when cars blow up), etc. At the same time, you also get wind and scents.

It’s really bizarre. For example, you’re being jolted from side to side in a car chase, and then the on-screen action shifts to a helicopter. Suddenly, you’re sort of drifting, then you go back to the ground and something punches you from the back of the chair.

And, even though this is a tense time in the movie, I would just laugh and laugh. Pretty much like I do on Space Mountain. I thought the whole thing was completely, hysterically and maniacally funny. The movie was awful (but completely poised for “Taken 4”) but the chair was totally worth the price of admission.

After that movie was over, I went back to the hostel, then realized I had nothing else planned for the evening and turned around and went back to the theater and saw “American Sniper.”

Completely different Experience. And, for those who have never watched a patriotic film in another country, it’s very odd. I, for example, was pretty much crying in remembrance or relation when the movie got to the part where they watched news coverage. I mean, I remember what I was doing on 9/11 and even though the embassy attacks on were in, what, 1998, I WORK in a consulate and have seen that footage in training many, many times.

So my reaction to those scenes – as well as the “inside” jokes, like what the “I’m going to tell her I got it at Zale’s” means – were completely different than that of my fellow audience members. It’s just a very odd thing to be the only American watching an American movie.


I also saw “The Butler” in Hong Kong, but this was way more intense.

At the end of the movie, the rest of the audience just got up and walked out, but I just sat there. I’m sure the film has been glamorized to some degree for Hollywood, but to me, it’s not a work of fiction. I’m not sure the rest of the audience is capable of grasping that.

Already running late in 2015

Good thing I didn’t resolve to stick to a posting schedule. My weekend posting has sort of gone to pot. Mostly that’s because I head out of town so often but I had no excuse this past weekend. All I did was go to a baby shower on Saturday and a hot pot party on Sunday.

Both were overwhelming successes so far as I was concerned. I bought a Grimm’s fairy tale book for the mom-to-be and she really appeared to be touched by it. People should always buy books. They’re awesome.

The hot pot party was an amazing amount of food. We had about 35 people there – a friend’s house – and I think everyone brought food to bring 35. We ate most of the meat but there was so much left over.

So it was a really good weekend, in town and everything. I needed to keep my mind off the fact that my bid list was going to come out on Monday.

This is the list of potential next posts. I’d figured that there’d be about 15 on it, and I was exactly right. Some are darn cool, but some aren’t going to be available to me because of the timing.

It’s highly possible that my top choice, which is a management position, won’t work out for timing. I am done here in December and it starts in May. You’re supposed to plan for a month of home leave and then allot for some training. For that position, there’s not four months of training. I’m still listing it high because that’s the job I want.

The second contender for me is a front office position in a small consulate. Normally I wouldn’t be interested in front office, but it’s a really small consulate and that’s kind of my ideal. I like knowing who all I work with.

No. 3 would be a position a security office in a post that’s larger than Guangzhou. It would be awesome but probably would require a car. I’m not sure if the other two would.

Anyway, the thing with the list is now I’m supposed to research and bid. Bids are due February 20, but honestly, I could send them in tomorrow. I mean, there’s a possibility that they might add a post or two, but I’m comfortable with my top three and don’t really expect the order of the rest of them to change. (It’s not 1-15 so much as it is high, medium and low.) But we won’t know until Feb. 27 which one we’ve been selected for. That’s a LONG time from now!

So I need to keep busy, which works out because I am pretty busy right now. Over the three-day weekend, I am headed to Taipei. Only today did I even bother to search for stuff to do there; I’ve just had too much on my plate.

Last Friday, I did my movie outreach and we watched “Twelve Angry Men.” I had 42 people there and you can imagine how surprised I was when more than one asked me, “So what happens to the accused if Henry Fonda isn’t on the jury?” How on earth does a Chinese audience know who Henry Fonda is?

Here was a random suggestion that came out of the meeting: if evidence is unearthed later that overturns a conviction, hold the jury accountable.

Last night, I “supervised” the outreach event, which was English teaching. Tomorrow, I have another; a bunch of the former Peace Corps volunteers are going to speak at the Thursday event.

I’m all over PR this month; I’m also doing a media one on January 29 as part of a panel, but I can’t do my regular movie one in February because I am traveling to take a class.

February really is a busy month, because it’s one of the two HUGE Chinese holidays – the new year. We’ll be exiting the year of the horse and entering that of the goat.

My work trip will leave on Saturday the 7^th or whatever it is (checking would require the effort of turning a calendar page). The class starts Monday but if I’m going to the Philippines I’m going to get as much out of it as I can. I’m hoping to go diving.

After the class, I will leave the following Saturday and fly back into Hong Kong, not Guangzhou. This is because I already made plans to hit up Disney again. The kid count is going. It was one officer and her family and now we’re up to three. The adult count is six, I think, and we’re up to six kids. I’m counting myself as an adult.

First and last days in Bhutan

OK, these are going to be the last photos of Bhutan. I really could go on forever, but no one needs to see all 600 photos.

Really, I need to just stop taking photos.

The photo with the airplane wasn’t really my first day in Bhutan, but on the tail end of the second flight into that airport, which was incredible.

Essentially, you’re landing in a valley, and it’s very narrow. The runway is also very short. Here’s what Wiki has to say about it:

“The airport is located … in a deep valley on the bank of the river Paro Chhu With surrounding peaks as high as 18,000 ft it is considered one of the world's most challenging airports. As of October 2009, only eight pilots in the world were certified to land at the airport. Flights at Paro are allowed under visual meteorological conditions only and are restricted to daylight hours from sunrise to sunset.”

Essentially, it is one scary airport, but you don’t really notice it as you’re coming down. You see mountains close on either side, but it just doesn’t strike you how difficult it must be to land a plane there. Or it doesn’t strike most people, anyway. I was seated next to a pilot (one of the people in my group) and she was explaining it to me, not that I really wanted to hear it.

It was a long way away

But once we landed, we just got out and gaped. It’s absolutely fantastic, and then you look up and down and see exactly how narrow the place was that the jet came through .

So that was the first cool thing – the arrival.

One of the last cool things (can’t say the last one because the final takeoff would be that) was climbing Tiger’s Nest. It’s a monastery on a cliff – 900 meters up on a cliff.

The legend is that Guru Rimpashay (that’s phoenetic; I don’t care to look it up) flew up on a tigeress’ back there and meditated, or something like that. Again, I wasn’t at all into the Buddhism.

The climb was fantastic, though. I was sick as a dog but somehow wound up in the lead of the 14 of us, along with one of the other travelers. She was 68 and a total badass. I mean, she’d broken her ankle something like two months before and had done therapy on fast-forward so that she could still go. She was awesome.

To me, the trek there was better than the site itself; to me, it was just another monastery. But to say you made it was incredible – it took about two hours to get there, and that was at a fairly rapid pace.

Here’s Wiki again:

Closer shot

“The rock slopes are very steep (almost vertical) and the monastery buildings are built into the rock face. Though it looks formidable, the monastery complex has access from several directions, such as the northwest path through the forest, from the south along the path used by devotees, and from the north (access over the rocky plateau, which is called the “Hundred Thousand Fairies” known as Bumda (hBum-brag). A mule track leading to it passes through pine forest that is colorfully festooned with moss and prayer flags.”

After hiking for about an hour and a half of switchbacks going up the mountain, you get to a point where it’s across from you, but there are hundreds of stairs between you and it. About 800, that is. First you go down, cross below hundreds of prayer flags and one waterfall, and then you have to go back up to it.

It was nice to see, but even better to be able to say I did it.