Step 26 - I can see the future...

Here's a recent exchange I had with a future housemate via SMS.

Housemate: hihi ill have a kitty! :D

Me: I'm allergic to cats :/

Housemate: what??? ur kiddin me right? fuck... isnt there anything u can do? like meds? :(

Me: not going to live on antihistamines so you can get a cat. Don't you think its a pretty big issue anyway? Something u should ask about? Regardless of allergies.

Housemate: it would live with me in my room so not really. plus it would make comin home nicer. whatever

Me: Be realistic *name*. Keeping a cat trapped in your room would be cruel to say the least, and its not like the cat hairs wouldn't come out on you and your clothes.

Housemate: i said whatever! no cat! jesus...

I can see the future, and it's not pretty.

I'm really hoping we can pull it together and have a working livable relationship, but I'm getting quite concerned about it. She's had a go at me twice about leaving the toilet seat up, when most times I've even been into that bathroom, the seat has been up anyway.

In particular, I'm really not cool with her attitude to bringing up issues that are annoying her. Her style is ...confrontational... (pretty accusatory, threatening and in general, aggressive). Regarding the toilet seat, my response was pretty immature (flipping the bird) so that raised the tempo of the argument, but I guess that was just my instant response when she decided to shout over me at a toilet seat.

'Dude, are you sure?'

There are other incidents that have occurred in the past that don't need to be raised here, but they're all pushing towards a tumultuous future. And this is before I've even signed a lease. I've had friends approach me and be like, 'Dude, are you sure?' and as it gets closer, I'm less and less sure. As I write this, I know I'm ready to confront any issue that there may be, and I won't be walked over, but the very fact I feel like I'm already entering into a living situation prepared (expecting to need?) to defend myself... it's crazy.

My last housemate was a dream, though it was different in that we had been friends from highschool - we already had a long established friendly relationship. But still, I'm not sure that we had even a single argument. If there were any issues, it was brought up in a friendly/relaxed way and no-one felt like they were getting getting a rough deal. I can only speak for myself, of course, but I think he felt the same way.

Is there any particular reason it should be down?

Maybe any women readers would like to explain this... issue... of the position of the toilet seat. Is there any particular reason it should be down other than for the ease of use by women? Now that the future housemate has made it clear that it's important to her that it be down, I'll endeavour to remember to put it down on that basis alone. I'm hoping that should an issue arise that I feel is really important to me, she'll show the same courtesy and take it on the chin.

For example, I'm concerned she'll take issue with my playing music in my room. Now, I warned her from the very very beginnings of the discussion of the possibility of me staying with her that I would want to have music, played through speakers, in my room. And that I'd probably have it playing all the time I'm home, at a respectable listening volume. She's said that's fine, as long as it's a reasonable volume.

Why am I concerned? When I walk into the house right now, it's almost completely silent. She's given me the impression that it's because her other housemates don't like noise, but I do wonder...

I can see the future...
I'm getting a cup of tea :D

Step 25 - There's a bear in there...

Alright folks it's been a pretty long time since my last update, so I'll give you a fill-in on my progress.

Probably the most obvious change is that I'm now living in an apartment. This isn't my final destination however. Towards the end of January I will be moving into a different apartment. Why the apartment jumping? I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but when you buy a semester of accommodation at the International Students Dorm at Sichuan University, you get accommodation until the 16th of January. Exams fall between the 20th and 30th - in my case from the 25th to the 27th. If you're planning to keep on living inside the dorm, that's fine, you can just buy another semester or something and you're set. However, if you're planning to move out, like myself, then you're charged at the short-stay rate. For the shared-double room that I was in, the price increased from 20 kuai per night to 70 kuai per night. Seeing as I had no intention of paying an inflated rate, I had to find somewhere to go I just re-read my last post and saw that I'd said all this before. Whoops. I was *going* to be on a spare couch at a friend's place, until I discovered that another friend had an entire spare room in their apartment. Entire spare room. Oh yes, oh yes.

To keep the story short, they're being very generous and letting me stay for free. More annoyingly, they're even resisting efforts by me to buy them drinks/meals/etc. The only downside is that the bed in the room I've got... well, it has no bedsheets. So another friend has lent me a sleeping bag. I'd go out and simply buy some sheets, except that the girl currently staying in the apartment that I'll be moving into later will probably be wanting to sell me her sheets! Soooooo we'll just see what happens. For now I'm quite comfortable in a sleeping bag.

Okay, what else is happening. As I said, exams are fast approaching. I'm trying to keep up with studying but I'm not very good at it these days, it would seem. That's actually an upside to having my new temporary housemates - they're both much more organised, and by simply hanging out with them, I'm sort of piggy-backing on their study discussions. One of them is a classmate of mine, the other is a higher level.

Oh, which is another thing. It would seem we've lined up a Chinese housemate for the new place. So it'll be Gosia (Polish), Bruce (Chinese, I really should find out his Chinese name...) and myself. I've only met him once but he seems like a good guy. He's also a student at Chuanda, and is studying management... I believe.

It turns out I don't need to re-enrol at uni, just give them money. So I'm slowly building up the required cash to pay them off. On that point, yes, I've decided to spend another semester here at Sichuan Uni. Right now I think that for what I want in terms of freedom to travel, freedom to have friends visit, freedom to basically do what I want; it's the best option. That said, I'm still hoping to find work... I actually met a guy who's cheating the system. He was a student at Chuanda, but had a tutoring job with a family who owned a factory. He explained that he wanted a VISA to just exist, so to speak, and worked with them to set it up 'on paper' that he's working for them, when in reality he's just tutoring a few kids and that's it. Living a comfortable bachelor's life, studying Chinese at his own pace/will. I'm jealous as shit.

Writing all this, I'm finding certain hypocrisies within my thinking. On the one hand, I want to be free to study at my own pace, on the other hand, I mention that I'm pretty bad at motivating myself to study. Would it be different if I was outside the system? I like to think so. I believe so. Maybe within the 'system' I need to remind myself that I'm still here for me and any study I do is just for me. I'm sure this is all obvious to you guys, but it's easy to forget. At least for me.

What else can I say... I recently saw Avatar in 3D at a Chinese cinema. That was all well and good, the special effects quite mind blowing while the story was a little less impressive, but a good romp none-the-less. Probably enough can't be said about the special effects. I've just done some reading and wikipedia came up with the quote that, 'the film is composed of 60% computer-generated elements and 40% live action'. This is significant in that, I can't tell real from fake in the film. I'm mainly talking about environments here, not the obvious stuff like the vehicles and aliens. I was actually told today that Avatar is now banned in China, though it's been in the cinemas for a good period of time already. If true, I wonder why. I mean, why try and stop it once it's already a) been watched by just about everyone that was really interested in seeing it and b)in every single dvd store in China. 

Whatever, there's still a lot to learn about China. I've taken awhile writing this so I'm going to leave it there. Other events that have occurred are a 24th birthday party that was a lot of fun, and... I don't know. I'll add to this post or the next one when/if I remember anything I missed. OH! The trip with the parents. Yeah, I'll try make time to do that real soon. Along with booking accomodation and travel tickets for a friend who's about to arrive to travel with me during the Spring Festival period. Ugh. Too much on right now.

Step 24 - Birthday Season

Well, it's been awhile and I've been a few places, done a few things, seen a few people. It was fun and now I'm back, I'm feeling completely underwhelmed by my situation. My motivation is possibly the lowest that it has ever been, possibly ever. I stay away laying in bed at night, conflicted and full of negative emotions.

Why is this? - Multiple reasons I guess.

Having just been with my parents for two or so weeks, I'm missing them and home in general. What confuses me about this perhaps is that I'm missing them much more than when I first left. Seeing them off at the airport was much harder for me than it was last time, and given the expression on my mother's face, she probably felt the same. I've had people tell me off for the homesick feelings before, and remind me of the great situation I'm in. I know they're right, I know I should toughen up, put on that smiley face and go live the shit out of life, but right now I'm just not feeling it. I don't think I've ever been good at picking myself up out of low moods/feelings, and this time around seems no different.

Another reason is that right now, I feel like I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't really want to study via the university this semester, but finding a job/work has been pretty unsuccessful. Even looking at finding teaching jobs, I only seem to be finding organisations that, when researched online, are described as being false, cheating, fraudulent, so on and so forth. This has been disheartening. It's also been a reminder of wasted time back in Perth when I could have studied and gotten a TEFL/TOEFL/CELTA qualification, which would have been useful now.

Thirdly, I'm running out of time. Re-enrollment at the university closes on the 20th, 7 days away from now. Should I decide I DO want to study at the University, then I'll need to organise the appropriate forms and fees inside that time.

Further complicating issues are... as of the 16th I'll be couch surfing till the end of the month. I've only just realised how close the 16th is... not so great. The reason I'm in this situation is because when you buy a semester of accommodation at the university dorms, it doesn't actually last a semester. It lasts almost a semester, at which time you either have to buy for another full-ish semester, or pay at a massivly inflated rate (20 kuai per night goes up to 80 or 100 I believe). Maybe I've already complained about this, so I won't go on about it except to say it doesn't surprise me anymore.

At the end of the month, I should be moving into an apartment. This ties in with all my other worries and concerns as we struggle to get a 3rd housemate in to the place to share rent, get various broken things in the apartment fixed before they're my liability and so on.

Oh, and my residence permit expires on the 28th of Febuary. This needs to be ironed out either through me getting a job that provides a work visa or through re-enrolling at university. 

Ugh, writing all this has not helped my situation, or my mood.

It's my birthday in 11 days. I'll be 23. Not entirely thrilled about being another year older either.

Step 23 - Away-way-way!

Just a very brief update - I've been travelling with parents around China. Still traveling infact. I'll have some big posts once I return to Chengdu (10th Jan).