China - Week 50 (8/8): Increasing Productivity

This week (all one day of it so far) has been pretty productive so far.  I set out on Sunday to plan out the rest of the week a little more carefully and so far (again, it’s only been 1 day) things are going well.  But first, let’s talk about Sunday.

As I mentioned, I went over to Jia Jia and Cameron’s to help them with their laptop.  That thing is kinda messed up.  The optical drive doesn’t work so I can’t load any software on it, and since I can’t load drivers, etc., I can’t fix the wireless network which means I can’t download any updates either.  (For some reason they don’t have a network cable.)  In any case, I spent a few hours there and managed to reload the driver but couldn’t get on their network.  At least that’s progress.

Afterwards we went to eat at Ajisen Ramen in Pudong and then hung out at Starbucks for a bit and I met a friend of Cameron’s from Canada (and all over asia).  Very knowledgeable about tech stuff but also likes to talk alot about his knowledge so it was an interesting conversation.  He did know quite a bit about my new cell phone so I got some good information on how to take care of some things there.  I have been doing a bit of research but so far haven’t been able to re-flash the phone with a better OS.  We’ll see what I can do in the future…

Monday I got up at 8:30, which is early for me these days, and went to the gym to work on some cardio and do some stretching.  I figure that even if I can’t get to wushu this week, at least I can spend an hour at the gym and burn some energy.  I ran into Jason there too.  After the gym I spent the afternoon cleaning my work area and working on projects.  In the evening Tam’s friends James and our friend Lisa, came over and we watched “Police Story 3: Supercop” and “Arrested Development”, which is without a doubt one of the best shows on TV.  If you don’t think it’s one of the best shows on TV that means you either have never watched it, or you have the attention span of a gnat.

In any case, it’s Tuesday and I’m about to leave for the gym before a day of working on web design stuff, so I will end this here.  Oh, and in other news I am also having my visa renewed today.  I got some pages added last week (a quick 5 minute trip to the local consulate’s U.S. Citizens services office) got my foreign residence certificate (a quick 5 minute trip to the local police station) and today I will have my passport picked up and should have a new 6 month, multiple entry, F visa in a matter of days.

I had some interesting thoughts yesterday about the whole issue of people in China tending to try to take advantage of other people and the seeming lack of a moral core/fiber in this society, but I will elaborate on it in the future when I have more time.  This is just a reminder to myself to do so.