China - Week 50 (8/8): The Daily Routine

I’ve started settling into a regular routine now. (Well, as regular as 2 days can be, I guess.) If I manage to do the same thing tomorrow I can almost call it a “spree”.

I wake up at 8:00, shower, get ready, open up the blinds and let in the sun. Then I get some breakfast, check my e-mails and blogs and do some Chinese listening study. Around 10:00 I head over to the gym and get in 45 - 60 minutes of cardio with stretching, head back home, cool down with an episode of “Friends” and then take a shower and eat some lunch. Then it’s time for work. From then on out I try to ge things done with my parent’s website. I have given myself a launch deadline of August 15. Everything has to be done and finished by then or I turn into a pumpkin. I have a small snack around 3:30 and then dinner at 7:00. In the evening I do some work or go out and be social with some friends, but nothing too major. Tonight I went and hung out with Jia Jia and her friend Amy (both from Chongqing). We went to PuDong and ate some Shaanxi food and then got some foot massages at a nice Japanese-client-centered place just off Century Park. The massage place had a nice sitting area where we could sip on tea and chat so we did that for a while. Then I gave Amy a ride home in a taxi on my way back. Now I’m home, it’s 11 p.m. and I’m going to get ready for bed. I try to sleep by midnight so that I get a full night’s sleep. I wil be more liberal with my schedule on the weekends, but since it’s only Wednesday tomorrow it’s a moot point mentioning that right now.

I feel like I should clarify something about my last post. I actually should have said that I had some thoughts on ways to behave one’s self when dealing with others who feel inclined to take advantage of you, not that I had thoughts about the issue of Chinese morality (or lack of, depending on your point of view). Actually, I don’t want to discuss the morality as much as I want to discuss virtues. But mainly in the form of a story, and mainly when I have more time to write it out. So, sorry for the misunderstanding.

Oh, and since someone asked, The new phone I have goes by a ton of names. The phone itself is originally designed and manufactured in Taiwan by a somewhat secretive company called HTC. The makers named the model I have “Wallaby” but nobody knows it by that name. If you’re in China they’re distributed by dopod. If you’re in Singapore you have an O2 XDA phone. In Germany and the U.S. it’s the T-Mobile MDA. They can be called Q-Tek, SX-56 and a ton of other names, but for all intents and purposes, just refer to mine as the T-Mobile MDA, since that is the branding my phone has. It is actually the german phone (hence my keyboard having the Y and Z reversed), but it was reflashed with a Chinese OS (hence my Chinese Operating System). I am thinking about relfashing it with the Singapore O.S. since then I can have my O.S. in English, but still maintain my Chinese language functionality, but that is a project that will have to wait for after August 15. Here is a picture of my phone:

This is actually a picture of two phones. Mine is the one on the left with the slide-out keypad. It kind of combines the sleekness of my old Sidekick 2, but with the robust features of the Treo 650, and the ease of use of a familiar Windows environment. Anyway, I like it. I just wish I could read everything on it ….

I also wanted to mention one more thing, and that is the addition of an FAQ on my website, narom.net. I get so many of the exact same questions about Jet, or Shanghai Wushu, or the Shanghai Wushu Team, or what my life is up to, by so many people who are just way too lazy (or possibly busy, but I doubt it) to just read my blog, that I decided to stick it up. A nice little php scrīpt I downloaded with a pretty easy admin system, easy install and customization and blah blah blah. You get the idea. Whenever I spend the time to reply to someone with a question, I’m just going to copy and past it to there as well.