Shanghai (12/19 - 12/23): The Calm Before The Storm

Realizing that I just had a short time before I would start moving to Hong Kong I decided to spend this week working on preparing for the move.  When moving to a new city there are a lot of things to consider, but I think for myself I came up with a philosophy that works well for my purposes: The less you have to move, the easier it is.

What does this mean?  If I had a ton of stuff cluttering up my home moving it all would turn into a huge undertaking.  (read: no fun at all)  I realized that I really don’t need THAT much stuff to exist comfortably no matter where I am.  Actually, I’m a big proponent of scaling down and leading a fairly unencumbered life (at least as far as material possessions go) and I like to think that I could pack all the truly “important” things that I would need in a small bag and leave at a moment’s notice if I had to.

Maybe I watch the Amazing Race too much, but those people seem to survive with nothing more than a big backpack and a passport.  Who is to say we all couldn’t do the same?  It’s our attachment to “things” that keeps us where we are, not our ability to go somewhere.  Imagine if you didn’t have any furniture (I don’t), and if all your clothes could fit in one suitcase (mine can).  Imagine if you didn’t need all the gadgets that most of us have around (I only need my phone and my laptop) and imagine if your didn’t have to worry about a mortgage or car payments (I don’t).  How much more compelled would you feel to explore this amazing world of ours?

I realize this isn’t the lifestyle a lot of people would be comfortable with, but I sort of like a semi-nomadic existence.  I might not feel this way forever, but I do right now so I am enjoying it while I can.

In any case, as a result of this philosophy of “less is more” I have been spending most of the week going through and purging a lot of the unecessary things from my home.  I got rid of a bunch of clothes I never wear and organized my clothing into just the essentials for any occasion (I would show you my clothing organization chart, but I don’t want to give anyone a heart attack).  I have been going through all my documents and papers and throwing anything out that isn’t something important or related to work/finances (Just a small pile of documents now, instead of a few boxes worth).  It feels really good to organize and clean.  The more I think about it, the more I realize that I’m becoming Monica from “Friends”.  (I’m going to put up a poster of her on the wall and light some insense in front of it every morning — she is the patron saint of OCD cleanliness.)

I haven’t gone to wushu much at all this week.  I went once … and I feel yucky already.  I hate missing out on wushu.  Especially since next week I will be doing ZERO wushu the whole time I’m in xiamen.  I should at least get out and go for a walk every morning, but I haven’t even done that.  Maybe it’s the cold that is keeping me locked inside (cleaning and organizing) but I just feel compelled to stay in and get all this stuff done.  (Stupid winter)

Speaking of getting stuff done, I spent a big part of yesterday working on setting up a blog for Jet Li.  It’s just a static page right now, but eventually it will be MUCH more.  It will go in a few phases:

1. Static page with comments in the jetli.com forums

2. Integrated blogging system with the jetli.com forums where users can comment on entries and get an RSS feed of Jet’s blog.

3. Integration with the AnD blogging system allowing a HUGE host of features for all the jetli.com users.

The blog will be in Chinese (both systems) and English and he is planning on a ton of updates in the future — at least once a week from what he said.  We will also mirror the blog on sina.com (and possibly sohu or 163 or one of the other major portals) to spread the entries to a wider mainland Chinese audience (currently China only makes up about 1.7% of the traffic on jetli.com).

You can check out his teaser entry here:  jetli.com/gfn/interract/blog  (yes, I know that “interract” is spelled wrong.  It’s a typo.  Meh.

Right now it is Sunday morning and I have just 8 hours until Peter W. arrives from the U.S.  That means I have 8 more hours to really finish up all this cleaning and organizing before I have a house-guest.  It won’t be for too long though since tomorrow morning (Christmas!) we’ll be flying down to Xiamen to spend the week with Patrick and Stephen (just barely missing Raffi as he is leaving at the same time we are arriving.  I will, of course, try to blog out our visit down there.

After we get back on Friday we will spend about 5 or 6 days in Shanghai (hopefully doing some wushu at some point) and then I’m off to Seoul for 5 days before moving to Hong Kong on January 9th.

BTW .. I really love the pimsleur language series.  I’ve been working on the Cantonese lessons and it’s been great.  I went ahead and started downloading ALL of the pimsleur languages (thank you bit torent).  Not that I have a hankering to learn Swiss German or Hindi, but it’d be fun to plug away at some of these over time.  (And it can’t hurt to speak a smattering of Vietnamese or Thai while hanging out in S.E. Asia, right?)

That’s all for now. A more exciting travel blog will be in the mix starting tomorrow.  And while technically I don’t actually celebrate Christmas I would like to wish everyone out there a very happy holidays and a wonderful New Years. May it be as bereft of stress as humanly possible during this time of year.