Long time no "See"

---

Well, it's almost my father's birthday and I feel I haven't written much in here recently. I'm about to go on a huge trip so I probably won't be able to write much in here until I get back. I'm planning on buying a big journal for the trip so I can write in it every day and I can copy it in here when I get back. My first stop, as of yesterday, is Tibet. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm going to be taking a train from here to Beijing Monday night and then another train Tuesday night to Lhasa. The train to Lhasa takes two days (48 hours). Once we get there I will have 10 days in Tibet. We're going to go to three different cities, one of which is Lhasa. After those ten days I will take a flight to Nepal and hang out in Nepal for a little while. As of right now I'm not really sure what I'll do after Nepal but I'm really looking forward to this trip a lot. It will be a bit on the expensive side (around 1000 US) but it includes hotel, food and entrance fees for everything in Tibet along with all the train and plane tickets to Tibet and again to Nepal so I think in the end hopefully it's a good deal. I'm a little psyched.

Yesterday I had my first fight with my boss. He's really a crazy guy in some aspects. I think I have to agree with Michael though, his main problem is he doesn't know how to accept the fact that something is his fault. Yesterday I went to school around 11am because Merry and I were going to go get my stuff for Tibet figured out. After I got there Ernie pulled me aside and told me that it was really dangerous to go to Tibet and asked if I still wanted to go. I said yes and he said he wanted me to write two documents. One saying I work for Rockies and the other saying if anything happens to me they're not liable. So I wrote the two documents after lunch and called Ernie to read them to him to see if they were okay. He said they were and I got ready to go with Merry to the travel agency. First I had to translate them into Chinese. Now note that this is the first time I've ever written anything on a computer in Chinese in my life. I had Zhang Han (Cat's new roommate and Gladys' cousin) laughing at me over my shoulder for the way I wrote while someone else helped me select what to write for the best translation. She was really annoying. I finally printed it out and handed it to Gladys. She immediately started berating me. "This is not how you can write it. The travel agency won't take it like this. It has to be from the school and not you" Blah blah blah. "Why don't you write it? I'm not Chinese I don't know what it should say. I'm me. You write it and I'll take it." More complaining. I went outside to sit and the next moment Merry's calling the travel agency to make sure the form is okay. They said it was pretty decent and we decided to leave for Parkson's to get the stamp for the form. By this time not only am I frustrated because Gladys was berating me but I have to be somewhere in about 2 minutes. We got all the way over to Parkson's and Ernie called me "Listen. Everything's wrong. You have to come back." "I'm not coming back." I was in a hurry and it was a long walk to walk all the way back and then over there again. "You have to come back so we can sort all of this out." "Can't we at least get the stamp first and then go get the letter? Or you send us the letter?" "No, come back and I'll explain what happened." I'm a bit livid at having to walk so far when this isn't my job at all to do. When I got back I walked in and demanded he give me the form. They flipped out and it took the next couple of minutes for us to calm Ernie down while Gladys, being smart, just went to get the form written properly. Ernie was livid though and I even called my old boss to let him know that it was inappropriate for Ernie to be angry with me when I was trying to do something to help them and they were trying to do something to help me. In the end Zhang Han was told by Gladys to take a taxi over with us to get the stamp. When we got there Zhang Han got out of the car and started walking away. The taxi driver was like "um, money?" Merry didn't have money to pay and I wasn't about to give the money so we both insisted on Zhang Han paying. She then accused me of everything being my fault because I walked to Parkson's when everyone was telling me not to. I told her "Zhang Han. I'm not stupid and I don't really like walking that much. If someone had told me not to go I wouldn't have gone." After we got the stamp Merry and I were finally alone and we took a bus over to the travel agency. It took the next three hours for Merry to okay everything with the agency and make sure they were an okay place. She read the contract I was signing with the tour company word for word (6 pages) and asked a bunch of questions.

Afterwards I went to meet Cat and Martin for a nice dinner at a Japanese restaurant with his family and then we went over to Noah's. Around 9:30 Cam called me to ask where we were going and tell me that he still had a perm to do but he would be there after it. I got a couple of phone calls from him. The last one being that he had taken a taxi to the wrong place. He finally took a motorcycle up to Noah's. "Here's the boy" I said finally. Really looking forward to seeing him. After all I hadn't seen him in a week. As he came walking up Grace said out loud "that's him?" I'm not exactly sure what that was supposed to mean but obviously it was him if I said it was. He came up and I gave him a hug before we both sat down. He said hi to everyone around the table and got a big hug and a kiss from Craig. Then Grace noticed he was talking to Kelvin in Cantonese and asked out loud "I wonder if he speaks Mandarin." She then promptly turned to him and said in Chinese "Do you speak Chinese?" My boy looked at her a little confused I would assume and said "I am Chinese." Almost a second after Grace and Jen got up to leave and Cam got on my other side so he could smoke without it blowing into my face. It was kind of a strange number of assumptions she was making. First as I said one wouldn't normally announce one's boy is there when he isn't. Second if Cam couldn't speak Mandarin how in the world was he my boy? It was very obvious that he didn't speak English. If he had spoken English he would have walked up and said hello to the people he didn't know at the table. Kelvin agreed with me later that she makes too many assumptions.

After a while of flirting under the table with Cam and chatting with everyone he decided to leave to go play pool with the boys (it was 1:30am). I sent him off and went to sit back down. A couple minutes later everyone else left leaving Kelvin and I to walk home by ourselves. We decided to walk me all the way home - about a 30 minute walk. But first Kelvin insisted on getting a beer and his I-pod from home. We talked all the way there about the new kids and how we both have the same way of reacting to sounds - the unnatural repetitive ones kill us but the natural ones don't. He told me he thinks I have a great inner instinct for feeling. I told him sometimes it can be a really horrible thing - like when I know I'm paranoid but can't do anything about it. He said I just have to learn to do something about it, which is true.

---

Comments

[John Wang]

I logined in,and post it agian,ha
Hey. Jupe,Have a good time.I found your flog from google,Becouse I am a dalianren,so I am very interesting to your flog.I read all articles in your flog,and saw all your pics,it took me 3 weeks.and I like that.It makes me know you,and improved my english in addition. ha,So you will have a long trip,Have a Good Time. good wishes for you living in Dalian; my email: [e-mail] see u