I feel I owe the motorists of Shanghai an apology. Today I decided to get back to golf. I went to the driving range near my house and hit a few balls. I borrowed a driver and a seven iron and started belting the balls again. It was like I’d never left; my swing felt natural and the balls seemed to be leaving the club cleanly. The only problem was I couldn’t for the life of me see where they were going. I just assumed that they were going straight and far, possibly over the back fence. After using the driver on about 60 balls I decided to try the 7-iron. I noticed that all the balls were going off to the right instead of straight. I realized I must’ve been turning my hips during my swing. After I fixed this problem I went back to my driver and tried hard to see where the balls were going. To my horror, the first three balls I hit soared into the air, over the fence and onto the freeway. I now realize that a great deal of the first 60 balls I hit traveled in a similar path. I am scared to read the news for fear that there were a large number of golf-ball-related injuries in Shanghai today. All I can say is, people of Shanghai I’m sorry and I’m really working on not turning my hips.

Popularity: 3% [?]

I think this post has been building for some time now. So far in my journey here I have split my time between my house and my work. That work, in case you haven’t been reading closely, is as an English teacher for a Korean school here in Shanghai. My house is of course an English only zone. My work is of course a Korean only zone with a little bit of English thrown in. As a result, I haven’t really been able to fit China in so far. Today however, I stumbled across a fundamental truth of my life here and there was no way to avoid it anymore. I had to stop and admit the fact that, “Holy shit I’m in China!”

I think it was between the third and fourth office that I visited today in search of a piece of bureaucratic red paper. Two weeks ago, you see, I lost my passport. Since that time I have tried to get a new one. I have also tried to get a new visa. Let me give you an example of what this entails. Today, I first visited my housing complex office along with my new and old passports, my lease and copies of both. After filling in a bunch of paperwork, the person in the office told me to go next door to another office to fill in some more paperwork and get a stamp. After I had secured this stamp, I was told I had to visit the police station to register my address. I noted the sign on the wall that advised me I should have done this 24 hours after entering the country. It had been a month since I entered the country, or around 720 hours. Nevertheless, I figured I had to get this over with so I hopped in a taxi and went to the nearest police station.

After I got there, I was happy to speak to a policewoman who spoke to me in English. She told me that as I didn’t have a current visa (due to losing my passport) I had to visit another office to get piece of paper I needed. I jumped in another taxi, rode for an hour and told my story to another policeman. Finally, I emerged with a piece of pink paper. Tomorrow, I will then take this paper to another office to renew my visa. This complicated process must be undertaken every time I enter the country again.

Yet amidst all this office visiting, I found myself becoming more aware of the country that I was in. I wanna get out of the foreigner bubble that I put myself in and see more of the real China.

Minus all the red tape of course.

Popularity: 3% [?]