Sleepless in Shanghai: Prospects Dimming for Chance of Sleep

I've never found falling asleep easy. Nights upon nights I've laid in bed struggling to figure out the magic formula to getting good, natural sleep. Especially here in China, where every night I'm struck by the fact that I'm in fucking China, the nights have been tough. But in all these years, I don't think this problem has ever kept me up all night, as it stands to at this point. With the Shanghai sun creeping under the square hole in the wall I lamentably call my window, I know that China is getting ready for just another Tuesday. In a way this helps me get through it all, but I have to first convince myself* that sleep is overrated anyway.** People are gearing up for another day of business and some poor soul is getting ready for a tragically long commute across town. All I have to do is go to the office and pretend to work. Someone else always has it worse. 

*I engage in my fair share of self-delusion, and not just with sleep. 

**I know it's not. But this is exactly what keeps me up at night. 

The worst thing about the lack of sleep is the feeling that I'm losing time off the tail end of my life. This isn't entirely scientific, nor may it even be reasonable, but I feel like sleepless nights must come back to bite you in the ass at some point. Like, you'll lose a few dozen brain cells or your cortisone levels will spike, causing adverse long-term physiological effects on body fat storage, or something. It basically simmers down to this: nothing good has ever come out of this kind of sleeplessness. It's not like I'm averting a nuclear showdown or working a second job to pay the bills. No, I'm just recording my aimless thoughts in the wee hours of the morning, wondering whether this constitutes a first- or second-world problem, what I'm going through.* Whatever it may be, I'm willing to give this sleep thing another try, for the reason put forth in an earlier asterisked aside. The title of this blog has yet to resonate so strongly, for this entire night has just been one long trip aboard the struggle-to-fall-asleep bus. Truly, the worst bus to be on short of the struggle-to-stand-last-Sunday bus. 

*Leaning toward the former as I'm inclined to do, but without the air of entitlement that usually colors such challenges.

Sleepless in Shanghai: A Deluge of Broken Thoughts on Ellen's

I have to wake up in less than three hours. I wish my body would understand that and let me go to bed, but sadly it seems to have other plans tonight. So after a second attempt at reading and an nth attempt at nodding off, I've convinced myself that this is the most valuable thing I can do at this point. Whether that's true seems besides the point.

Being at Ellen's is always strange. As much as I love it for it's international feel and cheap American eats, oftentimes the plasticity of it all gets to me and I feel a little uneasy. Maybe I'm just cynical and refuse to believe that such a place actually has any of the soul it pretends to. Usually at a place like that, I'm in awe of the plethora national pennants as I crane my neck to read every bit of Sharpie scribbled about the walls and ceilings. And that's it. But the more times I go, the more hollow it feels. I feel like I'll look back at Ellen's and see not an Occidental oasis in an ancient Chinese capital city, but just it for what it is: a niche bar playing (and profiting) to the desires of the select expats in Nanjing. The walls, fun as they are at first and fifth glance, will fade into monotonous exclamations of national pride and private romances. The American Top 40 that's always on will make me cringe at the cheesiness of radio hits in the homeland. And the regulars will in a strange way make me a little sad, with omnipresent hat guy and faceless cocktail dress-clad native women emerging as particular paragons of a lifestyle that seems to me more than a bit off-putting.

But then again, all this is a bit dark and making me sound a lot more sad than I actually am at this point in my life. In all honesty, Ellen's is a fun place where I had fun times with fun people, and penultimately that is what I will remember. I don't intend to look back on it as a place where I had deep thoughts about deep issues, but I'd like to record these thoughts now before the gross superficiality of the place glosses over it's more subtle details.

Struggling to find a sentence that captures what these thoughts suggest about the intended aim of this blog as a whole. Continuing to struggle as I realize that I can't comfortably posit any sort of encompassing notion that really ties this into the larger thread of the blog. Realizing that I don't really need to make any grandiose conclusions because this is a blog and Bonnie Talbert isn't going to read this. Memories of arduous yet worthwhile treks to the SOCH flooding into my consciousness as I wince at those hellish trips out to the Harvard hinterlands. Finally content with how this is ending.

Collection of Thoughts in Nanjing- First Week

If all nighttime roads lead to M2, all daytime ones lead to real estate and Harvard. I don’t consider myself particularly ungrateful (but to be fair, as a Generation Y-er, I am speaking in relative terms here), but sessions at work make me realize how appreciative and lucky I should feel for the opportunities available to me. Here I am, typing away on my new HP dv4- by no means a top-of-the-line machine, but far from shabby still- in the king-sized bed of my emperor-sized hotel suite, and every day I hear stories about how it costs upwards of 200,000 yuan for an 80-square foot apartment in Nanjing. How Annie will still be paying off her mortgage loan when her yet-to-be-born child is an adult.  How Robert is a slave to the bank. How no one knows what’s to come or just how much worse this could all get.

How lucky I am.

They don’t say that, of course. But I can feel the sentiment. It’s in the sudden shift in social posturing when people find out you’re American. Never spoken of, but undoubtedly in the air, and you couldn’t miss this nonverbal cue even if it hid behind the feigned aloofness and genuine hospitality of your new local friend.    

I wonder what continues to drive members of the CCC to places like Mazzo and M2 on weekend nights. Their success rate must be close to nil, as I don’t imagine (expat) girls to be looking for this subpopulation of awkward, aging Chinese men. Of course, the CCC isn’t the only collective out there, but it’s probably the most baffling.

                   

What separated Mazzo from M2 was the interpersonality. Maybe that comes with spending over a thousand yuan for a booth, but it still seemed a lot more family friendly than Shanghai clubs. The music was a welcome throwback to the hits of the early 2000s, although I can’t say I didn’t miss my Pitbull and Gaga. The setup was nothing spectacular, but a couple things did stand out. It was less dark and smoky, which led to more exposure (also known as the CCC member’s mortal enemy) and less confidence in the general populace to bust signature moves. It was indeed disappointing, as I had been looking forward to trying out the Spongebob in the public arena for some days now. On the bright side, there was opportunity for a different kind of dancing that had been missing from my life for far too long.

Times like these, I wonder whether my allergy to Chinese mosquito bites (rural and urban, apparently) is enough to keep me away from this country in the long run. If I can’t venture into the countryside without coming back with welts, or even be in a five-star hotel without escaping the buzzing wrath, can I possibly live here comfortably for, say, two years? What about four months?

I don’t really give the idea of living in another country long-term the thought it probably deserves. Too comfortable in the wealth and diversity in Oakland and Cambridge, I’ve never seriously considered the pros of living in, for instance, China at some point in my life. Being in Nanjing, short though the time may have been, I can’t help but think may be a valuable (and cheap) experience at some point in my twenties to stay abroad for a while. True, it may be frustrating not being able to communicate on the same level as I would in America, but this truly is a fascinating country with a lot to offer, if you dig deep enough. Little expat hangouts like Ellen’s could provide the Western respite I’d inevitably crave, and I’d have the chance to indulge my laughably irresponsible hotel-as-home fantasy.

I think I’m most afraid of not having regular access to friends. But to be completely honest, there’s no reason for me to think I’d have such a luxury at any stage in my post-educational life. It’s truly a frightening prospect, being thrust into the real world with few familiar faces to fall back on- could be another reason to stay a career student. I guess I really fool myself into thinking that America is the only option for me- not that that’d necessarily be a bad thing, the U.S. is great. The problem is that I feel like this internship is supposed to open me up to such possibilities, and I’m only doing myself a disservice by being myopic about not just the answers but the questions themselves. Hard to ask the right questions when you only care about leading off every response with “America.”

Bumps Along the Road

It's hard to come back from a thousand word loss. The village idiot within me convinced my better self that it would be advisable to leave all of my thoughts on an untitled Word document. Needless to say, I have no idea what became of it, but those words are now safely in verb and noun heaven. Should I try my best to recreate that which is lost? I'm leaning toward saying that such a thing would reek of disingenuous pretension. Again, forward and onward. 

Here in Nanjing now, and the sky is pouring buckets. It's freezing in this office and the stalls in the TP-less bathrooms don't close. This all aside, I can get used to this place. Roughly a third of the size of Shanghai, and five times less crowded. A swanky room on the 26th floor, Mexican food, and purportedly lower cost of living- I can get used to this place. 

Watching the Karate Kid last night, I realized that I could comfortably spend the next two weeks vegetating after my post-work workout. Scary thing is, at this point such lethargy sounds more appealing than actually going out and "experiencing China." Right now, as I sit in this empty conference room on my "preparation break," I'm feeling uninspired. It could be that I'm listening to the Keane and Natasha Bedingfield versions of "Somewhere Only We Know" back-to-back, but just watching the rain sweep across Nanjing could be enough, at least for the moment. 

SUNING4LYFE?

What's stopping me from living in nice hotels for the rest of my life? I mean, no, I won't own the place, but what difference does that make really? With room service and all the amenities I'll ever really need (including a Japanese bar and club-wow), why wouldn't I trade real estate independence for the life of a straight baller? I'm sure this is how a professional athlete must feel. Besides, your neighbors would always change, so you can meet new people all the time. Everyone around me would change, but I'd stay the constant. Like a rock in a stream- just always there, getting in the way, and living large and in charge. 

But seriously, after this Suning hotel suite, I 'm seriously considering spending the better half of my twenties looming over major cities in ritzy hotel suites. It'd be the ultimate excuse to delay adulthood: "I can't settle down now, I'm living in a hotel for chrissakes!" Perfect. Everyone wins, except my potential child with said woman. But he wouldn't have been formed to begin with, so I guess the stakes don't really apply to him.