After I came back this morning from an early workout with C, I went to my kitchen to make some oatmeal and egg whites. As I bent down to pull the pan out from underneath the counter, I felt a heat on my forehead. I looked up; the stove was already ON. Little blue and yellow flames were dancing happily in place, teasing me from inside their little grate. The last time I cooked was when . . . yesterday morning? Jeez.

In other news - the infamous CCTV tower (the one that looks like a giant pair of pants) just down the road from me, caught on fire last night as the entire city celebrated Lantern Festival, the last official end to the Chinese New Year. This is not surprising because every Wang and his uncle Wu was blowing up the streets with lines of crack(ers), bouts of BOOMS and window-tapping, ear-splitting shits of colorful dynamite. It was only a matter of time before something burst into real flames. My taxi driver this morning exclaimed to me in Chinese that the tower looked like 9-11.

And, in light of this post's theme, a few weeks ago, the twin towers of the new Landgent Center, literally across the street from my apartment, veiled the rare blue sky in huge ebony puffs. I have never been that close to a real fire, so I spent almost that entire morning shooting it. You can also see a dim, pre-burnt CCTV tower in the background, toward the left, right behind the second set of apartment complexes.

It's 11:30pm and the firecrackers have been going on all day, except now they have changed to fireworks.  Any planes flying over China would be greeted by a landscape of exploding bouquets of color confetti. The entire city of Beijing is aglow, bringing in the New Year - Chinese New Year, that is. This whole next week will fill the air with stagnant smoke from thousands upon thousands of mini explosives, reminding us that 2009 is the Year of the Ox. Chinese New Year is like our Western Christmas, except sans all that St. Nicholas stuff. Instead, train stations are bulging with passengers on their way home to family, banquets, and little red envelopes filled with the currency of hope. Since my own family is 8000 miles away, I'm using this week for contemplation and productivity, curious as to what this second New Year will bring.

I forever feel like I’m explaining my lack of blog updates. This time was due to work. Hence the butt-raping post earlier. I’m serious. It’s no laughing matter. Work has inserted the beads and RRRRRRRRRRRRRIPPED THEM OUT.

No, butt seriously, last week was tough. Trying to cope with B’s departure, work was the last place I wanted to be. And then I got scolded: the magazine is late and why didn’t I carry out my promises? Well, fuck you Mr. Boss Man. I’m supposed to manage this magazine, not do every fucking thing by my self. That’s right, I said it. If your incompetent team actually wrote one decent, non-Chinglish article I didn’t have to re-write, then maybe we would have a magazine now. Fuck you. (Stomp out of the room. Pack things. Leave China). Well, that’s not what happened, although at the time, there was a fantasy or two that involved similar scenarios.

Anyway, amidst the hot mess that I call the Office, I realized that no amount of explanation or pouting was going to fix anything. Your balls have to be hard as diamonds out here, and mine hadn't even dropped yet. However, while drilling holes into my computer screen with laser beams of hate, I did figure out that I was the only one who could change the situation, which required an alteration in attitude. I don’t mean attitude as in I’m going to break your ass, bitch. I mean attitude as in my outlook on things. I tend to easily fall on the shit end of the blame/lie/elicit your sympathy while I take your money stick because I am gullible as all hell. Partly because I believe in the Good of the world and partly because I was a little Chinese immigrant girl who grew up in white, suburban Arlington, VA and thought that the bearded man they called “Jesus” in the old, soft cover, children’s Bible 12-set I somehow ended up with, was America’s status quo, and that I would be turned into a pillar of salt if I looked back at the burning village. My lunches were packed with peanut butter and cheese sandwiches, or Tupperware full of delicious leek dumplings, which subsequently stunk so badly that I was trapped between being too embarrassed to eat them in front of my friends, and guilty for letting my mom’s hard work go to waste. I didn’t even know what The Little Mermaid was until fourth-grade, and I only just developed my own taste in music during sophomore year of college. This is what happens when you travel to the States at age three, under the care of a (phenomenal) mother whose most authentic idea of “American” was the Ronald McDonald cardboard cutout two blocks south of our first D.C. apartment.

But don’t worry folks. I am balancing out my gullibility by living the hell out of life, everywhere. And I am finding street smarts in my size, layering it on like a proper Shanghai citizen, shriveled in front of a tiny heater in the dead of winter (in China, there is a certain date when all heating is officially turned on for winter; the government, however, does not allocate heat below an invisible line drawn across China’s midsection. Shanghai is south of that border). I can pull on an old pair of neck swerves like it’s nobody’s business. You know - the kind where you perch your left hand on a jutted hip while the other hand snaps left, right, left in front of your pursed lips as you gyrate your neck with flava. (Side note: this is a talent I perfected in college when I somehow found myself a member of a Black Entertainment Sorority. Word to the sistas of Diamond Dolls Elite. Mm.) Anyway, I’m quickly learning how to decipher the bullshit from the regular shit.

Long story short – after a bunch of hooha and pointing fingers (probably the most frequent habit at any workplace; that and surfing the net), I made it clear that despite their erroneous accusations of my empty promises and over-optimism, the job I had set out to do was done. And if they wanted anything more, they better get me some Little Fucking Engines that Could. And just to seal the envelope on my hard work and their lack of, how ever many hours I was supposed to work last week, I doubled. I literally worked my way out of the problem. And now everything is daisies . . . or rice patties. Bad attempt at racial humor. Sigh.

And that’s why I’ve delayed my blog, yet again.

But, I'm back :-)

In honor of Jameson’s departure, I am holding a Winter Spring Cleaning. He was right (damn). I have SO much stuff. Not like I didn’t know that before, but now those boxes sitting in my living room are just starting to irritate me. Because they’re there, and because I have no idea where to put what’s in them. And even if I did, I wouldn’t want to because I would know that there would be purposeful pockets of space everywhere in my apartment that I forced stuff into. Personal things should fit intuitively into a living space; there is a given place for everything, and I just don’t have enough surface in my figurative, intuitive counters and drawers and shelves and closets and corners.

For a while there, I did rationale that throwing away stuff in China was too tragic since they don’t have Salvation Armies here. But, much to my dismay, garbage bins are veritable stop-and-go’s, because people have full-time jobs picking through that stuff here. They even make money on it. There is no Recycling-Bin God in China because any plastic bottles you toss get picked out right away. Any clothes or cardboard you trash becomes an old person’s treasure. Seriously. It does. Great sub-economy.

So, since my Salvation Army plea didn’t pan out, I’m getting rid of it, along with a shitload of my stuff – as much as I can, as quickly as I can. If I didn’t miss them while they were in boxes, I might as well just get rid of the whole shebang.

I need to start taking my new job a little more seriously.

This is definitely something I have never needed to say since professional Jenny has never felt this way before.

New Company is stable, riding on the shoulders of its sugar daddy publishing house, the oldest publishing government entity in China. New office is nice; have my own 1280x1220 flat screen, printer and tacky, antique Chinese living room set. New Boss is amazing, extremely well connected, and willing to help me in any way he can – as long as I push out the new brand and bring in the bucks. He is nothing like the previous Chinese pig heads I have met in the system – all talk and no action; seedy men who, unlike the ideals they spout, are majorly inept and have stagnancy down to a tee. New Boss is caring, hard working and willing to make change. The latter is a concept that most of China, and much of middle-America, is unaccustomed to; but New Boss is unafraid of the status quo, and has hired me to go against it. New Team is a little bit of a hot mess, but generally yearning to learn and move up. And although nursing them to life is parching the milk right out of my tender breast (too much info?), it is invigorating to watch them realize their own talents and dexterity. New Resources and Budget are unlimited. The philosophy of New Boss is that how much money I use is not an issue, as long as I transform the brand into the apple of our niche market’s eye.

The cards, gods, qi and Communist party are all playing in my favor, and yet, I am not moving at the pace I should be.  

Maybe it was because the last magazine I was in charge of was such an oppressive experience that the “I need to take it easy” feeling has overstepped its boundaries in this new magazine. Old magazine was a huge expat rag in Beijing, newly taken over by a Chinese team with Chinese ideas and resources, most of which were not and never will be accepted by the extremely nitpicky, needy, arrogant expat population. New magazine is two years old, but has enough reserves to catapult it to stardom; it just needs a firm, but gentle hand (mine) to guide it in the right direction. And yet, I rarely make it into the office before 10am because I personal train three times a week, I leave the office when I want and take long lunches with clients. Yes, these are the benefits of being in charge. But they are also the result of the fact that I don’t need to pull a 9-5 day in order to work faster and smarter than most of my team. Can I help it if it takes me one afternoon to do something that would otherwise take my staff one month to do? No exaggeration. While the others literally need to be trained step by step, the industry is common sense to me, and I have found a niche market in which a few brilliant ideas will take this brand a long way.

It’s not like I’m doing a poor job; in fact, I am doing quite well and have impressed the uppers with my efficiency. But my conscience still scolds me for being a lazy ass because it knows that I am falling really short of my personal standards. Every day I tell myself to get serious because the situation is serious. This is a huge opportunity. I have an entire magazine gasping for vavavoom in my hands, waiting for me to pump blood into it. I should take advantage of my nunchuck skills and get things done according to my own standards of speed, not theirs. Imagine what I could do if I worked every afternoon, getting the equivalent of a Chinese month’s workload done every day – then, I would really deserve the praise that has come my way. Then, I would know I was really taking this opportunity of a lifetime earnestly. I am in my early 20s, and am the youngest, highest paid member of the team. That either makes me really good or really lucky, or maybe both. Regardless, no one my age gets this kind of chance to prove themselves.  

I am the Managing Editor and Creative Director of a sow’s ear with silk purse potential, but I know the latter will only go as far as I’m willing to take my own capabilities.

I rode the fastest recorded train in the world, from Beijing to Tianjin, this weekend, to finally pack up my old apartment and close the book on that city. As a bonus, Jameson somehow got our Australian friend, Nurse N, to cook us an early Thanksgiving dinner, sans turkey (because who wants to fall asleep in the middle of their cranberry sauce). We did, however, have roast chicken with cherry tomatoes, onions, green peppers and shards of pumpkin; French bread with Greek olives, sun-dried tomatoes doused in feta and cottage cheese, and thick slices of Swiss; homemade toffee and pumpkin pie and chocolate pecan pie a la mode; and of course, wine. Nurse N is an impressive chef. Even more impressive is the fact that Jameson and I managed to gorge ourselves on every morsel amidst his whooping cough/Chinese-hospital-diagnosed pneumonia and my impending doom disease due to an earlier case of Chinese-street-food poisoning. Mmm.

In other news.

Had a good day today. The new team is starting to come together as we prepare for our magazine re-launch in January (more on this later). After four days of impending doom disease, my energy is back and my thinking cap fits again. As I returned from an invigorating session with my personal trainer late this evening, I was greeted by a pair of army green coats and hats bundled around two apathetic faces. These are the same faces I see every morning as I leave my building, and these are the faces that stare blankly at me every time I get home afterhours, because my gate key doesn’t work and the usual in-outflow of traffic is already upstairs in their bunny slippers. And the following is usually what happens when said faces and I interact. Tonight was no different.

“Can you please help me? I can’t get in.”

Hesitation. “We don’t have a card.”

“Well, do you have any way to let me in?”

“I would really like to help you, but I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“You have to have a card.”

“I have one of those round key things that my landlord gave to me, but it doesn’t work.”

Silence.

“Um. Can you help me?”

“We don’t have keys.”

“Well, how am I supposed to get in then?” Mind you, this is all in Chinese.

“You should wait for someone who has a card.”

“But it’s 11:18pm – who is going to come?”

“You should try your key.”

“I did. Many times. It doesn’t work.”

Silence masked by an evasive stare.

“So .  . .  you’re not going to help me?”

“You should get a card.”

Screaming inside. “Can I go through there?” I point to the adjacent car gate with a lock wrapped around it.

Blank stare.

The inside of my head is reverberating in silent screams. Eff usual Polite-Jenny. I’m freezing my cahones off. Stand here or save figurative cahones. Cahones  it is. I quickly maneuver around apathetic guard #2 and shake the lock on the car gate. It slides right off. I slide right in, and even save some face for Polite-Jenny and loop the lock back on. Shivering, I sneak a look back. #2 never even turns his head.