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 :-)

Leave a Reply