Genderalizations
There's a curious aspect to my social life in China, and it's one which has puzzled me since I first started to make friends here.
Specifically, my friends are overwhelmingly young women, generally between 20 and 27 years old. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth – I certainly don't regret any of my friendships – but I've spent some time trying to figure out the reasons why this state of affairs exists.
If I'm being completely honest, the simple fact that I find young women pleasant to look at certainly numbers among them, but I like to think I'm not that much of a pig, and that this is a fairly peripheral consideration.
Doubtless, the fact that most of my time in China has thus far been spent in youth hostels has something to do with it. These places tend to attract a younger set of people – staff ( yuan gong / 员工 ) and patrons ( ke hu / 客户 ) alike – and most establishments like to have personable young women working there. They help present the best face, set customers at ease in what is often an unfamiliar environment, and (especially at the bar) increase sales. However, simple exposure to people whose job it is to be friendly wouldn't explain why these people are now my friends. People generally don't enjoy taking their work home with them, and I've had more invitations to homes, dinners, and trips (i.e., more than none) than this would warrant.
Who else would I have been talking about?
That my passport has "United States" stamped on it makes me more of a curiosity than a target for romance or matrimony. In fact, being non-Chinese would eliminate me from consideration among most of my friends; having a relationship with a foreigner is just too much trouble, they say… and often, their parents just wouldn't approve.
As far as being a foreigner, there is also the superstar factor to consider. In many places, especially those geared towards tourists or normally devoid of them altogether, a foreigner is an automatic celebrity. Pale skin (skin whitening creams abound on the cosmetics market) and rounded eyes (eyelid surgery, first popularized in South Korea and Japan, is growing more and more widespread) affords you a certain status that is simply unavailable to people with Asian features.
The thing is, of course, over here I don't look foreign. I've been asked countless times where I'm from, and taking stabs at the answer is a popular pastime among new acquaintances. While Japan and Korea tend to be the most popular, you could name virtually any province in China and chances are someone has guessed that as my family home ( lao jia / è€å®¶ ). Only one person has ever correctly identified me as American, and that was a fellow Californian who noticed the REI labels on my clothing. Lately, I'm increasingly being pegged as local to wherever I currently am, which is unspeakably gratifying.
Returning to physical appearances, apparently here in China I'm considered… cute. Even though it's a thoroughly distasteful concept that I can entertain neither very seriously nor at length, it is something I've been exposed to fairly consistently, so it merits a mention.
Okay, okay, I get it.
My only possible conclusion is that the fat clown archetype is subject to a fairly peculiar set of emotional responses on this side of the Pacific.
Continuing with physical factors, the vast majority of young women I meet in China are non-smokers. In fact, only one of my female friends smokes regularly, and she's just started a campaign to quit. In contrast, only two of my male friends don't smoke on a regular basis. This may seem like a petty issue where friendship is concerned – after all, there's cigarette smoke hanging in the air in essentially every public place in China – until you consider the following two points:
1) There is a fairly laissez-faire attitude among many Chinese men towards dental hygiene (incidentally, something I have not often observed in women).
2) People here, particularly men, tend to be recklessly cavalier about personal space.
If you have ever carried on a conversation with a close-talking chain smoker who's neglected to brush his teeth for the last three days, you will understand how difficult it is to reach a mutual understanding of any kind, regardless how interesting the other person is.
Still, after all that, I'm not satisfied. After conversations with several friends on the subject, I've come to the following conclusion: I'm friends with so many young women because, by and large, men in China are less interesting.
That said, the only person in China with whom I've been up into the wee hours arguing politics has been male, and I have a number of male friends who I trust and can relate to just as much as anyone else. So this is certainly not universal; only a general impression based on my admittedly narrow range of experience.
However, the culture here is still steadfastly patriarchal, and the one-child policy has seen to it that the past few generations of men have been brought up in any combination of two environments: shamelessly spoiled from birth as the sole hope of a family's future, or as the unremittingly dominant force in any personal or professional relationship with a woman. Chauvinism is the norm, and even dynamic, independent women accept – if not support – statements about gender that, in the Western world, would get you icy looks of slightly incredulous scorn.
In many cases, this has resulted in a certain breed of man that has simply failed to grow up. They are accustomed to constant validation, have their every need promptly and efficiently attended to, and generally feel that money is the solution to any obstacle, or the goal of any interaction.
There are, of course, elements there that I recognize in my own upbringing and personality, which is possibly why I cannot bear to see them displayed in others. Truths about myself always seem uglier, somehow, when reflected in someone else's eyes.
So, while the man-child hordes smoke, bully, shout, push, rut, and spit their way through the upper echelons of society, the women of China keep their heads down. They work harder, are paid less, endure more hardship and condescension. They also develop tougher skin, better critical thinking, and more sophisticated senses of humour.
Or they just get really mean.
So, I take a quick inventory of some of my female friends in China, and mentally compare them to the average guys on the street or playing Counterstrike in the internet bars ( wang ba / ç½‘å§ ).
There is an artist and teacher, whose mother often had to choose between feeding herself or her child. Despite this, she has nevertheless made enough room in her dreams for an eventual visit to the poorest provinces of China, where she hopes to fund a small school or some kind of food program.
She studies Goya, Bellini, and Qi Bai Shi with as much open, brilliant pleasure as she absorbs Mr. Bean and Crayon Shin-Chan, and she's chronically short of money because she spends it all on friends and family.
There's an entrepreneur, simultaneously one of the sharpest and most scattered minds I have ever encountered, who somehow manages to successfully juggle the often conflicting demands of her husband, child, and business.
Through it all, she maintains an unrelentingly sunny disposition and a practical yet optimistic outlook on life uncluttered by undue sentimentality. She navigates street markets, contract negotiations, trade conferences, extended family, and labyrinthine local politics with aplomb. Apparently, the only thing that scares her is the inevitability of cooking dinner.
There's a young professional photographer who insists on making her own way, despite her doting father's considerable wealth. She smokes like a chimney, curses like a sailor, can drink me under the table, and strides fearlessly through Shanghai every day, roaring and invincible, armed with talent and flashing, exuberant youth.
She is also irresistibly addicted to Red Vines, just quit smoking and drinking – the cursing is still in full flow – and cleans her apartment on her hands and knees because she refuses to make the compromises in cost and effectiveness that come with buying a mop.
There's a shy, willowy English major, not long out of college and all but ignored by her family. She takes what jobs she can find, traveling wherever there's work and money to be had, waiting and saving for some indefinable future.
In the intervals between uncertain work and uneasy sleep, she spends time and money learning to play the zither ( qin / ç´ ), simply because she thinks it's beautiful.
Honestly, there's just no contest.
4/1, Suzhou – Hangzhou
This is part of a series of posts that are going to detail my time as part of a week-long, five-star-studded, guided group tour my father arranged for us. Initially I thought it would be a short trip around Shanghai, and agreed to go in the hopes that maybe... just maybe... my dad and I could spend some quality time together.
...Yeah.
In any event, the posts are going to come in reverse order, since the trip is almost over and I'm writing what's most fresh in my mind at the moment. There's going to be more exposition in the posts to come, since explaining how these tours actually work at the business level is something I'm going to reserve for when my impressions get drier and I'm bored of writing about the whole thing anyway.
Pictures are also coming, when I get a chance.
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We were up at 6AM again in Suzhou, ready for another battle at the breakfast line with the five other tour groups staying at the same hotel. I have found that breakfasts tend to be the best meals, possibly because the hotel kitchen staff is accustomed to serving real customers in addition to the periodic herds of guided tourists. This is not to say that the meals are good ... merely the best in comparison to what we are fed in other establishments throughout the day.
As a result, despite the ungodly hour, the breakfast crowds are merciless. Omelet bars are overwhelmed, the young cooks sweating and dazed behind their portable gas stoves and french skillets. Busboys and waitresses skitter back and forth frantically, gathering used dishware and silverware, and responding meekly to impatient barks from patrons. Chafing dishes full of meat -- and some of the more competently executed vegetables -- are emptied faster than the kitchen can refill them, and fresh fruit is quietly smuggled away in purses and backpacks for later consumption.
Luckily for the staff, we are normally allowed only about an hour before being prodded onto our buses for the morning's featured event.
Suzhou's morning tour was the Lingering Garden (Liu Yuan / ç•™å›), which was fairly interesting, in an "I've seen this in front of every P.F. Chang's" sort of way.
To be fair, the garden was actually gorgeous, and the steady rain only enhanced the drooping willows, the dark creaking wood of the buildings, and the twisting stone walkways. However, the place's serene beauty was utterly spoiled by the noise of workers busily restoring or replacing part of a wall, the legions of tour groups tramping about the place, and their tour guides' loudspeakers blaring in competition with one another as they expounded on the history of the place.
This is fairly typical of Chinese tourism, and I'm surprised I'm still upset by it after all this time.
Trying to escape the crowds, I decided to just wander off on my own into the maze of gardens, avoiding the main paths and tour groups, occasionally retracing my steps to check on the tour group and make sure they weren't piling back on the bus without me. This failed to put me in favor with the tour guide, who appeared to take offense that I wasn't cooing over his descriptions of the hardwood chairs in every room.
The garden was followed by a visit to a silk outlet, thinly disguised as a tour. I immediately left the group and located a cafe on the second floor where I spent a happy hour sipping a cup of terrible coffee and reading, with a brief but remarkable interlude... a "fashion show" put on by the factory.
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The fashion show's grand finale.
The net impression was one of long-standing depression; unattractive models wearing cheaply made, unattractive clothes, slumping down a gaudy catwalk before wheeling robotically to retreat backstage. As a tribute to fading hope and listless cynicism, I could see no room for improvement. As a sales and marketing tool... I think they could do better.
We were then called to lunch, which turned out to be equally depressing. Out of seven or eight dishes (to serve a table of ten), one was boiled cabbage, and another was scrambled eggs, both with no seasoning whatsoever, unless you count despair. God help the chef in charge of the kitchens if he actually likes to cook; this was clearly the work of a broken man.
Once the shoppers -- and less discriminating eaters -- in the group had had their fill, we were herded back onto the buses for the drive to Hangzhou, which lasted for three hours and one pit stop.
Our arrival in Hangzhou was actually a pleasant surprise. Rather than viewing a pointless stretch of waterway or standing around in a field for fifteen minutes before being driven to dinner, we were driven directly to the restaurant near West Lake ( Xi Hu / 西湖) and cut loose for an hour. Despite the cold drizzle, the entire group naturally made a beeline for the lake itself, there to pose giddily for pictures of themselves in front of a featureless fog bank.
Despite having resolved to try to spend some quality time with my father this trip, I decided that this, among so many other activities, defied any possible interpretation of the phrase, and quit the field. I told him I'd meet him at the restaurant at the appointed time, and went wandering off by myself.
Incidentally, I now recognize this as my favorite mode of travel, which is something of a relief and a disappointment. I am relieved, since I can now stop wondering why I feel out of my element when traveling with others, but supremely disappointing in the realization that some of my happiest moments may simply be lost to time and strangers' memories, as I am unable to sufficiently share them even with the people closest to me. Words and pictures are a pale, clumsy substitute for a living memory, and that they may be all I have to offer when all's said and done is a disheartening thought.
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Either they're the luckiest bastards ever to walk the earth, or about to die a bizarrely symmetrical death.
I immediately found one interesting attraction by the lake, at any rate; there is a peculiar monument, entitled "Monument to Martyrs of the 88th Division of Chinses[sic] Army in the Battle at Songhu[sic]."
The intent is clearly noble: on January 28th 1932, Japan initiated an invasion of Shanghai, in which 1,421 soldiers of the local 88th division died defending their country, and this monument was built (and subsequently dismantled for unknown reasons, then rebuilt years later at the current location) to commemorate them.
However, the two heroes that made it onto the monument are curiously immortalized at the instant in time immediately before being -- if the monument has any say in the matter -- violently martyred into a fountain of fine red mist by four simultaneously exploding bombs, which I found unsettlingly hilarious.
It wasn't long before I found a coffee shop hidden behind a narrow, neon-lit facade on a nearby street; all narrow stairways and wood paneling, the old building was dark and quiet inside, but for the creak of wooden floorboards and the occasional pool of light from a window or an overhead spot. The first floor was just a stairway; the second floor was a bar, where they were just starting a movie. I told the waitress I was interested in a quiet place to just have a cup of coffee, and the manager nearby told her to take me upstairs, to a floor that was simply marked "3/F Lovers" on the building's register.
"3/F Lovers," despite my various apprehensions, turned out to be a collection of small private sitting rooms. Mine was packed with a small table, two chairs, a tired-looking sofa, and an open window with a view of the street below. A single small sconce cast a dim honeyed glow over dark wood panels and dusty art, and a lake-fed breeze whispered in through the open window, somehow making the room simultaneously warm and cool.
The waitress took my espresso order and slipped out, leaving me alone with the quiet hiss of rain and wet tires outside, the lonely, ancient wail of a Chinese fiddle (an er hu / 二胡) floating up from the street, and the low murmuring click-click-clack of a game of mahjong (ma jiang / 麻将) from the room next door.
I had a pang of guilt when I remembered my dad out by the lake, but we are probably both happier this way; I have a moment of peace in this sublime little hideaway, and he is free to harangue his fellow travelers without me cramping his style.
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Okay fine, I lied about the sconce; I just think it sounds better than "desk lamp."
I have half an hour until we are expected at what I fully expect to be an enormously boring and bland dinner, and I fully intend to make the most of it by sitting with my eyes closed, sipping my coffee, listening to the city around me, and otherwise doing... absolutely... nothing.
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Leisure 1930 Pub : Coffee House Restaurant
88 Scholar's Road ( xue shi lu 88 hao / å¦å£«è·¯88å· )
Hangzhou, China
T: +86 0571-87910561
Doubt, and yet…
I cannot help but admit I am having second thoughts about returning to China. There is the inevitable voice of self-doubt, and I must decide whether it is just that -- self-doubt -- or realism. Much like my initial departure, I am very much unsure of what to expect of the future.
Trying to recapture and gauge the discouraging emotions from that time has been less than fruitful; but what I do remember is that this creeping, paralyzing uncertainty was a hallmark of my thought process before I left; and it was nowhere in evidence during my absence. The world felt more expansive, brighter, and full of possibility, even when I was hosing shit of questionable origin from my shoe in a public bathroom, or watching a stream of toddler urine slowly wend its way toward me along a subway car's floor.
I am not so naive as to believe this is a pure effect of longitude; nevertheless, I think it makes sense to pick up the search where I left off.
Recognizing that the difficulties in China will be formidable -- trying to unravel the mysteries of simply moving money from one place to another today was a trial in and of itself -- I'm sure I still want to give it a shot. I'm just having to remind myself why a little more lately.
As I've tried to explain my move to a few of my friends in China, I've often fallen back on the phrase: 一个生活没困难，没æ„æ€ . That is, "A life without difficulty has no meaning."
And aside from some personal difficulties, some real and some imposed from within, I've had it pretty easy. Prestigious private prep school, solid college, never fearing for food on the table or a roof over my head, and falling into money (in varying amounts) from one job to the next, without really ever feeling like I had to exert myself overmuch.
This applies even after I went into business for myself, a decision I more or less based on being able to buy a big TV/monitor and deduct it from my taxes. I made almost twice as much money as I ever had before, and I spent half that year essentially unemployed. Sure, I worked hard on the projects I got -- I do have a decent work ethic, after all -- but I didn't have to go through any of the trials and tribulations normally associated with running your own company.
It kind of felt like cheating, really. As if I'd entered an "Infinite-subsistence-pay-at-the-expense-of-your-soul" code on some cosmic gamepad. It never really seemed like I earned that money. Possibly one of the reasons I spent most of it on gadgets and toys for which I had no need, and food/drink/gifts for friends (only the former of which I regret).
A friend once suggested I was so unhappy because I haven't really had to try for anything, and maybe he was right. Ever since I graduated high school, in all honesty I've really kind of been coasting.
Maybe I just feel like I need more of a challenge. Maybe I'm bored and want to see what's over there. Maybe I'm running away from something here. Maybe I'm stupid, crazy, or both. Maybe I fear being tied down to unpleasantness more than the possibility of never putting down roots. Maybe I'm just chasing a girl. That last one I'm fairly sure isn't it... but who knows, right?
As I said before I left the first time, I think the desire for more difficulty in one's life must be specific to spoiled kids with too much time on their hands (i.e., me). But, meh. So be it. If I'm going to be a stereotype, I may as well try to see how far I can stretch it.
Whatever my concerns now, I'm committed to going. Regardless of what doubts I may have, or the failing memory of those first doubts, what I do remember clearly is the sense of certainty when I decided to go back.
I am choosing between safety -- the security of a job here, and the likely possibility of at least enough work to keep me going for the next few years -- and an unfathomable unknown.
Given I have awakened to the fact that I am essentially free of all responsibility but to make the most of my time, I hope I will opt for the chance of discovery every time.
Next post, hopefully another journal transcript, and not a techie/emo rant.
Fuck you, everyone.
If I never see another computer again, I would not be terribly upset about it. This presents a problem, since my job (for lack of a better word) depends on computers.
But after a long and difficult night, and today's long and difficult morning, dealing with all kinds of retarded shit inflicted on me by Lenovo, Intel, the RIAA, and Microsoft, I am well and heartily sick of the electronic world, and a little bit of the physical one too. I want to take my laptops, and use them to crush the skulls of the people responsible for the bullshit I just had to go through.
So let's document this process, in the angriest, most unnecessarily profane manner possible:
1) Skype recording in Vista: Fuck you, Microsoft, RIAA, and SoundMAX.
I decide it'd be nice to record my Skype calls, since I'll hopefully be doing a lot of business calling with Skype from China. That way, it would be easy to go back and review meeting notes, client instructions and project parameters, so on and so forth.
So I hit up Google and download a couple apps to try out. Come to find, thanks to the morons at Microsoft, the RIAA, and SoundMAX, I am not allowed to record audio off of my own soundcard in Vista. The rationale there, I guess, is that since people apparently still pirate music (gasp!), they must be doing so by buying a CD, playing music on their computer's CD drive, then recording the audio at 1:1 speed through the line-in input. So any recording off the sound board is disabled at the driver level.
Take note, this is a new and essentially undocumented "feature" of Vista and/or various manufacturers' drivers. People using XP, you're in the clear. Don't ask me about Windows7, because I couldn't give a shit right now even if I wanted to. Also I don't care about who's actually technically at fault here, MS or the manufacturers. I hate them all.
But seriously? The only people this affects are the ones who want to use the feature legitimately; i.e., musicians, geeks like me, or etc. What kind of mouth-breathing digital (note: DIGITAL, you stupid assholes) media pirate is going to take the time to record music off his sound card or internet radio at 1:1 speed, when he could just rip it directly as fast as his drive or net link can transfer?
So I end up having to fork over some money to a third-party software company. At the least, this product (Pamela for Skype) has some extra features, like voicemail, return automatic calling, and so on, that to be fair Skype should already have. I love cheap VoIP and I'm otherwise pretty happy with Skype, but yeah... fuck you too, Skype.
2) My new computer's wifi: Fuck you, Microsoft, Intel, and Lenovo.
So you would expect, if you paid $1500 for a new laptop, that something as simple as wireless internet would work. Right? That seems like a pretty reasonable, logical assumption, right? I mean, a base requirement for a satisfactory product purchase would be the proper operation of all basic functions of said product, at least at the beginning of its life cycle... RIGHT?
Right.
So why, Lenovo and Intel, does my brand new X200s keep dropping connection? Fuck you guys. I can't even -- and this is key, here -- access the Intel webpage to download the fucking drivers to fix my fucking wifi card.
Whose idea was that? Nice job. Fuck you.
Meanwhile, my T61 is fine. Researching on the web, downloading drivers, and so on. So I start uninstalling the bullshit wifi manager packages you preloaded on my laptop, one by one. Oh, it looks like I chose to uninstall the wrong one, because it destroyed the wifi installation and now Vista won't grant me permissions to reinstall it.
Awesome. Fuck you, Vista and your retarded, nonsensical user permissions. What's that? I'm logged in as an admin and you won't grant me permission to delete this folder? I have to reboot into Safe Mode and do it from a DOS prompt? Why am I back in 1992 using rmdir /S? What's this? I'm still logged in as admin and you're saying permission was denied to copy a driver file somewhere, so I can never ever install drivers for my wifi card? Oh, and you're not telling me where the target location is, so I can't go and manually fix it? Fuck you.
So I restore the PC to factory settings -- after I spent about 3 hours stripping it of useless shit from Lenovo, Intel, and Microsoft -- and start again. After some tweaking, I manage to get the wifi more or less working. Still shitty, but at least functional. How, you ask? Yes, I removed all your shitty, bloated software and just installed the bare driver.
At this point, it's 3am and I get to go to bed.
Seriously, fuck you guys.
3) Vista language packs: Fuck you, Microsoft.
Admit it. We live in an increasingly digital and international world. Worldwide communications are expanding at a phenomenal rate, and the global economy blurs political and cultural borders more and more with each passing day.
So, why would the knuckle-draggers at Microsoft decide to forbid any version of Vista except Ultimate/Enterprise to change its display language? And beyond that, fail to tell anyone about it? Fuck you guys.
This is beyond moronic. I paid for Vista Business. In a product with the name "Business" in it, would you not expect that, you know, maybe some of your clients might be multinational? That it might be useful, even for someone who doesn't want to pay for and install all the over-inflated useless crap in Windows Ultimate to have the option of switching display languages? You think maybe there are people in the States who might not have English as their first or preferred language?
Well, I guess not. You'd rather rip people off for as much as you can for basic conveniences. Fuck you. I'm downloading your Chinese language pack right now, and I'm going to use a freeware third-party program to fix your mess.
(Update: by the way, that third-party fix worked perfectly. Fuck you, Microsoft.)
In conclusion: I am going to go for a run, take a shower, and avoid my computer like the plague for the next three hours.
Some more angst… But this time, from CHINA!!
I'm having a lot of fun here, and I'm pretty excited to be moving on, but right now I think I'm going to address some nagging shadows in my head. Rest assured, some funny/more interesting shit is in the works.
There are some things about Shanghai that have surprised me, either with the simple fact of them, or because of their simultaneous strangeness and familiarity. Every write-up, documentary, or travelogue that mentions China inevitably talks about its duality.
There is plenty of that in evidence here; Jing'an temple, one of Shanghai's major tourist draws, is an 1800-year-old temple tucked into one of the ritziest shopping districts on Earth, surrounded by Dolce, Gucci, and Rolex storefronts. I'm staying in a Marriot, but turn a corner and walk 50 meters, and there's a whole street full of guys in shacks jury-rigged out of old cardboard boxes and construction yard scraps, selling breakfast hot from a sizzling griddle to a jostling crowd of schoolgirls, laborers, matrons, and businessmen in Armani knock-offs.
As for myself, I'm finding it difficult to cope with the maddening confusion in my head. I have been telling all my friends how much I missed real conversation, since I had to make do with limited Chinese on my side, and at best the barest English on the other. But right now I'm sat one table away from an American and a German talking about hotel strategies, and I'm having the strangest, but undeniable, feeling of hostility.
Then I turn my attention to the other two nearby conversations -- the Chinese bartender and receptionist at the counter, or the two Chinese businessmen on my other side -- and I feel like I'm home, despite only being able to understand every third or fourth word. For all I know, they're discussing which type of rusty spoon would be most useful in removing my kidneys while I sleep tonight, but I derive the oddest sensation of comfort simply from the rhythm and melody of the language.
A mystery.
I had a conversation earlier today that might help me find some answers here. As I'm taking the day to relax before a trip to the boonies, I decided to visit the pool for a swim. I was the only one there, aside from a hotel employee who was just staring blankly at the floor. After a couple laps, we started talking. It turns out his job was basically to sit around and wait for me to leave. I asked if he was bored, and he explained that, well... kind of, but not really.
He applied the zhong (middle) in zhong guo (Middle Kingdom, i.e. China) in a way I hadn't heard before. He told me it also applies on a personal level; it's important for people to be zhong, or centered, in themselves. He couched this in terms of social harmony -- in a country as diverse and populous as China, for individuals to be content is really the only way to avoid excessive strife and conflict.
On a social level, this sounds a lot like the national party hotline or something. It's so much the antithesis of the Western way of thinking, where the idea is that you should decide what you want, then strive mightily until you get it. Governing people is so much easier when they're docile, so I can understand why this is such a well-perpetuated attitude.
On a personal level though, and applied rather more selectively, I recognize it as something I desperately need. Not to say I should be completely passive -- there's been plenty of that for me already -- but I should know when to be happy with what I have, so I at least have some kind of home base.
Anyway, there's plenty more to talk about there, but my interest in it can only really be maintained for so long. As for China's duality, I'm rather more interested in the common threads, those constants of Chinese culture that have survived the ravages of the more volatile tendencies.
That sounds a bit grandiose, I suppose, and it's fairly tough to do. So I'll just cop out, stop here, and try to stave off jetlag till some reasonable hour presents itself.