This month opened up with a string of bad luck which struck me like lightning to a metallic rod.
It began with having to deal with my agent who was handling my Chinese Visa renewal process. It was actually due on the 27th of February, but when that date rolled around with no passport and visa in my hand, my contact at Sinoland called him up to see what was up. "Wait a few more days." was the general response, and so I waited. My current visa was set to expire on March 4th, so I still had time to buy. A few days went by and still no visa. "Wait a few more days." was the general response from the agent. And since I was powerless in the matter, I had no choice but to wait a few more days. On the 4th of March, when the absolute deadline had arrived, my visa STILL hadn't arrived. I was infuriated and pressed for a good reason as to this delay in processing my visa. "Oh, the Olympics!" was the excuse given by the agent, which is the excuse everyone else uses for anything that goes wrong. THE BLOODY FUCKING OLYMPICS! I'm so tired of hearing about it. For the next nine days, I had to go under the radar, avoiding any chance meetings with authorities checking foreigners for valid visas and temporary residence permits, as I was then considered as an "illegal alien". On the day that I finally met up with the agent who spoke no English whatsoever, I had Tanya at Sinoland be the translator and the mediator. I was so livid with him that I envisioned several different ways to teach him a lesson, but I kept my cool and eventually negotiated a deal to bring down the cost of the new visa from 1,500 RMB to 1,000 RMB.
During this period, I had several students in the Wangjing district of Beijing who phoned to cancel classes. All at once. With one excuse after another ranging from the usual "cough cough I'm sick" story to the "I've suddenly became inundated with my work" story, I didn't want to hear any more of it. Through experience, I found that students in this particular district just isn't serious about learning. I hate flakes and assholes, so I made the decision to boycott everyone in Wangjing.
I'd started a new position at a middle school in Dashanzhi. During the interview process several days earlier, I was reluctant to accept this job because of the great distance I had to travel every week and the inconvenience of not being close to a subway station. Out of their desperation in need for a teacher and through negotiating a raise in pay and getting an allowance for the cost of transportation, with the promise that class sizes would be somewhere between 5 - 10 students, with a maximum of 15, I accepted. On my first day of class, I counted 24 heads of rowdy middle school Korean students with no desire to pay any attention. I made a formal complaint after my exhaustive first day at work, but things didn't improve. By the 3rd week, I was out of character and started yelling in class demanding that they all "SHUT THE FUCK UP AND PAY ATTENTION." Other colourful words were used while waving my chalk in hand. "THIS IS NOT A DAY-CARE CENTRE!" I yelled furiously and continued with my barrage of demands, asking those who didn't want to be in my classroom to leave immediately and never to come back.
As if this wasn't enough, my Motorola phone crashed on me and lost my 120+ contacts I had on it, with no backup. I was responding to a SMS from a friend who invited me out to have dinner together when a message "Waiting..." appeared on screen for several minutes, followed by a message "rebooting...", and then booting back in its original factory default with the language set back to Chinese. Navigating through the Chinese menus was challenging but I managed to revert it back to English and continue writing my SMS. That's when I discovered that my phonebook was empty. In disbelief, I powered off, took the battery out, and powered it back on, hoping for a different result, but with no luck. Empty. Coincidentally, my friend Kim came out of the elevator and saw me in my less-than-graceful state. I threw my phone down on the ground and it slid across the floor. I then took it outside and threw it down on the pavement, then kicked my phone from Tous Les Jours to KFC in my fit of rage.
My open can of worms didn't end with my mobile madness. Coming down from Filip's apartment the evening after, I was about to unlock my bike when my whole set of keys which had my keys to my own apartment, a key to a friend's apartment, my mailbox key, AND my bike key, flew out of my hands and down a well-like structure at the bottom of Filip's building. I couldn't believe it. Resisting this force of evil which had wrecked havoc over me for the past few weeks proved to be futile, so I just gave up. I accepted the temporary loss of my keys and decided to carry on with the rest of the day and deal with it when I had time. I walked everywhere for the next few days.
And while all of this was happening to me, I also had to deal with my unreliable flatmate from Kansas with his difficulty in paying his rent on time. This problem, however, is one problem I had a certain degree of control of by way of eviction.
I may not be an astrologist, but I sense that the stars are not in alignment in my favour this month.
