all work and no play...

we're trying to plan a winter vacation somewhere. we should probably do it soon before all the snow is gone. plus i seriously just want to curl up by a fireplace listening to the crackle of the logs drinking hot cocoa from an ergonomic mug that fits my palm perfectly on a bear skin rug after a long fun tiring day making snowmen and rolling around in the snow outside our cabin and wearing my tabogan and riding wooden sleds through ravines and catching snowflakes on my tongue.

i have some really nagging work cases. i took on a private patient i see in my home. she is text message-happy and i am starting to regret giving her permission to contact me. she also does not seem to respond to "i need to go" cues. last week, we went way over our hour and i said i needed to go and she didn't budge! she's quite needy and neurotic but then again, if she wasn't, she wouldn't be seeing me.

there's another child i do therapy with. the father is a pill but not an asshole. he writes these long ass emails detailing his thoughts and everything that goes on in the child's life. and he sorta dictates how i should do my work, which isn't cool. plus this case is really challenging because i feel sorta stuck and not sure where to go with him. i secretly think the joke's on all of us working with the child b/c he's super smart, is quite precocious, and is probably laughing at all of us as we create this circus around him. he's probably fine the way he is. he probably just wants to be left alone with his Lego set. and amazing Lego's he sure can build.

i am seriously turning into a dull girl. all work and no play certainly makes me a dull...girl.

on a holiday note, they are now playing Xmas music in the malls here. reminds me of south coast plaza.

priceless.

-gramma told me she tried to hook up these china mountain women she met on her recent china trip with my cousin back home. they asked her to send them photos of him. she said they were so happy at the possibility of marrying a man in america. and i was so happy to see her gain some weight. she's an emotional eater. when she has some meat on her, she's happy. i think visiting china and taiwan really is the highlight of her year.

-telling my mom that dave and i are together again...really priceless. ugh. and she's trying to rename me too. she introduced an atrocious chinese name to me last night. check this out. Hung Rui Ming. i said no way in hell am i going to respond to that name. she has a thing for changing her name to increase her fortune, luck and health. she's had like 10 names already. i told her she shoulda thought of this when she gave birth to me 32 years ago. my sister's "new" name is just as bad, but my mom let her keep the first syllable "cui." i can't recall the second syllable. the only good thing is, she gave my nephew and niece chinese names and they actually sounded cute and pretty. i forgot those too. my mom is so freakin emo. it so runs in the family. dave says she should play some online games because that way she can name her characters whatever she likes and change and delete them as she pleases. i think that's a good idea. she's supposed to visit in March when the weather is nicer. i hope my gramma comes too.

and the week ends..

i had sorta a bum weekend.

1. M. butterfly was shut down by the police for some unknown reason. darn, and i really wanted to be "cultured" in china.
2. we have been having bad luck with food. first, thanksgiving dinner was overpriced and under-good. i was craving prime rib so we went to Lawry's but it was costly and was average at best. we later learned that we could have bought an entire turkey with trimmings for a third of that price. then yesterday, after eating noodles that nearly made me barf, we walked down the street and saw a dead rat right outside the row of restaurants by the gutter. ew. then we waited an hour at china mobile and then got the most rude, impatient, racist teller who i viscerally reacted to. let's just say if we were living back in the three kingdoms, this guy would be my mortal enemy in the battlefield. then we went to a taiwanese restaurant and ordered what i thought was japanese dessert toast. it ended up being the most disgusting shell of mayonnaise mixed with icy ham, peas and carrots. what the hell. but the night got better. we tried a new thai restaurant with some friends and hung out at Cotton's, a nice bar that would have been better without the extremely loud locals, screaming at the top of their lungs. i bought a nice warm hat that accentuates the chilly weather from a vendor for less than half the price of how much it was being sold in a store up the street.
3. on the bright side, i always enjoy meeting new people from around the world and this weekend we met a lebanese man who is from australia and living in japan and teaching business in hangzhou. we also met a lady from NY who is in the marketing industry and a lady who works in a business related field living in SH. both could relate to the pains of being an ABC in china, which was super cool. all friends of friends. in SH, there is never a shortage of the different people you might come across that you never would otherwise. that is one of my favorite parts about being here.

here's to a good week.

USBeware

because i have been downloading music and video files from bittorrent, and my laptop C drive capacity is mega small, i have sorta maxed out. i haven't gotten a chance to search for a large external drive like a terabyte but i see these vendors that sell these somewhat cheap 36GB USB drives. i thought i would take a chance and buy one of them, mostly because i seriously need extra space. i knew they would be fakes but as long as they worked, i was cool.

BAD IDEA.

not because they don't work but because 3 Trojan viruses were installed on them. when i plugged it into my laptop, it said it automatically installed "drivers." well it installed viruses instead. so dave had me format the USB immediately then download ad aware and spybot and run them twice. i formatted the USB drive several more times. maybe a fluke but i tried saving a Word file on the USB disk and it somehow crashed the file. then when i tried to transfer my large music files onto the USB disk, it didn't because there was an error with one of the music files. when i opened up the USB disk to check the contents, it had these 3 mysterious files and although it said my Word file was on there, i could not locate it. suspicious behavior. so dave thinks the virus has officially infected my laptop and now infects any external drive i plug into my USB port. he had me immediately download an actual antivirus (here i thought the ad aware and spybot were sufficient) and i am running that now.

i am bummed because:
1. i wasted 110 rmb if this USB ends up unusable due to the virus
2. it infected my laptop like a bad H1N1 virus.

i knew it was too good to be true. 36GB for just over 15US? doesn't add up. and i'm no math expert.

shanghai graffiti.

can't resist the graffiti. too bad the dude wouldn't move.

not good day!

why is my nosebleed accompanied with hacking up bits of blood?
why do i feel feverish?
why do i have no energy whatsoever?
why do i feel so f-in down?
why am i missing all of my appointments?
why is my employer giving me a hard time?
why are there ants everywhere????

i am having a not good day! :(
i miss my gramma and her home cookin.
could it be... homesickness??
sigh.

10 reasons why lusa is having a china day.

1. EVERY single taxi on a rainy day is either occupied, stolen from me, or on the other side of the road.
2. female problems.
3. line-cutters. no one around here has heard of the concept of lines.
4. mean taxi driver responses when i ask for their unwanted fapiaos.
5. stomach aches and nausea from chinese food.
6. incessant, cold, stinky rain.
7. attempts at being scammed by "taxis" at SH railway station, followed by inability to obtain a taxi at all.
8. being over-busy.
9. really bad recurring headaches.
10. having to wake up before 7am multiple times a week.

coffee, tea or me?

nothing better than hot tea on a cold rainy day. for once, "What's that got to do with the price of tea in China?" is a valid question.

the miracle of big cheeks.

why?
cuz she's cute.

Shanghai Nightmare

so i was super-excited to attend my first haunted house in China, Shanghai Nightmare. Halloween is not the same in China. frankly people around here do not celebrate it. it is primarily an expat holiday. and I so missed halloween this year, esp pumpkin carving. so when i read about the first haunted house to come to Shanghai, i had to go! the designers of this haunted house attended a Haunted House convention in Wisconsin to learn the ins and outs of HH and how to make them scary, legitimate and similar to the ones back in the States. i have to say, the location was perfect. it was in an abandoned 3 story warehouse along the Suzhou creek in this dark part of town. it looked like Saw could have been filmed inside of it. while we were waiting in line, they showed the camera footage of people walking thru a part of the HH. it showed many people scared out of their wits as something either jumped out at them or scared them to death. we looked for it, but no one ever found that part of the HH. i was imagining something really scary. i was scared, as i always was, and was impressed with the detail they put in on decor and trinkets and paintings in the haunted house. the opening scene was the best: it was the Ring girl walking towards us down a hall with only bars separating her and us. the lights suddenly went out and next thing you know, she's right in front of us! the beginning parts of the HH was pretty scary. lots of camouflaged people popping out at us. creative use of mirrors and lasers. the familiar zigzag maze of the HH. most of the corridors were single file only, thus making scared females even more scared as they walked down it alone. there were a couple unique parts. there was a part where you had walk single file down a corridor where thick plastic enveloped and put pressure on your body. and the maze of mirrors was new to me too. there was a part where the walls spun as you walked, making you feel dizzy. then there was the part where monsters were sitting in the audience watching laser that was etched onto a wall of fog, but the writing was backwards and i did not get a chance to read it. then one jumps out at you. and the finale was great too. at the end you enter a room where there is a scary monster bartender. then there are 2 doors: one for female, one for male that you have to walk through. milan, one of my friends, looked like she was going to cry (bless her heart but it was so funny!) and did not want to walk thru the female door. she ended up going with her bf thru the male door. i sorta did not want to either, but Pi and i walked thru it anyway. it was pitch black and curved to the left. but there were no monsters in there. it led to the exit.

so in summary, it was a good first HH for china but with dave and my fetish for horror movies, we agreed we could make a much scarier HH, if we had the money to rent out a scary warehouse, hire the people and purchase the materials. how much fun that would be. here's to a spooky halloween that gave me quite a scary shangHIGH!

Feeling crabby.

so i came home tonight to find a large dark object looming on the ground in the shadows near my shoe box. i turned on the light, and there lay a large brown crab! it responded to the light and began to scamper away to the other side of the shoe box. it tucked itself away in the corner as i snapped a foto. i was freaked out b/c i am generally frightened of live animals/insects/bugs that aren't cute and furry. i figured someone's dinner escaped as i often saw live seafood being sold at the wet markets. it could only be the people on the 2nd or 3rd floors. i noticed the lady who lives on the 2nd fl was not home. in fact, the entire stairwell seemed quite dark. so i waited patiently for her to come home so i could ask whose crab it was. it is an old building and everything echoes in the corridor. i can hear people come and go. alas, she came home hours later and i opened my front door as she walked by and asked why there was a stray crab. she said it probably belonged to the 3rd fl and she will let them know when they return. we looked around the area in front of my door but there was no crab to be found! it must have found a nice dark nook to hide in and escape its culinary fate! i told her i did not want to find a dead smelly crab the next day and was quite frightened that it was lurking around. she said to keep my door closed and i will be fine.

i thought the crab was quite an ironic metaphor. lately, i've been feeling quite crabby and also moody (Cancer is my sign) . it could be b/c of women issues but probably also b/c i am taking on alot of new projects, job prospects, patients, and presentations/trainings. i am feeling a bit overwhelmed and haven't been getting regular exercise or stress relief, ie. vacations.

i am so due for a vacation. i have been trying to plan a rivertown visit but each day just seems so short and there is so much to do. i am constantly catching up!

A poem for my orphans.

yay! i got a spot to see my orphans again this weekend! they are going to get so tired of me snapping fotos of their cute little selves!! my last visit a couple weekends ago was a special one for the orphans. they got to run around outside around the complex the orphanage is in and breathe in the fresh air. they got to run amok and be children! one of the kids got lost but we found her. another one, the brightest of the bunch, finds her own way around and we weren't worried about her. i learned that there were two kids in there whose family comes to visit them weekly. not all of them are special needs kids. one child who had a flattened head was counting to 100 very proudly for all to hear. she also took a neighborhood child's water bottle and he was quite upset about it!! it was sorta funny but the neighborhood child's gramma told him, "just let her have it. she's got no daddy or mommy!!" what a guilt trip to put on a small child! during the day, they have a teacher who teaches them in a makeshift school. most of the kids look smaller than their actual age. i was sad watching the workers be quite rough with the kids. a small baby threw up and i alerted the worker. they said the child was tied down on all four limbs because he/she threw up alot. it just broke my heart. it was so hot in there and when we tried to turn on the fan, the worker said to turn it off b/c the kids get sick. it was a joy feeding the kids at dinner time. my fave part was when i would pick each of them up and then the other kids lined up and walked towards me with their arms open b/c they wanted to be picked up too! some were quite heavy too! i had enough love for each one of them. i especially adored a small child who had Cornelia de Lange syndrome--those kids are rare and adorable. another sad thing we saw was when we were coming back from outdoor play, we saw a teenager prone on the ground just outside the entrance who was then dragged in by guards and workers and taken away, probably the 2nd floor. he looked so depressed and sad. mind you, the gates are locked, and i have never seen a living soul on the 2nd floor. there is a huge padlock on the entrance gate of the 2nd fl. my theory is they lock them up there until they are adults then are entered into the military or a countryside work camp. the BEAN president said they are transferred to an adult home afterwards. i guess we shall never know. i would love to follow the children from while they are in the orphanage to after they leave to hear the real story. i have a feeling it will be a very sad story. here's a poem i wrote for my orphans.

i love you boys and girls
even if i don't know you
you touch my heart
this much is so true.
i look forward to seeing you
once every 30 days
you make my heart smile
in so many countless ways.
i hope my love means something
it is the most priceless gift i can give
may each day be wonderful
and the fullest you may live.

MIA.

i haven't updated my blog for awhile now mostly because i've been busy but partly because i've been uninspired. and also because since i've figured out how to upload pictures on facebook more efficiently, i don't feel like uploading them twice if i do it on here too.

work has been picking up, alot. i am always at least 2 reports behind, at any given time. i am now teaching Applied Psychology to a small-group of students in my home. i never knew preparing for a class takes SO much time. i will be training new volunteers for Lifeline, the only crisis hotline here in Shanghai, and i have not begun to work on that at all. i inadvertently volunteered to be part of the marketing committee for SIMHA. i have enjoyed making a few new female friends here through D2H3, the drinking/running group that i am equally enjoying. since that is my only form of exercise, i am guilty of not being more active in that. and i have enjoyed seeing my orphans for the second time and hope to be more involved in BEAN's other events. oh and my ex and i decided to give it yet another go. and a relationship alone can take up a bit of time.

about the uninspired part. i started asking people who really loved shanghai what it was about this place they loved. it all came down to their experience of it. it was exciting, new, different, changing and a melting pot of cultures and local and expat activities. it had night life, it had day life. china is going through a metamorphosis of modernization and shanghai is the epi-center. one of my friends said, "there is no place else more exciting to be right now than shanghai." but the thing that inspired this question was one i had asked myself: "why wasn't i enjoying shanghai as much as others seemed to?" is it because i don't work for a company that pays for everything, including a driver, an ayi, rent, moving expenses, furniture renovation, utilities? well that could be part of it. could it be because i just don't have the right attitude? that's likely related. so how can i change my attitude so everything's exciting, fresh and new again, just like when i first moved here? could it be because the air quality is so bad, as is the tap water, food of any ethnic origin is mediocre at best, it's overpopulated so people are rude because they're cramped and fed up, the streets and facilities are generally dirty and unsanitary? when you leave shanghai for a while on vacation or work and you see how other cleaner, more peaceful and less polluted cities filled with gracious and genuine people are, it makes it really hard to come back and not think how much shanghai sorta sucks. i had that experience with qingdao, taiwan, japan and wuhan. maybe i need a vacation. maybe i need to move. but lately, i've been having some pretty bad "China days."