Beginnings and endings

Today is the end of my life.  But also the beginning.  I feel at once as if my life has no content, but at the same time it is brim with latent happiness and friendships waiting to happen.

I've been in the Palo Alto area for a week and a half now, staying with John and Trudy (John is my mom's older brother; they live in Redwood City), and it has been great.  Let's do the bullet point thing again:

• I graduated from BYU two weeks ago yesterday.  I didn't attend the commencement in the Marriott Center, but I did attend my college convocation in the HFAC and walked across the stage to get my diploma cover!  It was a wonderful service, and seeing people I hadn't expected to see again was a nice bonus.  Grandma Ann and Wayne, my aunt Christa and some of her kids, and Paul and Rose and their kids were in town.
• The Sunday after that, Daniel gave his missionary farewell address up in our old ward in Sandy.  He did an excellent job, and it amazed me how much that neighborhood always feels like home, even after not having lived there for seven years.  It was touching how many people still remember and love my family and how pleased they were to see Daniel going on a mission.
• On Tuesday, Eve and I took Daniel to the MTC.  He was equal parts nervous and excited, and we didn't spend too long saying goodbye.  Right afterward, we snuck into the MTC by a back door and went to the copy center (where Eve works) to write Daniel letters and put them in his box.
• Immediately after that, I left for California.  It took me from 2 pm to just after 1 am, with a stop for dinner and some construction slowdowns, so just about 12 hours.  I was falling asleep near the end, but I found another car who was going pretty fast to follow so I didn't have to think as much.  (moral: try finding other people to drive with from Utah to northern Cal)
• I spent one day with Josef - he flew here when he was finished in China to visit his sister - we hiked in the Point Reyes National Seashore and drove along the coastal highway back towards San Francisco (stunning views, ridiculously windy road), and then we had dinner with Liu Laoshi, who was out here with her husband (he works in Sunnyvale), at a Thai restaurant.
• Church, FHE, and Institute were all pretty good.  There aren't many people here yet, but I knew five people at church, each in a different way and from a different phase of my life, which was pretty cool.  The church is so small sometimes.
• The weather here is perfect!  I've been out hiking, running, or to the beach nearly every day, and it is consistently incredible.
• Went to the DMV yesterday and switched my Utah license for a California one, registering to vote at the same time.  I'm officially a Californian!

That's about it.  I can move into graduate housing on campus on Monday, and orientation begins Wednesday evening.  Hopefully I'll make friends with my roommates and others quickly; it's nice living here, but still pretty lonely.  I've been keeping up with friends fairly well, but it's different when you're not in the same place.  Hence my thoughts at the beginning of the post.  Looking forward to what Monday brings!

August already

It seems that long trips are the perfect place to write blog posts; they’re where I’ve written most of mine over the last year.  In keeping with this habit, I’m sitting on a plane to Salt Lake writing this right now.

The last two weeks have been wonderful.  After I drove up to Utah from Los Angeles via Phoenix, I spent a few days there and then flew out to New York City to spend some time with Hannah and Brent and travel a bit.  Some things that happened:

•  Went to the Hill Cumorah Pageant in Palmyra with Hannah and Brent
• Biked all around New York on Brent’s bike
• Visited Jaren in DC – saw the new MLK memorial, the International Spy Museum, and the Hirschhorn and African Art and Sackler galleries
• Went with Jaren to Annapolis, saw the state house and drove over the Bay Bridge
• Drove to Boston with Hannah and Brent – walked the Freedom Trail, ate good seafood, drove out to Plymouth Rock, visited Harvard and MIT
• Spent half a day in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, could have spent three days – it was incredible
• Sat in the studio audience of the Colbert Report with Ryan Kelly; a (hilarious) highlight of the trip!
• Saw Ryan Teynor (this trip was full of Ryans) for the first time since high school – he lives with his boyfriend and has been in New York for seven years – only gay person I know fairly well
• Went to the 9/11 Memorial with Jaren and his family (they all came to town for a family trip)
• Saw Porgy and Bess with Hannah and Brent; Audra McDonald played Bess, and it was a powerful, moving show
• Went to the Clinton Street Bakery for breakfast and Chelsea Market to look around after that

It was a really nice trip; relaxing, didn’t see too much but stayed pretty busy, and I got to see people I hadn’t for a while and spend more time with Hannah and Brent.  I didn’t feel like Brent and I had much of a relationship before this, so this has been very good in that respect.  Now I’ve got a week and a half in Utah, and then I’m driving to California!  Everything’s going by so quickly…

Phoenix to Provo

I'm dead tired, but I would be remiss if I didn't write a post in gratitude for being alive after the longest solo drive I have done yet. Google maps said Phoenix to Provo would take 11 hours; I did it in 9. This was accomplished by generally going ten over and some competent passing, but I am very grateful to have been able to stay alert and aware all day. I got to spend the evening with Ben and Joel, which was nice as well.

Reboot

I will update the blog with my whereabouts for the past month soon, but for now I'm restarting my series of daily (that's the intent, anyway) posts on things in my life for which I'm grateful. Driving back to Pasadena from USC with CT this afternoon (I know, you don't know who CT is; I promise I'll update soon), I put the address in my phone and it told me to get on the freeway and take the 110 north. However, as I got on, the entrance didn't allow me to get over before the freeway split, and I was forced to take a different freeway through the heart of LA, one that takes much longer due to traffic. A few miles later, however, I saw an exit with a temporary sign marking a detour to the 110 north. We followed it, and after a few blocks we were headed back to the 110 without having lost much time. I'm grateful for thoughtful traffic engineers who take the time to map out detour routes and lay out the signage. They saved me time and preserved my peace of mind today.

You've had a birthday, shout hooray!

My birthday is this weekend!  Soon I will be a year older, and hopefully wiser too.  Here are some highlights from the last year:

• Found out that I did super well on the LSAT, paving the way for applying to law school
• Flew to Detroit to audition for membership in GCNA (guild of carillonneurs in north america); unfortunately, the jury was rigged (a touchy subject with me still, but it was a growing experience at least)
• Finished my coursework at BYU by taking spring and summer classes, among them a math class after having had no math for five years
• Packed up and said goodbye to Provo permanently, at least as a place to live
• Went home to Malaysia, spent a few fun days in Thailand with Eve, Hudson, and Annie, back to Malaysia, and then to China!
• Studied at Nanjing University for a semester with the Chinese Flagship program; had an awesome roommate from Dalian named Xin Qiang
• Went on an epic trip to Chongqing, Chengdu, Dazu, and Mt. Emei over National Week; slept in an airport, on a bus, on a monastery floor, in a hostel, and in a super-sweet hotel room (courtesy of Dad points)
• Went to Harbin over Christmas with Seth, Maryia, and Ming Wen, Seth's roommate - nearly froze to death and spent Christmas Eve sleeping on a train!
• Another incredible vacation: nearly a month for Chinese New Year spent taking Ben, Seth, Josef, Jonathan, and Lena around Bali, Malaysia, and Singapore - so many good times!
• Moved to Beijing, worked in a law firm there for just over 3 months
• Applied to law schools; visited Chicago and Stanford in whirlwind weekend trips and ultimately decided on Stanford
• Moved to Shanghai via Nanjing and Suzhou to do a short internship here before heading home

I am so blessed!  When I list everything I've been able to experience in the last year, the hard times and annoyances pale in comparison.  Here's hoping this year will bring more happy memories.

Oh, Shanghai

Tomorrow I will have been in Shanghai for two weeks.  And two weeks from today I'm flying back to the United States!  What an adventure this year in China has been.  I'm glad I will have this fairly comprehensive (if spotty in consistency) record of my time here.

New developments in work: I've been busier at DLA than I was at LexField.  Lots of documents to edit, and I got to sit in on and help translate a bit of a training we hosted for some startup companies here.  Some of their business models were interesting, but for the most part they had absolutely no idea how to explain themselves or present their pitches.  I went in and out of the meetings, but from the snippets I caught I wasn't terribly impressed.

My longish-term project I'm doing for Kaichen is an analysis of what might happen to private/foreign investments in China if the government collapses or undergoes a radical transformation in the near future, based on similar events in Indonesia and other places.  I haven't done much research on it yet, but it's looking interesting so far.

Ben, Seth, Jonathan, Chandler, Sisi Messick and I went clothes shopping on Saturday.  But not just to the store.  No, sir.  We went to the fabric market and got fitted and picked out styles and buttons and sleeves and the whole shebang!  Sisi was our fashion coach.  We each got several dress shirts, long and short-sleeved, Ben and Chandler got suits, and Seth got a cashmere coat made, all at ridiculously cheap prices!  My long-sleeved shirts were 100 kuai (just over $15) and short-sleeved were 90 kuai.  The suits and coat were 500 kuai, or $80!  I really liked the cashmere coat, but I couldn't justify buying one, since I already have a winter coat and a peacoat and a trench coat, and I certainly won't need any of them very often at Stanford.  But still.  I spent just over $100 on 6 fitted dress shirts!  On our way out, we bought ties - silk ties for 8 kuai ($1.25) each!  Crazy.  Then we went to the pearl market and Seth and I bought some shorts and Ben bought some shoes, again for ridiculously cheap prices.  I'm glad Hannah and Brent are moving here next year - if I ever need any dress clothes, I'll make sure to have them buy them in Shanghai.

The Shanghai Branch is really good to the YSAs here - every Sunday a member has the whole group over for dinner after church.  Yesterday was at Sister Wang's house.  She's Taiwanese and married to a man who's not a member of the church, and they're both super nice.  There were 7 of us who went, and she had more than enough food for everyone; really good angel hair pasta, green curry with rice, salad, fresh whole grain bread with butter...and decadent chocolate cake for dessert!  Sooooooo good!  Her husband worked for Singapore Airlines in marketing for 30 years, and now he lives here and studies Mandarin while she works in interior design.  I'm so grateful for people like that who open up their homes and make young singles feel welcome and at home.

Ben left this morning for Hong Kong; I won't see him again until I maybe see him in July in Utah, depending on how my plans work out.  Everyone is going their separate ways in the next few weeks; Seth finished his internship on Thursday, and Chandler is done and traveling around already.  Joel and Jonathan finish this week, I think.  I'm glad to be so nearly done with the two-year endurance race this Flagship program has turned out to be, but I'm also a little nostalgic for all the good times we had together and everything I experienced over this two years.  If I had to do it over again, I think I would choose to come, despite (maybe because of?) the hard times, because of the friends I've made and the things I've learned about China and about myself.

Life in Shanghai

I love Shanghai!

I'm sure there will be things I don't like about it eventually, but for now it's great.  Ben and Seth rent a room in a house in a cool section of town with little alleys and shops and tree-lined residential streets.  Quite the opposite of our apartment in Beijing, which was off a main street with lots of big buildings everywhere and a lot of traffic.  It's been cloudy/rainy since I got here, which can get depressing after a while, I guess, but I love the rain and had far too little of it in Beijing, so that's another plus!

With the air mattress I brought, more than half the floor space is taken up by beds now.  We have a small table in the corner and a closet and a TV, but the rest of the apartment is mattresses and bedding.  Still nowhere near as crowded as a Chinese dorm room, but we can pretend we're living in cramped squalor. :)

My commute to work is about 45 minutes - 6 stops on the subway and a good walk on either end.  I work in the Shanghai World Financial Center, the second-tallest building IN THE WORLD!!!  We're on the 36th floor, which is very cool, even though I don't have a window in my office.

So I'm working for DLA Piper for 3.5 weeks.  They're an international law firm and the largest firm in the world, with thousands of attorneys and over 70 offices in over 30 countries.  They mostly do corporate/transactional work.  I've been helping do a little research and some editing over the past few days, and my main project is coming up with a framework for understanding the changes that will happen to foreign-owned property and businesses if the Chinese government were to collapse or be radically altered in some way.  Kind of cool!

This is a super nice building.  The toilets are the Japanese kind with a multitude of buttons, water jets, seat warmers, etc etc.  Our one conference room has glass walls that can be turned opaque at the flip of a switch.  My computer monitor is huge, and the internet is lightning fast and has a built-in VPN, so it's basically like being back in the States (or heaven, take your pick)!

I get off at 6:30.  Commuting is pretty painless here, even at rush hour.  It can be crowded, but the escalators and everything else move pretty quickly.  Very efficient.  Ben and Seth tend to get home fairly late, Seth later than Ben, so unlike in Beijing where we would hang out with people most weeknights, here they only do things on the weekends.  That might get monotonous after a while, but since I'm only here for 3.5 weeks anyway, I don't think I'll mind.  I probably won't try to get to know the branch/YSA very well in any case.

Food is really expensive here.  Maybe about the same as Beijing, but there are way more foreign restaurants that charge exorbitant prices, so it seems more expensive.  Especially where I work - there are no cheap places to eat around here, so it's pay up or starve.