Hiatus

Nope, not Haiti, hiatus.

I have not written here for some time due partly to a lazy demeanor regarding this blog, a trip to the US, and a return to China that has seen some seven day work weeks with hours that are reminiscent of college finals library hours. Could I have faithfully updated? Absolutely. Did I really want to? Not a bit, though I thank the small handful of followers that comprise the people I should actually be calling on a consistent basis, throwing my recent life onto the internet has not been high on my list of things to do.

I can most certainly say this about China, and our time here. The honeymoon's over. The savings are dry, and the horizon is exactly that... a horizon.

I'm not sure what I've written previously, but the education enterprise we set up was a statistical failure despite some promising student numbers and reviews. True Wind, our consulting firm, has been absorbed into a larger company that deals with management and strategy consulting, and my freelance design has netted one logo for an aspiring author and board member here in China.

I am now living in my third apartment with two chinese roommates, and very well may be moving again this week since our landlord has decided to sell our unit and relocate us to another, albeit nicer, apartment.

We've had birthdays come and go, weddings fly by, and several fellow expats have left china for humbler, better things (they came here for the bigger and better).

As a group/company/team whatever you want to call us, we are sitting on several potentially large projects. I may have mentioned bits and pieces back home, but our strict NDA's disallow me from saying much else. What I can say is that we are going to get taken for a bit of a ride on the fee side of things. And we are working to make sure that this will benefit in the long term. I may seem ok with this only because fees here are really villainized, and contracts with chinese partners are only worth the paper their written on and may be abandoned at any time really. It is therefore our aim to settle for the small but manageable fee, and maintain an amicable relationship with both sides, while securing very realistic future work.

If it all sounds a bit vague, that's because it is, welcome to China.

On a side note, most of us here are excited the World Cup is over and that we can return to our normal sleep schedules. on a sider note, I was recruited to join a rag-tag group of soccer misfits for a 6 a side tournament on Sunday, against 8 other teams from the city. None of us are sure how we pulled it off, but 8 games later, we emerged victorious, undefeated, and winning the championship with a penalty kick struck by yours truly. rock and roll and sore muscles everywhere.