metal rods

As I was going to work yesterday I saw a large crowd of people surrounding an accident. I knew someone had died because of the size of the crowd. I normally just walk by, because I'm not a fan of dead bodies, but since I was up high in my double-decker bus I got the full view.

A guy on a scooter had run into a strip of metal hanging off a three wheel crate in front of him. He had fallen to the side of the road, his arms clenched against his stomach, and his face permanently frozen in an expression of someone who had just been hit fatally in the stomach. His eyes were clenched tightly and his face withered in pain. There was a chalk outline around his body. There was no ambulance and nobody felt the need to cover his corpse. I felt a bit sick for the rest of the day.

Thinking back, I'm not sure how the chalk outline got there. I remember seeing only one police officer in the crowd of about 200 Chinese. Unless pre-determination was trying to prove itself as obviously as possible.

So that's China. How many of you saw a dead guy on the way to work yesterday?

Speaking of work, I have a new job. In an office. I'm still teaching in the evenings, because it makes a lot of money but for some reason I decided to join the working world again. Goodbye to my 10-hour weeks. I don't really remember applying for the job or going in for an interview, but somehow at rush hour this morning I found myself pushing through a billion Shanghainese on the way to work.

I'm already sick of being back in an office. The lighting, the inspirational crap on the walls, the bad gossip - it's all out of a terrible nightmare. The MSG has gone too far.

So anyway, I'd normally drop names but I've heard of a lot of people getting fired for blogging about their work, so I won't. Though I have no problem with being fired, I feel I shouldn't push it, and apparently my blog is no longer blocked in China. But anyway, I'm doing research for an international company. And I'm the supervisor. I don't know how that happened, but somehow I'm supervising a Japanese, a Korean, and a Chinese in completing our research project in the next two months.

God I hate offices. Since I'm supervisor I'm already changing my hours to 4 days a week starting late and leaving early. It's a bullshit project, I'm already half way done and I've only done six hours of work. I've found that with most office environments. The 40-hour workweek is all pomp and circumstance.

So anyway, I'm in the grind. It's exhausting because I do nothing. It's interfering with my 'stare at the wall' time and 'lay in bed' time. I may not last the week.