One month down, five to go

Ok I'll admit it. I actually miss my Australian life. Not just my family and friends, or the familiarity of the food and the fact I can speak the local language ... I'm actually missing my routine.

My working hours in Beijing are 10am-4pm, at least three days per week. I have to be at work on Wednesdays, because Wednesday is the mandated day for everyone to be at work, otherwise nobody gets the job done. Other days I can 'work from home' if I wish, and that's certainly the approach everyone in the office takes. Oh, did I mention this is actually a full time job?

For anyone who comes from an Australian, UK or US background, these kinds of hours are the stuff dreams are made of. And the lack of productivity doesn't really seem to make sense, because at home the Chinese people I know work much harder than the majority of people born and raised in Australia. Like the old guy at the local Chinese restaurant who just keeps going and going even though he’s starting to look like those shrivelled mushrooms he serves up in your plate. Or the young eager Chinese kid in the office who just never bloody goes home even when you tell him three times that report doesn’t need to be finished today.

So it seems like kind of a paradox to me that I’d come here and find that the working hours are less than half of what I was doing in Australia before I left. At first, I was gleefully boasting that my time here is turning out to be more like a holiday than a work assignment. Everyone at home was jealous that I can sleep in as long as I like. I was making plans for all the things I could do with my newly flexible lifestyle—visits to Shanghai over the weekend, surprising my colleagues with a rapidly improving Mandarin-speaking skillset, hiking in the nearby mountains, steadily improving my fitness so I can compete in a half-marathon, embarking on my long-suppressed dream of studying oenology (each ambition a little less realistic than the last ...).

All those plans were put on hold towards the end of last week, when I contracted the dreaded Beijing lurgy, and it sure as hell won't budge despite my doing everything possible to convince my body to get better. This morning I woke up again feeling like someone had punched my sinuses in, filled my nostrils with lava and crammed my head full of cotton wool. So I dutifully got out my iPhone, logged into my mail and went to write my boss an email to say I wouldn't be in today. Then I realised that my boss wouldn't be at work, and would never even know I wasn't in. The worst thing is, there would be no rush tomorrow to catch up on everything that happened yesterday, because, if I'm honest with myself, I actually have no purpose in this organisation.

I caught myself in the middle of a very unfamiliar feeling: I actually miss work. I miss being busy, stressed out, tired and feeling unable to finish everything I need to do. I miss having a purpose. For the first time in my adult life it doesn't really matter to anyone whether I get out of bed or not. I miss being useful!

Surely this strange sensation won't last too long. Tomorrow, after I've had my 10 hours' sleep and rolled up to work at 10am, pockets filled with freshly steamed baozi (dumplings), everything will be back to normal and this odd desire to be back in the rat race will have gone as quickly as it came.