The S curve

I’m a third of the way through my time here now. I’ve passed the two month mark. In our training before I left, I was told that I should expect a bit of a U curve in terms of my happiness overseas. That means at first you’re on a bit of a high, because what you’ve been looking forward to for months is finally here. You get to do cool stuff like go to the Forbidden City and see the Great Wall. You’re meeting new friends, buying cheap alcohol and having a great time. But then it starts to settle in that you’re away from everyone you love and you start to notice the annoying things about this crazy new world—like the fact that you can never get on a subway without being pushed around, and you have no idea what is in the contents of your food. Eventually, you come full circle as you start to get used to your new life; settle in and start to explore the things you didn’t expect to enjoy before you came, like the new fruits that come into season every week and the joy of a clear sky once in a month or so.

Because my brain likes to overthink things in minute detail, I think my u bend is actually an S bend, and it started from when I found out I’d be leaving. I was on a high, excited about going somewhere new and challenging, excited about the personal and professional gains and thrilled with the victory of winning the place. But then I started to worry about every possible negative thing—the smog, the big city atmosphere, the language barrier, the lack of a support network. Then when I finally got here I realised it’s no way near as bad as I thought it would be! This place is great fun! The friends I’m making are wonderful and there are so many things I can’t get at home. Even learning Mandarin is exciting and motivating.

This is where the S bend starts. Think an S lying on its side, so it kind of looks like a u and an n joined together. When I got here I was riding up the side of the u, and I am now afraid that I’m plateauing across the top of the n. The new exciting stuff is getting boring, and I’m starting to get sick of constantly dealing with my inability to communicate with everyone. I’m really really missing everyone at home, and I constantly think about the day when I’ll get to see them again.

Or maybe this is just a volatile ride—one week you’re flying high and the next week you can’t imagine how you will possibly make it to the end. Let’s hope so, because I really don’t want to slide down the other side of the n!

Things I miss most about home

There are a whole range of things that I thought I would miss from home during my time in Beijing—I thought I would be frustrated with the bustle of big city living, and I thought I would get sick of Chinese food, I thought I’d miss the clean streets and sanitised toilets of the West. But really, none of these things have bothered me too much! Living overseas is a fantastic way to get down to the things that are important to you.

So these are the things I miss most about home:

1. (this one’s a given, but worth repeating anyway) My wonderful family and friends, the laughs we have together, sharing their lives and experiences

2. Wine.
Oh how I miss the sweet popping sound (or slightly less romantic but more pragmatic click of the screwcap) of a newly opened bottle, and the first whiff of a succulent savoury pinot noir when I swirl it in my prized Riedel glasses. I miss lounging on my couch with a good book and a glass of red after work, and I miss catching up with my girlfriends over a glass of the local riesling. And don’t even mention the prospect of wine and cheese together! My twitter feed is constantly reminding me of the degustation dinners, harvest festivals and wine tours I’m missing out on while I’m here.

3. Cooking.
No matter how hard I try, I cannot break the barrier of comfort in a Chinese supermarket, much less in a Chinese kitchen. The foods that are available are so foreign to me that even a translator would make no difference. Despite being exceptionally willing to try new things (I’m munching on a punnet of bayberries as I type this), actually cooking them is a whole new level of challenge. I feel like I’m grabbing at a cloud that keeps disappearing through my fingertips. So I miss so much the experience of cooking at home—from being able to look up new recipes on my iPhone, to being able to find the ingredients I want in a supermarket, to having an oven and sizeable kitchen in which to prepared the food, to serving up a heartfelt meal to my friends and family (cf #1).

4. Being unable to communicate.
This one at least I can do something about! My Chinese lessons are going very well and my tutor is a little scared by the ferocity of my commitment to study. But still, every now and then I wouldn’t mind going into a shop and understanding what the assistant is saying. Just once or twice …

5. The natural environment.
To be truthful, my time out bush is limited even when I’m in Australia, so this one is definitely not a constant longing. It’s more of a surprising twinge I didn’t expect. Yesterday I was walking into my apartment block when I heard what I thought was the sound of a large bird. More likely it was the sound of a bike squealing or a gate swinging shut, but for a millisecond I was transported home to being awoken by the squawk of a cockatoo (which I have always hated). This made me realise that, in fact, there are no birds in Beijing (except the ones kept as ‘pets’ in miniscule cages that resemble torture chambers), and for the last month I have been awoken by a constant drone of car horns on the busy street. 

 
I have managed to get out of the Beijing city bustle for a few short periods of time in the last month. And they have been wonderful! Luckily for me, next month I will be visiting the grasslands of Inner Mongolia. Plenty of natural environment for me there :)

6. (and this is a very distant fifth place) Work.
Not enough to want to go back to it, but just a teensy little bit.

Well, that's hardly anything to complain about, is it?

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.