my how time flies

It has been over a month since my last post..my how time flies. Unfortunately work is still kickin my ass but I have been able to get out the last two weekends and feel like Im starting to feel more at home here in Shanghai. My vocabulary is still terrible but I have learned to make due. I have completely mastered the transit system which feels like enough of an accomplishment. I have waaaaay too many photos to post as I normally do here so instead I will include a link to my picasa album. The photos are the majority I have taken thus far.

life and times of futch

The album consists of random team photos, my adventures at the Yu Garden, a few karaoke (the majority are too embarrasing to see any space online), People's Square, and the Bund at night.

I have been in Shanghai now for almost two months. The beauty of this means that I only have a month and a half to go. This is not my desire to leave Asia as much as my need to move on to something new. My first post mentioned all the travel I had planned. This has not gone to the wayside. On Thursday, I will travel to Tokyo to visit Yusuke's millions of relatives. I am spending Thurs through Tues there and staying with an old friend that recently took a job there. I have no itinerary as of yet, but it sounds like I may have timed the cherry blossom season perfectly and I may head to Kyoto to see what all the fuss is about. A trip to Mt. Fuji may also be in order although it apparently is still too snowy to climb.

I also plan to travel to Thailand at the end of April before heading back stateside. And Im going to try and sneak out for a weekend to Beijing. (We will see how deep I am in it at that point.)

After this Tuesday, work is all downhill and so this is basically the home stretch. It is funny that I am looking forward to a sprint finish in which the prize is having no job with very few prospects. But such is life (as in "the life and times of futch"...get it?)

Speaking of which, I heard back from the Kellogg School of Management (aka Northwestern). They were very impressed with my application, so impressed that they decided to keep me on their waiting list so as to compare all additional applications against. This thus leaves me waiting until mid-june to hear if I have a spot. Additionally, if I were to get in, my financial assitance is hardly a sure thing. Its a strange feeling knowing that I would make a perfect fit in their school and yet having no specific way to tell them without a video following me around for the last 9 years. (Here comes the introspective tangent...)

Not being able to speak the local language has given me a ton of time to reminice on my life since graduating and leaving the shelter of the sparkling North Shore of Chicago. In this time, I have lived my life 4-6 months at a time. School entailed 4 months per semester with a smattering of breaks or work sprinkled liberally throughout. After school, I packed up my life and moved to mysterious Connecticut. (How was I to know that CT and Deerfield would be so similar? Banana Republic being the uniform of choice with sponsorship provided by Lexus and its fine Japanese automobiles.) Since Jan 2005, I have lived out of an oversized suitcase. (The suitcase has seen better days.) Connecticut to San Diego, San Diego to Chicago, Chicago to Cincinnati, Cincinnati to Houston, Houston back to CT, CT back to Southern Cali, and then finally some Asian culture. Hard to believe it has been over 4 years. During this time, friends have married, purchased homes, settled down, moved on with their lives. The most unfortunate part of being a well-paid transient is my life in now filled with acquantences...people I see in passing with a friendly smile and a warm hug, the promise to avoid the inevitable and not lose touch so quickly. Each time I travel to Chicago, it feels less like home and more like a stranger. (Kinda like reconnecting with a friend you havent seen since childhood and realizing that what you used to share in common (forts, kick the can, and thundercats) have not been relevent for a decade and you have nothing to talk about.) Does English allow parentheses inside of parentheses? I have been using excel too long. But I digress. In the 4+ years, I lost a grandfather I hadnt seen in years and a grandmother who was my personal hero. During this time, the Futch family emigration to the valley of the sun was completed, sans yours truly. The Bears made a super bowl, the Cubs missed a world series by 6 outs and a booted sure-thing double play ball (thats Gonzalez, not Bartman), Indiana hoops went from the top of the big ten to the cellar because of a few phone calls, and the Bulls remain mediocre at best (sorry Yusuke). All of these events occured with or without me, everything I have experienced in passing, like some ethereal ghost that appears once a month to the suprise of those in the vicinity at the time. The long and short of it is that at 27, I am ready to start living my life.

So in May, I hit the reset button with a world of work and life experience. Who knows where it will take me but things have an amazing way of working themselves out if you put yourself out there. An extremely wise team mate of mine put it this way..."Life should be like a table. If you build your life on top of one leg, you will have no balance and, if that leg should break, your life will fall to the floor. If however, you build your life with the support of many legs, your life will never fall apart should one of those legs break." I clearly need more legs to support my life. As such, this summer I plan to rebuild those legs. Reconnect with friends and family. Let them know I am still alive and more than a smile and a hug.

Only until Mid-may and the rebuilding begins. 49 days from now. My how time flies.