Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Life In Fast Forward 1.0

Location: Simsbury Connecticut
Time: 12:06 PM
Status: Prepared
Resources/money: adequate
Morale: High
Hunger Status: "full"

Life seems to be racing ahead at a pace impossible to follow and yet I find myself not where I planned to be. Regarding my trip to China the situation is out of my control. Currently I need my visa. To obtain my visa I need three documents issued by the Chinese Labor Bureau. Those documents are a Permit For a Foreign Expert to Work in China, an official invitation to come work in the country and a document confirming that I have no dependents coming with me. These documents are currently being processed in Inner Mongolia, China. They were supposed to be completed by August first, allowing for a four day mail time to me. As it stands, the school doesn't know anymore when those documents might be completed and they are requesting me to postpone my flight and simply wait until my documents are completed. They are not willing to cover the expenses of a postponed flight which according to the airline, will run into the 2k+.

Ideally, within the next twenty-four hours my documents will be processed and picked up by someone from the school I'm teaching at. They can scan the documents and email them to me. If they can do that by Friday morning my time I can take a bus down to NYC and get my visa processed that day and depart on Monday as originally planned. (probability = minimal)

Not ideal but more probable is that I'll need to cancel my flight. If I cancel it soon, they'll give me 70% of what I paid towards credit for a new flight so long as I'm willing to abide by about ten million pages of fine print regarding it's use. This will mean simply waiting around until my school lets me know that my documents are ready. At which time I'll buy a new ticket for about 1,000 dollars. And leave at an as yet unknown future date but hopefully before the beginning of September. (probability = probable) :)

A few bits of perspective which are helping me keep morale high are; first, the worst case scenario is really not that bad. Second, I should be able to get a substantial amount of credit towards a new plane ticket from my old plane ticket if I do have to cancel it. Third, I've been super popular the past three weeks and the flood of positive emails, messages, conversations and energy people are sending my way is making it difficult to stay long in a negative frame of mind. Fourth, I bought my first camera which is lots of fun to play with.
Fifth I compiled the playlist of music people have sent me and excluding random band and album suggestions I've had over 80 individual songs recommended to me by 66 individuals. Sixth, I learned how to meditate this way.

Further updates soon to come. Thanks for reading.



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