What’s Stress Got To Do With It?
It’s been a great few days of celebrating here. A satisfying performance by the Bears, followed by four passing mid-term exam scores meant that this has to go down as a good week, regardless of what else happens, short of hospitalization or arrest.
It’s just now hit me that celebration must be short-lived and it’s back to the books once again. The pace hasn’t slowed much and, just to keep things interesting, our new books have no pinyin, or English spelling of words. That’s a bit of a pain, but the worst part is the secondary effect. Pinyin forced the printer to spread out the Chinese characters into identifiable words and phrases. Now the characters are non-stop, with no spacing other than commas. Since many characters are used in multiple words, I’ll need to refill my aspirin supply shortly.
I was a little disappointed to be the only customer at a sports pub for the Chicago game. After a while, I started to feel like I was at home, with nobody watching. I came just short of taking off my pants and putting my feet on the bar before a second patron showed. As it turns out, he wasn’t a fellow Bears man, but the off-duty, head chef, Andrew.
Andrew is an Australian who has moved around Asia for many years had just returned to Beijing after a spell working on a Mongolian oil rig in the Gobi desert. Over the next two hours, he took dozens of text messages from various women and tried to manage his schedule. Rough life! In between texts, he provided a constant stream of predictions; pass, screen, draw, score in two plays, score in three plays. Other than his failure to predict a turnover, he was wrong once. I only half-jokingly offered to pay his way to Vegas.
Guinness, Jameson’s and an omelet. Don’t knock it until you try it. Of course there are very few places to do this. It’s not really a weekend kind of fare to try at home. The ambiance is critical, requiring a pool table and multiple televisions showing sports. You’ll just have to find that rare pub and settle in. Keep in mind that the satisfaction level will be much higher if you’ve blown off class or work and that the rest of the day will be a waste.
In another fortunate bit of timing, the next day’s lesson revolved around sports competitions and such. I had previewed the text earlier that morning and, when called on, was able to say that I had gone to Chaoyang the previous day, drank beer and watched an American football game, which my team had won. Kind of a frivolous reason to miss class, but my scores gave me a little leeway. (Lesson contents continue to be timely; after a rough night following a Mexican dinner, we learned about medical problems, especially intestinal ailments. I wasn’t so quick to share my experiences with the class that day.)
When I had gotten to class, several of my classmates told me that my scores were good, but that they couldn’t remember them exactly. I thought that this was strange until I talked to laoshi at the break. He had just one book with everyone’s results and had showed it to the entire class. Everyone knew how everyone else had scored. Privacy just doesn’t have the same priority here. It’s rare and elusive, so it’s come to be unexpected.
Far from being an A student, I was still ecstatic. My comprehensive, grammar and oral exams had averaged 76 out of 100. I would normally be despondent with those kinds of results, but they are apparently very acceptable in this program, especially in the early terms. Only a few of the Asian students were far ahead, a combination of limited previous exposure to Chinese and mind-boggling study habits.
My listening exam brought down the average a bit with a score of 66, but it was a passing score. That was simply amazing to me, as I apparently go brain-dead when spoken to in Mandarin. I often wonder if I get the glazed-eye look of a zombie to match the feeling when this happens. Again, I found that this score was nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a bit of a mind game. I spend half of my time feeling like a complete idiot and then find out that this is completely normal. I still feel very “special” the next week, though.
Overall, the exam week was a little rough. Everyone was under a lot of pressure. A friend of the same age and I realized that in our cases, this was ridiculous. Unlike our classmates, we wouldn’t lose a scholarship or be forced home by our parents. For us, it was purely ego. Somehow, this realization did not reduce stress for either of us. My self-prescribed stress relief would turn out to be self-defeating as well.
After day one, I headed out for a massage. They’re available in almost every neighborhood and will generally cost from US$6-12 for an hour. It felt great to get the knots worked out and I headed home to hit the books in preparation for day two. That night, I could barely sleep. Every muscle in my body ached. I knew that I had been worked over pretty good, but this was ridiculous.
After the second day’s exam, I was still pretty sore. I have the strangest ability to occasionally dispense with all rational thought. “I feel like I got ran over by a truck; I need a massage!” I was convinced that the right massage would cure what ailed me. Hobbling home, I couldn’t believe that I had the rotten luck of selecting another bad masseuse. Another sleepless night and another exam.
If insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results, lock me up. Third day of exams, third massage. Suffice it to say that my weekend was spent recovering in my room. I think I’ll stick to beer for relaxation. If anything, I sleep better and, if I feel bad the next day, at least I know that more beer will fix it.
This weekend will be a trial of endurance, patience and wits. Possessing only the first, I’m not looking forward to it. It’s a time I hated in the states, and at least I knew what to expect. It’s time to go apartment hunting.
I always knew that life in a dorm, no matter how nice a place it might be, would be a challenge. Awaking to the sounds of drunken teenagers roughhousing in the hall at 4am was the final straw. Long gone are the days when I would have joined them. Now I’m the old fart who wants to call the police, but can’t. I hate them for making me come to this realization as much as I do for the disturbances themselves.
First, I’ll need to find a rental agent that both speaks English and appears relatively honest. Since all rental disputes are determined by the Chinese version of the contract and the English version often does not match, I’m forced to enlist one of my Chinese friends to assist me. This will provide me with a way to check up on both the landlord and the rental agent. All of this before I even look for a place. I have a feeling that Saturday night will involve more than two beers.
