would you LOOK at that...

...the fund transfer went through already. for the uninitiated, still so much takes place in china in the form of cash, meaning that i'll be needing to hand over a friggin brick of bills to the landlord when i get the keys. again, i'll qualify that statement by saying, provided i don't get swindled. i'm excited but still halfway expecting that he's going to give the apartment to someone else despite signed contract in hand because they agreed to pay 150% of what i agreed on. in fact, let's just assume that's going to happen so i'll be pleasantly surprised if it doesn't.

now i only need to make about 8 trips to the atm over 8 days to get the money out. annoying.

back to work for the first time in nearly 2 weeks. i brought in the chocolate and yes, they were gone so quickly that i didn't have the chance to try one. a-ok, actually. ayi also came 'round with cut-up pieces of moon cake for us to have, which was nice. i wonder who thinks up all of these niceties for the office. the medicines in the cupboard, the cracker cabinet, the cut-up fruit in the afternoons. the pitcher she empties milk into (and constant refills because we're like fucking calves in a meadow we drink so much milk) for coffee.

i wrote my cousin an email about italy because she told me before i left, "I think it's so cool that you get to travel for the job. So you don't get to eat pasta or shop at Prada, you are in Milan. I love Italians!!! ... maybe you will have a hot weekend love affair with a HOT Italian stallion." lmao. what? if i had a dollar for every person that brought up an italian stallion when i told them i was going to italy, i'd have... maybe 4 bucks. still funny. i had to let her know that after my first 2 days in italy, i was really not loving the native peoples. after moving to a nicer hotel and finishing the gift show it was a lot better, but really. i mean, i wasn't expecting people to fall over themselves to serve me, but i certainly wasn't expecting china, italian-style. i actually get fewer looks here in china, which is saying something because my people fuggin love to stare. and they can smell a foreigner a mile away. and vice versa. (drum roll.)

not too much interesting to say today because i'm purposely avoiding talking about work. work is work, and i've lived through office politics for a long fucking time so i know how to navigate, more or less. but that doesn't neutralize the.... the only word i can think to use at this point is, fatigue. i'm fucking tired of it. it wore me out at w-s and i don't want it to make me start hating my job here. after a while it all smushes together and i can't differentiate between people who bother me and those who don't, and the only thing i think about in the morning on my way in to work is that i'd rather be doing anything else than going in. i don't want to be there again.

anyways.

my sister sent my this from her phone - scarlett sleeping on the leg of my parent's rottweiler-mix, lola. scarlett, whom my sister frequently refers to as 'fucking whore' or 'goddamn bitch,' apparently attacked lola's leg after the photo was taken in true scarlett style. i never made claims that she was nice.... and my sister isn't really one with cats. no one in my family took to scarlett after i abandoned her at my mom's house. she's combative and mean and kicks everyone's ass, which, i admit, is hard to love. i like a little personality, myself, over crappy obedient-but-dumb animals, but sometimes you have to kick her ass in order to avoid killing her. she's a fucking pain. i know it. my dad's first question when i told him about the apartment was, 'do they allow cats?'