Shanghai Diary: One Month In

I got to Shanghai one month ago today.

If this hasn't come through before let me just state it outright: if I could stay here in Shanghai longer than my three month tour, I would in a heartbeat. I'm kind of hoping that I can go home for Christmas and then come back in early 2018. I am absolutely loving this city and being here.

There have been some struggles to get by but they've been minor and each time I get jump over one of those hurdles, I feel a huge sense of accomplishment. Now that I've got my mobile, bank card, and scooter, I feel like there's nothing I can't do. Of course, some of the language stuff -- especially reading characters -- still flummox me but, again, those are things to be overcome. Every day I learn a little more Mandarin and eventually I plan on trying to learn how to read some of it. I can barely write (my handwriting is atrocious) so I doubt I'll go into that area but if I could figure out a few characters, I might get by a bit better.

I'm already dreading the idea of selling my scooter and not having that daily challenge of trying to get around just on my incredible good looks.

Of course, (I miss the earth so much) I miss my wife (it's lonely out in space), I miss Avery, and I miss the animals. But, I'm just so excited to be here.

When it comes to the podcast, I feel like I've not been able to dedicate enough time to some of the shows that I've got scheduled and I'm thinking I may have to put the show on hold and move out some of the scheduled episodes a bit. This 12/13 hour time difference with the East Coast (15/16 with the West) is kicking my butt a bit. Where I've got interviews recorded, it's not been an issue but setting up times to interview and record have been a real challenge.

I think, too, that I need to be more protective of my time. Last Monday I got to work at 8AM and left at 6PM for trivia and then was back on the phone for meetings by 9:30 PM and would have gone to midnight had I had a call-in number for the 11PM meeting. Things are only going to get worse when the US "falls back" due to Daylight Saving and China stays the time. That'll increase the time difference to 13 hours with back home.

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The more I'm here, the more of the jokes in this makes sense to me. And that's kind of scary.