Life in Chengdu has become pretty stagnant, and I know in a previous post not long ago I said that Chengdu has become my home away from home, it still is! I should probably take back what I've just said and instead say; work in Chengdu has become very stagnant, it feels like recently it's all I've ever do! But home can still become boring and I feel it's time to pack my bags, get out there and do some much needed travelling. There's only so much work, bingeing TV boxsets (even though I absolutely love 'The Wire' at the moment), getting squashed on buses and the metro, that one can handle. My life has become a mirror image of the Fat Boy Slim song 'Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat', except with the 'Rave' part replaced with 'Work'!
Even learning new Chinese words and phrases has become boring, it's become boring now to insult my students by calling them a fat pig (你是胖猪 nǐ shì pàng zhū - if anyone is interested)!
I fully realised that I needed to get away from work when, at 10am last Sunday, I'd just finished my first tutoring class of the long day ahead and I leaned back and sighed "Fuck my life". Little did I realise that my student was still in my classroom at the time I uttered this, and he repeated back to me, word for word.... "Fuck my life"!
I looked helplessly at my friend in the next classroom, we both looked the same (bags under our eyes, fatigued and over-worked) and wrote on a piece of paper 'Holiday, now?' He just nodded in agreement, and it was as if the despair of work had lifted from our heavy shoulders!
I shall see you in 4 days, Singapore (and then Malaysia)!