segunda-feira, 4 de abril de 2011

An apology

 It's been more than one month ever since my last post.
 I am very sorry.
 Originaly, I had planned to write about my stay in Japan while I was there, as in, a live blog. But the thing about Japan is that, because my stay in each city was relatively short, I had to make up for it by getting up early, and going to bed late so I could see and experience as much in the city as I could (the same applies to Korea). Which left me either to busy or too tired to do a proper blog post (those familiar with my nature know that without a decent night's sleep I'm quite useless, and clumsier than usual). So I just told myself that I would see to it as soon as I got back in Beijing. As we say in Portugal: "Leave not for today what you can do tomorrow".
 So when I got back here, I still had a whole week before the new semester would start again. But then after two whole weeks running from place to place, I was content to let my lazy ass rest on my chair and just take it easy for a while. And go out at night. And get up late. And go out at night again. Or watch a whole season of Showtime "Weeds" in one day. You get the picture. Then the new semester started. And so did homework, and lessons to catch up. No biggie, I thought. I can manage. And then I got a part-time job as an english teacher. The rest is history: every time I'd think about updating the blog, I would either remeber that I should be reviewing for the Zonghe lesson, or I'd waste time surfing the net, talking on facebook, and finding out how Nancy Botwin would talk her way out of being shot dead because she screwed up her drug-dealling again. And so time passed, with my blog simply lying here without any updates.
Until this special weekend in China, in which we had classes on Saturday(these barbarians!), but were free on Monday and Tuesday. The portuguese crew decided to take advantage of it and spend two days in the city of Datong, where we watched the Yungang Grottoes, mountain side caves with 51,000 Buddhist statues carved inside them (we didn't watch ALL of the Buhdas) and the Hanging Monastery (more on that on a future post. yeah, I know you heard that one before). Then on the way back to Beijing something funny happened: apparently our bus driver took a wrong turn, and instead of the normal highway we ended up on a highway meant only for trucks. Did you know that there are highways for trucks only? And that the one to Beijing can have a line 100 killometers long? I didn't, neither did my tuga friends, so we were quite surprised when became completely surrounded by trucks, miles and miles of them, and even more so when all of them stopped, leaving us stuck on a stuffy bus after dark. Aparently there are only so many trucks that are allowed into Beijing in the course of one night. The people in charge of the bus seemed to find it quite funny, as they explained us the situation (I use the term "explain" loosely). As the queen would put it, we were not amused. Eventually, the bus driver called the police to help us out. He seemed to be really worried about being at the airport on time (don't ask). Twenty minutes later a police car showed up and helped us get out of the "Truckway" by making the vehicles in front of us move along. However, we had go back a while before finally being on the right road to Beijing, which wasted even more of our time before arriving there. In the end, instead of the of arriving at 6 o'clock, we arrived at 10:30. Tired and hungry. Oh well. 5个小时在路上,10个小时在路上,都不是差不多吗?
 What does all of this have to do with my blog? Well, as we were stuck in the bus for hours without anything to do but talk, my colleague Zé, who travelled with me to Tokyo in February, brought the topic of my blog into the conversion. While Ponta backed him up (paraphrasing):
 (Tranlated from portuguese.Duh) Zé: "Hey Diogo, weren't you going to write this really neat blog? Cuz it's been more than 1 month and we haven't seen anything."
Me:"I've..I've... I've been busy"
Ponta:"Ohhhhhhhh - So busy. He's such a busy man".
Zé."Soooooooooooo busy..."
Me:"HEY! I could make a post TODAY if I felt like it!"
Zé:"Hey, you don't have to be so upset, we're just talking to you. If want to be agressive with someone, be with Telmo.
Ponta: "Yeah, Telmo's nobody's friend."
Telmo:"................"
Ze:"But seriously, do you really think you're still going to update anything today?"
Me:"I'll do it JUST BECAUSE you said I wouldn't do it. JUST BECAUSE."
And I later said something unflattering about his mother, but that's off-topic.
 Anyway, here it is. My third blog post. Bet you were thinking that it would never come. Well, since I'm quitting my job next week, and so I'll have more free time, expect new posts soon. I'm tired, now. 10 hours on a bus will do that to you.
Take care, mes amies. 回头再说啊!