Time to think

After a frantic last week in Nanjing where I slept 4 hours a day because I simply didn't have time, I got on the train with my worldly possessions and headed to Qingdao for internship training. Or so I thought....Our days are tightly scheduled, with 3 hour lectures in the morning and 3 hour Peking opera classes in the afternoon. We are putting on a Peking opera show on Sunday...and the justification for this being part of workplace training is "playing and negotiating with roles embedded with assumptions and expectations independent from the actor's preference". Right... I am learning a song and dance but do not see how that'll help me be a better intern. There are other pointless events in disguise. The first night we had a dinner to learn Chinese dinner etiquette and of course, all the non-Mormon guys left drunk. Mark was especially terrible. I got picked up and carried by each of the ASU guys (obviously minus Aaron) at different points during the night, so it was test of patience...

It'd be nice if we had more free time, since the lectures scheduled haven't been very helpful and the opera classes are really pointless. But this is just one more thing on a long, long list of things that flagship has failed to deliver. At least the hotel is really nice and is part of the same building as the flagship office. And there is central heating which is amazing. It's also nice to not have real homework and just be able to sit, watch a movie, read some news, think....

I stayed in the hotel tonight and watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Really enjoyed the story and the actors' performances. I like the idea that you can attracted to someone for some reason and always will be (that doesn't mean I believe in "the one", just that a certain combination of qualities will always make a person attractive). It also makes me recall the events in my life that were once painful but have slowly faded into vague memories that I occasionally still dream about. It also makes me think about the Clementinesque guys I've dated or have been attracted to. But opposites don't always work.