Of Lethargy and Inertia

Weariness can snore upon the flint, when resty sloth finds the down pillow hard.

William Shakespeare - Cymbeline

About a week and a half ago Chun and I parted ways, as the academic year at Zhengzhi kicked off last week, and I myself moved to the Qinghua campus last Wednesday. Thus, my first Chun-less Taiwan experience materialized, a strange feeling I must say, after terrorizing Taiwanese society together for so long. After leaving our White Mage behind in Holland, this finally marked the demise, albeit a temporary one, of our fellowship. I wish my cohorts godspeed, and the best of luck in all their endeavours.

A new alliance was quickly wrought out of the ashes of days long gone however, as fate has stuck Rens and myself together for the coming year or so. Although I didn't really know much about the good lad prior to our departure, we get along surprisingly well, that is to say I haven't had the urge to brutally slaughter him yet. Yet. However, fate has not been so generous in other areas. As you may recall from an earlier entry, a week before we left for Taiwan, we were informed that it was still uncertain whether or not we would receive a scholarship from Qinghua; this is due to the fact that the contract between Leiden University and Qinghua had expired back in February and to this day hasn't been renewed. Yes, that's right, the contract had expired 7 months ago and apparently none of the legendarily thick dick wads at the International Office or at the Sinology Department (I'm still not sure who's responsible for the communication with universities abroad) had noticed this minor glitch; in fact, if our liaison at Qinghua hadn't informed us about it, we probably would have learned about this issue only a week ago. Apparantly, Qinghua's accountant is drafting a new contract, because they weren't satisfied with the last one. Here's a tip, my friends, free of charge. READ. THE. FUCKING. CONTRACT. BEFORE. YOU. SIGN. IT. ASSHOLES. Anyway, we'll at least have to wait until October to see where this goes. For now, Rens and I have been looking for a job to sustain ourselves; my cohort might have hit the jackpot with a job as an English teacher, which he'll know for sure tomorrow. I have not been quite so lucky yet, and might have to consider stooping to new lows in order to secure an income. Chills run down my spine at the mere thought of such conduct...

Apart from this problem, other issues have caused turmoil in my mind like the presence of a black man would in rural Alabama. For instance, a few weeks ago our contact person in Leiden, one of our teachers, informed us that Qinghua did not offer a course that would suit our current level of Chinese, and encouraged us to "look around and see what other courses they have on offer". Although a year long stay will undoubtedly benefit our Chinese, this is completely beside the point of sending your students abroad for the sole purpose of language acquisition. At least make sure the university in question offers courses which carry some fucking relevance for your students. We eventually did find an advanced course offered by another department, so we'll see how that works for us next week when our classes start.

Generally speaking, dealing with administrative matters is not one of the merits of this university. When we arrived for instance, they hadn't arranged for our student ID and internet access; the former meant we have no access to other university facilities. Luckily, we can now at least enter the library, hence my current entry. We are currently still waiting for these quite basic matters to be arranged, and like everything here, you end up having to wait until half past the future for some goddamn results. I trust you get the general idea.

You may find these last few paragraphs to be a bitter monologue of frustration and spite, but the fact of the matter is this, my dear readers. From the moment we arrived here, we've been entangled in a bureaucratic web of indolence and sloth. The wheels of bureaucracy move agonizingly slow, sometimes even grinding to a sickening halt, and when you've laboriously made it from point A to point B, you discover that you still have a Mount Everest to climb and you're stuck at fucking base camp. The most frustrating part in my opinion is, that a lot of these issues could have been avoided through better communication between both universities, but bureaucracy and plain indifference got in the way, and that's kind of difficult to deal with when your own ass is on the line. The last few days have truly been a mind numbing exercise in anger management for me; at least I have the peace of mind and the maturity not to let the frustration get the better of me, to be able to keep my shit together and take one day at a time. And despite all of this bullshit, I'm still enjoying myself here. I just have to settle down into the low expectation tempo of campus life, and that will happen soon enough. Rens and I have agreed to grasp every bit of progress we make and celebrate it as all the races of Middle-Earth celebrated their freedom from the clutches of Sauron. So there you have it, I'm allowed to enter the fucking library now. Fuck yeah. Oh, and today I had lunch with Justin, our Korean alcohol powered friend from last year, and we discussed a possible trip to Korea this winter. More on that in future entries, or at least when something resembling a plan has crystallized.

Anyway, I do apologize for this rant and the lack of visual entertainment; next time, a more light hearted entry with lots of eye candy, of course.