beautiful girl

A new change that I’m adjusting to here in China is that people tell me I’m beautiful and I seem to be rewarded for being considered attractive. (Today my Chinese boss got me earrings and when I said thanks she said `I like beautiful girls’. Last week she refused to employ two new teachers because they were gay. It’s unfair that I should get a gift for being a pretty girl and they should be refused employment because they’re gay.)
This is strange given that I’ve been in an academic environment for the last few years (also in England rather than China). It’s not that I wasn’t aware that people thought I was good looking but I was almost never told this. Even amongst the few females I would rarely be complimented on the way I dressed and looked. Now, it’s a daily event. Also now that I don’t move in academic circles, men have no problem telling me I look nice or making some comment on my external appearance. And people in general are very happy to talk about looks.

Different culture, different rules? Or perhaps this isn’t particularly culture specific. Perhaps it’s simply the moving away from academia. Further investigation is required.

china adventures.

I now have access to my wordpress admin pages which I didn’t have for a little bit while I was getting adjusted to the China internet realities. I downloaded a vpn which although means you get adds in your browser, still I think it is more straightforward than using proxies all the time and proxies are more of a pain. (I mean it’s easier if a vpn does it for you.) Now, I browse anonymously and should be able to access everything I want.
Of course and this is the irritating part about it all, there are always ways around censorship so why not make things easier just allow people to just be? Same for drugs, prostitution et cetera. It would be simpler and better to allow rather than go into so much trouble telling people what to do and think. tsk tsk.

what I am will do

I was invited to do one of those stupid Facebook Likeness test where you put a list of items in an order of priority and get compared to your FB friends.
This one was about things you’d want more of first. Should be straightforward. The standard items are there, the things we tend to aspire to: friends, money, intelligence, creativity, time, and beauty, and so on. I’m having a very hard time doing the list because although I would appreciate more of all these items I don’t find myself wanting anymore. I’m happy with what I’ve got.
I feel relieved and grateful that I should feel this way. It gives me hope that as I work through my issues which include a tendency for depression (by which I mean a history of depression), anxiety, pride, and all the rest of the things that make me smaller, basically as I work through all that is keeping me from reaching enlightenment, I nonetheless am complete. I do not desire more intelligence/beauty/creativity not because I would mind being smarter/more beautiful/creative than I am (and I wouldn’t) but because what I am will do.

interim

Currently homeless in the time left in London before going off to China for an adventure. It’s been positively girly staying over with girls and hanging out with my friend D. whose sister is a flatmate of my friend whose bed I’m sharing with. I love the last sentence. I will teach all my students in China to speak in really confusing sentences like that. It’s been so much fun being in this house, it’s been comforting and interesting to have this much female energy around. To watch sisters and girlfriends interact. I have learned for example, that sisters sometimes have secret nicknames they use only amongst themselves.
And that some people still use dial up and do not need to be hooked up to the internet all the time. Meanwhile, I’ve got unfinished music albums yet to be downloaded. I have a week left in this country and I have no expectations. I may be gone for a week. I may be gone for years. It will be an adventure any way it happens.