Daily Life: Monday

Mondays are long, long days. The car comes to pick R. up at about 7:45 and doesn't bring him home again until about 8:30 in the evening, after his Mandarin lesson. My own classes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I have make myself construct a plan for the day, or else the hours stretch out like a desert.

About 30 minutes after he left, I went downstairs (to the mall attached to our complex) and picked up R's dry cleaning - 32 kuai ($4) for a sweater and two pairs of pants - and got a latte from Starbucks (23 kuai). I hope no one will question my loyalty when I say they have drink quality issues there.

I try to spend the mornings - when I have the most energy - writing, or reading, or writing about reading. This Monday had me finishing a review (for Queens) of Coming Through Slaughter, by Michael Ondaatje. (He wrote The English Patient.) Curious about who could write about a legendary New Orleans jazzman Buddy Bolden (literally legendary, there are no recordings, only one photograph, and very little written record of him) with such aplomb, I looked him up - Ondaatje, that is. And ordered a copy of his magazine, Brick.

Although the weather was nasty (dark, foggy smog, no blue sky, even when I look straight up), by lunchtime I was itchy to be out of the apartment. I dropped off my keys at the front desk for the housekeepers (who come M-W-F for linen service, vacumming and light house-cleaning) and walked the five or six blocks to Sequoia for that yummy egg salad. The yam man had already set up his steel drum oven at the corner of Guangua Lu and Dongqiao Lu. I'd like to tell you I could smell it from across the street, but what I could smell instead was car exhaust and acrid construction dust. I'd worry about asbestos, but am fairly certain that the lightening rods on temples are about the only nod to fire safety in this old-new town. Here's hoping, anyway. Since I never smoked (does six months in college count?), if I get lung cancer, I'm blaming it on Beijing.

Due to construction next door to Sequoia (according to my blog sources, an old Beijing expat is reinventing one of his several holdings to a Texas BBQ joint), the eavesdropping was limited, but the egg salad was impeccable as usual. Two guys on laptops behind me, tapping away, but one of them smacked his gums as he wolfed down his roast beef on rye. I set to work on a new short story about a housewife who sells her husband's big screen TV on Craigslist.com.

About 4:30 R. called to say he'd cancelled his Mandarin class. "I listen to Chinese all day, and I don't understand a word; the last thing I need is someone teaching me how little I know the language." I get it. Come home I told him, not unselfishly. "Also," he said, "I don't know if I can cope with a new restaurant tonight." There's a Papa John's downstairs, I said. They deliver. I could hear the relief in his breathing.

Back at our building, I checked the at the front desk for my keys. The housekeepers hadn't returned them yet, would I mind to wait in the lobby? Indeed, I would not mind. The wireless access is less restrictive than my account my upstairs. I used the opportunity to check my blog.

When R. got home, we watched a little Squawk Box on CNBC. I studied Chinese while R. vented about his day. It sounded to me a lot like his complaints at home. Same business, no matter where you plunk it, no matter what language they speak.