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where the streets have no name…

I’ve come to realise that China streets and street names have no correlation to where they actually are on the map.

[sigh]. Fine, I admit, that’s a blatant lie. I just can’t read Chinese maps. Give me a US map, and a compass, and I’ll navigate you to the closest In & Out, but make me figure out how to get to Tsinghua University (a reasonably large chunk of land in Beijing), and I’ll probably get lost.

Anyway, when we were lost last night I started humming “Where the streets have no name…” to myself absentmindedly, except I started singing “I wanna go…. to Beijing….where the streets have Chinese names”

yes. stupid. i know. but hey, i write it off to jet lag.

and now for something….completely serious no really, i mean it.

5 weeks in Beijing. this is the longest time i’ve spent apart from Wendy. amazing isn’t it? for the first year and a half of our relationship we were long distance. admittedly, LA to San Diego isn’t that long distance (like Dan and Emma…oy, that’s a real cross-country one), but you try sitting 3 hours in fucking LA traffic and tell me that ain’t long distance. Anyway, then it was Bay Area to LA, which invites the whole torture of countless Southwest delayed flights, and the madness that is the LAX traffic going into curbside pickup. But through all that, we managed to see each other almost every weekend. At the very least, every other weekend. There was ONE time (when she went to Taiwan) where I had to wait 2 weekends to see her.

Anyway, thinking about it now as I’m taking a break and thinking about things besides Solaris, NUMA-ness, test case failures, and why we still have a [Caps Lock] key on our keyboard, I really miss Wendy. Erik and I often joke about our cummulative history of failed long distance relationships. Esther and I broke up after one year of college. Mai and I broke up after she moved back to the Bay Area and I stayed in San Diego. But Wendy and I were able to keep it going…. even though it was new, as opposed to an established relationship like the ones I had with Esther, and Mai (and Erik had with Connie).

Why did it work? I guess for a few reasons… which I’ll try to enumerate coherently here (sorry in advance if I ramble). First off, she was worth it. More than anyone else I dated post-Mai, she was worth a long distance effort. Second of all, contrary to what I thought initially, a new burdgeoning relationship can be kept alive by the new-ness of everything, which often turns out to be stronger than the volatility one might think would end the relationship.

This second point bears some more explaining I think. My initial thought, and that of a lot of people, is that fresh/new relationships that are forced to go long distance will fail because there is no established relationship there already to build on. I was worried that it would fall apart, cause what the hell are you supposed to talk about on the phone when you’ve only known the person for a short while, right? Turns out I was wrong… you can establish a deep connection with someone you’ve known for your whole life just as easily as you can with someone you just implicitly trust. When Wendy and I met, we had that connection right away. Don’t confuse this with “love at first sight”. I don’t believe in that… “lust at first sight”, sure. Hell, I make those connections all the time (”Hellllllooooo Jennifer Garner”). Love is something that has to be built up over the course of a relationship. But I feel like you can establish a connection with someone at first sight…. this isn’t a sexual thing at all, I’ve felt the same with tons of guys. My best friends are all people I’ve felt this connection with, whether they’re people like Erik, whom I’ve known for what seems like forever, Dan whom is easily one of the most trustworthy people a person can meet, Jesse, who is probably one of the easiest guys to talk to in the world, or even this goof-ball dude Poorna who I’m travelling with right now. Anyway, the point I’m getting at is that this kind of connection you establish at first contact with someone can be enough to sustain a long distance relationship. AND, with a newly started long distance relationship, there is enough new-ness to keep things interesting and vibrant. I really believe that Mai and I broke up because we felt like we started to drift apart…. she was having fun with her old friends back up in the Bay Area, while I was a bitter disgruntled grad student. Of course we drifted apart…we were living two entirely different lives from our undergrad times when we spent 24/7 together. But a new relationship has nothing to compare itself to… it’s unburdened by any history. The girl can never say “You never send me roses like you used to!”, and the guy can never say “You’re way more clingy than you used to be” - cause hey, no history, no hangups, it’s all good. A new relationship makes everything interesting… “hey, you’ve got toe fungus? I’ve got athlete’s foot! Wow, we’re so close, it’s amazing!”. okay, maybe not that, but you get the picture.

sigh. i’ve been rambling on this for a good half hour now. all this stemmed from the simple thought “I miss Wendy”. i’m excited to be here….and i know 5 weeks in Beijing isn’t going to be enough - but all the same, wish she could be here.

hrm. wonder why i keep switching between properly capitalising things, and not. bizarre. i need some blog grammar/writing lessons i guess. okay, i’m off to go refill my nalgene, and go order a completely random dish from a chinese menu. wish me luck.

1 comment September 10th, 2004

i want to ride my bicycle….i want to ride my bike

one day down, 35 to go. we had our first day of work go smoothly. the office here is great…. they have this really nice open 4 person cube work environment. i’ll have to take a picture of it to better show it. it’s nice… i find myself liking cubicles again, after having spent a year in an office. the privacy of an office is nice - but sometimes i feel more productive in a cube (i say this, as i’m at work typing in my blog…hrm…maybe not as productive as i thought ;-)). anyway, the facilities are top-notch. the views from the building are pretty good too.

poorna and i got bikes yesterday, and after a long day of work, we attempted to ride home. we got pretty freaking lost, and ended up riding through numerous back alleys until we found our hotel. we went out bar hunting in the evening, and ended up at this place called the “Listen Bar”. very hole in the wall-ish…. definitely had that college bar feel to it, pretty quiet and deserted. the students working there were very friendly though, and we ended up eating dinner there, and having quite a few drinks before heading home and passing out.

we rode to work this morning, and got less lost. it’s frustrating to be staring at the back of your building with a big cement wall separating you from it. we debated throwing our bikes over and hopping over the wall - but figured it might be a bad second day of work if our Beijing manager had to come bail us out of jail for breaching security.