Apologies to everyone who enjoy following this site. I’ve been extremely busy in the past months with a number of things and complicated by the fact that I had to be a single-dad without a car for a while. Here’s the story…
Summer Crunch
My last entry was in late May and from that point, I was sucked into a vortex of extreme busyness. When Lisa and Maddy left on June 17, I kicked it into Red Bull overdrive and pulled 80 hour work weeks with a couple all-nighters to complete some big projects prior to my return to the US on July 4 to work at a tradeshow, meet with US customers, and present justification/outcomes of this whole gig to the VPs. The pressure was overwhelming. I was able get about 1.5 weeks in Atlanta which was nice but I was focused on the meetings which would determine the renewal of my contract here. The meetings went well.
Prior to my arrival, Lisa ruptured a disk and severely herniated another. Within 3 weeks, she was in and out of surgery 2 days before I had to go to to California for meetings and then back to China. We did some shuffling with United Airlines to put Lisa on a flight during the first week in Sept. and moved Maddy’s flight up so she could travel with another family from Beijing.
Single Dad in Beijing
It actually worked fairly well. My mom flew to Atlanta, picked up Maddy and took her to Chicago for a couple days of fun in the city before she rendezvous her friends at O’Hare.
This time is the busiest time of year for a school’s IT department and the hours are long. Throw in a failed mail server and it gets really fun. Thankfully, Maddy was able to go home with some friends after school and I would pick her up at dinner time. I have a newfound appreciation for single parents.
Lisa returned in the first week of Sept and is still in a bit of pain with weakness in the legs. She does her prescribed physical therapy every day and is slowly getting better.
Temporarily Carless
To complicate things, I had a fender-bender on the airport expressway while coming home from dinner with Maddy. It was quite scary but when it was all done, I realized that it’s much easier to have an accident here than in the US. First of all, it’s not a litigious society yet and the post-wreck interaction is more gentlemanly. It also helps that blame is decided by the police for even the slightest accidents.
The key to having a car here is having a membership with a car club similar to AAA but more tailored to foreigners. The minute I bumped into the guy, I called the club and got out and waited. The representatives of the club handled the police, the towing, the paperwork, all insurance issues, interactions with the other driver and even repaired my car. It was quite amazing. It reminded my of the Trunk Monkey commercials where a press of the button makes all your troubles go away.
The downside of the accident was that insurance reimburses the faulty party after they pay for the other person’s car repair and it takes a month to get the money back. In other words, I had to dip into my savings for a big wad of cash that I won’t see for a while. Luckily it doesn’t cost a lot to repair a car. Mine was fixed within 2 weeks and it runs better than it did before and I was very impressed with the quality of the repair. It only took 1 return trip to fix some minor details.
Taxes
As an expat, you have a different set of rules for taxes…some good, others not. You qualify for an automatic extension until June 15 and can have a free extension until October 15. But note that you have to qualify as an expat by various tests of how long you have been here etc and being here half a year doesn’t really work. If you arrive in the summer, don’t count on the full expat-tax benefits and make sure you file by April 15. I had an extension until Oct from another tax person and it worked out fine but my new accountant put the fear of G*d in me that if I owed something, I wouldn’t be so lucky. Lesson learned. I could write an entire document on taxes and probably should.
Overall
Life here is fine…even pretty good. It’s starting to feel more like a home as I make repeat trips down the same roads and interact with the locals more. That’s one reason it’s so hard to blog…nothing is much different than living the suburbs of the US. The differences don’t seem so big anymore. Lisa, on the other hand, is still having a hard time with her perceptions of China and letting the little things bother her. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that she finds her groove, but until then, I think she’s counting down the days just like the other “tai tais” who she initially thought were so pathetic to not embrace the experience. It’s harder than it looks and certain personalities do better here.
This past week was the national holiday and instead of traveling, we opted to stay here so I could work on the servers without the risk of annoying students and teachers. We had a few days of beautiful weather. I got lots of work done and enjoyed later nights out with some friends. I’m beginning to collect some new blog material with visits to karaoke bars and Russian restaurants with strange stage shows. Despite the pollution and personal hygiene habits of some locals, this is becoming way more enjoyable this year.
Leave a Reply