While I wrote on Wednesday about wanting to move apartments, I never thought things would move so quickly. On Thursday at around mid-day my DoS asked if I wanted to move apartments, and I said yes of course, and he said ok, they’ll probably have a new apartment for me in about a week. Excellent!
That same day at around 6pm the admin assistant came to me and said that I’d be moving apartments the next day, and moving in with my ADoS. I told her “no no, no, no no, no, no, no” (yes, that quote’s accurate) for a number of reasons. Two of which are that you can’t give me half a day’s notice to move apartments on a day when I have classes and that living with my boss would be weird.
I eventually won a reprieve, being in the odd situation of defending my apartment, saying that actually it’s fine and I quite like it. But I still have to move this week because I think they’ve already cancelled the lease.
Things in China can go so ridiculously slowly when they should go quickly, and far too fast when some thought and consideration needs to be applied. A case in point of things moving slowly is the air-conditioning in my classroom, which I’m told won’t be fixed until September, by which time I won’t need it anyway.
With various other things, the news felt like several final straws all at once. So when me and some friends went out to Fantasy on Thursday night to see DJ Run, I gave up giving up drinking. Yes, my job here literally drove me to drink. I didn’t drink much – I knew I’d be the lightest of lightweights, but we all had a really good time even if it turned out DJ Run had cancelled.
On Friday while still angry I was wondering whether to a) walk away, b) give 30 days notice, c) ask to transfer to a different branch of the school, or d) stick it out. While I’d like to say the odds were about 25/25/25/25, my tendency to be all talk and no action and err on the side of the devil you know rather than the devil you don’t seems to have won the day. Also, now I’ve had a couple more days to calm down, I’ll almost certainly end up going with option d. I only have 124 days remaining on my contract – on Tuesday I’ll be two thirds of the way through – so the most sensible option is to see it through to the end.
Jon Tringham 
Hi Jon, you are an amazing person, since you are more than half way through. Just stick it out and you would one day think it makes the not too ordinary of life. I enjoy reading your writing. Keep writing. Cheers!