Life in the past 4 weeks since I switched jobs has been good. There have been some down moments, but I have often wanted to say I love what I do! All in all I’m very excited about the new group I’m leading as well as the potential for what could happen here in Shanghai. God has really blessed me in the past weeks and while I know the will be difficult times, I’m confident his way is right.

In about one week I’ll be going to Kuala Lumpur for a vacation. Hopefully I can relax a bit there. My cousin, Amber will be there for a bit and I scheduled my trip to be able to be there while she is. I’m really looking forward to it. After I get back, I suspect it will be the home stretch for by current job and lots of learning and planning for the upcoming youth ministry.

But I suppose the biggest news, at least to me, is my plan to change jobs. I have informed my company that I do not plan to continue in my current position after August 14 of this year. I have felt the call to be more involved in the youth ministry with the international fellowship I have worked in during the past two and a half years. I want to spend more time helping with administrative things and, more importantly, spend time with the students. My current job makes it difficult to commit to specific times as I often have to work in the evenings or overnight. Also, I no longer find this job very enjoyable. 

I don’t have any job lined up after August, which is a concern as I will need a source if income and a visa to remain in Shanghai. While it is possible for me that I’ll work part time at my current position, it is not my preferred option and I will likely not be employed by Collins in any capacity after August. So this phase of my life appears to be coming to a close. 

After I talked to the church about my plans, an opportunity to lead a new group near several international schools appeared. This was presented to me, so this will be what I will be doing in four months. I am quite excited about this. After I agreed to lead this, they started a small group of students themselves, which I try to visit whenever I can. I am also starting planning for the next school year when I will be directly involved. I’m excited to see what God has in store!

The journey over the next few months will be interesting. The airplane will likely be transferred to Yanliang and I expect to spend some time there after that. I need to document a few things I know so that my coworkers have the information after I leave. I need to plan what I can for the upcoming youth ministry. I need to prepare for a significant lifestyle change. And possibly most importantly, I need to mature and develop into the person I need to be to be in this leadership position, focussing on what is important and leaving the rest to another time. But it will be a fun ride!

So this past week was generally unproductive. I accomplished nothing significant. It was dedicated to let my brain relax a bit and allow me to catch up on a few things. I watched a few movies, was able to spend some quite time at home, and – my favorite – be able to spend time with the youth again.

During the month of November, I gave up any commitments outside of work. I was being asked to work nights and weekends and the conflict of trying to keep my personal life as well as my work life was too much. So I only had a work life. There were only a few times during the month (until Thanksgiving) that I was able to do something that wasn’t work related. They were only possible because nothing required me to be at work at that time. There were three days during the entire month that I didn’t work: the first day and the last two. Some required 24 hours continuous, and others simply overnight. I rarely got more than 5 hours of sleep at a time, and learned to sleep and be awake at pretty much any time of day. It was not much fun. I hope I don’t have to do this again, at least for a long time.

Today (Sunday) I started an interesting experiment. We had our Sunday School Christmas program at church and the Sunday School leader asked me to take pictures or video of the kids as they sang and performed. I have been interested in media for a while and have aquired some video and audio equipment, and very quickly came up with a somewhat complex plan. OK, so it’s not nearly as complex as most of what you see on television, but considering I’m only one person, and very much an amateur at that, it was a bit of a stretch for me. I ended up having three people take video for me – one in the center and on either side. I also had three channels of audio recorded from the sound system. I took still photographs myself. The plan is to get everything imported and manually sync them with each other, then I can cut between different angles from the three video cameras. I’m not sure how this will turn out. I’m importing the first video as I write this, so we have a long way to go before I can see much for results. The end result will be a DVD, and hopefully it will not turn out too bad. While this is mostly an experiment for me, I have a little experience with video recording. At the retreat in October, I had the sessions recorded, and things didn’t go too badly, but I had a few difficulties, particularly with audio, and wanted to resolve that in the future. This is why I recorded separate audio from the main mixer this time. It will add an extra layer of “fun” trying to sync everything together, but hopefully the result will be better.

So that’s my challenge for this week: see if I can do some major video editing.

An article with a picture: http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2008/11/28/319486/pictures-chinas-arj21-completes-first-flight.html

You can also check out Google News at: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&ncl=1275359489

The last time I made a post I was in Xi’an with Josh. It was a lot of fun having him around, and I’m glad it forced me to take a bit of a break from work. I managed to get a little extra sleep ahead of the retreat, but the highlight was hanging out with my cousin. We don’t get to do that much any more, which I guess is mostly my fault for moving to China. I had another trip to Xi’an this past week. Actually not Xi’an proper, but a “small” town (~250,000 people – small for China, big for American midwest) north of Xi’an about an hour called Yanliang. That was a last minute trip, the return being 48 hours after the decision to go. So I have flown into the Xianyang airport 3 times in the past 5 weeks. If things go as expected, it will become a lot more familiar in the next year.

Work is still busy, and probably will be for the foreseeable future. First flight is still looming, and the pressure is on to keep to the schedule (which still appears to be moving to the right). We are being asked to do some things that are unreasonable with the current schedule, so while the end result of the discussions won’t be much different than where we are now, it will be a painful road to get there.

So today I think I am mostly caught up on the sleep I missed during the retreat. Meetings and other work on the weekends prevent me from sleeping in, which is where I get caught up. For some reason, six hours of sleep waking up at 9am is much more restful than 6 hours waking up at 6:30. I did some cleaning today of the office, which desperately needed it. I threw out a bunch of papers, but otherwise just allocated the mess to other places around the office. It looks better at least. Still more work to do. (Overall, I’m doing a better job of keeping the place clean than I did 5 years ago. Wait, I have a maid now…)

Mom and dad – I promise to call you soon.

So the week has been interesting. Josh arrived on Tuesday night. I didn’t spend too much time with him while he was in Shanghai – too many things on my plate – but he seems to do quite well on his own. I took him to youth group and church so he could meet my friends, and we all had a good time. Now that I’ve taken a few days off work and left the city, I’ll have more time to spend with him. I’m not particularly excited about being a tourist again, but I’m beginning to think the time off couldn’t not have been better placed. I’ll know more on that later this week. I must say the weather is quite nice right now. After the hot humidity of Shanghai, the cool weather tonight feels wonderful.

I’ll probably go to bed early tonight. Hopefully shortly after I submit this. Maybe I’ll be able to catch up on some of my sleep. I’ll sure need it for the retreat next week.

My cousin Josh is coming tomorrow. I’m excited to see him but don’t really have a good idea of what he’s going to do while he’s here. I solicited some ideas from friends so I have some leads. Hopefully he’ll have a good time. I’m hoping to use some of the time spent working over the past weekends as flex time and take him around the city. I’m hopeful that things will cooperate. We’ll see how well I do getting out of my normal paths around the city.

So already being busy with work and youth group, now adding the retreat, time is very precious to me.

Things have been very busy here, only starting to slow down last week. I am really far behind and will be trying to get caught up over the next few weeks. Last weekend we finished the latest delivery of our software, which is pretty much ready for first flight in October. There are a few minor tweaks remaining, but we are pretty much good to go. Last Friday through Monday were booked pretty much solid with delivery preparations and paperwork. After Monday, things slowed down a little bit, but was somewhat interupted by a trip to Yanliang (near Xi’an) so  I could perform another delivery for a different aircraft. This delivery was much simpler and start to finish was less than two hours. Yanliang is a nice place, smaller at about 200,000 people, and quieter than Shanghai. As this is where most of ARJ21 flight testing will occur (to our knowledge at this point), I may be spending quite a bit more time there in the future.

That’s all for now – I’d better get back to going through my emails.