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I normally update this on Sundays, but as I have been working the last two Sundays, that hasn’t happened. Things have been busy here. When I get stressed, my memory starts to falter on things I don’t have to remember (and a few things that do matter), so I can’t remember much of the last couple weeks. Hopefully this next Sunday I’ll be able to relax and fill you in a bit more.
I find it interesting that we call them retreats because, to many of us, they are anything but. We are not retreating, but going full force towards the event. To be fair, the retreat is not for me, so I shouldn’t expect to be the recipient of its advertized benefits. I say advertized because I don’t often get the same things out of the retreat as the students do. And I expect to get less sleep this October than normal.
So it starts. The retreat planning has been going on for a little while, but for me it hit a bit harder this week. (I enjoy it, so this is not really a bad thing.) On Tuesday we went to the retreat place to get things arranged, and to get an idea of what we can do and how we do it. I took half a day off from work to attend the tour. The place isn’t bad. It is about an hour west of Shanghai, so it’s a bit of a trek, but they have a lot of space and pretty decent living quarters. Instead of apartments like Aurora, Silver Pearl has villas. We plan to get 27 people in each, the maximum allowed by the place. It should be an interesting time. I took some video and created a video tour of the place. (I have realized that my videography skills need some work.) I’m trying to upload it to Facebook as I type this, but the site has been very unstable for the past several weeks, so most of the time the video upload fails. Now that I’m in the spirit of the retreat, I finally got around to updating the website with the new retreat information. Most of the job was updating the out of date software on the website, but now that that’s done, we can get the information updated quickly when it becomes available.
This was also the second week in a row that I did not speak at youth group. I actually took Saturday off to relax and get some things done. It was a good day. I figure I must have been in a good mood when I was walking down the Nanjing road pedestrian street and a guy came up trying to get me to come by his fake market. I actually enjoyed the “conversation” which mostly consisted of me repeatedly turning him down and making the arguments that, despite his contradictions, it would take too much time out of my busy schedule. Now that’s a good mood.
The airplane is making progress. More and more things are being installed and tested. Many things aren’t working quite right yet, but some are not critical and the others are being addressed. In preparation for first flight, they have begun to install the galley, one section of which is now directly behind the first officer’s seat. I’m not sure if they’ll get all the interior installed before first flight, but there is still a bit of time for that yet.
This next week will be busy for me, as I’m back to my normal speaking schedule, and my coworker is on business travel to the US, so I’m sort of doing his job as well while he’s away. My list of tasks only grows. It doesn’t get shorter.
Friday was a momentus occation for China. For the first time, this country hosts the Olympics. Friday night showed the streets empty around Shanghai as millions gathered around television sets to watch the opening ceremonies. I was one of them. I must say I was impressed. Don’t get me wrong, I never doubted the ceremonies would be spectacular, but I knew not what to expect. The use of wires and flying people, the video screens embedded in the floor and around the “nest” at the top of the stadium, and most of all, the number of people expertly performing their roles showed the world what China is capable of. The scale and precision of the performers was excellent. They had very difficult jobs to do and they did them perfectly. Not that my opinion means much, but job well done!
It seems likely at this time that I wil not see any of the games in person. Traveling to Beijing at this time is not convenient or cheap. Some of the events are being held in Shanghai, but my attendance doesn’t seem likely at this time. Will I regret this decision later? Possibly. My excuses, however lame, include being rather busy both inside and outside of work, with not much time to spare. I realize that my attendance, or not, will not greatly affect either the course of my life or the events of world history, and I figure that maybe someday, at a different place and time, an Olympic opportunity will again present itself to me. (Vancouver 2010, London 2012…)
This really isn’t a post about the olympics, but that does seem to be the big news around town these days. I know several people who are making the trek to Beijing to see some of the events, but I won’t be one of them. There will be a few events in Shanghai, however. One of the things most discussed around here is the extra security. Policies have changed to make visa applications more restrictive, so a few people I know are having a bit of a struggle. News reports have indicated the additional hassle is causing lost business in some cases. I also saw a notice at my complex that they have installed a device to enable monitoring of phone calls. My biggest suprize, I suppose, is that this wasn’t being done before.
The rest of my life these past two weeks has been normal. My schedule doesn’t allow for much free time, so pretty much everything I did is the same as I always do. Life is good. He is good.
It has always been my goal and prayer that the kids in the youth group would grow closer to Him through their experiences with it. I usually feel like what I am doing is not adequate to accomplish this purpose, and they are not growing as much as they could. Then I read things from them that indicate it is happening anyway. The very things that I blame for not stretching them are the things they identify as what’s helping them the most. To prevent identification of the people involved who may know them, I won’t go into details. But it is humblingly wonderful to know that you aren’t needed, but He chooses to use you anyway.
I started trying to learn Chinese again. My opinion that it would be good to know Chinese at work has shifted from this to it is pretty much necessary that I at least be able to understand it. Meetings generally happen in Chinese, and sometimes the only thing said in English is that, in the interest of time, they won’t translate the rest of the meeting. I have tried a Chinese tutor here in the past, but due to the fact I am pressed for time, it makes it difficult to schedule a chunk of time for this, even if I insist on the convenience of the tutor coming to my apartment. (It’s more of a “I have time now” than anything else.) So independant learning is the most attractive option. I had heard about Rosetta Stone previously and heard good things about it. So I did a little more research, thought I would like it, and signed up for the online version. (This gives me all the functionality of the CD versions, except I don’t have to wait for the order to come – can start using it immediately, and it is based on subscription instead. I have a LONG way to go, but I have been quite happy with it so far. They don’t do any translation (i.e. this_chinese_word = this_english_word) but show pictures and say the Chinese word/phrase associated with the object in the picture. You learn new words through process of elimination based on words you already know. The online demo was for Turkish and explains it better than I can. I’m hoping that between this, and the fact I live in China, I can learn enough of the language to get by in a short amount of time.
That’s all for now.
I am being stretched, and as I am stretched I am growing. Work is opening up new challenges and opportunities for me, and conversations with some people I have known for a while are getting more deep. I am humbled to be thought ready for these things that are brought upon me.
China’s new large aircraft program is continuing, and some people are coming to Shanghai for some presentations regarding this. I have been asked to support this, but other priorities may make this difficult. I am excited about the possibilities and hope that I can be involved in this. Challenges in dealing with various issues for ARJ21 are also stretching me, causing me to better understand and react to dealings with the customer.
Youth group has brought deeper conversations with a few of the students in the past several weeks. Wisdom and grace are my prayer requests as we work through their issues of growing up. I am grateful and humbled to be a part of their lives, and hope I can stay close enough to God to be a positive influence.
Shanghai is still hot and humid, but that’s no longer much news. Stepping out of heavily air conditioned buildings or vehicles causes glasses to fog, but this is normal life here and things press on. However, we all look forward to October when it will be pleasant to walk outside again. Such is the cycle of life, I guess.
If anyone in Shanghai has been ignorant of the time of year to this point, all doubt was removed as you stepped out the door. The weather in Shanghai is now what people use as an excuse to leave. The temperature today was around 38 degrees (100 F) and characteristically for Shanghai, humid to boot. There seemed to be fewer people walking and riding bikes this afternoon, no doubt sitting out the heat in some shady or air conditioned place. Two more months of this and then it starts getting cooler.
It seems likely I will not go to Beijing next month for the olympics. I am considering attending an event or two that takes place in Shanghai. In some ways I suppose it would be silly not to take this opportunity.
But life in Shanghai continues as normal. Work goes on at its frenzied and chaotic pace, and while many families are travelling during the summer, there are still a few kids around to make youth group a nice comfortable place.
So I just got back from a goodbye dinner for one of the elders. Charlie has been the elder overseeing the youth ministry and will be moving back to the US in a month. This is a common scenario when living in Shanghai. Because the church is international, everyone has a home elsewhere. True, some people were born in China, and have emigrated to another country in the past before returning, but many people here were born elsewhere, and consider that there home. It seems like there are a lot of people leaving this year, but that may just be my imagination. I’m beginning to realize that this may not get better or be any easier the longer I am here. Working with the youth, many graduate every year. The more I know people, the more it will hurt.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I’m not going to work today. Or, at least, I’m not planning to. It is almost 2pm now and I’m still at home. I do plan to do work today, but only going through emails and trying to get organized and caught up with my tasks. I think I can do this because I spent all night last night updating our rig. We declared success shortly after 4am and went home.
I have been trying to keep organized by scheduling when I do certain things to maximize my time, however I have found that other people don’t keep to my schedule. Things like late nights at work trying to get things working, random meeting inside and outside of work, and getting called in to work on weekends tend to throw things into chaos. Such is my life I guess. I realized Sunday while I was at work that the ease of my job is primarily controlled by the decisions and mistakes of others (in two different countries, I might add). From the US side, we’ve had a few difficulties with getting the paperwork correct when shipping equipment, which causes me grief because it causes the customer grief. From this end, some design decisions made by for the airplane (in this case the test aircraft) will make it very difficult to troubleshoot problems.
I spoke at youth group again for the first time in about two months – since before my vacation. It went better than I expected – thanks to God. I would love to have more time to prepare, specifically the times of day when I can think properly. Much of the preparation this past week was done between 11pm and 1am.
So it sounds like I’m complaining a lot. I guess in some ways I am, but for the most part I really enjoy everything I do. Work gets frustrating frequently, but there are also frequent rewards for the work. I love the youth group and can’t imagine trading it for anything. We’ll see where God leads in my life as I plan to follow him always.
OK, so the emails from work have finished synchronizing, so I’d better go.
So my plan is to update this website regularly on Sundays, and at other times if I feel like it. But it looks like tomorrow will be booked. We have flight test engineers from Cedar Rapids in town to do testing on the rig, and as they want to get as much done in as short a time as possible, they are pretty much working as much as they can. So far this has included evenings and weekends, and they have only been here two days. So tomorrow, Sunday, I will be working in the morning to support them in troubleshooting some of the problems they are having. In the afternoon our church is having a graduate recognition, and I’m supposed to be there to pray over those graduating, along with the other adult helpers. And right now, I’m waiting for a guy to get home so I can call and ask him about another problem we are having. One thing I dislike more than working on a weekend is making other people work on the weekend. (Which is why I’m feeling rather bad for my driver right now. I’ve kept him up past midnight twice this week, and he worked all day today as well.) Fortunately, everyone we are working with has been very helpful and supportive in getting our issues resolved as quickly as possible.
And that support is on top of Cedar Rapids trying to swim out of the flood. See this link for some info. At this time I don’t know anyone who has been affected more than trying to keep water out of their basements. At least, the people I have heard from haven’t been seriously affected, however with the water supply low, everyone in the area is being affected. Please keep them in your prayers.
That’s all for now.