The flight was also not full and I had an aisle seat in the middle with no one sitting next to me. I was able to sleep a bit on the flight and we made it to Beijing right on time. I got my bags, and met dandan from my school and the drivers who were going to take me back to Shijiahzuang. I decided that since I was getting in so early and had sooo much baggage that I didn’t want to hassle with the train. Normally taking the train home winds up being 6-7 hours from the time you leave the airport. Taking a car made the trip a much more comfortable 3 hour ordeal, with no baggage lugging at all

I got back to Shijiazhuang and saw Shenqi after nearly a month and a half apart. It was the longest we had been apart since we met back in December 05, and we had a lot of catching up to do. My maid Wu Jie came by and cooked us a big lunch including my favorite shrimp dish. Being in the states, I didn’t get Chinese food anywhere near as good as the stuff she cooks.

I was shocked at how quickly I feel back into the Chinese language groove. During the first hour speaking was tough, but within a day I felt I was roughly at the same level as when I left. Sweet.

Since then, I have been busy catching up with everyone and getting back into my routine.  I am trying to get started doing some business out here, which has kept me REALLY busy. Things are just begining, and I am thus not going to post details here yet, but I will be sure to do a full write up with all the details once things get locked down

1. I accompanied my girlfriend to the hospital only to find the doctor in the examination room smoking
2. My friend Leo took me out to lunch with his family. There were 4 of us total. We had our own room and three waiters whose only responsibility was waiting on us. Leo still managed to yell at the waiters when they were slacking, barking out orders like he was a military officer, and the waiters all complied and didn’t even flinch.
3. In the changing room at the gym, Two guys smoked before starting their workout
4. I got a 3 hour massage at the bath house for 60RMB ( $7.50 US)
5. It took me 3 hours today and two trips to the bank to get my online banking activated, and it still doesn’t work well
6. I spent 4 hours haggling over the price of plastic monthly cards (like you use at a gym) to ultimately save 25RMB ($3.13 US)

The list goes on and on, but those are a few of the highlights.

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And by the way….I am back in China!!!

• Seeing my family (dad, mom, sister Rachel, step mom Krista, step brother Mikey, Grammy Elaine, and Grandma Alice)
• Seeing a number of my friends – Justin Klein (you can read his take on our get-together here), John Medina, Jeremy Sultan, Susanna Hyatt, Chuck McGill, Ross, Davide, Madeline, etc. and talking with many others
• Flying my old airplane
• Taking some great pictures
• Riding horses with my sister and Dad up at Will Rogers’ park
• Swimming at the Brentwood country club
• Taking a family trip up to Telluride, Colorado
• Eating some In-N-Out and many other things that I had been craving
• Shopping for all the stuff I can’t find in China
• Visiting the Getty Center
• Showing everyone pictures of my girlfriend Shenqi, and seeing everyone else’s pictures
• Drinking some good Italian wine
• etc.

While all of this has been really nice, I miss China, my friends, my house, my girlfriend 申琦, and my life there. The U.S. and everyone here just seem so foreign to me now. I am having a lot of trouble getting used to the slower pace of life in general here, the MUCH higher price of everything, and, I can’t believe I am saying it, but how inefficient many things are. When I first got to China, I would have never dreamed of saying that America was less efficient, but in some aspects it is quite true. I can’t stand how long it takes to wait in lines here, shop, pay for things, wait in restaurants, etc. Having an unlimited cheap labor force really makes many things run faster in China. I had to valet my car today when I went to visit my dad’s new office, and the valet took 5 minutes to get to me, get me a ticket, and take my car. I couldn’t believe it, but it wasn’t like it was anything weird by U.S. standards. That situation just doesn’t occur in China. I then waited 30 minutes for a table, only to get served SLOOOWWWWLY by a waitress who was overloaded and couldn’t handle all her tables. It took forever to order, get our food, get a check, and get change. I missed China.

Also, making plans with people requires much more notice and planning than it does in China. If I want to meet with someone in China, it happens that day, not a week later. There is no telephone tag, schedule checking, planning, etc. It just happens. Everything for the most part is on a much more accelerated schedule.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am definitely not saying that everything about China is better. All I am saying is that there are a few things about life there that I really really miss.

I have a few more days here in L.A., and then Labor Day weeked in Las Vegas before I fly back to China. I intend to savor every minute of my time here in the states, but will definitely be happy to get back to 中国 (China).

Here is an excerpt from the article. This excerpt is nowhere near as funny as some of the other examples in the full article:

Dad, I got you the chicken McNuggets. I got you the little cup of ketchup for them. I got you a hot fudge sundae. I then watched in amazement as you dipped each of your ten McNuggets into your hot fudge sundae. I explained that the ketchup was for dipping, the sundae was desert. You slathered each McNugget in hot fudge and ice cream anyway. Dad, you rock.

Click here to read the rest of the article. It is well worth the read.

There were a few things that really bothered me about the bathroom.

1. The toilet had no stagnant water in the bowl. Mosquitoes would thus fly into the room from the sewer system below
2. There was a water heater mounted above the sink which made it impossible to mount a mirror that I could use when shaving.
3. The water heater was too small. There would be no hot water about 3/4 of the way through a long shower.
4. There were rusting pipes running all over the bathroom. They looked horrible, leaked constantly, and couldn’t be good health wise. Paint chips kept coming off which clogged the drain
5. The sink didn’t drain well and water came out of the tap too slowly. The temperature control was either too cold or too hot. There was no middle temperature
6. There was no drain for the washing machine. Whenever a cycle was done, the water would spill out all over the floor and about half would drain into the shower’s drain hole while half would just sit in the area next to the toilet. The mosquitoes would gravitate towards this stagnant water that wouldn’t drain
7. The shower drain wasn’t big enough. Water would pool up and take forever to drain
8. The tiles were all old dirty, cracked, and just plain ugly
9. The ceiling had begun to mildew
10. The shower head wasn’t mounted high enough. I am fairly tall, and thus couldn’t rinse my hair without bending at the waist.
11. The washing machine had to be moved into the shower area each time we did a load so that the drain hose could be routed towards the shower’s drain hole. The machine then had to be moved back to the other side of the room when I wanted to shower.
12. The glass that connected to the kitchen was broken
13. There was no enclosed shower area. Water would get all over the place and thus caused me to track it all over the house when I left the shower. If I had to go back and brush my teeth, I would then get more water on my shoes that I would track outside the bathroom

Anyway, I know that seems like a long list, and that some of the things seem minor, but all those little things when factored together really frustrated me.

I decided that since I would be here another year that I wanted to have a bathroom I felt more comfortable using. I asked Ivy from Konall to help me find some contractors to bid the job. She said that everone she called turned down the job because it was too small. There was only one person who responded. He bid 7800 RMB for the job, and we ultimately got him to take it for 6500 RMB (about $800 US).

I was a bit nervous about not having a bathroom for the 10 days that it would take to remodel the bathroom, and didn’t like the idea of having laborers constantly working in my house, but I bit the bullet and signed a contract.

10 minutes after agreeing on the terms, there were 7 works scouring over my bathroom. They quickly started destroying all the old tile, removing the appliances, and getting rid of everything that wasn’t permanently installed. They didn’t bother about checking for electrical lines or plumbing, but just started hacking away.

By the end of the first day, everything had been gutted and all you could see were the original pipes and concrete.

I didn’t want to sleep at home without any water or a toilet, so I decided to look for a hotel. The cheapest one that met my desired quality was over 200 RMB ($25 US) a night, which I thought was too expensive. I decided to try sleeping at the bath house. I knew that all the bath houses had rooms that you could sleep in, but I had never tried it. I went to 龙世界 (lóng shìjiè) and got a room. It was REALLY nice and only ran me 30 RMB a night ($3.75 US). Score!

My house was already a TOTAL mess and I was really starting to have second thoughts about the whole process….

After the hike was over, we had lunch at one of the restaurants there. 申琦 (shēn qí) and I both managed to find seats in the one indoor area. It was much cooler inside and just the break we needed.

After lunch, we went to get on the bus and found out that the air conditioner was broken. DOH! Not cool considering that it was ROASTING outside. The bus company, however, was smart enough to fill one of the cargo bays with extra parts and after thirty minutes, the two drivers managed to have the problem fixed.

We then proceeded to 西柏坡 (xī bǎi pō) which was supposedly the birth place of the modern Chinese communist party. There were three different areas of 西柏坡 (xī bǎi pō) that we visited. The first was a hall with a bunch of old calligraphy. I could actually read some of the characters which was cool. The second stop was the most interesting part, a museum with original documents and videos about the founding of the current government. We spent nearly an hour looking through here and taking pictures. The last stop was one of the original meeting halls and Chairman Mao’s old house. This was probably the least interesting of the 3.

We then headed back to 石家庄 (shíjiāzhuāng), all totally exhausted from the hiking and sun-exposure. Shenqi rubbed some aloe on my burns and we called it an early night.

The school seems like it wants to do a few more of these field trips. I really hope they are serious about it as I had a great time. Shenqi even went so far as to call it a mini-vacation

I had to independently apply to the law and business schools of each of the schools I was considering. This meant that since there were 4 universities I was interested in, I had to complete 8 applications. You can see the ultimate results here:

Needless to say, I was not too happy with the results. I got all my applications in around the 1st of the year, and the decision schedules all indicated that I should hear from schools around March or April at the latest, which would have given me plenty of time to plan and return to the U.S. from China. I was very confident with my applications as my GPA was extremely high (3.925) which put me at the top of my UCSD graduating class and earned me membership in both Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi. I had worked steadily for the UCSD CSE department as a TA for over 3 years. I had started my own business and acted as CTO of an internet startup. My entrance exams went well. I got a 160 on the LSAT which put me in the 82nd percentile, and a 730 on the GMAT which put me in the 97th percentile with a perfect score on my writing sample. My essays got praise from everyone that I showed them to, and I had a good group of supporters writing letters of recommendation for me.

When the rejections started rolling in, I really had no idea what had happened. On the law school side, the only dark spot was my LSAT score, which while it wasn’t perfect, was decent. Everything other than my LSAT score would have been tough to beat. On the business school side of things, I had no dark spots except for the fact that I had no post-university business experience. I, however, only applied to schools that specifically stated that they accepted students with no post-university experience. Given that type of statement, they must have accepted some people with no post-university experience, and it would have been tough to have beaten my credentials.

By the time April had rolled around, I had been rejected by every school except USC. I was even rejected by UC Berkely, the school my mom attended for her undergraduate education. USC was first choice, so I still had my fingers crossed. I quickly got rejected by their law school, but had still heard nothing from their business school. I started calling and emailing frequently trying to explain to them that returning to the states from China was not an easy thing. By the time June rolled around, I finally got a response from one of their admissions directors telling me that I had been accepted by the business school, and to wait for an admissions packet that they would mail to me. This packet was postmarked on the 5th and didn’t arrive at my U.S. address (my dad’s house) until around the 9th. They were out of town for a few weeks, but when the got back, they told me that the packet stated I needed to respond by the 15th, a date that had already passed. I couldn’t believe that they had waited SOOO long to send me the packet if the date was that close. I had my dad send the packet to me here in China, but it still hasn’t arrived yet. I called the USC admissions office over 8 times but couldn’t get a call back. I sent a number of emails to them but still didn’t get a response.

At this point, I had already been leaning towards spending another year in China. I have an amazing life here that I am extremely happy with. I have a wonderful girlfriend who I am totally in love with. I am learning new things every day and constantly find interesting things about this culture. My Chinese is improving rapidly, but it is clear that due to the complexities of the language, it will take far longer to learn than Italian or Spanish. I spent 6 months learning Italian to get to a level that I was pleased with. I think that 8 or 9 months with Chinese is nowhere near enough time to get to a similar level, but that 18 or 24 months might be a better estimate. I also am just beginning to understand what it is like to do business out here and still have yet to get my feet wet.

All that being said, I was slightly leaning towards spending another year here in China when I finally heard back from USC and they agreed to grant me a deferral. This way I can spend another year here in China and then decide what I want to do. I can go back to the states and attend USC business school. I can stay on here in China on a more permanent basis. Or I can do something entirely different. The bottom line is that I now have more options than ever, which is a great feeling.

So I will be staying here in Shijiazhuang for at least another year. Shortly I will be updating this website a bit to reflect this change. I would like to thank all the people who helped me with my applications including Susan M, Chuck M , Justin K, Geoff V, Jeff W, my Dad, and especially my Mom.

I feel very happy now and I feel very happy about the road ahead