“I once was lost, but now am broke.”

After finally completing the May holiday chronology, I was prepared to start posting more frequently some of the incessant ramblings of the mind that plague me throughout the day; sort of moving away from the theme of being an expatriate in China to something more broad and encompassing. After all, in September I’ll be celebrating my 3 year anniversary in Shanghai, which is nothing to sneeze at and, more relevantly, is as clear an indication as any that it’s time to let sushipanda.com start maturing into a different groove.

However, as always life intervenes. After many many many months of announcing that my carefree youth was coming to an end and that it was time to start focusing my priorities on the long view, I finally started to take those first tender steps in that direction. And, as with most of the happenings in my life, it all started with someone else’s stomach virus.

You see, many weeks ago my default consigliere was the unfortunate receipient of a violent stomach virus that rendered him incapable of wasting time. Mike had gotten sick prior to our Sichuan trip, and was diagnosed with something so awful that I can’t possibly mention it here in this space, partly because it prevents him from drinking copious quantities of beer, but more because I can’t remember what it’s called. It was during this period of relative calm that he realized that if we were to continue down our current path of decadence, we would never be able to achieve our long-term goals in life (he of being a wealthy investor with property all along Hong Kong harbor, and I with my plans of being the flamboyantly metrosexual pioneer of some underwater sport involving rubber balls and tube socks). Mike can be prone to the occasional bout of wisdom, and as he looked straight into my eyes and said: “You’re about to be an old, miserable failure,” I could sense that this was one of them. Right then I there, I decided to step over the line from “man-childhood” into the realm of “something resembling manhood.”

He’s right, of course. You’re only young once, but you can be a lot of things once, including a badly-dressed doughy 36 year old dancing at Babyface VI trying to pick up on girls who could pass as his 21 year niece. I didn’t want to be that guy in another 8 years.

Hence, I did what any rational human being would do in a quarter-life crisis: I bought an apartment. One wildly beyond my affordability levels. With a little help from my parents on the down, however, I have now entered the sexy class of people known as “home-owners.” The title sounds so magesterial that it is literally forcing me to grow up. I guess there’s no better motivation than having millions of RMB on my shoulders. Where once I was lost, now I am found…and will be a lot broker to speak of. Gone are the party days of yore.

Goddamn stomach virus.