sushipanda

The end of August are the dog days of summer. A classic baseball term, it refers to the fact that players get tired and hurt around this time, the weather in most cities with baseball teams is at its hottest, and a lot teams have to play games on strings of consecutive days to make up for earlier postponements. Essentially, it connotes exhaustion, lack of energy, and grown men grinding every day out like dogs.

I guess I’m feeling the dog days too. It’s strange, since I was just mentioning to a coworker that it really hasn’t been that hot this summer. Of course, that hasn’t stopped me from immediately breaking into a sweat every time I move a single muscle, but the heat hasn’t been as devastating as summers that came before this one. Still, I feel slow and enervated, and even in Xiamen last week I was enjoying just lying in the hotel room watching crappy Bruce Willis movies and spending two hours chatting with Lydia about how we should really get out and see the sights instead of actually getting out and seeing the sights.

As the lethargy penetrates every inch of my physical self, it becomes more and more difficult to find copious amounts of mental energy as well. The weekends, which are designed to let mind and body recover from a hard week’s worth of work, have instead turned into the most draining days of the week for me, since my mind is spent indulging, struggling, grappling, and [insert more active verbs in this place] with a crazy cocktail of bliss, joy, sadness, frustration, and [insert any dramatic emotive noun in this place]. The workweek, on the other hand, is where I unwind to the point of being brain-dead, of feigning productivity in light of all the pending changes in the organization and the sheer distracted nature of my soul. If these aren’t the dog days for a weathered panda like myself, then I’m not sure what else coud be.

In the midst of these doldrums, vanity prevails. Since I’m moving to my new apartment in a few weeks, I was dismayed to learn that the neighborhood hair salon to which I have devoted myself ever since I moved back to Gubei was now requiring a minimum 500 RMB charge every time one wanted to refill their VIP card. At no credit whatsoever, my card was as sorely in need of recharging as my head was in need of a mowing, but I was loathe to put down 500 RMB when I was probably going to be able to squeeze out two haircuts (three max) before I changed neighborhoods.

And so, I let the darn thing grow. Having nowhere to hide it, I could only grease my hair directly up, so that suddenly I was a good three inches taller and feeling the bottom of some of Shanghai’s shorter doorways (there are many in this town). This led to Ariel (amongst others) at Anabela’s birthday party last Friday to make the flattering but misguided comment that I looked thinner. In reality, the massive amount of hair on top of my head made my face look deceptively smaller, which was an optical illusion that I did not care to reveal to anyone at all.

The offshoot of all of this, however, is that my neck is beginning to ache and creak as it is being asked to support more and more mass. Even though 28 years of supporting this planet of a head of mine have made it burly and robust, I suppose that the weight of all that upwardly mobile hair, combined with the typhoon of thoughts swirling inside my brain, have made my neck akin to a Shanghai woman’s personality: nagging and wholly unsupportive. Thanks to Lydia, who was kind enough to hold my head up and stuff huge pieces of cheesecake and chocolate mousse into my gaping mouth throughout the weekend…I’m sure that will help make my head weigh less.

Yes folks, during the dog days of summer, this is the kind of shit I write while at work. Enjoy.

A wonderful weekend away from Shanghai. Beaches (ick) and ocean (gross) and seafood (ok) were supposed to be enjoyments, but simply taking some time off to relax and to enjoy the company turned out to be the true Xiamen experience

As we walked out of the hotel in Xiamen on Sunday around noon, I looked at Lydia and said “I give myself 30 seconds before I start sweating.” She glanced at me and said “Too late, you already are.”

Yes, dear readers, I fall in the accursed category of having an embarrassing physical feature that no one is rude enough to point out, but in their minds they think “ewwww.” I have an oversupply of sweat glands, which I’ve heard is actually quite healthy. Whoever said that must never have experienced the joy of literally peeling off his shirt from his torso, then hopping into a nice long shower to cleanse his body, and then stepping out of the bathroom only to immediately start sweating again.

That is my life. I’m glad that women are the (allegedly) less superficial gender, however, and they can look past that brightly lit sheen on my forehead and see the vapid, superficial dude nesting inside. Even so, if the spirits above were to grant me one chance to change something physical about me, I’d most likely choose to make my body as sweat-free as possible. Either that, or decrease the massive size of my…(sorry, coughing fit).

In all seriousness, though, sweat is a byproduct of the human body emitting too much heat. I am indeed a very, very hot guy. I like to think that my heart sometimes beats too fast, and that the extra for of the blood rushing through my veins causes my body temperature to rise. Having a heart that can get excited and moved like that, resulting in hands that are always warm to touch…there’s something pretty goddamn nice about it.

Then again, maybe I have a defective heart and I’ll die any minute now. In a pool of my own sweat. Which, on many an instance during the past weekend in Xiamen, I definitely wanted to do.

Check out the photos section for updated pics of our weekend getaway. Xiamen is a nice place to check out…when it’s not as humid as a moldy sock buried in the Amazon jungle.