He came over to our office building the other night because a local film company is filming a documentary about him. After sitting and talking with him for a few hours i realized that he is one of the smartest people i’ve ever been around. The amount of knowledge in his head was outstanding. He shook my hand with confidence and several times throughout our conversation i had to remember that i was talking to a teenager, not an adult. He knows a lot about a lot. I was very impressed. He loves to laugh, loves to make others laugh, and has an all-around wonderful personality.

So throughout our time together i filmed a few moments and put it together in this hodgepodge video::

The front walkway to my apartment:

From the third floor of our office building:

Shopping with friends:

Today, my roommate left to go to Thailand for a week (that lucky guy). Coming up the elevator tonight after being out all day i reached in my pocket for my keys and discovered that my keys were nowhere to be found. Instantly, i knew exactly where they were. They were inside the front pocket of my backpack that i take to work with me everyday. But of course since today is Saturday i didn’t have my backpack with me. I panicked. I went to my apartment and thought maybe by some miracle my roommate noticed my dilemma and left my keys outside. Nope. I’m officially locked out. I start pacing in circles imagining myself wearing the same clothes for a week and no computer to get my work done. This is a terrible situation. What am i supposed to do now? This is absolutely worst case scenario. I start thinking really fast knowing that it’s already getting late and if i’m gonna call in some help i better get on it. I don’t have anytime to waste. I get back in the elevator and go back downstairs. I’m now thinking that i’ll just go back to our company headquarters and find a guest room to sleep in and sort everything out on Sunday or Monday. On my way out of the main gate of the apartment complex i remember that there’s a maintenance office near my building. What are the chances that they are open at 9:00 p.m. on a Saturday night? I walk in, see the lights are on, and then i see a guy working at the desk. Perfect. In broken Chinese i say to him, “I have a problem. I can’t find my key.” Without any hesitation he starts digging through a small cardboard box on his desk and pulls out a business card with a bunch of Chinese characters and a phone number, but it also has a picture of a key on the card so i think this must be a step in the right direction. I ask the desk guy if he could call the number because my Chinese is not good. He smiles and agrees to help me. After talking with the key guy on the phone the desk guy tells me to go back to my apartment and wait 10 minutes. Awesome. Now i’m feeling hopeful.

I go back to my apartment and i wait. Almost exactly 10 minutes later the elevator door opens and out comes a maintenance worker. We go to my apartment and he’s speaking really fast. I have no idea what he said to me, but i said, “My key is inside so can you open the door?” That seemed to clear things up because he started working on my door immediately. Out of his toolbox comes all sorts of random tools, pins, and contraptions. We’re either going to pick this lock or dismantle a bomb. After a few minutes of trying to pick the lock he realized that he couldn’t get his contraptions to work. So he opens his bag and pulls out a piece of cardboard. When he pulled it out i thought to myself, “That thing looks like those stupid cardboard fans they used to give away on the hot days at church when i was a kid.” Do you know what i’m talking about? It’s a square piece of cardboard with a wooden tongue depressor stapled to the back. Well, that’s now his tool of choice for unlocking my door. He shoves the fan thing into the crack between the door and the door jam and starts shaking my door violently. Five seconds later it pops open and i sigh a huge sigh of relief. I gladly pay him 300 yuan (about $45) and thank him over and over again for his work.

Moral of the story: Take your keys with you everyday. Also, never trust a Chinese door no matter how sturdy that thing seems because a flimsy piece of cardboard can pop that sucker open in 5 seconds flat.

Well, to be fair, we figured out that the kitchen light is close enough that it sheds a small beam of light into the bathroom. It’s just enough light so that you don’t trip over anything. Lately i’ve been waking up early enough to shower with the door open because my roommate is still asleep. Leaving the door open allows much more light to come in from the kitchen. But this morning i decided to shut the door to see how dark it was in there and i was quite surprised at how well i could see without a lightbulb in the bathroom.

So there i am in my bathroom this morning with the door shut and only a small amount of light trying to squeeze its way through the blurred windows of the door. I started to think about how maybe we don’t need to replace that bulb after all. I’m getting used to this. I can see fairly clearly in the dark. It’s a different experience so that gives it an element of fun and humor.

Then i tried to remember how nice it was to have the light. I hardly remember anything different now, but in my minds eye i could almost imagine it. Having light would mean i could actually see my face when i shave or that i could see the end of my toothbrush when i put the toothpaste on it. Having a light in my bathroom would certainly makes more sense based on what i need to accomplish each morning.

But there i was this morning; only a tiny sliver of light coming in from another room and doing it’s best to shine through the window into my dark bathroom.

And so my mind drifted a little further to think about how sometimes in life it seems easier and more convenient to live in the darkness and try to convince ourselves that we don’t need the light. Getting the light feels like too much work, but deep down we all know that adding some light to our lives makes all things better. Adding some light to my morning grooming routine would definitely make my mornings better. But sometimes, i’d just rather stand there in the dark and not do anything to make my situation better.

And so take from that whatever you want. Lightness and darkness. What we want and need versus what we sometimes choose. Or maybe i just think weird thoughts when i stand in a dark bathroom and try to shave.   

“I gotta get my whole family to the airport first the in the morning. That’s like trying to move a youth group.“

He has 4 kids.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday i read some words from my dear friend, Anne Lamott (we’re not really friends, but you know how some authors make you feel like you’re best friends? That’s how Annie is… yes, i call her Annie now).

Here’s a little of what Annie had to say to me yesterday over a cold cup of coffee:

“Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.”

“Tidiness suggests that something is as good as its going to get.”

“We need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here.”

In my scrambling and frantic search i found a small note from an old friend that read, “You are truly meant for amazing things.” If you knew this friend you’d know the weight of those words. Now the frantic scramble was over and the photos didn’t seem to matter anymore. I did happen to find them in the same stack of stuff as that note. I walked out the door and trekked through the snow remembering that someone believes that i’m meant for amazing things.

It’s a good morning.

I recently spent a solid 2 weeks in Hong Kong. Most of that was spent without an agenda, just living like a local the best i knew how. So now that i’ve been back in Beijing for a week, the differences between these two places is more glaringly obvious than before. I’m not going to give you the obvious stuff, let’s dig a little deeper.

• Beijing street signs and business signs contain very little to no English. In Hong Kong it is quite easy to get around, read signs, and understand different places in the city. This occurred to me this morning on my bus commute to work. Nothing… NOTHING was in English.
• In Hong Kong you can go anywhere from McDonald’s to the market to the doorman and get by with speaking English. Not the case in Beijing. English is certainly used in Beijing more than other Chinese cities, but it is not nearly as easy to use as Hong Kong.
• The population of Hong Kong is about 7 million, the population of Beijing is about 20 million, but Hong Kong has a tendency to feel much more dense. They cram apartment buildings in so close together and there seems to be a lot more people walking through the malls. In Hong Kong it feels like you are always in a crowd. Though Beijing is certainly crowded, i feel like there’s room to breathe sometimes.   
• Hong Kong is EXPENSIVE! Wow! One thing about Hong Kong expenses that bugs me is the cost of riding the MTR (the HK subway system). The MTR charges you based on how far you travel. In Beijing, you pay a flat fee and it doesn’t matter how far you travel or how many times you change trains.
• For the most part, people in Hong Kong seemed very happy. I’m not saying that people in Beijing are unhappy, i’m just saying Hong Kong people seemed more happy. I have some thoughts and opinions about why that is. Without diving into too many details, i’d say that Hong Kongers seem less stressed. They seem to have less on their minds, less pressure.
• Hong Kong is rules rules rules!! So many rules. Stand in line for this. Stand in line for that. Don’t drink here. Don’t eat there. Lots and lots of rules to follow. I took a sip of Coke on the MTR and a friend said, “You’re gonna get fined for that.” That’s just plain silly.

I think that’s all i have for now. All-in-all, there are major differences between Hong Kong and Beijing. Some differences i like, some i dislike. In a lot of ways i like the chaos of Beijing, but on some days the hypersensitive type-A personality of Hong Kong is something to be desired.   

I commute about 45 minutes to work. I ride the loudest, oldest, most-likely-to-breakdown bus in all of Beijing. It’s affectionately known as the 653. Maybe that’s because that’s how old it is. When i get on with my iPod in my ears i have to turn the volume up almost all the way to get the music to play over the screeches and bangs as this hunk of metal awkwardly bounces down the road. Each morning before i leave my apartment i have a pretty serious debate in my head about which type of music i will listen to: contemplative, churchy, rock n’ roll, top 40 pop, old skool. Trust me, at 7 a.m. without a drop of coffee in my veins, it’s a tough decision. The other day i chose churchy music and the whole ride to work i thought about this decision and tried to figure out if i liked that decision. I thought about how a lot of people in the churchy music world have things really backwards and that’s frustrating to a lot of people on the outside of the church. I thought about how there’s too many cliches and too much churchy jargon for other people to understand. To be honest, i started getting frustrated with this music that was blaring in my ears because i felt so separated from the culture. But then, in an instant, i remembered the words of a couple of good friends. These guys write a lot of this churchy music that churchy people enjoy and i just love the way they describe what they have the opportunity to do. My friend, Brett Younker, describes his job this way, “I like to write songs that the church could sing.” Such simplicity there. No fanfare, no hoopla, no hype. Just songs that the church could sing. Hype is overrated. My friend, Daniel Bashta, is writing and recording a new album that i think is gonna say some amazing things. As he’s preparing to record, here’s what he wrote on his blog to all of his friends, “Please pray for us that as we capture these songs that somehow and in some way that we would capture just a sound byte of the sound and roar of heaven.” I think that’s cool. Again, no fanfare, no hype, not trying to be captain cool. Just an honest approach at trying to capture something genuine and meaningful. I like it.

So as i continue to bump along in the mornings on the 653 i’ll continue to debate which music will get me ready for the day. This morning was “Sleeping at Last” but that’s only because i needed something mellow so i could do a few emails. Who knows what tomorrow will hold. Maybe i should listen to more churchy music because maybe that will keep that bus from breaking down.