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I am communicating with Yang via Weixin (WeChat app in English) because this is how adults in China communicate when not in the same room. Even sometimes when in the same room. Yang tells me that she needs to go to Guangzhou over the weekend for work but that she will be back before I go to Singapore for my half marathon. I tell her fine, but that’s a long time to be in Guangzhou. She says only a few days. I say I leave for the marathon on May 30, no April 30. Oh, she says. Weixin, or no Weixin, there are communication gaps. ...

I have the afternoon free so I pick up Aidan and Lydia from school. Their school is very close to the apartment we lived in when we first got to Beijing in 2005. In some ways those days were simpler before what was unknown became known and then unknown again. Our apartment, which we call Chaowaimen after the name of the building, was changing tenants so I brought Lydia and Aidan by for a visit. ...

I am sitting in Starbucks noticing my hands are shaking. I wonder when that started. I wonder why that started. My mind flies back in time. Back to the last time I laughed. I mean an actual uncontrolled laugh. Not a controlled, “I can see how that could be funny” laugh. It was 14 years ago. I was in a u-haul truck with my brother moving from my first life to my purgatory life. My other friend was at my soon to be old home waiting for me. He needed to use the restroom but could not get in until we got there and we were a good 10 minutes away. I could just see him hop side to side waiting for us trying to defer the urgency so that it didn’t become an urgent situation. And I lost it. Just busted up without a hint of control. For a second anyway. ...

Yang and I are with the kids in downtown Seoul wondering where our hotel is. The only thing we are sure of is we don’t know where it is. I am wondering around the corner like a bird with a clipped wing looking for a wifi signal while simultaneously yelling at Elisa not to play with the traffic. Eventually I give up and go into the cramped coffee shop, order an Americano, and slurp wifi. ...

In is 8:30am on Sunday morning I am sitting in Starbucks having my venti coffee and reading the Chronicle on my tablet. I see Yang’s mom walking towards me on her way into our apartment complex. I think for a moment about whether I should call out to her our just make eye contact which is my normal social outreach. She notices me and walks over. She asks me if I’m cooking today and I say yes, I will make something for St. Patrick’s Day. She then asks me if I think the kids will like “your food” as she calls it. It is a rhetorical question. Before I can answer, she states that she will make some Chinese food for dinner as well. ...

I am at a massive goodbye team members and welcome team member’s lunch that occurs at the end of every release. There is about to be a toast of plum juice when my cell phone rings. It is Yang. She sounds weak as she tells me she can’t move her arm. I imagine she is on the slope at Chongli, a three hour drive away, where she went for one last snow boarding run. I wonder how in the country where I am illiterate I can get help to her. Then she tells me she’s on the way to the hospital with the snowboard instructor driving her car. I go into Doctor on TV mode and ask her questions about the injury. Is there blood? Bruising? What part of the arm? Any other part of her body hurt? What did she hit when she fell? From her description it sounds like a separated shoulder. I go back to the lunch and the toasting and the spicy intestines which I do not eat. ...

I am inching downwards into the IKEA parking lot when I notice the car in front of me has two large Chinese flags as bumper stickers. Large enough that one covers the left side of the trunk hub and the other covers the right side. Because of the size one cannot but help notice them. And then I notice the car is a Honda Accord and that explains everything. I went to IKEA to pick up some home furnishings thinking it wouldn’t be crowded because of Chinese New Year. I was wrong. Even though the rest of Beijing felt like the city had exhaled its population, IKEA was packed. My first stop, preordained in IKEA’s layout, was the sofas and being that I’ve never really been happy with our couches in Beijing I set out to finally get one I actually like. I know, living large. IKEA Beijing, being the largest IKEA outside of Sweden, has plenty of couches all of which, by the time I arrived, had people sitting on them. This was remarkable because I arrived at the couches 10 minutes after the store had opened. Even more remarkable was that quite a few people appeared sound asleep. ...

Some middle age men hit the lottery with the whole midlife crisis thing. First, they don’t have a midlife crisis. In fact, midlife finds them confident in who they are. Midlife finds them understanding the true meaning of freedom, which is accept yourself and to be your true self. But this isn’t the lottery. The lottery comes when their wife’s own midlife crisis turns her into a super fit cougar. A super fit cougar who decides to get a boob job. Now, that’s hitting the midlife lottery. ...

Two years ago almost to the day I lost my ATM card and the experience of getting a replacement was such a hassle I swore I would never let it happen again. Until a couple weeks ago. It is pretty easy to lose an ATM card here as most of the machines spit out the card at a remarkably slow pace that for some reason reminds me of a tractor. Both times I lost my card I was stressed out about something and I’m sure I just grabbed the withdraw and walked away leaving my card to eject into an invisible hand. After realizing I lost my card and checking the cash bins near the ATM machine it was time for me to solicit Yang’s help and go to the bank. One of the things I dislike the most about living here is its difficult for me to do any kind of complicated transaction without someone’s help and in general I tend not to like to ask for help. ...

I stand up to get some water to wash down my lunch and I feel a bit dizzy and not for the first time in that day. I’ve had a bit of a cold and a Beijing smog fueled cough and I’m thinking now I might really be coming down with something. That and I was up at 3:45am to watch the 49ers NFC Championship Game. So I decide it is time to go home for the day and put the quarters into the machine again tomorrow. ...