Well, I’m down to my last 7 days of living in Shanghai. I still have a number of farewell parties to go and it is difficult and sad sometimes to realize that most of the people I’ve met here I will probably never see again. With tools like Skype and of course email it is easier to keep in touch, but without face-to-face contact it is hard to keep up with everyone.
I’ve always enjoyed living in new and different places and making friends in so many different countries. But it also means that I’ve had to say a lot of goodbyes along the way. I hope I have the chance to see a lot of my friends from Shanghai again but realistically it’s going to be difficult. Perhaps one or two I’ll have the chance to meet here or in Tokyo again. I certainly hope so.
I was surprised today to learn that a colleague of mine knew about this blog. I don’t necessarily hide it from co-workers (it is the internet after all and anyone can see whatever I write if they want), but as it is quite personal content you really have to search to get to it. Or so I thought. Now that I’ve been writing long enough and because I have registered the name “globalflight” in a number of other places, it is quite easy to find my entire presence on the web. Especially if you know my last name, which I purposely don’t post here, this site is the number one hit on Google – i.e. anyone can find it who knows me with about 2 seconds of effort. I know by being out on the internet I choose to expose myself, or at least part of myself, to the world, but it is really so easy now to find out a lot of someone you know with just a click of the button. Have you Googled yourself (or one of your friends) lately?
The movers are coming bright and early tomorrow morning. I think I’ve gotten everything arranged for them so it shouldn’t be so difficult. The daily stuff at work is basically wrapped up now. A few meeting and dinners this week and then I should basically be ready to go. Still have to wait from my paperwork. As mentioned before I’ll be without my passport until the customs clearance and work visa are issued. It’s all a formality now but will take until about the 31st. I’m ready to go. A lot of things are waiting now to be done in Tokyo with the new place and I want to get to work on it.
A lot of paperwork is involved in shipping goods out of China. Fortunately most of it is taken care of by the moving company. But this time my headache is that they take away my passport for three days to do customs clearance. So during those 3 days I can’t apply for a visa at the Japanese embassy or even do something simple like check into a hotel. None of this would be so bad except that I am on a very tight schedule for leaving the country. Oh well, I suppose part of the experience of living in China is learning how to deal with getting out.
Looks like I’ve fixed where I’ll be living in Tokyo come June. I didn’t originally search in this area, but as it turned out the convenience of the location won me over.
Akihabara here I come!
Here is a link to the Wikipedia article on Akihabara.