K: Murphy is Chinese

If all you really need to do in a day is knock out a box full of email, then the internet will be down. If you have a half an hour and you really want to shower before going to class, there's no water. If you are planning to have dinner on the table at 7, the taxi driver doesn't know how to get your house (even though he said he did when you got in.) If you've projected plans for your day and accomplishing a task is contingent on one factor, guarantee you've set yourself up for failure. I've heard of Murphy's Law, I've given credit to Murphy for a mishap here and there, I've laughed at a few of his little pranks, and then I met Murphy... in China.

This I know is true: In China, everything takes longer than you think it will.

Today. Actually, this story begins four weeks ago... speaking of taking longer... when we rode our bikes to the other side of the city to meet some friends for lunch. The weather turned bad so we decided to leave our bikes at friends' home and taxi back to ours. Until today weather and free time refused to play nice together.

Today, the three of us: N, A (our teammate), and I taught class at 8:00am. Class lasts 1.5 hours and on Tuesdays we're all finished teaching at 9:30. We returned to the office and worked on some grading/lesson planning, and two hours passed unnoticed. Sidenote: A and I like to get our run in before lunch. N thought we should skip it in favor of an early lunch and an afternoon bike ride. So we put the plan into action figuring an hour for lunch at a local restaurant (yes, that's quick... i told you everything takes longer in China), a few minutes to change clothes, 45 minutes to taxi to Ningda, 15-30 minutes to chat/get bikes ready to ride, and 1.25 hours to bike home. what time is it? 3:15, at the latest. Still time to tackle that inbox, finish the lesson for next week, make the dinner that didn't get made last night because the taxi driver... don't get me started, and read those assigned pages of master's work.

Remember the contingency thing? Lunch, change, taxi went off without a hitch; we were even twelve minutes ahead of schedule when we reached Ningda. (Type A? Nope.) Now, we've just got to wait for the baomu (housekeeper) to come let us into our friend's house (she's teaching) and we'll be on our way. 2:00, no baomu. 2:30, no baomu. 3:00, no baomu... you see where this is going, but lucky for us we had... UNO. Around 4:00, we figure we might as well wait for our friend to come home. We visit for a few (that was in the original plan), ride down to the man with the airpump and get air in the neglected tires, make a couple of stops to accomplish something on a to-do list whether or not it was today's list, figure we may as well eat while we're out, and head home. Home at last, 7:30pm and too tired to do anything that really needs to be done.

Even so, we figure we've got ol' Murph beat. We know his secret ambition is to get us all bent out of shape, and he may have won a victory here and there in the past, but not today. We found the bright side, time together and a topic for a post. =)