i went to work at the usual hour, but quickly climbed onboard the bus when i arrived at the stop before having to see anyone. i purposely didn't look, and put in my earbuds so i wouldn't have to listen either. just 36 more working days to go and this emotional ordeal will all be over.

did i say 36 days? add another 30, since pansusu came by my cubicle this morning to ask if i could stay onboard for another month, until the end of july. a part of me is fine with this decision, since i wanted to stay a bit longer in chongqing anyway. i would also get paid an additional month, so that's more money in my pocket for when i finally go home. but another part of me was looking forward to being "demobilized" and then spending the entire month of july traveling in western sichuan, taking photos of mountain wildflowers. i'm just going to have to delay my travel plans until august.

WWY ordered a camera while i was on vacation and today it finally arrived. i wasn't familiar with the sony RX100 but the camera itself felt substantial when i played around with it. it was heavy for one thing, made of some sort of metal. it also had an aperture of f/1.8 (at least at the wide angle range), capable of multiple burstmode shots, and a focus ring around the protruding lens tube. later when i checked the specs i was even more impressed. WWY said something about this is the camera people use to take dSLR quality photos, and i totally concur.

after lunch i chatted with WWY and her friend yangfan. i invited WWY out to dinner tonight but she said she still wasn't feeling well after a night of drinking with some korean coworkers. i saw the contract department leaving together for their walk, so naturally i ignored them. in the 2 months i have left at work, i find myself having to rebuild my social network again for the 3rd time. originally i was very tight with the cost control department (even going on 2 vacation trips with them), until at the end of october when they suddenly completely ignored me. the past few months i've been working myself in with the contract department crowd, but ever since my split with xianglian, i can't bear to be with them anymore. so now i have to find new friends to hang out with again.

i bought a few shirts online and some umbrellas. i paid lihui in cash so he could use his credit card and pay for me online on tmall. i wonder if my foreign american visa credit card would work? maybe there'd be fees. i can't apply for a chinese visa card because i don't have a chinese identity card.

i had a long claims meeting from 3:00 to 6:00. it made the day go by that much quicker. i only got back to my desk when it was almost time to go home. i had a few QQ text messages waiting for me, one of them from xianglian. she said she received my postcard and said she really liked it. i sent that postcard last wednesday from zhangjiajie. i was sort of hesitant about sending it because i didn't quite know what to say without sounding stupid. i wrote about my time spent so far, that there were a lot of tujia restaurants, and that i wish she was there. that last part sounded especially pathetic. but i sent it anyway. i wanted to reply to her QQ message but decided not to say anything. maybe i can pretend i never saw it.

with nothing going on after work, i went straight home. like i did this morning, i got on the bus before anybody else, and buried my head so i wouldn't have to see anyone. i sat next to lihui and we both played with our cellphones. back in town, i changed into my gym clothes and went to the track field to run 4000m. it felt good to feel so bad. i then came home and made some rice porridge for dinner. i spent the rest of the night uploading vacation photos to my qq zone site.