Come With Us, Now

Cooped-up in the Novatel San Yuan. Have been here from 9:30AM for a training and will remain till quitin’ time.  I’ve driven by this place many hundreds of times but had never entered.  I hadn’t been missing much.  It reminds me of one or another aspirational hotel from the nineties that for one reason or another have never had an upgrade.  Brazil, which I recently visited had its share of these joints. 

I rendezvous with two colleagues outside and we all agree:  It’s a lovely day in Beijing.  What can you say?  We all seem to know its' temporal, fragile.  The big buildings on the north east corner of San Yuan Qiao all crowd us in but regardless there are flowers on the trees, ad few of the trees miraculously have bees and you can smell pollen in the air. 

I am exhausted.  The material we’re covering is interesting.  And I have no choice but to stand behind my chair and do silly stretches to keep myself awake.  There is a spread of obligatory hotel-food outside and it is unappealing.  But the vat of black coffee, that has my attention and I hit on it over and over, draining it and asking the bored young lady who is standing at our beck and call outside the room, to kindly go and refill it. 

Lunch is a three-course meal that is entirely unnecessary.  No one wants to have their heaping, unappealing salad and soup, before an entrée and dessert.  But there it is in front of you and indeed, I’m hungry.  We all order double espressos at the end of the meal.  Now, my 2:00AM wake up is going to become a problem. All of my oxygenated blood heads to my stomach.  Physical claws of sleep climb my shoulders to lay their silken talons into my shoulders and my cerebellum. “Come with us, now John.”  I notice I’ve been noticed, nodding.  That’s not appropriate. I stand.  More stretches.  More silly pacing and twisting.  The claws receded but I see them sitting there at the base of the chair waiting for me should I relax in any way, whatsoever. 

Monday, 04/01/19