A privilege, called … life!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’ He chortled in his joy. Good on you, Lewis.

Today I begin a new life. I will look upon all things and see the wonder in them. My clothing? I own three pairs of trousers, about eight T-shirts (my teaching job in downtown Shanghai has no dress code) and one pair of shoes, Adidas trainers. Oh, and one pair of slippers. That’s all I need. To blazes with materialism; less is more.

I will greet each day with sheer gratitude. Transport costs? Next to nothing. I do not own a car and owning a car in Shanghai is madness. You have to pay for a special license to be able to drive on the ring roads, the traffic makes Jo’burg’s ring road at 7.30am look like one oke on a bicycle in the middle of the Karoo. The inner city’s transport system of subways and buses (cheap) and taxis (reasonable) is so good you just don’t need a car, which comes with endless hassles and expenses. I seldom wait more than one minute for a taxi. And besides, I walk to the school where I teach. No work-related travel costs. A brisk half hour huff puff past the Chinese in the parks where willow trees trail and thoughtfully reflect on Confucius in ponds. The Chinese sway and genuflect as they practice Tai Chi or waltz to Strauss and Chopin skirling from a CD player. The walk is finished off by six flights of stairs to my office. I totter to my desk gasping zao shang hao!, good morning, to my Chinese colleagues who cannot understand why, in winter, after taking off my heavy backpack crammed with laptop, power cable, books, snacks, mineral water, etc, I have to pull off my jacket and sit with just a T-shirt on, steaming from the brisk walk. I go at a cracking pace for the weight loss.

I shall not bitch. I often slip on this one. We all seem to like to have a good ol’ moaning session. My lunch and breakfast at the school is for free. Just dig them chopsticks into the tofu and funny green veggie stuff which I still don’t know the English name for. Free food? There is something to be grateful for.

I shall laugh, for it is good for the soul, It infects all around me with grins and chortles, faces wrinkling upwards with flashes of teeth and sparkling eyes. Ah, eyes were made to sparkle, were they not? To wit: the children I teach. I am always scratching about for new games. The latest is to stick a blindfold on a child. My blindfold is way cool; it is also a mask with dopey eyes.

The child then catches someone in the class and then:

1) The blindfolded child touches the giggling captive’s face and has to figure out who he or she is in a roaring class of about 38 twelve-year-olds. Or

2) The captor asks the captive questions in English until the captive is identified. Rule: You can’t ask the captive his or her name.

Another variation is to give each child a card from a pack of playing cards. The child who gets the red ace has to be blindfolded. Gambling and lucky numbers run deep in the Chinese soul. The tension rises to tittering crisis point as I go from child to child and he or she flips up his card to see it is not the red ace with a squeal of relief. The winner is blindfolded and has to stand in front of the blackboard. I ask him a question about something in the classroom. How many lights in the classroom? What is the colour of the boy’s pencil bag who is sitting in front of you? What is the colour of the girl’s jersey sitting behind you? Correct answers get points for his team.

I shall live in the now as the likes of Eckhart Tolle’s tremendous book The Power of Now has taught me. Though I may label my wife and I as displaced South Africans, wondering where on earth we will take root and spend our twilight years, I will dismiss those thoughts and be here, now, certain as the air I breathe, present to the sunlight falling on my body as I write this near the window of our tiny apartment on the 22nd floor. Present to the fact I have good health, a great job. Present to my ability to stand back and reflect on my emotions, and know, therefore, that I am not my emotions or my labels. I need not identify myself as them. My self is far deeper than that, runs to the core of this twinkling, miraculous universe we all participate in, come from and to which we will return.

And oh, I have read Og Mandino.

So to the Chinese censors out there examining my blogs, put this one in your smoke and pipe it. I mean, swipe this one in your Coke and Skype it, whatever.

Why so happy? Maybe just because the sun has come out in Shanghai after a week or more of peasoup. And we can go to the huge Century park for free if we just take along a bag of recyclable garbage each, instead of paying 30 RMB each. Go stand in awe of the Chinese love for flowers and topography. I’m a Jo;burg boykie and love endless blue days. I’ll send you okes some pictures of the park. Gotta go now. Sunshine is calling. Chook, don’t forget the sarmies.