there was no water again late last night as i went to go brush my teeth. this is the third or fourth time this has happened? i really should've listened to my mother's advice and gotten a few buckets to fill with water just in case. but i thought, "what are the odds of this happening again?" apparently here in changshou, the odds are pretty good. fortunately i only had to brush my teeth. maybe by morning the water will return and all will be right with the world again. i used the leftover egg boiling water to brush my teeth and wash my face. there were little flecks of eggs in the water which i tried to ignore. i went to sleep around 12:30.

i completely forgot about the water situation this morning but quickly remembered when i turned on the faucet and it made a dry hissing sound. using the bathroom was awkward because it meant i couldn't flush. i did try to flush a little bit with the dirty egg cooking water from last night. i filled my small cooking pot with cold water from a pitcher i had in the fridge (this was from a time when i thought boiling the water would make it safe to drink, not realizing there'd be flecks of particles still in the water) and used that to wash my face. i didn't bother shaving, i had a legitimate excuse not to. that was it as far as my morning routine. i seriously hope the water will be back on when i get back home later tonight.

i had some of the sponge cake i bought last night for breakfast, and took the rest into work as a snack. better to eat it all before it gets moldy.

at the bus stop i asked FY if she had water this morning. she did. it's just my apartment building. later at the office i asked my neighbor yuwei. she confirmed we didn't have water. she also told me water stopped for the entire area late last night, but returned this morning, except for our building.

"nihongo o hanashimasu ka?" i said to a girl whom i overheard yesterday say she studied japanese in college. she gasped. i don't think she understood what i said, but she recognized it as japanese. she told me she studied 2 years, but she never paid attention in class, and it interfered with her english learning, which she admit is equally as bad. i surprised myself that i was able to remember some japanese, although i did minor in it at school. i don't really know this girl's name but she catches the bus from my stop as well, sort of nerdy-looking but occasionally comes to work in heels. i don't think she's local because her mandarin pronunciation is pitch perfect. she has a very distintive clear voice, so it wasn't hard to overhear her conversation.

wangyan finally wrote me back after i sent her an e-mail 2 days ago. in hindsight, my friendly message welcoming her back to work might've been misconstrued as creepy fawning. and that's what i thought when she didn't respond. but she wrote back today saying she'd been busy. i noticed she didn't mention anything about what she did during the mid-autumn holiday, and i didn't want to pry any further.

my cold symptoms came back today, i don't know why. i was fine yesterday. maybe the effects of the cold medicine i took monday night was still working there magic come tuesday. but now on wednesday the symptoms are back: sneezing, runny nose, and the occasional cough (which i control through cough drops). fortunately i had my cold medicine with me and took another tablet, this time for daytime. it's kind of like taking a mild hit of speed because now i have plenty of energy plus no more cold symptoms.

by late morning the effects of the cold medicine was in full swing. i felt at the same time tired but full of energy. there's a stillness to everything, and i feel slightly detached from my surroundings. i think the cold medication they gave me is just way too strong. back at home, we tailor our cold drugs to target specific symptoms. the drug i took targets them all, regardless if i have them or not.

after lunch i went out by myself on a walk. it was a clear day, with temperature i'm guessing in the upper 70's. for the first time i could see the mountains behind our construction site, many stripped for its raw materials. maybe one day when i come back those mountains will be gone, reduced to plains.

i almost got to the bend in the road that brings us to the factory, which i'd guess is around 1km away. it was a nature walk of sorts, as i admired all the strange indigenous weeds, none that i could identify. i saw something that looked like an arbor vitae bush but when i got a closer look, it resembled ragweed. then it clicked. could my cold symptoms actually be the result of pollen allergy, and not actually a cold? the one symptom i didn't mention but i have was an itchy throat, which usually means allergies, not cold. but i never sneeze when i have allergies, or not that i remember. in any case, in a few weeks i should be fine, cold, allergy, whatever. i also saw a wagtail, a male grey wagtail to be exact, leucopsis subspecies. funny i only see male birds, never any females.

by the end of the day i was gripped with a sudden depression. i'm not sure what caused it. maybe it was triggered by my solo stroll. even though i've been accepted by the natives, i could never really fit in. which leads me back to FY. the more i hang out with her the more i like her. but my ability to read girls needed recalibrating a long time ago, and i can't figure FY out, especially since she's the same with me as she is with a lot of other guys. i see her with them and i'm jealous for many reasons: besides being closer to her same age, they're also chinese through-and-through. i'm not that. i feel like she deserves somebody whom she can talk with without having to explain things all the time, and especially somebody who's not going to leave the country eventually. i know all the signs of developing a crush and i like to get out while i still can and don't embarrass myself even further.

i ate dinner without any real appetite, using just one arm, while my other arm stayed below the table, too lazy to raise it up. i ate in silence, brooding. i was the last person on the bus and sat in the front seat again. when i got off at the bus stop, i didn't even bother looking back, i pulled out my shirt and walked quickly home.

my house smelled like somebody had came in and taken a dump on the floor somewhere, which is kind of exactly what happened since i wasn't able to flush the toilet this morning. thankfully the water was back on, so i spent the next few minutes furiously cleaning the bathroom.

i changed clothes and went to the track field. being in a bad mood is the perfect time to go running, work out those self-loathing tendencies. still, i kept looking around, maybe hoping FY might show up, but she didn't. i did 10 laps, which is 4000 meters, approximately 2.5 miles in about 25 minutes. i had my music to keep me motivated. i probably had enough endurance to make it 5000 meters, which would be close to 3 miles, my usual distance, but decided to take it easy. i was the second fastest person running, only bested by a speed demon in biker shorts, but he didn't do as many laps as i did (i don't think anyone did). i saw a woman running in half inch heels, not sure what the point of that was. i felt a little better afterwards, walked 2 laps then ran into 2 coworkers (one of my drinking buddies and a guy i chatted with before on the bus a few times) and walked 2 more laps with them. at exactly 8:00 it started to rain a little bit which was the perfect time to go home.