while searching for my mp3 player last night i suddenly realized where it was: in the pocket of my running shorts. unfortunately i sent it through the wash and sure enough, i fished out a wet mp3 player plus headphones from its pocket. i wasn't terribly sad or angry, just felt a tinge of inconvenience. i tried turning it on this morning, no response. i'll give it another day or two to see if it'll come back to life before declaring the device dead. as i recall, i didn't pay too much for this sandisk sansa clip+, something like US$25. it didn't have the best interface but it was simple and did the one thing i needed it to do, which was to play back music. i loved the OLED display and i loved how it can also accept external memory cards (microSDHC). i'm tempted to get the same one if i can find it. [note: after lunch i searched online; found a refurbished 4gb clip+ for US$20. i'll probably but it if my mps player is indeed dead and it's still available on ebay]. in the meantime, i'm in the market for a cheap chinese mp3 player.

once more i came to work today without any breakfast. once more i decided to ignore fengya. if i pretend she's not here in the office, it makes me feel better. a part of me hopes that when her contract expires at the end of the year, she'll decide not to renew it and leave the project.

loren didn't come into work today. i thought i overheard him saying something to mr.lee yesterday about not coming in, but when i asked him he just smiled and said nothing. i think it's weird that he'll just disappear without telling me, shows a lack of empathy which i've found to be quite common amongst some of my coworkers.

i upgraded my PC from XP to windows 7 this morning. later lihui gave me the password to a VPN service he purchased - nydusVPN. it's pretty effective and the servers are surprisingly fast for a VPN. i can get onto facebook and youtube without any problems. there is however one side effect: because it uses a foreign ip address, all connections to my local servers disconnect the instant i go VPN - which includes shared servers and printers. apparently there's no easy way around it.

we were late to lunch so couldn't find a table large enough to fit everyone in our shared department. when i saw yangyi eating by himself, i decided to ditch my other lunch companions and go sit with him instead. i left fengya as well, but i don't know if she picked up on it. if she was too clueless to know i liked her, then maybe she's just as clueless when i'm willfully avoiding her.

the silent treatment continued into the late afternoon. sunmeng came by our area to chat with fengya. maybe she didn't realize it, but that made me miserable. i found whatever excuse i had to go elsewhere - a bathroom break, a visit to the procurement department, hanging out in the copy rooms. when she returned to her desk, she told me asked fengya if i've spoken with her and she said no. sunmeng also sensed a lot of tension in our cubicle area, as everyone seemed to be in a quiet and sullen mood. i told her that sometimes you like someone so much but when they don't like you back you have no choice but to hate her. she was shocked, since a few weeks ago i was singing a different tune. i told her if i had the opportunity, i would move to a different area so i wouldn't have to sit so close to fengya. sunmeng told me something weird though: that fengya has a boyfriend in shanghai. of course i take that with a grain of salt, because a few weeks ago she told me fengya was looking for a boyfriend, and when guo and i used to be friends he told me fengya was single. it doesn't matter though, whatever we had or might've had before can't be salvaged at this point.

everyday there is a rotating flea market around the changshou area. it follows a weird schedule based on which number day it is. mrs.gu told me about it earlier in the week, and i wanted to check it out this weekend, so i asked some of the drivers if they knew anything about it. one guy told me where to go, which bus to talk. when i talked to mrs.gu about it, she expressed some interested in seeing a ganzi (market day) so we decided to go together tomorrow morning to witness one of the larger ones in the area, in the nearby town of shuanglong. there will of course be plenty of photo opps.

of course i skipped the office dinner. i didn't report my absence to fengya, she didn't care anyway. when it came time to leave, i said good bye to mr.lee and herbert, and quietly made my way to the bus. it was raining, which contributed to the overall depressing mood. back in town, i went back to the tailor to pick up my pants. the man there said he forgot to give them to the tailor, and told me to come back tomorrow.

i bought half a pound of duck feet before returning to the apartment. i go there so often, i'm a regular customer now. i made some ramen for dinner before snacking on some duck feet. at 8:00 john skyped me so i can help him with a podcast. he wanted to interview me about the history of my ongoing blog. but first i gave him a tour of the apartment, garish furnishing and all. we finished by 9:00.