it's about 6:30am in the morning in chongqing and i am on my computer trying to install a patch on my oneplus one phone so it can work with china unicom. long story, but i discovered on friday that oneplus one phones sold overseas (with the cyanogenmod OS) have their modems purposely crippled in china because of licensing issues. the fix is sort of elaborate, involving unlocking the bootloader, rooting the phone, installing a 3rd party recovery, installing oneplus' own oxygenOS, installing the modem patch, then reinstalling cyanogenmod. it's such a hassle, i'm thinking i might be better off if i buy a cheap new phone instead of trying to fix the one that i have.

all of this comes the day sunmeng and i had a big fight. it was of course over wuweiyu, who wanted to come down to qianyinqiao tomorrow (sunday) with her friend yangfan to come and pick up their gifts. i told sunmeng we'd all get together and probably have lunch. sunmeng said she wouldn't go because of WWY, i accused her of being petty, and asked her why should couldn't be nice to WWY for just a day and then never have to see her again. so we mutually gave each other the silent treatment, she watching television, me playing with my phone. later in the early evening she went to the bathroom apparently to cry, then came out and told me she wanted to go back home. that's when we really got into it. i said she was being crazy and a bad person, she said i was immature. i told her if she gets all worked up over something this trivial then how would she deal with a real crisis. she said i was forcing her to do something she didn't want to which shows i don't really care for her at all. at certain points both of us were screaming, i'm sure half of the floor could probably here us. she screamed when she wasn't getting her point across. i screamed when i found out whenever she was texting on her phone it was to get advice from her cousin. i told her i came to china to see if we could make it work, to see if we're compatible. she said she felt the same way, and used the fact that i wasn't able to find an apartment on my own (not speaking the local dialect, not having a phone, basically not understanding the chinese apartment rental system) as a clear sign of my immaturity.

it seems surreal that earlier today everything was going great. i'd decided to rent a room at the haiyou hotel for a month, paid RMB2100. we had wonton for lunch, then chicken fried steak and sweet potato fries for dessert, along with a tofu mango pudding. we then hung out in the mall until we got tired and returned home in the late afternoon. and then just like that, everything broke. i was sure we'd be fighting again, since we were always fighting the last time i was in china. but i was thinking it'd be later down the road, not less than a week in my china stay.

so a few days of bliss followed by a waking nightmare is what it feels like. i regret coming to china, and i wonder if i can return the room, and change my flight ticket, and go back to the US early. it's probably just the anger talking, but i hate it here. it's been a few days and the only thing i managed to do was to secure a place to stay, at a hotel instead of an apartment like i wanted. i still haven't exchanged my money or put anything into the bank, and i still don't have a working phone. none of this is sunmeng's fault, but it adds to the overall misery of this trip. oh, plus it's the rainy season so it's been raining a lot, which is fine, but i think i'm allergic to the plastic handle of my china-bought umbrella and now i have new dermatitis on my hands.

eventually we reached a stalement and sunmeng decided to stay, at least for the weekend. i don't think things will be able to go back to the way they were, but we can at least pretend to be civil. we went out to dinner, she got all dressed up for some reason, but it was pretty cold. neither of us were in the mood to chitchat, found a wonton place, ate dinner, then returned to the hotel.

i woke up in the middle of the night unable to sleep, feeling like i was in bed with a stranger. WWY and yangfan are still coming, but i told sunmeng i wasn't go to meet with them. at this point, i think i'd have a better time with them.