Greetings from GMT + 8:00

Dear friends,

I blog from Shanghai, my new home. Well, it’s not so new, because I’ve been here for about 12 months. But this city is literally my home: I [gasp] recently bought an apartment here. I haven’t actually moved in, since it’s currently being renovated (with the help of my friend Joy), but close enough.

I owe many of you updates on my whereabouts and doings, and so I now rock the blogosphere with my very own blog, to share with you a slice of life from my corner of the world.

To start, I will catch you up on how I ended up in Shanghai, after three years in Tokyo.

The Dreaded Branded Merchandise

I quit my job with Warner last February (2006), and left Tokyo in July, because, well, to be honest, it wasn’t so much based on a burning desire to move to Shanghai or love for my new/current job; I think it was more because I felt that it was time to move on.

The Warner departure was rooted in events that happened almost a year before I actually quit, when the head of our Asia Pac region (my then boss) was given new responsibilities (which means he was canned, basically). And then a few months after that, the president of the division and his No. 2 were canned, along with about 250 others in Burbank. More folks were then let go in Europe, and the mass colonic was complete when the entire non-expat Asia Pac regional staff in Tokyo was let go with exception of my little arse and a finance manager who was transferred. I’m told that this sort of purge is routine and happens every 2-3 years at all the studios. Nevertheless, in spite of my survival, I was demoralized.

I’m also told that schadenfreude is second nature in the entertainment biz, since one person’s pain is another’s gain, as it makes one less person to have to poop on, on one’s way to an office on the Burbank lot. (I’ve only recently understood the meaning of schadenfreude. I sometimes still get it confused with bildungsroman. What can I say, I went to public school.) Yet when my co-workers were fired in Tokyo, I experienced no schadenfreude. This was not due to any empathy with my friends and co-workers, or that I’m some sort of a saint. Rather, it was because pretty much everyone that got fired (i.e. just about everyone but me) received outstanding severance packages, while I received branded merchandise.

You see, 2 weeks after the mass purge, I received my holiday gift from the studio chieftains. It was the dreaded branded merchandise, a gold-plated Bugs Bunny pen. One might think that it’s the thought that counts, but gifting deciphers tea leaves in Hollywood, it is the One True Org Chart, where the quality of one’s gift reveals one’s place in the scheme of things. (There’s a great podcast from KCRW’s The Business about Hollywood gifting.) The year before, I received a nice set of teacups that took a moment of thought on the part of the gift giver and a personal assistant’s trip to Crate & Barrel. But this time, I got branded merchandise that took all but a tick of the pen on the standard-issue company gift catalog. Bugs Bunny never looked so heinous. And thus I started looking for a new job.

I Like My Oatmeal Lumpy

I was feeling down on Warner on the heels of the Bugs Bunny pen, but I was also down on Japan around the same time because, despite my love for the place, despite my missing it dearly even now, I think my time was up. This feeling manifested itself in my obsession, in the months leading up to my decision to leave Tokyo, to get up off my seat on the Mita subway train and lead the sweaty salarymen in the Humpty Dance. I’m not sure why this song/dance in particular, but I suppose that’s the way things are with obsessions, no rhyme or reason.

I felt this same inexplicable urge back in 1997, the last time I spent quite a bit of time in Japan and felt ready to leave. Only back then, I wanted to do a Michael Jackson lock-and-pop robot thing with a leg kick in the subway train to “Bad”, that pop masterpiece with the classic chorus, “I’m bad, I’m bad, I’m really really bad”.

As much as I loved Tokyo, I always felt a bit like a burn victim, wrapped in heavy gauze. Living in Japan as a non-Japanese and not speaking much Japanese (admittedly my own fault) is a filtered, indirect experience, like touching and seeing through gauze. I never felt fully able to delve into Tokyo life beyond the surface. Sure, I made some lifelong friends there and my Japanese skills got to the point where I could make passable conversation. But expressing myself in my full wit, charm and glory (uh ... such as they are) was just not possible.

The difference between the gauzed experience in Tokyo and my current life in Shanghai is stark. For example, in only my first few weeks in Shanghai, I argued spittle-for-spittle with locals who cut in front of me in the taxi queue and flirted with a nurse awhile getting treatment for constant diarrhea (I suppose, more than language ability, flirting while flatulent speaks to my massive wit and charm). Not that living in Shanghai is without its warts, but I feel less incomplete and invisible and bandaged here.

I suppose having to endure life in Tokyo as a burn victim bottled up quite a bit of steam, to the extent that I felt ready to jump up and down and let the good people on the Mita line know that I was there, in their midst, a crazy son-of-a-bitch with such a bad itch that the gauze had to come off. And hence the urge to do the Humpty Dance with the salarymen.

Shanghai

In the middle of feeling sorry for myself, about my job and Japan, I got a call from an ex colleague about an opportunity in Shanghai. It all happened very quickly, from flying to L.A. on 3 hours’ notice for an interview to accepting the job 2 weeks later, and then packing up and moving to Shanghai a few months after that.

And so here I am, in crazy Shanghai, and there’s so much more to tell. I hope you will keep checking back for more.