Better, thank you

Thank you, friends and family for cheering me up over the past week. I feel a little better.

I've dealt away with one source of stress - text messages from that guy. No, I didn't hire anyone to kill him. Somehow in my sleep, I've learned to ignore his unpleasant messages and read the other things he has to say, like suggestions and tips he has. I won't make contact with him and I don't look forward to getting his messages, but at least the messages don't drive me crazy me anymore. See? Problem solving works. As long as there's a consciousness to deal with a problem, they get solved one way or another, consciously or unconsciously.

Last night was a little rocky, though. I was really uneasy about waiting outside the hospital for the body of the president's security detail. In the end, we didn't see the body nor the family before we left (at 19h20), but we did see another body - the wrong body. I don't know whose body it was, but it was wheeled out into a van in order to be transported to a funeral home, and everyone thought that was it. Cameras started flashing and film started rolling until the guy from the funeral home said we have the wrong one. I didn't see a hand or any other deceased flesh, since it was covered under a white sheet. But in any case, it was chilling. I don't like those things. I'll take Du Zhengsheng's uncooperativeness over a dead body any day. 啊彌陀佛.

Anchoring today was a mixed bag. Ruiying left me to anchor Taiwanese on my own, again, that heartless man. Thank god Tianen and Zhaoyang came to my rescue and helped me a little bit, otherwise I would have crashed and burned even more horribly. By no means was my delivery smooth today, but it was much, much, MUCH better than it would have been without any help. And Grandma, (GRANDMA who is known for criticizing people and performance more than anything!) even called Dad from Kaohsiung to tell me to call her so that she can tell me "good job!" When I least expected it, she was very encouraging and also gave me some good advice - to find all the different vowels and consonants in Taiwanese and go through all of them in front of a mirror and find the best looking lip shape while pronouncing them. I'll do that. Thank you, Grandma.

After the Taiwanese, I did one hour of Mandarin (which went so so) and 45 minutes of China Airlines news (which also went so so). But before my airplane news was over, the director told me that I am to go back into studio one and cover the 11h00 news for Ruiying until he comes. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. He had overslept, and I ended up doing all of his news today. I don't know what they'll do to him (most likely nothing because the MD just absolutely loves him), but I got out of it a half day off (because his hours and my hours added together was enough to apply for a half day off), more air time, more practice, credit for helping the rest of the crew, credit that he owes me, and possibly a chance for management to reconsider putting us in the anchoring chair early in the morning after getting off a seven-day reporting night shift just a few hours earlier.

Things always seem to go better when expectations are low. Now I will expect that I will never find the keys that I think I lost this morning and will have to request the landlady to re-key the three really expensive locks. Maybe this way they'll turn out.

Going to work at four in the morning, you have to be really careful about where you place your things, including your brain.

Time for bed. I'm getting up at 3h30 again tomorrow.