Every opportunity is a crisis.
Hey y'all. Here's the pickle I'm in at the moment I'm writing this: in less than 4 hours, I will be taking a bus to Tegel Airport in Berlin. From there on, I'll be flying to Amsterdam where I will be in transit for about 10 hours. I will then board a plane to Bejing, China - ETA 12h30 local time, that's another 10 hours of flying. Then I'll be in transit for another 4 hours before boarding yet another plane to Qindao (700km southeast, give or take) where I will be picked up at the airport by a local liaison and driven by cab to a club where I will do a soundcheck followed later that very same night by a 2-hour dj-set in which I will perform the role of 'master of ceremony' for a US-based DJ I've never met before ( Thankfully he seems to be a nice guy and mailed me to say that everything will work out just fine).
Sounds like a burdening experience? Wait till you hear the punchline. I will be doing all this by my lonesome because my good friend Grizzly Adams was banned from Chinese soil for a few years after politely declining to kiss the ass of the Embassy Witch that was pissing in his face while screeching with evil laughter and scratching her scurvy skull with boney fingers. So Monday was definitely not a good day for us: not for him because he's been working hard as fuck to get to the point where people want to bring him all the way across the planet to play a dj-set - not good for me because he was the man with the plan, whereas I was the man drowning in financial quicksand trying to keep his brain from falling apart on the streets of Wedding.
So my personal preparations for this trip have been a bit minimalist, what with my life currently spread out around Berlin stuffed in cardboard boxes - money is short, time is fleeting and to add to the consternation, it is now starting to look like my camera has been stolen from the apartment where I am currently sitting, along with the laptop of one of the residents. I am filled with disgust and despair. I don't know what tomorrow will bring but the weather forecast predicts one giant clusterfucked shitstorm over my head and something called a thundershower in Bejing. So to wrap things up: it is now 6 hours till take-off and I don't really have the energy or clarity of mind to figure out how I'm supposed to feel about leaving to China for 10 days knowing that my only source of income is sitting in a pawnshop in Neuköln.
'The Chinese character for opportunity and crisis are the same' - a great motivational quote for when hardship presents itself. Unfortunately, this piece of wisdom works both ways - what started out as a great opportunity has at this point transformed into a crisis that is cracking my skull open from the inside out.
PS: in China there is no Tumblr, FB or Twitter so don't expect any updates. Besides, with the good fortune that this trip has brought us so far, I expect to either end up in a Chinese forced labor camp or wake up in a hotel with a bag of dry ice over a hole in my back and a note in Cantonese saying 'thanks for your kidney'.