This is either an exciting or terrifying point in one's life depending on your viewpoint. I've decided I'm not huge on China. My plan A required living here to learn Mandarin, my plan B was more school. Unfortunately my trip to DC made it apparent that before going on to more school I'll need to spend time abroad learning a langauge. So now I'm left back at square one. After coming to terms with this life quickly went from exhilarating to fairly terrifying... for a minute. Maybe a hot minute. At the moment I'm sitting in the middle bunk bed on the left wall of a sleeper cabin in a Chinese slow train surrounded be Chinese people eating strange foods. I ask myself, what is it I want to do with my life? Where do I want to go? Who do I want to be? All there is to go off of is a few ethical requisites and an image in my mind. A friend of mine summed up my goals quite succinctly not too long ago: “Nylon wants to be James Bond”. A fairly uncanny assessment.
Pop culture today is all about anti-heros. Tony Soprano, Don Draper, they're all just people. Go back a few decades though and your male lead was superhuman. For some it was over the top. James Bond though is nuanced enough to wherein he's a person, just the epitome of one. The quintessential man, he can assess and ameliorate any situation. James Bond is worldly, cultured, he's seen and done more cool things than you can shake a stick at. Nobody can seize the day like 007. Most importantly though, James Bond does not put ballin' before what's right. His actions are almost wholly dictated by what is best “for Queen and country”. So why not?
I hold no delusions of being a CIA operative, that's more than a bit silly. It's not silly, however, to try and find a field of work that encompasses both Bond's particular nature of ballin' and his brand of nationalistic altruism. Another component of my Bond analogy is that, while I've never read Ian Fleming's books, it seems that Bond didn't set out to become 007. You can tell that he worked hard, did the right thing and got a little lucky. So maybe I shouldn't set out to become something in particular, maybe it would wiser to set a general trajectory, focus on putting one foot in front of the other and let fate decide where my cards will fall. Exhilarating.
Here's a few pictures of the Chinese slow train.
Pop culture today is all about anti-heros. Tony Soprano, Don Draper, they're all just people. Go back a few decades though and your male lead was superhuman. For some it was over the top. James Bond though is nuanced enough to wherein he's a person, just the epitome of one. The quintessential man, he can assess and ameliorate any situation. James Bond is worldly, cultured, he's seen and done more cool things than you can shake a stick at. Nobody can seize the day like 007. Most importantly though, James Bond does not put ballin' before what's right. His actions are almost wholly dictated by what is best “for Queen and country”. So why not?
I hold no delusions of being a CIA operative, that's more than a bit silly. It's not silly, however, to try and find a field of work that encompasses both Bond's particular nature of ballin' and his brand of nationalistic altruism. Another component of my Bond analogy is that, while I've never read Ian Fleming's books, it seems that Bond didn't set out to become 007. You can tell that he worked hard, did the right thing and got a little lucky. So maybe I shouldn't set out to become something in particular, maybe it would wiser to set a general trajectory, focus on putting one foot in front of the other and let fate decide where my cards will fall. Exhilarating.
Here's a few pictures of the Chinese slow train.
No nuclear weapons allowed aboard the train
Hallway on the train. The peon section. Six bunks per berth.
14 hours later we arrive Nanjing from Tianjin. That's out train on the left. It's basically the Chinese greyhound. Someone else booked these tickets and I feeling like there was a CRH (bullet) train that does the journey and we didn't spring for it. I'm trying not to think about it though. Try and play Where's Waldo with the FSU student in the picture.
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