At Last, All the Various Delays Have Been Settled

All Kinds of Procras——————tination Have Finally Been Resolved

This summer, all sorts of things that should have been finished long ago, or should have been started long ago, kept getting delayed… delayed…

First is my magnificent thesis. In the plan, by this moment it should have reached the final-draft stage, but the reality is that the reading project has not even systematically begun yet… I can only buckle down in the next week or two! (Of course… even during the period of idleness, there was not absolutely no progress; at least I did think about some questions…) This matter was delayed for about a month and a half.

Second is my wonderful property certificate. This property originally belonged to the municipal land and resources bureau. It should originally have been transferred at the end of June, and we had long since gone to the municipal bureau to handle the transfer. We were told that the certificate could be issued in 20 working days. Who would have known that in early July the city said that this property had been transferred to the Haidian District land and resources bureau, so they returned the materials and had both buyer and seller go retrieve them and then go handle it in the district instead. We obeyed and went, but the district said that the city was supposed to transfer the files over, but… “they are in the process of being transferred”… It was said that the archives were being rebound, reviewed, photographed, and so on, and that it simply could not be handled in the short term… (But when the city returned the application, it said that as long as we went to the district, it could be handled right away.) This caused us to make several futile round trips, and the seller came from Shandong every time (Shandong people really are brisk and decisive when they do things). In the end, this batch of files was transferred back and forth for two months before it finally got over there, and we at last got the matter settled last week. By the way, the Haidian District land and resources bureau is really quite efficient: the property certificate can be picked up on the same day, on the spot. I also don’t know what the municipal bureau is doing if it takes 20 working days to issue a certificate—printing one clearly takes not even 20 seconds… This matter dragged on for a full two months.

Third is my miraculous renovation project. The original completion date was set for July 26, but after additions and subtractions, delays and dawdling, it unexpectedly dragged on for a full month. In the end, when it came time for us to make the payment, we arranged a time with the manager. After making appointments for three or four days, he stood us up five or six times in a row (sometimes he couldn’t come at noon and rescheduled for the evening, but still didn’t show up). When I called to urge him and said we were about to return to Shanghai, he was instead quite self-righteous, as if we were the ones trying to renege on the bill… Fortunately, we finally settled the account before Mom’s train left today. (By the way, the train ticket was originally supposed to be for yesterday, but recently there has been a peak in student travel, tickets were tight, and we couldn’t get one, so only today could we go back. It seems as though it had been arranged just right for that manager…) This matter dragged on for a full month.

Finally, one course from last semester had not yet had its grade released, and only today was it finally posted. My grades for the first three years of university have finally been set—my GPA is 3.47… I suppose that’s passable? If last semester my classmates had not collectively gone into a frenzy, getting into the top 60% should not be a problem, right~~?

Although everything has been delayed, it is all proceeding nicely. As long as I can successfully secure graduate-study recommendation, I can leisurely live the life of a recluse and look forward to the future. Of course, what if I fail to secure it? Last time Teacher Yu also asked this question. If by some chance I can’t secure a place at Peking University, then surely one of the other schools on Zhongguancun Avenue—Tsinghua, Renmin, Beijing Institute of Technology, Minzu, and so on—will have a spot I can get into, right? As long as I can stay in Zhongguancun, that’s enough. Taking another step back, if I can’t get into any school at all, I can still leisurely be a “people’s philosopher” just the same, since I’ve already built my base in Zhongguancun~

August 27, 2007

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Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.