Things That Are Unexpected

Gang and I are browsing the latest news and pictures about Sandy, which turned New York City and its neighborhood into an empty area overnight. Friends on the east coast have been updating their status on Facebook and Weibo, such as "out of power" and "on vacation", etc. We luckily are enjoying sunshine in California and have access to electricity, water and internet, but many people have their normal lives interrupted by the hurricane. They may plan to celebrate their birthday or anniversary tonight, or have already invited friends and relatives over for weddings on Monday, or need to close a big deal with overseas partners as soon as possible. However unexpected natural disasters prevent them from following original plans, and force them to go for alternatives - stay in the dark, read or play board games by candlelight while waiting for Sandy's pass.

I always view myself an organized person with strict agenda of getting things done at different times. Unexpected situations can be very annoying. Small changes to plans are tolerable: such as one more problem set due this week, another party to go tonight, or new paper topics. Some changes, though big, leave enough room for me to react and therefore are easy to accept as well, such as marriage and new jobs.

What can be really troublesome is big sudden changes. Last year I went on a field research with five classmates and a professor from Princeton University. We spent three days in Namibia and then went to South Africa, where my luggage were stolen the night before we were about to leave. Everything seemed to change overnight. For all the past two months, I collected data from all the SARB MPC reports, surveys and other database, recorded information through interviews with local government officials and entrepreneurs during the field trip, and wrote my paper day and night, in hope to finish most of the paper by the end of the month. Suddenly my laptop and interview notes were stolen without a copy of my paper or excel files saved online. In other words, I had to repeat the work that I'd already spent two months on. What's worse, my passport was taken away as well, which meant I did not only need a new passport but also a new US visa to go back. Without a penny in my pocket, I was worried that I would spend weeks here miserably and missed all the courses in the rest of the semester without a laptop to either continue to work on my paper or download online readings and lecture notes for other courses. Luckily, with the help from alumni and friends, I received both my travel document and visa in a week, and finally got back. But I remember when I was told by the US consulate that they couldn't issue visas on a Chinese travel document and my only choice was to go back to China to get a new passport and then a US visa there, I did start to plan how to take the rest courses in China and how long should I postpone my graduation in case I couldn't get enough credits by the end of the year.

Sudden disasters brought challenges, but also made us feel better about our lives when they were over. I was stressed by all the qualifying exam and job search stuff before I left for Africa. But after all these happened, I only felt lucky that I didn't wake up when the guy was lurking into my room and thus protected myself from any physical hurt; and I found it so unworthy to worry about things like jobs and exams when I was facing the danger of deferment. I guess that's the biggest thing I learned about things that are unexpected: they remind us what we should be grateful of.