Micah Sittig

In 2020 I worked on improving my mental health and it yielded a lot of improvement, but I still struggle with moving forwards sometimes. Inspired by Jason Kottke's list, these are some of the things that made me look forward to each day in 2021:

Podcasts: Marketplace Morning Report, The Water Margin Postcast, Topa Talk, 故事.fm, Out of System.

Youtube channels: Elevate Yourself, TronicsFix, Baumgartner Restoration, Dashner Designs and Restorations, Grian's Minecraft series.

Volleyball: Coaching for OVS and USYVL, playing with and watching Charlotte at Nordhoff and Rise, listening to Out of System podcasts, watching NCAA games on Youtube and in person.

Hiking: Been busy this fall with teaching, sports and being involved in four schools, but the prospect of getting outdoors still makes me wake up excited for the day. Highlights were Condor Trail section 1 with Chris, Pine Mtn → Piedra Blanca with OVS, and a short but epic jaunt through Mono Pass off Little Lakes in the Eastern Sierra with a great group of guy friends.

Teaching: I teach two subjects I love to kids who show me a lot of grace and kindness, with colleagues who support and encourage me.

My daughters: Each one unique, full of curiosity and creativity, deserving of my care and sacrifice.

Jodi: Stands by me at my lowest lows, pushes me to my highest highs. Waking up next to her each day is a privilege.

After many years of silence and spending most of my online time on Youtube, Facebook and Reddit, I'm peeking my head out to say that I've moved back to California, Ojai specifically. I'm married with three daughters, the oldest being in high school now. For work I'm teaching science and math at the Ojai Valley School, where I live with my family in faculty housing.

Also wanted to share that I've been playing a fun little game recently called Wordle. It's an online word puzzle game that you can only play once a day, so it gives me something to look forward to but doesn't take too much of my time. Here is a screenshot of today's (spoiler!) puzzle:

Another game I've been playing quite a bit the last few years is Minecraft. In terms of the user experience it reminds me of playing Lego with my siblings when we were younger; constructive, creative and collaborative. I've been playing less the last couple years because it really is a timesink, but it was fun when I had the time.

Tonight I went to a dance charity event put together by WFLMS students with performances by dance clubs from seven other schools in Shanghai, all for sending students/funds to the Inner Mongolia tree-planting trip this year. After a slow start (sexy dancing? er), Nanmo Middle/High School really turned it up a notch and the rest of the show was awesome. There was even locking, and one dubstep number. Very nice evening, totally worth the price of admission and for a good cause.

The students even prepared an impressive promotional video, filmed in the WFLMS dance room, and put it on Youku:

Even though we've moved back to California, we still have a foot or two planted in China, and always will. One thing I regret not doing when we left was turning on international roaming for one or both of our China Mobile cellphones, as I'm unable to receive texts or calls to my old number. One way this has been annoying is that some websites, like those for online banking, will send confirmation SMS messages for performing certain services or allowing you to log in with your cellphone. Since I won't be able to go back to China to turn on international roaming anytime soon, I started looking around for solutions to this problem.

One solution that has worked out well so far is Wo-call. Wo-call is a service offered by the Hebei branch of China Unicom, which offers you a Chinese (Hebei) cellphone number that can receive calls and text messages through its app. By going through the registration process on their website, charging RMB 50 after being redirected to the China Unicom website, and downloading the Wo-call app from Google Play, I now have a working Chinese cellphone number. I changed my registered phone number in various accounts to the new number, and I've now successfully received texts from Alipay, ICBC and CTrip. This will be my stopgap measure until I return to China and visit a China Mobile office to get my old number back.

Another minor problem has presented itself after I switched to using a Mac and somehow messed up the security preferences in Firefox so that I can't use plugins on the Alipay homepage to login securely. Also, the other day Jodi was buying train tickets on her own computer and needed to use online payment from ICBC, but she doesn't have the software installed to use my ICBC secure USB dongle.

The solution in both cases was to log in using QR codes! I just opened up the relevant app (Alipay, ICBC), switched to QR scanning mode, scanned and confirmed that it was me by pressing a button on my phone, and the browser logged me in. Pretty convenient, and a feature I wish more websites had.

This past week I've gone through a long and tortuous journey, getting back an ATM card that I left in a grocery store ATM. Read on for the sordid details.

Two weekends ago I was sent by my school to an IB workshop in Singapore. The night before I left, I dropped by the grocery store to shop for a few last-minute purchases and to withdraw some cash from the Bank of Communications ATM in the lobby using my Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) debit card. The plan was to take cash with me to Singapore, and leave the debit card home with Jodi in case she needed more cash.

Later that night as I finished packing my things, I opened my wallet to take out the debit card and found that it wasn't there. I immediately recognized that I had left it in the supermarket ATM after withdrawing the cash. I told Jodi, scrapped together as much cash to leave behind as I could, and made plans for the next morning.

At the airport, I called the ICBC customer service hotline and froze my account. I confirmed that the balance was correct, and was assured by the customer service representative that I could re-activate my card at any ICBC branch, including subway branches, once I had retrieved my card from the ATM. An hour later I was on a flight to Singapore for a four-day stay.

When I got back, I visited the ICBC branch near my school to try and withdraw some cash with my passport. No luck: no cash would be forthcoming without the card. The best they could do was print out a piece of paper with my bank account information that would prove the card belonged to my passport number. I was getting nervous because it was the beginning of the month and various things were coming due: rent, credit card bill, various utility bills, etc.

The next step was to find the card. I called the hotline for Bank of Communications and a helpful woman pointed me to the Xintan Rd branch of BoC as being responsible for this particular ATM. Discouragingly, she told me that cards like mine were usually kept for 4 days at the maximum--my trip had been exactly four days long--but that there was a chance mine was still there. I called the branch the next morning and was able to confirm that my card was probably in their possession, so in the afternoon I left work 30 minutes early and arrived at the bank 10 minutes before closing time. Using the printout from ICBC and my passport, I was able to claim my card. Being ever a scientist, I did not wait to activate the card before trying it at the ATM of the same branch where it was promptly confiscated for being frozen, necessitating another trip to the window for retrieval.

The afternoon of the next day, I took my passport to the ICBC branch in the Xujiahui subway station expecting a quick activation and finally being able to withdraw some cash. But no, the tellers were unable to activate my card because it had no personal information attached to it; this account was opened for me by my second employer in Shanghai back in 2006, and they had not given my phone number or address to the bank. The bank branch's standard procedure for unlocking frozen cards was to confirm phone number and address, and since my card did not have this information teller would require me to go to the bank where my account was opened, the central branch in Pudong, and "confirm my information". To me this was ludicrous: if my account had no personal information attached to it, how would the other branch even be able to confirm my info any better than this branch? Besides, the most important piece of personal information, my passport number, was attached to the account, and would be easily confirmable with my physical passport.

Without leaving the desk, I called the service number for ICBC and talked to a customer service representative. I hoped that the service rep would be able to guide the teller through unlocking my card without requiring a trip to Pudong. But even after handing the phone over to the teller twice and even escalating to a manager, the people behind the service number were not able to wrap theri heads around and solve this problem.

Finally, while I was busy on my phone, one of the tellers at the bank branch got on the desk landline to her boss at ICBC. After consulting with the boss, she received authorization to release my card without confirming my personal data. After a few simple questions about my last transactions, she handed the card off to another teller who worked on the computer for a few minutes and unfroze the account. There was a pause because the bank account is under my complete name, including middle names, and the input field was not long enough so my account name has always been SITTIGMICAHSTEVENSTU with a missing ART at the end, which is obvious if you are looking at my passport. But this was quickly resolved without my assistance and the card came back to me, ready to use. At some point, I still need to make a trip over to Pudong to enter my personal details into the ICBC computer system.

So it took a tense hour or so of negotiation between me, the two tellers, a security guard, the customer service rep, and her manager, but we were finally able to get the job done. Big thanks to Jodi for being a sport and taking care of the girls while I hashed this out. Hopefully this information is interesting or useful to somebody.

With the help of Jodi's parents we've become the owners of a dark blue Chery Tiggo. Since Jodi go her license in March I've been serving as the co-pilot, but we've run into a few situation where it'd be more convenient if I could drive too. So for the past couple weeks I've been working on using my California license to get a Shanghai license. I'll update this post as the process moves along (in it's usual bumbling way, in my case).

• The first step was a visit to the DMV office in Minhang, at 闵行区沁春路179号 (179 Qingchun Road, Minhang). The guard informed me that all licenses for foreigners are being issued at the main DMV in Changning. That would be at 长宁区哈密路1330号 (1330 Hami Road, Changning), which is best reached on public transportation by taking Metro Line 10 to the Shanghai Zoo, walking over to Hami Road and catching the 739/807 north for two stops. The DMV main branch is open 9am-5pm.
• The second step was a prelimiary visit to the Hami Road DMV. They asked me to bring: my original driver's license, an official translation of the original DL, my passport, and my temporary residence registration from the local police station. The DMV recommends two translation services: the one I used was the Shanghai Interpreter's Association at 静安区北京西路1277号1607室 (1277 Beijing W Road, Jing'an).
• The third step was to get my California license translated. I went to the office mentioned above, a long-ish walk from Nanjing W Road metro station, where the translating took less than 10 minutes and cost RMB 50. The Interpreter's Association is located in a nondescript office building on busy Beijing Road, and the translation is done by the lady at the front desk. The people in front of and behind me were also there for driver's license translations.
• The fourth step was to go back to the DMV at Hami Road with the correct documents. I took a number at the front desk of Building 1, had a quick chat with the desk on the second floor for foreign driver's licenses, and was directed to building 9 for photos and 10 for physical exam.
• In building 9 I paid RMB 25 for a set of photos with my Chinese name and passport number printed below each photo. The photographer was quick and efficient, got a good shot on the first try without having to take my glasses off.
• In building 10 I collected the photos and a form, filled out another couple of forms according to the poster examples on the wall, and paid RMB 60 for the physical exam. I was directed out, to the left, and upstairs where I took the exam form to each of about 8 different little rooms for a series of physical checks that were also quick and efficient. Which meant that the bad news was delivered swiftly and with finality: my left eye (cornea scarred by a childhood herpes simplex infection) did not meet the 0.8 standard, being only 0.3. Thus, I failed the physical exam. I was given an address in Minhang, 莘东路508号 (508 Xindong Road) where I could go for a re-exam any Wednesday 8:30-11:00 or 13:00-16:00, presumably after getting better glasses (wouldn't help me).
• The fifth step was to go to the re-exam place, intending to do my best to explain my condition and plead for leniency. I took Jodi along for a language bonus, and Josie for a cuteness bonus. This is where the TIC started. The staff immediately grasped our situation and explained that they understood, but that they were required by the rules to use the same standard and that we would most likely fail again and lose the RMB 10 re-exam fee. They strongly suggested that we choose an alternative path, which was to go to a district-level hospital — Minhang's being conveniently located just down the road — which would have the driver's license physical exam form and be able to do the exam, and that the standards just "might be looser" (heavy emphasis on that phrase, repeated several times). We got the hint, hoofed it to the hospital, and boy were they right.
• The sixth step was a visit to the hospital, the Minhang branch of Shanghai's famous Ruijin Hospital. Physical exams for DL take place on the fourth floor in the department that combines service for Taiwanese passport holders and plastic surgery. Several other people were there for the same service as me. I filled out the same form as at the DMV, pasted on another photo, and paid the RMB 40 fee. We chose the eye exam first as it was the highest hurdle to pass. And get this: after walking into the eye exam room and rousing the nurse from his nap, he took a look at my California license, verbally noted that I wore glasses, and then proceeded to fill out the form to the effect that I have perfect vision in both eyes, perfect hearing in both ears, and no other physical defects. Choosing to not look a gift horse in the mouth, we took the form back to the front desk where it was stamped and handed back. TIC indeed.
• The seventh step is to go back to the Hami DMV and make an appointment for the written exam. Report coming soon.

Notes:

• On my first visit to the Hami DMV I met a "fixer" at the gate who offered to help me out. I'd heard of this before, hiring somebody to grease the wheels, but since I was deteremined to go through this myself and also on a budget, I declined the offer immediately.
• Coming out of the re-exam place, we also met a fixer who offered to smooth over the eye problem for RMB 800. Naturally we turned him down. I read on Shanghai Expat that somebody used this kind of service for RMB 500.
• In summary: to change a foreign license to a Shanghai one, learn Chinese, get your license translated, then take original plus translation, passport, and temporary residence registration to the Hami Road DMV. It's pretty easy from there.

Now that I’m in Beijing I often wonder if it’s possible to build a strong educational programme in the imperial capital of guanxi. To counter guanxi, which is essentially about leveraging one’s personal network, I thought it best at Peking University High School to emphasize process over people. So we instituted a policy that to enter the International Division, students must enroll in a week-long admissions camp.

This is a really over-the-top (in a great way) method for dealing with high school admissions. Somebody on Google Reader tried to defend guanxi in contexts other than this article, but the way I see it guanxi is a transaction that benefits some parties and has negative externatlities for many more others. For me, then, it's a no go.

We ran around to a couple places looking at e-bikes today, but came home with only some groceries and a tummy full of Sbarros and Hunanese food. The main problem is that we really want a solid bike with a quality child-seat on the back. The problem is that the seats we scoped out online all seem to fit bicycles and bicycle-style e-bikes only, and larger e-bikes don't have solid structures on the back that could support a toddler in a child-seat. Tomorrow we're going to make one more trip to Carrefour and then decide. If it comes down to it, we may just buy the bike we like and have the local e-/motobike shop jimmy-rig the seat onto the bike using some solid bars and bolts.

I don't like to be all nostalgic, but this isn't exactly that. Back when I was in college the internet was full of nerdy people; all sorts of people, but all nerdy enough to spend time tinkering with connections, HTML, and online communities. Nowadays it's a different internet. Playing on Weibo, I'm finding that a more wide cross-section of the teachers at my school are on it in -- it's just a matter of seeing who is commenting on each others' posts, and guessing from their username who they are. Weibo's feature that lets you add nicknames to users comes in handy for remember who is who. And it's not like the walled garden of Facebook, it's like wide-open world of Twitter. I like it.

These make me cringe, but are worth a chuckle:

By graphic designer Heather K Phillips.