I moved to my new apartment on my birthday. One American woman sent me an e-card as usual. She sent me cards on my birthdays and Chinese festivals. Yet I have never met her. She is a cyberspace friend whom I met in a chat room. I think I owe her a visit if I decide to leave this country for good.

Yet I had no mood for my birthday. I had to move out quickly and clean my apartment so that I can get my deposit back. I worked my ass off and "did a good job for a man" as the landlady said, but she found faults everywhere and hired a Mexican young man to do more cleaning. The cost? on me of course. Worse, because of my carelessness during the quick in-processing, I did not notice some items on their inventory list that were actually not there. Well, I can do nothing but wait to see if this landlady or her rental co., a family business, is honest or not. Some neighbor warned me the other day as I was holding moving sale that she was well-known for not returning the deposit.

I moved one street up into a smaller apartment formerly occupied by one colleague. It has got some built-in storage such as wall cabinets. My colleague who moved one floor up does not have any significant belongs so she let me to use a garage storeroom. This way, I found many shelve in my apartment still empty after an initial sorting and putting away my junk.

My junk consisted of five or six loads of an economic car. I moved them all by myself except for a couch that my neighbor "gave" me when he moved out. My colleage came to help with his truck. Then on the out-processing day, the landlady was surprised to find the couch gone and claimed that it was hers. Well what could I say? There was no way to find the former tenant although she must know his new address. I went back and moved the couch out of my apartment and managed to help it climb up to the top of my car and drove it back.

The subsequent job was sorting out my stuff. The couch was gone but I did not feel bad about it. In its place I put a bare wood box, with partitions good for storaging music records, between two plastic deck chairs. On top of it I put a sqaure shaped plywood to enlarge its top surface. This way I now have a vertical "tea table". This is typical Chinese sitting room arrangement. The host and guest sit on both sides of a table drinking tea and chat. Very formal, no comfort. much less intimacy. The sitting room con kitchen is so small that a couch can not be put there with a coffe table.

The bedroom is larger, with more depth, enough for a single bed mattress, a two drawer file cabinet made of light thin iron sheet, two entertainment stands, both with defects, a hospital three drawer night stand, a coffee table left by some previous tenant, and a cushioned armchair. On the entertainment stand is a 20 inch (maybe) TV set, a radio-cassette-record player and a five CD player. I put a long ply wood which used to be part of a computer table and achieved a large top surface. Beside the CD player, I put some old books for decoration. Over on the wall hangs an oil painting of rustic landscape.

The bed and the entertainment section take half of the bedroom. The other half is for the coffee table, the night stand and a card paper box of the same height as the stand, in which there is a smaller box of real junk: parts from old bikes I found here and there, and various kind of wires. It is covered with a green window curtain and I throw a piece of red cloth over it. On the top is an old Japanese tea pot and a small coffee-colored pottery vase with handle.

I covered the coffee table with another piece of green curtain. On top of it is a candle cup and I am going to take some copies of Country Living from the storage to put on the coffee table for decoration.

Above the coffee table, I have put up an old painting of flower in classic styled frame. The painting however is more oriental in style.

This area I regard as a meditating space although I never meditate, or it can be used to receive a guest with whom I can sit on the floor and drink tea over the coffee table. It will be more Japanese-like. However, in Monterey, I do not see this possibility. On the floor I put a green carpet and over it I put a large piece of Yi nationality decorative texture with hand embroidered geometric patterns. I bought the piece for 100 Yuan many years ago in China and brought it with me this year as I returned from a home visit.

I have some Chinese scroll paintings but I do not want to make more holes on the wall.

You see, when you do not own the property, any expensive decoration will enventually end up with more financial loss. So why bother? Besides, I do not have that luxury money. Most of my stuff came free, junk I picked up here and there or was given to me for free. Economically I am a gatherer.

Signing a year lease is like sentencing myself a year in prison. I cann't leave without losing money. So all the thoughts of leaving my current job and the United States have to be put off for at least 6 months.

By decorating my apartment I make my prison more comfortable and give more human touch to it, although I will still spend most of my time out of my apartment, in libraries and computer labs.

The apartment was cut off from a larger apartment and does not have electricity meter. The electricity is paid by my neighbor, an old lady who is now the manager. She has been the manager for many years. The apartment complex was built by her and her husband, but the contractor did a foul job and they were forced to sell the property to recover investment. What a feeling it is to change from property owner to a renter!

The complex is of a U shape, embracing a yard planted with trees and flowers. My door is a sliding glass door, like a window. When the blinds are pushed open, I saw the whole yard from my sitting room. This compensates for the loss of front door porch in the previous apartment.

The most difficult thing for me in every moving is to take things out from boxes and suitcases and put them where they should be. I empty most of the paper boxes because I can't turn my apartment into a warehouse, but there is one suitcase, the one I came to this country with, that I can never fully empty. The contents were pre-sorted when packing and I often become lost when separating them. I simply forget where they are. By keeping them together, I know where to turn to for a certain need, such as finding my needle and thread, my self-carved seal, my pictures, medicine, etc. It is my treasure box and a reservoir of memories of days at home, because most things there come from China. The suitcase has been damaged during air travel, missing one wheel, leaving a hole where it used to be, and the handle. I use iron wire wrapped in cloth for the handle. Although it is not of good quality, I simply cann't get rid of it.

I know why I cann't fully empty this suitcase. It is because I always has a feeling that I am moving in the next minute and I want to save the trouble of packing. When someday I take all the things from it and throw it away, I am at home.