Late night thursday and language lessons

not in the blogging mood, but to the faithfuls out there, personal qualms must be put aside. naahmean? so the orientation continued at work and finally finished. I go to one of the plants for the next two weeks for practical training. talked with the HSE guy, Chen and and Gu, one of the people who handles the raw materials data base. Let me tell ya, running a chemical business, you better have some serious regulatory staff to make sure that yourself and your customers are taken care of. Sure you can cut corners, but then you are just an asshole who is waiting to get burned. and you would absolutely deserve it.

So opened up a bank account here, nothing to it. just normal, go to the bank of china, stay in line, the teller spoke english, and Bob's your uncle, fannie's your aunt. The details of the chinese banking system is a little confusing for me. so I just let HR handle this. Just pay me...I don't care where I get it, as long as I can access it.

So back to China, lunch was an expensive affair today. 59RMB, that's what you get for shopping at a supermarket beneath the Ritz. a terrible chicken salad sandwich, some papaya, some chilli/paprika potato chips (pretty good, addictive, and not good for the old health), and an apple turnover. I was starving and decided to splurge. Do people care about this mundane details, I doubt it. Let's get a little more efficient.

language lessons were great. Let me tell you about the subway trip right after work. .So I gt out of work at 6:00-6:15, language lesson was scheduled for 6:30. walk to the subway and let me tell you folks, it was freaking crowded. unreal. and in Shanghai, people just shove you out of the way, and it's not rude to just push your way through. and considering I am bigger than most of the locals, i say bring it on baby. Inside the subway, i am talking waaaaaay too close for comefort. I mean you are literally grinding with somebody. and everyone of course wants to get off at the interchange, and it was kinda fun pushing my way through about 3 or 4 rows of people to get out. actually I probably forced myself to think of it as fun because any thoughts of annoyance would have made me ridiculously angry. You cannot think in contexts of what I would do to a person for shoving me in Philly or NYC or wherever else. You just gotta accept thats what people do and its okay to push back or whatever as long as you are not overly aggressive like pushing someone so hard they fall or somehting. Judgment baby judgement. (yes the last few sentences make me sound like a valley girl, I just wanted to throw a few people off)

so language lesson, lessons were numbers, time, saying dates, big first to little, so year, month, date. people say China, Shanghai, not Shanghai, China as we do in the old country.

man so I didn't get to the language lesson t'll 7:10, imagine me being late I know I know, i am f'n surprised too. But come on, I had no idea where this place was, next time I know better. so i had to laundry today and it's 10:30 already and I am freaking tired from all the walking. I throw the stuff in, and I get a call from Zhie Hu, my friend from Columbus who is actually from Shanghai. He's in China for the summer. Tells me Russ from Columbus just got into Shanghai and they all want to hang out. Sonfoa....i was half asleep when he called me. So trudge out to meet him, he's like a 20 minute cab ride away, which in no traffic is pretty far away. I get there of course it's great to see Zhie Hu, one of the best guys ever, honestly. Sit down I have a drink and I really want to just get back and go to sleep and they decide to go to get a foot massage. Zhie Hu insists I go and of course I go. so russ, his girlfriend, another girl from columbus, Zhie Hu, and his friend. I foot massage was okay and I kept saying it was great because I don't know I guess I was being polite. I mean seriously what was i going to say, no guys, this isn't really good, while you guys think this is great. I mean it's a foot massage, whatever. Now if it was a petticure, that would be something else. Listen, don't diss the petticure until you try it. after the massage, which took like a freaking hour, and Zhie Hu picks up the tab for everybody, told you he was one of the best, and I know that he doesn't do it so you'll pick up the tab for him later. He's just a good guy. The best part of it was sitting next to Russ and Zhie Hu and cracking jokes. that was great. Russ's calluses were awful and you know, hey russ, maybe they need to bring in the planar and rotary sander to take care of you. Okay that's disgusting let's move on.

So I think I will meet up with them again friday night. I didn't get to bed t'll like 3 in the morning. awful. this weekend, we're going to Yu Yao, we meaning a me and a 7 people from work. It's the country side, maybe some mountains, and we are going waxberry picking. but the highlight, the highlight is something called drifiting. we pretty much get on a boat and just drift down a river. Kinda like a log flume, but uncontrolled. I was told, (I have no idea if this will be true), that instead of life jackets, they will be giving us wooden logs to hold onto. I could not stop laughing when I heard that, I mean I didn't laugh at it when the person told me, but just trying to explain to a couple friends of mine. this is going to be great. I mean if you think about it, why wouldn't the wooden log work?

weekend's a coming, blog won't be updated t'll sunday night or monday. cheers y'all.

Work, angry lady, and more food

Today was an okay day at work.

More food talk, and yes I did figure out how to say yes and no in Chinese. (mandarin). Dhuay is yes and bu is no. bu hao (no good). So therefore hao = good. Who doesn’t love the transitive property of equality. Oh another excellent dinner adventure. By the way today I wore pants that were ripped at the crotch. Of course nothing I could do except walk around with a book or a drink or whatever to cover up the freaking hole in my pants. I totally forgot those pants had a hole in them. Good times. Everyone was polite enough not to make fun of me. Of course then I just said yeah my pants ripped hahaha laugh at me at my expense. Yes saved everybody some embarrassment.

Work was cool today because I got to talk to Wang Xin today. The most experienced engineer who is not a supervisor, my level, I guess. He sat down and went through the whole project management process for the group. His English is pretty good, but not fluent, but I wish my Chinese was half as good as his English.

So today I saw a guy trying to sell fake Mont Blanc pens to these two foreign ladys (aka westerners). He said, “woman want pen” and I instinctively made fun of the guy Then realized holy cow, I wish I knew how to say “women want pen” in Chinese? He’s light years ahead of me.

So to dinner we went to Yan’s fried dumplings which apparently the most famous in Shanghai. The street is just full of all kinds of food vendors and restaurants for locals. The fried dumplings is like the traditional steamed bun (bao) but fried. Not deep fried, but just fried in a covered pan. The meat is pork, at least my best guess. The fuckers were freaking hot when we got them. We ordered 28 for 28RMB. I ate about 8 of them and had enough. To me they weren’t that good. I was also freaking pouring sweat from all the walking and didn’t have drink in hand. So that might have affected my tude. Okay I’ll punch myself in the face for saying tude, twice. Anyways I had 4 left over and there was this old man watching me to my left. I looked over and he pointed at my food and I gave it to him and he just walked away with it and my chopsticks. I don’t have any reaction to the incident. Just happened. There is a good amount of poverty here. Understatement probably. Oh and then there was a heated argument between a lady selling (my friend called her a hawker) and a few security guards. I don’t think they were police. She was awful pissed, I mean ridiculous, at this one guard. I have no idea what was going on, everything would be assumed. But she had to leave. There were no fisticuffs, but holy cow she probably would have beat the living day lights out of the guard just on pure rage. Then again I could imagine the guard just calmly using one hand to fend her away with some crazy kung fu. You know like Neo in the first matrix. I bet on the former.

The main roads are pretty clean, there are literally street sweepers sweeping the major city roads, the sidewalks and side streets, well you are at your own peril. They can get pretty grimey.

Oh I have to mention the random water drops that hit you if you walk close to buildings. These are from wall unit airconditioners. Aparantly there are no central heating and cooling. All wall units even for gigantic high rise apartment buildings. See picture. So you hope that it is just water from those units hitting you and nothing else. You don’t want to imagine or think about whatever else it could be. Never fun.

So that’s that. Tomorrow I go to a Chinese language lesson. Wish me luck. A shout (out) to all my boys from DubC.

BBQ-Shanghai style

So before i get to the dinner, I had to go to the Shanghai International health hospital to get a physical. They test your blood for AIDS and drugs and whatever else they feel like, get some X-rays, blood pressure, an EKG (more on that later), an ultrasound of your stomach area, check your vision. This is necessary for the permanent residency permit to stay in China. The EKG was pretty old school. they clip electrodes around your ankle, your two wrists and four little metal suction cups across your chest. (You like how I'm using second person in the narrative, yeah that's right, 11th grade english class coming to fruition, and yes that's an SAT word for all you rednecks out there). Anyways, I was expecting some type of horrifying shock across my body, but thankfully there was none. the results havent' come in yet, but hopefully everythign will be okay. Although I can't remember if they used a new needle on me or not. Seriously, I'm not kidding, I can't remember. Half jokingly I am worried a little, but not really. right? Right?

So since I had to fast for 12 hours and the test wasn't until 1:30PM, let's say daddy was starving and my friend Jon, who also had to get the physical, took me to Burger King. they use thigh meet for the sandwiches here, cheap. I had the spicy chicken sandwich meal with fries and a coke and a spicy junior whopper. What is spicy junior whopper you ask? well, a regular junior whopper with a spicy sauce on top. it's okay, I wouldn't have it again. the spicy chicken was pretty good, but kinda greasy. well greasier than normal fastfood. Oh yeah the whole thing cost 28RMB which divided by 7.6, you get $3.68. I'd say it's cheaper than the U.S.

Now let's get to DInner. Two american interns in teh office took me to a barbeque place near their hotel. Now when I say barbeqe, I will let the pictures speak for itself. you get shishkebabs of meat, potatoes, fish, mushrooms, shrimp, fishballs, meatballs, and whatever else you can freaking thinking of including duck tongue, chicken beaks (I didnt see anybody order any of the last two items). We got beef kebabs, potatoes, corn on the cob, check out the pics. the whole meal including drinks (which was close to 20% of the total bill ) came to 77RMB, a whole meal for 3 people for a grand total of 7 dollars. BOOYAH. now I think you have to take into account, that the beef could have been anything. We decided that it wasn't dogs because well dogs are a delicacy adn we couldn't have possibly gotten it for that cheap. at least that's our story and we're sticking to it. however, could it be rats? well sure it could be, but it was beef, BEEF, you hear me, BEEF. Seriosuly though, I'm pretty sure it was beef.

I'll upload more pictures later.

And then I took a cab back to my place and then realized that I didn't even know how to say yes in Chinese. Like "yes" this is the right place when the cabbie asked me. How did I tell the cabbie how to get to my place you ask? I have the address written in Chinese and just show that to the cab driver. good times. Next task, fidn out how to say yes.

by the way, leave some comments if you have the time. it'd be cool to read.

First one

2nd day at work. will write more when I'm off. hopefully this will be informational of some sort. mostly self reflective and I am trying to gauge my progress in my understanding of the culture in China, will probably be minimized to my Shanghai experience. This will not be well thought out, it is a blog, so it will be more a stream of concsiousness writing without any spell checking. I hope this will help you, the reader, (always wanted to write that for some reason "you, the reader").

barewalls