So, I'm about to head out to go ice-skating, except I'm worried they will not have skates for my giant American feet, haha. My friend humorously described this lack of inventory as an "untapped market", which made me laugh. You will not be surprised to learn that she works in PR :-) But I'm on my way out the door, so we'll see if they can dig up a special pair just for me.
I spent the afternoon today shopping at Carrefour for cleaning supplies. Not for me, mind you - but for my aiyi. Literally this word means "aunt" (Hi out there!) but colloquially it refers to a maid. Yes, that's right - after almost 2 months here I am breaking down and hiring a maid. I resisted for so long because, well, I am used to cleaning (however infrequently and half-assedly) myself. And I don't like the idea of paying someone to do something that I can easily do myself. I guess it makes me feel, too, what's-the-word -- bourgeoisie. (Icky.) But the dust is piling up and I'd rather spend my time sightseeing (and ice skating), and Tim recommended his aiyi who he and his wife have employed for over two years. So I hopped on the spoiled-expat bandwagon. I'm mitigating this feeling by still doing my own laundry and food gathering/cooking. It's just the scuzzy floors that will get a cleaning. She's coming tomorrow at 1 or 2 PM.
For whatever reason, the mop/broom aisle in Carrefour is the home turf of like 6 different salespeople who all try to push (pun totally intended) brooms on you the moment you step in the aisle. Nowhere else in the store has anyone else tried to offer my something. But there's like 2 - 3 people giving broom/mop demos in this particular aisle. Even when I clearly had a broom and mop in my cart already, they were still trying to hawk their merchandise, haha. I have no idea what's going on there or why that aisle is so popular with the type-A employees.
So I regaled you all in the past with the tale of my heating units and how I wasn't sure I was using them effectively. Turns out I was right. After several weeks of procrastination I brought the units' remote control into work and asked my boss to read the labels for me. I discovered I'd had the unit on "Automatic" instead of a specific "Heater" mode. Also I now can use the high-powered mode and have the fan blades oscillate to heat an entire room better. Coupled with the slight rise in temperature (I think it was 8 - 9 degrees out today) I'm feeling a bit toastier. Asking my boss to read the labels on my remote control brings me back to that embarrassing feeling where I know what I want but don't know how to say / ask for it, haha. But I swallowed my pride and it turned out to be a good thing (as I would imagine usually is the case) :-)
I've been eating some badass food, too. On both Thursday and Friday nights I had food from Guizhou province. The food is spicy, but not nearly as spicy as Sichuan or Hunan food. They have some interesting dishes too, including worms, bees (yes, bees!), dog meat (perpetuating a stereotype), and steamed turtles. I have to admit, I'm really curious to see what a meal consisting of bees and turtles will taste like. I'll let you all know what I find out, and of course I'll bring my camera along for the ride :-)
I also saw one description on the menu that was heavy on the Chinglish - apparently the dish contained "Jew's ear." I saw that and was like fuck, I'm getting out of here, ya'll aren't taking my ears!!
Tonight I go for the hat trick as, after ice skating (if I can indeed do that) we're going to a Hunan place. No rest for my tongue :-)
Small anecdote: I was discussing Chinese and American leaders today with my tutor, where I found out the Chinese refer to Dubya as "Bushi", which, when said out loud, sounds pretty close to how you would say "is not" in actual Chinese. I liked that. And she taught me how to say "Clinton," and then she said another name starting with an L. And I was like, "Hillary," naturally assuming that she would be the woman most closely associated with Bill. But Joyce (my tutor) was like "No, not Hillary, not his wife -- [this other woman] can't be president." I literally had no idea who she was talking about, so I kept saying "I really think you mean Hillary" and just assumed Joyce was mistaken.
But it turned out she was trying to say "Lewinsky"!! I cracked up for a couple seconds there, just because, you know, I don't think most Americans think about that incident anymore, but apparently that's not the case overseas. Oh, the legacies we weave without even thinking about it . . .
Showing posts with label icebox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label icebox. Show all posts
February 23, 2008
February 17, 2008
Words & Food
Today was the first time I've been able to say it's actually warm. I even took off my big heavy jacket on the walk from the Thumb Plaza to the metro station. Of course, it's all relative, as today's temperature was something like 7 - 8 degrees C - hardly "warm". But given the past month of crappy weather, I'll take it. Oh yeah, and the sun came out. It was pretty nice :-)
I went to the Shanghai Art Museum today. Half the stuff my guidebook said to visit wasn't there, haha. Either that or I was just not good at finding it. There's not much English or Pinyin to be had, so I just walked around and looked at all the pretty pictures for awhile. There were a couple of which I wanted to buy prints, but the gift shop didn't seem to have them. I need to learn the word for "buy". Um, I'm sure it's in my phrasebook. I also need to learn "live", "need", "with", "there", "here", "after", and "like". Probably all also in my phrasebook.
The great thing about having a language tutor is that I can come to her and say "Help me learn these words." In fact I might text message her with these words and ask her to come up with sentences designed to help me learn and remember them. Word. (hah! no pun intended!)
I'm getting better at recognizing words I know when people say them to me. That's pretty cool and empowering. So I am having more mini-conversations with taxi drivers and waiters. In the morning when taxi drivers have talk radio on, I'm starting to recognize words like "today", "want", "have", "you", "me", and so on, from the vocabulary that I actually know and can speak. Baby steps man -- baby steps. Today I saw a billboard for Heilongjiang - and immediately knew that means "Black Dragon River". That's a pretty badass name for a province, if I say so myself.
In fact I was watching a bit of TV this morning, and there was some commercial for skin moisturizing cream on - Garnier, I think. (Amusingly, the announcer pronounced it "Gar-nyer", where in America it's pronounced "Gar-nyay", which I guess is the correct way to say it in French.) I heard the phrase gao keji, and immediately went - ahh, I know what that is! Because two metro stops I say the most are Shanghai Keji Guan and Zhangjiang Gao Ke. Ke is technology (first tone, anyway), ji (fourth tone) is science, and gao (first tone) is tall. (We all know why I know this word.)
So gao keji, in the commercial, literally means "tall science and technology". In this context though, gao probably means something like "advanced". Combined with my knowledge of how these commercials are all the same, e.g., they all try to convince you they've uncovered the secret formula for eternal youth, I could infer that the voice-over was using this same technique of persuasion in China. Not that there's anything especially interesting about that - I'm just happy I was able to recognize the words in a normal, everyday context.
Another funny phrase involving gao is Ni he gao le. This literally means, "You drink tall" which makes no sense. But colloquially, this phrase means "you're drunk", and if you think about it, it kind of makes sense (at least to me, anyway). This one is easy to confuse (when either speaking or listening) with Ni hen gao le, which simply means, "You're very tall". A way to make it easier is that he is first tone and hen is third tone, so if you get your tones right, I guess there's less of a chance of insulting someone accidentally.
In other, smaller triumphs, I went shopping yesterday at Carrefour and bought vittles. It took me a couple trips to load everything into the taxi, so I knew I wouldn't be able to carry everything up to my apartment by myself, not in one trip anyway.
Solution, you ask?
As we stopped at my door, I said to the taxi driver, Wo gei ni er shi kuai bang wo. This translates to "I give you 20 kuai help me." I could have added zhe ge ("this") while pointing at the bags, I suppose, but I got my point across. He understood and helped me carry all my bags upstairs. Victory :-)
Speaking of er ("two"), it's pronounced like "ar" (as in "yard"), and it's first tone. So every time I say it I'm reminded of the sound a dog makes ("arf arf!") and I feel a little silly because I feel like I'm barking at someone in the way a small dog would, haha.
Also speaking of er, you only say that when you're saying the numeral two. When you want to say "two of <something>", you say liang. So if you want two bottles of water and you say Wo yao er ping shui, you'll confuse people. What you need to say is Wo yao liang ping shui. But if you're giving a street address, you'd use er. Don't ask me why this little rule is in there. But it's confusing :-)
Back to Carrefour, or Jialefu as it's called here, I bought a pot and a pan. So now I can boil (and fry!) the frozen jiaozi that I bought, which is way better than microwaving them. They also make for a much better dinner than a pack of Bugles and some rice crackers. (I'm such a bachelor.) I'm really starting to enjoy all the different kinds of dumplings - jiaozi, xiaolongbao, and wonton. They're cheap and delicious. Good times. I guess it's in my blood, and all, given that I grew up being served kreplach every so often :-)
I'm not sure if now's the time to explain how I've been living here almost two months and my refrigerator was not plugged in -- but, I guess I just did. The funny part is, I didn't even notice, because it's so cold here. All the bottles of water I had in there were cold, so I had no reason to be suspicious. Yesterday I dropped something behind the fridge and had to look back there, so I noticed, hey, this thing's not plugged in! Now the fridge light turns on when I open the door, and I'm like -- oh, right, that's supposed to happen -- I forgot.
Back to Jialefu. You know you've made it in China when your company or product is blessed with a Chinese name. For example, KFC is known as kendeji which, when said out loud, vaguely sounds like "Kentucky". Same thing for places like Washington DC, Houston, Italy, Canada, Budweiser, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, McDonald's, et al.
Aaaaand I am looking into booking a trip to Beijing at the end of April. Randomly enough, a friend of mine who I used to carpool with to Hebrew School in 3rd grade is in a play that is touring through China this spring. The tour is not coming to Shanghai, so I'm going to plan to meet up with them in Beijing.
I went to the Shanghai Art Museum today. Half the stuff my guidebook said to visit wasn't there, haha. Either that or I was just not good at finding it. There's not much English or Pinyin to be had, so I just walked around and looked at all the pretty pictures for awhile. There were a couple of which I wanted to buy prints, but the gift shop didn't seem to have them. I need to learn the word for "buy". Um, I'm sure it's in my phrasebook. I also need to learn "live", "need", "with", "there", "here", "after", and "like". Probably all also in my phrasebook.
The great thing about having a language tutor is that I can come to her and say "Help me learn these words." In fact I might text message her with these words and ask her to come up with sentences designed to help me learn and remember them. Word. (hah! no pun intended!)
I'm getting better at recognizing words I know when people say them to me. That's pretty cool and empowering. So I am having more mini-conversations with taxi drivers and waiters. In the morning when taxi drivers have talk radio on, I'm starting to recognize words like "today", "want", "have", "you", "me", and so on, from the vocabulary that I actually know and can speak. Baby steps man -- baby steps. Today I saw a billboard for Heilongjiang - and immediately knew that means "Black Dragon River". That's a pretty badass name for a province, if I say so myself.
In fact I was watching a bit of TV this morning, and there was some commercial for skin moisturizing cream on - Garnier, I think. (Amusingly, the announcer pronounced it "Gar-nyer", where in America it's pronounced "Gar-nyay", which I guess is the correct way to say it in French.) I heard the phrase gao keji, and immediately went - ahh, I know what that is! Because two metro stops I say the most are Shanghai Keji Guan and Zhangjiang Gao Ke. Ke is technology (first tone, anyway), ji (fourth tone) is science, and gao (first tone) is tall. (We all know why I know this word.)
So gao keji, in the commercial, literally means "tall science and technology". In this context though, gao probably means something like "advanced". Combined with my knowledge of how these commercials are all the same, e.g., they all try to convince you they've uncovered the secret formula for eternal youth, I could infer that the voice-over was using this same technique of persuasion in China. Not that there's anything especially interesting about that - I'm just happy I was able to recognize the words in a normal, everyday context.
Another funny phrase involving gao is Ni he gao le. This literally means, "You drink tall" which makes no sense. But colloquially, this phrase means "you're drunk", and if you think about it, it kind of makes sense (at least to me, anyway). This one is easy to confuse (when either speaking or listening) with Ni hen gao le, which simply means, "You're very tall". A way to make it easier is that he is first tone and hen is third tone, so if you get your tones right, I guess there's less of a chance of insulting someone accidentally.
In other, smaller triumphs, I went shopping yesterday at Carrefour and bought vittles. It took me a couple trips to load everything into the taxi, so I knew I wouldn't be able to carry everything up to my apartment by myself, not in one trip anyway.
Solution, you ask?
As we stopped at my door, I said to the taxi driver, Wo gei ni er shi kuai bang wo. This translates to "I give you 20 kuai help me." I could have added zhe ge ("this") while pointing at the bags, I suppose, but I got my point across. He understood and helped me carry all my bags upstairs. Victory :-)
Speaking of er ("two"), it's pronounced like "ar" (as in "yard"), and it's first tone. So every time I say it I'm reminded of the sound a dog makes ("arf arf!") and I feel a little silly because I feel like I'm barking at someone in the way a small dog would, haha.
Also speaking of er, you only say that when you're saying the numeral two. When you want to say "two of <something>", you say liang. So if you want two bottles of water and you say Wo yao er ping shui, you'll confuse people. What you need to say is Wo yao liang ping shui. But if you're giving a street address, you'd use er. Don't ask me why this little rule is in there. But it's confusing :-)
Back to Carrefour, or Jialefu as it's called here, I bought a pot and a pan. So now I can boil (and fry!) the frozen jiaozi that I bought, which is way better than microwaving them. They also make for a much better dinner than a pack of Bugles and some rice crackers. (I'm such a bachelor.) I'm really starting to enjoy all the different kinds of dumplings - jiaozi, xiaolongbao, and wonton. They're cheap and delicious. Good times. I guess it's in my blood, and all, given that I grew up being served kreplach every so often :-)
I'm not sure if now's the time to explain how I've been living here almost two months and my refrigerator was not plugged in -- but, I guess I just did. The funny part is, I didn't even notice, because it's so cold here. All the bottles of water I had in there were cold, so I had no reason to be suspicious. Yesterday I dropped something behind the fridge and had to look back there, so I noticed, hey, this thing's not plugged in! Now the fridge light turns on when I open the door, and I'm like -- oh, right, that's supposed to happen -- I forgot.
Back to Jialefu. You know you've made it in China when your company or product is blessed with a Chinese name. For example, KFC is known as kendeji which, when said out loud, vaguely sounds like "Kentucky". Same thing for places like Washington DC, Houston, Italy, Canada, Budweiser, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, McDonald's, et al.
Aaaaand I am looking into booking a trip to Beijing at the end of April. Randomly enough, a friend of mine who I used to carpool with to Hebrew School in 3rd grade is in a play that is touring through China this spring. The tour is not coming to Shanghai, so I'm going to plan to meet up with them in Beijing.
January 11, 2008
Bonbon at 11 AM
One of the best parts of being at Bonbon tonight was knowing that everyone in Austin was at work while I was watching DJ Marky pick up a turntable and scratch a record upside-down.
There's a coat check on the first floor of the club, and when you hand in your coat you have to write down your phone number on the ticket. I don't have mine memorized, so I just wrote down some random numbers. I assumed they only used that information if you didn't pick up your coat, so they could call you. Well apparently you have to recite the phone number back to them in order to get your coat back. Again, I just wrote down some random numbers and forgot about them. Kind of troubling :-) After attempting to explain, and having Justin tell the guy that I don't know my phone number, and handing him my credit card with "Ryan" on it (I'd also written my name on the ticket), I got my jacket back. Lucky thing too because it's barely above freezing outside. On the way out Justin informed me that the only reason I got my jacket back is because I'm white. I was like shit, I'll take that :-) But what he really meant is that I should memorize my phone number ;-)
When I got home I was investigating the built-in hangers on my balcony that you use for drying clothes. (Laundry day is tomorrow.) I noticed that the main sliding glass door was open. It's been open for over a week. No wonder my living room is so effing cold! I know nobody else opened it because I remember on move-in day that all the windows were open. I guess to get any sorts of smell or whatever out of the apartment. I must have missed closing that one, because I didn't go out on the balcony. And it wasn't a theft danger because, well, I'm on the 18th floor, and Spider-Man uses his powers for good, not evil.
So I shut the door and quickly checked all the other windows, which were closed already. Hopefully this new development will result in a warmer apartment, which is a good thing, because people have been telling me a cold front is moving in -- even though Accuweather says the high tomorrow is 52 degrees F, which seems comparable to what it's been like this week.
My quest to order a bottle of water in a restaurant continues in vain. (Yes, it's become a quest now.) Last night I ordered one, and was rewarded with three bottles of fruit juice. Well, I said to everyone, that's almost like water. And at least I got something this time. And that something was some form of liquid in a bottle. That's progress, right?
There's a coat check on the first floor of the club, and when you hand in your coat you have to write down your phone number on the ticket. I don't have mine memorized, so I just wrote down some random numbers. I assumed they only used that information if you didn't pick up your coat, so they could call you. Well apparently you have to recite the phone number back to them in order to get your coat back. Again, I just wrote down some random numbers and forgot about them. Kind of troubling :-) After attempting to explain, and having Justin tell the guy that I don't know my phone number, and handing him my credit card with "Ryan" on it (I'd also written my name on the ticket), I got my jacket back. Lucky thing too because it's barely above freezing outside. On the way out Justin informed me that the only reason I got my jacket back is because I'm white. I was like shit, I'll take that :-) But what he really meant is that I should memorize my phone number ;-)
When I got home I was investigating the built-in hangers on my balcony that you use for drying clothes. (Laundry day is tomorrow.) I noticed that the main sliding glass door was open. It's been open for over a week. No wonder my living room is so effing cold! I know nobody else opened it because I remember on move-in day that all the windows were open. I guess to get any sorts of smell or whatever out of the apartment. I must have missed closing that one, because I didn't go out on the balcony. And it wasn't a theft danger because, well, I'm on the 18th floor, and Spider-Man uses his powers for good, not evil.
So I shut the door and quickly checked all the other windows, which were closed already. Hopefully this new development will result in a warmer apartment, which is a good thing, because people have been telling me a cold front is moving in -- even though Accuweather says the high tomorrow is 52 degrees F, which seems comparable to what it's been like this week.
My quest to order a bottle of water in a restaurant continues in vain. (Yes, it's become a quest now.) Last night I ordered one, and was rewarded with three bottles of fruit juice. Well, I said to everyone, that's almost like water. And at least I got something this time. And that something was some form of liquid in a bottle. That's progress, right?
January 4, 2008
Icebox - The First 12 Hours
The flight and touchdown went fine. I ate the first meal on the plane, some sort of chicken-and-rice dish, and it sadly upset my stomach for the rest of the ride. But the day was saved thanks to the iPod I'd bought a couple weeks previously, because I was able to watch like 10 episodes of South Park, and listen to tons of music, during the flight. No need for in-flight entertainment when you've brought your own :-)
I made it through customs and baggage claim just fine, even though I had five total bags (three suitcases, a carry-on, and my laptop bag) to manhandle. It was really helpful that I'd done this before in November, so I wasn't worried about anything. I knew exactly what to expect.
I met with two of my co-workers and a driver in the "receiving line" outside customs. The receiving line literally are these lanes that you walk through with metal rails on each side (kind of like the lines you go through to enter rides at theme parks) that wind this way and that. The railings are absolutely mobbed with people waiting for friends or acquaintances to exit customs. You see tons of people holding up signs with names on them, signs with tour group names, signs with hotel names, and so on. I quickly found my co-workers, and we were on our way.
After a quick 30-40 minute trip back into the city area, we arrived at my apartment. I live in a series of high rises off Dingxiang Lu, near the Thumb Plaza, which is where I ate Pizza Hut last time. I'm close enough to The Bund to see the World Financial Center from my window. I think I'm also near Shiji (Century) Park. Other expats from my company live here or near here, which helps me feel at ease. I'm on the 18th floor, which technically means I have a great view, but in reality it means I have a great view of the other skyscrapers next door ;-)
The driver left us, and my two co-workers and I went up to my apartment to meet my landlord, Qian. Very nice guy, super-helpful, and generally put me at ease. When I walked into the apartment, I was struck by how ultra-modern it looks. It's furnished quite nicely, at it's a lot nicer than where I was living in Austin, "nicer" in the sense of "looks like it came out of a Wired magazine showcase." Haha. It's two bedrooms, which is cool, and there are two actual beds here. Two balconies also, and each bedroom has a pretty huge windowbox -- or whatever you call those areas in front of windows that you can use for sitting down. There's a desk, a living room table with some chairs, and a bathroom including a washing machine. No dryer though - I'll have to investigate that :-) There's a nice living room with a TV and a DVD player. I'm glad that I am not used to watching TV for entertainment, because I think the only English station I can get is CCTV 9 and I don' think I could stand to watch that for more than 20 minutes straight :-) There's no oven but there is a microwave and a two-burner stove, plus a refrigerator and freezer.
Speaking of freezer ...
I was a little surprised to see there's no central heating. Obviously I've taken this for granted while living in America. Let me assure you, after one night here, I never will again ;-) The living room has a giant tower in the corner that acts as a heater, and the two bedrooms each have one smaller wall-mounted unit in them. To put it nicely, uh, the heat from each unit doesn't reach very far out into the room ;-) The living room unit heats the area directly in front of the TV, so if you're in the dining area or kitchen, you best put on some mittens. The unit in the main bedroom is on the wall opposite the bed, so let's just say I slept in some warm clothes last night :-) The unit in the second bedroom is just above the desk where I'm typing now, though, so at least I'm pretty warm as we speak. Also, to get hot water, you have to specifically turn on the water heater and wait for it to warm up. Whew.
There's probably some super-powerful mode that I haven't discovered because the buttons are all in Chinese. I'll have to ask someone to help me with that, but in the meantime, I might have to investigate getting a couple more space heaters ...
Okay, enough about that. After meeting with the landlord and getting the tour of the place, such as it is, the four of us went to the Thumb Plaza, just a 5-minute walk or so, to eat. Mmmmm. I'm not sure why Qian came with us. My coworkers said that it wasn't normal for the landlord to spend a couple hours with his new tenant. We were all confused why he wanted to hang out with us and go shopping, but hey, I wasn't complaining :-)
Since I wasn't that hungry, I deigned to eat at McDonald's. I figured I wanted to check it out at some point, and I didn't want to do it at a time when I had a big appetite. In line we actually ran into two NI expats that I met last month, and they teased me for eating at McD's on my first night in China :-)
The McD's is attached to a Carrefour, a store that's like a grocery store on the lower level with a Target or Sears on the upper level. I'd sketched up a small shopping list including things like alarm clock, pillows, shampoo, detergent, etc. So the four of us went shopping! Qian was super-helpful. He took my shopping list and ranged far in front of my coworkers and me, helpfully asking people where things were and pointing out things I might need. Again, I'm not sure why he was being so helpful, but I definitely appreciated it!
At one point we stopped to try on slippers, which was hilarious and involved the four of us and two store employees, plus a couple customers who were passing by. None of their merch looked big enough for my lao wei feet, and I was right -- even though I tried on and bought a pair of XL slippers (the biggest or second-biggest pair they had, I think) when I got them home they turned out to be too small to walk on. Anyway the Carrefour staff was making me laugh because they kept pulling pairs off the rack, or pointing to them, and speaking to Qian in Chinese, and he would translate in decent English. They spoke very excitedly and gestured a lot. I felt like I had a couple of manservants with me :-)
Buying bedding was also pretty fun. I was looking for sheets, pillowcases, and a comforter. Of course, comforter doesn't translate into Chinese, so I had to explain kind of what that was. And I think I got one. What I ended up with is something that is the size of my bed and has this weird plastic-y feel to the outer lining. It's pale yellow and looks like it belongs in a hospital. My co-worker said that I'm supposed to put a cover on it, but I'm confused by the idea of covering a blanket, and the one cover I got with my sheet set doesn't fit it. But hell, it's warm, so that's all I cared about last night :-)
Carrefour sells tons of package-style bedding, and we went back and forth for a couple minutes over which size and color I needed. Of course these discussions are all among Qian, my two co-workers, and anywhere from 2 - 3 store employees who happen to be helping us. I just stand there with a smile on my face, nod at the appropriate time, unable to understand anyone unless I ask them to translate for me, and laugh at the absurdity of what is taking place before me :-)
One small tidbit: I picked up an alarm clock for 77 kuai (colloquial term for yuan) and paid for it at a separate instore location with my debit card. Unbeknownst to me, my bank's fraud detectors went off (Uh oh! Purchased something in China! Identity theft! Identity theft!) But the purchase went through. This came back to bite me when I tried to check out at the front register with the rest of my purchases -- my card was denied!! Luckily I had another one and was able to use that.
(I'm pretty happy that Carrefour took Visa in the first place -- most places here don't. It'll be weird dealing with mainly cash again after so long of a plastic existence in the US.)
After that I picked up a couple bottles of water, because I don't feel like getting dysentery from my tap, and some snacks like green tea cookies, Pocky, and some variety pack including rice puffs and pea-flavored crackers. Mmmm.
We loaded my purchases into a cab and shuffled off back to the apartment. I said goodbye to everyone and they left. I set about unpacking not only my purchases but also my suitcases. I kind of failed at the latter, but I was tired :-)
As I was putting my sheets on my bed, the power went out all of a sudden. I panicked for a split second but then remembered that I'd packed my flashlight from home. Genius! I managed to find it and suddenly I had light. I wandered over to the phone (thankfully, my apartment comes with a land line) and called Qian, who said he'd call someone right away. About 10 minutes later I heard a knock at my door. It was a security guard for the complex, I think. He showed me how to turn the power back on -- basically, just outside my front door, there's a room with the 18th-floor circuit breakers in them. All he did was flip the switch and presto, the lights came back on. That made me happy :-)
I wonder what caused the outage in the first place. The door has a lock on it but seems to be unlocked. Maybe some punk kid got bored and came up to the hall and started flipping switches ;-) At any rate, this happened a second time in the night, but at least I know how to fix it now. I might talk to Qian about making sure that door is locked (and that I have the key to it), because that's really unsafe.
After those escapades, I finished setting up my purchases. It was only 8 oclock, so I tried to watch a DVD. I almost succeeded :-) The disc inserts and plays just fine, but the TV and DVD remotes are all in, of course, Chinese. I fired up The Matrix but noticed it had subtitles. So my first thought was: okay, let's turn off the subtitles. (They are distracting). But how? The answer: press buttons randomly and see what happens!
After about ten minutes I succeeded in getting to the DVD's main menu. From there I was able to turn off subtitles. But unfortunately, the picture started showing up in black and white. Curses!! I spent literally another thirty to forty minutes trying to fix the picture. It wasn't that way before, so I knew I must have pressed some button to cause the change. But alas, it was not to be. I did succeed in getting the DVD player to display its options in English. And I think I memorized where the important buttons (including, ironically enough, the Subtitle button) are on the remote. But alas the DVDs, they have no color! I checked the TV itself which was in color, so it's got to be something with the DVD player. I even put in another DVD to test it and it was still in black and white. So, again, I'm going to have to get someone to help me fix this :-)
By this point it was like 9 PM and I figured I'd stayed up late enough to deal with the jet lag appropriately. I got in bed and watched some CCTV (exciting!!!) before passing out.
I woke up around 7 AM this morning, so I got a decent night's sleep. I checked my email and found an alert, the one I talked about earlier, from my bank. Their instructions said to call them immediately. I was able to use my computer and Skype to call in and resolve the issue.
Today I'm supposed to call another co-worker (they're passing me around like a hot potato) and will attempt to purchase a cell phone. I'm supposed to meet up with another one of them (co-workers, that is -- not cell phones) for dinner.
I made it through customs and baggage claim just fine, even though I had five total bags (three suitcases, a carry-on, and my laptop bag) to manhandle. It was really helpful that I'd done this before in November, so I wasn't worried about anything. I knew exactly what to expect.
I met with two of my co-workers and a driver in the "receiving line" outside customs. The receiving line literally are these lanes that you walk through with metal rails on each side (kind of like the lines you go through to enter rides at theme parks) that wind this way and that. The railings are absolutely mobbed with people waiting for friends or acquaintances to exit customs. You see tons of people holding up signs with names on them, signs with tour group names, signs with hotel names, and so on. I quickly found my co-workers, and we were on our way.
After a quick 30-40 minute trip back into the city area, we arrived at my apartment. I live in a series of high rises off Dingxiang Lu, near the Thumb Plaza, which is where I ate Pizza Hut last time. I'm close enough to The Bund to see the World Financial Center from my window. I think I'm also near Shiji (Century) Park. Other expats from my company live here or near here, which helps me feel at ease. I'm on the 18th floor, which technically means I have a great view, but in reality it means I have a great view of the other skyscrapers next door ;-)
The driver left us, and my two co-workers and I went up to my apartment to meet my landlord, Qian. Very nice guy, super-helpful, and generally put me at ease. When I walked into the apartment, I was struck by how ultra-modern it looks. It's furnished quite nicely, at it's a lot nicer than where I was living in Austin, "nicer" in the sense of "looks like it came out of a Wired magazine showcase." Haha. It's two bedrooms, which is cool, and there are two actual beds here. Two balconies also, and each bedroom has a pretty huge windowbox -- or whatever you call those areas in front of windows that you can use for sitting down. There's a desk, a living room table with some chairs, and a bathroom including a washing machine. No dryer though - I'll have to investigate that :-) There's a nice living room with a TV and a DVD player. I'm glad that I am not used to watching TV for entertainment, because I think the only English station I can get is CCTV 9 and I don' think I could stand to watch that for more than 20 minutes straight :-) There's no oven but there is a microwave and a two-burner stove, plus a refrigerator and freezer.
Speaking of freezer ...
I was a little surprised to see there's no central heating. Obviously I've taken this for granted while living in America. Let me assure you, after one night here, I never will again ;-) The living room has a giant tower in the corner that acts as a heater, and the two bedrooms each have one smaller wall-mounted unit in them. To put it nicely, uh, the heat from each unit doesn't reach very far out into the room ;-) The living room unit heats the area directly in front of the TV, so if you're in the dining area or kitchen, you best put on some mittens. The unit in the main bedroom is on the wall opposite the bed, so let's just say I slept in some warm clothes last night :-) The unit in the second bedroom is just above the desk where I'm typing now, though, so at least I'm pretty warm as we speak. Also, to get hot water, you have to specifically turn on the water heater and wait for it to warm up. Whew.
There's probably some super-powerful mode that I haven't discovered because the buttons are all in Chinese. I'll have to ask someone to help me with that, but in the meantime, I might have to investigate getting a couple more space heaters ...
Okay, enough about that. After meeting with the landlord and getting the tour of the place, such as it is, the four of us went to the Thumb Plaza, just a 5-minute walk or so, to eat. Mmmmm. I'm not sure why Qian came with us. My coworkers said that it wasn't normal for the landlord to spend a couple hours with his new tenant. We were all confused why he wanted to hang out with us and go shopping, but hey, I wasn't complaining :-)
Since I wasn't that hungry, I deigned to eat at McDonald's. I figured I wanted to check it out at some point, and I didn't want to do it at a time when I had a big appetite. In line we actually ran into two NI expats that I met last month, and they teased me for eating at McD's on my first night in China :-)
The McD's is attached to a Carrefour, a store that's like a grocery store on the lower level with a Target or Sears on the upper level. I'd sketched up a small shopping list including things like alarm clock, pillows, shampoo, detergent, etc. So the four of us went shopping! Qian was super-helpful. He took my shopping list and ranged far in front of my coworkers and me, helpfully asking people where things were and pointing out things I might need. Again, I'm not sure why he was being so helpful, but I definitely appreciated it!
At one point we stopped to try on slippers, which was hilarious and involved the four of us and two store employees, plus a couple customers who were passing by. None of their merch looked big enough for my lao wei feet, and I was right -- even though I tried on and bought a pair of XL slippers (the biggest or second-biggest pair they had, I think) when I got them home they turned out to be too small to walk on. Anyway the Carrefour staff was making me laugh because they kept pulling pairs off the rack, or pointing to them, and speaking to Qian in Chinese, and he would translate in decent English. They spoke very excitedly and gestured a lot. I felt like I had a couple of manservants with me :-)
Buying bedding was also pretty fun. I was looking for sheets, pillowcases, and a comforter. Of course, comforter doesn't translate into Chinese, so I had to explain kind of what that was. And I think I got one. What I ended up with is something that is the size of my bed and has this weird plastic-y feel to the outer lining. It's pale yellow and looks like it belongs in a hospital. My co-worker said that I'm supposed to put a cover on it, but I'm confused by the idea of covering a blanket, and the one cover I got with my sheet set doesn't fit it. But hell, it's warm, so that's all I cared about last night :-)
Carrefour sells tons of package-style bedding, and we went back and forth for a couple minutes over which size and color I needed. Of course these discussions are all among Qian, my two co-workers, and anywhere from 2 - 3 store employees who happen to be helping us. I just stand there with a smile on my face, nod at the appropriate time, unable to understand anyone unless I ask them to translate for me, and laugh at the absurdity of what is taking place before me :-)
One small tidbit: I picked up an alarm clock for 77 kuai (colloquial term for yuan) and paid for it at a separate instore location with my debit card. Unbeknownst to me, my bank's fraud detectors went off (Uh oh! Purchased something in China! Identity theft! Identity theft!) But the purchase went through. This came back to bite me when I tried to check out at the front register with the rest of my purchases -- my card was denied!! Luckily I had another one and was able to use that.
(I'm pretty happy that Carrefour took Visa in the first place -- most places here don't. It'll be weird dealing with mainly cash again after so long of a plastic existence in the US.)
After that I picked up a couple bottles of water, because I don't feel like getting dysentery from my tap, and some snacks like green tea cookies, Pocky, and some variety pack including rice puffs and pea-flavored crackers. Mmmm.
We loaded my purchases into a cab and shuffled off back to the apartment. I said goodbye to everyone and they left. I set about unpacking not only my purchases but also my suitcases. I kind of failed at the latter, but I was tired :-)
As I was putting my sheets on my bed, the power went out all of a sudden. I panicked for a split second but then remembered that I'd packed my flashlight from home. Genius! I managed to find it and suddenly I had light. I wandered over to the phone (thankfully, my apartment comes with a land line) and called Qian, who said he'd call someone right away. About 10 minutes later I heard a knock at my door. It was a security guard for the complex, I think. He showed me how to turn the power back on -- basically, just outside my front door, there's a room with the 18th-floor circuit breakers in them. All he did was flip the switch and presto, the lights came back on. That made me happy :-)
I wonder what caused the outage in the first place. The door has a lock on it but seems to be unlocked. Maybe some punk kid got bored and came up to the hall and started flipping switches ;-) At any rate, this happened a second time in the night, but at least I know how to fix it now. I might talk to Qian about making sure that door is locked (and that I have the key to it), because that's really unsafe.
After those escapades, I finished setting up my purchases. It was only 8 oclock, so I tried to watch a DVD. I almost succeeded :-) The disc inserts and plays just fine, but the TV and DVD remotes are all in, of course, Chinese. I fired up The Matrix but noticed it had subtitles. So my first thought was: okay, let's turn off the subtitles. (They are distracting). But how? The answer: press buttons randomly and see what happens!
After about ten minutes I succeeded in getting to the DVD's main menu. From there I was able to turn off subtitles. But unfortunately, the picture started showing up in black and white. Curses!! I spent literally another thirty to forty minutes trying to fix the picture. It wasn't that way before, so I knew I must have pressed some button to cause the change. But alas, it was not to be. I did succeed in getting the DVD player to display its options in English. And I think I memorized where the important buttons (including, ironically enough, the Subtitle button) are on the remote. But alas the DVDs, they have no color! I checked the TV itself which was in color, so it's got to be something with the DVD player. I even put in another DVD to test it and it was still in black and white. So, again, I'm going to have to get someone to help me fix this :-)
By this point it was like 9 PM and I figured I'd stayed up late enough to deal with the jet lag appropriately. I got in bed and watched some CCTV (exciting!!!) before passing out.
I woke up around 7 AM this morning, so I got a decent night's sleep. I checked my email and found an alert, the one I talked about earlier, from my bank. Their instructions said to call them immediately. I was able to use my computer and Skype to call in and resolve the issue.
Today I'm supposed to call another co-worker (they're passing me around like a hot potato) and will attempt to purchase a cell phone. I'm supposed to meet up with another one of them (co-workers, that is -- not cell phones) for dinner.
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