tbaroundtheworld

It’s been kind of a funny week between appointments with the government, conversations with my driver, a refrigerator that freezes things solid, multiple air conditioners that freeze me solid and getting used to living in an apartment building with zillions of other people serviced by two very slow elevators. Both Monday and Tuesday mornings were consumed with trips to see the police and the immigration authorities lest I go off the grid and create mischief. When you come to China and stay in a hotel, you are automatically registered with the police the moment you hand over your passport at the front desk for review. All the major hotels are linked into the system, and the tracking of your presence happens in the background, out of sight of visitors. I think westerners might react poorly if they knew the extent of the system, but since they never see it no one is any worse for the wear. But this is not so for those of us who live in apartments, managed by regular people. Once you obtai...

Starbucks has once again become my centralized base of operations commencing on Saturday with a walk down for a cup of iced decaf and a chocolate muffin. At 8:10 in the morning the streets in Kai Fa Qu are still pretty much empty and Starbucks was no exception – I was the only person in the shop although a few people were sitting out on the patio. There were many small groups of people hanging around talking on the plaza in front of the entrance to Anshan Mall, but in general the place was pretty much deserted. I settled in to enjoy my breakfast and to watch what was going on. A fellow in full road bike kit wandered in to do the same, leaving his bike out among the tables. Aside from the inducement of the jazz soundtrack, he chose to eat outside. Around 8:25, the Chinese began to queue up at the mall doors, many hundreds of them waiting to get into the shops. When the doors were finally unlocked – at 8:30 I presume – the queue surged forward with their progress channeled inward by the ...

I spent most of the morning doing a sort of team building with the permanent workforce and the expats, setting some expectations for how things will be in the future. Not particularly interesting work, but something that needs to be done in order to leave this place with a capable group. It was about as tedious as it sounds, but we were all looking forward to the second part of the day – barbeque and volleyball on the beach. So at noon we wrapped it up and headed down to the cars for the short drive to the ocean. One of my guys had done a little research and enlisted his driver and housekeeper to pull together some food and entertainment. We had a nicely sized half a cabana with tables and chairs. A group of Chinese celebrating a birthday shared the other half. It was interesting to hear them sing “Happy Birthday” in Hanyu. Some grills were set up and when we arrived the first of the food was ready – pork pieces on bamboo skewers, my first opportunity for street food albeit in a slight...

One of the interesting more little tidbits that have emerged since I was last here is the fact that I can no longer access Blogger unless I sneak in through the corporate VPN. Not sure why that is, whether the government is now blocking it, or whether there’s just some weird combination of this hotel’s network (which is not very reliable.) In any case it’s put the kibosh on my plan to move my literary efforts from my work computer to my personal laptop. Yesterday started early, at 4 AM, and by 9 last night I was flotsam on the shore of sleep. Arrived home after a great catch-up dinner with Kris and Matt and after settling in I was dropping my book mid-sentence by 9:15. But between those bookends, I had a pretty interesting day. I met with Maria my relocation consultant at 9:30 to have a walk through at my apartment. I’d started the morning with a decent breakfast at the hotel, planning to avoid the need for food until dinner as I had no idea how the day would unfold. Arriving at the ap...

I can’t imagine how many blogs I’ve started with the line “we got off on time” but I’m trusting it’s quite a few. Here’s another – we got off on time – but with a twist. I’m sure everyone is aware of that little H1N1 problem we’re having and the response of the Chinese government. It started with the forced quarantine of Mexican nationals who had made the unfortunate choice of traveling to China following the flu outbreak in their country. The picture of the bell hops at a four star hotel in Hong Kong delivering take-out food using the luggage trolleys pretty much said it all. Since that time, those of us with regular travel to these parts have been bombarded with one conflicting message after another regarding the likelihood that we would or would not be allowed to enter the country if we chose to risk a trip over. Well today’s policy was interesting – the gate agent at SFO announced that anyone holding a Mexican passport or any traveler who had been in Mexico within the past 40 days ...

I don’t know what it is about closed doors that makes what appear to be sane people lose their minds. Last week I made the mistake of arriving for a blood test about 15 minutes before the opening time. I’d thought it was 7:30, it turned out to be 8, and so I sat and polished off Solitaire games 13,734 and 13, 735 on my iPhone. Other people had made the same miscalculation and as they came in that non-verbal communication that occurs between people in the same boat started to kick in. They look at the door, they scan the faces for some acknowledgment and they take a seat with a shrug or a nod. But there’s always one who just can’t tune into the vibe of the collective. Usually a “he”, he needs to take charge of an unmanageable situation and try to make something happen. On this day it was a puffed up middle-aged guy in a loud Hawaiian shirt sporting one of those silly blue tooth earpieces and emanating a diffusing cloud of cheap cologne. He had his wife with him - apparently she was the ...

It was sort of a tough week for me, after a couple of months of deliberations my management and I decided that it would probably be best for me to take a breather in the US for a couple of months. We’d started this dialogue when I returned to China in January as the change to our program schedule had resulted in my crew being delayed in coming over for about six months. And while I did have a few people on site, the bulk of my work remained in the west and I was finding that it was pretty hard to stay on a western schedule while living in the east - too many late night meetings leading into early morning meetings. So I put the wheels in motion and made my plans to leave with an eye to returning when everyone else moves over. It is funny how attached you get to a place. My emotions were all over the place, obviously glad to be going home but sad to be leaving people behind. And while living here can be tough, it can also be challenging in a fun and exotic way countered well with the tir...