Monday, July 19, 2010

2nd Week

Hey another week gone by and other crazy things happening. Let’s start off with the random touching. Due to the mold issue in my place, they moved me into a local hotel at the construction site. Not bad, nice digs. Anywho, I get into the elevator and behind me are three Chinese men. They start staring at my left arm, but I kind of shrug it away. As I’m waiting for the doors to close, the one guy just grabs my bicep and tries to see how strong I am. Guess they have never seen biceps like mine. He starts ranting something in Chinese, which I assume is “Oh my god, those are the biggest biceps I have ever seen. He must be a god or something”. Definitely something along those lines. So as I am leaving, I feel generous, and flex my right arm for them, and they start laughing and grinning. I’m glad they enjoyed.

Well as most of you know, I am in China doing structural engineering. I know I will be very busy because of work, but didn’t know how soon it was going to start. This weekend I didn’t plan on going anywhere because I knew I was going to be moving out of the hotel at some point. Wake up on Saturday at about 830am, look at my phone (force of habit), and I have a text from one of my co-workers, “Call me when you wake up, we gotta go to work today….”. CRAP. Ok, I call him we have to finish something today that construction needs for the weekend. We go in and sit down and hammer through some stuff. The other dude prepares the work, I evaluate all of the information and act as an independent verifier. 4hrs goes by and we are finally done. I have a feeling this will be my life for the next few years, but I wonder what would happen if I am out of town and can’t physically sign the document…

Well I finally got moved after work on Saturday to my new place. After work I biked back to the hotel. Grabbed my stuff, checked out, went to my new place. They were going to come with some assistants to move my stuff. I told her I needed to look at the new place to make sure it was mold free first. I went over, looked it through and nothing! Thank Jeebus. I also really like living in this new place. Since it is not on the first floor I gain about 50 sq ft extra indoors and another 20 sq ft on an 2nd balcony off the master. Nice place. Even though they claim it will only be for about 2 months, I think I am going to dig in and try and convince them to let me stay there. There is nothing wrong with the location, just a little farther from the others, but by farther I mean an extra 40 yards….

Another case of inappropriate touching happened the other day as well. I was sitting in my new apt and I see this weird looking bug crawling around the floor. It looks like a spider with the back two legs of a grasshopper. Thing is freaky looking, and I don’t want it here anymore. So I go grab a tissue to get kill it and throw it out, I get next to it, aim, and woosh I swipe at it. Look down at the piece of tissue and its not there, that’s strange, I always get my victim. Then I look at my arm and there it is staring at me. So I rapidly move my arm to get it away from me, it lands on the floor and must of thought ‘Hey I want some of that spicy latin blood’, because the damn thing starts jumping at my legs. I keep moving out of the way of this thing and decide enough is enough, I grab my shoes by the door, go back and end its poor life. This thing was insane looking, and worst of all it completely is not scared of me. Crap….don’t think this is exactly it but this is kinda what it looked like. Half spiderish, half grasshopperish, 100% out for me. Thing was probably somewhere between 1.5” – 2”. Anyone know what it is?


Monday, July 12, 2010

First Week

Well the first week has been pretty interesting to say the least. I got into my room on Sunday night (the 4th) and got settled in. Started looking around and noticed we have some mold growing on the walls. Crap. This has been an ongoing issue. I cranked my AC down like I like it and set up shop. I have two bedrooms for those that don’t know. I decided the first night to sleep in the master. Bigger bed, but hard as a rock. I couldn’t sleep a damn in it. It felt like I was sleeping on a box spring. I woke up probably every 20min throughout the night. Goto take a shower in the morning and I have a lot of hot water, but the shower head is not flush to the wall. I hear from a lot of the expats debate about whether the Chinese rushed this construction or if they cut corners, I can tell you they did. Not huge stuff, but if there were two screws that should go in, they put one. Doesn’t seem big, but when you tug on something a little, one screw doesn’t hold as good as two.

Work wise, things have been really good. The people are very nice, very friendly, and willing to help me out with whatever. I’ve met a lot of people and am still having trouble remembering everyone’s names. We have 4 Italians, 1 South African, 1 Filipino, 6 or so Americans and many more Chinese in my group. It’s like UN when you think about it. My desk however is a bit of a mess. I came to a desk that someone had been using. So I had all of their crap everywhere. I was told that the problem is in that we are gonna be rearranging everyone’s desk when the manager gets back from his home leave, next week. So for now I have just had to deal. I can deal with that, I can’t deal with the crappy chair. It’s a mesh chair which provides no support for my back whatsoever. When he gets back I’m gonna work on getting myself a new chair.

On Wednesday this week I finally got an opportunity to go out into the construction site. I got to walk around and see some engineering marvels at work. In all fazes of construction you can see some massive equipment, massive amounts of dirt, and tons of laborers trying to get these plants built. It’s wicked impressive. Spent about 2hrs roundtrip sight seeing which was awesome, sweaty, but awesome. Again, the Chinese stare, but I’m getting used to that. But it is obvious I am not built like a China man. The reflective vest (same thing the street constructors wear) that they got me is a 4XL. I mean, I might be fat, but I wear XL clothing, sometimes even L, never that big. It’s a little big on me, but I guess the 3XL is way smaller, guess I will have to deal and/or lose weight.

The only other things going on are that I will be moving out of my current apartment and into the on-site hotel for about a week, so they can come clean my place and hopefully get rid of the entire mold issue. Let’s see how it goes. The one thing we were told by the Owner via our HR Director in China was that they said the mold problem only happens in the rainy season which supposedly ended yesterday (yeah right), that the Chinese deal with it (so what), and that if we had more people in 3 bedroom apts that it wouldn’t have occurred (what?!?!?). Guess with more people the more spores they breathe in, and that would prevent the mold from growing on the walls? Whatever. When I do move back in I am also calling to get the extra channels. Watching BBC and CNN in English is nice, but when those are the only two English speaking channels, you get kinda bored. So they have 4 channels to add, woo woo!

One funny thing that happened recently was that I had to go into town to get some passport photos (need 8 for my work visa…) and to hit up the grocery store. As I am walking around, my rockstar status is obvious, even so that an old man came up to me laughing and started to rub my belly. He was so happy he got to do that, I think it might have added 10 years to the end of his life. I’m glad I could be of service! Supermarket was another experience. They have a lot of flashy packaging with bright and pretty colors, but almost none of it shows what is actually inside of the box and the pictures never show any food, unless inside of the box actually contains a big smiling China man’s head…. The smells in certain sections were also impressive. One area in particular had a collection of dried seafood with mosquitoes and all (minnows, bigger fish, sting rays, etc.).

I leave you with this last nugget. I am at the grocery store, looking for cleaning supplies. While being followed through the store by a 20 something year old guy smiling, laughing, and just staring at me. He walks near me still staring and farts really loudly. I look at him, and without blinking an eye, I fart right back. He starts dying of laughter and runs away (I assume to tell all of his friends, or to avoid my stench). Either way, we had a bond there for a second.

El Cubanito, bridging gaps with other cultures through bodily noises, since 1983…

Friday, July 9, 2010

Trip & Arrival

Been a while, but I finally figured out how to get onto the blog. Not as easy as one might think in China….

First the flight over. The flight over was awesome. Sitting in Business Elite is definitely the way to go! Let’s start off with dinner:

- Artichoke Hearts and Salmon Carpaccio
- Thai Chicken & Coconut Soup
- Walnut and Goat Cheese Salad
- 2 Crab Cakes, Lemon Grass Noodle thing, & seemingly grilled vegetables
- Vanilla Ice Cream with nuts and chocolate syrup with 2 strawberries

YUM! After that they make sure to keep everyone fed so they have a snack a few hours later that included fruit, vegetables, cheese, and salmon carpaccio. Then about 2 hours before we land they have another dinner. For that I had beef tenderloin with mushrooms, rice, bread, vegetables, and chocolate cheesecake. During the flight I spent the time watching movies, tv shows, and playing on my computer. Since each of the seats has an electrical outlet as well. When it came time to it I reclined my seat, which probably goes down to about 170 degrees so nearly flat and I got some shut eye. All in all it was a good flight but I’m sure it gets tedious after a while.

When I arrived in Shanghai I went to immigration, they looked at my papers looked at me, I smile, stamp and I’m on my way. I exchange some green backs to some funny looking money, then I get my bags and walk over towards customs. There are 5 Chinese customs officials sitting down, and none of them are stopping anyone so I just keep walking past. Walk through to see a sea of people waiting for their friends/colleagues/relatives and I don’t see a sign for me crap. So I signed phone to a Chinese cop and he directs me to someone who sells prepaid phone cards. Buy one, get it working, call the guy, and found him. I’m on my way now.

Driving in a vehicle with a locale in Shanghai isn’t for the faint of heart. I had no problems, I can appreciate driving like an ass hat, but its an experience. Signals don’t really mean a damn, turning lanes aren’t only the ones closest to that side, driving into oncoming traffic, NO PROBLEM! They also happen to use their horn as a conversation tool. I think BEEP = hello, BEEP BEEP = move to the side I’m coming through, BEEP ^ 5 means I have 5 passengers or perhaps I really like this horn. And forget red lights. They are just for show.

Past that, Shanghai was a lot of fun. I got in and out of cabs that spoke 0 English, not even Engrish. I spent some more monopoly money, got caught up on sleep, went to good restaurants, and met some cool other local expats. The drive to site was long, 4 hrs or so, but it wasn’t bad. It was nice to get away from some of the pollution that is present in Shanghai. When I got to the city you notice you aren’t in a city any more. The people are walking around without shirts and without shoes, children are running around everywhere, nothing has been cleaned in probably 2yrs, but all of the people are pretty nice. They seem to be curious how I can get so big (vertical and horizontal) and seem to want to know what I am doing at all times. Everyone laughs and then when I nod, or smile or wave, they get ecstatic and run away like a thrilled little school girl. Oh well, guess I will be a celebrity for the next few years here.

That is all for now. This is a long post, I’m gonna try and post some up later in the weekend to say what the first week was like and what the digs are like. Hope everyone is well, miss ya/luv ya, I’m out!