Merry Christmas!

Hello everybody! It’s been quite some time since my last post, and a lot has happened since then, so I’ll try to remember the important details, but I’m sure that I’ll forget some.

Two weekends ago: A good friend, Jon, decided two weeks ago that he would be leaving Beijing. As a result, we wanted to show him an excellent last weekend in Beijing. Since Saturday and Sunday were reserved for his girlfriend, Friday night was our only available night, so we made the most of it. The night started with some Beruit (a wonderful game involving ping-pong balls cups – into which you throw the ping-pong balls – and lots of beer). After that, it was “Friday Night Fights,” or so Jon thought. We lined him up to box with another of my friends, Ralph, but when they were getting ready to start sparing, we tackled him, taped up his arms and legs, blindfolded him, and carried him to an undisclosed location. It was essentially a fraternity-style abduction, based on the fact that my group of American friends considers themselves something of a fraternity (Alpha Beijing Nu is the name). So yes, I made it through college without joining a fraternity, but it seems that I have unwittingly joined one here; I’m not too upset about it, though. Anyways, after the abduction and a brief hazing/exit ritual for Jon, we went back to play some more Beirut. After that it was off to Party World for some karaoke! Because we were slow getting out of the door, our initial reservation was cancelled and we had to head to another location to sing. Long story short, we sang our hearts out until about four in the morning and then went home for some sleep.

Last week: The work week last week involved a lot of research and the creation of an economic game that will be played at an upcoming conference with a bunch of Marketing CEOs. My boss, Alex, will be presenting the game which is essentially created to show the benefits of choosing not to compete based on price. For anybody who has taken economics (or anybody who has access to Wikipedia and is curious), the game is based on the “Prisoners’ Dilemma” format. Because economics tends to be boring unless you’re actually watching it in action, I won’t go further into the game.

This past weekend: The only interesting thing that happened last weekend was on Saturday. Weekends tend to be my recharge time, where I just lay around the house and store up energy for the upcoming week. Saturday, however, I went out with a group of friends to the Hohai area to enjoy some nice drinks and conversation. After that, a French friend of mine, Jean, and I went to a club near my apartment to do some dancing. It was quite a blast: mostly American music, lots of people, just good all-around fun. After dancing for a little while I noticed that a very pretty girl was looking over my way, but sadly, she seemed to be with a boy. Since we kept catching each-others’ eyes, though, I decided to try and beckon her over. No success. Convinced that I had no game, I just continued dancing for a while with one of Jean’s friends (actually his Chinese teacher) that we met up with. Later on, though, I ended up next to the original girl and this time, she was willing to dance. To answer the obvious questions: No, I did not go home with her (what kind of guy do you take me for?), and yes, I did get her phone number. To answer the next questions, yes I have called her and yes we will hopefully be meeting up later this week. We shall see how that goes. So anyways, I went home at 4:30 am, and was awoken the next morning by a phone call from my family and my other family (the Tomaros).

Christmas was yesterday, and I had to work. Too bad, I know, but since everybody in China works on Christmas, I really didn’t notice it much. Not too much interesting to say about Christmas day. Sorry :-P.

And now for the big surprise news! I will be home in Madison from January 20^th to the 23^rd. I probably should have put this information at the start of the post so that people will actually read it, but my college friends are on break now (so you can’t complain about schoolwork making you too busy to read my blog), and my family already knows that I’m coming. Anywhoo, one of those nights will be reserved for the family (or for family and friends who love my family). The other two nights, I will be open to whatever people want to do. I just hope that I get a chance to see everybody!!! Hence, if you want to hang out with me, clear your calendar for at least one of the days and let me know what day you want to see me and I’ll try to make everything work.

That’s it for now. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I'm still alive and kicking . . .

Hey all. Sorry for the lack of an entry last week; I've just been too busy. This week you get one, but it's going to be short.

So this week was pretty mad with activity. I had a proposal to write, a commercial to write, and a looming VIP tour that I had to give on Friday. Hence, I was a busy-body. The proposal is almost done as of today, the commercial is done (though not perfect, but it's going to stay that way), and the VIP tour went quite well.

Actually, I'm just realizing that since I was so busy with all of the work stuff, I really don't have any interesting stories to relate, so it's alright that this blog entry will be very short.

Next week should be a little less hectic, so I'll probably be able to do some interesting things and come up with some good stories for next week's post, but we shall see. For now, I will leave off. I hope life is going well for everybody!

Happy Thanksgiving!

So it’s been a very busy week. Recently, I was assigned to a new project working with some Ferrari dealerships throughout China. Hence, much of this week was spent meeting with people who work for Ferrari, meeting with people who work for the dealership, and partying with them.

Monday night I was up until 4:00 am at a crazy night of Karaoke with the President of HighTeam, some other co-workers and a bunch of Ferrari people. By the way, Karaoke is HUGE here, and I probably go once every two to three weeks.

Tuesday and Wednesday were filled with more meetings and some research, but that’s not fun to write about, so lets move on to Thanksgiving. Erica (an American co-worker of mine) and I took off work early on Thursday. We were able to do this because our boss put us into a television commercial for the 600 days until the Beijing Olympics celebration that is going on in December. I’ll try to get a tape of it, since I’ll be standing there looking like a freak speaking Spanish on Beijing television. It’ll be something to show the kids. But anyways, back to thanksgiving. We took off early, because we felt it was only fair that we should get some time off for being subjected to humiliation in front of all of Beijing, and went to our friend Ralph’s parents’ house.

Once there, we began cooking, watching movies (Thank You For Smoking, Euro Trip and The Big Lebowski), and so forth. We did it potlatch style, so everybody brought a dish that is popular in their birth-location. I brought cheese bread. It was delicious.

After everybody arrived (about 20 people, in all), we got together and played a very intense game of kickball. It was awesomely sweet. I forgot entirely how much I love that game! The pollution made breathing a little bit difficult, but we had an excellent time anyways. And people really, really got into it. There were several excellent dives to try and prevent getting tagged out, and one dive (read “trip”) and crawl due to running in heeled shoes. The only negative part of the intensity was that I was ragingly sore on Friday, but I still feel that fun was worth the pain.

After that, dinner time. We had a turkey, two roast ducks, stuffing (my personal favorite of the food), salads, sweet and regular potatoes, beans, cranberry sauce, wine, beer, and multiple deserts. Holy cow was it delicious. Perhaps too delicious, actually, since I definitely ate enough to put myself into a pretty severe food coma. Once my photos are posted on web-shots, you may be able to tell when that was, since I took probably 6 or 7 pictures from the same spot on the same couch where I laid down to digest my food. That series of photos pretty much sums up the rest of the night. Everybody just sat, talked, digested food, etc. and then we went home. I know that my description doesn’t do it justice, but Thursday was probably the best day that I’ve had in Beijing since I arrived.

Friday was a fun day of work. Since I’ve been doing this Ferrari thing, one of the guys who we work with got some tickets to the Beijing International Auto Show for a couple of co-workers and me, so we took a trip over there for some research. It was pretty cool seeing all of the new concept cars and the interesting floor setups that the various companies created. Probably the coolest thing that I saw, though, was the dancing robot that Honda made. It was totally sweet! It could walk, dance, stand on one foot, and it almost seemed human. I have a video of it that I’ll try to post on Webshots, but we’ll see how that turns out.

The other interesting part of the auto show was the exotic cars area. Maseratis, Bentleys, Lamborghinis, Porches, and, of course, Ferraris were all there. The co-workers and I even got to go into the VIP areas of the Maserati and Ferrari areas. If anybody strikes it rich and wants to buy me a Ferrari (since I won’t be buying one even if I happen to strike it rich . . . they’re too expensive), the 612 is my choice. I have a picture of me standing next to it in the photo page.

Other than these little anecdotes, nothing too interesting is going on. I’m continuing to learn Chinese, I’m hooked on the TV show Scrubs, I like to read when I have spare time, etc. It’s a decent life.

I hope that everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I look forward to hearing from anybody who wants to write!

Here's the photo site again for people who haven't yet bookmarked it (I'll post the photos in a couple of days): http://community.webshots.com/user/ngpinger

Mike and I Cross Paths

So Thursday the 9^th, I took a little trip to Shanghai. Almost missed my flight due to waking up 17 minutes after I planned to leave the apartment to catch my cab to the apartment, but no big deal, I ended up making it on time (thank God that there weren’t any traffic jams on the way J).

Anywhoo . . . the first day and a half of the trip was spent working. I went to observe an event and sub-event that we were throwing to get some ideas for new things to start researching. It was interesting stuff and I had some new ideas come to mind for Consumer Relationship Management (CRM) stuff that we’re working on, but it’s probably not interesting for anybody reading this, so I’ll skip it.

Thursday night, after my first ever trip to Hooters (with four of the big bosses in HighTeam), I met up with Mike. The first night was basically just chill-time. Catching up, chatting, walking around Shanghai, etc.; nice and relaxing. Friday after I finished working we traveled around Shanghai to the Bund, Peoples Square, a history museum, etc. During that time I learned that Shanghai is a completely different world from Beijing. In the very commercial, touristy areas, we couldn’t walk for more than five minutes without being asked if we wanted a “lady massage,” or being approached by “art students” who wanted to show us some of the work they were exhibiting. Also, the cab drivers were terrible! They weren’t any crazier on the road than Beijing drivers, but they would do anything to rip off westerners (or “big noses” as the Shanghainese seem to like to call us). I’ve had one bad cab experience in Beijing in the whole three months that I’ve been here. But in four days in Shanghai, three cab drivers tried to rip me off. After a certain amount of yelling, though, I was able to work the second two back to a reasonable fare (for the first one, I was just too lazy and tired to bother).

Saturday, Mike had to work for a while so I met up with a Shanghainese friend of mine named Orlando. He did an internship in Madison in the summer of ’05. With him and a buddy of his, Benny, we went to a couple of commercial/tourist areas and just walked around; I didn’t really care to buy anything since almost all of the same stuff exists in Beijing (and often at lower prices, DVDs being the exception). We then temporarily parted ways so that Orlando could go home for dinner with some relatives, but not before planning to meet up for some awesome bar-time that night.

So, after freshening up, meeting up with Mike, having some dinner, and drinking three nice sized bottles of beer while watching Underworld Revolutions (we made a rule that we had to take a drink whenever Kate Beckinsale looked hot . . . good game), it was off to enjoy the Shanghai nightlife. We went to club DKD, and again had a bad encounter with a cab driver who dropped us off about three blocks from our destination and pointed vaguely in the direction that we were supposed to go. After several calls to Orlando, though we eventually made our way to the club and began the fun.

Johnny Walker Black and green tea is a drink of choice for the Chinese, but I personally find it disgusting. So I was stuck with Johnny Walker on the rocks . . . mmm. After a little bit of that and a wonderful dice game, we (meaning I, Mike, Orlando, and some of Orlando’s friends) hit the dance floor. It was a good time. The DJ was good, the music was decent, and dancing was fun. Too bad none of us had any game, so after a couple of hours of that we went to McDonalds for some late-night food.

The game that we (we now being Mike, Orlando and I) played on the way there was the “Try to get Mike to say funny things in Chinese” game. So that provided plenty of entertainment for Orlando and me. I don’t know if the actually phrases or Mike’s wacky drunken pronunciation were funnier . . . some combination of them kept us giggling like freaks the whole way to McDonalds, though.

At McDonalds, Mike started insisting that he could speak Chinese with the best of em, and proceeded to push us out of the way to order for everybody. Apparently he got his point across, even though the cashier kept laughing whenever Mike turned around to show us that he could order, because we got our food. And man was it delicious.

After that, it was time to head home so the three of us caught a cab. Mike insisted on us dropping Orlando off first even though he was 30 minutes in the opposite direction of my hotel and Mike’s apartment. We kept telling him that it didn’t make any sense, but Mike was the only one who knew where he and I had to go (so now he really did know the most important Chinese phrase as far as I and Orlando were concerned). However, Orlando, being the crafty guy that he is, agreed to go towards his home so we could drop him of there, and then promptly direct the cab driver in the general direction of my hotel. After about a 10 minute drive, he stopped and got out leaving Mike dumbfounded and with no choice other than to direct the cab driver to head towards my hotel. So I got home at the reasonable hour of 4am.

The next day I had my flight home at 2pm, so I gave Mike a call around 10:45am to grab some lunch before I left, but he was too tired. Lame, but whatever . . . we had a fun time. So I grabbed some lunch and headed back to Beijing!

This past week has been another relatively normal one at work. I’m now working as a strategic consultant on a year-long marketing plan for four Ferrari and Maserati dealerships in China. We give our initial ideas next Friday, and we’ll see where the project goes from there!

P.S. more photos will be up soon at http://community.webshots.com/user/ngpinger.

P.P.S John Tucker Must Die wasn't as bad as the previews made it out to be, exept for the ending, and Scrubs may be the greatest show ever.

"Ya know . . . this is a Great Wall . . . "

Written on November 7, 2006

Contrary to popular knowledge, or though my email would have me believe is popular knowledge, I am not dead. Rather, I have been experiencing technical difficulties with computer access outside of work. It all started with my apple power sending out a bright little display of sparks and then sizzling slowly until the indicator light that tells when the computer is being charged went dead. I debated long and hard about whether I should just use the company computer or whether I should buy a replacement charger since I knew that the apple sales people would gouge the crap out of me if I tried to buy one here in China. After getting a sore back lugging home the late 1990s size laptop in my man-bag once or twice, I broke down and decided to buy the charger. And it only cost me $120 . . . a 75% markup from US prices . . . freaking shipping costs . . .

So as of Saturday, I had a charged home computer. And since I would also have a charged home computer on Sunday, I decided to relax Saturday afternoon knowing that I could tell you all how I was doing on Sunday. Boy was that a miscalculation. Saturday night I decided to take a little trip out to the bars (now I know what you’re thinking . . . he must have drank too much and gotten a massive hangover . . . but just you wait and see) and, realizing that I had work to do on Sunday and that I really, really wanted to let you all know how I was doing via a blog post, I decided to take it easy on the drinking. After a measly three beers in two hours at the bar, I packed it up and headed home at the socially unacceptable time of 12:30 am. For those of you still on Madison Standard Drinking Time, that would be 1.5 hours before bar time. In Beijing, where there is no bar time, it’s just plain pathetic. But I was feeling very prudent. And what did I get for all of my forethought and responsibility? YES! A migraine AND a headcold! So Sunday did not prove to be the productive day of work and blogging that I had planned. Instead, it was a mixture of me moaning, because for some reason the sound of my own discomfort rather effectively took my mind off the pain in my head, and blowing my nose. So that was fun . . .

On to Monday: I went to work, feeling much better I might add, and had a very productive day. Work finished, on to Chinese class. Chinese class finishes, time to go home and write some blog entries. Get home, start up the computer, and a happy little message greets me: “Cannot find PPPoE server.” Hurray! Now my internet is down, though I haven’t yet paid a bill, so I can take some blame for this problem. Anywhoo, after crying like a little girl for several hours, I decided that I was too depressed to write last night.

Today, however, I am a new man! And here I am to relate to you everything wonderful about China (but you won’t get it until tomorrow, because my internet is still down and I’m writing this in a Word document).

First things first: the Great Wall. Not last Friday, but the Friday before that, I went to the Great Wall. Actually I went to the Great Wall twice in one day, for work research. The first place that I went to was rather dull: a touristy area by a big dam on a run-down portion of the wall. The highlight of the trip to that portion of the wall was the local Chinese yelling when I took off my shirt because my friend Carolyn was trying to take a picture of me and said my jacket was too dark and didn’t stand out enough against the dark hills in the background so I took of my shirt because I’m really pale and, sure enough, you can see me in the picture (even though that sentence was a major run-on, or maybe because it was a major run-on, it was really fun to write . . . I’m in a weird mood . . . ). So yeah, boring part of the wall. If you come to visit me, I will not take you there.

The second part of the wall, though, was really, really cool. There were 10 kilometers or so of completely restored wall. Pictures are the best way to get a feel for it, so go look at them! The only bad part about this portion of the wall was that it was about 4 hours away by car. And this is 4 hours with an insane driver. Let me tell a little story about her . . .

Pardon my French, and cover your kids’ eyes if they’re reading, but this lady had BALLS OF STEEL. I mean, I’ve encountered people who I thought were fearless before, but wow! The car ride up wasn’t so bad. It just involved an average disregard for signs, lanes, etc. that were created to keep drivers and passengers safe. On the way home though, if I had to give a rough estimate for the amount of time that we spent in a lane that did not contain oncoming traffic, I’d guess it was somewhere around 65%. Further breakdown follows: About 30% of the time, we were the party that would have been liable had an accident occurred since we were on the wrong side of the road taking on not only other mid-size sedans, but big freaking gravel trucks that would’ve squashed us like little bugs if they would’ve hit us, in an exhilarating game of chicken. Another 5% of the time some jerk was in our lane trying to cheat death in a similar manner. The remaining 65% of the time, as I mentioned, we were safe.

So that was the Great Wall trip. After that little expedition, I was supposed to watch scary movies with a friend of mine (whose name I should totally give out so that you can send her hate mail on Facebook) since it was Halloween weekend and all, but she backed out so I was forced to watch When A Stranger Calls all by myself. It was a scary movie in theory, but I just couldn’t relate to the main character. I mean I’ve never babysat for such a rich family and my boy troubles just aren’t . . . ok this joke is already going to far.

Sorry folks, all this sarcasm is making me tired. I’m going to go get a massage (I don’t have anything that can compete with the driver-lady for entertainment anyways). Toodles!

Computer Troubles . . .

I give my appologies for not writing in a couple of weeks, but the power adapter for my apartment's computer is broken and I haven't been able to do any writing at home. Since I'm writing at work, I'll keep this post short and let you know that more info on my life will be coming soon!

Things to look forward to . . .

1) New project; I'm going to Shanghai
2) Going away party for my friend Jess
3) A day trip to two sections of the Great Wall

Soon enough there will be text, pictures and possibly video!!!!

Back to Work

Not too much to write about this week. Work started again on Sunday after the week-long break. I was a little sad to go back because I was enjoying all of the free time, but this past week wasn't very stressful at all.

I've had a lot of down-time since the end of the Urban Safari so I've basically been doing a lot of research. At this point, most of the Chinese workers in the company have little to no formal business education so my work is pretty basic. I read American business educational material and summarize the parts that are most important to understand when working for HighTeam. Then I present the info to the other members of my R & D Team. It's pretty easy work and I'm learning a lot, which is quite nice. Over the past week I read 3 books on marketing and got paid to do so. I love learning, at this point I'm basically being paid to do something that I would have liked to do anyways.

In addition to that reading, I'm reading a couple of books at home. The first is Wild Swans, an amazing history of 3 generations of Chinese women growing up through the 19th century. If anybody plans to come and visit me, I would recommend that he or she picks up that book from their local library and gives it a read before coming by. There are lots of references to Beijing because it is the political capital of China, so I've seen many of the places mentioned in the book; pretty cool. I'm also starting The Pride and The Prejudice just for kicks. I bought a membership at a place called The Bookworm, which is essentially an English language library that charges membership fees. I haven't really gotten into it yet because I want to finish Wild Swans first.

Back to work. They are seriously running out of structured things for me to do, since most of the proposal writing that is going on right now is in Chinese. Hence, I've started to define my own projects. The company in the past has been a loose association of very talented and driven people who each built their own mini-businesses in HighTeam, and when they left, they took their work with them. So the company doesn't have a lot of base knowledge which everybody can access. So my first self-created project is to profile the major industries that HighTeam services. Right now Erica and I are profiling the high-end auto industry. Basically we're preparing the company for any type of project that they would need to do by breaking the industry down into manageable sub-industries (eg. we look at all of the high-end luxury sedans, find the different cars that are competitors based on price and style, and then determine the relative international positions of the cars in the international market. i.e. Volvo is a "safety" positioned brand; they sell based on the fact that their cars are very sturdy and safe, whereas Jaguar is a youthful image-based company; they sell to a crowd that is younger in age and enjoys nightlife, and is very concerned with style). All-in-all the project is very ambitious, but the project managers that I have talked to up to this point have been very excited about the possibility of centralizing some of the knowledge in the company. One told me that it would be "great not to have to stay up to 3:00 a.m. writing proposals anymore because of repeat work."

So that's my life right now. I enjoy the researching more than the event management for two reasons. First, it's far less stressful. I get to work at 9:00 a.m. and I leave at 5:00 p.m. Then I don't have to worry about whether I have taken care of all of the details in the project, because I set the level of detail. Second, I'm much better at it. I have always enjoyed and been good at working with very abstract problems which require me to synthesize large amounts of information into something more simple that gives people insights into what they should do in the future. So I like it. Still don't think I could do it for the rest of my life, but I like it.

My Apartment Location

Hey all. If anybody was wondering where my apartment is located in Beijing, feel free to check out Google Earth online. Worker's Stadium is just northeast (more east than north) of the forbidden city (a big square in the middle of Beijing). Worker's Stadum is also a tough landmark to miss if you know where to look since it is a big, round stadium-looking thing. This picture is a blown up view of my area of Beijing with some major roads and Worker's Stadium labeled. I don't know how big the picture is online (I can't read my own posts), but you can click on it to see the full size.

Photos!

So I don't have too much to write about today. I was planning on taking a trip to the Great Wall this morning, but apparently I ate something that didn't agree with me and I was up all last night with major stomach pains, and I didn't feel like leaving for the Great Wall at 8:00 am in that condition. Luckily, the pain has since subsided substantially.

The main purpose of this post is to link you up to my new webshots account. Click here to get to the site that contains my albums. I should be updating with new photos every once in a while, so feel free to bookmark (Don't become a member, though, unless you have an email address that you don't check often; Webshots does send some spam. If you need an extra email address, just get a Hotmail one; it's free and completely useless compared to Gmail!)

That's about all I have for now. I head back to work on Sunday . . . the holiday calendar here is a little odd compared to the U.S., but whatever. I'm just going to make the most of the free time that I have.

(October 1, 2006)

Wow it has been a busy couple of weeks. I hope I can remember what has been going on . . . I’ll start from the big event . . .

Weekend of September 23rd

The weekend of the 23rd was the big weekend of the F-1 (Formula One Racecar) run in Beijing as well as my first project, the Urban Safari. Saturday I was up at 5:30 am to catch a bus to the site (about 1 hour north of Beijing) at 7:00 am. I spent that day supervising the construction of the tent, learning about the site, and coordinating the project via cell phone (there were 3 people who still had things to finish up in Beijing the day prior to the event). Besides a little confusion about where our 4:00 rehearsal would take place (one girl thought it would be at the office, but it was on-site) and one other thing, things went smoothly on Saturday.

The other thing that didn’t go smoothly was the hanging of the pictures in the gallery. It wasn’t supposed to be hard . . . but it was for some reason. We had 5 hired assistants with nothing to do, so we gave them this job. We had printed off photos of how we wanted the pictures arranged on the wall. The instructions were simple: make sure that the tops are flat and that the pictures that are at the same level in the example picture are at the same level on the wall. Well, it turns out that hanging pictures level is very, very hard to do. Now there were 5 guys there, so they could have had 2 hanging and 3 checking to see if the pictures were level, but for some reason that didn’t happen, even after I saw the “first draft” of the wall, screamed, and suggested it. The second time I came back after leaving them to do it, the pictures looked like they were floating along a wave in an ocean. They started (on the right half of the room) reasonably flat, but then they started tilting to the right and rising until they reached the crest at the far left end of the room where the top of the left-most picture was a full 3+ inches higher than the top of the right-most picture. The change was gradual, so one wouldn’t have noticed it if they were walking 4 inches from the wall, but if you were on the other half of the room, it literally hurt your eyes. Yikes. So I just did it myself.

After that fiasco was straightened out, we had the walk-through by a couple of VIPs, and they were very excited. Hurray! After that, we did a little run-through, packed up, and went home to get a little sleep before the big day.

Sunday morning, I awoke at 4:30 am to catch a 6:00 am bus to finish setting up. The main day went extremely smoothly with the exception of a little scare when our wine connoisseur showed up 15 minutes late. Luckily, only one VIP had arrived to tour the tent at that point, and he was still around when the wine-man arrived.

Later in the day, the tent was a huge hit! We invited about 50 people, 30 or so came, and several came 2 or 3 times to take advantage of the air-conditioning, the massages, and the wine. Meanwhile, I got to discuss Urban Safari as a concept, hand out my business card so that people could schedule their own Safaris, and so forth. It was excellent. It felt very good to finally reach the end of the whole project and to see all of the ideas come together as a reality.

Despite the fun time that I was having in the tent, the high-point of the day came when I got to see the F-1 car run. Because our company planned the event, the people on our team got “very special access” badges which allowed us to go right up next to the F-1 racer as it took off and whipped around and skidded to stops, etc. It was crazy! It’s actually pretty scary when a car that can go 0 to 60 in 3 seconds is whipping around about 8 feet in front of you and burning so much rubber that you can’t see it after a second when it starts driving away. And all of this occurred when we were in what I liked to call the “death zone” (as in, if the driver screws up, he plows through the barricades and you are dead, zone). He did actually go through the barricade at one point, but not near me. It was a pretty minor accident too, with only $500,000 damage done to the car (eek).

So that was that. I got lots of “congrats” from the other members of HighTeam for completing my first event, and many (including Alex) said that the tent was better than expected. So I’m happy for a first success.

This past week was quite eventful to, but not as unique as the F-1 Event. Monday I thought I was done with work, but since I’m a numbers guy I had to run the analysis from all of the survey data that we took. It wasn’t too bad, though. Tuesday I took a trip to IKEA and continued the slow process of making my little bitty apartment into a home. Wednesday was a thank you dinner for the better than expected F-1 Event from the mystery company whose name I can’t divulge. Thursday, I was invited to a wine tasting by the wine connoisseur who helps us with Urban Safari; I’m finally starting to get a feel for the wine lingo that he throws around. After the wine tasting, it was on to karaoke, which was a blast. It was so much fun, in fact, that I went back for more karaoke on Friday. Saturday I caught up on sleep and today is Sunday, the first day of our week-long Mid-Autumn Festival (which means that I have no work next week!).

So today Erica and I went shopping around Beijing and I got the man-bag that I’ve been wanting for such a long time (my backpack is too big). In case you’re not familiar with the term man-bag, it’s something like a purse, but for a guy. However, you can sling it over your shoulder, so it’s masculine. Then we did some grocery shopping, I watched some T.V. and I treated myself to a nice little Bose stereo system that hooks up to my iPod. Soon my apartment will be a home ☺.

That’s about it for now. I’ll keep updating as I have time (which I hopefully will this week)!

Work and a Trip to the Countryside

(Written on Monday, September 18, 2006)

Work continues to move along. It is slow from time to time; waiting to talk to the right people, deciding which course of action is the best, which design is the best, and so forth, but it keeps moving. I regret to say that I can’t say much about the work that I am doing right now beyond the fact that I am designing a condensed form of the Urban Safari that I wrote about earlier. The company with which we are working insists that we work under a confidential contract, so no written mention of the company’s name is allowed. Sad story, but my involvement has given me a good understanding of what it takes to design and to implement an entire project. To the right you can see some of the fruits of my team’s effort. What you see is a tentative floor plan for the tent which we plan to take VIPs through in order to give them a true HighTeam Safar experience (in 20 minutes). The first area is set up like a spa. We plan to do massages and tell a story about the Silk road while the VIPs receive first class treatment. After that, we will walk them through a gallery (the other room) that showcases the various projects that we have done. After viewing the gallery, the VIPs will get to sample some fine wine and food and they will be given a short presentation on the nature of Urban Safari and how it can benefit them and their clients. It’s all basically a glorified sales pitch for HighTeam’s services; it should be pretty interesting to see how it goes. My work has been mostly dealing with details: how to time the motion of the VIPs, how to move the food into the gallery and the dirty dishes out, designing jobs for the various people that will be working on site, and so forth. It’s an interesting challenge, but I am happy to say that it won’t be my job forever. As I understand, this is more of a learning experience for me so that I can work as a designer in the future and keep the production and implementation needs in mind.

This weekend was a lot of fun. I took a trip with one of my co-workers Yang Yang (though she often goes by the English name Tina, to her family’s vacation home in the mountains to the north of Beijing. It was, for the most part, a very relaxing trip to the countryside. We went up with her uncle who was entertaining some of his old high school classmates. They basically did their own thing while Tina and I explored the area. The weather was very hot, but the views were beautiful. The town in which we stayed was in a large valley surrounded by mountains. To pass the time, Tina and I walked through the pastures, talked, sang karaoke (yep, karaoke), ate delicious food and so forth. Basically we took the trip as a chance to escape the working world, if only for a day or so.

The main adventure of the trip involved a very old, very scary U.S. Army style jeep. Tina’s uncle took us and some of his friends on a terrifying trip around the mountains. We started by driving down some paved roads . . . no big deal. Then the road ended. We continued flying at 35 mph down what could be called a road, but it was more like a jeep-width pathway that was full of huge holes, miniature ponds, and so forth. I had to hold on for dear life to keep from flying out of the jeep when we went through some of the pot holes (in true Chinese style, there weren’t any seatbelts). My ultimate realization of fear came when we were turning the jeep around to head back to the road. Tina’s uncle was very careful about his turning and maneuvering, so I asked why. He told me something along the lines of “no breaks.” Ummmmm . . . yeah. So we continued flying around these non-roads and now I was just in shock. “How in the world do we stop if we go down a hill?” was all I kept thinking to myself, and I kept trying to glance at Tina’s uncle’s feet to see if he was actually working a break pedal or not. Like I said, it was terrifying. As it turns out, this was a situation where something got lost in translation. Apparently “no breaks” didn’t mean that the jeep didn’t have any breaks, because we eventually got to a point where we had to put on the breaks, and they worked just fine, it just didn’t happen until we were back at the house. Needles to say, I was relieved. At this point it was the end of the trip, so I felt better mostly because I felt less stupid for getting into the jeep in the first place.

After that, it was back to more relaxing. I got to practice my Chinese, and I’m starting to feel a little more comfortable with it. As long as people are having conversations about food or their hobbies, I can follow most everything (and food is a large part of life here, so I understand a surprising amount of what I hear), but if the conversation drifts off to something else, I’m lost pretty quickly.

Other than the sporadic adventures, life has hit a pretty even keel. I’m starting to settle into a pattern. Wake up at 7:00 a.m., do some yoga and watch some Chinese music television, head off to work until 6:00 or so. Then on Monday, Wednesday, Friday I have Chinese class from 6:30 till 8:30, and on Tuesday, Thursday I have a little time to relax after work. It’s quite a breakneck pace. It’s really insane to think that I’ve been here for almost a month already! I feel like I just arrived, but I know that I’ve done a lot in the time that I’ve been here.

Note: I can't any photos other than the first one to work yet . . . I'll try and post them again at a different time.

Skull Camp, etc.

(Written on Monday, September 11, 2006)

So this weekend I went through the HighTeam training camp, and it was pretty amazing and grueling. I have to keep the description of the event somewhat abridged because it is a bit of a company secret, but I think I can give you an idea of what it is like. It was essentially a HighTeam boot camp. The weekend started with them giving us a card that had a skull and cross-bones in the center and the words “I want quit” below. They explained to us that, if at any time we felt like we couldn’t do what they were asking us to do, we could pass them the “I want quit” card and the pain would be over. They would let us leave. However, a permanent mark would go on our record saying that we quit in the middle of the camp. The card was overkill, in my opinion, but the camp was tough.

Throughout the entire weekend (Friday mid-day to Sunday evening), I only got about 7 Hours of sleep. I spent the other 40 hours learning the ins and outs of HighTeam’s corporate structure, completing projects, giving presentations, doing team building activities, and having an all-around good time with other employees from all three of HighTeam’s offices in China. Oh yeah, and did I mention that all of the lectures were in Chinese? Well, they were. Thankfully I had one guy on my team named Naudel who spoke good English and who was quite intelligent. It was very strange for me to have to learn everything through translation, though. I kept thinking to myself, “what if my translator isn’t picking up on the important nuances of the presentation?” and “what if the translator isn’t translating properly?” I think that this was actually very good for me though, because it forced me to be completely dependent upon my co-workers and teammates. I had no choice but to trust that they were doing what was necessary to keep me up to speed. It was very humbling.

That said, the other kids loved it when I did actually speak Chinese. The first thing I said when we were doing introductions was (in Chinese). “Hello, my name is Nathan, and I speak Chinese really poorly, so I’m going to speak in English.” For some reason, everybody started laughing and cheering. I don’t really understand Chinese humor yet, but apparently Americans who speak limited Chinese fit into the hilarious category.

My extremely shaky knowledge of the Chinese language did lead to a couple of challenges, though. Our final project was to write a marketing plan proposal to present to a company, in three hours. We got the proposal finished, and I was chosen to present along with Zhou Hua, a site-planning expert who only spoke Chinese. Moreover, before I presented I we didn’t have time to educate me about the content of the 7 or so powerpoint slides that were written entirely in Chinese, nor did we have time to educate Zhou Hua about the 13 slides that I was going to present. Surprisingly enough, the presentation went quite well, or so I thought until we hit the Q&A section. The big moment in our event plan was to have a 30+ story building wrapped as a present and to ceremonially and symbolically un-wrap the building by using some sort of mechanism at the top of the building which allowed the cloth wrapping material to fall dramatically to the ground. The only problem was that, according to the event plan (which was in Chinese), everybody was supposed to be inside the building when this happened. Kinda kills the drama huh? So the first question directed to me after the presentation was, “How do you plan to unwrap the building when the people who are supposed to participate in the ceremony are inside the building?” “How in the Hell should I know!!!” was what I thought to myself; I assumed that my teammates were smart enough to make sure that the big, dramatic moment in our event was properly planned. So I stood up there, thought for about one second and said, “I believe that this question could best be answered by Zhao Hua, our logistics expert.” Then I turned to him and waved him on stage, and asked the judges, “Could you ask the question again in Chinese?” They did, and he answered. I still have no Idea what he said, but they seemed amazingly satisfied considering our clear lack of communication. So that was it. And our team received the highest score of all four teams for our event plan and presentation. Wow.

Oh, another fun thing about skull camp. They have MAFIA, the role playing game, here in China! If you haven’t played Mafia before, a) you should, and b) you probably won’t understand this paragraph very well. So about 13 Chinese kids and I played Mafia on the second night (when we probably should have been sleeping), and it was awesome. About five of them spoke some English, so that made the game progress pretty smoothly, but it was very funny trying to debate with people when I didn’t know what they said until somebody translated for them. Then, I would have to make a rebuttal and have it translated for them. I don’t know how much of the arguments were lost in translation, but the game worked out very well and was as fun as ever.

By the time skull camp was over, I was completely exhausted (though not ready for sleep since I drank two Red Bulls to stay awake for the final presentation), so my friend Erica and I got some foot massages. Man that was nice. I really need to start budgeting my money so I can do that more often! But . . . whatever.

Today it was back to work. My boss let me come in at noon because he knew that I was tired (he’s really nice). And after I came in I found out that I’m going to be given a leadership role planning and executing an Urban Safari after an event for some Intel VIPs (at least that’s my understanding for now; I’ll write more about it after I have some meetings about it). Pretty cool huh? I hope so, cause I have a feeling it’s going to be a lot of work.

That’s all I have for right now. I’ll try and write more soon, but the internet in my apartment is currently not working, so I don’t know how often I’ll be able to post for the time being.

More fun times

(Written on Sunday, September 3, 2006)

The Urban Safari (Wednesday, August 30th):

The Urban Safari was quite amazing. It was pretty much what I expected: fine wine, food, and cultural activities, all to entertain VIPs. The head of the Chinese division of Mazerati, the head of the Special Olympics (international), Chief editor of China GQ, etc. I ended up being recruited to take photos as our team followed these VIPs around and provided them with entertainment. Sadly, I can give too many details about the event because it’s a HighTeam trade-secret. However, I will tell you that the final stop was one of the most beautiful restaurants that I have ever seen (and probably ever will see). It was modeled after a 1000 year old building. Think of the most beautiful indoor decorations that you have seen in movies about ancient China, multiply that by two and you’ll have an idea of the aesthetics in this place. As a second benchmark, for most people who want to hold dinners at this venue, the cost is about $3000/person (which seems unreasonable . . . my informant may have misspoken and the true costs is 3000元/person . . . more like $375/person). Long story short: it’s nice. I spent most of that portion of the evening drinking wine, chatting with co-workers and sitting on the patio area which faces the forbidden city. It was very nice. And after the Urban Safari finished. . . massages! Some co-workers and I got some free coupons to get body massages at a Thai-style spa. It was phenomenal. I think I may have to make the massage trip into a weekly event. And at $15/hour I may even be able to afford it!

Chinese Class and the Bar Scene (Friday, September 1)

Friday I started Chinese class. I had a little oral exam to assess my level, and they ended up placing me into the last lesson of level one. So, in theory, I hadn’t lost anything from the semester of Chinese that I took in college . . . ehem . . . that’s certainly not true. However, when I got to class on Friday, I realized that I was probably in the right place. There were three other kids in the class, all French, and they were just starting to learn how to tell time (time is a subject that I learned very well when I was in class). So they struggled along and I had an easy time. Then we started asking and answering questions and it was my turn to struggle. They had learned a lot of vocabulary that I didn’t know. So they were asking me about going to the supermarket and which foods I liked and if I wanted to go on a walk in the park and I was hearing something like this: Do you want to go with me to the 超市 in order to buy 蔬菜? We could eat 肉. Do you like 肉? So yeah . . . that was interesting. Eventually, though, I realized that if I just steered the conversation towards something that I had studied, I was once again able to fake like I could speak Chinese pretty well. Oh yeah . . . and we played a counting game where you had to skip numbers that were multiples of 7. Bam . . . MATH MAJOR . . . I was good at that :-P. (Ummmm. . . random side note: it sounds like somebody is slaughtering a baby Velociraptor on the floor beneath me) Anyhoo, we finished up class after that . . . all-in-all I think it was a success. Today (Sunday) I’m catching up on the vocab that I didn’t know and it’s coming swimmingly.

After class, it was bar time. My friend Erica from work had some friends who had birthdays and some who were opening bars, etc. So we went for a night on the town. I was hanging out with all expats, which was alright because I was finally able to express myself fully and be understood fully. Ahh . . . what a relief it was. So we had a good time drinking away (the night started at an all-you-can-drink champagne place. Woah was that a bad idea. After that it was to a shady nightclub and then to Erica’s friend’s bar. Surprisingly enough considering the amount of alcohol imbibed, there aren’t any crazy stories to tell. I ended up getting to bed around three a.m. and spent the majority of Saturday sleeping.

During the portion of Saturday that I was awake, I did some shopping. Boring yes, but it’s the little things that sometimes mean the most. I went to a grocery store called Jenny Lou’s, and guess what they had there! LETTUCE, TOMATOS, MUSHROOMS and SALAD DRESSING! I have been craving a decent salad since I arrived and finally the things to make one were made available to me! So I bought stuff along with other things, went home and had myself a delicious salad. Mmmmmmmm. It made my day.

After that I had another dinner by the forbidden city with mediocre food and a great view (pictures to come).

Last bit before I leave off. My job is finally getting some structure. Basically I’m in a new R&D section of the company. So, despite my training in Math and Economics, I will end up being a business researcher. Basically the bosses want me to locate, read and analyze articles and case studies that come from major American business publications (i.e. Harvard Business Review), and to translate the articles into a form of English that can be understood by the majority of the company. When I’m not doing that, I’ll be supporting other projects, writing proposals to get new projects, and so forth. Basically I’m part of an all-purpose team that is in charge of keeping us at the cutting edge of market research and market practices, and that also helps other projects so that everything runs more smoothly. We’ll see how it goes.

Another day in the life . . .

(Written on Wednesday August 30, 2006)

So life is finally starting to settle down a bit. I have my basic necessities taken care of at my apartment (pots, pans, blankets, plates, etc.). The total cost for everything . . . about $40 U.S. Holy inexpensive.

Speaking of inexpensive. I went shopping with Alex (my boss) on Sunday. I got five new shirts (custom made . . . I just picked the fabric and the style), seven pairs of socks, four silk ties, and three sets of cuff links for about $70. Pretty awesome. Moral of the story: if you are coming to visit me don’t bother buying clothes until you check the selection here. They also make custom suits, pants, etc. I’ll have to take another tip back there soon if I like the shirts.

The rest of Sunday was spent in preparations for a meeting that I had on Tuesday with my team and a business contact that is trying to seal the “Year of Spain” deal for us. The meeting went pretty well overall . . . I basically listened and learned.

I’m starting to settle into work as well. After the initial weekend frenzy, there hasn’t been that much stuff that I’ve had to do, just random projects here and there. In the meantime, I’ve been catching up on the marketing education that I really didn’t receive will studying math and econ at school. Reading some books, learning the ins and outs of the company: all in a day’s work. Soon, though I’ll be jumping into some more projects and starting Chinese lessons. I have a feeling that once all that is settled I’ll be pretty swamped with work and learning.

Tonight should be an interesting experience. I’m going on something that the company calls and Urban Safari. I think we’re basically going to take a group of VIPs from some company around Beijing to show them the culture, the food, etc., but I’m not entirely sure. I just get to tag along and enjoy the ride since I may have to run one of these safaris later on.

That’s about all I have for now. My apologies for the lack of pictures in the last post. Initially, I forgot to put them in. Then I tried posting again with the pictures, but that didn’t work either, so I think I’m going to have to wait until I have internet at my apartment to figure it all out. Until then, you’re stuck with words.

Also, I have a feeling that my posts are going to be a little less frequent now (unless I happen to become really bored in the near future). I’ll post when I have fun stories etc., but I highly doubt that most people want to keep up with my day-to-day work activities (nor do I want to try to summarize the wild variety of work that I’ll be doing day-to-day :-P). If you want more Nathan than you get here, feel free to call or email.

The Beginnings of a New Life

(Written on Saturday, August 26, 2006)

Life is already moving fast and furious here in Beijing. The first project I had of researching the Spanish culture and important Spanish holidays is well on its way. I made up a list of the possible celebrations that we could use in order to showcase Spanish culture, but since I am not a Spanish native, I really couldn’t give the perspective that was necessary to create a top-end proposal (which we need to present on Wednesday and for which we need a summary on Monday). Hence, last night we were in a bind . . . so we got creative.

On the suggestion of my team leader, three other team members and I researched the dining and nightlife scene here in Beijing and found every Spanish place that we could. Then we conducted some “field research.” Basically this means that we went out, had dinner, had some drinks and struck up conversations with anybody who could be an actual Spaniard at these Spanish venues. We struck gold once. We met a very nice man who grew up in Madrid and was quite excited to have some drinks with us and discuss his formative years, Spanish culture and Spanish holidays. All together, we spent about 5 hours eating, bar-hopping, taking pictures of Spanish influence in Beijing, and chatting with expats. Basically it was a night on the town paid for by the company. How’s that for work?

So the up-side of the story is that the company will pay for my fun as long as work is also mixed in. The downside is that I had to summarize the findings on a Saturday. So today was a mixture of writing summaries, creating powerpoints, having meetings, making phone calls and coordinating so that we can have a decent amount of work finished by Monday. After that stuff, I moved into my new apartment! I live in an area of Beijing called Dongzhimen (pronounced Dong-djeh-mun) which is a popular place for young professionals to live . . . both domestic and foreign. It’s small 4-room apartment with a combination bedroom/living room (photo below), a very small and narrow kitchen, a bathroom, and a very small dining room that has one wall that is entirely windows facing the garden-courtyard in the middle of the complex (also, in near picture). I was shown 4 places and picked this one because it was very clean, new and cozy. One place was simply massive, and though it would’ve been a very nice place to live, it actually felt too big for me to live there alone.

The plan for the rest of the weekend is pretty straightforward. Dinner with Alex (the big boss) tonight; possibly heading out on the town with some of the other expats working at HighTeam later tonight; sleeping in tomorrow if at all possible; meeting with the team tomorrow to start to get the big-picture of the Spain project early tomorrow afternoon; and possibly touring Beijing in the afternoon with my co-worker Vivian after that (though I doubt I’ll have time for it). Then it’s back to work on Monday (more like back to the office, since I’ve been working outside of the office anyways :-P).

I’ll leave the descriptive part at that and move to a bit of miscellanea. China is just as strange as I remember. It’s the little things that I tend to notice. Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” (Chinese version) blasting out of a bar as I walked by. The theme song from Sex and the City as the ringer on a dude’s (yes, a middle-aged Chinese male’s) phone. Terrorizing rides down the wrong side of a 6-lane road in one of those covered tricycles in the rain, or driving diagonally through the middle of an intersection on it with cars whizzing by on both sides. Two guys on mopeds riding past in a bike lane: the man on the left moped drives about 2 feet behind the other guy and holds a big bundle of who-knows-what on the back of the other man’s moped with his right food (take a second to imagine the picture). The Chinese just have a different way of doing things. Seriously, it seems like whatever works tends to be good enough. It’s funny to see.



<----- My little, tiny kitchen

A view out my window -->

I Have Arrived!

(Written on Thursday, August 24, 2006, 10:56 p.m.)

The wait is over; I have finally arrived!!!

The trip was good . . . not too many tears were shed beforehand (which makes me happy since I really wanted to view this trip as a new adventure rather than a sad departure from my friends, and the smiles and hugs that I received have certainly helped to sustain that image). I flew and had layovers for pretty close to 24 hours. I left Madison at 10:01 a.m. for Chicago. Then I flew Air Korea to Seoul, and finally Air China to Beijing, arriving at 9:00 p.m. (either 8:00 a.m. or 10:00 a.m. Wisconsin time . . . I don’t remember). Luckily, there were no delays, hold-ups or anything like that, so the trip was smooth with the exception of the two arm-rest hogs I was stuck between on my 14 hour flight to Korea.

After arriving in Beijing, I was picked up by a girl named Vivian who works at HighTeam and a driver. They took me to the Hotel where I met my new supervisor, Allen. Allen is a very nice guy who just recently moved to HighTeam from Kodak (based in Shanghai) because he used to work with Alex (my connection to China) and wanted to work with him again. We talked a little bit about work and then I went to bed so I could catch up on the sleep that I lost.

Thursday morning started at 7:40 a.m. I had breakfast with Alex and Allen and then sat in on a meeting with a prospective client who is working with a Spanish telecom company that wants to throw a bunch of events for the upcoming “Year of Spain” here in China. As it turns out, I’ll have a little niche in the team that is completing this project because I am the only member of HighTeam that speaks Spanish. Hence, I may come to be a translator/interpreter for this project. Go figure: I travel half-way around the world to speak Spanish. I could speak Spanish at Woodman’s or the Vilas Zoo if I wanted. Ah well, It may get me involved in this project at a fairly deep level pretty quickly, which would be nice.

Immediately after that, Allen and I went to another meeting with a real estate consulting firm to woo another prospective client. And who’da thunk it . . . the owner of this company was a Frenchman. So hey, I got to speak another non Chinese language today.

After that, I got my first assignment: Research all of the major Spanish holidays (festivals, etc.) so that I can give a presentation on them today. But I certainly didn’t have any time to work on that during the early afternoon because I had to learn where to buy groceries, how and where to set up and work with bank accounts, and other general logistics such as that. But don’t worry, I got to go back and start that project at 4:00 p.m. I worked on it until about 7:00. After that, it was time for a team dinner. We sat around discussing some projects (I even got to throw out some ideas that were received very well by the others), eating delicious food and drinking beer until about 10:00. It was a good time. The people who work here seem to be very fun and very motivated. They complain about having no free time but laugh as they do it. I like that; it will certainly make work bearable if not fun. So yeah, in at 7:40 a.m., out at 10:00 p.m. It’s my first day at work and I’m already doing overtime. Haha . . . I guess I couldn’t have expected anything less. Oh yeah . . . and none of it was mathematical computer work (like I thought I’d be doing).

So I guess it’s fair to say that I hit the ground running. Luckily, I am not suffering from the effects of jetlag. Otherwise, today would’ve been pretty rough. Despite my sarcastic tone, I have a strange feeling that this job is going to be a pretty good fit for me. As some of you know, I have a rather short attention span and I tend to get tired of projects (and things in general) very quickly. I can tell already that this personality feature will not be at odds with my current job. The work is fast-paced and spontaneous. I’m sure that there’ll be times that I’m cursing the job because of my level of fatigue, but I am excited to be working right now. We’ll see what the future brings.

Tomorrow will be another full day. Finishing the Spain project is number one on the list, then I look at apartments, then I’ll probably get another project which I haven’t heard of yet, and then there’s talk of paintball after work. Yes, paintball. Then it’s the weekend and next week I start taking Chinese classes and working! Hurray!

Oh yeah. The company also gave me a phone. If you want to reach me to actually talk, just go to your local post office, buy an international phone card and email me to get my phone number. Bam! It’s that simple.

Preparations Nearly Complete; Date Set

So now that all my visa stuff is in the mail (including my cool Chinese work permit that I totally can't read except for the phrases 中国 - China, 北京- Beijing, and 工作 - work), I finally booked my ticket. I'll be leaving at 10:01 am from Madison, Wisconsin on August 22, 2006 and arriving in China at 9:00 pm on August 23, 2006 after three flights and brief layovers in Chicago and Seoul, South Korea. Due to this sudden thrust into traveling responsibility, the reality of the trip is starting to set in. The four most extreme ideas follow:

1) Won't know anybody except for my boss (and perhaps Mr. Michael Neuenfeldt if he can find a job in the Beijing area);

2) won't be able to read much of anything (I've been trying to learn 10 to 20 Chinese characters per day. I think I'm up to about 100 in total. At this rate, I'll be literate in about 6 months . . . provided that grammar comes to me automatically through immersion);

3) still don't know exactly what I'll be doing for my work - it involves numbers, I think.

4) I'll be leaving all of my current friends (again, excepting the possible Neuenfeldt) my family.

The associated emotions: Fear, excitement, trepidation, anxiety (not necessairly with the bad connotation), and quite a bit of that wonder that comes along with beginning a completely foreign adventure; it is actually very hard to separate the jittery excitement from the fear when I slow down and actually pay attention to the feelings. Beyond these pervading sentiments, sadness that my college career is ending, a little premature nostalgia about the good times that I've had with my friends, and some meloncholy about the fact that I won't see my family for a while are the other thoughts and emotions that have crossed me.

But enough of that mushy gushy stuff. This sounds more like a diary entry than a blog. I'll leave off for now (probably until just before I leave, or until after I arrive).

再见
(I hope you all can read these characters and aren't just seeing stupid little boxes . . . that would be unfortunate)

Intro

In an effort to cut back on the deluge of email that some readers may have received during my Europe trip and more of you would have received during this trip, I have decided to blog-it-up for my stint in China. That way, you may check up on me as you wish, on your time, without having to constantly delete this nonsense from your inbox. If you want to be added to an "update" list (which, fittingly, will be updated automatically whenever I post to this here blog), please send me an email (which you should already know, or which can be obtained easily from www.facebook.com if you ask me to be your friend), and I will gladly add you.

I highly doubt that I will be writing as much as I did when I was in Europe since life will be much more routine for me in China due to my pseudo-grown-up status, but China is a pretty crazy country, and I'm sure I'll have a story now and again. Happy reading!

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