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.