China Update 7

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I'm writing this on Thursday while I'm at work, but i'm pretty sure it's Wednesday night for you guys in California. I'm sorry if i repeat what i have already written about my job, but I would rather repeat myself than forget something.... The owner of the company does not speak Chinese, but we still meet with him every morning or every other morning. We speak through his assistant who I believe is filling the roll of vice president of our small company. She studied in Australia for her Master's degree so her English is okay.
I am working in an office building. Our company rents this office which is fairly small. There are around twenty people here in open cubicles, the boss's office, and a meeting office. I'll take pictures. No worries. There is not too much work for me. I'm here with a Canadian intern. She, like me, struggles to appear busy during down time, but it's skill we are learning. The assistant and several other employees just started. The boss isn't here all the time because our company is renting another room as well, but I haven't been there.
My job so far has mostly to be a consultant and researcher. I do research on foreign products and companies and give him advice on our company website and developing products. We have several deadlines for product development approaching in the end of this month. We have to send the orders to the manufactures or the products will not be ready for the business section of the World Expo. The other day, he told us that we are getting to know the industry and next week our job will actually start. My job description is in logistics so that will be very exciting, but I will be just as happy appearing busy when I'm not working on one of my projects. This may very well be our job for the whole internship as well.
A very interesting aspect of Chinese business is the value of the contract. Contracts and signing forms are done to please foreigners. A contract can be verbally renegotiated at any time without any warning. If you are not careful, you and the other party may have different opinions of the terms of the new verbal contract. I have attached the learning objectives and have sent them to my supervisor as well. Her name is Sara Li.
Ruben! Your last update was last week sometime! Why haven't you wrote anything or been online? To be honest, i was too busy. Let's see... Friday i didn't work. I think i already wrote about us freely renegotiating my working contact (yes this makes me wonder about my job duties). At least i know they won't fire me because they aren't paying me anything! Ha ha ha! In reality they are paying me around $75 a month. Friday, dennis and i went shopping. I spent way too much on a pair of shoes, but i really needed a pair since my shoes broke. The supports in the heel broke leaving large rubber supports to poke me while i walked. In evening we went out. We went to a mansion. In the backyard they were having a huge party. There were tons of tables and it was was packed. It was the US playing South Africa? I actually watched the whole game. The referee was terrible. We had a goal and he decided not to count it for a reason unbeknownst to me. It was 100 yuan to get in and it included two drinks. That's $14. The party spilled into the club next door called Zapatas! A mexican club! Most of us went there to use the bathrooms throughout the same. Then we went to a club called Mint. It's costs 2000 yuan to get a table there, but someone knew someone who knew someone. Dennis goes out five or six nights a week and makes friends with everyone he sees. He is also black, well educated, and buff so he is valued more than a blond girl. He goes into clubs and the bar tender buys him drinks and the owners want to sit with him just to speak with him. It's really funny how being handsome and black here is more valued than gold. Ha ha ha! We left Mint at 5am, but i didn't drink there because i didn't help pay for the table. The table came with several bottles of American hard liquor.
Afterward we headed to another club. I met a really nice and pretty brazilian prostitute on the street. It was very nice to finally see a latina again. You almost forget what a pretty girl looks like. It's really crazy going from Mexico where all the girls are beautiful to China where... (i'm not going to finish that sentence). once we got in the club, i decided to bail because i was tired. I arrived home at 7am. I showered, cleaned the apartment again, and packed my bags. I left the apartment around 11pm on saturday. Carrying two of my very heavy suitcases, I made my way to Dennis' apartment via the metro but first, the 20 minute walk to the metro station withOUT bags. The metro wasn't crowded, but making the whole trip probably took me two hours (40 minutes normally). I arrived at Dennis' apartment just before 1pm and fell asleep. We woke up at 4pm and left. He showed me a few markets and we got back to the apartment at 6pm (half an hour late). He loves to carry beer in public because it's legal here, but i think we overdid it when we carried three cases of beer (twice the size of US bottles, like chilean bottles) three blocks to the apartment. In the humidity and the heat, it look like we had just showered when we arrived. Instead of having a house party at 5pm before we went out, we waited 5 minutes and 6 people arrived. Everyone had a beer and talked About eating pizza and then we left to go go-carting. In the bottom of a mall across town is a basement or single floor of a parking garage. It's huge and there is a glass bar that hangs over the race track. It was really nice. Everyone went for three races, buy two get one free. It was like $30 US, but it was too expensive for me. I talked with some people. Finally we ate again. I hadn't eaten anything since lunch the day before (excluding the one beer i had at the world cup party, i gave the other away). We went to KFC in the mall in between races. I bought the thing like you can get a taco bell in the US, a tortilla wrapped around a tostada. It was 14 yuan (2$) which was expensive but good for a western restaurant. I was still hungry so i went and bought a sandwich at the supermarket across the way in the mall. It was 5 yuan, much better($.90). Half was tuna and onion and the other half was vegetable, it was the only kind they had. I was still hungry so i bought a cream puff for another 5 yuan. Afterward everyone was going to Mint, but it was 1am and i was tired so i went back to the apartment and fell asleep.
Sunday morning we woke up (2pm Ha ha ha!) and went out shopping. We went to a place were they sell tons of purses and stuff in the back rooms of these very small eight by eight foot shops. They all say Parada, Louis Vatiton, Gucci, and stuff. It looks real to me. There are no errors like in the American knock-offs and the quality is good. The factories are here in China and when they say they are produced in another country, they just add a zipper or a button in that country. US companies do the same thing when they send products to Brazil. After walking through the market, it has become very apparent to me that when i leave China, i will have at least two Armani and several other name brand suits. All of course good quality and specially tailored to fit me. I will also have some winter and summer silk robes and silk bed linens. Of course all the prices for suits and purses start high around 5,000 yuan and stuff but you can barter your way down. You can get fake purses for as low as 100 yuan and possibly real ones for 150. i do not know how to tell the difference, but some girls do. i have talked two layered reversible silk ropes down to 40 yuan before, but not every vendor will sell them that low. I ended up bargaining a guy down to 100 yuan for two extra large fans that we decided to share. Dennis wanted to take one home. We continued walking around and someone offered us the same fans for 30 yuan each instead of the 50 yuan. We couldn't believe the acting the other vendor did and wanted to beat him for ripping us off for 20 yuan each and making it such a big deal! Later i realized that 20 yuan is around $3. FYI, For Your Information, i use $1 US = 7 yuan because the exchange rate is actually $1US = 6.8 yuan or something.
Sunday night i went out with vivian and some of her friends. They were really cool. we went to a 'western' restaurant where a quarter of the menu had english subtext. apparently tuna & mayonnaise pizza is western, but not as western as American Potato Pizza! i washed my clothes and got ready for Monday. Monday i went to work. I didn't get lost or anything and arrived 5 minutes late, i think. Tuesday i was on time and Wednesday i arrived 10 minutes later. Thursday i left 10 minutes earlier than wednesday and arrived 30 minutes earlier. Monday night Dennis went out again but i stayed in because i had to write my Learning Objectives for the internship. That was my excuse because i didn't want to go out with him and get back at 3am. That is just an excuse because my plans fell through with a girl named Maribel from Bolivia. Ha ha ha!
Monday night we had noodles about 12 minutes from the apartment, around two blocks. There is dancing on the street corner to chinese music. there are usually 50 or so people. It's very sweet and romantic. I'll take a picture sometime. I really want to go with the cute girl, Joan, who lives in the apartment with us but she doesn't know how to dance. She also doesn't know how to cook or the prices of fish. She is really upper class, but she washes her clothes by hand. (I really hate that, but it makes sense.) It costs a lot more to do laundry and almost nothing to get good food. I'm going to have to learn how to dance and then take her. Tuesday after work, i was leaving with Lisa, the Jewish Canadian intern and i asked her if she knew what these weird bumps were appearing under the skin of my hand. She said they were a type of staff disease called mensa. It popular for foreigners to get it here because of the humidity. I called Zoey after work and she had Sofi meet me at a metro station. Sofi was getting off work and her boyfriend was with her so i was a little disappointed to find out that he was real, but i'm happy that he is a good guy. We went to a hospital and it was going to be very expensive because they have a floor dedicated to foreigners. We decided to use the Chinese emergency room. The doctor looked at my hand wrote down where i was from, the weather in Fresno, and a prescription. We went up to the counter and they gave me a cream and two bottles pimple cream (the alcohol and powder we use to dry out the pimples on our faces) for 20.5 yuan. I am supposed to keep my hands as dry as possible in this environment where Peggy told me that "it is always raining somewhere in Shanghai." There are hot days and cooler days. Today it was cooler and misting on the way to work. It reminded me of Hawaii. It was very nice.
After getting pimple and antibacterial cream for my hands on Tuesday, i went looking through a market we visited on Sunday. I bought some shorts without trying them on and they are six inches too small around the waist. I went looking on Wednesday night too. The market is above a metro station and is huge. I never found the store, so i guess i lost my money, a total of $8 US. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night i have eaten the same thing, oil fried noodles with lots of peppers. i go to the place were we bought noodles and take them to go. They are really expensive (5 yuan) but they are really spicy and delicious. I get them and eat them in my apartment. every morning i have the same breakfast, i buy two rice bread balls (the size of baseballs) with cooked spinach inside for 1 yuan. as sad as it is, they are the best option available. on an average day i only eat the equivalent of two McDonald's chicken nuggets worth of meat which come in the form of peppers and meat for lunch. there are lots of bones. there is always white rice, canned tomato in scrambled eggs, cooked spinach, and a meat. so far we have had chicken, fish, pork, and tuesday... BEEF!!!! beef the size of two chicken nuggets makes me so happy it's unbelievable. there is beef at the grocery store, but it's really expensive. 28 yuan for a steak!!!! $4 us, but it's wayyyy too much for me. i won't spend my money on that.
I'm very happy that i won't be going out to all the clubs anymore. I'm trying to set up some people to hang out with this weekend. Although staying in my room by myself for the whole weekend will finally allow me the time i need to start studying chinese again. My biggest temptation will be to continue studying german. I'm going to start looking for some learning-to-read kids books in german. I also went shopping tuesday or wednesday. When dennis left, the desk looked like it did when he was here, like someone emptied all the desk drawers on top of the desk. except for the dresser and desk draws were full. there were also clothes everywhere. I bought two of the largest/cheapest plastic bins i could at the supermarket and I paid 40 yuan for each. They were really expensive (i spent around $11 US total!!!) so i have completely cleaned the room and now need to decorate it. everything in the room is white except for the dresser and the purple sheets on the bed. i think a poster or two is in order. perhaps the large fan! i'll make a video of the apartment. no worries. maybe you will even get to meet joan! (dennis spelled her name Jone in his phone)
Dennis bought a knock-off iPad for $125 US. it does everything a normal ipad does, expect for running iTunes. It has a USB port, memory card port, you can buy the apps from Apple, etc. the legitimate electronics here are said to be more expensive than in the US. you can buy any movies in DVD or sometimes blueray quality in the streets. the normal price is 5yuan. for series with two DVDs, it's 10 yuan. i bought the first season of burn notice, but i'm still looking for the other seasons, but they're not common. i think i'll have to download them online.
the weekend is coming up which means i will have to eat other foods. :-) i am ready. when i went to the store, i bought chocolate bean milk (i already drank the milk i bought before. protein!), a small plate of fried boneless chicken because i couldn't go for four days without meat, some bread, peanut butter, jelly, a blue beer which looked interesting, and four or five different brands of chocolate. tonight i'm going back to the market again, i'm going to buy a rack to organize things in the bathroom, a laundry basket for my dirty clothes (contrary to dennis' opinion the floor is not sufficient)(i'm using the window seal now), and some chicken for dinner tonight. with the chicken and the noodles, i'm speaking 15 yuan on dinner which is a lot, i don't know how i'm going to cut my spending back. i can't survive on bread products alone. i'm going to buy more milk, because dennis left a bag of dry cereal. i know i've been staying in china too long because the cooked spinach is now delicious when i get it for lunch. today it was a salad of spinach, bell pepper, and some other things all cooked, but it was delicious. i can't stand eating two cups of only white rice for lunch everyday, the vegetables have flavor. usually i trying to roll the meat in the rice to give it flavor. the meat is of course friend in oil. despite my diet being high in fried food and chocolate, perhaps only because i will be going an hour to work in the morning and then home at night will i lose weight. i still don't have a chinese tutor but vivian said she might consider it. peggy's family is going to teach me how to cook food next friday i think. i was going to help her move out tomorrow, but zoey email me about a meeting we have. we are going to have a meeting with an investment banker who will talk to us about something. i'm excited to go. it sounds awesome.

(I apologize for any negativity. i wrote this when i was hungry). :-)

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Comments

[Dale, Laney, Grandma]

Hey Chinese traveler
Happy birthday to you big guy. How's the life of a traveler? We are at the Camp Delmar with over cast skys no sun yet. Grandma's are in coats as they think it's to cold. I'm in a t shirt and shorts. Well just wanted to take time to say happy birthday to you and how will you celebrate your new year? Take care we love ya Ruben, and be safe. Dale, Grandma, and Aunt Laney......................