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Published: June 30th 2008
Attention summer student job slackers - I have come to your rescue (for at least ½ hr of your “work” day)! I know that I haven’t written in a long while - I apologize! Here is my explanation. Albeit I have been doing some interesting things worth writing about, the majority of my current existence involves a day to day routine of going to work etc which is really of no interest to anyone (including myself at times). However, I will try my best to write about what I have been doing in this fine month of June due to the current situation that I’m in (see below) as I have a wealth of time on my hands currently.
So to start (roughly) where I left off in my last blog…
In the first weekend of June, Tina & I went to a nearby sea-side city of Tianjin. It is only 1hr away from Beijing by train so it wasn’t too bad. The only unfortunate part about it was our staying out too late the night before. We went out with some friends of Tina’s to a bar called Mix - which should have it’s name changed to Suffocation due to the number of people and cloud of emphysema-inducing smoke. It was fun though. Saturday morning we left around 10 - and our train was at 10:55. To give you an estimate of distance and time, it takes 10min to walk to the bus, another 10min to get to the train station (but is usually involves a 10-15min wait for the bus), another 15min on the train to Beijing Railway St from our station at DongZhiMen and then about 5-10min of running through the subway station, across the railway station yard, up the escalator (through a million people), to the train gate, down the stairs, cross the tarmac, to the platform and then to your car. I kid you not, we arrived at 10:53. They were already closing the doors. That was enough exercise for one day though; thank you. When we arrived in Tianjin (which looks about as exciting as Guelph on a Saturday night), we only had to hike a “short distance” (according to Tina) to her mother’s place. I think that we have a different understanding of short distance. I’m all for walking places…but not if they’re 5km away! So 1hr later, we end up at mama Tina’s apartment. Her mom lives in Tianjin because her younger cousin goes to school there and she looks after him. His mom (her sister) passed away a few years ago and Tina said she was more than happy to get out of the house for a year away from her father…Her cousin was preparing to write the Chinese SAT. It is a very serious test in that it decides your academic future 100%. If you don’t do well on it, regardless of your past academic performance, you will end up going to a provincial or local university/college. If, however, you do well on it, you can apply to the national or “normal” (???) universities. Here in Beijing, Tsinghua, Peking & China Agricultural are all “top tier” schools, in that you have to score in the top 15% on the SAT to apply. Tina’s cousin wants to go to a top tier school in ShangHai for either structural engineering or architecture. (He ended up doing well - scoring in the top 10% which is good).
On Saturday, Tina and I went around the city of Tianjin. It is a mish-mash of European and Chinese architecture as it used to be a German port city around the 1920/30’s (before the war). There isn’t much to do there though, so we just walked around the city for the afternoon. We went back to her mom’s apartment at supper and went out for street bbq with her mom, uncle and cousin. We were both pretty tired, and ended up calling it a day around 9:30 that night. The next morning we woke up and headed to the subway to go to the harbor. Let’s just say, if you’re ever in Tianjin, don’t waste your time. It was relatively unexciting. In fact, it was down-right disgusting. It stunk and was very dirty. We didn’t stay long. We ended up going back to Beijing that night after supper.
The rest of that week I worked at the office on a protocol handbook for the new AI center AgriCorp is opening up in September. As well, I spent a lot of time talking to the vets in Australia (where the bulls are coming from) and to the AQSIQ (China’s ministry of agriculture) regarding immunization and testing upon arrival in quarantine. For some reason, you can’t vaccinate for IBR (a component of shipping fever) before bulls enter quarantine in China because they would “test positive” which I tried to explain to AQSIQ as a load of shit but they were not interested in hearing it. They were using the incorrect test to test for the herpes virus that causes IBR. Anyway, we tried to get the OIE involved (world animal health organization), but they would not have any pull. Needless to say, we’ve currently to date lost 5 bulls to shipping fever. It is very frustrating to do work here when the government has their hand in everything and their “experts” don’t know a single thing they are talking about! They tried to tell me that you can’t tell the difference between IBR immunization and exposure, but I showed them 3 different tests that could do just that based on the vaccine we were proposing to use. They weren’t interested because they didn’t want to be seen as “wrong”. And in the words of a Robert Munsch book…I WAS SOOOOO MAD!
That same week, I also had lunch with the CFIA vet here in Beijing, the Canadian Ambassador, the head of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) here in China and the Dean of McGill’s Ag College who was over here visiting his friend (the head of CIDA). I was trying to get in contact with the CFIA vet for ages, but luckily Robert is good friends with everyone in the business, trade and commercial departments at the Canadian, American and Australian embassies so he linked me up. It was a good chance to see what they do here in China, and I guess they liked me because they invited me on a 3-week project (starts July 7-July 28). As well, I also went to the BC Pavilion opening with them. It is a building in the southeast corner of Tian’anmen square advertising the 2010 Olympic Games. The opening was pretty boring - a bunch of politicians and government “lifers” hanging around talking about how much work they have been doing (but when you work in government, that translates as 7.5hrs/day instead of 7hrs/day…which is not to say that everyone is like that…but most; Dr Kumor, the CFIA vet, is not like that - I can assure myself because I have actually seen the things that he does and he does the same work that 3 people do there in a day - he even says himself how lazy the government workers are!). I really don’t like the “BC Pavilion” either, because I don’t understand why it is not the “Canadian Pavilion”. There is nothing in there about any where else in Canada. It’s very strange, and makes you wonder why the rest of the country should financially support the 2010 games if that is how they are being advertised; as the BC Olympics (not even “Vancouver Olympics!”)…strange. Anyway, I also have been to the Sino-Canadian Agricultural Week seminars which is, again, a bunch of Chinese & Canadian government officials talking about themselves and what a great job they do. If left early because I had better things to do at the office. Dr Kumar called me that afternoon and asked me why I didn’t take him with him. He’s a pretty funny guy (but relatively intimidating at first - big, older Yugoslavian guy). I’m looking forward to working with him in July.
At the end of that week, Tina and I went to a government dairy farm around Beijing. What a disaster this place is! It was built in 1955 and shows it. I don’t think there’ has been a single update since then. They are planning on moving to a new facility in the next year or two, but it is still a complete mess! The people who work there don’t care at all about their job or the cows, so it’s really sad. As well, we only went there because the government farm has heavy influence on other dairy producers in the country, and if AgriCorp makes them happy, they will continue using and promoting our product - which translates to “your time on the farm will be a complete waste of time and anything you recommend to us will be of no value”. Great. They also only work from 7-10:30, then 2:30-4:30 every day…which means we have to be there at 7 (leave our apartment at 5:30am), sit around from 1030-230, then leave at 4:30, and get home at 6:30 (due to traffic, it takes longer at night). By the second day, I had had enough! I told them if they wanted me to be there, I was going to work during their little siesta and if they were interested in hearing what I had to say they could be with me, and if not that was fine too. No one worked with me. We ended up only going there 2 days.
On the weekend, my friend Kurt from UoSask (Western Vet College) and his cousin Nico showed up at my place. Kurt’s family owns a large pig corporation in Alberta and just set up a farm in Heilongjiang province in a town called Jiamsu near the Russian/Chinese border. They stayed the week which was great as I could finally have meaningful English conversations! When I went to work during the day, they did tourist things that everyone does when they come to Beijing and we would meet up at night to do something usually. We went to WangFuJing street one night which has a huge food market - mostly bbq etc. It is rather expensive as it is a touristy area, and no one in China really eats the majority of foods served (so for those that only come to China for a week or so really get a false sense of what people eat here!). Regardless, we ate some pretty nasty stuff including bbq’d scorpion which, in first few bites doesn’t taste to bad but has an awful aftertaste. I also took them to a few other spicy food restaurants. Kurt is now comfortable with really spicy foods because he didn’t have much of a choice! I also took Thursday of that week off to go the great wall with them as last year was a bit of a challenge to climb it due to poor life choices the night before. It seemed a lot shorter this year and it was definitely not as hot which made life quite enjoyable! Unfortunately, Hanmu’s attempt to teach the Chinese women selling water in the towers new phrases to get the attention of foreigners, was, I’m sorry to say, unsuccessful as I didn’t hear anything that he taught them last year being said. Nico left on the Friday afternoon and Kurt’s friend from Haerbin showed up (a Chinese grad student who worked as their translator in the barn for the month they were there). They stayed the weekend (which has a long weekend here in China - “Dragon Boat Festival”). We went to HouHai (a lake) where Peking University and TsingHua University have had boat races every year since 1985, but the government would not allow it this year because they didn’t want to distract attention away from “Olympic Good Will” (that was their official statement…????). I don’t really understand that but, once again, the Chinese government never ceases to amaze us all. Kurt & “Taylor” (Peng) left on Sunday afternoon for Shanghai, leaving me, once again, to exist in the world of Chinglish.
Tina decided to quit AgriCorp on Tuesday of the following week. She had had enough! It is very difficult to work there as they really expect a lot out of the employees. I don’t think it’s entirely fair though. Just because the owner’s live to work, does not mean everyone else has to - but that is what they expect! It was strange though, because they told her that if she wanted to take a break, she could and then re-evaluate her position in a few weeks. However, Wang-Yi had just gone to Holland for the month to do training at the Alta AI center there (and then he is off to the US for 1 month after that). They were supposed to have a translator for him, but when he showed up, it turns out that that wasn’t that case! Thursday afternoon Tina went to the Dutch embassy, applied for her visa and was on a plane to Amsterdam on Tuesday…So much for “quitting”. I think it will be good for her though. She really needs to get out of China for a bit and see what the rest of the world is like. She has emailed me a few times since being there and says the weather is crap, but she likes everything else! She was surprised at how “rural” Holland was (although it is the most densely populated country in the EU) - but I suppose it is all relative considering she’s Chinese. It has also been good for me as I have been forced to be a lot more independent so I have learned a few more words and I am getting better at reading the bus schedule (which is 100% in Chinese characters!). I have a strategy though - I remember 1 character for each stop I want to go to and hope that it’s the right one on the schedule. It has worked so far - except I got on the bus on the wrong side of the road once and was on it for 2hrs…but it was an experience non-the-less. The ticket lady on the bus kept looking at me and smiling/laughing, especially when we came to the stop exactly opposite where I had gotten on 1 hr before! I had nothing else to do that day, so it wasn’t a big deal.
On the first weekend Tina was away, I spent Friday night just wandering around a random subway stop. I hopped off in an area I hadn’t been too and just walked around for a few hours. I stared to head back towards home and finally arrived about 3 hours later. The next morning it was raining, so I decided to head to the Beijing art district. It was really great. I spent most of the day there despite the rain. The “768 Art Zone” as it is called is about ½ a city block in size and houses the majority of China’s most famous modern and contemporary artists (outside of ShangHai that is). They are really in to sculpture as well as heaving social commentary primarily criticizing the Chinese government. My favourite painting was one of the National People’s Hall (the head government building around Tian’anmen Square) and a large flock of sheep wandering around in front of it. I tried to find a small postcard or something of it because it was so funny, but no luck. I had lunch at an overpriced café, but they had squash soup on the menu so I couldn’t say no (and overpriced is a relative statement here in china - the bowl of soup was only 30rmb or 4.50$ - but came with bread and a drink). That night I went down to the “other” embassy area (there are two embassy districts here in Beijing), to a park called RiTan Park. In the park there is a small pond with a stone boat built beside it (similar to the one in the Summer Palace, but much smaller). On Saturday nights they have live acoustic music by local Chinese artists. Everyone sits on the rocks around the pond and listens. It was quite nice. Unfortunately it was 10pm and I had just realized that I hadn’t done any laundry in about 2 weeks - and I had a flight the next day - so I headed on home to do laundry until 2am.
On Sunday I headed to the airport and hopped a plane to Qingdao about ½ way between Beijing and Shanghai. It is situated on a peninsula right across from the south end of South Korea. I spent the week about 1hr away in swine jail. ½ of my expenses this summer were paid by Hypor, a swine genetics company from Kitchener/Amsterdam and this was a new farm they had just started as a nucleus herd for their Chinese cliental. They only have pigs starting to go in to the grower barn, so things were only at ½ capacity last week. I spent the first 2 days sitting around in “quarantine” (which I later learned as a complete load of crap) before I was aloud in to the barn. Unfortunately, I couldn’t leave the farm either - so I was literally in swine jail. I watched a lot of YouTube videos on everything you could imagine. I watched the entire 2007 Discovery channel shark week, National Geographic’s Human evolution series as well as human demography over the ages amongst others. I am now filled with more useless knowledge than ever before! When I finally was able to go in to the barn, there really wasn’t a lot for me to do. The facilities are run exceptionally well and only minor things could be modified or changed to improve the pig’s health. They were having an outbreak of E.coli diarrhea in the piglets when I was there and we worked mainly on controlling that (also…see below). We also did about 40 inguinal hernia surgeries one day on piglets which was good for me as I had never done them before. I only performed 2 by myself, but opened and closed all the rest. They are relatively challenging to perform if you haven’t done them before, so I only did a few to minimize risk of really messing up (especially since the pigs are financially and genetically worth so much). I figure I’ll mess up on academic time this year during surgery rather than someone who’s paying me. It was fairly cool and rainy there for most of the week and I ended up getting a bit of a cold as well as a nasty eye infection - which was just the start of my problems…
After spending 8 long and relatively boring days there, I was finally released last Tuesday to fly back to Beijing. I thought I was going to have a chance to see a bit of QingDao, but unfortunately there was no time as I had to get back to Beijing to go to another farm that afternoon. I arrived back at the AgriCorp offices and headed out to China Ag to meet with a guy about going to their new research farm. As we were heading out to the train station, someone called him and we ended up not going after all…I’m not sure why…but that’s China. Flexibility and constant confusion is the norm here (especially for me). Instead, the next day I went back to China Ag and spent the day at their Vet College which really wasn’t that exciting. I mostly watched surgery and a few acupuncture procedures (which actually was interesting). I left that afternoon feeling relatively tired and “under the weather” so to speak.
On Thursday I went to the AgriCorp office to finish up a presentation I had to send to the CIDA guys in preparation for our trip to XinJiang province (on the Afghan/Khazikstan/Chinese border) in July. I am giving a presentation on the role of the veterinarian in food safety. I sure the audience will be really interested (note: sarcasm). I felt pretty nauseous at work and relatively cold all day. I stayed until 2:30 until I felt like I was going to pass out and headed over to the International Clinic near my house. I spent about 1hr on the phone with the insurance company and finally got to see a doctor. They took my blood and actually analyzed it in about 10min. It was a miracle. I could only imagine if it was like that in Canada! My neutrophils were through the roof - 88% with a reference of 50-65% suggesting I had a nasty viral infection. As well, my macrophages were relatively high as well also suggesting bacterial. Based on my clinical presentation (don’t ask…), the doctor figured (even though I already told him what it likely was) I had rotavirus as well as E.coli. Great. After enjoying the lovely service of newly graduated Chinese nurses who proceeded to give me several hematomas due to an inability to find the veins in my hand, they finally got one and pumped a bunch of lactated ringers and penicillin in to me for the next 24hrs. I went home Friday afternoon where I sat around (both in bed and on the white throne) … and I am still doing the same today. I currently have a small pharmacy in my room and I feel like my grandparents now - I have to take about 50 pills every meal (actually only 4, but it feels like a lot!). I am also downing some nasty oral rehydration salts which taste like salt water - but it’s better than dehydration I suppose. I am also on the “white” diet; bread, rice and potatoes. I ate only bread on Friday, bread and rice yesterday and today I’m thinking about being real adventurous and running to the food store (more out of necessity because I don’t want to be too far from the washroom…) and getting potatoes so I’ll have a nice meal of bread, rice AND potatoes! Yum! Yesterday I bought purple Gatorade to see if it would change the color of my “excretement”. I have not noted any significant color changes yet unfortunately…On the plus side though, I have watched 16hrs of Prison Break season 1 - a show I had never seen before, but since it was the only English DVD that Tina had in the apartment, I felt I had to watch it. Now I have absolutely nothing to do (hence to blog update is occurring). Last night, after watching Prison Break of course, I started reading an infectious disease book I had and convinced myself that I had cholera. If I don’t start “firming up” (if you catch my drift) by this afternoon, I’m going to head back to the hospital to get myself checked out.
Kurt is coming back to my place today (he was traveling china for the last 3 weeks) and staying here until Tuesday when he flies back to Calgary on Tuesday. Tuesday is also Canada day so hopefully I’m feeling better by then to go to the dinner at the embassy. We’ll see I suppose. I am also going to Hong Kong next weekend because I have to leave the country to reactivate my multi-entry visa. On Monday July 7th I’m flying (in the Canadian embassy’s jet!) to Urumqi, XinJiang province for 3 weeks - so that should be an experience (unless I don’t feel better….then there might only be one plane I’ll be taking and that will be back to Toronto!). We’ll see!
That’s it! Hopefully this entry has filled a small portion of your “workday” friends (especially all those in grad school…).
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Mike warren
non-member comment
So what else is new.
Sounds like pretty easy summer, when are you going to get a real job, say McDonalds. Your aunt would be proud of you. You've come a long way. Uncle Mike