Almost my birthday
And an exciting one it will be!
Currently I am toying with the idea of moving home, yes all my three bags and pillow, to more of a permanent location, my own room! Haven’t had once since before Christmas, it’s time. Mostly my motivation is to have a place where I can hang up all my photos of Lindsay, Mitchell, K&B and the rest of the gang. I found a cheap room [like $125/month, right in my price range] in a good location [its actually down the street from a disco I used to go to when I was in high school, Nightman] with a Chinese girl named Gilda [as in Radner]. She seems pretty cool, speaks English well and actually won’t speak to me in Chinese. Which is Ok, I guess. The apartment is in true Chinese style, it was probably built in the 80s but looks older than the Communist party itself, but the interior is pretty nice, and the room comes furnished with a horribly uncomfortable double bed, among other high quality furniture. Gilda says I can buy good cheap bed mats at Ikea. I may do it, I think it might be time to have my own place. Could happen this weekend, I will keep you all posted. Of course my fear is that as soon as I commit to Gilda I will find an ad for a similar apartment, but with fun international roommates that love to go out and eat, party, and have dozens of fun friends. I don’t know how many more night I would have to endure sleeping with the kitties to achieve that.
I am learning to live on my meager Chinese salary, only eating Chinese food, and I have finally discovered decent breakfast options: the Chinese Egg McMuffin. For only 12 cents I purchase a just-baked bread type thing, they cut it open and put a fried egg inside. Then I buy a warm soy bean milk drink to wash it down, its all pretty tasty and for about a quarter. For lunch, work serves us food, your basic low quality Chinese, it comes in a crappy little box with four sections, all with different food. Usually two or three are edible, and I have learned that anything tastes OK when you wash it down with lots of rice. Now is not a time to be picky.
How is work? Boring, because my boss is waiting to hear from Nicholas Hall, the man in England with whom we are setting up this healthcare conference. In the meantime I have been self educating myself on pretty much anything I can find out about China, healthcare, China’s economy and foreign investment, which is pretty interesting. James [boss] says we will start our preparations on Monday.
The Chinese have traded in their kids for dogs
His wife, Linda, who works in the adjoining office, brought their dog in today to visit the office staff, he’s a Pekingese dog [surprisingly the most popular dog I have seen here, http://www.akc.org/breeds/pekingese/index.cfm]. She refers to him as her son and his name is Wrong. “Wrong wrong!” He came to the office and his favorite activity was standing in front of me and barking. “Gua! Gua! Gua!” That’s the translation of ‘bark’. Linda says he likes to frighten people with is bark, but as we noted from his wagging tail, he clearly wants to be my new best friend. She placed him on a table and we all stood around and looked at him while she feed him candy [like people’s candy, which she bite off and then fed to him] and dried crab apples [also people food]. [I know K&B are gasping] After he snarfed all his food down, did some more barking, Linda put his coat on, of which she says he has many. During the day the maid takes him to doggie day care for half the day. There are many dogs in my neighborhood, MANY DOGS, and surprisingly very few kids. I think the Chinese have turned their kids into dogs. They are easier to treat like princes; they just lavish the attention, food, all the care given to them. Kids grow up into to teenagers and reject all that. I don’t know how the dogs are helping population control though.
My parents are on their way to India in a few short hours. They will leave on Friday and get there on Sunday. Now that’s really the other side of the world. They are on some three week tour, hopefully they will come back sans giardia.В My mom will happy to note that the public toilets in all of Beijing have been redone, and there is no longer a charge to use them. There used to be a charge of 2 cents, paid to the most horrible job in China, the toilet fee taking person, and you would get back the most disgusting money you have ever seen. It was after these experiences that my mom swore off drinking any liquid ever again in China. Well, Pat, drink up because they don’t smell near as bad. The Olympics are doing some good things.
A fun fact to leave you with for the weekend: in China there are 166 cities with one million people, while the US has nine.
Currently I am toying with the idea of moving home, yes all my three bags and pillow, to more of a permanent location, my own room! Haven’t had once since before Christmas, it’s time. Mostly my motivation is to have a place where I can hang up all my photos of Lindsay, Mitchell, K&B and the rest of the gang. I found a cheap room [like $125/month, right in my price range] in a good location [its actually down the street from a disco I used to go to when I was in high school, Nightman] with a Chinese girl named Gilda [as in Radner]. She seems pretty cool, speaks English well and actually won’t speak to me in Chinese. Which is Ok, I guess. The apartment is in true Chinese style, it was probably built in the 80s but looks older than the Communist party itself, but the interior is pretty nice, and the room comes furnished with a horribly uncomfortable double bed, among other high quality furniture. Gilda says I can buy good cheap bed mats at Ikea. I may do it, I think it might be time to have my own place. Could happen this weekend, I will keep you all posted. Of course my fear is that as soon as I commit to Gilda I will find an ad for a similar apartment, but with fun international roommates that love to go out and eat, party, and have dozens of fun friends. I don’t know how many more night I would have to endure sleeping with the kitties to achieve that.
I am learning to live on my meager Chinese salary, only eating Chinese food, and I have finally discovered decent breakfast options: the Chinese Egg McMuffin. For only 12 cents I purchase a just-baked bread type thing, they cut it open and put a fried egg inside. Then I buy a warm soy bean milk drink to wash it down, its all pretty tasty and for about a quarter. For lunch, work serves us food, your basic low quality Chinese, it comes in a crappy little box with four sections, all with different food. Usually two or three are edible, and I have learned that anything tastes OK when you wash it down with lots of rice. Now is not a time to be picky.
How is work? Boring, because my boss is waiting to hear from Nicholas Hall, the man in England with whom we are setting up this healthcare conference. In the meantime I have been self educating myself on pretty much anything I can find out about China, healthcare, China’s economy and foreign investment, which is pretty interesting. James [boss] says we will start our preparations on Monday.
The Chinese have traded in their kids for dogs
His wife, Linda, who works in the adjoining office, brought their dog in today to visit the office staff, he’s a Pekingese dog [surprisingly the most popular dog I have seen here, http://www.akc.org/breeds/pekingese/index.cfm]. She refers to him as her son and his name is Wrong. “Wrong wrong!” He came to the office and his favorite activity was standing in front of me and barking. “Gua! Gua! Gua!” That’s the translation of ‘bark’. Linda says he likes to frighten people with is bark, but as we noted from his wagging tail, he clearly wants to be my new best friend. She placed him on a table and we all stood around and looked at him while she feed him candy [like people’s candy, which she bite off and then fed to him] and dried crab apples [also people food]. [I know K&B are gasping] After he snarfed all his food down, did some more barking, Linda put his coat on, of which she says he has many. During the day the maid takes him to doggie day care for half the day. There are many dogs in my neighborhood, MANY DOGS, and surprisingly very few kids. I think the Chinese have turned their kids into dogs. They are easier to treat like princes; they just lavish the attention, food, all the care given to them. Kids grow up into to teenagers and reject all that. I don’t know how the dogs are helping population control though.
My parents are on their way to India in a few short hours. They will leave on Friday and get there on Sunday. Now that’s really the other side of the world. They are on some three week tour, hopefully they will come back sans giardia.В My mom will happy to note that the public toilets in all of Beijing have been redone, and there is no longer a charge to use them. There used to be a charge of 2 cents, paid to the most horrible job in China, the toilet fee taking person, and you would get back the most disgusting money you have ever seen. It was after these experiences that my mom swore off drinking any liquid ever again in China. Well, Pat, drink up because they don’t smell near as bad. The Olympics are doing some good things.
A fun fact to leave you with for the weekend: in China there are 166 cities with one million people, while the US has nine.
posted by Claire at 10:55 PM
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