The Big News
We got a new music system installed- apparently the ceiling speakers were just too poor quality to actually play music- so now we have these giant hulking black speakers placed around the club house piping in what sounds like should be coming out of a 14 year old girls’ bedroom, not a place where people are buying $18,000 parking spaces.
Today the heat is broken and the roof of the greenhouse ceiling is leaking because the glass is broken and for whatever reason they haven’t fixed it. It snowed last night and it is Grey and Cold today.
The Big News is… I’m getting out of here! Yes, it’s true. The developer has decided that our staff and club management is sub-par, and they want us out. I don’t totally understand all this, and no one tells me much, but this is what I have heard. When I asked what specifically is so terrible about us, and my manager specified that one Angel is ugly and the outdoor security men are not big and handsome enough, and that our staff changes too frequently. Perhaps they haven’t figured out that anyone with half a brain and decent looks can find a better way to make a living than opening doors or standing outside? Only the two office workers [my manager and the useless bitchy girl who frequently yells at me] the engineer and the four head security guards are actually directly employed by my company, so we will be moved to other projects. Everyone else [who is hired through an employment agency] will be let go.
I am being moved to the place that I did the hostess-ing event in September… remember those creepy photos of me in the blue suit with creepy make up on? I’m going back there. To do what I am not too sure but I know that it is a 14 min bike ride from my house, it is in the city and therefore surrounded by many good places to eat, there are businesses already in the building, and I will be office based, not some white statue at the reception desk. So I am thrilled. We all leave March 14th… that makes 11 days of work left. In the meantime I will be reading books copied from the internet, I’m starting with Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenin. Why not.
My Weekend Adventure
I took a weekend trip with Alison, her friend Caitrin and her boyfriend Ted, to the ‘ancient city’ of Ping Yao, located roughly 7 to 10 hours south west of Beijing. We bought train tickets and left Friday night, arriving at 5 am in Ping Yao, into a town SO DARK with no lights, no nothing open, it was… dark. And cold. We woke up the people in one hotel and sat and drank tea while we waited out for a lower price on the rooms [they started at 1,200 for one room, we got them down to 800 for two]. We stayed in a beautiful hotel [rare outside major cities] that was a renovated old courtyard, with rooms in the traditional ‘kang’ beds- that is, the heater underneath the bed, and the place where the whole family sleeps, reads, watches TV, hang out, etc, because it’s the only warm place. We saw the kang in action at a store where we bought some tradition shoes- they invited us into their back room to sit on their kang. Be grateful that we have giant living rooms!
It was lovely town, similar to Lijiang [where I went with the folks and sis in October], but less Epcot Center like, much more dirty, less touristy, and an actual functioning town. Old city walls, small alley ways not big enough for cars, it was very cool.
We spent half the day on Saturday trying to get train tickets back. Part of the fun of traveling in China not by plane is that you can’t buy round trip tickets. No, that would make way too much sense for this country. So we went to four places before we decided that there really were no train tickets back on Sunday night. We were told to go to the nearby city, Tai Yuan [the capital of Shan Xi province] and get a bus or a train from there.
On Sunday, we saw the house that “Raise the Red Lantern” film was made in, and then drove to this major city, and decided to take a bus back to Beijing because it takes half the time, we could arrive by 1 am. We got on our luxury liner bus at 7pm, and headed onto the major highway. It had been snowing, and we were traveling into the mountains, and at some point we came to a stop and learned that they had closed the highway because it was frozen and it would not open until ten the next morning. It was already midnight. All the truckers and most people on the bus immediately gave up and went to sleep right there on the highway. Keep in mind we are in the middle of nowhere, except for a small gas station that we went to, got them to call their friend with a car to pick us up and take us to the nearest train station [for an exorbitant amount]. We arrived at the train station and bought ‘no seat’ tickets for the 1.30am train. This means that there are no empty seats or beds, and we are getting onto an already crammed bumpkin train. These ‘hard seat’ cars get packed with people, people everywhere, curled up on the sinks, in the aisles, in the place between cars, standing for hours at a time, mostly migrants moving to the big city. We stood for two hours until some beds became available and we were able to charm the train lady [actually Caitrin was the charmer here, she was great] to sell us the upgrade. At four we finally got to lie down and sleep until we got to Beijing the next morning.
I may fly home next time [if I am smart enough to remember my passport!]
Today the heat is broken and the roof of the greenhouse ceiling is leaking because the glass is broken and for whatever reason they haven’t fixed it. It snowed last night and it is Grey and Cold today.
The Big News is… I’m getting out of here! Yes, it’s true. The developer has decided that our staff and club management is sub-par, and they want us out. I don’t totally understand all this, and no one tells me much, but this is what I have heard. When I asked what specifically is so terrible about us, and my manager specified that one Angel is ugly and the outdoor security men are not big and handsome enough, and that our staff changes too frequently. Perhaps they haven’t figured out that anyone with half a brain and decent looks can find a better way to make a living than opening doors or standing outside? Only the two office workers [my manager and the useless bitchy girl who frequently yells at me] the engineer and the four head security guards are actually directly employed by my company, so we will be moved to other projects. Everyone else [who is hired through an employment agency] will be let go.
I am being moved to the place that I did the hostess-ing event in September… remember those creepy photos of me in the blue suit with creepy make up on? I’m going back there. To do what I am not too sure but I know that it is a 14 min bike ride from my house, it is in the city and therefore surrounded by many good places to eat, there are businesses already in the building, and I will be office based, not some white statue at the reception desk. So I am thrilled. We all leave March 14th… that makes 11 days of work left. In the meantime I will be reading books copied from the internet, I’m starting with Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenin. Why not.
My Weekend Adventure
I took a weekend trip with Alison, her friend Caitrin and her boyfriend Ted, to the ‘ancient city’ of Ping Yao, located roughly 7 to 10 hours south west of Beijing. We bought train tickets and left Friday night, arriving at 5 am in Ping Yao, into a town SO DARK with no lights, no nothing open, it was… dark. And cold. We woke up the people in one hotel and sat and drank tea while we waited out for a lower price on the rooms [they started at 1,200 for one room, we got them down to 800 for two]. We stayed in a beautiful hotel [rare outside major cities] that was a renovated old courtyard, with rooms in the traditional ‘kang’ beds- that is, the heater underneath the bed, and the place where the whole family sleeps, reads, watches TV, hang out, etc, because it’s the only warm place. We saw the kang in action at a store where we bought some tradition shoes- they invited us into their back room to sit on their kang. Be grateful that we have giant living rooms!
It was lovely town, similar to Lijiang [where I went with the folks and sis in October], but less Epcot Center like, much more dirty, less touristy, and an actual functioning town. Old city walls, small alley ways not big enough for cars, it was very cool.
We spent half the day on Saturday trying to get train tickets back. Part of the fun of traveling in China not by plane is that you can’t buy round trip tickets. No, that would make way too much sense for this country. So we went to four places before we decided that there really were no train tickets back on Sunday night. We were told to go to the nearby city, Tai Yuan [the capital of Shan Xi province] and get a bus or a train from there.
On Sunday, we saw the house that “Raise the Red Lantern” film was made in, and then drove to this major city, and decided to take a bus back to Beijing because it takes half the time, we could arrive by 1 am. We got on our luxury liner bus at 7pm, and headed onto the major highway. It had been snowing, and we were traveling into the mountains, and at some point we came to a stop and learned that they had closed the highway because it was frozen and it would not open until ten the next morning. It was already midnight. All the truckers and most people on the bus immediately gave up and went to sleep right there on the highway. Keep in mind we are in the middle of nowhere, except for a small gas station that we went to, got them to call their friend with a car to pick us up and take us to the nearest train station [for an exorbitant amount]. We arrived at the train station and bought ‘no seat’ tickets for the 1.30am train. This means that there are no empty seats or beds, and we are getting onto an already crammed bumpkin train. These ‘hard seat’ cars get packed with people, people everywhere, curled up on the sinks, in the aisles, in the place between cars, standing for hours at a time, mostly migrants moving to the big city. We stood for two hours until some beds became available and we were able to charm the train lady [actually Caitrin was the charmer here, she was great] to sell us the upgrade. At four we finally got to lie down and sleep until we got to Beijing the next morning.
I may fly home next time [if I am smart enough to remember my passport!]
posted by Claire at 6:16 PM
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