Relieved

House exactly like my Parent's neighbor's house. Photo taken by Jerry Rife of San Diego Union Tribune

I’m very very relieved to hear that everyone is all right.

I didn’t realize the Southern California fire was where it was until yesterday…the headlines didn’t mention the fire extended into San Diego city, so I thought this was all out in the boonies. Then I saw this picture and read that parts of Tierrasanta have been evacuated. Tierrasanta is not I the boonies. This has threatened large parts of the city. I guess I thought modern cities are not supposed to burn down in times of peace. I was home-sick yesterday. And Mom’s cell phone number didn’t work. But now everything is OK.

I still have a bad sore throat. I went to a different toastmaster’s meeting last night and I’m making some friends. Tonight I’m going to the American Chamber of Commerce Mixer. I’ve been drinking 2 beers a day so that I can build some tolerance for social drinking. It seems everyone here drinks a lot.


On the bike in the National Forest

Weekend Recap

See more pictures from the weekend in the gallery.

Friday: Ate dinner at a new, closer Xinjiang restaurant. We ordered Xinjiang vegetable dish and Xinjiang Chow Mien. Then we found out that the vegtable dish is composed of the same ingredients found in the Chow Mein - cabbage, tomatoes, big onion chunks, green peppers, MaLaTofu spices, and pepers. Haga had to leave half way through the meal because of her stomach problems, so I ate to much. Later that night, I went out to a bar street alone and went into the most Chinese of bars on the street (meaning: fewer foreigners and foreigner specialized prostitutes, more citizens). Sat at a table with a young couple on their first date. Because they allowed me to sit at their table, I had to be the purse watcher when they went to dance on the floor. The bar was so full that I couldn't move. There wasn't really a dance-floor per see...just people dancing between tables. The band was pretty good. The girl singer dressed really innocent (sweeter, jeans) and sang Brittney, Shania, that defunct UK girl-power stupid band, Joan Jet, and Shakira. The guy singers made their voice rusty and sank blues, Ricky Martin, and that Achy Breaky Slock song. Glow sticks were thrown out, and I decided I didn't stand out enough, so I laced the sticks into my army boots. I am cool.

Saturday: Start off with a breakfast of hand-made flat-noodle beef soup. Walked about 2 miles to the above-ground subway. Took the subway south 4 stops. Went to Ikea. Nothing to tell here. Its just like the Ikea in Oakland, except no black people.

Walked to the football stadium. Passed the Shanghai extreme sports park. Bunch of kids skateboarding on ramps. Everything in China starts to get a drab luster very quickly if it’s not maintained/cleaned. Somehow this industrial drab look is most suited to a ramp park.

Entered the New Stadium Hotel cafe. Ordered coffee and cake. Yelled at waitress because the cafe charges a 15% service fee and I didn't see any good service. Plus, the coffee was outrageously expensive.



Entered the Stadium. Watched the Shanghai Internationals play against the [city unknown] National Power football (that's soccer for Americans). We sat in the second-to-cheapest seats. Most of the spectators sat in the better sections. The team supporters sat at field level. They stood the entire game, wore uniforms, and banged drums the entire game. There were not that many people there overall...maybe 5000 or less. The opposing team (National Power) had a cheerleading team. But they stayed on the other side of the stadium (which was empty), so I couldn't get a good look. I fell asleep for about 20 minutes in the second half. Shanghai Internationals won with about 2 minutes left in the game.

Took taxi back to our area. Went to a Chicken specialty restaurant. Ate chopped chicken in vinigar with stir-fried rice and greens.

Went home. If I wanted to buy more pirated DVDs, I would buy: The 12-disk set of all movies by the guy who made Princes Mononoke / Spirited Away / Noriska / Laputa / etc. (its all the same story anyway); Malibu's Most Wanted (hey...its only $1...and I can later give it to people with lesser taste in movies...someone who's name starts with L or M); Shanghai Knights; a Chinese movie called "Millennium Mambo", a Chinese movie called "Heroic Duo"; and Lumpan - Castle of Count Cagliostro (another Japanese anamie).

Sunday:
I think Haga should write more about this because she had a unique perspective, but here is the outline.

Got up at 6:30. Got in a taxi to the downtown Ritz-Carlton. Met up with a bunch of other foreigners. Got in a shared taxi, which we took to someplace north. Got on a speed boat with 35 other foreigners. Arrived at what I was told was an island. Took another Taxi for 20 minutes to the Chongming National Forest. Rented a tandem bike. First tried Haga in front. Then realized it would be best with me in front. Had a blast riding around on concrete trails of the forest (estimated dimensions: 1 mile square) . We didn't rent any horse rides because the horses just go around a circle in a corral. But riding around the lakes and geometrically aligned forest trees was fun. Rented BBQ sets. No-one was taking control of the BBQ, so I stepped in. Talked alot with a bunch of alcoholic foreigner with interesting backgrounds. I inhaled a lot of smoke from the BBQ and then I got sick. I now have the Black Lung...you know...the disease that miners get.

Toastmasters

Picture of us on the train. Note: Chinese people have a different name for the Subway if it travels above ground. I didn't know that before. Learn something new everyday. Where are we going? I'll get to that in the next post.

Last night I went to the Shanghai Putong Toastmasters club meeting. Toastmasters is an organization that promotes leadership and presentation skills in structured, ad-hoc voluntarily governed meeting groups. Therefore, it is surprising that, in spite of the three taboos against discussing Sex, Politics, and Religion, the government has not shut this group down yet. Just kidding. I do wonder however, if other Toastmasters clubs have these taboos.

Everyone was speaking English with each other. That's rare because students rarely have the discipline to speak only English when it is not required...and it wasn’t required here. There were extensive introductions and then table-topic speeches, in which different people got up to give two minute speeches on certain questions. Every speech is evaluated on multiple criteria including; how many "ahs/ums/, eye movement, pacing, vocal variance, content organization, grammar, and overall demeanor. I volunteered to give an impromptu speech on how I deal with frustration. "This is my first time to Toastmasters - um - and I am a little nervous too. I have been in China for two weeks now and I encounter fustrations on a daily basis. Most of my fustration comes from communication issues. Either people do not understand me or I don't understand them. Usually, when they don't understand me, it’s because they are not listening to me, they are just amused that this foreigner can speak Chinese.

Sometimes I get frustrated because people seem to act illogically. Yesterday, my drinking water tank broke and a full tank of water leaked out all over the kitchen floor. I called the maintenance manager who came over and inspected the tank for a half hour. He called a meeting with the landlord representative for today and then inspected the tank again for 45 minutes before they decided that, yes, there is a leak somewhere and they cannot fix it. I just wanted them to replace it. How did I deal with this? I held my frustration in...and I smiled."

People laughed. At this point, I got a yellow card letting me know that my time was just about up. I lost my train of thought, so I just said "In conclusion, just hold it in, and smile..." They laughed again. Did they know I was lying? What I wanted to say was "and if you get too frustrated, and nothing gets done to fix the situation, then what I like to do is step up close to the source of my frustration, squint my eyes, look really psycho, and try to scare my frustration into leaving on its own accord". The ending they heard was probably better.

My evaluator told me that I effectively used humor in my speech (I didn't tell her I was not trying to be humorous), and I appeared very confident. But my eyes where all over the place - often looking at the ceiling. My tone was too flat. I had one "Ah". And my pacing was way off.

I met several people that night:

Oregon foreign guy named Erik. He came to Shanghai looking for work, arriving 2 weeks before I did. Speaks Chinese with a Taiwan accent. He and I were going to go to some exhibitions together on Friday, but he flaked because he was moving and preparing a place for his 7 year old boy whom he is going to raise in Shanghai. He said there was a big battle - which he won - to get custody from the mother in HK. I thought there had to be something very wrong with the mom for a Chinese court to give custody to a foreign father.

An English Language Slut. A college girl with near fluent L.A. accent English, who likes to show off to everyone how good her English is. She used a good amount of SAT type words as well as common verbal expressions; "Over national day holidays me and a Canadian guy and a German guy went to Qinddao, and it was just so awesome!" I'm pretty good at spotting who learned English from foreign boyfriends. While I was talking to other people, she came right up and stole me from the conversation I was in. BTW, I AM (or was) a Chinese Language Slut.

A 20-something year old boy who dropped out of public school so that he could study in his own way. He learned English by listening to tapes. He was not as good as the English Slut, but better than most of the club members - probably because he concentrated his studies on how to express himself. He gave a 6 minute speech on the topic of "better to do than to regret", in which he explained his reasons for dropping out of high-school to self study at home. The other club members where very impressed (and somewhat shocked) by this.

Bankers, Teachers, Sales People, and Engineers. About 3/4th of the members and guests came in groups from their foreign companies. About 1/4th came on their own. Most of those people have some international work experience, spoke great English, and carried themselves with confidence. Everyone was friendly, but that's not surprising.

I'm going to check out the other three Shanghai Toastmasters groups to see which one I like, and then I'm going to become a member.

Fustration [sic]

[i'm editing this because my dumb@$$ friends (which is most of my friends, but today, in particular, Josh and Tony) have made dumb@$$ comments about my cards and my thoughts on Chinese people. Dumb@$$! Also, I like to write this word like this:Dumb@$$]



OK. I went to get business cards press printed and they messed up and I'm really pissed. They messed up because they had to copy the Photoshop materials provided to them (developed by the most gifted Hagachan) into another format...and they couldn't do this right. Then there were printing smudges and other errors on about 1/4th of all the cards. I went through every card in the shop and threw out the bad ones...then demanded they return 1/4th of the money (I need some cards...even not perfect ones, for my activities in the next couple of days) This is not why I'm mad. I'm mad because they acted like it was my fault. I didn't yell at them though. OK. I complained. I said "If you had problems converting my materials, how come you couldn't tell me what you needed before I gave you money?" Dumb@$$!!!

Now I'm in Starbucks eating a brownie. Ahhh...better.

You know, there are plenty of foreigners who live here and get sort of fed up with Chinese culture. I don't plan on being one of those foreigners. But I really think that Chinese people have a severe lack of detail-oriented-ness in their culture. Maybe this only goes for Chinese people in the PRC; my old boss at Tekcon was detail-oriented from hell. All around me it seems that things could be better if people paid a little more attention. Not effort...attention. I just feel like everything - from the business cards, to the way buildings are made and provisioned, to the way waiters clean the tables at restaurants - lacks attention to detail. I'm not one to talk about concentration. I'm not a detail oriented person. China is a country full of non-detail oriented people

The drinking water tank in our apartment is leaking. I called up the land-lord representative, who showed up with the building maintenance dude (who was at the apartment the day before to examine the tank). The landlord representative is a cute short chick who speaks Japanese. They inspect it for 45 minutes before coming to the conclusion that it was leaking. While I'm waiting she tries to start up small talk with me. Somehow when other people try to initiate small talk with me, it fails and both parties get a little irked. Maybe I’m missing some language cues when I speak Chinese. Or a lack a mutual context for our communication. This is a common example of how everyone else seems to be in the conversation loop but me:

Short Cute Girl: So...you've had Japanese food.
Me: Here?
SCG: Japanese food.
Me: So?
SCG: Like sashimi, ahi, Yakitori...
Me: I know what Japanese food is.
SCG: Okonomiyaki
Me: Yes...I know what it is.
SCG: So you had no trouble finding it?
Me: I haven't had it in China
SCG: Really? I can show you and Hagasan where there is Japanese restaurant.
Me: No need.
SCG: Oh. You don’t like Japanese food.
Me: I like Japanese food. I like all food.
SCG: There is a big restaurant in this building.
Me: I can show you 15 Japanese restaurants within 5 minutes walk of here. They are all bad quality and expensive. When are you going to decide that there is a leak in the tank and you can't fix it. Just replace it!
SCG: It is past its warrantee period
Me: We have this concept where I am from that products past warrantee period break because they are designed to break. Since all of our products came from China, I’m sure it is the same way here.

I got to say though that when I initiate the small talk, it usually goes better.

Famous couple on the Bund looking at the PuTong side


Last couple of days I have been sick, which put a hold on some of my weekend plans. Last couple days we stayed home more - which was fine because we finished Season 2 of "24".

I had to buy some diarrhea medicine from the Friendship Store (the local pharmacy was too far away for me to walk to without incident, and I didn't want to aggravate Haga with another attempt at this). The "pharmacist" - a flamming Chinese guy who looked like Jeffery Brison in his coffee-shop-tarot-card-reading days (very skinny, hair combed over like an 1985 new wave mod, )- diligently tried to explain to me the pros and cons of different medicines. There was the Chinese medicine - "Direa Cure - 6 tabl". There was the Japanese medicine, made from the bark of an Upalumpa Tree which grew on the east side Mt. Fuji. And there was Smetca, a powdered oral medication with English description and instructions. Guess which one I picked.

Last Thursday I went to some bars and clubs by myself while Haga attended a Japanese party. I didn't really go into any club...just scouted out the scene. I walked around for several hours. At the end of the night, I got this idea in my head that I would try out a foot massage place before I went home. I went in side and was taken to a room with a bunch of puffy leather chairs. There were other rooms full of Chinese men who were smoking, and a room with some foreign women, but no one else was in my room. The masseuse - a 20-something year old round, short, ad strong girl - came in with a bucket of scalding hot water, in which I soaked/ burned my feet. She then took my feet out of the water, oiled them, and them began to systematically crush my feet. Here is what we talked about:

Jesse: You know, this is sort of painful
Girl: We Chinese have a saying; "First bitter, the sweet". You understand that?
Jesse: Yes. But I have a saying too; "First sweet, then sweet".
(Pressure on my foot increases)
Jesse: you...are...killing...me.
Girl: Does your stomach bother you now?
Jesse: a little ... but ... my ... feet ... are ... in ... pain.
Girl: That is because you have a stomach problem.
Jesse: I have a little diarrhea [this was Thursday when I was just getting sick] but my feet hurt because you are crushing them.
(Pressure is applied to different location of foot)
Girl: Do you sleep well? I think you do not sleep well.
Jesse: Why?
Girl: Because this part of your foot is in pain
Jesse: I don't sleep well because my bed is like a wood board, but that part of my foot is in pain because you are causing me pain. It has nothing to do with my sleep.
Girl: Of course it does. Every part of your body and your foot has relationship. This part of your foot is [girl starts using Chinese medicine terms which I do not understand]

So I got a lecture on Chinese medicine. At the end, my feet did not feel sore from walking, and the torture pain wore off quickly.

On Friday, even though I was pretty sick, we went to Simchat Torah services at a shuel. We arrived late (because I'm a Covner, and because we found out it is very difficult to get a cab at 6:00 at our apartment because the convention center across the street lets out at that time). The shuel was located in a stand-alone house/mansion about 1.5 miles from our apartment. We walked in and were shocked; men and women were sitting separated by a wooden trellis fence. They were singing melodies I didn't recognize at all. The rabbi was wearing a large black hat and black coat. A woman came up to us, looked at me and said "You sit on that side. She will be fine". And so that was how it went. I prayed (although I can't read Hebrew anymore and I didn't know most of the songs these guys were singing). I danced around the Beema and held the Torah. Haga, the women and children danced in a separate section. She seemed to have fun. None of the women wore head coverings or seemed particularly orthodox. I sort of felt it was silly to separate the women because they couldn't be as active in the celebration...although that may be what the women wanted.

Later, we ate kosher chicken and couscous and delicious salads. Supposedly a kosher butcher was flown in from Israel to specially prepare the food. The rabbi poured vodka and passed it around to everyone. It was a fun time. I think the rabbi was orthodox, but because his mission is to provide service to all Jews in China, his service was very inclusive and I appreciated that.

We did a couple of other things recently. Haga and I went to the "Bund" on Sunday. The neighbors downstairs painted their room and the paint smell has wafted into our apartment; I have bitterly complained 4 times to the building management about that. I went to a job interview on Friday. We at Xinjiang food again on Sunday.

I will try to update this more often since I'm getting complaints from all you guys. Oh...also, I'm taking a hip-hop class at the gym tonight. And there are some more new pics in the gallery (look to the end to see the newest)


Eating Xinjiang food. Notice the bread and the spicy chicken potato stew.

Week one+

View from my balcony. There is a larger version (for printing) in the gallery.

So I found out that I could have bought my cell phone in China for cheaper.

I'm in Starbucks writing this. We are on the west side of Shanghai in what is called the Chang Ning development district. Its a lot of big hotels and shopping malls. Its a good 15 minute taxi-ride to get downtown...but since that only costs $3, not too bad.

Now that I'm here, I need to finish getting set up and then build a routine. The routine should include making contacts with foreigners, finding new restaurants, exercising, and getting together some business plans. I guess I'm writing this down now because I'm freaking out with so much to see and so much to do. I'm also freaking out a little about my long term plans (or lack of clarity on said plans) I'm a little sick and my throat feels more sore because I'm asking everyone questions. Everyone is giving me the first answer that pops out of their butts.

So back to where I live. Imagine the Belagio hotel. Only the fountains dried up and cloths are hang-drying from some of the balconies. Now imagine the hotel is surrounded by office buildings inhabited by China's top 207 state-owned banks, and a bunch of Korean and Japanese companies. On the lower floors of those office buildings are Japanese and Korean restaurants. On an adjoining street is a shopping mall with a *gasp!* Starbucks. Starbucks is all over the place now. There is also a gym, but more on that later. Walk about a mile away and you are back in the old-school concrete universe that is 1960 China. Here you can buy a dim-sum feast for $1.50. Or buy a live chicken to bring home for grandma to kill. Within the concrete universe, about a mile from our apartment, is a Xinjiang Muslim restaurant, 20 dumpling-king restaurants, a smallish computer mall, lots of bad-fashion stores, and a few DVD stores.

Now, if I was so inclined to spend $30 on "dao-ban" pirated media, I would probably buy high-quality, boxed copies of the following: The complete 8 disc Season Two of "24" (very very entertaining and addictive), Lawrence of Arabia special addition, Warriors of Heaven and Earth (Chinese martial arts movie...don't know if its good yet), The Animatrix, Betty Blue (Haga wants to watch it), Glengary-Glenross (I want Haga to watch it so she understands some references in the Simpsons), MS Office XP, Windows XP, Photoshop 7, and Dreamweaver 4. Also Nora Jones, Cui Jian, and David Bowie music CDs. We are keeping our eye out for clasic movies and some old Chinese singer that my friend Patrick wants.

The last week I have been dividing my time between exploring my neighborhood, doing University of Phoenix work (which is getting to be a real drag), taking care of regular business (like washing cloths, fixing the POS computer, etc), getting a job-search routine up, and exercising. I'm a member of a gym now. There are a couple of other, older foreigners there...and they all have young Chinese girlfriends. This makes Haga sick, but I'll let her talk about that if she wants to. The gym is cleaner than 24 hour fitness, but costs about the same. Its a little weird. Chinese people stare at me when I'm working out, and a bunch all comment on how strong I am. Its like in their eyes being tall is the same thing as being strong.

So I went to two job interviews. One was with a Chinese commie state-owned company that wants to open an online IP B2B site and needs a Westerner to manage content and do marketing and be happy with $800 per month. I learned some good Chinese words in the interview, but I would not take the job even if they gave it to me; the boss had too much of a resemblance to my old boss at Tekcon, who I almost killed. I also interviewed for a corporate "outward bound" type trainer position. I was feverish and had diaria during the interview. So I ordered congee porridge (the interview was in a cafe) and after the interview I forgot to pay the bill. The interviewer called me up and invited me to attend one of the training sessions to see what its like - but he won't pay me because he paid for my breakfast already.

Chinese people are so friendly. Some are friendly because they want something from me. Most are friendly because it is in their nature. I don't think it is in my nature, and I sometimes feel guilty about this. People want to be my friend, want me to come over and hang out. This is just not how I work. The irony is that Chinese people think that foreigners are very open people. I will need to changing my outlook.

This Friday I plan to go to Jewish services at a rabbi's house. That can be cool. On the weekend hopefully we will be able to go downtown. Haga is doing great...but now that she has her part of this blog, she will tell you in her words about what's going on.

Shanghai, China PRC

We arrived yesterday at around 2PM. The flight was good. In the in-flight movie, I saw the new governor of California fight a sexy female cybernetic organism.

We are very tired. I didn't sleep much yesterday. So I have a tired-nasal headache. We checked into the hotel, went to the company, then went to our appartment. The appartment was really big. It has gaudy shandeliers, and three bedrooms. Washer/dryer included. Airconditioning, TV DVD VCR big bathtubs fridge fire alarm ironing board dinning room table friendly security guard security gate air conditioning heater second bathroom balcony phone fake wood floors

PS. Have a phone number for my mobile phone. Its listed to the right. We also ate Weeguar noodles. And walked around different parts. Found an internet caffe not too far from our appartment. Haga likes her coworkers and wishes you all well. I bought her a 4 book translated set of Neil Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon". And I ate baozi, xiaolongbao, and jianbingguoze with out the guoze for breakfast (translated: dimsum. dimsum. and eggy-pancake with hot sause).

Family Day

We had a party in celebration of...just a family celebration.

We ate sushi, beef salad, sushi mackerel & avocado salad, crackers, and chocolates. Mmmm. Haga's grandfather played a senile guessing game - see if he remembers everyone's name. He called Haga "Hirome". So I told him my name was Takashi (Hirome's husband). It was the best joke of the night.

The grandfather also told stories about army life in "Manchugogu" - Manchuria...which is Northern China. He noted that it was really poor, and people would defecate in the streets, and then the pigs would come by and eat it. Haga's grandmother then went on about how she thinks that the Japanese were just trying to bring development and civilization to the people there. Chinese people would probably be upset to hear what they said. On the other hand, they are a product of a less-enlightened generation- a generation going through the changes of modernity and fascism. People today don't have as good excuses for being dumb.

We went outside and had an amature photographer take pictures of everyone in Hirome's garage. So go to the end of the gallery to see the newest pics.

Shichan's athletic competition . They gave us yellow ribbons before we went in. In Japan , from an early age, they start training kids to compete in the sadistic game shows . Kids go through obstacle courses, while signing songs. Some don't make it. I asked if the ribbon was use to show support for the troops. The pre-school teacher said the ribbons are to let them know I am not a child molester.

I have bad jet-lag. Last night went to Roppungi and went dancing. Very fun.

Japan

Me at the airport. After coffee and cookies in the First class lounge.

We left on Thursday. I miss Unagi

First Class flights rule! Movies: Millennium Actress - A-; Bruce Almighty - C-. The flights was 10 hours. Lots of leg room. Narita Airport to Yokodai was 2.5 hours. And I had to go to the bathroom.

The family here is good. They all say I lost weight. My niece Shichan is 3 and very cute. My niece Nahochan is 4 months and also very cute. Shichan talks alot now, so I'm having relate-problems. Naho doesn't talk much, so we relate well. Hirome signed up for a free 30day ISP, so I can get online and do my University of Phoenix chores (as well as update this blog. Japan is the same. Its smoking. Its crowded. Its overly polite. Its muggy. Its hip-hop-happening. Its hitting my head on the short door-frames.

Schedule: Saturday we see Shichan in an athletics competition. Sunday is family day. Monday and Tuesday I don't know. Wensday its Shanghai or bust.