Tuesday, December 13, 2011

A few more observations to get us started: 

• The cops here run around with their lights on most of the time, and nobody pays any attention. It’s weird. We asked how people know if they’re serious about pulling someone over, and no one could really answer, because they hadn’t had the experience . . .
• For a people that seem as compliant as the Chinese do, they sure know how to flaunt the, “No Smoking” rules. We see men smoking everywhere they are not supposed to—stairways of buildings, restaurants, restrooms, etc. I said “men” here, because we’ve seen exactly one woman smoking during our entire stay. Hmmm . . . .
• The language is starting to click a bit, but also get jumbled up with Japanese (and even ASL!) in our heads. It’s going to take a bit more before things sort themselves out, and in the meantime, the Chinese people can look forward to a few more, “Gomen nasai(s)” from us until we finally remember to say, “xie xie,” instead.

 Morning

My first morning at work. I went in and met the team I’ll be working with—there are three people in the office, and the office is on the eighth floor of the building you saw in an earlier photo (well, actually, it’s around the corner from that building to the right, but part of the same complex, so you know what it looks like). Our office is small, but nice—I’ll send photos later. My office space is walled off by frosted glass, and the rest of the team is in cubicles around a central welcome area. It’s a fun group, and I’m really looking forward to getting to know all of them. Meanwhile, while I’m hard at work, Tracy decided to get up and work out, then go to the spa to get her hair done. Trophy. Wife.

Afternoon

We went to lunch with the office team, and everyone really liked Tracy—she’s been a very engaging person with everyone we meet, and the team called her a “supermodel.” (As a side note, the Chinese people will say whatever is on their mind—they called my boss, who was with us at the lunch, “fat,” to his face! He’s not, BTW). But the lunch was an amazing buffet of food—everything you could want, and I was able to get my first ice cream! (On a related note, I hear Cold Stone is all over the place, and we’ve seen a few Baskin Robbins already!). After lunch, we left the work team and went with our agents to look at two more places. Neither were good for us, and left us with the one we’d seen yesterday as our only option for now. We told the agents that I would be at work all day Wednesday, but Tracy was available if, and only if, they found something else (we could tell they were starting to run low). We wrapped up the day with dinner at Dadong Duck, a Peking duck restaurant. We’d never had duck before, but it was pretty good. The picture shows Tracy and Angela, our office manager, enjoying some of the appetizers they brought us. You get to decide for yourself what they’re sucking down!