China - Day 7 - Crisis Averted

June 25
Today's been pretty slow at work. I spent the first half of the day reading a technical manual about a measurement probe and it's application in a number of different CNC mills. Now I'm going to review some parts that were machined out of spec and have been rejected by the customer. Wooooooo . After lunch, Michael brought me my company shoes that I need to wear whenever I go out on the workshop floor (they tried to give me a pair on my first day, but those were 3 sizes too small). These shoes are huge, they feel like boats on my feet. Actually, I'm pretty sure they are steel-toed, which is kinda cool. And now I have dedicated work shoes from now until when these things fall apart (which will probably be judgement day, based on how they are built)

Things are looking better on the home front. I just got handed a key to my new apartment, which will be in the same building, just one floor lower and at the other end of the hall (so it won't be the one directly below mine, which I assume is equally water logged). I also straightened things out about my internet situation. The company is apparently purchasing a wireless card from China Mobile that they are going to give to me so that I can access the internet wirelessly. I really hope it is a 3G card (actually, I don't know if Xiasha has 3G service). However, this means I won't have wireless in the new apartment until after they get the card to me. Hopefully it will be today or tomorrow (which definitely gives me an incentive to come to work on Saturday, as is apparently the norm for Allied). More info to come after I see the new apartment.


Went to dinner with Michael at one of the restaurants near our apartment complex for an "authentic Chinese dinner" (in his words). I'd told him that I love sweet and sour pork, so we ordered that and he ordered some other stuff that I wasn't entirely following (I figured "leave it to the local"). When our dishes arrived, I started to understand why the dish is called tang cu pai gu (sweet and sour spareribs) in China, not tang cu zhu rou (sweet and sour pork) like Di Laoshi taught us. (side note: we also had a fantastic dish that was little fried balls of some starch (probably potatoes or taro) with lots of oil and peppers. I think Yunnan was somewhere in the name. Back to the sweet and sour pork). There were bones everywhere. I hate eating food with bones in it, but I didn't want to be a bad guest (especially considering that this was at least the third time Michael has taken me out to dinner and he's only let me buy him a soda), so I went with it. I also went along with his suggestion to have some Chinese wine (it's name translates to "Green Dragon Mountain," which is kinda badass). Here my adventurous nature came back to bite me in the ass. The drink they brought out looked, smelled and tasted like a mixture of Coke and turpentine. I could barely finish half of my small glass on my own. While I was struggling, Michael told me about how he used to have a reputation for being able to drink anyone at the company under the table drinking this wine. Not one to back down from a challenge, I matched him pour for pour, trading my taste buds and brain cells for my ego. Still unsure how that battle will turn out.

After finishing up at dinner, we headed back to the apartment building and I checked out my new room. It actually looked a lot better than my old room, which now smells somewhere between old fish and wet mold. There was no mold on the ceiling or water on the floor. There was actually more furniture (an end table) and most of the light bulbs worked. I also found an ethernet cable snaked in through the window that worked, much to my surprise. This pleasant surprise supersedes the wireless modem the company gave me this afternoon, but I'm going to hold on to it in case this ethernet cable stops working. But for the time being, I'm enjoying broadband speeds (well, at least DSL). Anywho, back to the new room, it's quite nice and I learned my lesson about keeping important things on the floor (don't). I handwashed my laundry tonight, which took much longer than expected and left my wrists very sore from wringing out clothes. Hopefully they will dry hanging outside tomorrow and it won't rain much. Here's to hope "gan bei"

My new room. Advantages over the old room: no mold on the ceiling, TV displays the proper colors, floor isn't waterlogged	This is where the magic happens. Not really. But Michael has offered to set me up on some dates. Really.