China - Day 59 - The Expo and my best weekend yet

This was a positively fantastic weekend, the most fun and most entertaining weekend I've had in China. This weekend perfectly encapsulated the travelling/expat experience I wanted to have this summer; I'm very happy that I got to and very thankful to those that helped make it happen. Now, on to a more detailed recap.

August 13
Picking up from my last post, I got into Shanghai fairly late by my standards (around 10:30PM. The difference between my standards of time and Shanghai's standard of time would be a recurring theme of my time here), but thankfully the metro was still working. As much as I love the Shanghai Metro system (I think it might be my favorite in the world), the one thing that I absolutely can't stand about it is that it shuts down so early; external lines start closing around 9PM, central lines stay open until 10:30-11PM. This means that anyone trying to have any semblance of a nightlife has to take cabs everywhere (not that it's an issue to find cabs, but I'm a huge believer in the use of subways and subways are much easier to use when you don't really speak the language). While I was on the train I spoke to my friends Alex and Chris about our accommodations for the weekend; apparently their friends Rachel and Cindy were staying in a huge apartment in Shanghai and Alex and Chris suggested that we cancel our hostel reservation to stay with the girls. When I got to the apartment (an adventure in and of itself, as no cabbie had apparently ever heard of the street it's located on) we realized that "huge" was a relative term and that it was time for us to grovel our way back into the hostel (which we did, thankfully). As much as I appreciated Rachel and Cindy's hospitality, one of us would have had to sleep on the dining room table and another in the bathtub, which was just not happening.

After getting settled at the hostel, we headed out to begin our nightlife at 12:15AM. I'm used to seeing things begin to wind down around this time, but the energy of the group was infectious and I just went with it. After a few false starts (at clubs that were rejected for one reason or another) and one very tense argument with a cabbie, we ended up at a club called Muse where we proceeded to party and dance until 3:30, which is when things apparently begin to wind down in Shanghai. Either way, I was just thankful for sleep at that point.

The beds in our hostel room. It's a good thing none of us suffer from night terrors because I very well could have punched Chris in the face as we slept.	The bathroom in our room. While it was a very efficient use of space it was a complete and utter design disaster. I ended up locking myself in there by placing my backpack in the wrong place and blocking the sliding glass door.

China - Day 20 - (Insert clever tagline)

Yeah, so the last three days have been so uneventful that they don't merit a breakdown by date. I'm still working on fixturing and now I'm creating a primary machining fixture (the first one I created was actually a secondary machining fixture, so now I'm backtracking). I should hopefully finish this up soon and move on to another project, but little things keep popping up and I make little mistakes due to a lack of direction. This is getting a little frustrating, but I'm looking forward to finishing up with this fixture soon. Hopefully I'll get a chance to teach myself some Pro/E soon (since I figured out how to change the language of that program to English). Tomorrow, however, will not be that day as there is a scheduled power outage from 7:30 to 15:30 while they upgrade the factory's connection to the power grid. I'm not sure if I need to come into work, we'll see.


On the fun front, I'm going to Shanghai this weekend. I'm leaving on Friday after work and coming back Sunday night; I'll be staying with my friend Susan (although there are at least 3 of us crashing with her, so I'll probably be sleeping on the floor, couch if I'm lucky). On Saturday we're going to get a tour of Google Shanghai and a meet and greet with some of their interns from Chinese universities. I'm going to try to swing by the Apple Store that's opening in Shanghai on Saturday that isn't too far from Google, although we'll see how the day goes. We aren't going to try to go to the Expo; we're going to put that off until later in the summer when the crowds have hopefully subsided.

Because things have been so slow lately, I'm going to delve into two topics that have crept into my mind over the last 3 weeks: corporate paternalism and children in public.

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.

China - Day 3 - Welcome to Hangzhou, no wait, Xiasha

June 20
The next night after touching down in Shanghai, we got up for orientation which primarily consisted of a luncheon with alumni. The food served was Shanghaiese (aka Shanghai specialties), including a fantastic pork belly dish (no idea what it was called), jellyfish, eel and a number of less interesting dishes. I figured "When in Rome..." and tried the jellyfish and eel. The eel was quite tasty, but heavily masked with spices. The jellyfish was something else all together. It was a lot crunchier than I expected jellyfish to taste, kinda like hard jello. After the luncheon, we returned to our hotel to get our bags and head to the train station for the train to Hangzhou. This was the second time I seriously regretted bringing so much stuff. We got to the train station (Shanghai South) and it was a mess. There must have been easily five thousand people. After a number of false starts, we got to the right gate where we waited with 500 hundred of our newest friends for the train. While we waited, I went to find a water fountain because I was quite parched after running all over the train station for the past half hour. However, I didn't find a drinking fountain like I expected. Instead I found a hot water dispenser. Over the next couple of days it finally dawned on me that cold drinks are not really normal in China. It seems that the Chinese prefer their drinks warm, or at coolest, room temperature.

Jellyfish on the left, eel on the right

China - Day 1 - Whelp, I'm in Asia now

Wow, where to begin?

June 19
Let's start with the flights. I left SFO on June 18 on United flying to Incheon where I would catch a connecting flight to Shanghai on China Eastern Airlines. I was lucky enough to be upgraded to business class for the SFO-ICN flight (thank you mom and dad's frequent flier miles) and I have to say, it was exquisite. They served me three glasses of champagne before we even left the gate (one I had when I first sat down, the second when my seat mate [an anthropology professor from Harvard] joined me and the third when the flight attendants had to finish off the bottle before take off [I guess we looked like we would oblige another drink]).

747-400's at SFO. I think one of them was mine	A little pre-flight champagne