For an hour or so today I was helping some of the staff in the front office to sort through and check off the names of entry passes to the facility that will be given out to VIP guests upon their arrival at the front entrance.
Low and behold, but who did I find within the first stack of passes that I put my hands on?
Yao Ming. That's right, the basketball star.
I'm not going to lie, it made me feel really cool to be in charge of his pass. Cindy Crawford's was somewhere in there as well....
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Translators
Today was quite interesting because it involved various meetings between different groups of staff at the OMEGA Olympic residence. Two of the groups of staff have their own translators for communication purposes, which led to some interesting scenes for me to take in because I understood both sides of the game.
Mr. Li, the head of security hired for this month at the venue, has a female translator (who's name has escaped my mind...buhaoyisi...), and Charles, the OMEGA Security representative, has his own translator now as well named Gilbert Wang. Gilbert is really nice, and he and I spent pretty much the entire day chatting back and forth in English and Chinese.
Today there occurred what I like to think of as the "Battle of the Translators", where both wanted to be doing their job in front of their bosses, but really only one person was necessary for the situation. Although the female translator was deemed the "head translator" between Mr. Li and Charles, upon beginning the meeting Gilbert quickly took control and started translating everything for both sides, leaving the other translator bewildered and flustered. So flustered, in fact, that she did not speak up for the rest of the day, but only silently worded the translations to herself under her breath as the meetings went on.
It was intense, actually.
I could just see the desire to translate on her face. In fact, I think she felt pretty dishonered to not be able to do her job. She kept nodding and agreeing with everything that Gilbert said, but not once did she speak up and try to translate anything herself....I guess it would have simply been to awkward for her since he was already in control.
Anyway, I'm just rambling about that.
After all of the translation work during the meetings, me and a guy names Ellis attempted to assemble some flat-screen TV stands. Unfortunately they were huge, had tons of pieces, and no manuals whatsoever, so Ellis is hiring some technicians to do it.
The good thing about trying to assemble the TVs was that I learned how to say "screwdriver", which is pronounced gai3zhui1 (numbers being the tones), which will be quite useful in the future, I'm sure.
At the end of the day we all got caught in an intense downpour of rain, and about 12 people, including myself, 8 chattering "hostesses", and three people from OMEGA, were stuck in the stuffy residence front office, which is about the size of a large broom closet.
It was hot in there, to say the very least.
Once the rain died down I gathered my belongings, grabbed a taxi home, and then instantly relaxed on the couch, drinking a cold can of coconut juice.
Mr. Li, the head of security hired for this month at the venue, has a female translator (who's name has escaped my mind...buhaoyisi...), and Charles, the OMEGA Security representative, has his own translator now as well named Gilbert Wang. Gilbert is really nice, and he and I spent pretty much the entire day chatting back and forth in English and Chinese.
Today there occurred what I like to think of as the "Battle of the Translators", where both wanted to be doing their job in front of their bosses, but really only one person was necessary for the situation. Although the female translator was deemed the "head translator" between Mr. Li and Charles, upon beginning the meeting Gilbert quickly took control and started translating everything for both sides, leaving the other translator bewildered and flustered. So flustered, in fact, that she did not speak up for the rest of the day, but only silently worded the translations to herself under her breath as the meetings went on.
It was intense, actually.
I could just see the desire to translate on her face. In fact, I think she felt pretty dishonered to not be able to do her job. She kept nodding and agreeing with everything that Gilbert said, but not once did she speak up and try to translate anything herself....I guess it would have simply been to awkward for her since he was already in control.
Anyway, I'm just rambling about that.
After all of the translation work during the meetings, me and a guy names Ellis attempted to assemble some flat-screen TV stands. Unfortunately they were huge, had tons of pieces, and no manuals whatsoever, so Ellis is hiring some technicians to do it.
The good thing about trying to assemble the TVs was that I learned how to say "screwdriver", which is pronounced gai3zhui1 (numbers being the tones), which will be quite useful in the future, I'm sure.
At the end of the day we all got caught in an intense downpour of rain, and about 12 people, including myself, 8 chattering "hostesses", and three people from OMEGA, were stuck in the stuffy residence front office, which is about the size of a large broom closet.
It was hot in there, to say the very least.
Once the rain died down I gathered my belongings, grabbed a taxi home, and then instantly relaxed on the couch, drinking a cold can of coconut juice.
Have you ever....
....eaten Chicken soup using only a cheap plastic comb?....or made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with only your fingers?
Well I have!
Yeah, one of these days I should really invest in some kitchenware for this apartment.
The comb worked surprisingly well though, I must say.
Well I have!
Yeah, one of these days I should really invest in some kitchenware for this apartment.
The comb worked surprisingly well though, I must say.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Blue Green Bar
It's pouring rain here. "Raining Dogs and Cats!" as Jack, my first official Chinese tourguide (during the first week I was here with UNC) used to say.
I was supposed to meet up with my friend Laura tonight and grab a drink, but because of the rain and my general state of deleriousness I decided to stay near the hotel.
I believe that I stated in my last post that the lady who brings me breakfast brought me a little note-card saying that I could have a free cocktail at her bar. Well, I took her up on it tonight.
Blue Green Bar is literally 10 meters across the street from the front door of my apartment-hotel, but the guy at the front desk (whose name I don't know yet) insisted on ushering me under an umbrella so that I didn't get wet. He literally grabbed me and forced me under the umbrella, though he was about half my size I do believe.
The bar was awesome. I literally had the time of my life, and all in Chinese. I love it. Going to a Chinese bar by oneself allows for adventure far beyond anything available to the ex-pat hangouts.
One of the Chinese guys there was testing out a cocktail and made me one for free, which was nice of him. Unfortunately the place ain't cheap: a small bottle of tsingtao beer costs 30 Kuai, as opposed to about 2 kuai in a store. Oh well, it's worth it for the company and the language practice.
One guy, a bartender, named Xiao Yu spoke a little broken English, while another female bartender whose name I didn't spoke pretty well. I kept telling her how good her English was, but she wouldn't accept my praises. No one else there spoke English, which was fine by me.
The lady who brings me my breakfast was sitting in the corner with a friend surfing the internet on a laptop. I said hey to her and thanked her for the card, which I used to buy a flaming B-52 shot at the bar.
I feel like Xiao Yu and I could be good friends. I'll have to stop back by that bar sometime soon... if my work schedule allows it.
Speaking of that, it looks as though I will be starting work everyday around 2 or 3pm, which leaves me the entire morning to study Chinese and excercise! Awesome!
Alright, I'm out for now. I'm going to try and get some sleep while the alcohol in my system is still taking it's toll.
I was supposed to meet up with my friend Laura tonight and grab a drink, but because of the rain and my general state of deleriousness I decided to stay near the hotel.
I believe that I stated in my last post that the lady who brings me breakfast brought me a little note-card saying that I could have a free cocktail at her bar. Well, I took her up on it tonight.
Blue Green Bar is literally 10 meters across the street from the front door of my apartment-hotel, but the guy at the front desk (whose name I don't know yet) insisted on ushering me under an umbrella so that I didn't get wet. He literally grabbed me and forced me under the umbrella, though he was about half my size I do believe.
The bar was awesome. I literally had the time of my life, and all in Chinese. I love it. Going to a Chinese bar by oneself allows for adventure far beyond anything available to the ex-pat hangouts.
One of the Chinese guys there was testing out a cocktail and made me one for free, which was nice of him. Unfortunately the place ain't cheap: a small bottle of tsingtao beer costs 30 Kuai, as opposed to about 2 kuai in a store. Oh well, it's worth it for the company and the language practice.
One guy, a bartender, named Xiao Yu spoke a little broken English, while another female bartender whose name I didn't spoke pretty well. I kept telling her how good her English was, but she wouldn't accept my praises. No one else there spoke English, which was fine by me.
The lady who brings me my breakfast was sitting in the corner with a friend surfing the internet on a laptop. I said hey to her and thanked her for the card, which I used to buy a flaming B-52 shot at the bar.
I feel like Xiao Yu and I could be good friends. I'll have to stop back by that bar sometime soon... if my work schedule allows it.
Speaking of that, it looks as though I will be starting work everyday around 2 or 3pm, which leaves me the entire morning to study Chinese and excercise! Awesome!
Alright, I'm out for now. I'm going to try and get some sleep while the alcohol in my system is still taking it's toll.
Boulder Bar: First Attempt
Recently I heard about a really cool concept bar in the North of Beijing called "Boulder Bar". It's a combination of two awesome things: beer and rock-climbing (bouldering, not high ropes stuff).
Anyway, because I was told that today I don't have any responsibilities and will basically be starting tomorrow, July 31st, I went on an adventure to try and track down the bar. The problem is, however, that there is no address anywhere online in Chinese, so all I had to go by was the name of a nearby bridge in pinyin.
The long and short of the story is that I took a combination of metro and taxi to reach the North end, then walked around for a long time looking for the place.
Much to my dismay, I have yet to find it. On top of that, my cell phone ran out of minutes while I was in the middle of a call with OMEGA, so I have to go buy a recharge card sometime soon and take care of that.
I will find that Bouldering Bar!!!!
Anyway, because I was told that today I don't have any responsibilities and will basically be starting tomorrow, July 31st, I went on an adventure to try and track down the bar. The problem is, however, that there is no address anywhere online in Chinese, so all I had to go by was the name of a nearby bridge in pinyin.
The long and short of the story is that I took a combination of metro and taxi to reach the North end, then walked around for a long time looking for the place.
Much to my dismay, I have yet to find it. On top of that, my cell phone ran out of minutes while I was in the middle of a call with OMEGA, so I have to go buy a recharge card sometime soon and take care of that.
I will find that Bouldering Bar!!!!
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Starbucks Times
Alright, I took the plunge into yet another cliche social phenomenon and have stopped into a Starbucks on Chongwenmen Street, on the other side of the shopping mall attached to my apartment-hotel, to work on some excel spreadsheets for my transportation job with OMEGA. Humorously enough, not only am I extremely unfamiliar with Microsoft Excel, but I also still have very little information about what my job here entails. What I do know is that I have two cars under my command, and I need to create some sort of system for organizing them in terms of how they will be used to accommodate OMEGA's guests.
It's interesting sitting in Starbucks in the middle of Beijing, the capital of the "Middle Kingdom" (everything is Middle here), drinking a cup of coffee that here costs about the same, or more, than the average Chinese worker makes in a day. The pricing at Chinese Starbucks is pretty consistent with the pricing in the United States, which therefore makes it a high-end item in China and only available to the upper-crust of society. For the time being, at least.
*Note- Having become frustrated with Microsoft Excel and all of its crazy formulas, I have switched to the much more layman-friendly Microsoft Word.
Yeah, I must say that it is interesting to be sitting here without a schedule yet, pretty much on-call with Karin whenever she needs me. Part of me feels the urge to just get up and start walking- walk around Beijing and discover things. However, another part of me likes to just sit here and people watch, conserving energy, for it knows that the coming weeks will be quite hectic.
Ok, I am going to stop rambling for now and write again when something extravagant and interesting happens.
My apologies to anyone who actually read through this last, pointless entry ;)
It's interesting sitting in Starbucks in the middle of Beijing, the capital of the "Middle Kingdom" (everything is Middle here), drinking a cup of coffee that here costs about the same, or more, than the average Chinese worker makes in a day. The pricing at Chinese Starbucks is pretty consistent with the pricing in the United States, which therefore makes it a high-end item in China and only available to the upper-crust of society. For the time being, at least.
*Note- Having become frustrated with Microsoft Excel and all of its crazy formulas, I have switched to the much more layman-friendly Microsoft Word.
Yeah, I must say that it is interesting to be sitting here without a schedule yet, pretty much on-call with Karin whenever she needs me. Part of me feels the urge to just get up and start walking- walk around Beijing and discover things. However, another part of me likes to just sit here and people watch, conserving energy, for it knows that the coming weeks will be quite hectic.
Ok, I am going to stop rambling for now and write again when something extravagant and interesting happens.
My apologies to anyone who actually read through this last, pointless entry ;)
Breakfast Sandwiches
I woke up this morning at 7;45am, knowing that the little lady from "Blue Green Bar", a cafe across the street, would be rapping on my door at 8:00am sharp to deliver breakfast. Sure enough, just as I sat down in the main room of my apartment and turned on the news, there it was: "knock knock knock".
Excited by the prospect of food, I went to the door and let in my breakfast delivering friend. We greated one another, and then she walked through the door. Upon entering my room, she instantly turned to me and handed me a card for a free cocktail at her bar before setting my breakfast down on the table and then leaving.
Just like the day before, breakfast consisted of two cups in a bag, a sandwich, and four or five cherry tomatoes. The sandwich, however, was a variation on the sandwich from the day before in that it was no longer on a roll, but on three pieces of white bread. The fillings, the mystery meats, cucumbers, tomatoes, cheese, and sweet sauce, all remained the same. The cherry tomatoes were equally juicy as the day before, and I accidently shot the juice from one at my computer as I bit down on it- the sign of a good tomatoe.
Yeah, there really is nothing like a good mystery-meat sandwich for breakfast.
Last night at 10:00pm, just as I was about to try and get to bed to continue adjusting to the time over here, I got a call from Karin (don't know if I wrote about her yet- more or less my boss) asking me if I wanted to meet up with some of the OMEGA team in Sanlitunr (an expatriot filled, tourist attracting bar street in the Chaoyang district) to get something to eat. Honestly speaking, I was dead tired, but I went anyway because I like those guys and wanted to get to know them better.
I spent a lot of time in Sanlitunr during the summer of 2007 when I was first in Beijing. Unfortunately a good portion of the memories of that time period are blurry and dark, marred by the effects of the alcohol my fellow students and I used to ward off the stresses of intensive language study during the day.
Anyway, returning to Sanlitunr was an interesting experience, for it has definitely changed a bit.
An Apple (computers) store, for example, has mysteriously sprung up in the area's busiest section, which seems strange because the area mostly consists of bars, and it appears to be a little cleaner in general.
I met up with my colleagues at an expatriot-filled restaurant-bar called "Tree", which apparently serves up a pretty mean pizza. Walking into the restaurant....I felt like I had left Beijing for a moment due to the onslaught of drinking and laughing "laowai" (foreigner) faces. The waitresses and servers, of course, were Chinese, but very little Chinese was actually spoken in the restaurant itself.
Grabbing a bottle of Tsingtao, I sat down at the table with my new friends and tried to join in the conversation. Unfortunately for me, the Swiss speak in French the majority of the time, especially when they are drinking, eating, and relaxing. Although I can follow along with what they say, my French is too undeveloped to actually add any sort of intelligent conversation to the mix. Therefore I spend a lot of time sitting, listening, and drinking, which suits me just fine. I must say though that Charles, who is head of security at the OMEGA residence, makes a strong effort to speak in English around me when he can. He's a cool dude.
I hung out with the crew for an hour, or hour and a half, then bid them goodnight as I walked away from the restaurant toward the main street to flag down a cab. As I rounded the first corner past the restaurant, I nearly ran straight into a young, drunk, white laowai leaning against the side of a building puking his guts out into the street. He stop his hurling for a brief moment to look up at me with empty, distant eyes, and the dropped his head back down and continued on with his liquid show.
Beautiful....I guess Sanlitunr has not changed that much afterall.
Excited by the prospect of food, I went to the door and let in my breakfast delivering friend. We greated one another, and then she walked through the door. Upon entering my room, she instantly turned to me and handed me a card for a free cocktail at her bar before setting my breakfast down on the table and then leaving.
Just like the day before, breakfast consisted of two cups in a bag, a sandwich, and four or five cherry tomatoes. The sandwich, however, was a variation on the sandwich from the day before in that it was no longer on a roll, but on three pieces of white bread. The fillings, the mystery meats, cucumbers, tomatoes, cheese, and sweet sauce, all remained the same. The cherry tomatoes were equally juicy as the day before, and I accidently shot the juice from one at my computer as I bit down on it- the sign of a good tomatoe.
Yeah, there really is nothing like a good mystery-meat sandwich for breakfast.
Last night at 10:00pm, just as I was about to try and get to bed to continue adjusting to the time over here, I got a call from Karin (don't know if I wrote about her yet- more or less my boss) asking me if I wanted to meet up with some of the OMEGA team in Sanlitunr (an expatriot filled, tourist attracting bar street in the Chaoyang district) to get something to eat. Honestly speaking, I was dead tired, but I went anyway because I like those guys and wanted to get to know them better.
I spent a lot of time in Sanlitunr during the summer of 2007 when I was first in Beijing. Unfortunately a good portion of the memories of that time period are blurry and dark, marred by the effects of the alcohol my fellow students and I used to ward off the stresses of intensive language study during the day.
Anyway, returning to Sanlitunr was an interesting experience, for it has definitely changed a bit.
An Apple (computers) store, for example, has mysteriously sprung up in the area's busiest section, which seems strange because the area mostly consists of bars, and it appears to be a little cleaner in general.
I met up with my colleagues at an expatriot-filled restaurant-bar called "Tree", which apparently serves up a pretty mean pizza. Walking into the restaurant....I felt like I had left Beijing for a moment due to the onslaught of drinking and laughing "laowai" (foreigner) faces. The waitresses and servers, of course, were Chinese, but very little Chinese was actually spoken in the restaurant itself.
Grabbing a bottle of Tsingtao, I sat down at the table with my new friends and tried to join in the conversation. Unfortunately for me, the Swiss speak in French the majority of the time, especially when they are drinking, eating, and relaxing. Although I can follow along with what they say, my French is too undeveloped to actually add any sort of intelligent conversation to the mix. Therefore I spend a lot of time sitting, listening, and drinking, which suits me just fine. I must say though that Charles, who is head of security at the OMEGA residence, makes a strong effort to speak in English around me when he can. He's a cool dude.
I hung out with the crew for an hour, or hour and a half, then bid them goodnight as I walked away from the restaurant toward the main street to flag down a cab. As I rounded the first corner past the restaurant, I nearly ran straight into a young, drunk, white laowai leaning against the side of a building puking his guts out into the street. He stop his hurling for a brief moment to look up at me with empty, distant eyes, and the dropped his head back down and continued on with his liquid show.
Beautiful....I guess Sanlitunr has not changed that much afterall.
Adapting
Well here it is, my first post. I never ever thought that I would be a blogger, but I think I will give it a shot because it seems to be less complicated than keeping up with a list-serve. Did I spell list-serve right? I don't know how to spell that....
This way people can read about my life as they please instead of me flooding their inboxes with silly emails!
Anyway, I have survived my first full day in Beijing. This morning I woke up naturally at 4:45am due to jetlag and time-change, etc. However, it was a good thing overall, for I was able to get a lot done prior to vanishing into the depths of the city to meet up with my OMEGA co-workers.
Around 7:00am this morning I was feeling kind of woozy. At first I thought that I was about the have an attack of nerves (all sorts of crazy thoughts have been running through my head recently), but then quickly realized that it was simply side-effects of the large multi-vitamin that I swallowed without having eaten anything for fifteen or sixteen hours. Silly me, I should have eaten dinner, but I just couldn't seem to make myself hungry last night.
At 8:00am sharp a bag-carrying lady from a small cafe across the street showed up at my door knocking away. As it turns out, she will be delivering me breakfast every morning for the next month, which is awesome. One of the definite perks of this internship :) She told me that I can ask for different food if I want to. I had no qualms with the food, but I may start asking for coffee alongside of the milk and orange juice that she brought.
Wow, I feel like this entry is already pretty long, and I haven't even gotten to my job yet.
Speaking of that....I don't even know where to begin. I met up with a lady named Karin, who I have talked to a few times before through email, at the "Park Plaza Hotel" which appeared extremely nice in comparison to my little "Beijing New World Apartment Hotel". (*Hmm...I should write an entry about my apartment sometime) prior to picking up another lady at her hotel, and then finally going to the "China Club", the home base for our venue.
The China Club is amazing! It is located in an ancient, five-hundred year old, temple-esque, courtyard-filled, set of buildings that most people only get the chance to see as a museum. OMEGA has acquired a large group of the buildings, as well as two huge courtyards, for their main venue.
Originally I thought that I would be working in the Olympic Village (I will still make my way up there), which would be amazing, but honestly this new area, which is just south of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, is blowing my mind with its awesomeness.
All of the people that I am working with seem like really interesting, really cool, down to Earth people. I'm sure that I will write more about them at a later date, but for now I will just say that I am lucky to be involved with them. It's humorous though: I am such a random intern that the vast majority of my co-workers have straight up asked me: "What are you doing here anyway?" That's ok with me though!
I still don't know what my schedule is like, nor do I know what time I am supposed to arrive at the venue each morning, nor do I even know what my responsibilites are yet. As soon as I gather that information, I will write all about it.
One thing that I do want to write about is something that has made me quite happy so far. I'm not a bragger, but I am proud to say that my Chinese, at least my speaking and reading, seems extremely solid. I feel like I can talk to anyone that I meet about nearly anything, and I have had much less trouble with signs, papers, etc than ever before. Apparently all of my random studying and audio recording listening this summer has paid off! Sweeeeet!
My day ended with a quick trip across town to the tailor's shop to make sure that my work uniform fit ok. The shop was a tiny little thing behind and unmarked door in an extremely random building on the side of one of Beijing's main streets. My pants were a little long, but that will be rectified by tomorrow morning.
Alrighty. I've written way too much about way too many random things for now, though I am sure that I will write more later. Blogging is cool! I hope that I still find the time to keep up with my moleskine journals though....I love those little things.
This way people can read about my life as they please instead of me flooding their inboxes with silly emails!
Anyway, I have survived my first full day in Beijing. This morning I woke up naturally at 4:45am due to jetlag and time-change, etc. However, it was a good thing overall, for I was able to get a lot done prior to vanishing into the depths of the city to meet up with my OMEGA co-workers.
Around 7:00am this morning I was feeling kind of woozy. At first I thought that I was about the have an attack of nerves (all sorts of crazy thoughts have been running through my head recently), but then quickly realized that it was simply side-effects of the large multi-vitamin that I swallowed without having eaten anything for fifteen or sixteen hours. Silly me, I should have eaten dinner, but I just couldn't seem to make myself hungry last night.
At 8:00am sharp a bag-carrying lady from a small cafe across the street showed up at my door knocking away. As it turns out, she will be delivering me breakfast every morning for the next month, which is awesome. One of the definite perks of this internship :) She told me that I can ask for different food if I want to. I had no qualms with the food, but I may start asking for coffee alongside of the milk and orange juice that she brought.
Wow, I feel like this entry is already pretty long, and I haven't even gotten to my job yet.
Speaking of that....I don't even know where to begin. I met up with a lady named Karin, who I have talked to a few times before through email, at the "Park Plaza Hotel" which appeared extremely nice in comparison to my little "Beijing New World Apartment Hotel". (*Hmm...I should write an entry about my apartment sometime) prior to picking up another lady at her hotel, and then finally going to the "China Club", the home base for our venue.
The China Club is amazing! It is located in an ancient, five-hundred year old, temple-esque, courtyard-filled, set of buildings that most people only get the chance to see as a museum. OMEGA has acquired a large group of the buildings, as well as two huge courtyards, for their main venue.
Originally I thought that I would be working in the Olympic Village (I will still make my way up there), which would be amazing, but honestly this new area, which is just south of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, is blowing my mind with its awesomeness.
All of the people that I am working with seem like really interesting, really cool, down to Earth people. I'm sure that I will write more about them at a later date, but for now I will just say that I am lucky to be involved with them. It's humorous though: I am such a random intern that the vast majority of my co-workers have straight up asked me: "What are you doing here anyway?" That's ok with me though!
I still don't know what my schedule is like, nor do I know what time I am supposed to arrive at the venue each morning, nor do I even know what my responsibilites are yet. As soon as I gather that information, I will write all about it.
One thing that I do want to write about is something that has made me quite happy so far. I'm not a bragger, but I am proud to say that my Chinese, at least my speaking and reading, seems extremely solid. I feel like I can talk to anyone that I meet about nearly anything, and I have had much less trouble with signs, papers, etc than ever before. Apparently all of my random studying and audio recording listening this summer has paid off! Sweeeeet!
My day ended with a quick trip across town to the tailor's shop to make sure that my work uniform fit ok. The shop was a tiny little thing behind and unmarked door in an extremely random building on the side of one of Beijing's main streets. My pants were a little long, but that will be rectified by tomorrow morning.
Alrighty. I've written way too much about way too many random things for now, though I am sure that I will write more later. Blogging is cool! I hope that I still find the time to keep up with my moleskine journals though....I love those little things.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
