Which Credit card?

Can anyone offer me advice on which credit cards are particularly good to get?  I understand that there are some with good offers.  My Amex Blue in the UK used to give me 1% cash rebate, that was pretty good.  And I think that some cards here give discounts in certain restaurants, I just don't know which one to get.  Help?

Have an egg

Curious, our ayi just handed out some red shrink wrapped eggs in the office.  They're nicely wrapped, well, as nicely as shrink wrapped eggs can be (the hard boiled, or some such de-shelled variety).  The wrapping has a chinese word on it - the same one or pair of characters that one sees for wedding celebrations.

 

Apparently a chap in our office has had a baby, and that handing out eggs on such an occasion is tradition.  Cool!

 

I've just had lunch though, so I'll probably have to save egg-eating for later in the day.

Chinese Vocabulary list

An extensive list of words, must be good to support study. Doesn't have pinyin though, so you'll need some other application to help if you don't know how to read these words.

Really this list is intended to help people moving from simplified to traditional chinese or back again. Warning - don't print it out - it's a long list! 300 odd pages of PDF..... I think I'll try to work on it a page at a time.

http://philgross.com/chinese/cidianf-freq.pdf

Useful website for helping read Chinese

http://www.adsotrans.com/advanced.html

This website has a number of functions which can either translate entirely a chinese phrase, or just help you part way.  The first function 'adsotate', has a mouse-over which when you point it at one of your chinese words, gives you a translation and the pinyin pronounciation.  Others I think will be useful for converting simple passages into pinyin to read.  It's just too unrealistic for me to read Chinese right now - it takes too long. 

 

I think I'll use a combination of the 'pintone' option (which includes pinyin and chinese characters), so that I can read from the pinyin.  If I don't know the meaning of a word, then I'll use another free program I have (kingsoft powerword share 2002) to do a mouse-over translation of characters I don't recognise the meaning of.

 

Here's what Adsotrans website made of the following simple sentence (which is probably written wrongly anyway):

我叫萧启荣。我住在上海。我是英国人，在这里工作。

 

I call Xiao Qirong 。 I live in Shanghai 。 I am British person ， here work 。

 

wǒ jiào Xiāo Qǐróng 。wǒ zhùzài shànghǎi 。wǒ shì yīngguórén ， zàizhèlǐ gōngzuò

 

我叫萧启荣。我住在上海。我是英国人，在这里工作。

 

 

我wo叫jiao萧Xiao启 Qi荣rong。我wo住zhu在zai上shang海hai。我wo是shi英ying国guo人ren，在zai这zhe里li工gong作zuo。

New words

 

精彩	Jing1 cai2	Wonderful, terrific
惨烈	Can3 lie4	Horrifying
世界上	Shi4 jie4 shang	In the whole world
	Not easy to directly translate	Ever
宽敞	Kuan1 chang	Spacious, roomy (large area)
团队	Tuan2 dui4	Team
负责	Fu4 ze2	Take responsibility / organise
火爆	Huo2 bao4	(Fire explosion).  really in / full of excitement
小说	Xiao2 shuo1	(short speech).  Novel
一个火爆的小说	Yi ge huo bao de xiao shuo	A hot novel
要不然	Yao4 bu4 ran2	Otherwise
原本	Yuan2 ben3	Original (not a photocopy)
复印	Fu4 yin4	Photocopy
除了	Chu2 le	Except
安全性	An1 quan2 xing4	Security
		Avocado
继续	Ji4 xu4	Continue / resume

KABB - American food in Xintiandi

I think I'm beginning restaurant reviews.  Or mentions at least.  It'll serve as a handy personal record, and hopefully bring more readers to my website.

 

http://www.xintiandi.com/site/ibeCCtpSctDspRte.jsp?section=11191

It's well worth a click around the xintiandi website if you don't know the area.

 

KABB.  I went last night, with some visitors from Paris who were friends of an aunt of mine in HK.  We sat outside for dinner, and ate burgers (not on the dinner menu but can still order them).  They were chunky homemade burgers, with bacon and cheese options, made rare/medium as per request, and with slightly too crispy chips.  The burgers were delicious.  And before 8pm, it's happy hour on beers, house wine and some whisky.  I'm not sure how much the burgers were, but I think a pasta dish was about 80 kuai (6 pounds).

 

Outside, it was very nice.  There are very beautiful buildings around this area.  That terrace experience was most relaxing.  I see what Xintiandi's Wilfred Wong meant when he mentioned following in Montmatre's footsteps.  I've been longing after a nice terrace experience for a few weeks now, and wasn't really sure where to go.  Now I know - there must be a few places in Xintiandi with outside seating.

I'm still blogging in English

I haven't blogged for a bit, because it takes some time, and I've been trying to spend more time on my Chinese.  It's good to do though, for putting my thoughts together, and reaching out to people out there who are interested, or kind enough to help my cause!

 

At some point when my Chinese improves, I can see myself beginning a Chinese blog, for practice, and to build up a readership of locals who take interest in a 'foreigner's perspective.  If I could do so, then presumably I readers could even help correct my Chinese - that would be great!

Have a laugh at my written Chinese

The below is some Chinese work I did in the office.  I was thinking of writing an article a day or something in Chinese - and publishing it either to this blog or to a separate blog to record the progress of my written Chinese.  And give other learners some simple material to read from.  And allow my friends to help correct my mistakes.  And to provide endless laughter for them as well no doubt.

 

Thing is, it took me a long time to write (maybe 2 hours).  Which still isn't very time efficient.  I learnt some new words, but actually I think I'm still better listening to the radio, or practising speaking.  I've yet to find a cunning way of practising speaking in the office.  Not really talking with people, but just practising speaking.  The best idea I've had so far is to use a meeting room, and walk around it talking to myself, or reading pinyin from an easy book, or recording radio, and playing it back on a tape player phrase by phrase, and repeating the phrases several times to build fluency.

 

我昨天晚上本来是打算跟我的同屋Martin吃饭。他是刚从台湾回来的。但是他最后都是跟他的叔叔吃饭，所以我就是一个人自己吃饭的。我的阿姨是已经帮到我烧菜。他少了一个荤菜，是排骨跟豆腐的，还有一个蔬菜，但是我不认识是什么东西的。好像是白色后者说透明，一块一块这样。还有一个汤，蘑菇的。不错，所有都不错。吃完了饭，我看了一点一个点四的台湾电影。哪一个电影是由马马虎虎的故事，还是一点慢，但是给我多听一点普通的中文，我没所谓。

 

我哪一个时候，我自己的感觉是忙开行的。这样过的生活是忙不错的。我来了中国，不是只有困难或者难过的事情的。忽然我发觉了一点负疚的感觉。我是应该不吃怎么多饭，看电视机，我应该是先去游泳。哈哈，我碰到空的时间，我应该是抓紧时间去锻炼身体.

 

New words:

透明	tou4 ming2	transparent
忽然	hu1 ran2	suddenly / all of a sudden
突然	tu1 ran2	suddenly / all of a sudden
发觉	fa1 jue2	realise
负疚	fu4 jiu3	feel guilty
碰到	Peng4 dao4	bump into / meet unexpectedly / come across
抓紧时间	Zhua1 jin3 shi2 jian1	make best use of time

 

What's with the spitting?

I went swimming with my cousin last week.  The pool by my apartment, 25 kuai a swim.  New, clean.  Bathers must wear bathing hats.  There are 3 seated lifeguards on duty at a time.  Pretty impressive.  There's even water in the footbath outside the changing rooms, although I don't know if there's anything in there other than water.

 

Anyway, after a very nice swim, Kira and I were resting by the poolside.  Alongside us were some men, in their late forties.  One choked up some phlegm, and spat it into the gutter by the poolside.  A few times. 

 

Kira and I were somewhat disgusted.  We didn't really feel like swimming after that, and left.  The water in the poolside-gutter is intended for spill-over from the pool, and with some minor filtering of course, returns into the pool and cycles around.  So, our nice gentleman's spit would be swilling around the swimming pool for quite some time to come.

 

The sad thing is that despite this, I will go back to swim there.  I'm not comfortable with the idea, because as my mother points out, I don't know how professional they are in the appropriate addition of say chlorine into the pool.  But I don't have much choice.

 

Hygiene and social comfort, are areas of compromise in my living in China.  If I'm going to live here like a normal person, there are many things for now that I will need to accept.  Maybe in 5 or 10 years they will have stopped, once things move along further.

 

Another example for you.  I eat breakfast at my office, which is pretty good.  I'm currently in the China Insurance Building in Pudong, opposite the Jinmao Tower.  On the second floor there's a small restaurant, they do a chinese breakfast for 5 kuai.

 

One of the options is of course a bun of sorts.  There are few people, Singaporeans I think that eat breakfast early most mornings.  They have a ritual however, which involves peeling the 'skin' off the bun, before eating it.  [Aside - I understand that many Singaporeans do this in Singapore]

 

And at lunch yesterday, my local colleague peeled the skin at great length off the two plums we were given as part of our 10 kuai food tray, before eating them - because of 'farmer medicine' - pesticide etc.

 

On the whole, if it's convenient to do, I'll do it.  e.g. eating an apple at home, I'll peel it and eat it.  But I bring apples to work sometimes, nice to eat at my desk.  But I'm not going to bring a peeler with me - the best I can do is to polish the apple.  It's either that or not eat the apple.  Or eat the bun.  Or swim.  Or travel around China in dangerous transport modes.... you get the picture.

 

To take us back to the title subject, sorry, I digress.  Spitting.  There seem to be a fair number of people here who feel compelled to spit.  They do that nasty choking sound to cough the stuff up.  I thought maybe it was to do with smoking, or chewing tobacco.  My friend winfun suggested it could be because they don't drink enough water.  Whichever, the problem in my mind isn't so much that these people spit, it's that they need to spit.  If you see what I mean?  Anyone know why some people here need to / tend to spit?

I want to move my blog

Not sure where to yet.  I'm looking at Multiply.com and msnspaces. 

 

what I like about blogger

- easy to set up

- publishes to my private website (www.shiufamily.com)

- I can blog by email

 

Some things I don't like about blogger

- when people leave me comments, I get notified by email, but there's no indication as to which article they commented on and no link for me to reply.  I just spent ten minutes trying to find my original article on travel places to visit, which someone has kindly commented on, and I couldn't find it on my own blog.

- the comments that others leave aren't easily visible on the blog.  It makes the blog very 'me me me', whereas I'd much rather have an open discussion forum type, like wang jianshuo's (www.wangjianshuo.com)

- it's not easy for me to upload photos as part of articles.  Apparently I can download Hello and use that to upload, but that sends each photo as another 'article'.  Seems like a retro-fit.  I know multiply's much better at this.

 

Any suggestions for where I can / should move to?

 

Rush hour metro ain't that bad

Weird huh.

 

So I've been taking the metro to and from work this week.  I start at Xinzha lu station on line 1, go one stop south to people's square, change onto line 2, and then go 2 or 3 stops east to Lujiazui.  I've been a bit later to work this week, leaving home at 8-8.30, and arriving at 8.30-9am.  I have been leaving work at 6pm to 6.30pm this week.

 

Oddly enough, i haven't experienced the 'really really' busy that I'd seen before.  Sure it's busy, and there are pinch points where there are throngs of people (like changing lines at people's square, which takes over five minutes of crowded shuffling up stairs and corridors.  On the trains though, it's not tooooo bad.  Sure getting on, when it's busy, can be a rush.  The trains don't stop long enough to let everybody on and off in a civilised fashion, so you have to be somewhat assertive / rude in order to get on.  (This can't be helping attitudinal development here - I'm regressing myself!).  But on the trains, I can usually find a spot to stand, and I don't have to press up against too much warm flesh.

 

Walking in the sunlight to and from the metro stations remains a hot and sticky business.  Having bought a bargain trolley-backpack for my laptop etc. in the market, wheeling my laptop is next to effortless, which helps keep me from soaking my shirt.

 

I'm quite happy with this situation - that I should be able to take the metro most of the time, and take taxis only in the summertime or when I'm feeling lazy.  I feel less extravagant now, less of a sore thumb. 

Hiring an Ayi - ethically sound?

A friend of Ray's (my US flatmate) apparently was appalled to hear that we had hired an ayi.  Our ayi helps with domestic chores including washing, ironing, groceries and cooking in the flat for the 3 of us.  She comes for 3 hours a day at 7 kuai an hour, 6 days a week, and we pay her for a 3 hours rest each week.  That works out to be about 150 kuai a week (10 pounds, or 20 USD).  Bargain - a real contribution to balancing out the quality of life as an expat in Shanghai.

 

Our ayi has an evening shift at a company.  She could also fit in another two daily household shifts.  Whilst in reality I can't see her wanting to work so many hours, at roughtly the same rates, she could make say 2.5k cash in hand .  Graduates in multi national companies (i.e. from top universities, top grades, bilingual) are routinely paid 3k RMB a month.  (200 pounds a month). 

 

Is that slave labour is the question.  Ray's friend says yes.  Ray and I say no.

 

Our ayi's very happy to work for us.  We treat her well as employers, and pay the top end of market rate for her (she does do a good job).  I think slave labour involves forcing pay levels down.  If anything as high-paying expats we're helping drive up the wages that ayis can command in Shanghai, thus increasing their quality of life.  If we didn't hire her, and did our own washing/ironing etc., then we'd save money, and put her out of a job. 

 

There are people in Shanghai who beg for money.  There are people in Shanghai who carry out basic tasks to make money, e.g. recycling bottles, mending clothes.  Why deny these working people the opportunity to make money?  There are millions of people who want to work in China, at any wage per hour, if only for a lack of employers.

 

Opinions?

Taking the metro to work

After two weeks of early morning taxis, I thought I'd try to save some money and give the metro a chance.  It just happens that to get to my office across the river and back, the most direct route is to use a tunnel which is closed to taxis during peak hours.  So I was taking taxis at 7.30am and leaving the office at 6.30pm.  In which case I had might as well take the metro, because at those times it shouldn't be especially busy.

 

In preparation I bought a wheeling laptop backpack bag in xiangyang market, for 150 kuai.  There were many kinds, and I picked one of reasonably good quality.  Don't know how long it will last before the zips break, the extending wheelie handle malfunctions or the backpack arms fall off.  It's handy to be able to pick something up like this without spending a significant amount of money.

 

This morning.... at 8am I left the house.  8.10 onto the metro, it was busy getting down the escalators and stairs to the train - lots of hot people and bodily odours.  On the train it was ok though, and walking to the office on the other end was also fine.  Definitely a manageable experience.  The only problem if there was one, was that I was appalled to find out that my shirt was soaked with sweat, front and back!  I didn't feel that hot... but clearly wearing the rucksack was a bad idea.  I'll try wheeling it on the cleaner roads tomorrow, and see if that's any better.  It's a little embarrassing otherwise!

Prospects of sustainable life in Shanghai

I've been a little busy in the past few weeks.  I went to the UK to say goodbyes, and then when I came back, had about 10 days to study for two MBA exams find a new apartment and move house.  Finding an apartment was the tricky bit here.  I went looking for apartments with Ray, my new flatmate, but finding a place to our mutual tastes and budgets wasn't easy.  Oh and the day after moving house, I started work officially with Capgemini China.

 

We had a 3 day orientation at work, giving about a dozen of us new joiners a chance to ease in and have some fun.  It's great to be back to work, and to be part of the exciting journey which is working for and helping develop Capgemini China.

 

It's great being back at work... but the past part is at home.  We saw a number of strange apartments along the way, and a few really nice ones.  A couple of complications and confusions along the way, but we're in our new apartment now, and it's great.  It's brand new, and it's really very nice.

 

Sharing with two others helps a lot.  On my own there's no way I could live in this nice an apartment.  It's strange.  We pay less than 3000 each to leave here.  But the foreign student dormitory accomodation is about that much for a single room.  Living in the centre of town, this is a Much better deal than the old apartment I rented near Fudan University.

 

Being closer to town, and having a flatmate, I feel far less isolated.  With an en-suite bathroom and a large bedroom, and a brand new apartment, it's so much easier to see myself living here and enjoying life.  Our ayi can cook us meals.  They're healthier than the ones my Uni ayi cooked for me, and the restaurants in the town centre are plentiful, if often expensive.  I went out and bought films today.  I bought about 40 excellent DVDs such as The Motorcycle Diaries, and haha the School of Rock.  I bought a 6 DVD set of the classic HK triad films 'Young and Dangerous'.  In all, they cost less than it would have cost to buy 2 films in HMV back home.  Haha I'm hoping to spring Trainspotting on some of my local friends, I hope they can understand the Glaswegian accents!

 

We have a few more things to buy for the apartment.  This week we had telephone and internet installed, and bought a water cooler.  We want to buy a wireless internet hub so that we can all access the internet from our rooms, and to get some chairs to relax on the balcony.  Once we're more settled we're planning on buying bicycles of sorts, so as to explore more of central Shanghai.  I'm really looking forward to that part.

US and China cultural cooperation?

Proposal by US economist ‘Lieberman’:

 

Mr President, I rise to introduce a bill that aims to redefine and enhance the relationship between PRC and USA.  The United States – China Cultural Engagement Cct of 2005 authorises $1.3 billion over the five years after its enactment.

 

For the first time ever an economic and military superpower is about to emerge without war or catastrophe: Asia’s middle kingdom: PRC, stands at the precipice of becoming one of the two most influential nations on Earth.

 

Already, US trade with Asia is double that with Europe and is expected to exceed one trillion dollars annually before 2010.  One in six US jobs are currently tied to international trade.  Over 400 of the world’s Fortune 500 companies are invested in China’s economy.

 

Source: Congressional Record, Volume 151, Number 71, page S5926 May 25 2005