What's wrong with Motorola?

So I have my flashy new phone, the Motorola RAZR R3.  It looks beautiful.  It must have cost them a lot of money in research, design & manufacture.

 

When talking about phones to friends, the most common thing I hear is “but I’m used to the Nokia menus”.  Some people don’t have this problem, e.g. those using Siemens phones.

 

I had a Motorola a long time ago.  Motorola Startac.  It too was a slim phone.  It had a terrible user interface.  So many years on, I still can’t understand why Motorola are able to spend millions on sexy phone design, but can’t see the sense in making their phone easy to use.

 

The biggest example I have is:

- If a friend of mine has an Office number, a Mobile number and a Home number, I have to have separate entries for them in the phone book.

- When searching the phone book for a name, I can only search by the first character, and then I have to scroll.  For example, to find Martin, I have to first go to M, and then scroll past Marcus, Marianne, Mark…  and if I have more than one phone number for Marcus, then I have to scroll past Marcus (home), Marcus (office), Martin (mobile)……..  If I want to call ‘mum’ then I would start at N and then work backwards.  Man!

 

Motorola allow me to store 1000 phone numbers in my phone.  But in order to phone them it seems, I can only search by 1 character.  And then scroll.  And scroll.  If they’d put a thumbwheel like Blackberries have, then I could scroll quicker.  But no, I have to slowly slowly one by one scroll.  What a pain in the behind.

 

Not much more than a pretty face it seems, which makes the RAZR a poser’s phone.  Great.  Vanity at a price.

 

What’s wrong with Motorola?  Sure, design sells phones.  It tricked me for sure.  But in terms of getting friends to recommend phones, surely they realise that they have to be easy to use as well?  Someone over there is really missing a trick.  It’s like designing cars that look great but drive like crap.  Oh wait, that’s the American auto industry I just described…. Hehe

 

Thanks for the umbrella suggestion Micah BTW, I’ll pop down to the Nanjingdonglu branch of uniqlo when I have a chance.  I’m in HK for the next few weeks on business, so it’ll be when I get back.

 

Oh and interestingly, Barbarossa never got back in touch with me to apologise, explain, or even say hello about my giant umbrella incident.  The challenges in running a business if you ask me, are 1) what happens normally 2) what you do to avoid things going wrong 3) what you do when things do go wrong and 4) keeping your stakeholders (incl customers) sweet.

 

Maybe Barbarossa are happy enough with their passing tourist trade.  Or maybe they’re cocky enough that they have enough expat business and don’t need my custom.  Or maybe they have enough problems on their hands and management are already up to the eyeballs.  Or maybe management there just haven’t got the professionalism of service that I’ve grown accustomed to.  A combination of the above I daresay.

phone review - Motorola V3 RAZR

My flatmate Martin helped buy me a mobile phone today, he gets an employee discount in the export business that he helps out at.

 

Pros

-          light, slim, looks great

-          high quality of manufacture

-          has predictive text – autocompletes words

-          can write Chinese even in ‘english’ mode

-          light, slim, looks great (sorry, that’s the main benefit I suppose)

 

cons

-          weird, typing on keys that don’t actually move much / at all

-          probably will break the first time I drop it, or sit on it wrong

-          it isn’t good at bulk sim card operations, that facilitate first time transit of phone numbers from your old phone

-          the manual is fairly useless, it really doesn’t tell you much at all

-          searching the address book – can only search on the first letter

-          Motorola never was great at menus, I still don’t think they are

lovely weather -> freak thunderstorm!

Generally the weather here has been superb.  Reasonably cool, not too hot.  The kind of weather where I don’t have to turn on a/c at night.  Brilliant.  The last couple of days have been warmer though, and yesterday afternoon, all of a sudden the heavens opened up and it rained for the whole afternoon.  Quite horrific stuff, heavy rain and thunder.  It took me quite by surprise (I’m quite ignorant of weather forecasts – the only one really I look at is one I gratefully receive by SMS whenever I fly back with a foreign sim card into Shanghai?!?!).  If only I could subscribe to these English language SMS alerts… like every time it was expected to rain it could SMS me…. there’s got to be money made there

 

I’m gonna have to start bringing an umbrella to work.  Other than getting stranded in the office, it also limits lunch choices – I’m about to go out for lunch, and the weather’s fine but some clouds look a little mean.

 

Tell you what I need…. I need a small umbrella to permanently leave in my laptop bag.  Thing is, I don’t bother with the 5 kuai / 10 kuai types, because they just fall apart when there’s strong winds, in which case it’s not much good to me anyway.  I need a small but strong umbrella.  I could buy a brand name umbrella in the UK… but does anyone know where to get one here?

Getting fat on mooncakes!

Sunday just gone was the mid autumn festival.  Based on the lunar calendar, something to do with the moon being extremely big I think.  We had a good peek at the moon from the balcony, and then tucked into mooncakes.

 

What with the housewarming party we had on Saturday, we had a few boxes given to us.  Being tourists of course, why not open them all up and give them each a try eh?  As if that wasn’t bad enough, we still have loads left over, and I’m a sucker for the traditional kind (lotus paste).  (the kind you tend to find in Hong Kong, whereas here I’m told by young friends that there is no ‘traditional’ kind – they have a variety of ingredients for theirs here – red bean paste, peanut, sesame, …)

 

So at work each day this week I’ve been bringing a mooncake in to snack at.  Delicious.  I’m going to a ball this Saturday – the BritCham annual summer ball.  I daresay come Saturday my teeth will have rotted and my waist expanded by a few inches!

 

I wonder what salesmen, or business leaders do, when each of their customers gives them a box, assuming they receive more than they hand out.  Food culture often dictates that it’s bad to let food go to waste – does that mean that the nation just puts on the pounds in this month?

 

I’m quite enjoying the festival nature here – these mini traditions / celebrations make life much more interesting.  

 

 

How to get satellite TV signal in my bedroom?

Where’s low tech when you need it eh?

We have satellite TV in the living room. I have a TV in my bedroom. I’d like to watch satellite TV from time to time in my bedroom, but I don’t want to buy another satellite TV decoder unit, and I won’t want to drag a wire from the living room to my bedroom. Laying a cable isn’t quite practical – lots of doors to wrap around, and I don’t fancy drilling through the walls in rented accommodation. What I’d really like is a radio transceiver to plug into the back of my satellite decoder, which would then beam a radio signal of sorts over to a radio receiver that I could plug into the back of my bedroom TV. That way, I’d be able to watch satellite in my bedroom, although I’d have to walk to the living room to change channels.

I’ve asked around here, but I’m told they don’t exist. I’m sure that this kind of thing we had at some point in the UK – just need to track it down!

I found some online in the US. Now I have to find an cheap one in China or in the UK! The irony is that the products are probably made here in China, but there's quite possibly a minimal market for selling them here!

http://www.x10.com/minisites/videosender/wireless_video_sender_satellite_tv.html

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/glance/-/electronics/B000068TYR/202-4484474-0484663

Dining service standards - mixing the good with the bad?

Before heading off to hear Justin’s choir, (the International Festival Chorus, who performed French choral music including Faure’s Requiem last night), some friends and I headed for Xintiandi for a wander about and dinner.

In the superb sunny but not too hot weather, it was perfect for al fresco dining. We sat at KABB, a ‘western’ restaurant which serves pastas, grilled meats, burgers, burritos…

I’ve come before in the evening and had burgers off their lunch menu – delicious. Last time I came they told me they had run out of burgers, last night was the same again – I was encouraged to order from the main menu.

We had a couple of small tribulations. Firstly while they tried to seat us. In moving small outdoor tables and chairs around to fit our group of five, at first they didn’t leave enough space for us all to sit. About ten minutes later, having sat down and looked through the menus, we were told to get up and move, because we were breaking ‘xintiandi’s table placement rules’. I did point out to the rather rude waiter that they had placed the tables not us… he did apologise and moved the tables for us once more.

His attitude improved somewhat after that. He now suggested that they might be having burgers delivered in the next ten minutes – the very ones that don’t exist on the dinner menu that I couldn’t have earlier. Quite why fresh meat burgers would get delivered in the late afternoon (6pm) when they’re not on the dinner menu, I’m not so sure of. I suspected that they wanted to keep the evening meat options to the more expensive grill items, which is fair enough I suppose.

I ordered a bottle of wine – the house red, which I thought was eminently enjoyable. At RMB200, it’s a similar price to house wine back home (13 pounds), which is pretty pricey when I start to think about it in terms of how many crates of beer or bottles of absolut vodka I can buy (I recently bought absolut, Malibu and bacardi bottles for RMB100 each in a supermarket – clearly alcoholism is not taxed as heavily here!). Issues with the wine were that of the 5 wine glasses, two had to be sent back – one dirty and one chipped. Ideally waiters would spot that kind of thing themselves. Or even the kitchen staff would clean them properly. Another problem was that the tables were made of metal mesh – the implication of which dawned upon me when the waiter was already leaning across me to pour my wine. As he pulled away from the glass, a few drops of red wine fell onto my cream linen trousers. He apologized again, explaining that “wine pouring skills were low in china”. A training issue I think – there are lots of easy ways to avoid this. Like knowing how to use the white cloth napkin so elegantly draped around the bottle to catch drips, not just leave it looking pretty for example.

Cynics among you could say that he spilt a little wine on me because I was being an awkward customer. It’s possible, but I don’t think I was, I think I was quite polite and courteous, but just making requests of what I expected or wanted. I’m going to write it off myself as training issues. It’s disappointing that customers like myself who want to eat regularly in such places, have little choice but to train waiting staff ourselves – upon encountering any number of minor issues.

These minor issues aside, we had a lovely meal. The food I understand was very good – including what looked like a primavera pasta with lots of sauce, a chicken and avocado (yes avocado in shanghai!!!) salad, chicken and stake burritos, and of course my burger, cooked medium rare as requested. Superb also to eat and drink wine with friends in such a spectacular setting.

We had a friend visiting from Hong Kong – Melody. She indeed admired xintiandi, and appreciated being able to eat outdoors – suggesting that she didn’t know of anywhere for al-fresco dining in HK. The good is really good. But there’s a bad side too, which not everyone can cope with. To give you another example, I’m getting used to the fact that in some restaurants such as Shang Dao coffee (UBC coffee), where you can eat quite good meals, they often have considerable trouble bringing out meals all at once (they don’t try at all). The result is that slightly uncomfortable “oh no, don’t wait for us, it’ll go cold” “oh no, I really don’t mind” lahdi dah, for a good half an hour while the staff panic and rush around.

I’m not sure what I’d think if I was a visitor. But there are so many great things about Shanghai that I’m really enjoying, especially having found hobbies (and with hobbies come like minded friends, which in turn one hopes leads to good friends), and so the vast majority of the time I think I’m happy to take the good with the bad. Yesterday’s dinner only cost RMB90 (6 pounds) each including wine. To eat in fine surroundings al fresco with well made food, you’ve got to admit you can’t get this kind of value elsewhere.

men's clothes shopping in china

Clothes clothes clothes

 

I saw some what I would call reasonsably fashionable brown leather shoes in a market last week, for about RMB300 (20 pounds).  Good shoes in the real shops generally go for RMB600-900, and I think they all look like leftovers from the Miami Vice show.  The stall owner told me that they were from the same suppliers as a brand name shoe that was being sold in a department store.  Good news – because it’s been real hard to find shoes over here.

 

I’ve not found the department stores or malls to be so good.  I can’t afford the likes of Gucci and LVMH for clothing, and the clothes in the department stores are of debatable taste.  In New World dept store on nanjing xilu off people’s square, there’s a Georgo Armani store (no spelling mistake), which I believe is trying to pose as a premium brand.  I’m not sure who they are trying to kid.  Also, for the prices, I think I’d rather have my clothes custom made in a market somewhere.  It’s just a question of finding material and a suitable shape.  If not that, then buying look-alikes in xiang yang market.

 

My friend Lisa took me shopping to ‘Made in China’, a little store within a small small ‘mall’ within Jing An temple metro station.  Within the store, they had shirts and trousers for men and women, stacked up high on shelves.  It’s a tiny store, with a kind of curtained off store room cum changing room.  The quality of the clothes was excellent.  I bought three pairs of trousers for RMB150 each (10 pounds).  Each pair was ‘brand name’, e.g. Paul & Shark, and I couldn’t fault the quality of material or stitching.  

 

I had the length of the trousers altered at a local tailors across from my apartment, at 3RMB each (10p).  I think I made them all a little too short, I’ve never been very good at gauging trouser length on my own.

 

My office shirts are all made in the dong jia du road fabric market.  The material and tailorwork is considerably lower than the ‘real’ stuff.  But unless I’m being fussy, it does the job just fine.  They cost me RMB80 (5 pounds) each, from stall 123.  My friend Chris had some made with better material, and machine made – they look to be of a much higher quality, they cost him RMB120.

 

I’ve had one suit made so far, and a pair of trousers.  I wasn’t happy with the making of the suit, from the perspectives of cutting, quality of adornments (buttons, zips, trouser waistband insert), and stitching (belt buckles, trouser buttonholes).  The separate pair of trousers I got from stall 66.  They are much better made, although I think a little baggy around the ankles.  I should try them out for a suit.  The suit cost me about 500 kuai I think – RMB60 per metre of fabric, and about RMB200 for workmanship

 

I’m very happy walking around wearing my cheaper clothes.  The metro, taxis, slurping noodles, or balancing dumplings on a spoon, and no cloth napkins in sight, I’m much better off leaving my UK clothes safely in a cupboard.

 

What I’d really like… is to find a tailor here who knows how to cut an English or Italian cut.  A recommendation would be nice.  I’ll track someone down through britcham sooner or later I guess.

Sales tax? what sales tax?

In the UK, goods and services have a tax built into the price, which has been 17.5% for quite some time.  Companies are required to pay tax on all of their earnings, and the tax authorities will act strongly if they don’t.  There are some businesses where less tax is paid.  These are typically cash in hand businesses such as plumbers, music teachers, Chinese and Indian take-away restaurants, fish and chip shops.  In these cases it’s hard for the government to accurately gauge the level of business going on.  The Tax authorities generally look to see if the numbers look about right, and will occasionally carry out spot investigations.  Generally, the UK system is one of trust, where you are required to self-declare how much your earnings are, and how much tax you think you should pay.

 

In the UK, say if I want to buy expensive computer parts, I know a shop where I can go and talk to the owner, and he can give me a ‘cash’ price for the goods – with a slight discount.  It’s really very much an exception – he doesn’t do this often at all, it makes him distinctly uncomfortable, and he has to be careful that his accounting books don’t show an anomaly.  It’s essentially a favour for a friend, but the risk is that the tax authorities could bury him in tax audits if they found out and wanted to cause him trouble.

 

In China, the tax system doesn’t seem to have filtered down onto the streets yet.    When haggling prices for goods or electronics, there are two kinds of receipts here.  A shop receipt, and a government receipt.  If you ask for a government receipt, then the price you get is inevitably higher, generally by 5%.  Even in Carrefour, or Ikea, or the New World Department Store you have to take your till receipt to another office in order to request an official receipt.  I was quite surprised when the corporate shipping company that delivered my belongings from the UK emailed me to ask whether I needed an official receipt, indicating in black and white that I would have to pay 6% extra if I did.  Accomodation is the same – rental price generally goes up 5% on mentioning receipts.

 

I do hope of course that Carrefour and Ikea are paying tax on the business that goes through their tills, not just on the official receipts that are requested from their office.  Certainly the shipping company’s behaviour implies that they don’t want to pay tax, and if I need a receipt then I’ll have to pay their tax for them.  Starbucks is the best I’ve seen – their till receipts have the official stamp built into them, just like taxi receipts, which means that their till receipts are one and the same as the government receipts.

 

It’s a curious difference to me, the UK’s system and China’s current system.  The China tax seems to be pretty low at 5%, and the authorities are most relaxed about how stringently it should be paid.  Perhaps the leniency is intended to promote business, or to keep prices low, and in some way to help international competitiveness. 

 

I’m sure the tax authorities are already making lots of money.  I’m also sure there’s an awful lot of paperwork involved.  As the tax rate grows, and tax compliance grows, revenues will be considerable.  There will also be big opportunities for advancing the operations of the tax system, to take out the paperwork burden, and to improve compliance governance.

TV in China

We have 40 odd terrestrial TV channels here.  I had to fill out forms and this and that (in person) to get the terrestrial TV paid for and operational, but we have it now.  There’s CCTV1 through to CCTV12, but then there are a whole lot of other channels, most of which I can’t figure out names for.  I think one of them is Shanghai Star for example.

 

We also have satellite TV, which we asked our landlord to fit for us.  Satellite gives us CNBC, BBC, CNN, HBO, sports channels, that kind of thing.  It also has a Taiwanese Chinese channel, Star Chinese.  It’s my preferred channel when wanting to watch a little TV but not wanting to watch in English.  The trouble with satellite (other than it allegedly being illegal) is that when the weather is less than brilliant, the reception is very poor.  When it rains, the satellite is pretty much un-watchable.  Which is disappointing given that the TV is often refuge on rainy days.

 

Satellite TV isn’t so affordable.  It cost us 3600 to have the dish installed, which we split with our landlord.  A friend of mine had the same thing installed previously for 1200 apparently.  We buy satellite cards once a quarter for 200 RMB.  They look distinctly unofficial.  It seems someone is making a lot of money from satellite.  I do wonder why it isn’t legalized, so that the government can make tax out of it.  Oh no, I forget – businesses declare very little of their business as taxable here it seems.

 

Slowly I guess I’ll figure out what’s on terrestrial TV.  In the early morning, there’s a programme which teaches basic English phrases, which is nice because I can hear some Chinese phrases in context.  Yesterday morning I heard a bit of a play, acted out on stage.  That would have been good to record and study later, because the actors and actresses spoke slowly and clearly.  This morning I saw a Shanghainese drama – would be good to listen to as and when in the distant future I begin to learn Shanghainese.  I also caught the tail end of a documentary on Fudan University and its history, topical given the 100^th anniversary celebrations.  Shame I couldn’t understand much of it.

 

When I’m at home relaxing, sometimes now I’ll put on an American film, but play the Chinese soundtrack on it with English subtitles.  Their choice of voices is sometimes amusing, giving say brad bitt a slightly different personality.  Overall though I think it’s a reasonable practice.

HK - good experience vs language environment

I’m having to think about how I’d feel about going to HK to work for a while, say 3, 6, 9 months.  We have a project opportunity that looks excellent, and it would be a good notch on my ‘Asia’ belt.  It’d also be an easy start in terms of language, because HK is English / Cantonese.  Projects here in the PRC probably wouldn’t be as grand – the HK one would be pretty cutting edge, and something I could then tout / reapply within the PRC.

 

Trouble is, it’s away from Shanghai, and it’s away from the Mandarin speaking environment.  I’ve only been here 6 months, but I know that my mandarin improves noticeably with every say 2-3 months of being here. 

 

It’s a tricky call but I’d best chew on it a bit longer.

Service standards when things go wrong

Jamie

Barbarossa

213 Nanjing Xi Lu

Shanghai

 

Wednesday September 14, 2005

 

Dear Jamie

 

RE:       Service standards when things go wrong

 

I’ve been to Barbarossa many a time, and we have met briefly on a couple of occasions.  By and large it’s a lovely experience, and one of my favourite bars in Shanghai.  Like many places though, all’s well when things are going smoothly, but when something out of the ordinary happens, things can start to go wrong.  I am sorry enough to have come across one such problem at Barbarossa, which I now write to you to explain.  I’m not sure if you’re the general manager or manager there, but have some faith that if this letter does indeed arrive with you, then my words will not be wasted.

 

This Sunday night just gone, I took 8 friends to Barbarossa after dinner, and treated them to cocktails on your second floor.  Annie usually looks after me, but this night she was not on duty.  The service was fine, and the cocktails were mixed well.  When we set off to leave though, I came across problems, which have disappointed me greatly.

 

It was raining heavily when we left.  Whilst most of my friends had umbrellas, I did not.  Conveniently, I saw the large yellow Barbarossa umbrellas, and asked door staff if I could use one on the way to my taxi.  They said that I could, so long as I returned it to the gate staff.  Quite happily I trouped out, offering shelter to a friend, given your umbrellas are rather massive.

 

Upon reaching my taxi, which your doorman had kindly pulled over for me, a sudden gust of wind blew and broke the umbrella.  I wasn’t doing anything other than holding it in a perfectly normal fashion.  Quite possibly it was due to the large size of the umbrella, and especially high winds that night.  Embarrassed I handed it to the gate man, and proceeded to see my friends off and leave.  The gate man however informed me that I wouldn’t be able to leave until I had paid RMB300, and he blocked my path to the taxi.  From this point on I am getting soaked in the rain.

 

I wasn’t quite pleased with paying RMB300 for one of your guest umbrellas, especially given that my various friends’ RMB10 umbrellas were doing just fine, I’d only used yours for the short walk as your guest, and that I’d just personally spent RMB600 on drinks.  Unable to leave, I asked for the manager, who I was informed was running over.  Still not arrived, I told the gate man to ask the manager to hurry up, to be told again that he was already running over.  A while later, two men strolled up.  Neither were the manager, and both insisted that I pay, having broken your umbrella.  I requested that the manager come out. 

 

After some argument, and getting even more wet, I headed towards the restaurant to take shelter and find the manager myself.  On the bridge, I came across a fellow proclaiming himself as the assistant manager.  By this point I was pretty angry.  He wanted to walk me to the gate and take a look at the umbrella.  He didn’t speak English, the best he offered up was “you speak china?”.  I explained to him that I was his guest, I was getting wet, and that I wasn’t paying for an umbrella that had been lent to me for five minutes. 

 

Now communicating in Chinese with the aid of a friend of mine to translate, he said that he could sort out the matter.  Quite what this meant other than “I’m sorry you’re free to go”, I’m not so sure, as he still wanted me to go out and look at the broken umbrella, as if this would give him vital clues as to how to solve the mystery.  After further argument in the rain, where I pointed out that it was getting later and I was getting more and more wet.  At this point he asked for my phone number, which I presumed to mean that he wasn’t going to require money from me.  I agreed, on the condition that he give me his name.  He got scared by this, and refused, insisting again that I give him my phone number.  After further debate, he told me that his name was ‘gong’, and I gave him my name and phone number.  After this, I took another Barbarossa umbrella, and this time successfully made it into a taxi.  By this time, it was half past midnight, on a very wet Sunday night.  Not an ideal end to the night.  Some of my friends had waited on in the rain to make sure it was ok.  Other than delaying their journey home, I was embarrassed, especially having chosen to take them to Barbarossa as my preferred venue.

 

On Monday lunchtime I called and asked for Annie, who I was told was still off.  I hope she hasn’t left you.  I asked for the manager, and was put through to someone who half spoke English.  I told her that I wanted to make a complaint, and asked that you call me.  She said that “if she saw you” she would ask you to call me.  It now being Wednesday lunchtime, I haven’t received a call, and I’m through with calling to track you down myself.

 

I am writing you this letter because I do like Barbarossa, and I believe that it is important that management know when customers come across problems.  Having taken the time and effort to first contact you and then write this letter, I do expect a response by return.

 

As a suggestion, here are my impressions as a customer as to what I would have preferred:-

1.       the gate keeper to have acknowledged that the broken umbrella was not due to my misuse, not asked me for RMB300, and not physically prevented me from climbing into a taxi

2.       the gate keeper to have called out the manager, not two unhelpful chaps who also physically prevented me from entering a taxi

3.       whoever came out from within the bar, to have brought another umbrella for me to keep me from getting more wet

4.       whoever came out from the bar, to have put me straight into a car, perhaps with an exchange of phone numbers

5.       the assistant manager would know how to communicate in English, and would give me his card upon meeting me, rather than try to remain anonymous

6.       everyone could have treated me like a valued customer, as opposed to treating me like a vandal

7.       a manager should have been briefed as to the incident on Monday morning, and I receive a call to discuss

8.       after my telephone call to complain on Monday, the manager be informed immediately, rather than “if I see him”.  I would hope to receive a return phone call within two hours of my complaint, and for the manager to have already been briefed by his staff.  Not receiving a return call within 48 hours is very disappointing.

 

Overall, the event got me really quite angry, getting tired and wet in the rain.  I really very seldom get angry.  In six months of being in China, and many fascinating incidents, I’ve only got angry one other time.  And it’s only this one time at Barbarossa that I got angry enough to get vocal and shout.  It’s fair enough that management aren’t around to speak to at midnight on a Sunday.  But that you’re so inaccessible that I feel I must write rather than have a telephone conversation with you begs belief.

 

I await your response, or one from someone else in management at Barbarossa, and wish you the best in continuing to run what really ought to be my favourite bar in Shanghai.

 

Yours faithfully,

 

KW

 

work & fitting chinese in

Being un-proactive isn’t paying off – I’ve been collared to help with a sales proposal and some work doing financial planning for a new Capgemini office.  Which means I no longer have all day to learn Chinese.  I’ve offered half of my time to each of these projects.  Looking at an 8 hour day, that’s about 4 hours each, to get some work realistically done.

 

Which doesn’t leave me much time for admin, email, and importantly, learning Chinese.  I can’t really reduce the work I do for these people to 2 or 3 hours.  Maybe I can, well, I’ll have to figure something out. 

 

One thing I’ve been battling with is that regardless of whether I’m studying Chinese or working, I find myself tired at the end of the day.  It’s not great, because it means I’m spending my evenings unwinding or resting instead of working hard on my Chinese.  I wonder if I can reduce the amount of thinking I’m doing in the daytime.  Maybe if I can reduce the number of things my mind is thinking about, then I can reduce my fatigue.  I’m thinking of more focus.  More planning, more focus.  More doing, less thinking, less multi-tasking.

Corrections to my written Chinese

From: my Uni friend Grace

 

Hello,

 

I read your blog today,and was impressed by your persistence in learning madarin.

 

Would you mind if I give you some advice to your writing?

 

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

我昨天晚上本来打算跟我的同屋Martin一起吃饭的。他刚从台湾回来。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

是他最后和他的叔叔一起吃饭，所以我就一个人自己吃的。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，

帮我烧好了菜。她烧了一个荤菜，是排骨跟豆腐，还有一个素菜，

 

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

good writing    好像是白色或者说透明，一块一块这样的东西。    

 

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

有一个蘑菇汤。不错，所有都不错。吃完了饭，我看了一点一个电视上放

 

 

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

的台湾电影。那一个电影的故事（plot）马马虎虎，节奏（pace）还有一点慢，但是我能多

              

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

我那个时候，我自己的感觉是满/蛮开心的。这样过的生活满不错的。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

来了中国，不是只有困难或者难过的事情的。忽然我有一点负疚的感

 

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

觉。我是不是应该少吃饭，少看电视机，我应该先去游泳。哈哈，我碰

 

到空的时间，我应该是抓紧时间去锻炼身体.

 

Kai-Wing’s thoughts having read this

Thanks Grace!

 

New words

节奏        jie2 zou4                pace / musical rythmn. 

 

Wrong words / pronounciations

满            man3                     completely / very  (I thought this was mang3)

开心        kai1 xin1                happy                     (I thought this was kai1 xing1)

 

Some carelessness in watching what my computer was putting in for words.  Some carelessness in not checking/thinking about what the computer had put in for words.  Some sentence construction problems, when putting slightly more complex sentences together.  And as Aline commented, I do use 是 far too much.

 

I think this was a good exercise.  It was a good exercise for me to do at the time, and having now read a correction, I can learn from some of my mistakes.  I think if I do this kind of thing every now and then I will make some improvements.  

 

I wonder now whether my work will provide me similar opportunities or not.  Possibly not I think.  If I could write sales proposals and presentations in Chinese then that would be great.  Realistically the best I can do right now is simple emails and chatting on MSN.  But it’s a hassle for others to correct my Chinese, and slows conversations / dialogues right down / distracts from the original topic.  Maybe the blog is indeed the best way – and hope for a kind soul like Grace to advise me where I have gone wrong!

 

How embarrassing… how incorrect my Chinese is, for such simple phrases and topics!  Thank goodness my friends and colleagues are so kind to put up with me and help me.  As a child learning Cantonese, I think it wasn’t so easy – at the time it was just too amusing for HK Chinese friends and relatives to take amusement at my mispronounciations.  Here, thankfully people are far more accommodating.

Building vocab thru watching business DVDs

This morning I helped with some sales work. This afternoon, I used some downtime to work on some Mandarin – still a top priority for me when I have spare time. I’ve started watching a business DVD series, by an experienced (old) Taiwanese chap. Something that my friend winfun introduced me to. It’s working well as a means for practicing listening and building vocabulary. It’s good too to help remind my colleagues of how good/bad my Chinese is, because at times I need them to help tell me what words are when I can’t hear them clearly.

I think if I can do this every now and then I’ll be able to grow my vocab. Good news.

It’s my birthday today, I’m very happy for it! I was dreading the sales work this morning – working in Chinese, off Chinese documents provided as scanned picture files, so I couldn’t use the computer to translate them. Frustrating business. But with friends sending me text messages to say happy birthday, every time someone reminded me, I smiled again. It’s nice to enjoy my birthday in this way – having something special to smile about.

My friend Chris gave me a little gift today – some cufflinks. A good present – I’m real low on cufflinks right now. It’s good too cos I was annoyed with him because I invited him to a group dinner on Saturday, and he bailed out with a lame excuse at the last minute. I reckon he should know better. I don’t think I told him it was my birthday, but it was a pretty firm invitation. But, with a lil gift, that’s a good and simple way to straighten things out. I’m happy.

words picked up during some MBA lecture

融资 rong2 zi1 financing (mixed capital)

赚 zhuan4 make money

烧 shao1 burn money / spend fast

words picked up from first episode of 'chinese style management' – the Taiwanese thing.

author: 曾仕强

series title: 中国式管理

老搭子 lao3da1zi3 old game/card partners

摸黑 mo1 hei1 dark feeling / middle of the night?

结局 jie2ju2 ending / outcome

先进 xian1 jin4 advanced

紧张 jin3 zhang1 nervous (not jiang4)

忙碌 mang2lu4 busy

紧张忙碌 jin3zhang1mang2lu4 nervous busyness

辛苦劳累 xin1ku3 lao2 lei4 hard overwork

轻松愉快 qing1song1 yu2kuai4 relaxed happiness

并不 bing4 bu4 (emaphasized) not

放在脑海里面 fang4zai4nao3hai3li3mian4 put in your mind

我下面这句话你要放在脑海里面

我们老祖宗的道理

老祖宗 lao3 zu3 zong old ancestors

洗澡 xi2zao3 bathe

本事 ben3shi ability

我们本事不够高 wo men ben3 shi bu gou4 gao1

道理 dao4li principle/truth/argument ??

流传 liu2 chuan2 spread / hand down

连续 lian2 xu4 continuously / successively

a difficult lecture

Today the Business Data module started on my IMBA.  It’s taught by a Wu Lipeng.  He’s a Fudan professor, so he talks in Chinese.  We get two text books, one of which is in English, the other in Chinese.  They’re not equivalent.  We get a case study book, all in Chinese.  And we get handouts of the slides, also all in Chinese. 

 

In this course, we study simulations and modeling, statistical sampling, linear and nonlinear optimization…. I don’t think these sound like straightforward topics, especially in understanding how to make good use of these techniques in the real world.  This will be a little tricky.  In truth, the lecture slides, books and handouts should be in English.  There’s often variability, but this particular course takes variability to quite one extreme.

 

I have some choices to make in this type of situation.  A) Try to listen, follow, understand the material.  B) Ignore the lecturer, read the textbook and seek to understand the material.  C) ignore everything, and continue learning chinese quietly during lectures, and hope to struggle through the exam

 

I think I’m going to work on somewhere between options B and C.

work - got to learn to read

Being effective as a consultant without full Chinese language is proving tricky.  Internally, with management there is no issue.  Internally amongst peers though, I need Chinese to be able to fully participate in group discussions.  Externally with clients, there will be many clients who do not use English at all.

 

I’m helping with a sales proposal.  We have a team developing the proposal, with the team members spread across China in various offices and on various clients.  The client material and our draft sales proposal are written in Chinese.  In order to be able to contribute my part, I need to understand the client’s situation and requirements, and our team’s intention as to what and how to propose.  This process is tricky when you can’t read or communicate so well.  Sure, my colleagues are generally bilingual.  But it often makes for slow and long drawn out telephone conversations, with guessing games as to what something really means.

 

The good news is that for now I can take one of the juniors in the office and have them help me read the documents I need to read.  Their English isn’t great, but it’ll be quicker than just using a dictionary.  Other good news is that this really is a pressuring environment within which I can learn and practice Chinese.

 

More good news is that my colleague Jonathan showed me a book today, Jack Welch’s ‘Winning’.  Chinese version.  35 kuai RMB – cheap!  Actually the words inside don’t look too complicated… I can’t read whole sentences in it, but I think I can recognize sometimes 50-80% of the characters in a sentence.  It might be a good exercise to try to start.  And if not realistic, a good exercise for a few months time.

mutiplicity of meaning - chinese is a funny language

A friend today asked me whether I would ‘go down’ living in China.  The words 下去 usually mean to descend.  E.g. I’m going downstairs now.  But in the context of what my friend asked me, the words 下去 mean ‘continue’.  There are many many examples of this type of thing.  Pretty much any word actually.  想 means to think.  It also means to want.  得 has three different pronounciations and meanings.  And this is over and above all of the words that sound exactly the same but actually are different written characters.  You’d think with more than 8000 characters they could have a one to one mapping of words to meanings.  Ho well, I suppose only 2000 or so are in daily usage.

 

All said though, I’m very grateful that Chinese grammar is relatively speaking highly straightforward.  There’s no subjunctive tense… there’s no der die das den die das den der den or however it goes… and past/future tense is a simple as adding a will/did.  I’ll count my blessings.

 

Where are the card shops?

Maybe I haven’t been shopping enough.

 

But commonplace in the UK, and commonly enough in HK, one can find shops specialising in birthday cards and the like.  Thank you cards, get well cards, valentines cards….

 

Where in Shanghai do these things exist?  Department stores?

 

Shopaholics to the rescue please?  It seems a bit silly to bulk order birthday cards in from overseas...

more of our place... and some weird fruit 

our place 

this is a long long way away from shanghai.... ahhh fond memories