ReidaBlog

My sister arrives today and since I have been putting off a lot of tourist activities until she and her friend Sara arrive I figured now was a good time to post any remaining photos. So this update will be a bit random. But I should have some good updates next week.

8 weeks so far. I think I mentioned last time that we had a bunch of people leave us at the 4 week and 6 week mark. So we did quite a few farewell lunches and dinners.

For Melinda’s and Pat’s farewell we ended up at the first Chinese restaurant I ate at when I got here. Not a bad place but in a city with about 2M Chinese restaurants it is weird to be at one twice when it is not particularly good or near my place.

I think we got the waitress to take this picture. Notice how they cover the backs of the chairs. Not sure why but most of the better restaurants do this. In the winter you’d hang your coat on the back of the chair (or in my case a coat and book bag) and they’d come by and cover the whole thing up.

At the same lunch. With yours truly, Sasha, and Jeremy.

Sasha has since taken off as well, back to Australia where she works for their equivalent of NPR producing news stories. I don’t have any pictures of her going away dinner but we ended up at a really good Thai place that served Negra Modelo of all things. Thinking of taking Meg and Sara there since I’ve found that while Chinese food is different than anything you’d get in the States, Thai food is the same around the world. Which means it is really good in case I wasn’t all that clear.

Melinda sent us some pictures that she took before heading back to London.

She took this picture right outside of class. That is Paul (Malaysian and in my class), Bernice (US), and Floren (German also in my class).

Paul is a lawyer from Malaysia that decided he’d rather do finance work in China so he’s taking classes for at least a year. He also has parents that speak Cantonese so while he doesn’t speak it himself he does a pretty good job of hearing the different tones. Lucky guy.

Mom, Dad how come you didn’t speak Cantonese to me when I was growing up?

Floren just graduated with his MBA from a university in Hong Kong and just got a part time job as an analyst for a telecom consulting company while he studies. It will be interesting to see if he is able to balance work and school.

And that’s Melinda. She was a fashion designer from the UK/HongKong whose boyfriend lives here in Beijing so we’ll see her again. Apparently she had this ‘in’ to a private market that is full of overruns from the factories producing actual designer clothing. As opposed to the completely fake stuff you find at most markets.

Sasha also had some pictures:

This is Veronica and Thao.

Veronica left as well. She is just starting at a university in Germany and had some summer internships to attend. She was on her ‘gap’ year which seems to make a lot of sense and it is a little strange that we don’t have the same thing in the US. For those that don’t know it is where you take a year off to travel/work/whatever between high-school and college. You can see from the snow that this picture was taken soon after we arrived. Our weather has since turned from cold and snowy to warm and smoggy.

Now to switch gears. Not sure why I took these pictures but…

Chinese fast food place. Not all that good. And from what is posted in the Subway store a meal here has about twice (yep I said twice) the fat and calories of a meal at Micky D’s. Something like 1600 calories and 80 grams of fat. Plus 100% of the PRC recommended dose of MSG.

Which makes this look healthy:

Speaking of McDonalds it is kind of weird to eat there. First, the food tastes exactly like the food in the US. Well, except that their dipping sauces have different flavors. They have ’sweet and sour’ and ’spicy garlic’. The garlic one is pretty good, actually has chunks of garlic. Second, they don’t clear their own trays. One of our teachers said that since McDs is so expensive they expect that someone will clean up after them. You’ll be happy to know that I still clean up after myself.

Speaking of not all that healthy. I live in the university district of Beijing. So as you’d expect there are a lot of students and the nightlife is pretty suitable for that demographic. There is a club near my dorm which is pretty popular on select nights. I’ve been avoiding going out during weekdays but I thought I’d give an idea of what the nightlife is like.

So for those whose knowledge of Renminbi/Dollar exchange rates is a little rusty this means that all you can drink is about $6 for guys and $3.50 for girls. As a result I am woken up everything Friday morning at about 4am as people come back from the bar. But it does make for small classes on Friday.

This is the other type of bar night that is really popular. They give you these red, yellow, or green glowsticks to wear as you walk into the bar. I’m not sure about you guys but if I was dating someone and they chose ‘yellow’ as we entered I’d find that pretty depressing. On the other hand, if you’re trying to break up with someone who just doesn’t take the hint…

Between my place and the bank I walk along a sidewalk that is very strange. Now I do this at least once a week and noticed that at one point in the sidewalk this happens:

Ok, the picture didn’t turn out that great but notice how the sidewalk actually curves into the trees when it could have gone straight. Weird.

And finally I’ve posted strange Chinese signs before but this is the weirdest one yet. Not to say I don’t appreciate what it represents. Ready:

Are you sure?

Ok here goes:

Why is this weird you ask? Because the bottom hours on the sign are the hours when the bank tellers are available at the local Bank of China. Not just the low wages that will make China competitive.

Ok, ok, I realize that nothing has been updated for a while. I’m working on it.

A week ago the 6 week students all left and the new batch of students arrived. It was sad to see some of the friends I’ve made take off. Meg is always telling me how expats tend to become tight knit groups very quickly and that is definately true here.

Anyway, I’ve got some pictures from some farewell dinners that we held which I will post once I edit them for the site.

Completely unrelated I’ve finally come up with an appropriate metaphor to describe Beijing traffic. And by traffic I mean (in order of decreasing yield worthiness): buses & trucks, black Audi or Mercedes, taxis and other private cars, motorcycles, scooters, animal powered vehicles, pedal trucks, bikes, and finally me.

Meg did a good job describing Dehli traffic so I’ll be curious to get her take when she arrives in a week - yay.

Anyway - the best I can describe it is as a giant ski slope. You are pretty much allowed to go wherever on the road you like (I have yet to see the police pull anyone over) and you really only worry about the people in front of you. What amazes me is that I don’t see much road rage. If people drove in the States like they do here then there would be gunfights constantly.

The other day my driver decided that traffic was moving too slowly so he put on his left blinker and just pulled into incoming traffic.

I also have a favorate intersection where 3 roads come together and there are no street signs or traffic lights (or robot for my springbok readers). People just kind of ‘go’. This place is a riot during busy traffic.

Finally, I’m pretty sure that crossing the street is the most dangerous thing that I do each day. You know that Seinfeld episode where George gets the high score on the frogger machine and then tries to move it across the street? That is how it works here. Let’s say you have 6 lanes of traffic (3 in each direction). Once one or two lanes is clear you start going, you’ll then wait in the middle of the street for the next lane to clear and proceed a little at a time. So it is common to see a group of people standing in the middle of the street (right on the double yellow lines) while traffic whizzes by in each direction.

Surprisingly, this all seems to work. And this is where I come back the the ski slope. See, the secret is that everyone tries to move along a relatively constant vector. No one sprints or zig-zags too much. This allows the cars to adjust for you and for the other cars. Well at least we don’t have cows in the street.