Friday, November 02, 2007

The 25th Floor

I officially signed the paperwork on my apartment today.  The landlord had, as promised, bought a brand new washer/dryer, refrigerator, and a Sony HDTV.  Tomorrow the cable and internet are being turned on.  The landlord is taking me to lunch, after which we’re going to go to the furniture store and he’ll let me pick out the desk and sofa couch of my choice. Then, on Sunday, my shipment will arrive, and I’ll move out of the hotel and actually spend the night in the place.

I got to see the view at night for the first time.  It’s amazing.  Seriously, it looks like Blade Runner, huge buildings on the skyline with neon Asian characters blinking all over the place.  It’s fucking spectacular.  I’ll post pictures on Sunday.

Okay, here’s something really weird, and it exemplifies just how bizarre a place this country can be sometimes.  You have to prepay your electricity, hot water, cold water, and toilet water.  Yes, the three types of water are all treated separately, and have different prices.  In other words, you pay more for the water you shower in than you do for the water that flushes your turds.  But wait, it gets even more strange.  Each one of these accounts has a little plastic credit card, which you have to charge up just like you would a prepaid phone card in the US, so I have four little credit card-type things for my utilities. 

You make these payments in the management office at the complex.  You can buy any of them any time you like EXCEPT hot water, which for some reason you can only pay for on Monday mornings.  So over the weekend I’m going to have to go to the management office, give them money for my hot water and have them hold it until Monday morning.

I’m still not 100% clear on how the hell I’m supposed to know how much money I have in these accounts.  I don’t think there’s a website or anything where you can check your balance, so to speak.  It’s just fucking weird.

This brings me to another point—the people who come here for the Olympics are going to be fucked, because they’re all going to be expecting to pay for things with credit cards.  Apart from maybe some of the better hotels, NOBODY takes credit cards here.  Everything is done with cash.  When you go out to eat, you carry cash with you.  I have to pay my utilities with cash, it’s not like I can give them a credit card and just have them automatically recharge the accounts whenever they get low.  I think a lot of people are going to be in for a shock because, for safety reasons, people in the west generally don’t walk around with wads of cash.  Here, though, there’s no street crime.  You can walk down the street drunk at 3am with a wallet full of money and not have to worry about being mugged.

Fucking China, I swear to God.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Someone Call Cory Hart

I noticed something this morning in the taxi on the way to work.  I don’t think I’ve seen one person here wearing sunglasses.  It’s a bright day today (and nowhere NEAR as cold as it was supposed to be, thank God) and I put on my sunglasses out of habit. Then I realized that nobody else had them on.

I’ll have to ask about that, I wonder why it is.  Maybe people who wear sunglasses are considered assholes or something cultural like that.  Beats the shit out of me.

Sickness, Duck, and Winter

I forgot to write that a couple of days ago I had to go and get my official government medical exam.  Nothing major, they’re checking to see if you’re bringing in any infectious diseases.  (As if China is a bastion of public health.) At any rate, they took some blood, did a chest x-ray, and a quick EKG.  I was in and out in about 20 minutes.

I mention this because of the taxi ride I just had on the way home.  I swear, the driver had tuberculosis or something from the way he sounded.  The taxi ride was 10 RMB (about $1.25).  I handed him a 50, and I almost didn’t want to take the change.  I immediately ran upstairs and washed my hands, then ran disinfectant gel over them.

OH!  The fucking heat is on in the hotel finally!  It’s not government heat, the hotel has its own heating system, which until today has not been working.  So imagine my surprise when I opened the door a few minutes ago and it was like a goddamned oven in here.  The other day, when I was trying to get the thermostat to work, I cranked it all the way up to 30°C, which is like 80-something Fahrenheit.  Well, it’s been blasting at 80 all day, and after sitting in my refrigerator of an office all day it was a hell of a nice little treat.

Tonight I’m off to eat Peking Duck for the first time since I got here.  (I had this delicious pork noodle thing today for lunch, it was absolutely spectacular and cost a whopping $1.75.) I’m meeting my buddy down at the north gate of Worker’s Stadium again.  In Chinese it’s “Gong Tie Bei Men.” But I found out that in a Beijing accent anything that ends in -en is pronounced with an “-urrrr” sound.  So, phonetically speaking, it’s “Gong Tee Bay Murrrr.”

I was practicing today, and my Chinese crew thought it was fucking hilarious.  I also taught them what “mad skillz” meant.  Ah, the great cultural exchange.

Also, I expect to get the keys to my apartment tomorrow, so hopefully my shipment can get delivered ASAP, enabling me to go outside without my nutsack shrinking to the size of a peanut shell.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

A Witch’s Teat

And sweet goddamned miserable holy fuck is it cold here!  The government still hasn’t turned the heat on, and won’t for a couple more weeks, so we all sit around at work in coats and jackets.  Well, everyone else does, at least.  I didn’t bring a jacket.  Why?

You’re only allowed 70 lbs a bag when you fly internationally.  (That’s business class, if you fly coach it’s 50.) I put a couple of jackets in my air shipment and my heavy winter coats in my sea shipment, because the air shipment was supposed to have been here waiting for me when I arrived.  However, the movers fucked up some customs paperwork and the air shipment was delayed getting out.  It’s here, though, and it’s cleared Chinese customs, waiting in a warehouse to be delivered.  They offered to bring it to my hotel, but I told them I’d just gut it out for a couple more days until they could deliver it to my apartment. 

This weekend I’ll be buying a space heater or two.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Living Quarters

I made an offer on an apartment today.  The realtor thinks the landlord will go for it.  When the ink is signed on the lease and you suckholes see what I’m getting for my money, every one of you is going to start looking in the Beijing want ads.

Just to prepare you:  in Los Angeles I lived in a small one bedroom, maybe 750 square feet.  I had one window.  I never opened the blinds, because my view was of the wall of the supermarket next door, a wall about 5 feet from my window.  It was in an area not exactly high crime but it wasn’t exactly Brentwood, either.  There was the occasional gang shooting.

And for all this I paid $1,100 a month.  Keep that in mind.

Deep Thoughts

You know one of the best things about living in a country where labor is so cheap?  I never have to wash or clean anything again.  It’ll be like being married, without the nagging. 

I swear to God, the heaviest thing I’m ever going to lift in this country is money.

Snapshots

I’ve received a request for pictures of the city.  I haven’t really had much time to see a lot of it yet.  Of course, since I got here I stood outside Worker’s Stadium in the rain, waiting for a Scot I’d never met in person, who was going to be dressed like a Hooter’s waitress, so I could go to a costume party with people I didn’t know, and ended up at a rave so drunk off my ass I could barely stand up, but I really haven’t had time to take a lot of pictures.  But just to get the ball rolling, here’s a picture I took yesterday of the view from my hotel room.

I promise, in the coming days more pictures and video will be forthcoming.  If I can take some pictures of my office I’ll do that too, though the confidentiality agreement I had to sign expressly forbade it.  Maybe I can get them to make an exception just so I can take pictures of the building, not what we do in there.

Herro, You Wan Pussy?

The hotel I’m staying in, while not a world-class resort, is a pretty nice place.  I’m quite comfortable, the service is great, and they have a revolving restaurant on the top floor of the hotel giving you a 360° view of the city.  So this is not a dump by any means.

My first night here, when I was zonked out from jetlag and crashed in bed, I have a vague memory of the phone ringing and someone asking if I wanted a massage.  I said no and went back to sleep.  The next day I couldn’t remember if I had dreamed it or if it had actually happened.

Yesterday it happened again.  I was working on the computer, the phone rang, and a guy’s voice said, “Hello, you want massage?” Once again I declined.  It just happened a third time, except this time it was a woman’s voice.

Now, massages are not an official hotel feature.  (I checked in the services guide.) So obviously someone here in the hotel is earning a little extra cash working as a pimp calling all the foreigners to see if they’d like to get a little yellow tail (and I’m not talking about sushi, either).  What I don’t get is why anyone would pay for sex in this country.  I mean, talk about your classic “coals to Newcastle” scenario.  Just the fact that you’re a white male means that half the women in this country between 18 and 30 will sleep with you.  Go to any club in town. 

Finding sexually willing women in China is about as easy as finding passed-out skanks on Colin Farrell’s living room carpet.

Icicles for Communism

Today in Beijing it was pretty damn cold.  I had three layers of clothes on, but my hands were freezing.  There was no heat on in the office.  And I haven’t been able to get any heat in my hotel room, either.  I have to sit around with layers of clothes on to keep warm.  There’s a thermostat, but when I turn it on cold air comes out.

I found out why today.  One of the legacies of the communist era is that—I shit you not—the government controls the supply of heat in the winter, and they haven’t turned it on yet.  So the radiators and stuff in the apartments and offices don’t work, and won’t for another week or so.  The flip side to this is that, during the winter, you don’t have to pay for the heat since it’s provided by the government.

Seriously, man, this place is like fucking Mars.

First Day

Well, today was my first day at work.  Without going into specifics, let’s just say that taking this job was one of the best decisions I ever made.  The facility is great, the money is great, the country is great, the people are great… it’s fucking wonderful. 

Today five of us went out and ate a Beijing-style lunch called a hot pot.  It’s sort of a huge pot of soup in the center of the table with a duck in it.  Then you add in bits of lamb and beef and various veggies, and dip the meat into a sesame sauce which had sort of a peanut taste to it.  Absolutely delicious.  For all five of us it was about $14.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Getting Back to Normal

Well, so much for the Great Firewall of China.  I’d been quite worried that my access to info was going to be restricted, but so far the only sites that have been blocked are Wikipedia and YouTube.  Other than that, I can hit every newspaper, every blog, and every other site I read regularly.  That’s great news.

So, tomorrow is my first day at work.  I don’t think I’ll be doing much work, though.  I have to have all kinds of medical exams and stuff in order to get my Z-class visa, and I still need to find a place to live.  The apartments I looked at yesterday were amazing.  I’m still trying to decide what part of town to live in.  For about the same amount of money I was paying to live in that fucking dump in LA I’ll be able to get a top notch place here.

Apparently my air shipment has arrived and should clear Chinese customs in a few days.  If I can get into an apartment next week, my life might begin to assume an air of normalcy relatively quickly.

Oh, and MAN, did I get fucking shitfaced at a Halloween rave last night.  I took some video of it with my camera, but of course China won’t let you get to YouTube. It’s weird.  In many ways this police state has far fewer rules than most western countries.  It’s oddly libertarian in a way. 

Friday, October 26, 2007

Rich Man’s World

I had forgotten about the money here.  The largest note that the central bank issues is a 100 RMB note, shown below.

Please excuse the oversaturation on the image, it’s not my scan.  At any rate, 100 RMB is worth roughly $12 or so. Imagine how thick your wallet would be if you had to carry around all your money in $10 bills.  Wanna go out for a night on the town and you feel like taking $400 or so?  That’s FORTY $10 bills in your wallet.  So when you fold your wallet in half to stick it in your pocket, you feel like George Costanza.  What a pain in the ass.  I’m looking at my wallet now and it’s almost 4” thick, with my credit cards and everything.

Yes, yes, I know I could get a money clip.  But still, China needs to get with the program and come up with a 200 or 500 RMB note.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Thirsty?

This is the sign above the sink in my hotel bathroom.

Apologies for the flash, but you get the idea.  Yummy!  “Yes, we’re advanced enough to use a missile to shoot a satellite out of the sky, but parasites in the water kick our asses.”