Sunday in the office

I'm sitting in the office not because I love to work, but it's quiet over here and hopefully I can concentrate better. Plus the internet connection here is much faster than the hotel.  Upon arriving at our office entrance, I see something completely out of place at the corridor:

It looks like someone is trying to save some electricity and decided to charge their scooter on our floor.  So Chinese.


This past week has been really hectic with the apartment search, getting over a jet lag, and trying to work but not overwork.  I think I've overcome the apartment troubles.  Yesterday we finally put down a deposit at the apartment building right next to work, and hopefully by Wednesday I can move in.  But guess what?  I'm flying to Chengdu sometime around Wednesday to give the employees here a talk about Acentech.  So I'll be staying at a hotel once again.  I guess that's fate. 

I've eaten more white rice this week than I had all year in the US.  My pants are already getting tight.  I think it's also because most of the food here are really salty, and so I drink more water too.  Whatever. 

Last night a fellow acoustician originally from Taiwan took me out to eat.  I guess he wanted to make me feel at home.  So he took me to Pizza Hut.  Yup.  YUM.
Pizza Hut is doing extremely well in Asia, but also for a good reason.  Unlike McD and KFC, which dominate the low-end western fast food market here, Pizza Hut is actually a classier option.  The decors are much more upscale, in fact people eat with forks and knives here, and the floors are not greasy like they are in the US.  So while the food is still as terrible as the average Pizza Hut in the United States, at least the ambience is above average.  The final bill came to a whopping 150RMB, which could also buy you a very nice meal like this one:

Sesame sauce with Chinese writing!

 

My awesome coworker who helped me find the right apartment!

Here are some random things that got me through the week:
1. Professionally, they refer people by their last names.  So since I'm an engineer and coming here to 'teach'.  They call me Prof Su or Engineer Su, both of which I don't really respond to even after they call me for a few times.  In Taiwan, we mostly refer to each other by their first names.  So finally I told them to just call me Kuan-Yu, even though they find it somewhat disrespectful.
2. Some American expressions do not get translated into Chinese, but rather they end up producing the same tones as the actual English word.  These are generally saved for company names, such as McDonald, Dell, etc.  The best one I heard this week was using the expression dink, like doulbe income no kids.  The guy that used that expression didn't even know that it was originally an English expression.  We were both laughing so hard it was ridiculous. 
3. Every work day, the company provides their employee 7RMB for lunch, which is 7RMB more than what we get at Acentech.  My new colleagues find it amazing that US companies do not typically reimburse their employees for lunch.  What can you get for 7RMB?  Almost nothing.  Well actually, for 10RMB, the lunch guy (I'll talk about this another day) can provide you with a little lunch box of goodies with A LOT of rice.  Or one can go down to the food court and spend about 15RMB to 20RMB for a typical lunch meal.
4. I finally got sick of Chinese breakfast and decided that I wanted some bread.  There are a lot of Taiwanese bakeries here in Beijing that sell much better baked goods than what you can get at the typical Chinatown in the US.  I call them Taiwanese bakeries but they are basically western pastries, similar to Iggy's.  I found out this morning that they also sell American coffees, which actually tastes pretty close to DD's.

Take that, Iggy's