Lessons

Well, I did French in school for 4 years and I still sort of 3/4 know it, and I did Arabic night-classes and have forgotten it all, and Italian night classes and remember a good bit of it, and then I did a few language lessons when I was living in Beijing ("survival chinese"). So, I'm semi-fluent in lots of languages! I decided a few weeks ago to try to improve my slightly sketchy knowledge of at least one of these languages, so I looked around on nightclasses.ie and found a cheapish Chinese course on up in a place on Baggot street on weds nights. Cool!

Started the course tonight and was definitely value for money! There were only two of us in it - altho there's supposed to be 7 signed up. Happy days for the organizers if they've already paid their money I guess :-) Didn't really cover muchfirst night: pronunciation of the tones (which is always a bitch from what I remember from last time), "Ni hau ma?" and the usual greetings stuff - altho we got a bit of grammar as well. Will see how we go next week!

One thing that I definitely found is that I'll need to rewrite my notes when I get done each day - I haven't done any real writing bar signing credit card slips and a few scribbled notes at my desk in the last few years (and even then we're gone to Chip & PIN with the credit card so I don't even do that any more), and my writing, never all that good in the first place, has really gone to shyte! I might as well be a doctor!

Home at last!

Well, I made it home safe and sound anyway. What a trip back! My last day was fairly hectic, I went down to Dazhalan hutong to do a final bit of shopping and then went out for lunch with Dermot, one of the Irish guys. "Lunch" turned into drinks down in Huahai, and I only got back to my apartment at about 6pm, with still all of my stuff to pack, and no tine for one last trip down to the Silk Market. Got everything squared away eventually, nad went straight out to a bar in the Kerry Center to met Mina, the english chick I'd met at the Paddy's day ball. The bar was a fairly swanky place - low lighting, minimalist dcor, liv jazz band in the cornr, full of people in suits networking like a mad thing (loads of swapping business cards) - and 50 kuai beers! Normally the kind of place I'd avoid like the plague, but Mina is a corporat headhunter so she moves through that sort of environment like a fish through water - seemed to know everyone in the bar. She managed to score me a few free drinks off the bar manager so I'm not complaining! After a while Dermott and Fionn turned up, and seeing as they felt as out of place there as I did, we headed off down to Sanlitun to meet Peter and Sylvia, the Austrians I'd gone skiiing with before. We stayed ther a while, tehn ended up back in my usual haunt, Propaganda. As usual with Propaganda, I ended up getting to bed at 3am.

Three hours later, my alarm went off and I had to get up and get ready to lave for good. Things started off badly enough, as I was supposed to drop the keys of the apartment off with the gate guard who'd hand them into the agency later on. Thing is, no-one had told her, and she didn't speak any english, so it took 25min and the help of a few passers-by to get the point across. So, I got tot he airport a bit later than planned, but still a good bit before the normal check-in time, so I could be first in the queue and get away with the overweight luggage.

Or so the plan went anyway. Thing is, when I got there, I got stuck behind a greoup of fecking belgians who seemed to be trying to book their connecting flights from hathrow to brussles at the check-in counter, and who were all at least 7-8kg overweight with their bags. The check-in girl wasn't the most efficient either - I timed her at 15min to check in a group of 3 ppl! So, despite starting to queue at 7:45 for a 10:20 flight, I only got to the counter at about 9:15 - after having only had 8 ppl in the queue ahead of me! Miracle of miracles, my bags squeaked in under the limit - 22.5Kg. Good job they didn't check the weight of my carry-on bag, which I reckon was another 11kg or so!

I managed to get through customs and security with the minimum of hassle (a lot less than when I was going to Japan actually), and the 11hr flight passed like all 11hr flights do - slowly. Unfortunately we hit headwinds on the way over and arrived 15mins late, which meant we lost our gate slot and had to park on the tarmac at heathrow and get bussed into the terminal. The buses took another 10mins to get to us, so by the time I hit the terminal 4 building I had an hour to get to my gate at Terminal 1. Now, while the shortest distance between any two points is supposed to be a straight line, there is no such thing as the shortest distance betwen two points in Heathrow airport, and I just about got to my gate just as they were calling my row number to board - talk about tight timing!

So, finally after another hour and a half flight I was back on Irish soil at last. Unfortunately, I hit the arrivals hall at 5:20, which put me too late to get to Heuston to catch the 6:25 Waterford train (the airport to heuston station in an hour during rus hour on the friday of a bank holiday? Fuggdaboutit!). So, I hopped on the 6:30 Rapid Express bus instead. The word "rapid" in "Rapid Express" seems to come from the same place as the same word in the DART's name, to go the 120-odd miles from the airport to Waterford, it took 1/3 of the tiem that it took to fly the 9,000-odd mils form Beijing to London! Then again, I suppose the 777 didn't have to stop in every pissant little village along the way either. So, at 10pm I got off the bus at last, and by 10:30 I was home, or 23 1/2 hours after my alarm went off to start me on the journey.

Dai Jian Bai Jing!

Well, here we go. It's 6:30am, and I'm just about ready to leave for the airport. Is the 4th time in as many weekends that I've been to Beijing airport, but this tme I'm not coming back. It's a bit sad to be leaving, but also good to go home. Is going to be some culture shock when I get back! I'm a bit tired tho, my going-away party went on until 3am, so hopefully I'll be able to get some sleep on the plane. Next stop, Waterford! (well, via London and and Dublin that is........)

Last day in beijing!

Well, here we are, my last day in China. I have a lot to do today - pack the bags, tidy up the apartment, go out do a final bit of shopping, then head out and start saying my goodbyes. Busy busy busy!

My 2nd last night in Beijing turned out to be a bit of a quiet one tho. I got in from that airport about 10:30pm, and rang around to see who'd be on for going out for one or two. Strangely enough, no-one took me up on the offer! Ah well, hopefully tonight will turn out different.

THis time otmorrow, I'll be just getting on the plane home.....

Last day in beijing office!

Wow, where did the time go? I'm on my last day in the Beijing office already! It doesn't feel like two months have passed at all, but this time tomorrow I'll be in Tokyo and this time next week I'll be on the plane home to Ireland.

It's been a bit of a whirlwind two months. I definitely haven't been sitting on my ass here anyway - reckon on average I've been going out doing stuff two out of every three days/nights I've been here (if not maybe a bit more), which isn't too bad a ratio, especially considering all that inconvenient "work" stuff that keeps getting in the way! It's been a bit tiring though, especially the last week. I think I've been out every night since maybe just after I came back from Shanghai 2 weeks ago, and it doesn't look like it'll be stopping any time soon either. I think the next time I'll get a good full night's sleep will be when I get back home! I definitely didn't get it last night anyway. Went out with some of the irish guys for wha probably will be my last visit to the local nightclub (Propaganda, in Wudaokou) and ended up getting in at about 6am! Reckon that's the latest night yet, but not by much.

At least I don't have to worry too much about rushing to get my project done before I leave now. it seems that at some stage over the last few weeks while I've been busting my ass to get it finished for today, working until 7, 7:30 or even pm, the managers decided that there was still too many legal issues to be resolved with the code and so they bumped out the schedule untilt he end of the next quarter in June. Only problem is, they sort of forgot to tell us, the engineers who were actually workign on it (I mean, why would we want to know something as trivial as that?). We knew we weren't going to get everything done by tht iem I left, but we thought we had to have a large section of it finished and released. Now we don't! I love the way Sun works sometimes......

rain!

It's raining here. First time I've seen rain in 2 months! it's not exactly up to the standard of what we get back home, but water defintely is falling fomr the sky. it seems some of the locals aren't quite sure what to do with it, there's been a few "working form home today because of the weather" emails gone out, and a few of them pulled out of my going-away lunch 'cos they said they felt a little sick didn't want to catch cold on the way to the restaurnat. Wimps!

What I am more worried about here is the traffic. I know the way back home that if it hasn't rained for a few weeks the roads get a bit slick and a bit dodgy to drive on. Well, after 3 months without rain here, I shudder to think the amount of slicks we'll get on the roads. It's not like the locals are the safest drivers in the world either...... Will be extra-careful crossing the roads here today!

getting my bags home

I was just looking on the BA website and I reckon I'm going to have a lot of fun with getting my bags home. Apparenlty the weight allowance for non-US international flights with BA is 23kg per passenger, with a penalty of £30 per kilo for overweight bags. This is a bit steep compared to going to the US, where you get to have 32Kg per bag (not per passenger), and get charged £60 per overweight bag (not per kilo). Looks like I may have to lie at the airport, say I'm going to LA or NY, and then once I get through the gate, hop on the correct flight! :-)

One option which I hope may pan out is if I use the automated check-in, when I was flying out here and used that with Are Lingus they never checked teh weight, they just tagged the bags and shoved them on through.

Xi'an

Well, I think I made a tactical error in my weekend travel plans. As I said last weekend, I probably gave myself too much time in Shanghai, and this weekend I didn't give myself enough time in Xi'an.

The trip definitely started off better than Shanghai - for one the plane took off on time so I got in around teh tiem I should have, and then I discovered that China Northwest Airlines ran a minibus service from the airport to town for Y25, so I dind't have to worry about getting fleeced by taxi drivers. the bus drops you in the heart of the city, right beside the Drum Tower, so all I had to do then was a 5-min walk down to the south gate to my hostel! I was booked in and back out on the street for a bit of a wander by 8:30pm, by which point the week before I hadn't even boarded the plane in Beijing!

Again, compared to last week where Shanghai didn't leave me with much of a good first impression, Xi'an was the opposite. Where Shanghai had been dead, Xi'an was buzzing! I went out to see what the South Gate (nan men) looked like by night, and it was pretty impressive.


Lots of people around, even at 10pm!

I wandered around a bit then, up to the Drum & Bell towers, up around the Muslim Quarter, and then managed to find a restaurant which had an english menu. I decided to see if Xi'an hotpot was as good as Beijing hot-pot, and it's pretty close all right. After stuffing my face on semi-identifiable meats, I left the restaurant intent on more sightseeing, but by that stage a dust storm had blown up. Within a few mins it was blowing pretty string, and ppl were scurrying for whatever cover they could find. Nasty stuff dust storms, gets in your eyes, your mouth, up your nose, so I decided at that stage to call it a night and go back to the hostel.

Next morning I was up bright and early (ish), and decided to head and see the Terracotta Warriors. I decided to decline the Y165 tour that the hostel was running and instead went for the slightly cheaper option of taking the locla bus for Y8 return! As I've done so many times in Beijing tho, I misunderstimated teh distance between the south gate and thetrain station, and what looked an easy stroll on the map turned into a 45min hike. I eventually got there anyway, and after literally having to fight my way onto the 306 bus out to Bingmayong I made it out to the museum by about 11am.

The first thing that struck me about the museum was that they could have put the car park about 500m closer to the museum entrance than they did, but i guess what would mean the tourists would have less distance to run the gauntlet of souveneir hawkers and freelance tour guides (Y150 for an hour's tour apparently), and you have to support local enterprise I guess. he second thing that struck me was that you come a liong wayt o see not very much, as in the first pit I went into (pit 2) they stll hadn't uncovered the roofs of most of the chambers holding the figures, so all you could see was a few trenched dug in the dirt and a few fragments of figurines. I'm sure it'll be impressive enough in a few years when thy aactually dig all the guys out tho.

And then I got to Pit 1, and the real deal.

There's apparenly over 6,000 in the main chamber, and they reckon they could find at least up to 10,000 when they dig them all out. What got me was tho that rather than taking the easy way out, having 1 or two moulds and churning out 6,000 near-identical figures, it looks like every figure has different facial features and expressions, and are slightly differnt sizes, just like a real army would have. Now that's attention to detail!

After soaking in the sights for awhile, I headed back to Xian city where I had a lot to do and not mcu time to do it in. So, after already been walking around all morning, I went to see the drum tower, the bell tower, the mosque (walked by but didn't go in, not that impressive apparently), the Forest of Stelaes museum, and the market place by the south gate. After that, not being content with the paltry amount of exercise I'd gotten, I went up on the city walls, where you can hire a bike and ride along the top of the wall around the whole city! So, i did just that, and did the 14km round trip in about 70mins. The wall is damn inpressive, about 12m high and 15m at the top - you could stick a road along the top if you wanted to.
It was 700-year-old paving stones tho, and on the high nelly bike I had it was definitely a teeth-rattling ride!

After that, I decided enough was enough for one day so headed out to get some food from the street vendors. I don't know what I had, but it was tasty and one of the deep-fried things I had on skewers could have been chicken. I had every intention then of heading out to see the Xi'an nightlife, but when I hit the hostel I got chatting to a few other travellers and ended up drinking beer and playing pool in the hostel bar until 1:30am.

Four hours later I was up and about again, to check out and get to the airport for my 8:30am flight (which is what I get for choosing cost over convenience). I'd been a bit wary of how to get back to the airport, as I'd heard stori aboutt eh Xi'an taxi drivers offering you what seems like a reasonablly cheap price to get there, but then stopping the taxi half-way out the motorway and threatening to dump you htere if you don't pay at last double. Luckily, the same bus I'd gotten into town started its return trips at 6am so I was spared discovering if that were true. Things passed uneventfully and I was back in my flat in Wudaokou by 10:30, or about the time I'd be waking up normally!

So, Xi'an, lovely place, so much to see and do that I only covered less than half. Anohter place to add to my list of "must see" next time I come back to china!

Coffee

Typical. I'm here 7 weeks and the week before I leave we get a coffee machine in the office! Granted it isn't exactly high quality stuff, is one of those "plastic coffee" machines you'd see in canteens and some restaurants, but is still better than the Nescafe instant crap I've been drinking since I got here!

Accommodation

I just got an email from the web site I booked my hotel in shanghai through.

"We refer to the below booking and was advised by the hotel that you did not check-in as reserved. As we did not receive any cancellation notification from you, the hotel will charge a one night no-show penalty to your credit card."

So, someone in the hotel screwed up and didn't process my booking properly. I'm pretty sure I stayed there, I mean I wasn't sleeping on the street or anything, but the hotel seems to think otherwise. I've checked my credit card statement and nope, there's no charge from the hotel for the stay. So, looks like I'm getting 3 nights in a 5-star hotel for the price of one! :-)

(and before anyone says that's dishonest and I should 'fess up, this place had the nerve to charge me 50 quai admittance to the resident's bar and then slap a 15% service charge on an already expensive drink!)

And speaking of accommodation, for a while there it looked like I was going to be left dangling in the wind re: a place to stay for my last few nights here by my company. The boss was asking me to start filling in my expense report before I came back, and was annoyed to say the least when she saw the cost of accommodation. The problem I guess was that when I was coming over I put in my expense request based on me sharing an apartment with someone, and when I got here it turned out I was on my own in the place so the cost is double my original estimate. Also, seems that the rent on the apartment is negotiated on a monthly basis, and April is twice as expensive as Feb was - nearly a grand from April 1st to 14th as opposed to slightly over a grand from Feb 1st to 28th (the fact that one of the guys here who knows someone in the building I'm in says that the "normal" rent on those apartments is about 1/3 what we're paying measn someone is getting screwed somewhere, but it's not me so I don't care).

And here's where the fun begins. the boss was quizzing me on why it was so much, and then said "but you're only there until the 6th right?" My reply was no, I'm there until the 14th when I fly out. Turns out that because it's so much, Sun are only going to pay my rent until the 7th, as that's how long I'm over here on business on, and once I get into my vacation days I'm on my own. Nice eh? I'm off to Japan for 4 days so I'm goign to be paying my own way there nayway, but for a while it looked like I'd have to go off and find a hotel for the 2 days after I come back from Japan and before I fly out. Luckily I managed to sweet-talk the HR person here into letting me have the 2 nights in the apartment for free, so I'm ok for accommodation, no thanks to the people who pay my wages back home.

Shanghai

Well, I'm back from Shanghai anyway. Interesting city, totally different to Beijing! Reminded me a lot of Hong Kong in some ways. Defintely a commercial city, the main activity there seems to be shopping!

Getting there was fun naturally. Managed to get out of work on time, and got to the airport with no problems. Even got through security without difficulty, didn't even set off the metal detector (which is unusual). After that tho, things got fun. Like a good little airline passenger, I was at the airport 2hrs in advance. the whole check-in process tho, from queuing to get the boarding pass to being through security and walking to my gate, only took 15mins tho - way faster than at home! Then tho, things got fun. Maybe China Eastern Airlines are twinned with Aer Lingus or something, 'cos 10 mins before we were supposed to take off, our plane landed on the inward leg, so we were about an hour late taking off. That got me into the airport in Shanghai around 10:30. I thought I'd be able to take the Maglev train into town as abit of a bonus (50km in 8 minutes!) but what I hadn't realised when I was booking my tickets was that the maglev went from Pudong airport, and I was landing at HongQiao, the other international airport (which is probaly why I got it cheaper). so, taxi time! Naturally there were some drivers in the arrivals hall trying to pick up/rip off gullible tourists, so I got approached by a guy saying "taxi rank no good, too slow, you come with me". I asked how much, and when I heard 150 kuai, I headed straight for the taxi rank! 30 mins and 55 kuai later, I was in my hotel.

Once the nice buzz of staying in a plush 5-star famous historic hotel wore off (i.e. 5 mins after i checked in), I decided to see what was around the area. The answer? At 11pm on a friday night? Nothing! It seems as a city that Shanghai shuts down around 10:30 - all the lights in the skyscrapers in Pudong were off and the streets were deserted. The only people I saw were beggars trying to get money off me and shady guys in suits wanting me to go into "beer bars" where "beautiful ladies" would give me "massagee". Not exactly the most inviting first impression of shanghai!

Well, things looked better the next day anyway. I headed out on the Bund (the old riverbank area) to start my sightseeing. it reminded me a lot of the promenade on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong strait, except for one thing - every 10 feet or so I had some guy trying to sell me a rolex, and one guy tried the tea ceremony scam on me! That pretty much set the tone for the next few days anyway. Seems the ppl in shanghai are a lot more pushy about selling stuff than they are in beijing. And "selling" is the opersative word there - if you're not into shopping, then there's not a whole lot to do in Shanghai. Once I'd finshed sightseeing on the Bund, seeing all the big impressive buildings by day that I'd seen the night before, I decide to see what the whole shopping lark was like.

First port of call was Nanjing Road. This would be Shangai's answer maybe to Oxford St, except add 2 or 3 stories more onto each building and add a whole load of signs that you can't read. Different enough in the type of shops to be interesting, but western enough to be fairly familiar. As a non-shopper, nice to look at but not much there for me. I decided to try out a more "traditional" type of shopping, and headed down to Yuyuan market.

Oh. My. God. Talk about packed! I'd thought the marketplaces in Beijing were bad, but this was something else! You lierally had to fight your way through the crowd to get anywhere, especially around the food stalls. IN terms of the shopping, again I was abit disappointed. I didn't really see anything much there that I couldn't haggle for in Beijing.

I spent the rest of the day wandering around ther eand the other big shopping street (Haihuai road), and as soon as it was dark I headed back to the Bund to do the river cruise by night. Prety impressive stuff, I finally saw all the sights lit up. after that I decided to see he view from the top of the Jinmao tower. This is the tallest building in china and the 4th tallest building in the world, 88 stories and 420m high. I wanted to get to the bar on the 87th floor, but to do so I had to take 3 differnt elevators. One (for some reason) to the 2nd flor, then one ot the lobby of the Grand Hyatt hotel ont he 54th floor, then a 3rd to the 87th. I knew the bar would be expensive, but I figured I'd get a drink there for the same price as the admission to the viewing platform one floor up - 50 kuai - and at least I'd have a drink. Only thing was, when I got there I realised it was 60 kuai a beer and a 2 drink minimum!

So, 120 kuai to the poorer but after having a nice chat with some germans I met in the bar, myself and one of the german guys decide to hit the bars. Unfortunately we got to the Metro station at 10:42 to be told that the last metro had gone at 10:40, so we had to take a taxi to the other side of the river. It had also started to rain - the first rain I've seen in 2 months! So, we ended up on Maoming Rd, in a bar called Windows which one of the guys in the Beijing office had told me about. Nice enough place (10 kuai a beer!), but not much action going on so we decide to bar-hop our way down the street. By 2am we'd pretty much seen all there was to see, so we called it a night.

Most of sunday was spent wnadering around in the French Concession part of town, all old buildings and stuff, then I decide to hit another market. I think the stall owners were shocked at the haggling skills I'd picked up in the Beijing markets, they were used to foreigners opeing at mayb half what they said, but I started at my usual 1/10th and always ended up much closer to my figure than to theirs. Sun nught was pretty relaxed, I stuffed myself in a Henanese restaurant I found (beef chilli hotpot, mmm) and then headed back for a while to a abr in a hostel we'd found the night before near my hotel. Monday then was a bit of a loss, I was planning on going to teh Science museum, but i forgot that museums he world over close on mondays! Ah well, at least it looked impressive from the outside...

I could possibly have dome with only the weekned in shanghai rather than taking the monday as well, but there we go. Not being a shopping person, I missed out on 90% of what Shanghai has to offer. One definite thing I'd recommend for any westerner heading that way tho is to get a badge or a t-shirt maybe that says in chinese: "No watches. No bags. No shoes. No DVDs. No massagee. And no, I am not your friend". It will save so much time in the long run!

6 weeks!

Wow, I'm just after realising that I'm here 6 weeks tomorrow! Last time I thought about it, was when I hit the month mark. The last 2 weeks have just sort of snuck up on me. Only two weeks left to go in Beijing!

This evening I'm starting the first what I think of as "real touristy" bit of my trip - I'm off to Shanghai for the weekend. Should be fun, if only I can get over the first hurdle - geting to the airport in time!

flights organized

Well, it took a while of to-ing and fro-ing, but I finally have all of my next few weekends planned out. the last two weekends i haven't really gone anywhere or done anything (apart from wearing a suit and getting drunk in a posh hotel for Paddys day), but I'm mkaing up for that now! This is my schedule for the next few weekends:

• This weekend - Shanghai for 3 days


• Next weekend - Xi'an for 2 days


• The weekend after - Tokyo for 5 days


• the weekned after - Back to Dublin

Booking flights over here ins't as easy as it is back home anyway - I found a website (elong.net) which I could get the flights off, but for the domestic flights I had to pay cash on delivery. So, I'd get them to send it to work, and then pick it up there and hand over a wodge of RMB notes - all very dodgy looking, but all above board!

Today's booking has to take the cake tho. I've talked about my problems with booking the Tokyo tickets before (expedia not wanting to take my credit card etc), so I finally got it through elong. To pay by credit card I had to call them up as the flights were coming up as e-tickets on the web but were still asking for a delivery address. There was a lot of back and forth and in the end to pay by credit card I eventually had to fax them my passport and the front and back of my card.

The kicker came tho when the tickets were delivered - I was expecting normal paper tickets like I got with the rest, but when I opened the envelope the courier had given me, I found a printout of an e-booking form from NorthWest Airlines (who incodentally had refused to take my card last week)! So, instead of emailing me the e-booking confirmation like anyone back home would do, they printed it out and sent it to me by cycle courier! You couldn't make this stuff up!

So anway, it's all sorted, I have the flights all in my posession (or at least the tickets), and all that's left is the acomodation. I'm still wating on booking confirmation, but it looks like I'll be getting a room in the 5-star allegedly very famous Peace Hotel in Shanghai for about €88 a night. Not too bad, altho probably ruinously expensive by local standards. What the hell, I'm on holiday! :-)

what does this mean?

Can someone please tell me what the hell this road sign means?

I've seen it in a few places now - "no blowing up cars" maybe?

Paddy's weekend

Well, this year I've been doing Paddy's day in style! No wandering out to the parade at 12 and then going straight to the pub after for me, this year it's all been official receptions and black tie balls! When I registered with the Irish embassy here when I arived, I automatically got put on the guest-list for the embassy Paddy's night party. After a bit of problem with getting the mailbox key off the landlord, I finally got the invite in my hands, so I threw on one of my new tailored shirts, grabbed a pair of good(ish) pants and headed along.

I was a bit surprised on the way in, I was expecting someone to be checking my invite and all, or maybe asking for some ID to prove I was irish, but I just walked in the door, no questions asked! I could have been anyone - I could even have been english! Apparently there's only 160 Irish ppl "officially" here in Beijing, but it seems that all of them came to the embassy and everyone brought a friend! The place was fairly busy, but it was a strange sort of party. You had maybe two types of ppl there, the official/business types in the suits who were there pretty much to network and who spent the whole time swapping business cards, and then you had the rest of us normal gobshytes who were just hovering around, shuttling between the buffet table and the bar!

I was expecting some sort of "official" part to the night, like a speech from the Ambassador or something, but there was none (he's not big into speeches at this kind of thing apparently). The party pretty much consisted of ppl wandering in, hobnobimng a bit, and wandering out again. Strange. Afterwards, a few of us headed out to Brown's down in Sanlitun (which seems to be becoming my "local" here!), where there was an Irish Music night. That was a bit more lively than the embassy do, and I ended up getting in around 6am :-)

Yesterday as a reult was fairly quiet. I went down to the Pearl Market again with Peter and arranged to get some stuff shipped home with Sandy, the owner of the shop we were getting all our pearls in. we went down to Dazhalan Hutong after, and I picked up a dirt cheap pair of pants for the Irish Ball which I'd gotten tickets for. This one is one of the big ex-pat social events of the year here in Beijing, and it was held in a 900-seater ballroom in the Kerry Center. It was a Black Tie do, so I should really have gotten a tux, but I'd brought my black suit jacket from ireland and decided that would do! :-) I could have gotten a tux tailored for me for about €100, but decided there was no point, how many times in my life will I be wearing one of them again!

The party was...... not exactly what I expected. It was packed full of ppl in suits of all shapes & sizes (even two guys in green velvet dresed as "Austin O'Powers"), all very fancy and all, and the decor was as you'd expect from a high-class hotel - a few shamrocks ad harps and flags, but all done very tastefully. The meal was excellent, 5 courses with the main one being a nice bit of braised steak (my only complaint on that one was lack of quantity!). There were a few speeches which were unavoidable but mercifully short, and then a resident MC whose really crap jokes we tolerated 'cos he was the one giving out the spot prizes, and then the band came on.

...And here's where things started to go slightly wrong. it was an irish band, so the first few songs were the expected jigs and reels, but then they started doing more "normal" songs, and the music drifted slowly towards wedding band teritory. At this stage a lot of ppl started drifting out towards the free bar, having exhausted the free bottles of jameson that were on each table, and that sort of set the tone for the rest of the night. Then, about midnight, the rugby came on, so the party definitely split into two halves - the people in the ballroom dancing and the people out in the reception area watching the TV! I sort of wandered in and out between the two for a while, at least until the Ireland v England game came on. By that stage, most of the people had left, and all that were left were the "die-hards" - the die-hard dancers in one room and the die-hard drinkers and rugger fans in the other! :-)

the band wrapped up about 1ish, ad most pple left then. After the game ended, everyone else cleared out, and a few of us headed off to try to find liveliness and drink somewhere else, but at 4am there was a shortage of both!

Weather!

This is crazy. On saturday it was snowing here, and today it's 20 degrees outside! What the hell?

It's official...

Well, after a few days of arguing with the estate agent and the landlord about getting the keys to my letterbox, I was finally able to get in and get my invitation to the official embassy do tomorrow night. Now all I have to do is to figure out what to wear........

how to count in chinese

I found this one when I was looking for something else a while back, it's something I learned soon after i got here:how to count to ten in chinese on one hand. Is a fair bit different to our one!



According to my chinese teacher, one of her students went into McDonalds and was trying to get two burgers, so he held up his thumb & index finger to show he wanted two, just like he'd do at home in the US. Well, you can see from above how many he actually got.... :-)

Irish Film Night

Well, our paddy's day celebrations started here last night. There was an "Irish film night" set up by a bunch of the Irish lads here. I'm not sure why, but they picked some place out in the ass-end of nowhere to have it - was a film center in an industrial estate, which during the day is supposed to be a lively arty hippy type place but at night is just bleak.

The main flick was your typical irish film - depressing. It was the one from (I think) last year about two guys in a whelchair - back home it was called "Inside I'm Dancing", but here the name was "Rory O'Shea was here" (for some reason). I'm not going to spoil it but don't expect a happy ending. There was one short flick tho which was good, called "Yu Ming is ainm dom", about a Chinese guy who decides to move to Ireland. Before he comes over, he reads that the official language of Ireland is Irish, so he goes and learns Irish. Then he arrives here and realises that everyone speaks english!

Was short but pretty funny, but the funniest part of it (for me anyway) is that at the end he's supposed to be heading to Connemara on a bus (I don't thnk I'm putting in a big huge plot spoiler here anyway...). Thing is, you see two shots of him heading down the "west of ireland" coastline, but they used Bonmahon, in Waterford, where I'm from! Small world eh? I'm trying to find some pictures to prove it to the lads here but there isn't any good enough shots up on the copper coast website of the locations they used.

Anyway, because I was the only one there flying the colours (had me rugby jersey on from Cardiff last year), I had to step in for quite a few of the photos for the event. So, I should be appearing up on IrishBeijing.org any day now.

I'm feeling a tad delicate after it tho, as there were only 20 ppl at it and they had a whole keg of Guinness which had to be drunk on the night. I'm not sure was my crap morning because of the Guinness (which I'd never drink at home), or the dodgy fish & chips we went for after, but for a while I was talking to God on the Big White telephone. I wouldn't mind but I had a huge big meeting with all of my bosses on the status of my current project (as in, the reason I'm over here) this morning. Ah well, I managed to get through it anyway (just about). Roll on the next event!

Under Construction

I always make fun of my mother whenever she goes on holidays for her famous remark on the Eiffel Tower: we I asked her after she came back from Paris what she thought of it, she replied that it was nice but "it'll be even better when they finish it off and take down all the scaffolding" :-) Well, these days you could pretty much say the same thing about Beijing. Seems most of the city is under construction, either building new stuff or repairing old stuff for the 2008 Olympics. If you go somewhere touristy, Chances are part of it will be fenced off and covered in scaffolding, like the pagoda at the top of the hill in Jingshang park, the Arrow Tower in Tian'anmen, the main hall in the Forbidden City, or the Hall of Prayer in Tiantan park.

Yesterday took the cake tho in terms of having things fenced off. I decided to go up and take a look at Beihai lake, just to the northwest of the Forbidden City. So, I got off the metro at tiananamen west, walked the half an hour or so up Nanchangjie (did I mention before that beijing is BIG?), paid my ¥5 to go into the park, and then discovered as soon as I got across the bridge onto Jade Island that 3/4 of it is fenced off and under construction! I wouldn't mind but it's the 3/4 that has all of the interesting stuff on it, like the Dagobah Temple and the Hall of Ripples! So, all that was left to me was a nice leisurely walk around the lake to see the Five Dragon pavilions or the Hall of Celestial Kings, but that was about a 1km walk and from a distance I could see hints of scaffolding on them too, so I gave it up as a bad job and went shopping down in Dazhalan Hutong instead!

So, if you're coming to beijing on holidays and want to see everything there is to see, I'd almost suggest waiting until September 2008 to come. By then everything will be all ship-shape, the olympics will be over and the prices of everything should maybe be starting to come back to normal after everyone has had their fill of gouging the olympic tourists!