Ready for a break

In less than two weeks, we will be heading back to the US for the summer. We'll all be there for about 5 weeks, getting our fill of fast food, seeing friends and family (and many gambling tables?), refilling our medicine cabinet and playing golf for less than $120 a round.

It's definitely time for a break to get back to the US culture for a bit. The way of life here is wearing on me. I'm starting to get more depressed and having less fun. There are many little things that I am getting sick and tired of here........

I'm getting sick and tired of:
- our apartment (pt.1). It is 90% Chinese, and there are no Western boys above the age of 5. So Freddie and Warren don't have any friends here in the complex. On the random days off, they stay at home, play video games, read for a bit and fight with each other. We have to organize sessions to get together with their friends. It's not how I envision the boys growing up.
- our apartment, pt. 2. I hate getting woken up at 4 am by some college student screaming on the riverwalk outside.
- the cockroach season that never ends
- the swimming pool here with the random rules. The pool closes from 11:30 to 3:30 every day - because it is "too hot at the pool". Also, they tell us we can't swim when it just finished raining, when the week before, they would have let us swim in lightning and thunder.
- random answers, in general. Our piano teacher called us to say she will be late for the lesson (on Sat afternoon, when we have plans Sat night) because "it's raining too hard". Huh?
- elevator etiquette, or lack thereof. If you are in the elevator trying to get out at your floor, look out first -since the crowd is coming in. I'm starting to barrel people over now getting out - maybe that will teach them to wait before entering the elevator
- the car situation. We are having issues with our driver - and that just makes it a nuisance for everyone.
- the constant planning every day for transportation. I can't just leave work, drive home, pick up Martin and go to the doctor. Doesn't work like that.
- our apartment, pt 3. The regular doorman ALWAYS tries to strike up a conversation with me ..... when he knows damn well I can't understand anything he says. And I think he is hitting on Janice.....
- not being able to watch sporting events live with the kids. I'm getting depressed at this. We can't watch the Masters together, or a baseball game, or root against LeBron together...... We will be going to at least 3 Reds games over the summer to make up for it.
- the youth baseball league. I am the coach of both teams - and it's painful. I can't communicate with 20% of the kids. 20% of the other kids will show up 30 minutes late (for a 1 hour game). I have to explain to parents why their kids can't just step on third when a ground ball is hit when runners are on 1st and 2nd. Kids backing away from pop flies - at AGE 11. Kids wandering off the base after reaching the base safely - then get tagged out. I expect this at T-ball, not in 8-9 or 10-12.
- the caddies at the golf course. The next caddie to speak - as I am about to bring the putter back- and say "uphill" will get my Odyssey shoved down his/her throat. (I do kind of appreciate the bluntness, however. I hit a bad shot; I look hopefully at the caddie. "Is it OK?" The response: "No. OB." )
- Martin's skin, which looks like he has "leg measles" because of all the mosquito bites. I expect this to clear up after being in the US for 3 days.
- our apartment, pt 4. I hate the closeness of apartment living. I hate it. The TV can be heard everywhere. After being in a house since 1996 (wow), living 2 years in an apartment is hell.  And I really don't like the fact that the boys don't have their own room.

There's a lot of good things about living over here. Work is good and busy. As many of you can guess, I'd rather be here than in Cincinnati right now from a career environment standpoint.

But the newness has worn off. The first 4-6 months were horrible with the transition (mushrooms, anyone?). The next 9-12 months were an adventure - and for the most part, was fun. Now - it's a drag, a chore.

I know many of you are thinking "suck it up - stop trying to live the American life in China and live like a true Chinese person". Well, I did my time, and it was fun/entertaining for a while. But I'm done with it.

When we come back here after the summer, we will be moving within the city to an expat compound where we will have a house. A four bedroom house. We will be a little farther from work, yes. But there will be western kids for the boys to run around with, some privacy, some space, and people who speak English. Yes, a good bit of suburbia in China. And you know what? I'm not guilty about it at all. I - we - deserve it.

Golfing is illegal in parks

Warren's third grade class is doing a study on "Work and Leisure" - how people spend their time working and how they spend it relaxing. I was going to go into the class and show them how I relax now - by playing on my iPhone for 45 minutes straight - but I decided against it.

I opted instead to take the kids golfing. There is a park across the street from the school - and there was an area about 30 yards wide by 80-90 yards long, unblocked by trees, that would be an ideal mini driving range.

At 8:20 in the morning, the teacher, 20 3rd graders, and I headed over to the park with some kids clubs and 30-odd real golf balls.

I split them up in groups of 5; the first five would come up, hit 5 balls, then run out and collect them for the next group of 5, and so on. A perfect way to spend 50 minutes or so!

(I decided to kick things off with a Bob Barker-like inspiration swing. See, kids, here is how it's done. I wanted to impress them with my 60 degree wedge and hitting a high, full wedge that landed softly on the ground 75 yards away. I would get so many ooohs and aaaahs.......

....alas, it rained the night before, and I was wearing sandals, not my golf shoes. On the downswing, my right foot slipped, and I made contact with the middle of the golf ball - a pure skull. The ball went 110 yards on a low line......the kids, of course, were still impressed.)

The first group of kids finished hitting their balls when a 50 year old Chinese man came up to me and started talking to me very seriously in Mandarin. I understood nothing, so I did the next best thing. I called the teacher.

She came over - and her Mandarin was no better. "I don't know what he is saying ,either". Deep down, I kind of knew, but I could play the dumb foreigner for a while.

Then a student in the class started to translate. "He said that they will be working on the grass later today - and so he needs you to be off the grass for that work".

Um, ok. We told him "10 minutes" - and after about 45 more seconds of discussion, he was fine with hat.

The second group of kids started hitting - and we barely got into that session when another man, a bit older, came running over. He was now yelling - again, in Mandarin.

"Gaylene! Come back over here!" The teacher and the 9 year old translator joined us.

"He wants us to leave now. You can not do this at the park. You are hurting the grass. " This man seemed to be the supervisor of the first guy that approached us. What's this guy's title, the "Superintendent of the Park"? If so, then what is the first guy's job?

5 more minutes? I asked.

The man yelled even more. "No, we have to leave now, He says you are killing the grass".

Well, not wanting to cause any more of a scene, we packed up and left. They stared at us until we crossed the street heading back to the school.

"The Whitest person in Guangzhou"

We were invited to a theme party this weekend - a "rock star" birthday party where we were encourraged to dress up as rock stars. As all of you probably know, I have zero hard-rocker gear, and I can't really pass as a hippie.....

....so, I found some odds and ends around here and the local markets - Martin's NY Knicks hat, some awful sunglasses and a 35 RMB chain - and tried to pull off the Vanilla Ice look.

As my friend Scott said, "only the whitest person in Guangzhou could pull that off - and it looks like you did!" I'll take that as a compliment. (although maybe white rappers don't actually smile....).   It's too bad you can't see the high tops I was wearing (or Janice's leggings).....

Americans = Jon Arbuckle?

The offices at work are all cubiucles - no one has a "personal" office. All of P&G has gone to cubicles for some time now. However, there is a lack of "huddle rooms" in the office at Guangzhou. Many people hog the huddle rooms for any conference calls they are on - and there is a serious shortage of the huddle rooms availability throughout the week.

The site facility owners have determined that a key root cause for the shortage is that many people are using it by themselves for their call; they will tie up a room for just one person. They want to discourage this behavior - so politce notices have been appearing in each room.

Here is the notice. I always get a kick out of the illustration of the guys - it looks like they found a copy of "Garfield" and think that all Americans look like Garfield's owner. The only way you can tell the characters apart is by the color of their shirt.

I love the first panel - what exactly is the guy in green looking at?

T-shirts from this week

Actual T-shirts on the natives that I saw this week:

------------------------------
"Enjoy Summer in Miami"
-----------------------
(for Steve):
"Don't be mad at me
When I'm mad at you"
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"Awesome
Want
Bizarre
Must!"
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(seen on a 50 year old woman):
"No time to rest
Dance all night!"

Scaring the help

I stayed home in the morning on Tuesday ( Mon night US time) to watch the Caps-Rangers game 5. I missed Game 3 (the 3 OT game) but saw most of game 4. I decided to treat myself and play hooky from work for 3 hours to watch the pivotal game 5 starting at 7:30 in the morning.

Our nanny (called "ayi" in China) comes around 7:30 - so she arrived just before tipoff. She, of course, has no experience with me watching sports, since all the NFL games are on in the very early morning.

The Rangers first goal in the first period was cause from some (but not too many) loud obscenities. She was in the other room and seemed to hide in there for a while.

Then the Caps scored to tie it - and then take the lead. Yes, there was dancing and whooping it up. At that point, I think she figured out she needed to stay away from me.

I can only imagine what she thought when the Rangers scored the tying goal with 06.6 left.

I left for work after that - I didn't need to see the overtime.

I will be golfing on Sunday morning, and will try to catch the replay of game 7 later that afternoon. No live updates please!

It's Friday Math time!

It's time for some math exercises! For our class today, we will use Chinese real estate prices. This is to give you an idea of the real estate costs here in Guangzhou.

Here is a picture of the outside of a real estate agency. It looks like a big punch-a-bunch board from "Price Is Right". Each paper is one property. The units are in square meters and in RMB. The symbol next to the red number is "wan", and represents 10,000.

So, let's take a look at the first column,second row. It says
183 m2
580 wan

So that's 183 m2, and there are about 10 sq ft in a sq meter. 1830 sq foot.
580 wan = 580*10000 RMB = 5.8 million RMB, and at 6.3 RMB per $1, that's about $920,000.

You can see how much 100 sq meter apartments go for here.

But how much to rent? Well, here are some prices for monthly rentals.

The prices in the left and center section here are the rental prices.
So - in the center section, bottom left, you see:

35 m2
2300

That's a rental for a 350 sq ft apartment for about $375/month.

The language barrier

One unexpected barrier - or, I guess, an inconveinence - is the language barrier at work. It's not my lack of speaking Mandarin that's the problem.....well, yes, it is a problem, but that's not unexpected. It's the way the Chinese employees speak English - and how they try to speak English at work - that is an issue. And it's very subtle.

They say things that mean nothing to them but mean a whole lot to native speakers. For instance, I was trying to stress a point in a meeting that the team needs to stay on top of the machine performance shiftly. They need to make sure they analyze the reports and come up with a  daily action plan.

You need to know the shiftly efficiency. I asked in an examinatory tone: "What was it last night?"

They paused...." I think it was 82%"

I jumped on that. "You think? No....you need to know. You need to know this and take action".

"I know it!" they protested. "I think it is 82%!"

"Do you know it, or do you think it is?". That distinction was lost on them. Clearly, they thought it was the same, where the statement "think" expresses doubt, to me.

In another meeting, we were talking about tests that need to be run on the new line. I saw that the schedule said the test would be run later this afternoon.

It was 12:30, right after lunch, where we started our meeting but the technincians were still on break. I brought up the test we were planning to run.

" I see this test is in the schedule. Are we planning to run it today?"

"Yes!" was the answer.

Great.....when will we run it?

"We will run it now!" was the response.

Um, now?

"Yes, we run it now".

But the line is not running now........

"Yes, I know, we will run it today"

But when today?

"We are running it now."

BUT IT IS NOT RUNNING NOW! THE LINE IS DOWN!

The response? "What do you want us to do? The technicians are on break! They have to have lunch! That's why the line is down!"


There is no concept of "now" to them. It is perfectly acceptable for them to say, on a fall Sunday at 11 am Eastern, that the Browns are playing "now". Now, in general, means today. There is no real word for "at this instant".

It's little things like this that drive me crazy, bit by bit. Thank God we are coming back to the US in about 5 weeks......

Just my luck

Two Fridays ago, Freddie had an event at school in the late morning, so I decided to stay home until 10 and then head to his school. Lucky for me, that was a Thursday night back in the US - and it was Game 3 (I think) of the Caps-Bruins! After putting the kids on the bus at 7:30 am (7:30 pm), I got back to the apartment for faceoff....

30 minutes later, there was rumbling outside as a storm was approaching. A big storm. Black clouds surrounding 50% of the sky.

These storms that we are having this spring can be pretty intimidating. Here is a photo from our apartment at 8 in the morning.

Unfortunately, this storm knocked out our satellite reception for 1 1/2 hours, and I missed most of the first and second period. So my plan to watch the game was foiled......

Random Pictures

Some random pictures to make your day.....

1. A sign on the golf course on the edge of the rough. Careful! You don't want the McArctic Blast to get you!

2. There's water you drink at home....but when you need to get down to business, you need business water. (Love the logo.......it's like having a PBR at work!)

3. This is a picture from an airport store in the Shanghai Airport. The Chinese love their cigarettes....I heard that the state-run cigarette industry has bigger sales that Wal-Mart does worldwide. Anyway, click to get a closer look at the name of this airport store........I wish the US Airports just gave up the charade and are as honest as the Chinese Airports.....