Autocratic No?

It seems like in a place where the grasp of the English language is weak, people tend to reply with "Received with thanks" more often. Many people I know seem to snigger at this but it always still remains like a private joke. No one ever tells the offending party that "received with thanks" or its more polite and emphatic variant "well received with many thanks" is just not cool. My secretary uses the former more. I asked her what she means what she sends messages like that. She said this is how they're taught. I finally know the origination of such a blasphemy of non-committal replies. I know her that I dont want her to reply me in such a manner in future. Her replies to me has to mean something and/or less robotic like "Got it. Thank you." or "I'll look into it." or "I'll act on it." Im such a tyrant sometimes.

UGG!

Shipped these babies to Singapore and picked them up when i was home. Saved S$100 doing that, rather than buying in Shanghai. So comfy and so warm. Very song.

Rural Living

Sometimes it's true that China is still a rural and largely agricultural country. I got these as gifts from my badminton kaki. He's Singaporean. Shandong pears and eggs and gingko nuts. Haha. Weird.

Stacked

Im going to pay the first month rent and two months deposit for the apartment and also sign the contract today. I hope nothing screws up. I guess it's true that most things here are done by cash. So I had to withdraw stacks and stacks of money. This is only half with the RMB20,000 limit per day. It scares me to carry so much money around.

Good Review

This blog took a short break last week and I didnt manage to post about a follow up from the Bad Review entry.

After the bad review I had with one of my team members, I was expecting a much easier time with the other. This was the one whom I wanted to promote. There was so much paperwork to do that my recommendation to promote hasnt been approved so I couldnt tell him. Towards the end of his review, he pulled out a document. A document that listed out his accomplishments for 2012, including how much revenue and potential income and also how much he expects to bring in in 2013. Wow! I was impressed! I really was! Here was two diametrically different Chinese people in my team. All i could tell him was, leave it in my hands.

Dont Want to Miss a Thing

I could stay awake just to hear you breathing
Watch you smile while you are sleeping
While you're far away and dreaming
I could spend my life in this sweet surrender
I could stay lost in this moment forever
Where every moment spent with you is a moment I treasure

Don't want to close my eyes
I don't want to fall asleep
Cause I'd miss you babe
And I don't want to miss a thing
Cause even when I dream of you
The sweetest dream will never do
I'd still miss you babe
And I don't want to miss a thing

Lying close to you feeling your heart beating
And I'm wondering what you're dreaming
Wondering if it's me you're seeing
Then I kiss your eyes
And thank God we're together
I just want to stay with you in this moment forever
Forever and ever

I don't want to close my eyes
I don't want to fall asleep
Cause I'd miss you babe
And I don't want to miss a thing
Cause even when I dream of you
The sweetest dream will never do
I'd still miss you babe
And I don't want to miss a thing

I don't want to miss one smile
I don't want to miss one kiss
I just want to be with you
Right here with you, just like this
I just want to hold you close
Feel your heart so close to mine
And just stay here in this moment
For all the rest of time Yeah yeah yeah

I don't want to close my eyes
I don't want to fall asleep
Cause I'd miss you babe
And I don't want to miss a thing
Cause even when I dream of you
The sweetest dream will never do
I'd still miss you babe
And I don't want to miss a thing

I Don't want to close my eyes
I don't want to fall asleep
Cause I'd miss you babe
And I don't want to miss a thing
Cause even when I dream of you
The sweetest dream will never do
I'd still miss you babe
And I don't want to miss a thing

Don't want to close my eyes
I don't want to fall asleep
And I don't want to miss a thing

What's Missing?

Sometimes you dont know what you're missing until you get it back. Then it hits you like a heavy object hitting you.

Coming back home the other day and smelling how new my house is just reminded me how much I miss it. How big it is and how clean it is and how my light switches are all beside my bed.

The air's much fresher too, but surprisingly I dont miss the food in Singapore that much. Odd.

Bad Review

Me and my boss gave one of my team members a bad review.

She's so bad that I really wish I can sack her. I don’t think that it’s a realistic course of action I can take so I thought that giving her our thoughts on what we really feel and how we can help her may help improve things.

Needless to say, it was a tough review. She pushed back on our comments and went into shutdown mode. It’s ironic that one of our points was that she needed to listen more.

Damn, I knew that having a much older woman working for me would be tough.

HR

Because we have an aggressive target to meet this year, my President keeps chasing me to fill those two vacancies in my team. It’s funny cos in my previous company, I’ve been clamouring to add people but we didn’t have the budget and now I'm being pushed to hire.

There’s so much paper work to fill to justify the positions it’s not even funny.

In any case, I managed to find one candidate from Linkedin and thought she was pretty ok. Hopefully she passes muster.

Bread Talk

I now think that taking pictures of food before you eat it is rather lame but I thought that this carrot soaked bread thingy looks rather interesting.

There are a lot of good restaurants in Shanghai.  This one is called Mr and Mrs Bund. Hopefully we wont run out of trying them all.

People People Everywhere

During weekends, it’s just impossible to find a place that isn’t crowded with people.

This is a scene from this normal looking shop that sold food.

There’s nothing much on sale but everyone’s just packed in like a Robinson’s sale!

 

Sick

Someone was sick from the minus 20 degrees cold in Beijing. Cough and runny nose. I was fine all the way till she went back.

Then I spent 4 hours sitting beside my colleague in a meeting who was coughing and wheezing all the way.

Now Im sick. Sore throat and cough and fever.

It sucks to have a fever in the winter. I dont know if I feel cold from the weather or the fever.

Break?

I havent been blogging partly because I have been crazy busy recently, partly also because somebody verified that people havent been talking to me to find out how I have been because they can read it from my blog.

That's kinda sad.

Brrr

Sign of the times..Brrr..

Entrepeneurs

A lot has been said about China being messy and unregulated.

A lot of this is true. But at the same time, the Chinese are good at finding shortcuts to get their way.

This was again evidenced when i saw this outside the Apple Store in Beijing. I think this was the heavily publicized one when it opened recently.



A whole line of them are standing outside the Apple shop, selling screen protectors, iphone covers, ipad covers. One of them was even holding a micro-SIM card cutter.

Beijing Adventure

Because I had to go to Shenyang for a work trip, Someone decided to go to Beijing for a short trip to meet her friends. I also swung by Beijing after Shenyang to spend the weekend there.

Beijing is an odd place to consider for a stop-over weekend. But we also spent a short stopover a Beijing in Dec 2009, almost three years to the day.

Beijing has lots of good food, decent shopping and it was minus 20 degrees there. That was pretty crazy.

But all that was nothing compared to the ending part which i was looking forward to. We decided to take the high-speed rail from Beijing to Shanghai just for the experience. It's a five-hour journey but if you factor the one-hour journey to the airport, 1.5 hour wait at the airport, two-hour flight, then one more hour from Shanghai airport to home, the train journey isnt that long.

In any case, we decided not to do second class, not to do first class, but to go for business class. Cost us S$340 per person for a one-way trip but it was pretty fun!



Flat bed, food was provided, excellent service.

VROOOM!

海底捞

A lot has been said of the bad service in China that it's getting a little stale.

Therefore I had some skepticism when i heard about 海底捞 - a hotpot place with a much vaunted service.

We decided to try it one cold winter night.

Ok, there was a line of 10 pairs at 5:30pm on a weekday night at this branch which is in the middle of nowhere.

While you're waiting, they have seats and tables and they serve you snacks and drinks and paper to fold origami and chess sets too.

Once in, there were two dedicated servers serving about five tables. Not a bad ratio. They smiled a lot, which was a good, but yet not extraordinary thing.

The weird thing happened when during the middle of the meal, one of the two asked us if we wanted to drink the soup. When we said yes (i said "Duh" in my head), she went to a nearby cupboard with two bowls, threw in some spring onions and minced meat, came back to our table and scooped the soup for us. WEIRD! It's like some secret ingredient! She only did it once!

A while later, the other one came over, and started scooping off the excess broth and oil from the soup! Did you read what i  just said? The server came regularly to scoop the excess broth!! Amazing.

Someone ordered noodles and I ordered rice. They said noodles will be served immediately when we wanted it. When we indicated so, a different server came up to us holding a ball of dough and flour in his hand and immediately started to 拉the面on the spot!! He was pulling and twirling like making a pizza and turning and swirling like a dancer. It was a little weird to see him put so much effort in the cramped space for a S$1.20 noodle. But he did. I wanted to clap but didnt for fear people knew i was a foreigner.

About three quarters through, they saw us (no idea why so late) dipping and holding down the beef. They brought us a little cage-like thingy that can soak the beef.



Someone's only gripe was that this came so late. *Mumble*

The odd thing is they saw that we were some young couple and made a special dish for us and asked us to guess the name of the dish:



情侣菜. That's the name of the dish. Not very creative I know.

And they charged me for it. I cant remember if it was RMB1 or S$1. That was odd.

I later went online to read some reviews on this chain of restaurants. Everyone loves the service. Someone even said they didnt dare go back. 受宠若惊it seemed.

Chopsticks

Another Jap restaurant we went to gave us options for chopsticks. The lengths restaurants go to in order to make you feel special. I actually thought can keep the chopsticks. I was wrong.

But since I have been in a tourist mood, I took a picture:

Receipts

Some people have asked me why my secretary does my personal receipts as mentioned in my "Lazy Japs" post.

When i negotiated the package for my job, they told me that all unused housing allowance (i.e. i rent a place at a cheaper price than my housing allowance) will go to my salary, of which I will be taxed 40%. I resigned myself to getting less of my housing allowance because of the tax or just spend more on rental.

But after i came here, I found out that i can actually claim all my personal expenses as housing allowance to reduce my tax burden.

All i need to do is to give all my receipts to my secretary every month.

Kio dio!

Peppered

Sometimes I think we use different phrases differently as the Chinese or do they simply have bad attitude.

We asked for pepper at this fancy restaurant the other day. It's fancy and popular cos although it costs us S$100 for just two of us, the place was packed at 5:30pm on a Thursday night.

Well, we asked for pepper and we sure got it:

Internet Internet Everywhere Internet

I bought this gadget today. It is a Huawei device that allows you to slot a SIM card in there to create a wireless hotspot on the go. There's probably a shorter name for such a device than what I just described.



Sometimes I wonder if there's too much internet in my life.

But sometimes it's agonising when you need to send an email with an attachment but you just cant do it with a Blackberry.

There is a USB option which is a stick where i can stick my SIM card and then stick it into the USB port of my later. But then my ipad how? So i opted for the wireless one so that when Im on the train, I can surf using my laptop and ipad all at the same time.