1) Smartphones in China:

So…you have available all major brands and operating systems, and the good thing is you can get them all unlocked, though that’s less of a positive nowadays since the States are making providers do so themselves. Symbian S60 is out of date, and they’re not going to update it anytime soon, and I’d rather not dump a wad of cash on dying technology. Windows Mobile 6.5 is out of date, and Windows Phone 7 is slated for the end of the year. Again, no reason to dump a wad of cash on something out of date that won’t get updated. That leaves Android and Apple. Both very good platforms, just a question of what we need right? Right, the point is, we bought a smartphone for Maria so that she can keep track of her email and calendar while at school because they don’t have free internet on campus, which is another point of griping to come to later…First, China SUCKS! Ok, now that that’s out of the way, it’s because there’s no such thing as a non-grey market phone. It’s because in China technically WiFi is illegal…China has their own proprietary “secured” wireless technology called WAPI, and they had petitioned the IEEE to adopt it as a full on wireless platform, but since China refused to let the IEEE people examine the WAPI protocol under the pretense that it’ll compromise its security, they adopted 802.11i, I think? Whatever. So all those fancy phone that have wireless on them, don’t, in China, and if they do, they need to run unofficial software and firmware. I bought a Motorola Milestone (Droid in the States), and found out they had some “itfunzterminatorIIeclairmod” firmware installed that just sucked. It was laggy, nothing worked, and it ran the battery quick as hell. When I went back to the store to ask what this was, it turns out that all Android phones in China have this installed. So I asked if Apple phones ran proper software, and apparently it doesn’t either! Now this is all changing, so it’s not that big of a deal per se, it’s just inconvenient at this moment, seeing as how I’m not running a custom built ROM on Maria’s phone and there’s no good way around it. But as I said, it’s being fixed…because WiFi is just so prevalent in this country, I don’t know of a single WAPI hotspot…An unexpected benefit of this though is that I’m not well versed in flashing Android phones and installing 3rd party ROMS, and I can run 2.2, though it’s not released yet.

2) No wireless on campus:

This one’s gonna be short and to the point. There’s no free wireless internet on Tsinghua’s campus. Anywhere. You can buy “limited” and “domestic” internet access for 5RMB a month, otherwise it’s by the KB for “normal” internet access. At this point, we’re using Maria’s phone as a wireless hotspot.

3) Visa woes, still:

I still don’t have my visa! I’m running out of time and entries. At the moment, I don’t have a single entry left, and so am unable to leave the country without having to go back to the States and getting a brand new visa. I’m not sure what’s so complicated about it all, everyone else has work visas. Right now the holdup is that apparently the Chinese bureaucrat can’t add together the dates of all my previous jobs to see that yes, I’ve had more than 2 years of work experiences. It’s so unreasonable to expect them to understand that having one job from Jan. 2007 to Jan. 2008 then another from Jan. 2008 to Jan. 2009 means TWO years of experience (hypothetically here…sarcasm intended).

So, and to clarify, I, officially, have now never worked at RH and instead was working at VSM from January 2007 to September 2009, and I have a signed verification of past employment to this effect.

Bah.

Hopefully though, we’re over the major hurdles, and I’ll have my visa soon, and I won’t have to keep leaving the country, and I’ll be able to get my drivers license because I really want to take a nice long road trip again.

Related to visas, remember when I turned down a proper job because my father said he could hire me and pay me consistently? The second time I put my faith in family? I’m regretting it…

4) Chinese people’s non-existent sense of personal space:

And this wouldn’t be an issue if not for that fact that the majority of people in this country are men seeing as how “everybody wants a boy” and what not. I mean, I wouldn’t mind people not having a sense of personal space if they were all decently attractive Chinese girls…anywho though…it’s been grating more and more lately, and is just making me very uncomfortable, especially on the subways. Rushhours in this country are insane. There are attendants on the platforms shouting into blow horns to “use all your strength to squeeze into the train,” and they’ll give you a helpful shove as well, and are half a step from literally pushing you on top of the other passengers to occupy the headroom that’s “wasted.” But it’s probably a cultural thing, how these people were raised, but they’re very touchy feely, people of the same sex that is, which is also just weird, but there’s plenty of room on the train even or the platform and for some reason they still have to brush up against me and where I’m standing, though there’s plenty of room for them not to, and it’s getting harder and harder to restrain this seething desire in me to elbow them really, really, really hard, and pretend it was due to the rocking of the train or something. I’ve been cursing a lot lately under my breath as a more reasonable outlet, that’s what’s kind of nice about a country where people don’t really speak the language you’re cursing in. But the point is, they should just stop touching me!

5) Still sick:

Hmmm…I’m kind of tired now. The reason I was awake in the first place was because we’re still sick and Maria had a coughing fit and woke the 2 of us up. We had slept for just about an hour and a half, which unfortunately counts as a nap for me, and so I think messed up my sleeping a bit so I couldn’t fall back asleep. But that was a couple of hours ago now also, and I’m feeling it again, which is good because we have a early day tomorrow, and I think the simple monotony of typing and writing is having a soothing effect on me.

6) Non-complaints:

On a completely non-complaining note, we’ve been in China for 1 whole year! Happy Anniversary to us! We’re going to celebrate this weekend :)

We managed to get through a Mid Autumn Festival (when the Chinese people all eat moon cakes) without eating a single moon cake! (they’re kind of gross, especially the new flavors like Oriole or meat…)

The IFC also had its first ever Gala Evening on September 11th. Inauspicious day I know, but it doesn’t seem to have made much of a difference in this country. It took place at Capital M Beijing, a very lovely restaurant at Qianmen actually. I was surprised by how fancy it was on the inside, and it had a huge patio with wonderful views of the gates and the Forbidden City. Perfect on a warm summer evening actually, very comfortable. The food looked good, though we didn’t actually eat any. I was there as a volunteer for the IFC, helping coordinate the evening, handle registrations, payments, attendee corralling, and singing even. We sang 3 songs between courses, to general appreciation. Either way, this just means that it was a very long and tiring day, but still nice! We’re thinking of heading on back to the restaurant at some point, get a nice, fancy dinner. Or apparently they have a lovely Sunday brunch special on the patio, which sounded like fun also. Another member of the IFC, Amanda, suggested it, because the price is like a quarter of the normal dinner prices, but the food is still good, and there are champagne cocktails.

Otherwise, my father has succeeded in selling off the rest of his shares in the restaurant, 25% of which the sales revenue goes to Maria, at some point, which will be great. I have a job offer jointly from FTC/Matrix, my father and cousin’s, respectively, companies, though they haven’t paid me anything, and have kinda gone silent as far as work for me goes. I was supposed to go on down south a bit to put up some wireless sensor network thingie, work on some remote medicine stuff, etc., but apparently there’s been some miscommunication between the multiple parties and what responsibilities were meant to be delegated, and I kind of feel like I’m left out in the blue with nothing to do, and maybe nothing coming to me. I was supposed to be paid already, and again at the beginning of October. I even turned down yet another job offer from another company because of this, and it’ll actually really piss me off if I don’t get paid. I made this mistake once, turning down a job for the job at the restaurant, and this is the second time I’ve turned down a job for some family opportunity and if it doesn’t work out well, huh, I guess that’ll just suck, short answer, huh?

Either way, it does feel like things are coming together, school, relationship, job, apartments, visa, etc., which is absolutely great actually. It’s taken a bit, but maybe it’ll start working out soon.

I also hadn’t blogged in a while, which is mostly the point of this entry. We’ve been sick, that’s all, and very, very busy. But as I look at the last post date, it hasn’t actually been that long somehow, just like, a little over a week. I wonder if it’s really the fact that being sick, being unable to sleep, being generically uncomfortable, has just made the time drag. Though we had a good time last week, hanging out together, sick, at home, watching movies and TV. I guess this week’s a bit different now, and everything feels more, specific in how they bother me, like the sickness, the lack of commitment from my “job,” because Maria’s started classes and is much busier during the day, and it would be great if I had things to do during the day as well as I had planned on it, but well, I’ve already written about how annoyed I am at my family, and I guess I may get even more annoyed at them…what does it take to have a steady job eh?

But the “as promised” bit is that at some point I mentioned I’d consolidate into a separate MP3 player all the songs I recorded for her while she was away, and I have. I mucked around in WordPress, though about writing a custom plugin to generate the XML playlist file, or forcibly access and muck around in the MySQL, but both solutions seemed, complicated. Instead I’m using the built in WordPress functions to grab the data, format it properly, then just copy and paste it into a static playlist file. [shrugs] Not nearly as elegant, but sufficient and simple, and it’s even more important as I just realized my “Maria in NYC Music Project” posts don’t actually say what the song title is that I recorded for the day so there’s no easy way to browse, but it’s up now, the new MP3 player that is, and that’s the salient point of this post, so I’m going to go back to hacking up a lung and not being able to sleep.

(Weather)
It was like this when I was in New York; as the seasons noticeably change, I would get sick. This meant once when the summer months ended and winter began, and again when winter ends and it starts to warm. I probably got lucky the year and a half or so I was last in LA because there are no noticeable season changes there. But here, in Beijing, wow; it was quite warm when we first arrived, then all of a sudden, snow! Photos to follow incidentally. It’s been like that since the end of the month. It’s actually quite appropriate really, as November began, so did winter.

(Sick)
But I don’t like being sick. It throws off my sleeping schedule because I just sleep when I’m tired, and that happens at random intervals during the day. Other times I just can’t sleep because of the symptoms, like now. And in general, I’m just completely sapped of energy. I do think I’m getting better though. One of the good things about China is that most drugs are over the counter, including antibiotics. I’m taking those, and some other random Chinese medicine, to good general effect.

(Maria Runs)
Maria’s been getting more and more adventurous in her running lately. We’ve uploaded maps of her runs for anyone who’s interested.

(IFC)
I auditioned for and successfully got in to the Beijing International Festival Chorus! I was actually very nervous for some reason. I’m actually always nervous during auditions, never so during rehearsals or performances, but something about auditions rattles me. It looks pretty interesting, and the venue that they perform in is quite grand. They’re also very English which I find very amusing. The first rehearsal is tomorrow and though I am sick, I doubt I’m contagious, and I’d very much like to get back into the swing of things. Part of why I may have been nervous as Maria points out is that it’s been over a year and a half since I last sang. A pity really. I also hope to join their smaller group, the International Festival Chamber Choir. I don’t know much about hem yet though, but it seems like an added opportunity to sing and perform, which is always good.

(Updates)
As far as general updates go, I’ve been obviously a little bit absent from the renovation work going on at Connections Bar and Grill. Incidentally, the IFC people had heard of my restaurant! A testament to our current marketing scheme! I foresee great things in the future; this looks to be the start of a beautiful friendship! The schedule is still set though; we will open in one week. Next week will be the all important perfecting of our recipes, our new supply lines, and the hiring of new employees. As my father put it, I missed some of the craziness this week, but there’s plenty more next week, and it’ll all be mine. Yay. [insert sarcasm tag] I keep going over and over the operations of the restaurant in my mind, and it scares me.

You see, unlike in the States, where restaurant layouts make sense, apparently in China, regulations prohibit such things as a large open kitchen where one person can have easy access to all the supplies, utensils, plates, and cooking. You need a separate room, with its own wall separating it, for your dish washing and your produce preparation. This means that for one person to operate the kitchen in its entirety is for most intents and purposes impossible. That one cook will have to go to the “salad prep” room to get the produce ready, then go to the kitchen to cook everything, then go to the “dish washing” room to get the necessary plates before putting it all together. Apparently it’s a hygiene regulation.

So to get around this, I’m thinking we’ll keep the separate rooms because we have to, but just not use them. It just means there’s a lot of pressure on the cook, a.k.a. me, to make sure all the prep is done in the mornings and MOVED into the kitchen so that I won’t have to keep running back and forth between quite distant places…I’m thinking, down the line, once the restaurant is highly successful, a complete and utter overhaul of the kitchen will be needed. We’ll speak of this when the time is appropriate.

As far as renovations go at my apartment, I think we’ve hit a snag. Apparently it’s out of my hands, as it should since these are my mother’s renovations, but I think they’re doing it wrong. The plan was to rebuild the sun-room, this nice, enclosed patio type space on the second floor. There was some water damage because the roof was leaking, so they were supposed to tear it all apart, and redo it. Well the tearing apart went fine, but it looks like they’re walling up the windows! They’re just turning it into…a room. I doubt that’s what my mother had in mind. The problem with informing her is that this construction is already way behind schedule; they were supposed to be done by November 1st. And now if it looks like they’re doing it all wrong and will have to do it again but correctly, it’s just going to take even longer, and I just can’t wait for the day where I won’t have to worry about construction workers trampling through my home!

I think that’s all for now…I’m going to sort out some beautiful photos of Beijing in the snow and upload them next.