Chinese New Year, and Updates from the Special Economic Zone

So last week was Chinese New Year. Most companies give their employees 1+ weeks off for the holiday, here at Shinerich we got a full week off, but were required to work the Saturday before and the Sunday after, which meant really, we were only getting 3 days off. Fair enough, but still kind of a bummer.

Interesting point on perspective--unsurprisingly, I observed the following in regard to having 2 6-day work weeks surrounding the Chinese New Year holiday: the week before New Year felt like the longest and most devastating work week ever, because we had to work that Saturday. However, I am currently (almost) halfway through this 6-day work week, and I must say, it's not nearly as bad. Now obviously that could have to do with the fact that I've just returned from holiday, and therefore should be "rejuvenated" or whatever word you want to use, but I think it's more likely to be because of working Sunday, i.e. the day before the week, as opposed to Saturday. In this sense, it's quite nice knowing that this week, at the end of Monday, my work week was 33% over (2 days worked out of 6), whereas the week before last, it was only 16.67% (1 day out of 6). Obviously, this continues today (50% done, as opposed to only 33% done week before break after Tuesday, etc.), and will continue throughout the week. Fairly interesting, the effect that perspective can have on things which are essentially completely equal.

Anyway, so Chinese New Year. Originally the plan was to just sort of bum around Shenzhen for a week and relax. Anyone that knows me at all will realize what a foolish and unrealistic plan that is for me. Consequently, I woke up Sunday (the first day of holiday) and was already quite bored by like 2:00pm. John was going to be in HK a fair bit throughout the week, so I decided to just look around at airfare throughout the afternoon, seeing if I could snag reasonably priced airfare to anywhere decent. The options were:

Manila: $247 R/T

Taipei: $260 R/T

Singapore: $350 R/T

And a few others. But those were the 3 that I was really considering. Now in a vacuum with all else equal, Taipei would probably win out that fight pretty easily. I've been to the Philippines and Singapore, and really would enjoy going to Taiwan, as I've heard it's very interesting. However, that afternoon, by sheer happenstance, I had a very pleasant trip down memory lane through a group Skype session with friends from all over the world with Lexx (Gold Coast, AU), Elliott (Brisbane, AU), AlanKey (Adelaide, AU), and Sabutai (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia). While speaking with these 4 heroes, I was told by Sabutai that he's currently also on Chinese New Year holiday in KL, and that I should come over there. As I said, I'd flown into Singapore once before, and that time I'd taken a bus up to KL from there (about 4 hours). After a bit of thought, I decided what the hell, and booked the airfare. At 5:15pm. In my apartment in Shenzhen. For a flight that was leaving at 9:20pm. From Hong Kong. Anyone with any familiarity with South China will say, well, that's a bit of a trip, Shenzhen to HK Airport. Fortunately, I live very, very nearby the border (10 minute walk), but still cutting it quite close, even given my enormous tolerance for all things ambiguous.

So I was off. Booked airfare at 5:15pm, threw some clothes into a backpack, and raced off to HKIA. Ended up getting there with a bit of time to spare before hopping onto a Tiger Airways flight to Singapore. Spent the night in Singapore Changi Airport (not for the first or last time), before heading to KL on the first bus the next morning.

Had an excellent few days with Sabutai, I met a decent number of his friends, many of whom are from the small island nation of Mauritius, noteworthy for being the most developed "Sub-Saharan African" country (I put SSA in quotes because geographically it's really not Sub-Saharan Africa, it's an island in the Indian Ocean, but eh). Having already been to KL and seen a good bit of the touristy stuff, this time around had a more local feel to it, with Sabutai showing me some of the localish restaurants/bars/etc. around the university there. Was very interesting stuff.

I headed back to Shenzhen on Friday late afternoon (via another overnight in Singapore Changi Airport) and had about a day and a half before the end of Chinese New Year holiday, which was spent basically just doing laundry and catching up on things. Overall, a very solid holiday.

At this point, I'm back in the office, though a decent percentage of the employees are either 1) still on holiday, or 2) have quit because of the New Year. Interesting to note--apparently in China, they take new year's resolutions quite seriously. That is, rarely do they just say "Oh I'm going to give up soda" or "try to lose weight", they really do resolve to improve their lives in a number of ways in each coming year. Consequently, many people quit their jobs at the New Year to try to, I guess, "start over" for the New Year (for any Chinese reading this, if I've stated that completely incorrectly, and am consequently being a cultural Philistine, I apologize. Feel free to set me straight via email, comment, or burning my house down. Either way).

But anyway! So yes, back at work, it's been slow so far this week. It seems that I'll be heading back stateside at the end of February for a trade show in Atlanta, sort of yet-to-be-seen how long I'm there for (probably about 7-10 days). After that, things will get busy here around late March/early April for the Canton Fair. The Canton Fair. The biggest convention ever. Basically, in the US, companies like True Value, Ace Hardware, and I'm sure bigger companies like Wal-Mart and Home Depot have conventions where their store owners come buy products at promotional prices. The two of these shows that I worked with my dad this past fall were both some of the bigger shows of their kind in the US, with a few thousand booths at each. The Canton Fair had nearly 57,000 booths last year. Fifty. Seven. THOUSAND?!? Completely incomprehensible (though I will comprehend it come April when I'm there, I suppose).

In other news, the company had a New Year's gala sort of thing a couple of weeks ago. They were giving away door prizes which, on the low-end, constituted home appliances such as toasters, blenders, and other assorted crap. On the high-end, 2 people won 6,000RMB (~$1,000US) each. Big range, there. Incidentally, I ended up on the very, very high end, winning a brand-new laptop. It's a good thing I didn't buy a brand new laptop like 3 months ago, otherwise this other new one would be completely useless! Also a good thing that the Windows 7 on there isn't in Chinese....also might render it somewhat less than useful. So long story short, I'm trying to sell it on a couple of different HK/SZ websites. Will hopefully keep all 3 of you readers informed on that one.

Apart from that, things continue to move along as per usual in Shenzhen. Weather has been very nice, with temperatures not dropping below 60 (but for the 5 days that I was in KL, at which time it dropped to about 45 degrees. Mind you, it was 90 in KL :-D ) At the moment the whole work visa situation still seems a bit iffy, though we'll see how that progresses as the weeks go on. Frankly, at this point I don't really care, the way I view the whole situation is as follows--either the company I'm working for is able to get me a work visa. If so, great. I will work for them for awhile. If they're so incompetent so as to not be able to arrange a work visa for me, then odds are they're simply not worth working for, due to said incompetence. So basically, I will either get a work visa and work for a company that knows what they're doing, or I don't get a work visa, and can't work for a company that I otherwise would not want to work for anyway. I think the logic is correct, so we'll see.

Some other assorted thoughts--

I recently read that the largest known star in the universe, VY Canis Majoris, has a circumference that is approximately the orbit of Saturn. To put that in perspective, it takes light about 8.5 hours to travel across this star, whereas it takes light 8 minutes to reach Earth from our sun. Mind-boggling.

I was very enamored with Singapore and (to a lesser extent in this context) Kuala Lumpur due to their diversity. To clarify--I love Hong Kong because it's diverse. But really, it's diverse to a certain point; about 90% or so of the population is Chinese, and the other 10% is EVERYTHING. However, in Singapore, it seemed about 40% Chinese, 40% Malay, 10% Indian, and 10% everything else. So rather than being dominated by one ethnicity and having a very diverse subset of their population, the entire population is quite a bit more diverse. Really cool to see, and something that I'd really failed somewhat to notice my last time there.

A sign that my lifestyle in Shenzhen is starting to become somewhat problematic in terms of mine and Scutt's tendency to shop every day: in KL, one of the noteworthy sights that Sabutai went to go look at was the Uni Qlo store in KL. In short, Uni Qlo is a Japanese department store that has a few locations in SZ, and is one of the few stores in the city that makes clothes in western sizes. Consequently, about 40% of Scutt's wardrobe, and about 25% of mine, are made up of Uni Qlo products, because we simply go there like 2-3 days a week and shop around (not always buying something, of course, but when a city is basically one big shopping mall, you're going to do a lot of shopping). Bit sad, really.

Watched a phenomenally interesting speech by Robert Sapolsky about human nature the other day (incidentally, I had one of his books as required reading for Psychology 110 my freshman year at University). Would highly recommend, the man is a brilliant scholar and an equally brilliant speaker.

Other than that, no real further musings. More to come in the next few weeks, particularly regarding the whole visa situation...that's quite important!

Rough Week, Eh?

So imagine this situation--

You're sitting in a cafe with a wonderful breeze coming off the South China Sea, getting a 30% discount on all food/drinks because they think you're a student here, typing on a brand new laptop that works fantastically, and not needing to worry about cumbersome glasses being worn. Sounds wonderful, no?

Well that's about where I am right no. But rather than having it be a grand time, it's a pretty questionable situation. The brand new laptop is being used because my old laptop (5 years old, mind you) decided to pick an inconvenient time to die on me, so I had to spend ~$1,000US on a new one. The lack of glasses comes from the fact that the other day, while swimming in the South China Sea off the beach of Tai Long Wan, my glasses fell off and were lost forever to the sea. For those who don't know me well, I am blind without my glasses. Absolutely blind. As in, right now, my laptop is about 1 foot from my face, and this page is magnified to 144%, and I still find it very, very blurry. Fortunately, I know Hong Kong better than I know Normal, Illinois (the town in which I went to University), so getting around hasn't been that hard, but my God is it devastating just not being able to see anything. Apparently, given my experiences in Asia last time with the whole injury situation, it turns out that Asia might actually hate me. Yet to be seen, I think, but that's certainly what appears to be the case. So anyway, let's recap the last week...

Left off around Halloween. Since then, there's been a good bit of applying for jobs in Hong Kong and China. I emailed the CFO of BMW Beijing at the request of the lovely Miss Madlien Schenker, who was kind enough to get me the contact information of this powerful and, incidentally, US-ian (again, hate the phrase "American") individual, who informed me that he'd be happy to pass my CV onto their hiring people, who will see if they have a position open for me. Not exactly a job offer, but I felt pretty good about going straight to the top (given that I'm looking for a job in Finance, the CFO is pretty much the top guy to talk to, I guess), and so we'll see how that goes. Interestingly, while Mercedes is tearing up Hong Kong with unbelievable growth and huge popularity among the wealthy elites, BMW is doing much, much better than them in the Mainland, so it would be a good company to work for, and Madlien has told me that she doesn't use Mandarin at all in the workplace, so my lack of Mandarin skills would not be a huge handicap. Additionally, I really like Beijing, having spent about 2 weeks there in August, so it would be a pretty great job I think, should I be fortunate enough to get my foot in the door.

I crossed the border into Shenzhen last week on Friday for an interview with Wagner Spraytech, a German company with an office in Shenzhen and factories in Ningbo and Dongguan. It was a rather interesting interview, as Wagner doesn't currently have any positions available in Shenzhen--rather it was something of a favor done by their Chinese representatives on behalf of their VP of Human Resources in the United States, who is a co-worker of a very close friend of my Dad's (is THAT all?!) Anyway, it was still definitely a worthwhile excursion, their Chinese Ops Manager was a very interesting guy, and was able to give me some useful pieces of advice on how to find a job in China, what sort of jobs I should be looking for, what sort of salary to expect, etc. So overall a pretty good day.

Douglon's Dad came to Hong Kong this past weekend, and I finally got to meet the legendary Mr. Tse himself. He took us out to a couple of meals, both of which were positively magnificent (interestingly enough, despite being a fairly unassumingly small Chinese man, Mr. Tse was able to out-eat both Douglon and I at the breakfast buffet we went to at the Shangri-La... certainly not unimpressive!) He also had some interesting insights about business in China, and was able to provide some good words of wisdom from the standpoint of a very successful Chinese businessman.

A brief and random sidenote--as mentioned, I'm currently in a cafe at HKU sitting at a small table. There are no longer any tables available, so a rather unassuming Chinese student came up and asked if she could sit at the other seat at this table. I don't think that this sort of thing would occur in the United States, rather I feel like if there are no tables available, then you simply leave the place after ordering your drink. Interesting stuff.

Anyway, now that that random tangent is done with, I have a lunch scheduled today with Loic, one of my Uncle Fred's associates here in Hong Kong. I'm hoping he will also have some insights as to how to find a job in Hong Kong/China, so we'll see how that goes. Tomorrow should be a rather deciding day, I have an interview in the morning with an English-language school in Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong, and a phone interview in the evening with Allstate Insurance for a position back home as a Financial Analyst. Had you asked me prior to my departure to China if I'd've taken that job were it offered, I'd've likely said "no" rather emphatically. However, given the devastation that has occurred to my bank account, and consequently my confidence, since arriving here, it is now a possibility. We'll have to see how the interview goes. It certainly does sound like a really awesome job, anyway.

Looks like I'll be making another trip across the border to Shenzhen in the next few days to meet with an English language school, as well as with a company that I met with in Birmingham, Alabama, in late July. Could be promising, I suppose.

And now for sort of a random thought of the day regarding false advertising--I was recently looking into possibly buying an Amazon Kindle. I was absolutely flabbergasted when I saw that it had a battery life of...2 MONTHS?!? My God, that's just amazing! However, immediately after that, I noticed there was an asterisk next to this claim. The asterisk corresponded to fine print which said "Based on 30 minutes use per day". Well what the hell is that? That's like saying "Oh, this iPod will NEVER RUN OUT OF BATTERY AT ALL, as long as you don't use it ever!" I really can't understand the benefit of doing that. Frankly, people should react in a few ways-

1) They're really unintelligent, and just don't notice the fine print. They get their Kindle, and due to their unintelligence, they probably never use it. They never realize the battery doesn't actually last 2 months. Or maybe they do, in which case they're rather upset because the battery obviously doesn't last 2 months, it lasts like 30 hours.

2) They notice the fine print, and don't really think anything of it. They think "well that's fair enough, I guess"

3) Or they're like me, and notice the fine print, get pissed off at their insulting your intelligence, and simply say "well if I was going to buy a Kindle, now there's no way I'm going to, out of pure spite".

I just don't see how saying "OH 2 MONTH BATTERY LIFE GUYS!!! (contingent on using it for 2% of your day, every day)" can be any better at making sales than just saying "yeah, the battery lasts 30 hours". It's certainly not false, or even deceptive advertising, but it's just dumb, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe I'm just too picky about things like this, who knows. Moral of the story is... READ THE FINE PRINT!!!

Anyway, that's enough ranting for now. I'll be posting sometime tomorrow or Wednesday with updates on the 2 interviews tomorrow, so until then, remember, only use your Kindle 30 minutes per day if you want the battery to last 2 MONTHS!!!!