Ski, surf and food...

I had a another good week at work... it was quite busy though but I had something to look forward to for the weekend :)

Friday night, Carolyn took me to a great Taiwanese restaurant in the Gate 8 shopping centre. The beef wok and the chicken pot we had were delicious! Lots of flavour and lots of spices! I've also finally been introduced to "bubble tea" also known as Boba Tea. It's a typical drink from Taiwan... This restaurant is very likely to become our new evening canteen as it's very tasteful and very close to the hotel.

On Saturday morning, I got up early to meet up at 7.30am with Tina and Lili who were taking me skiing for the day. We drove to Nanshan - about 1h30 from Beijing - met some other guys there and rented all the gear we needed... including clothing! Nanshan is of course a "fake snow" resort but it's the 2nd biggest around Beijing and hosts winter sports competitions! It also has a great snow park... too bad I don't do snowboarding.

Even though the resort was not that big, it was still very enjoyable for one day! Also, we've been pretty lucky as the weather was very nice all day. Clear blue sky, no wind, quite warm at some stage... a pure day of fun!

I even got a chance to pretend I was a boat crew from Deadliest Catch! Opilio crabs... fear for your life!!! More seriously, these were my rental waterproof clothes. I would certainly not have picked this colour if it had been up to me but it turned out to be very comfy and kept me warm throughout the day!

Do I have insurance??? What exactly was I thinking when I decided to go there? No idea! On top of that, this slope was marked as a "difficuit trail" - I'm not too sure if I should do it if it's "difficuit"! :) Honestly, that's probably one of the hardest slopes I ever had to ski on... very very steep, very icy, very uneven, very scary!

Feel like like skiing with me? Check this out...

On Sunday, I finally visited Gulou Drum Tower and took some pictures of the city from a higher point of view :)

If you have weak knees, don't go up these stairs! Seriously, each step was about the length of my tibia... quite a challenge to go up and down!

Traffic in Beijing is often like that... mental!

This other building is Zhonglou... also mentioned in the above link.

This is Ja'er hutong, right next to Gulou.

I then walked to HouHai to do some quick tourist shopping. I have to admit that I don't go unnoticed in Beijing. For instance, the first shop that I entered in Houhai started playing a new song "Aux Champs Elysées" as soon as I came in... I don't think that was a coincidence! The next song was another one from Joe Dassin - I might not be a big fan of his but it made me smile :) After that, I went to the lake to watch people iceskate and chairskate... the following video will help you understand what "chairskating" is...

Headed "home" before sunset and had a Japanese meal with some friends... It was a good weekend overall but my muscles are in pain!!!

Just had a brilliant weekend!

Well, my 1st real weekend in Beijing went really well!!!
On Friday night, I didn't do much as I was pretty knackered from my days in Sanya and from the trip back to the city but it was good to rest...

On Saturday night though, we all went out to celebrate Joe's birthday and took a taxi to the "Beijing Kiev" Restaurant... How typical! Basically, it defines itself as the only restaurant in Beijing serving real traditional Ukrainian food :) We ordered a bunch of stuff to eat and tried out some "Kvac" which is supposedly a typical beverage... Inna, can you confirm? I apologize in advance but I have to say, this thing was ab-so-lu-te-ly disgusting... it tastes like some kind of sweet and sour beer mixed with some kind of medicine... Yuck! At this place, the good thing is all about entertainment as they have a big group of Ukrainian opera singers walking around the room giving a great performance. Okay, it's a bit noisy at times but it's good for one night... Want to have a look?



If you dare to, you can also order a specific tune from the song list but of course, this requires some skills :)




After dinner, we took another taxi to go to "Face Bar" for some drinks... Oh yeah, let me explain - in case you haven't understood yet, you can't do much by foot so you totally rely on taxis to take you to different places.

Face Bar was great... nice venue, good atmosphere, maybe a little bit pricey though for a Beijing bar. And here we are...



As I haven't asked any of these people (yet!) if they're willing to appear on my Blog, they will remain anonymous for the moment.



That'll be the end of this story (I have to keep some to myself) though the night was quite young as we left Face Bar........... :D

On Sunday, I finally decided to get my a** out of the hotel and grab a taxi to visit something somewhere someway. I made my way to Yonghegong and visited "The Confucius Temple and Guozi Jian"


















It was very nice but also very cold as most of the things to see were outdoors :)


































After that, I walked in the neighbourhood and slowly headed to HouHai to meet my friend Pat aka Pan Long! On the way, I accidentally found "El Dorado" which means for me the street on which probably 20 music shops are located... also known as Gulou Dongdajie!

While walking, I also tried to appreciate the efforts some shops make to become accessible to tourists but hey, can anybody explain this white banner to me..?

As well, I passed by the "Gulou Drum Tower" that I will definitely come back to as it looks very interesting... Under these 2 pictures, you'll find a very blurry video of it... I know you can't see much on it...



My map had been very handy throughout the day until I reached HouHai... Couldn't find the lake, didn't know where I was, it was getting really dark, talked to Pat on the phone who told me to get into a cyclo-thingy... I was a bit apprehensive as my language skills don't allow me (yet, let's hope!) to bargain the price. Anyway, I found one, told him where I wanted to go and when we got there, what had to happen happened... He asked me for 50 Yuan for a less than 5 minutes ride which was a real rip-off! My knight in shining armour came to my rescue right on time! Pat, I owe you big time!!! :D

I spent the rest of the evening with him, met some of his friends at their bar in HouHai "La Baie des Anges" and we then had dinner in the finest Japanese restaurant I've ever been to, "Hatsune". The food there was absolutely delicious!!! Check it out...



You must wonder if I ever have Chinese food. I swear I do, every day for breakfast and lunch! :)





Blogging is quite time-consuming by the way... If you appreciate my efforts, please leave some comments!

4 days in Sanya!

Last Sunday, we took a taxi to Beijing airport to catch a plane to Haikou in Hainan (4h). We landed there around 8pm and took a bus to drive the rest of the way to Sanya (4h). This was kind of a long trip... Pretty tiring! I went to bed around 2am! The weirdest thing of all is that we went from probably 5°C to 20°C in less than 10 hours :) Kind of a shock!


View Larger Map

The programme of the week was kind of packed...

Monday
- Very quick breakfast before 8am
- Conference in the morning
- Lunch
- Picture and team building games in the afternoon
- Went for a swim right by the hotel room
- Dinner party with a great talent show
- Went for a "midnight swim" and a few drinks with the team

Tuesday
- No breakfast (woke up too late!)
- Bus trip + boat trip to Wuzhizhou island with a little walk around
- Lunch
- Bus trip to Nantian Hot Spring where we tried out different therapeutic pools and lasted only 2 minutes in the one where an army of small fish comes and eat your dead skin. It's supposedly good for you but it was too weird for me... after 2 minutes, I couldn't take it anymore!
- Bus back to a hotel where we had a nice dinner (mostly seashells)
- Went to listen to the hotel local band who played tunes going from "The Man who sold the world" by Nirvana to "Voyage voyage" by Desireless! This was so surreal!!!

Wednesday
- Breakfast
- Conference in the morning
- Lunch
- Team games on the beach
- Played a very long game of beach volley
- Dinner party with more games

Thursday
- Caught a bus at 6.30am to go to Haikou airport and fly back to Beijing via Wuhan where we had to get off the plane to get another boarding pass and come back onboard... Why? I have NOOOOOOOO idea! In Haikou airport, I caught myself close to having a nervous breakdown ... I guess I'm getting a little sick of being manhandled within crowds of people! I know that the French are known for being disorganised and undisciplined but it's nothing compared to here!!!
- Finally got back to Beijing around 5.30pm and got into a taxi that took ages to go back to the hotel :(
- Later, I renewed my experience in Carrefour and found good stuff to cook and eat... finally!

In the midst of all this, I still managed to work a little :)

After this quick summary, here are the pictures...

First week - done!

Here's a picture I forgot to upload last time. This is TsingHua Science Park's entrance by night, where the office is located...

So guys, for those of you who don't know yet... Next week (or tomorrow actually), I'm flying to Sanya for a work thing. Sanya is a "small town" located on Hainan, a "small" island in the very south of China... it's known to be the Eastern Hawai!!! The weather there at the moment is great - temperatures are over 20°C.
Considering I came here just for 3 months, I only brought winter clothes so of course, I HAD to go shopping again :) Thank god I already brought my bathing suit cause I knew there was a swimming pool in the hotel. By the way, I went for a swim on the other day and it was great except it felt a bit creepy since I was alone, it was dark outside... kind of horror movie like :(

*** Disclaimer: if you're a guy, you might fall asleep over the next few lines ***
Anyway, as we have to dress up for the evening party, I went to buy shoes... Yesterday night, I found these black ones in a small shop close to work. They were only 68 Yuan which is a little bit over 6 € and even though they're kind of ugly and unlike me, they're cheap and I know I'm only going to wear them once. This was until I found a second pair today... 14€ with a strappy thingy and much more summery. Aren't they cute with their little pink flower on top? So unlike me, again!

I also found 2 cute little bags to go with my outfit. I know I'm not going to carry 2 purses around but again, they were really cheap (1€) and I liked them. And what's a girl without a bag? Girls, if you're interested, I can get you one if you want :)


Other than that, I had good food this week. On the other day, I had the mightiest "jiaozi" (= ravioli/ stuffed thingy/ dumpling) for breakfast... the pork stuffing with the herbs that was inside was a real marvel... so tasty I could die! I also had a typical traditional dish for lunch one day... of course I can't remember the name now but I will ask again. It's funny cause it's similar to French crepes (galettes bretonnes) and I loved it! What a surprise! It's basically a crepe (pancake) with an egg, some soy bean sauce or spicy sauce, some herbs, some shrimps or chicken and a deep fried thingy added on top. Then they fold the whole lot and it's ready to be eaten! I hope they serve that again soon at work :)

On Friday, we had our 1st team meeting, all in Chinese apart from my bit. Thank god they throw some english words in the middle otherwise I would only have read the slides (which were in English). This is supposed to help me get used to the musicality of the language and try and catch some words... but it's gonna take a while I guess :) I also had lunch with Nancy... we decided to do a French/Chinese lunch every Friday in order to teach each other some basic useful tips. It's great but I'm jealous cause she seems to pick up French much faster than I do pick up Chinese... This lesson has proven to be very useful though!

Finally, have a look at the following video... it's both in English and in Chinese and
1) you'll get to hear the musicality of the Chinese language
2) you'll get to see where I stay
3) you'll be brainwashed after watching it :)

Made it to mid week...

The little sun is slowly rising above greater China!!! It might be cold here but at least it's sunny... not a single greyish/ rainy Irish day since I've been here!!!

But still there's no place like home ;P

Anyway... after having a continental breakfast on Monday morning, I decided to go local for my breakfast at work on Tuesday and went for a bowl of egg fried rice with veal sausages... all of that was eaten with chopsticks, some buttered brown toasts on the side and a nice big glass of fresh industrial orange juice! I then grabbed a double espresso to finish this feast as the OJ didn't do much for me...

The picture on the left is the view from my desk at work... I know we can't see much here but I liked the contrast between the huge corporate building towers and the "local misty life" in the background. I guess that's what Beijing's all about...

On Tuesday evening, I went out for dinner with two other girls from the office straight after work. We took a taxi to the border of the Haidian and the Xicheng districts and went to a very nice restaurant. We ordered lots of different dishes just to try out...










So here's my little game... What did I have to eat?

1) the white things that look like drying towels are... believe it or not... pigs ears!

2) Pigs ears are back... this time all prepared... ready to be eaten!

3) I also ordered scallops with garlic... that was yummy! And the bowl next to them was some sort of very spicy potato noodle soup.

4) The dish on the left side contained some sort of vegetables and pork stew.

5) The reddish pieces in the white plate are roast dates.

6) The oval plate had some bamboo shoots.

7) The square emptied loaf of bread contained some pork (again) with green peppers and stuff.

So now, guess what I didn't have? Yes of course, the pigs ears. I said I would try it but after staring at them throughout the whole meal dreading to have a bite... my body and my mind gave up on me... Maybe next time... yeah riiiiiiiight ;P

THE joke*

By popular demand (ColmO), here's the joke you all (ColmO) want to hear:

It's about 3 mental health patients that go to a swimming pool... with their doctor. All 3 are standing next to an empty swimming pool and the doctor asks them to jump in one at a time.
The first one jumps and breaks his leg.
The second one jumps too and breaks his arm.
The third one turns to the doctor and says "I'm sorry but I can't go in there...". And the doctor says "Hurray, you're cured, you can now leave the hospital but before that, can I ask you the reason why you don't want to jump in?". And the patient simply answers "The thing is, doctor, I can't swim."

I never said it was a good one - I was just being polite by putting a nice comment into her notebook :) I'd say it's worth "Why doesn't the Queen wave with this hand?" and "Did you know that the word 'gullible' was not in the dictionary?" - If you want to find out the answers to these joke/ questions... ask ColmO!

*THE joke* is referring to the previous post "Where are the subtitles?".

First day at work...

Waking up in the morning... Here's my view! No, this picture wasn't really taken this morning as it was still dark but hey, at least you get a glimpse :)

Well my first day at work, believe it or not, I was early... I arrived around 8.30 after a 15 minutes cab ride and a continental breakfast taken in the hotel. I'm not quite sure I'm ready for the local breakfast yet!
---
WORK IN THE MORNING + sorting out some badge and laptop gear issues...
---
Lunch at 12 with part of the team. It was quite good, I had a little bit of everything... Steamed rice (of course, what else?) with Tofu and Spinach, Chichen curry, some fish, a breaded beef bun, a thin slice of vanilla cake (hhhmmm vanilla!) and some fruits.
---
Foosball break... I showed my European skills.. they were quite impressed! Paired up with Jing, we took down 2 teams of lads before being "destroyed" ourselves :) I need to take a picture of their foosball table, it's quite different... with very heavy wooden players!
---
MORE WORK IN THE AFTERNOON... almost passing out due to the 23°C inside temperature!!! Considering it was quite sunny and around 7° outside today, I don't understand the need for such a sauna... It's the same with the loo or "the Jacks" as some of you guys might call this place... After discovering a phone in my hotel bathroom, I discovered that the toilet seats in the office are heated and equipped with loads of buttons on the side that do stuff. I won't get into details since I haven't tried... Please note there is no "yet" in this sentence and there won't be! Anyway, I also got my full desktop gear with a docking station and a nice wide screen :D Might take it back with me when I head home!
---
5:00 loads of pings... Thanks you guys, it was good to talk to you!!!

>>> The thing that stroke me the most today is that I don't get bothered by people on the phone or chatting around me :) since I don't get much of what they're talking about. This is both a good thing and a bad thing at the same time but it will get better... I hope! Also, I believe I am officially the only European person in this building!

I finally took a taxi home and decided to do it my way this time. Come on Olivia, get a grip! I left the office, walked a bit and found a free taxi... I then tried (let me highlight this word "TRIED") to explain where I wanted to go. He understood but unfortunately didn't know exactly where it was about... so he looked at my map and started driving. We then """spoke""" for the rest of the ride and it was quite funny to have some kind of word exchange with a local person :)

Tonight, I also tried to use my Utensil Sterilising Cabinet and nothing major happened... No, my oranges and apples didn't turn into Jeff Goldblum... I'm so disappointed!

That's all folks for tonight! I might take a break tomorrow unless something really really exciting happens... Please note that I have a poor 728Kb/s connection in my hotel room and that it's quite painful to use Blogger in these conditions... I don't trust this speed test cause I'm not even sure my connection qualifies as broadband!!!

Please, keep on posting comments... :)

Where are the subtitles?

My suitcase finally arrived...

...and the Naked Cowboy days are now over! For those of you who don't know the naked cowboy yet, check him out here.

Well yesterday, as Dan suggested, I went shopping in case my luggage didn't show up. I'm still a bit jet lagged but shopping was a real priority :) I went around the block to discover a huge shopping mall with shops like Mango, French Connection, Sephora, Promod and Carrefour... among others! This shopping centre also has restaurants and a so-called "international cinema". Outside, it's kinda cold but inside, it's roasting like hell! Also, the music and the people are very loud. I ended up with a headache in 2 minutes, especially when they started playing Goodbye Philadelphia by Peter Cincotti like 5 times and also Je m'appelle Hélène... no kidding! If you don't know this song, ask the Frenchies what it's about! Anyway, I bought a few clothes, didn't go too crazy with that and then headed to Carrefour to get some food... Honestly, I didn't think I would make it alive! It was packed... a bit like the last weekend before Christmas except that I have the feeling it's like that ALL the time.

Anyway, forget about what you like to eat and try to experiment would be my 2-cents piece of advice... readable labelling? European products? You wish!!! It was very very hard to find things I could recognise or would be able to cook or eat. For instance, I bought some bread and then tried to look for butter or cheese spread... something to put on it... I went to ask a shop assistant and started to mime what I was looking for. Believe me, she had no clue what I was talking about and started laughing... In the end, Amélie's gift (the Point It book) will come in very handy in these situations. Another funny thing that happened there and that I would never have expected, apart from the fact that it was mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide, is a girl who came up to me and said in English:
- Excuse-me, can I tell you a joke?
- Sure!
- Alright, it's about 3 mental health patients that go to a swimming pool... (she tells the joke)
- Ha ha ha! That's a good one!
- Can I ask you something else?
- Of course!
- Can you sign my notebook and put a comment about the joke?
It turns out this is a school assignment. I'm not sure the assignment is to pick a random person in a shop and ask bluntly if you can tell the joke but she got what she wanted in the end :)

I came out alive and managed to bring my little grocery back to the hotel. It was quite a day! In 2 days, I've probably reduced my talking skills by 80% and I only use words when really needed. This is how desperate I've become! Until I'm able to ask for things in Chinese, I will prevent from being the annoying English speaker that goes to a foreign country and expect everybody to do so. Obviously, I'm not really good at miming so I will stop that as well :)

Tomorrow is my first day at work here! Yeeha! I will finally have conversations again!!!

Until my next post, enjoy this little piece of music...



PS. No I was not trying to scare the poor guy you see walking at the end, I was just trying to show the queue of buses :)

Beijing me voilà!

After a 9-and-a-half-hour long flight from Paris, I got off the plane... 45 minutes late... went through customs where a guy checked my passport, my visa and the various forms I had filled out, and while he's doing that, I had the oppportunity to give him immediate feedback on his work by pressing one of the 4 following smiley buttons:
- Greatly satisfied with it
- Satisfied
- Dissatisfied, takes too much time
- Very dissatisfied
...If you press the last one, you better run fast :)

I then walked to luggage belt #7 and saw on the way a lady holding a sign with names on it... I immediately noticed something close to CHICHEPORTIC and went to talk to her. She tried her best to explain to me in English that my luggage had been delayed and that I would not find it on the belt. Great news! Anyway, I went to the baggage enquiry desk and filed a report for my lost suitcase. My guitar however made it... why? how?

I finally met Chris (Na) waiting for me outside at around 1PM. I withdrew some money at an ATM machine with her much needed help and we took a taxi to the office. We arrived at the TsingHua tower after a 45 minutes ride and went straight to the 8th floor to meet the team. They all seem very friendly and have all started teasing me about my Chinese skills. Chris said they were also interested in having me teach them some French... Simon, hang in there, I won't come back empty handed!!! :)

After having a very quick chat with everyone, we went downstairs for lunch. Food was good and I even got my regular "Ke Kou Ke Le*" along with it (*Coca-Cola)... and they even have TVs for entertainment while eating.

After that we took another taxi to go to the Somerset ZhongGuanCun Hotel... traffic is awful in Beijing, especially around this time of the day!

The place I'm staying in... let me just say... WAW! I checked in at the reception downstairs and got my electronic key card to go to my apartment on the 10th floor!

Chris went through it with me and the housekeeping manager then arrived for an express 1 minute inventory in Chinese!!!


It's a 75 sqm apartment with all you need in it to be happy... even air-con :)
It has an all equipped kitchen. A nice comfy couch to crash on, 2 flat screen TVs and 2 CD/DVD players... one in the living room and one in the bedroom, broadband...






...a see-through bathroom wall from the bedroom, a phone next to the toilets!




... and a Utensil sterilizing cabinet in which you can also put fruits and vegetables!?! I don't really know what to make of this crazy machine yet but I have the feeling it won't be used too often!

That's it so far! I'm now waiting for my suitcase to show up today to know if I need to make a trip to the Carrefour to buy some clothes and stuff!