More Pix from Karl

More pictures posted from weekend adventures from Nanxu (blog update to follow soon): http://www.liebat.com/gallery2/v/Karl/China/Nanxu/

We're way overdue on Shanghai pix. Lila has a few to post, but Karl added a few here: http://www.liebat.com/gallery2/v/Karl/China/Shanghai_08

Socializing! Kidney Massages, Duck Tongues, and Another Ancient Town

It’s been a while since the last update. We’re getting into the groove of living in Shanghai, especially as Lila hasn’t been traveling.

Last weekend we were lucky to finally have some social opportunities. Larry and Jean were visiting from the US, and we were able to meet up Friday and Sunday night for dinner. We had a great time with them, and they even helped us reconnect to Deanna (a former colleague) who now lives within walking distance from us. We also had Karl’s driver (Peter) show them around on the weekend – our first trial run. By the time the rest of you get here, this should be a well-oiled machine! We also met up with work colleagues on two other occasions – Saturday night and Sunday brunch. We’re slowly getting answers and tips to all of our expat orientation questions. In addition, it is so nice to start having a social life.

Among the weekend activities, Karl got his first kidney massage designed to remove toxins from your body. Karl decided that it was a little “too personal” for his western comfort zone. On the bright side, he felt less sluggish for the following days.

We spent Saturday exploring Suzhou, about 1.5 hour away. The old town, dating back to 464BC (!!) and famous for its gardens, is surrounded by a moat and canals with a modern city around the corner. We spent time at the “Humble Administrator’s Garden” (which is also translatable as ‘garden of the stupid officials’). Dating back to 1513, it would have been absolutely beautiful if there had been a few less hundreds of thousands of people. The nearby pagoda, topping 122 feet, was built in 1119 and now leans 10 degrees or so. The area was famous for its silk back in Tang Dynasty (600-900AD). The silk factory included some of the old looming machines that were unbelievably complex but still functional. For 15minutes, we watched 2 women operate the machine and still could NOT figure out what/how they were doing because of the complexity. We did gain another important key learning from the day: when a map looks like it is only 3 blocks, it’s really an hour walking away. Everything here is so spread out. We’re definitely getting a good share of walking exercise.

Karl had another business trip, this time to Xiamen on the southern coast of China across from Taiwan. The city has a population of 3M, and is mainly considered a tourist city. Karl’s customer manufactures and builds PCs here for North Asia. During his travel, Karl took Shanghai and Xiamen airlines. Because the government sets the airline prices, the smaller airlines differentiate themselves through service levels. Imagine this: they served beverages 3x, a meal and 2 hot towels during a 1.5 hour flight. The downside: no frequent flier miles with a US airline partner.

The food in China has been wonderful. Yesterday we found out there are > 40k restaurants in Shanghai! We haven’t gotten tired of Chinese food – there’s so much variety. In fact, Karl’s staff is trying to teach him how to identify the varieties of Chinese cuisine. This week was particularly interesting as they forced him to expand his culinary horizons while in Xiamen. He ate duck tongue, chicken feet, and multiple types of mushy unidentifiable sea stuff. Shanghai is known for its dumplings and sweet and sour flavors. There is a lot of oil and carbs in the food, which makes dieting difficult. We’re getting to the gym regularly to keep the weight in-check.

Other mundane daily life type things:
We both have our official Chinese work permits. Our sea shipment from the US should clear customs next week. We’re anxious to personalize our apartment! We are still learning to communicate with our ayi (maid). She now cooks dinners for us, does our laundry (though our whites & blacks are now both grey), irons (though everything still looks wrinkled), and cleans (but doesn’t pick up a vase to see the dust under it). This is actually very common here as standards of cleaning are different. We are still in training mode and hope the new book we bought (Ayi Survival Guide) will help. The drivers have been great. We are learning to have them run errands, grocery shopping and dry cleaning. The most difficult thing, however, is the timing. If you say pick up at 7am, you feel obligated to be there (time to finally invest in a ‘fake’ watch).

We had an English bookstore craving. As we were wandering around we found the very limited magazine section with a government issued catalog on the process for ordering foreign magazines and newspapers. A 1-year subscription to the New York Times costs $2500. Most every other magazine was over $400 / year. I guess we won’t be indulging in any US magazine subscriptions! In plain print, the catalog also states, “We hope our customer don't show the newspapers and periodicals on the public places.” ?!

We also discovered Taikang Lu. Tucked off the main road, it’s a hidden gem of small boutiques, art galleries, and restaurants housed in the old shikumen style buildings. The shikumen are British style terraced housing with elements of Chinese courtyard style house, literally translates as “stone gates” after their fancy archways. At times, up to 80% of population lived in these style houses. We read they cram 120 of these houses per acre (a developers dream!). The area was restored approximately 8 years ago, but hadn’t taken off as a successful shopping area until 2 years ago. Now every Japanese photo tourist has this top of their destination.

Pictures from Xitang, the water village

We finally posted some pictures from last weekend at the water village described in the last post.


Super Old Smoking Woman in Xitang: http://www.liebat.com/gallery2/v/Karl/People/

Xitang, the water village: http://www.liebat.com/gallery2/v/Karl/China/Xitang/

Boats, Planes, Really Old Villages and $10 Ice Cream

KARL: Last weekend, I joined 200 people for an open sailing day on Lake Dianshan. The majority were first timers dressed in their Sunday best – suits and dress shoes. Showing up in my shorts and life jacket, I was immediately accepted as the expert of the crowd. Unfortunately only 5 boats were volunteered for sailing, which meant most of the day was spent queued up (did I just really say “queued up”?! What's happening to my English?). I decided to join the Yacht Club which includes ~250 sailors from around the globe. With the multi-national membership, I was told I have to learn “blue/red/yellow line” and a dozen other words in 10 different languages to be effective sailing in Shanghai. I’m still trying to learn Chinese! After 5 lessons, I can finally pronounce all the Chinese sounds, 5tones (4 + non-tone), and can remember a dozen words! Only 100 more lessons to go before I can communicate at a taxi driver level.
I also had my first solo adventure in intra-China travel between Shanghai and Beijing. The two-hour flights are like mega-buses, departing every ½ hour on 747s/777s that are at 95% full with 300+ passengers. Travel proved to be interesting because the government has my passport to process the work visa. I traveled with a single sheet of paper full of Chinese and my grinning passport-sized photo. Fortunately, my passport and new Chinese ID returned just a few days later.

LILA: While Karl was enjoying Chinese transportation, I should have been excited about going to Italy and Portugal. However, I spent 14 hours flying from Shanghai to Frankfurt in the middle seat next to the bathrooms, then connected to Rome and visited Portugal before finally returning home. The 5-day Europe trip was quite short when you consider 2 days were spent on yucky flights. By the end, I wish I’d invested in a few rolls of that $2 Charmin to cushion the ride. The good news? I have now visited 68 countries in my life -- Italy was #67 and Portugal#68. I’m wondering what took me so long to get to both countries. However, after spending days inside the gold-wall, blue-carpeted Marriott conference rooms, I definitely earned a vacation trip back!

TOGETHER: Intel expat buddies came to the rescue the past week – helping us adjust and answering our 3 pages of questions. Jay arranged a special tour including 7 stops at home stores, sporting goods, and book stores. We were thrilled to find our way around. A week later, Kapil and his wife had us over for a home-cooked (!!!) meal, complemented with Wii advice from his son.

After developing a Chinese flesh-eating skin rash (clearly self-diagnosed), we got Karl to the doctor. Fortunately the expat-friendly WorldLink medical clinic proved that the US healthcare system really does have a ton of room for improvement! Within 2 hours of a phone call, Karl had an after-hours appointment with a dermatologist – no waiting beforehand & he even walked out with medication in hand.

Karl arranged for our first suburb exploration into Xitang, about 1.5 hours from Shanghai. The town is pending UNESCO World Heritage status, and is composed of traditional houses from ~1000 years ago along a canal. It’s more famous, however, for the cameo in Mission Impossible III. We had so much fun exploring the town. Of course, we stopped by the DVD store on the way back to pick up the movie. Pictures to follow soon – beautiful and very picturesque.

We still have fun exploring the city, wandering around. We’ve discovered our ayi (helper) cooks. She’s now preparing dinner for us 3x/week. That’s very helpful with Lila’s 2 hour/day commute and Karl’s late office hours. We also finally gave into our ice cream craving, walked down the street, and actually paid $10 for a pint of ice-cream. Yes, it was worth it.

My Mouth Muscles Hurt!

That line comes from Karl who spent about 9 hours studying Chinese this week. As he said, "I didn’t know sounds like this could come out of my mouth!"

Karl: While Lila was in the US on business, I ventured out to explore the city. The highlights include the art district (30+ galleries featuring a range of modern art), the antique market (where I purchased two "500+ year old vases"), fake market (where I’m sure I didn’t bargain hard enough), and the gym. Spent most of my work week trying to learn the background on the account. Weather wise it has been nice - mostly in the mid 60s with all the trees/flowers just starting to bloom. However one day it poured and my 15minute commute took 1.5 hours due to traffic (this city hasn’t figured how to drive in the rain, kind of like LA). I’m worried because the typhoon season is supposed to start in ~3 weeks and last 4-5 weeks (everyday heavy rain).

Lila: Spent 5 days of meetings in Vegas, starting as soon as I landed– including the channel Board of Advisors meeting, customer meetings, my boss’ staff, and the Solutions Summit. Whew. I didn’t even make it out of the Venetian to see daylight for those 5 days, except for a 1 hour scavenger hunt. Being stuck inside for so long gave me a new appreciation of Shanghai’s air quality. The flight from the Shanghai to SFO was FULL of Intel folks returning from IDF. It made it hard to sleep, lest you want photos on our intranet site with your mouth wide open.
The personal highlight of the week was meeting up with family: Paul, Karl’s bro, was an attendee in Vegas – and I spent < 12 hours (incl sleep) in the Bay Area with Nabeel (bro) & Asha (his wife). The major lowlight was traveling back to Shanghai with 6 suitcases totaling ~300 lbs. I picked up the stuff we’d left at Nabeel’s, got it to SFO and thought "OH NO!" Somehow I managed to transport it from the car rental return to check-in with only 1 cart crash & 1 emotional near-breakdown. It was worth the pain for now being stocked with medicines, food, and spices (can’t ship per company policy).

Together: The weekend was great fun. Our helper made us delicious dumplings Friday night after an evening adventure to the art district. All but 3 galleries were closed – but that was ok! We met 2 owners and 1 artist. All were extremely chatty and made for an unexpected and pleasant date night adventure. On Saturday we spent most of the day with Jay, another Intel employee. He took us on a tour to the fabric market, 3 home stores, the sporting goods store, English bookstore, and a flower market. He answered tons of questions we had as we adjust to our new life. We will definitely pay it forward for the next employee who moves here. Saturday night we tried a great Thai restaurant nestled in an old estate. We even made it to the gym 2x this weekend – must start working off some of this China-chubbiness gained by too much good food.

Next week: Karl goes sailing, then off to Beijing. Lila goes to Europe for 5 days.

Intel invades Shanghai; Multi-hour Nail Polish Search

IDF – Our first working week in China happened to coincide with the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in Shanghai. This event is how we do our technology transfer from Intel’s R&D to the industry. (sidenote: Lila was responsible for the expansion of IDF internationally – including China – waybackwhen.) The Intel invasion made our transition week much better!
At IDF, we unveiled the 2nd generation classmate PC – designed by Lila’s team. It was very exciting with lots of positive press worldwide and several of our key S/W and OEM partners in attendance.
Karl also his first round of meetings with his team and with Dell. Having worked with Dell about 10 years ago, he was happy to discover their style of business is the same across the globe. In fact, he knew several of the Dell guys who are on assignment from Austin. Small world!

TRANSPORTATION: We are learning to communicate with the drivers – who are great. Car time has been useful for naps & work, especially given that everything is at least 30 minutes away. We were told by multiple people that the metro is more predictable – once you actually get on board. You may have to wait 3 or 4 trains during commute hours before the “people shovers” can squeeze you in. No wonder there’s so much construction on building subway lines across the city!

SURPRISE DETOUR: We made a left turn out of our building for the first time. Imagine our surprise to find a small neighborhood of lane houses with paths small enough only for bikes and people. Once you make it thru the buildings, there’s a small street with fresh vegetable stalls, a butcher, a store with tubs of fresh fish swimming around, a side-walk soup restaurant, and a mini grocery store. What a wonderful find!

RANDOM ENCOUNTERS: Walking home from one of our dinner adventures, we were stopped by a father and son tourists. They asked us for directions to one of the bars. Since we were such experts on the area, Karl took the effort to direct them down the street, along our path home. It turns out we pointed them to the wrong place, but they wanted to thank us for trying – so they offered to buy us a drink. We had a great two hour discussion over drinks on jobs, work ethics, and what to study (for the college aged son). We exchanged contacts and hope to find more random encounters like this going forward.

And finally… the infamous nail polish search
Everything in China takes more effort and more time. It’s compounded by the inability communicate. For example, Lila’s manicure was wearing off. She found a towelette that had made it in her suitcase. Despite all efforts, it only removed the red from 1 hand. At 7am, she walked to the grocery store. Closed. Walked to convenience store – didn’t have it. Mr Shen (driver) picked her up. They made 1 stop at the foreigner’s grocery store: no luck. With limited Chinese, held up her right hand “don’t want.” And color free hand “want.” She made swiping signs on her fingers. Driver Shen said, in limited english, “I help. 10:30. here.” Lila makes it thru a customer meeting with trashy finger nails, then meets him at 10:30. LOW AND BEHOLD! He has brought the same exact dark red color of nail polish. She paints her nails and is done with it. In the meantime, he went to another store and got nail polish remover – delivered when he picked Lila up at 5pm.

$2 Charmin & Other 1st Week Experiences

Shopping: We made it to Carrefour and IKEA on Thursday to buy basics, and back on Saturday to Carrefour for groceries. The only thing special about shopping at either location is doing it with your million closest friends. We learned never to go on weekends, unless you want to battle for bananas with 700 people.
When you don’t speak the language, shopping for familiar brands was the way we managed. One exception, however, was dishwasher soap. For 10minutes, we stared at shelves full of what said “dishwasher soap” but had pictures of hands or stacked clean dishes. We tried to ask people, but no one understood. Fortunately, about 20 minutes later, we found a European dishwasher soap in the next aisle (the hint was to remember the new tablets vs. liquid). Buying toilet paper was another challenge. No familiar brands, and the charmin squeeze test didn’t work on any of them. We went by price and picked the most expensive – which was US$4 for 12 rolls and still felt hard. The next day we found City Shop grocery store which is the high end foreign friendly store. They had charmin, but it was $2/roll of toilet paper. We guess our a$$ aren’t worth $2/roll afterall.

Chinese Conondrum: We had our first 2 hour Chinese lesson and were exhausted just trying to learn the basic sounds and 4 intonations (flat/high, rising, lowering, and lower+raise). We’d write more but don’t want to get discouraged. This language journey is going to be a long one.

Menacing Mattresses: After 1 night of “sleep” in our furnished apartment, we went to buy a new mattress. We’re convinced our wood floors are softer than the bed! The shopping journey took about a ½ day – longer then hoped. Imagine trying to purchase and arrange delivery of a bed when you don’t speak the language. We learned words for “longer” (given Karl’s feet hung over half of the mattress), “tomorrow” (for delivery), etc. We provided some entertainment for the mattress store people given the laughing and pointing going on. The good news is that we slept better with our new pillows, and the bed is arriving as scheduled tomorrow (or at least we think so). At the end, the store lady drug us upstairs to pick red envelopes off a silver Christmas tree. We had no clue what was going on. Imagine our relief when we realized Karl won 1000RMB (~120$US). The best part was the pay out was in cash.

Bonsai Bargain: Somehow we managed to tell Mr. Shen (driver) that we wanted to go to the flower markets. He drove us to the Pudong side (eastern side of river) to a 2-story flower market. We started with the fresh flowers that had beautiful arrangements, then got side-tracked with bonsai and orchids in the plant section. We purchased 2 amazing bonsai trees. One mini forest and one old tree. They’re really quite incredible and cost us less than $100. Karl also bought 3 types of orchids, including an unusual fragant one. A great stop for adding more life to our apartment.

Food Frenzy: We are living off guide books to find restaurants now. We’ve ventured off a few times to find things like a $1.50 breakfast with order of a coffee. Or, the food court downstairs from Carrefour for an awesome meal of ~$7. With IDF next week, some friends are in town and helping us explore. We tried the famous Laris at 3 on the Bund with Mark, Cameron, & Chris. Drinks were amazing, including Karl’s chili mango martini. Food was French-California style. Last night we met up Mark & Cameron again for margaritas at Zapatas, then found South Beauty in the French Concession. Lesson: never let Karl order at a Sichuan restaurant unless you LOVE spice. The dishes, full of chili peppers flavored with shrimp, chicken, or tofu, left us wishing we’d spent the $2/roll for charmin ultra soft! The meal ended with birds nest soup served in papaya. Karl ordered based on picture, not price. For those of you who’ve eaten this, you know it comes with a pretty price tag.

Random Settling In: Getting the apartment situated is a lot of work. We’re pretty comfortable and happy with the place so far. The location is very convenient to downtown areas and walking around. TV quality leaves a lot to be desired, so we found the DVD store where copies are sold for ~$1/ea. Mark also found a tailor in our neighborhood and took Karl along to order some slacks. The internet is generally slow, but we did get our vonage phone set up.