Wednesday, December 31, 2008

2008 - A Year in Review

It's been quite a year! New jobs, new journeys, new goals. So what all has happened?

January

  • Registered on oDesk.com.
  • Flew to Brazil for the first time. Billy spoiled me with an upgrade to business class.
  • First time catching a nap in the Fast Sleep in the Sao Paulo Airport. Every airport should have one of those!
  • I get to know the staff of the Brisa da Praia hotel in Porto Seguro.
  • Introduced to the weird world of Brazilian beach club dancing. It's called AxĂ© and the audience is supposed to dance along with the pros on stage. These were all filmed at the club called Toa Toa across the street from our hotel: the stage version, audience participation, aerobics class never looked this good, children's talent show!
  • Landed my first job on oDesk as a transcriptionist for $5/hr. Apparently I was the fastest typer to apply. These days there are many more qualified transcriptionists vying for work. Never actually had to do the assignment because the guy left on a business trip.
  • Got my first paying job on oDesk at $9/hr. Some dude wanted help revising his resume for LinkIn. He actually hired me without even performing an interview. Apparently my profile resume had impressed him. It was only a 3 hour gig, but now I had a feedback score and verifiable experience!
  • 2-day adventure in Brazilian health care eventually got us Yellow Fever vaccinations.
  • First side trip to Ipatinga made me grateful for the US Interstate system.
  • First side trip to Vitoria got me hooked on Sushi.
  • At the end of the month, I spotted my dream job in the list of openings: Writing positions at oDesk. I figured it was a long shot, and went on a desperate search for decent portfolio items. I didn't have my old school work with me on my laptop, but I found some articles I did a newsletter online.

February

  • After a couple of interviews, I somehow landed my dream job with oDesk at $12/hr.
  • Sea-side churascaria (Brazilian BBQ, aka all-you-can-eat meat) for Billy's birthday.
  • Delicious Italian restaurant called Area along the Pasarela do Alcool in Porto Seguro for my birthday.
  • Finally got to pick out my own painting to bring home from a trip.
  • First ever proper sunburn (as in stayed red for more than a day). Apparently, 3 1/2 hours in mid-day tropical sun with no SPF is what it takes. You'd think with how pale I am I'd burn easily. But no. I'm too Italian to burn, and too German to tan. From here on out, I'm sure to apply the SPF 15 if I'll be in the sun for more than an hour. Which, frankly, doesn't happen often.

March

  • Back to Vitoria again.
  • Our house in NY FINALLY gets cable!
  • We fly back to NY on Copa Airlines whose business class is the same price as coach on Delta. You just have to connect through Panama, which has an awesome club room to hang out in.
  • Flew out to Portland, Oregon. Billy got upgraded, but I didn't!
  • Visited the Sealion caves along the Oregon coast.
  • Stayed with Billy's fraternity brother in Portland. Cooked yummy food, had fun riding free mass transit, went to an awesome dinner/movie theatre, checked out the local artists market, ate with our hands at a Moroccan restaurant with belly dancers.
  • My parents drove up to visit, and bring us back our dog. We listed Charlie on craigslist and interviewed several new homes. I sure he's happy with his family. He's got a mommy & daddy happy to spoil him, no children in the house to scare him, and a rambunctious new friend to make trouble with.
  • We cancel the cable TV & phone, leaving just the internet service, saving $55/month.
  • I rock. oDesk gives me a raise to $20/hr.

April

  • Flew back to Brazil, this time in coach on Delta. Luckily, the flight was mostly empty. So Billy got to sleep across the middle 3 seats while I attempted to curl up in the side 2. It sort of worked, but it mostly sucked.
  • Flew to Curitiba and hung out for a few weeks.

May

  • Actually did some interesting things in Curitiba, like eating at lots of yummy restaurants, going to see the Chinese circus, visiting the botanical garden, and shopping in a ridiculously expensive mall.

June

  • Anniversary dinner at the same Italian restaurant as my birthday.
  • Coral island cruise. Thank you Larry for getting Billy to take a day off of work and actually go do something!

July

  • Finally return from Brazil. Fly business class Copa through Panama again.
  • Billy buys a new digital camera in the duty free shops. Now he doesn't have to steal mine to take pictures for work!
  • Fly down to Alabama to meet Billy's brother's new baby girl.
  • I finally get to go to the Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville.
  • College friend drives to our house from Boston for a short visit.
  • We take our friend and her boyfriend up to a party at Larry's lake house up on Champlain. Delicious burgers and the sauna are enjoyed by all.
  • I fly to Virginia to visit my parents.
  • Billy goes to Alaska on a fly-fishing trip with his dad while I'm away.

August

  • I see my brother for the first time in a couple years and meet his girlfriend. We all go visit Jamestown & old Williamsburg.
  • Buyer invites me (and only me) to interview for a copywriting job at $27/hr. I do one small project, then I'm just on call. He hasn't needed me since, but the job's still open.
  • Billy returns home to NY, but has to leave for Florida before I get back.
  • I return a few days later. Due to plane trouble, I end up flying Richmond to Laguardia to Charlotte to Albany. Then having to drive myself home at 1 in the morning. Ugh.
  • Billy returns from Florida
  • We fly to Australia on Qantas so Billy can work in Tumut for a couple weeks. Unfortunately, Delta no longer flies to Oz, so our upgrade vouchers are worthless.
  • I get invited to a web content gig for an AIDS Research group. I lower my bid to $23/hr. I do a few hours, then the group gets a new director and puts the project on hold. Job is still open, but there's been no more work for me.
  • We decide to have a proper vacation and drive Sydney, pick up tourist passes, then head straight on to the Blue Mountains.
  • Spend the morning hopping around town on the doubledecker tour bus, then drive down windy roads that were rather frightening in the rain to visit some very impressive caves.

September

  • Off to Sydney where we drop off the car and spend the week on public transport passes. Petted koalas, 'roos, and crocodiles. Climbed the harbor bridge. Visited some museums and the Olympic stadium. Saw the orchestra in the opera house. Ate delicious mediterranean food, sushi, burgers, and meat pies.
  • Flew back to NY on Qantas. Honestly, it's not that bad. They've got lots of entertainment on individual screens and the food's pretty good, even in coach.
  • Drove to Connecticut to sell Billy's car to CarMax. No point in having two cars if we're never home. No time to make a private sale that would have made us more money. Even still, we got more for it than we still owed. We got one of his credit cards to give us a 1% cash advance to pay off the loan, then banked the money from the sale at 3.57% until December. Hurray for arbitrage!
  • Drive up to St. Felicien, Quebec. It's a long way north. They didn't have many restaurants, so we ate more McDonald's in a week than I've had in years.
  • Drove back on a beautiful sunny day. It was a gorgeous drive.
  • I cancel my cell phone plan, but decide to add a line on Billy's parents family share, saving $35/month.

October

  • Still at our house in NY. I'm actually home for an entire month.
  • We go through all the junk in our basement, and most of the main rooms as well. We start eBaying and Craiglisting as much of it as we can. Books are up on half.com, piles of stuff are taken to the Salvation Army. We still have more to sell, donate, and Freecycle when we get another change.
  • I get myself a fancy new digital camera, and refurb previous generation iPods for both of us (classic for me, nano for him). And cables so we can connect our laptops to the TV to watch the shows we download.
  • Billy goes to visit his family in Huntsville, then goes to Vegas for a few days of Man Time with a college buddy. They're too cheap to both with strip clubs, but drop a few hundred at the shooting range playing with big guns.
  • Score a fun copywriting gig for a site called Crowdsourcinglinks.com at $27/hr. I don't log many hours, but it's an interesting project.
  • I dance and sing my heart out on stage at Rocky Horror halloween night.

November

  • I decline to drive all the way to middle-of-nowhere Maine with Billy. If I'll be wasting more time in transit than on location, there has to be something worth going doing.
  • Since Billy didn't listen when I told him I should go ahead and get my Chinese visa in October, we go through a serious hassle to secure an emergency exemption from the Embassy in Washington. Thank you next day air and visa processing services!
  • We leave our car in the airport for what is supposed to be a two-week trip to China.
  • Hurray upgrade vouchers! Maybe it's a good thing we didn't use them for Australia.
  • We celebrate Thanksgiving by eating the most expensive meal of our lives in the french restaurant in the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, China.

December

  • I actually gain some weight because we've been overdoing it at all the restaurants. I abandon my 'but the rest of the trip I'll probably be stuck with steamed rice and veggies' attitude.
  • I'm forced to go get a visa extension so I can stay in China another 30 days.
  • We attempt to go to Christmas Eve service, but the place is mobbed by gawkers and Chinese Christians.
  • Christmas Day dinner buffet is yummy, but Santa won't give us any gifts.
  • The manager of our favorite Italian restaurant in Guangzhou invites us to a New Year's Eve party on the rooftop deck. It's a bit chilly up there, but it was a nice way to end the year.

Monday, December 29, 2008

Upgrades rock

Delta approved our upgrades for the Tokyo-Atlanta leg of our January return from China. We don't know why it took so long (business class was only about 10% full). We're using Billy's Platinum upgrade certificates just like we did on the way over here. They have to be used by February. It's nice to squeeze every last mile out of them for the super-long flight.

For the trip to Brazil, we're using miles to purchase the upgrade. Once you get a big chunk of miles in the bank, it gets easier and easier to get upgrades. On a domestic flight, Billy'll get upgraded automatically for free. If there's room, I can go with him. Internationally, we'll use his platinum certs if we have them, or cough up the miles to upgrade ourselves. The sneaky bit is, when you get to medallion level (silver, gold, platinum) you actually earn bonus points for every flight. And when you upgrade, you get the bonus points for flying in a higher class. I've made silver this year (it's recalculated annually). I'll have to check with Billy to see if he made platinum again or is being downgraded to gold.

Unfortunately, Billy earned platinum level on Delta before we realized that SkyTeam is not really the alliance we want to be part of. We're stuck with it now. When we have to fly on something outside the alliance we'll just make sure we get a really good price. Sure, we'll earn some miles in other alliances, and on independent airlines, it'll never be enough to get any of the good rewards. And once you've flown across the pacific a few times, anything less than 10 hours starts sounding like a 'short flight'. I've flown round trips to Australia, Brazil, and Ireland in coach... but I do like to avoid 'roughing it with the commoners' when I can!

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Chistmas time in China

It's very odd to be in China at Christmas. In a city like Guangzhou, there are decorations everywhere. Our hotel has a 3 story tree in the lobby. Most restaurant staff are wearing santa hats. I saw a tree decorated inside the entrance to one of the local elementary schools. And they're playing Christmas music everywhere. Strangely, many of the places include the religious songs like "Silent Night" "Joy to the World" and "Hark the Herald Angels Sing". The really odd thing is, I know that 10 years ago, most of these people probably hadn't even heard of Christmas. I read some reports about the holiday indicating that the younger generation loves having a celebration without the family obligations associated with traditional Chinese holidays. One had a quote from a 26 year old saying she'd only done Christmas about 5 times. Personally, I think they're just into the decor, because there's not much of a push for the serious American-style gift giving. Kids may get a small stocking of presents, and adults don't seem to exchange gifts at all.

For those who are wondering, here's how our Christmas Eve & Day ended went:

Christmas Eve was work as usual for Billy. He didn't come early. Everyone I work with is on Vacation, and nearly all my projects are on hold pending management approval, so I'm not working much. In my family, we always went to the candle-light Christmas eve service at church and had a lasagna for dinner. We have an Italian restaurant and a Church of Christ within walking distance, so it seemed worth a shot. Billy called on his way home and asked me to order some pizza so we could eat before we hit up the service. I didn't want to miss out on my lasagna, so I walked to the Italian place and brought us back take-out. On the plus side, I could pay by credit card (delivery boys from Papa John's only take cash). On the minus side, walking half way across the island with the pizza for Billy meant it wasn't exactly hot by the time he got to eat it. Dinner was yummy, if rushed. We thought we'd head to the service at little early (at 7 for a service scheduled for 7:15). Perhaps if we'd gone over an hour to two earlier we could have gotten a seat. The rather small sanctuary was completely full. As was a bible study/overflow room. We wondered around a bit, snapped some pictures, and left after the service started. Turns out the service was mostly in Chinese, as were most of the guests. I was disappointed to find flashing my passport was not required for entry to the church grounds. It's on the US Consulate, but the baracade had been moved back to allow free entry to the church gates. We did notice that all the Chinese in the courtyard had passports in hand. I'm not really sure how things normally work there, but I was very surprised by the turn-out. Outside the compound, the island was quickly filling with people. It seems the Chinese like to take to the streets and wonder around on Christmas Eve. The hotel is a big draw. Some were coming in to attend one of the official parties, most were just coming to take pictures with the impressive decorations. The really, really weird part is that flashing headbands and light sabers seem to play a significant part in the wondering mobs' evening. There were vendors everywhere. And these headbands didn't just light up. Most had glowing or flashing horns. So there were children running all over wearing glowing red devil horns for Christmas Eve. I kinda stalked one of the kids through the hotel trying to snap a good picture (little bugger was moving quick!). We returned to our room after giving up on church, then decided we wanted wine to drink while we watched TV. We tried to hit up a local liquor store, but it was closed. We ended up in one of the tourist shops on the way there (I doubt the place would have been open even if we hadn't stopped). We browsed and haggled for quite a while. I ended up with a pretty purple shawl and green touristy-chinese purse. Billy got a cool present for his dad. We grabbed some ice cream at a convenience store and headed home.

On Christmas Day, Billy went to work again, but got home a few hours early. We got dressed up (I even made Billy wear a tie this time) and headed to our dinner reservations. We'd booked dinner at the buffet we'd gone to before. It was basically the same as any regular night, except they had turkey with cranberry sauce at the carving station and party hats/flashing santa pins at the tables. The price was higher too -- at least it included red wine and champagne. We stuffed ourselves. Billy was very disappointed the santa wouldn't give him any presents (he just handed out little baggies of candies to the children). Oh, and before dinner we recorded the video from my last post. When we left dinner, we could see there were again lots of people walking around wearing flashing horns, though today I was seeing mostly pink, blue, and green. The vendors probably sold out of red the night before!

And no one seems to be taking down the decorations or removing the santa hats yet. I do hope they put it all away after January 1. It'll drive me nuts if they keep this up through Chinese New Year (that's in late January this year, a couple weeks after we leave).

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Merry Christmas from China

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

The White Swan Hotel, Guangzhou, China


With Love,
Billy & Jacqui Pittenger

Embedded video not working? Click this link to watch us on YouTube.

You can check out all our photos on Flickr.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Bah, humbug!

It's getting that I absolutely loathe Christmas-time. I'm not Scrooge. I just think people should do things because it's the right thing to do, not because it's a 'holiday tradition'.

Things I hate about the holiday season

  • The sudden surge is charitable giving associated with 'the holiday spirit'
  • Secret Santas, family gift exchanging, and every form of 'obligatory giving'
  • Mall Santas (or whatever place you drag your kid to for photos and wish lists)
  • The spoiled rotten children who receive piles of presents
  • The spoiled rotten adults who are even worse than the children because they're old enough to be held accountable for their actions
  • The ridiculous consumerist bullsh*t of it all

Don't get me wrong. I see absolutely nothing wrong with giving presents to show you care. If I want to give you a present, I give you a present. It has nothing to do with the day on the calendar or someone being born 2000 odd years ago. Same goes for giving to charity. I have a problem with people doing these in the name of "Christmas". And it's even worse when they have the gall to do it while calling this a religious holiday. Guess what? Protestants had Santa Claus in Sunday School before they started bothering with the Nativity. Catholics always had it on the schedule, but they used it to help convert followers used to various 'pagan' solstice festivals. So basically, we've got three totally separate types of 'holidays' all being jumbled into one:

  1. The solstice festivals that go way back, and frankly have a much better excuse for existing. The fact that days start getting longer again instead of plunging us into eternal night is actually quite important.
  2. The 'Christ Mass' that is a truly Holy day in the Catholic tradition. Even if the exact choice of day is unrelated to the event being celebrated.
  3. The Santa Claus x-mas that worships at the alter of consumerism.

If you want to celebrate more than one of the above holidays, go for it, but understand they're three totally separate things. So please, just realize if you're sitting around a Christmas tree giving presents in the name of Jesus, you're being a big ol' hypocrite. A true Christian wouldn't just care about his fellow man each December. And he certainly wouldn't run up credit card debt to buy unnecessary junk for his bratty children. You have the right to be a consumerist a**. And I have the right to call you on it.

A social obligation to exchange presents each year on a particular date is silly at best. Worse still is the shear quantity of crap that is exchanged. Sure, I grew up looking forward to Christmas presents under the tree each year. But we didn't get a list a mile long. And none of it was big. Even when I got older and we had more money, we never gave that many presents. And I would have been perfectly happy getting even less than I did get. Generally speaking, I think we should all be giving each other a whole lot less stuff. Why? So we'll have a whole lot less stuff! No one appreciates anything if they've got piles of junk they never use lying around. It takes up space and makes you think you need a bigger house. So not only have you wasted money on crap that isn't being used, you'll end up wasting even more money getting a bigger place to live. It's all bad for your pocket books and the environment. And it gets worse with each generation. You ought to use the money for something that's actually useful, like retirement savings or education. And that's true all 12 months of the year!

Now, the charitable giving has me torn. I strongly feel people should be giving away more to charity (the cause is your choice). And they should be doing it all year long, not just wasting those charitable dollars on creating a fantasy consumerist X-mas for someone 'in need'. No one, I repeat, none one 'needs' Christmas. But they do need a lot of other things. Food. Jobs. Education. Assistance and direction to help them provide for themselves. If you'd like to give a pile of Wiis to the children's hospital, go ahead and do it. Just not because it's Christmas. If a gift is worth giving, it's worth giving at any time of the year. If you're only giving because 'til the season', well, you're not doing it for the right reasons. That's no better than giving for the tax break. But, well, I'd still rather people were giving to charity, for any reason, than spending it on more junk for themselves or their children.

And don't even get me started on the wastefulness of most Christmas cards...

Despite this frustrated rant, there are a few parts of the holiday season that I do enjoy. None of which I'll get this year here in China (ok, there's a small chance at #1 at a foreign consulate).

Things I love about the holiday season

  1. Candle-light Christmas Eve services. I can no longer identify myself as Christian, but as a singer I absolutely adore Christmas Cantatas. And I think singing as a group is good for everyone... even if it's just christmas carols.
  2. Office holiday parties. Even when they're done cheaply, it's important to have a fun event with your co-workers at least once a year. But it's still silly that this is associated with Christmas!
  3. The rare individuals who cross the bridge between holiday giving and real altruism. Now that's a Christmas miracle.
  4. After-Christmas sales. I'm not Scrooge, but it can pay to be a cheapskate. There are some things you really do need. So you might as well buy them on sale.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Busy week, long update

It's been a few days since I last posted. Here's what's happened:

  • I went to the Entry/Exit Admin to apply for my visa extension on Tuesday. It was successful in that they accepted my paperwork this time. I go back Tuesday morning 12/23 to pick up my passport. I do hope it contains a visa extension. Otherwise I have to go back to the hotel, pack my things, and immediately leave the country.
  • I tried to go shoe shopping after I was done turning in my forms. That was a big disappointment. See, the shoe district is actually a terrible place to buyer shoes. Not because it's expensive there (it's not), but because it's full of wholesalers, just like the leather district. Everything here has a district full of wholesalers. They usually have a small box of old samples you can buy. But a US ladies size 8 is not something easy to find here, even in a store that is willing to sell one pair at a time. If I try on clothes, I tend to need a large (rather than the small I wear in the US). All the cute tops are designed for someone with no chest at all. So basically, I feel like a big, fat giant at the end of a shopping trip. I'm now thankful that I don't need to buy clothes for Brazil here.
  • Aki headed back to Finland, so now it's just me and Billy here. That means we'll be spending less money on wine at dinner, but it also means we've lost the only person we had to hang out with.
  • We bought our tickets to return to NY on Jan 12. We couldn't get on the same flights we used to come over here, so we're flying from Hong Kong to Tokyo instead. We'll be driving there (there's a coach that pics people up from all the hotels) and get to spend 1 afternoon & evening in Hong Kong. That should be fun. Keep your fingers crossed we get confirmed for upgrades on the Tokyo to Atlanta flight!
  • On Wednesday evening, we got together with one of Billy's fraternity brothers. Turns out Ethan now works for iRobot -- the people who make the Roomba and the Scooba (and now they have a gutter cleaning robot, how cool is that?). They've got some manufacturers in this area so he was in Guangzhou for a day. He's been over a few times in the last year, and he's actually pretty good at Chinese. Limited vocabulary, but impressive pronunciation. It was nearly an hour taxi ride away (total cost, about $15 each way). How could we not go hang out?! What's the other side of the city when you've already come to the other side of the world? So we ate sushi at his hotel then went out to a street market. It was my first experience not a wholesale district. If I really needed cheap tops or handbags or jewelry or socks, I could have gotten some. I even tried on a cardigan and a jacket. Yes, the prices were good, but do I really need a pretty purple jacket right now? It would have been less than $40, but who knows when I'd ever get to wear it. Not this year anyway.
  • Last night we got Papa Johns delivered. Yup, they have them in China, too. They even have the garlic sauce. Got a thin crust pizza, a pasta bake, and cheesy garlic bread. It was pretty good. We'll probably order from them again. And it's nice not to have to go out to a restaurant for once. Although it turns out our favorite Italian restaurant also does delivery...
The reason I haven't posted in a few days is that I've been especially busy with work. We had a super important release of a whole new global nav over at oDesk on Thursday. The monthly newsletter and blog posts had to be coordinated with the release. Basically, I'm back to full-time work again. Now need to develop a strategy for a total help content overhaul. Near all the help content is now either obsolete, or painfully out of date. We're trying to shift to less documentation, more in-line help, and more tutorials. Which means lots of fun work for me. And I'm not saying that sarcastically, either.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Going back to the US after all

Despite the apparent cost savings of flying direct to Brazil, it appears both Billy and I will be flying home between countries.

Pros

  • Changing out our wardrobes with stuff we already own
  • Possibly getting to make our dental check-ups
  • A visit or two to the chiropractor
  • A chance to go through our own mail
  • Billy needs to fill out some paperwork for his new life insurance policy
  • Billy's office needs to install some software on his computer

Cons

  • It will cost more
  • We have to fly all the way from China to Albany, then down to Brazil just a day or two later
  • We only have upgrade vouchers for one leg of the trip
  • I'll lose 4 days of work to traveling instead of just 2
  • No new summer wardrobe shopping spree

On the up side, it looks like we may get his company to pay for my china plane tickets after all, so the cost is less important. And the prices really aren't that bad, considering how far we're flying. The part I don't like is that we can leave China no earlier than January 11 (and more realistically the 12th), but Billy must be in Brazil by January 16. Which means two overnight intercontinental flights in one week, and each trip requires 3 legs. Ugh.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

A day in the life...

Here's what my average day is like here in Guangzhou.

8:30 AM
Alarm goes off. Billy has usually already been up for an hour or two showering, reading yesterday's newspaper, getting breakfast, and taking care of emails from the NY and Finland offices' 'day'. I check our various financial accounts and take care of emails. If I want to catch the CA office during 'business hours' I need to IM them first thing.

10:00 AM
Change into something halfway presentable and go to breakfast. Most days, I walk down the stairs (20 stories). The breakfast buffet is awesome. Cereals, yogurts, juices, pizza, chicken & fish nuggets, spring rolls, assorted fresh fruit, scrambled hard boiled and fried eggs, omelet bar, assorted meats, french toast, steamed veggies, fried rice noodles, oatmeal, salad fixings, nasty coldcuts, croissants, breads, muffins, dim sum. And all the coffee or tea you can drink. Luckily, this is included in our room price -- otherwise it'd be about $28/person/day. If it's a laundry day, I take that down with me and drop it off before heading to the dining room for breakfast. It goes to the closest tourist shop/laundry service (about a hundred meters from the Hotel's side entrance). Drop it off by 11 AM and they'll have it ready to pick up by 5PM. A week's laundry for the both of us costs about $10. Sending it out using the hotel's service would be more than $200. There isn't any self-service options around here.

11:15 AM
The buffet closes at 10:30, but I sit around drinking tea (which they will happily keep refilling) and reading a book until I'm confident my room will be ready. The maids come around while I'm at breakfast. I don't like to be in the room while the maids are here, although they don't technically kick me out at this hotel. The staff here is all really nice, and they all seem to know enough English to go with their job. "Housekeeping!" "May I come in?" "May I change the sheets?" Some are definitely better than others, but overall, I'd say their English skills are better than the average cleaning staff at many US hotels. When we were on the 20th floor (an 'executive level') there were 3 people involved in cleaning the room every day -- a maid, a vacuumer, and a room steward to check their work and make sure all our 'executive amenities' were in good order. Now that we've moved to the 19th floor (the executive levels are being remodeled starting next week), there only seems to be single maid involved. I doesn't make any difference to me, especially since they've brought most of the extra amenities to our new room (like better toiletries and a handy tray of office supplies).

Afternoons
I try to get my work done, read my RSS feeds, and take care of whatever else I'm trying to accomplish. Lately, that's been obsessively researching mutual funds for my new Solo 401(k) plan. We started discussing refinancing our mortgage, so I think that'll be my next research project. I eat some food I stole from the breakfast buffet (usually a hard boiled egg, a piece of chocolate pound cake, and/or some mandarin oranges) around 3:30 and finally bother to take a shower sometime between 4:30-5:30. That way I'm looking my best when I go out to dinner, and I can make less laundry by rewearing my nice shirts several times. Honestly, I've only been putting in a few hours a day of paid work lately (about 20/week). But we've got a complete site redesign in beta over at oDesk. So starting next week I'll probably be back up to 30+, and maybe even full time. I love my job, but it's extremely difficult for me to work full time hours on it all the time. When I'm on the clock, nearly all my work involves constant thinking and creating. It's fairly straightforward to just 'do' for forty hours a week. I never had any trouble with it in my old, normal jobs. But inventing new content can be very draining. It's always exciting the first few days of a new project, and still fun when the initial excitement wears off. But after half a year of 35-45 hour weeks (taking zero days off, not even weekends) I had to cut back for a while. If I want to increase my hours while I'm here in China, unfortunately I'm gonna have to start getting up earlier, even if it means getting kicked out of the room for a bit by the maids each day.

Evenings
Billy gets back sometime between 5:30-8:30 PM on weekdays (mid-afternoon on weekends). We usually head to dinner about 30 minutes later so he has a chance to shower. The hotel has half a dozen restaurants. They're all quite expensive, but they get charged to the room. We can't take advantage of that too often -- once a week at most. We do dinner with Oki (a Finnish colleague) about 5 days a week. We try to make it a mix of western and chinese restaurants. The western restaurants have all been very good so far -- especially the italian place a few blocks away. The food at the chinese restaurants is hit and miss. Like they won't have half the things on the menu available. And you never really know what you're going to get, despite the menu being in English & Chinese with pictures. But I'll talk more about our food adventures another day.

Nights
When we return to the hotel after dinner (which usually takes an hour or two), Billy and Oki sometimes have to go write up reports. Although they seem to be giving up and do that less and less. Things aren't going very well at the shop, and I hear about it over dinner, so I don't bother to hang out with them while work on it (I am invited, and there's often drinking involved -- Oki is Finnish after all). Nights they don't work, Billy tries to find something on the TV. We get HBO, so some days there's a movie on we're interested in watching. Another channel has some shows from Discovery and other random American programs like Chuck. Some days I stay on the Internet and try to get Billy to participate in my research, sometimes I do some paid work in the evening (usually when I realize there was something I forgot to do earlier), and other days I give Billy the Internet so he can take care of emails himself. If we need to call anyone in the US, it has to be done either late at night or early in the morning (8 AM in NY is 9 PM here, 8 AM here is 7 PM there). We've been staying up until 11 or 12 every night. Billy's not getting enough sleep, so we really ought to call it make that a bit earlier (6 hours is usually OK for him, so the frustration must be taking a toll).

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Weather check

Near my house in NY:

Click for Glens Falls, New York Forecast


Here in Guangzhou, China:

Click for Guangzhou, Guangdong Forecast


Next assignment in Tres Lagoas, Brazil:

Click for Tres Lagoas, Brazil Forecast


Looks like we'll be skipping most of winter again! :)

Even more pics

Yes, I keep adding to my photo album. Tomorrow I'll go through and fix it up, adding captions, etc. There's even some video at the end. Sorry about the one vid being sideways -- didn't realize I couldn't turn it after I'd recorded.

// update! I moved out of picasa to YouTube and Flickr

Pics on Flickr
Vids on Youtube

Saturday, December 6, 2008

More pics up!


I had to update the link because I moved stuff over to Flickr

Friday, December 5, 2008

No visa extention... yet

We went to the Exit & Entry Administration offices to try for a visa extension yesterday. We failed. Apparently, there's two ways I could do this:

  1. Get a plain vanilla visa extension. I'd still be on a tourist visa, I'd still have just the one 'entry' (which I already used), and I'd have to leave 30 days after the new visa went into effect.
  2. Get converted to a business visa that will allow longer stays and multiple entries. This involves a round-about tag-along wife argument and a copy of our marriage certificate.

Option 2 is what we need in the long run, but means giving the neighbors the combo to our safe, having them pull out our marriage cert, getting the cert faxed to us here at the hotel, and praying the convoluted plan works when we get back to the security officials. Right now, we're probably going to have to settle for option 1. Then give option 2 a shot at the embassy in the US next time I need to go to China.

At least I learned some things from our afternoon of Chinese Bureaucracy.

  • I should always travel with a copy of our marriage certificate for occasions like this.
  • If I had succeeded in getting a visa yesterday, I would have needed to leave the country on January 3rd -- so I've got to wait until after December 18 to try again.
  • I should plan to go shoe shopping the day I go back to extend my visa. The opposite side of the street has at least a dozen shoe stores!

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

You mean I have to STAY at this luxury resort hotel...

So I'm here in China on a 30 day visa. This trip was supposed to be like 2-3 weeks. Now it looks like Billy will be here well into January. Which means:

  1. I might get to spend more holidays here in China. No complaints from me. This hotel is awesome.

  2. My visa will expire, and an extension will probably only get me another 30 days. The fact that even that may not be long enough is a bridge I'll cross when I get there.

  3. We would probably go directly from China to Brazil for the next job. But Brazil requires an entirely different wardrobe. Clothes which are in my house in NY.

Looks like I'll be buying what I need and seeing if I can get some things (like more contact lenses) shipped. The flights Brazil would be paid for by the company, but a trip home just to change out our stuff almost certainly would not. The cheapest possible flight home from here to Albany is about $1300. We can buy or ship everything we'd need for a whole lot less than that. And I know I shouldn't be complaining about getting to go for a shopping spree. But it still seems somehow wrong.


Oh, and did I mention our hotel is around the corner from the US consulate? And they have a church there? It's totally surreal to see a Church of Christ plopped down in the middle of a Chinese city. Of course, all the tourist shops on this street sell Chrismas ornaments (including crosses) and these cool 3-D carvings of the last supper. I promise to grab some pics another day. Maybe I'll flash my passport at the Chinese guards and go through the barricade for a peek inside.

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