Halloween - Yen Party

Another Halloween party in 798! There were about 2000 people in the 798 factory and everybody was dressed up, here is a picture of some of my friends and me Spiderman! Was a lot of fun except for me losing the ticket in the horrible line becasue when 400 people want to come into 1 place at the same time it gets pretty pushy. Well I got in but the camera battery was out so not much pictures were taken...

Finnish Business Councils

I was invited to a meeting yesterday by the Finnish Business Councils to heard about a presentation on Employee Branding. It was about how you brand your company well so that you can find talented and suitable employees. If a company has a bad reputation it will not find good labor etc etc. But branding in China....hmm, the only thing people think about here is money, little matter of what they do. But that's because of the lack of social security and what your own parents will do when they are old and quit working. The "pension" here is very very low unless you have been working for the government a long time in a high position. This is the biggest concern for almost all people here.Anyway, I met some nice new people there and had Lonkero at the restaurant! For you who don't know what it is: Long drink with Gin and Grape 5.5%. Only costs 2,5 euros here, half price from Finland and it's imported AAAAAALL the way, wonder how that works?

Later in the evening I got Lasagna with CHOCOLATE sauce, whatta f....?

China is trying to control the smoking, before you could smoke ANYWHERE here. Now they have started putting up signs everywhere. "Beijing Patriotic Health Campaign Committee" hahaha

A night out with work, the "Kippis culture"

In China when you go out for dinner with work or someone else than just friends there are some things you have to remember.
You should always go over to your Boss table and cheers with him, this is showing respect and is a MUST here. This also applies to older people or other important people at the table. For example some people you haven't seen for a long time who are older than you. Practically you have to cheer to everybody who is more "important" than you. So when your young and just have a white collar job it means everyone :D
We went out to eat with NSN and I documented some of this process :) You can see from the picture that they all come to cheer with my boss. Just come to the table and hold the glass with both hands and cheer and then drink up the whole thing. The more alchohol you can take the more awesome you are (we Finnish are pretty good at this game!)

Also pictures from the whole department I'm working with.

Cart on Fire

In the evening when I was on my way home there was a small junk cart on fire in the middle of the street. First everybody was just looking at it but then someone got a brilliant idea to throw some water on it after it had burned a good 5 minutes :P
I guess the garbage picker had picked up a cigarette which still was on fire so that the garbage cart caught fire....Looked pretty cool though, hehe

Flat tire

Was going to have lunch at my ordinary place this morning and went out to take my scooter. But what do you know, a flat tire! Luckily there is a shop just next to the company what can fix flat tires so I went there to fix it. Talked with the guy who repaired it, he's one of those millions of people who have moved from smaller regions to Beijing "New urban citizen". He came to Beijing almost the same time as me in 2008, now he has his "bike shop" next to a small local market. The bike shop does not have a roof or even a door. It's just a locker filled with tools so it gets pretty cold in the winter to sit outside waiting for customers. The guy, Wang is just 22 years old and comes from Dongbei province in north east of China. He told me that he hasn't found any girlfriend mostly because the lack of money, very few girls want to go out with guys here that don't have enough money because they are not a "stable" choice. I didn't even have enough money to pay him but he still said that it doesn't matter (ill give him the remaining 1 euro tomorrow as surprise). His salary is probably just somewhere between 1000-2000 yuan a month which is the normal pay for this kind of job...

Buzzcocks @ Yi Gong Yi Shan

The Buzzcocks are a British punk band from 1970s but still going strong. The advance tickets were 150 kuai so not too pr icy. They had a Chinese band as a warm up band but I'm still not 100% sure if they were singing in English or Chinese. could make anything of the words. Music was way too loud compared the voice level..
Anyways, the Buzzcock guys are around 50-60 but still jamming like it's 1973. The lead singer was so high on coke, Ecstasy or whatever but it was entertaining to watch. I'll upload a video and you'll understand what I mean. Music was so loud that I still have a slight tinnitus in my ears but it seems like its gonna pass. Friday night was hard to sleep with the high pitch PIIIIIP sound didn't wanna leave me alone.

Next to the toilets there was a funny sign :P

My Team

I took a picture of my team and wrote something about each one, we had a picture "exchange day" with our co-workers in Singapore. These are the people i spend 9 hours in the office everyday...

From the left in the following order

Seba...Do I even need to say anything? Tells jokes that nobody understands in the office, spends way too much time in bars and never seems to get enough sleep. Sometimes he also works

Zhang Yuan: Our team "mommy" who always works overtime and is an SAP expert. When she gets excited/happy/angry it one of the most awesome voices, I have to record it one day

Li shuo: Sebas team partner who always seems to be one step ahead. She's already finished the job before Seba even notices there is something to do :D

Xu Ying: Also known as the office little "cutie" and is always ready to give you a helping hand with any problem you might find.

Huge Margaritas

There is a place called "The Saddle" in Sanlitun where they have the hugest pitchers ever! AND it's free refill...You pay 10 euros plus and don't need to go thirsty for a while after that....

Local locksmith

Have you ever made an key for your apartment because you wanted a spare one? Well if you have I'm pretty sure it did not look like THIS! This guy makes any key for you without asking any questions what your gonna use it for and for a price of about 50 cents. He also wanted me to translate some english for him since his english wasn't that good. The things he had written were pretty funny, it was:

- finishingshoes = repairing shoes

- shoe shine = shoe polish (not a bad translation)

- repairlocks = lock repair

- with the key = key copy (my favorite)
- round tip change = bend out your shoes
- zip = zipper

Aaaah, my good deeds for today :)

Stray cats

There are LOTS of stray cats all over Beijing. Now somebody at my yard bought this little "fur house" for this one black kitten. I often go buy a pack of cat-food and feed it. Doesen't seem slim or under nourished at all, I guess a lot of people are giving him or her food. Wonder if it will still stay here in the winter...

LOL, what can I say?

I found some hilarious pictures at Sanlitun yesterday! When I went to a supermarket and they had underwear for "big men" the picture on the package looked like this! WHO would buy it? Seriously? In Chinese it says fat pants :D nd that's not all, the massage place has some pretty interesting treatmeant as well! Stronger for kidney and Period smootly....hahaha

The are renovating one of the houses in Sanlitun, most of the street is closed...They are also adding some floors to a building so it can have more clubs and bars.

Back Home in Beijing

Was a great chilout for 8 days but now back to work and inhale some of Beijings smog and "mist". On the way back from the airport I saw the gayest car in Beijing, if you don't believe me check this out!

And thanks for being a great host James, i'll start making those cheese-beans whenever I want an awesome breakfast!

My passport looks pretty cool already, stamps from a lot of places, only 15 blank pages anymore and still 3 years to use. Wonder if I have to get a new one before this one expires...? The airplane food was the worse I ever had from Shenzhen to Beijing, too bad i forgot to take a picture of that sad looking bread that tasted worse than dogfood.

Shenzhen

Through all the customs and checkpoints again but this time it's much faster because we managed to wake up pretty early and leave the flat before lunch time

I already had the short history lesson about Shenzhen earlier that it was the first Economic Developing area in China back in 1970. Shenzhen, Beijing and Shanghai belong to the 3 most developed city's in China. In China they grade cities as "Grade 1 City, Grade 2 City and Grade 3 City". Shenzhen is a Grade1 city, I'm not really sure how they are graded but it must have something to do with salaries, education, subways etc infrastructure.

Shenzhen is a BORING place! We went to do some shopping (found a stupid chinglish t-shirt)

and checked out the worlds biggest shopping mall for electronics! It was huge and you could wonder around there all day and see all the newest and high tech things (Laakso you would so love this place!). We checked the map and found a place where they were suppose to have Old Opium Dens people can go and look at but I guess the taxi driver took us to the wrong place so the only fun thing we found was this cigarette pick machine which is usually used for picking up toys for kids, was hilarious! Too bad we didn't get a pack, check the video for additional fun :P

If you take a vacation in China don’t bother going to Shenzhen, nothing to see here...Beijing and Shanghai has everything that they have here and MORE!This statue was kinda random...

Back to Hong Kong

Flew back to Hong Kong for a meeting, shopping and picking stuff up for some of my friends. Tomorrow we're going to Shenzhen with James to fix some Christmas Shopping (I mean it's already October :P )

Singapore

Beaches and over 30 degrees! It's warm all around the year here and people are very laid back. This is one of the only places where I've seen so many different people. When entering the subway there are Westerners, Asians (Chinese, Malaysian, Japanese, Korean etc) and Indians. Singapore is a bilingual country, but the official language is English here. However most people also speak fluent Mandarin Chinese here, I met one of my colleagues here yesterday and he always uses Chinese when talking to friends.

Just before entering Sentosa Island with the Sentosa train they had these mini ponds with about 5 cm of water but still put up a NO SWIMMING sign, wonder who would try swimming in less than feet deep water...AND this sign of BEWARE OF TRAFFIC on the side of the road "Just in Case" I guess... A good place to visit in the evening is Boat Quay which looks really beautiful with all the light. The Fullerton Hotel to the right has a 150 years old history and rooms go for about 250 euro + a night!

Went to Sentosa to enjoy the most southern beaches of Continental Asia. The national symbol for Singapore is the Merlion and they've built a huge one on Sentosa Island.
The bar distric in Singapore is called Clarke Quai also known as "Clar K", they had Hooters there and a bar with Wheelschairs and wards to sit on :P Thank you Suky for an awesome trip and Martin for the night out in "SingaThai" :P Hope we meet soon again!

Hong Kong

I stayed at James place while being here, the flat is located just next to Time Square which is one of the best locations in the city. Everything is close and convenient here! Outside the door into the hallway there is a really cool traditional fish market outside, they have everything from all sorts of fish to funky looking lobsters.

There is a religious group in China which is called Falun Gong and it's HIGHLY illegal here because they oppose the Communistic Party. You have probalby seen these group members if you've been to China's embassy anywhere in the world or at busy places around big cities. I've seen them in Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin etc. Well they were in Hong Kong spreading awereness how much illegal organ trading there are in China. People are killed and looted of their organs...
We didn't really do much sightseeing because I've already been here twice and then it's the holiday so all places are filed with people from Mainland. I can imagine how great it would be to go to Disneyland and que 2 hours for each ride. The only thing we did was going for a short walk in the mini Zoo in downtown, their animals are LAZY!

Hong Kong is all about Social Clubs if you want to meet important people. The fee for the clubs vary but around 20.000 euros annually and this club has a 7 years waiting list after you got recommended by 5 members and given proof that you are financially well off.However we did a lot of nightly exploring at LKF and went to see some awesome fireworks at FELIX when it was China Independence Day 1.10 (1.10.1949 is when the Communist Party took over China)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uziYVTXPJ-M
A 10 minute clip of the fireworks on youtube, this other one is a little shorter.