Interesting point on perspective--unsurprisingly, I observed the following in regard to having 2 6-day work weeks surrounding the Chinese New Year holiday: the week before New Year felt like the longest and most devastating work week ever, because we had to work that Saturday. However, I am currently (almost) halfway through this 6-day work week, and I must say, it's not nearly as bad. Now obviously that could have to do with the fact that I've just returned from holiday, and therefore should be "rejuvenated" or whatever word you want to use, but I think it's more likely to be because of working Sunday, i.e. the day before the week, as opposed to Saturday. In this sense, it's quite nice knowing that this week, at the end of Monday, my work week was 33% over (2 days worked out of 6), whereas the week before last, it was only 16.67% (1 day out of 6). Obviously, this continues today (50% done, as opposed to only 33% done week before break after Tuesday, etc.), and will continue throughout the week. Fairly interesting, the effect that perspective can have on things which are essentially completely equal.
Anyway, so Chinese New Year. Originally the plan was to just sort of bum around Shenzhen for a week and relax. Anyone that knows me at all will realize what a foolish and unrealistic plan that is for me. Consequently, I woke up Sunday (the first day of holiday) and was already quite bored by like 2:00pm. John was going to be in HK a fair bit throughout the week, so I decided to just look around at airfare throughout the afternoon, seeing if I could snag reasonably priced airfare to anywhere decent. The options were:
Manila: $247 R/T
Taipei: $260 R/T
Singapore: $350 R/T
And a few others. But those were the 3 that I was really considering. Now in a vacuum with all else equal, Taipei would probably win out that fight pretty easily. I've been to the Philippines and Singapore, and really would enjoy going to Taiwan, as I've heard it's very interesting. However, that afternoon, by sheer happenstance, I had a very pleasant trip down memory lane through a group Skype session with friends from all over the world with Lexx (Gold Coast, AU), Elliott (Brisbane, AU), AlanKey (Adelaide, AU), and Sabutai (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia). While speaking with these 4 heroes, I was told by Sabutai that he's currently also on Chinese New Year holiday in KL, and that I should come over there. As I said, I'd flown into Singapore once before, and that time I'd taken a bus up to KL from there (about 4 hours). After a bit of thought, I decided what the hell, and booked the airfare. At 5:15pm. In my apartment in Shenzhen. For a flight that was leaving at 9:20pm. From Hong Kong. Anyone with any familiarity with South China will say, well, that's a bit of a trip, Shenzhen to HK Airport. Fortunately, I live very, very nearby the border (10 minute walk), but still cutting it quite close, even given my enormous tolerance for all things ambiguous.
So I was off. Booked airfare at 5:15pm, threw some clothes into a backpack, and raced off to HKIA. Ended up getting there with a bit of time to spare before hopping onto a Tiger Airways flight to Singapore. Spent the night in Singapore Changi Airport (not for the first or last time), before heading to KL on the first bus the next morning.
Had an excellent few days with Sabutai, I met a decent number of his friends, many of whom are from the small island nation of Mauritius, noteworthy for being the most developed "Sub-Saharan African" country (I put SSA in quotes because geographically it's really not Sub-Saharan Africa, it's an island in the Indian Ocean, but eh). Having already been to KL and seen a good bit of the touristy stuff, this time around had a more local feel to it, with Sabutai showing me some of the localish restaurants/bars/etc. around the university there. Was very interesting stuff.
I headed back to Shenzhen on Friday late afternoon (via another overnight in Singapore Changi Airport) and had about a day and a half before the end of Chinese New Year holiday, which was spent basically just doing laundry and catching up on things. Overall, a very solid holiday.
At this point, I'm back in the office, though a decent percentage of the employees are either 1) still on holiday, or 2) have quit because of the New Year. Interesting to note--apparently in China, they take new year's resolutions quite seriously. That is, rarely do they just say "Oh I'm going to give up soda" or "try to lose weight", they really do resolve to improve their lives in a number of ways in each coming year. Consequently, many people quit their jobs at the New Year to try to, I guess, "start over" for the New Year (for any Chinese reading this, if I've stated that completely incorrectly, and am consequently being a cultural Philistine, I apologize. Feel free to set me straight via email, comment, or burning my house down. Either way).
But anyway! So yes, back at work, it's been slow so far this week. It seems that I'll be heading back stateside at the end of February for a trade show in Atlanta, sort of yet-to-be-seen how long I'm there for (probably about 7-10 days). After that, things will get busy here around late March/early April for the Canton Fair. The Canton Fair. The biggest convention ever. Basically, in the US, companies like True Value, Ace Hardware, and I'm sure bigger companies like Wal-Mart and Home Depot have conventions where their store owners come buy products at promotional prices. The two of these shows that I worked with my dad this past fall were both some of the bigger shows of their kind in the US, with a few thousand booths at each. The Canton Fair had nearly 57,000 booths last year. Fifty. Seven. THOUSAND?!? Completely incomprehensible (though I will comprehend it come April when I'm there, I suppose).
In other news, the company had a New Year's gala sort of thing a couple of weeks ago. They were giving away door prizes which, on the low-end, constituted home appliances such as toasters, blenders, and other assorted crap. On the high-end, 2 people won 6,000RMB (~$1,000US) each. Big range, there. Incidentally, I ended up on the very, very high end, winning a brand-new laptop. It's a good thing I didn't buy a brand new laptop like 3 months ago, otherwise this other new one would be completely useless! Also a good thing that the Windows 7 on there isn't in Chinese....also might render it somewhat less than useful. So long story short, I'm trying to sell it on a couple of different HK/SZ websites. Will hopefully keep all 3 of you readers informed on that one.
Apart from that, things continue to move along as per usual in Shenzhen. Weather has been very nice, with temperatures not dropping below 60 (but for the 5 days that I was in KL, at which time it dropped to about 45 degrees. Mind you, it was 90 in KL :-D ) At the moment the whole work visa situation still seems a bit iffy, though we'll see how that progresses as the weeks go on. Frankly, at this point I don't really care, the way I view the whole situation is as follows--either the company I'm working for is able to get me a work visa. If so, great. I will work for them for awhile. If they're so incompetent so as to not be able to arrange a work visa for me, then odds are they're simply not worth working for, due to said incompetence. So basically, I will either get a work visa and work for a company that knows what they're doing, or I don't get a work visa, and can't work for a company that I otherwise would not want to work for anyway. I think the logic is correct, so we'll see.
Some other assorted thoughts--
I recently read that the largest known star in the universe, VY Canis Majoris, has a circumference that is approximately the orbit of Saturn. To put that in perspective, it takes light about 8.5 hours to travel across this star, whereas it takes light 8 minutes to reach Earth from our sun. Mind-boggling.
I was very enamored with Singapore and (to a lesser extent in this context) Kuala Lumpur due to their diversity. To clarify--I love Hong Kong because it's diverse. But really, it's diverse to a certain point; about 90% or so of the population is Chinese, and the other 10% is EVERYTHING. However, in Singapore, it seemed about 40% Chinese, 40% Malay, 10% Indian, and 10% everything else. So rather than being dominated by one ethnicity and having a very diverse subset of their population, the entire population is quite a bit more diverse. Really cool to see, and something that I'd really failed somewhat to notice my last time there.
A sign that my lifestyle in Shenzhen is starting to become somewhat problematic in terms of mine and Scutt's tendency to shop every day: in KL, one of the noteworthy sights that Sabutai went to go look at was the Uni Qlo store in KL. In short, Uni Qlo is a Japanese department store that has a few locations in SZ, and is one of the few stores in the city that makes clothes in western sizes. Consequently, about 40% of Scutt's wardrobe, and about 25% of mine, are made up of Uni Qlo products, because we simply go there like 2-3 days a week and shop around (not always buying something, of course, but when a city is basically one big shopping mall, you're going to do a lot of shopping). Bit sad, really.
Watched a phenomenally interesting speech by Robert Sapolsky about human nature the other day (incidentally, I had one of his books as required reading for Psychology 110 my freshman year at University). Would highly recommend, the man is a brilliant scholar and an equally brilliant speaker.
Other than that, no real further musings. More to come in the next few weeks, particularly regarding the whole visa situation...that's quite important!
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