Steve's China Blog

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Hectic

This might be a long post since I haven't posted in awhile.

I flew out of Dulles Airport (Washington D.C.) on the 14th to Chicago and from there went up through Canada, the Arctic Ocean above Alaska, down through Siberia and eastern Mongolia until we arrived in Beijing on the afternoon of the 15th. Our flight to Dalian that evening was cancelled due to weather, so we stayed in Beijing that night and got another flight to Dalian the next morning.

I was hoping to get there early, but I didn't arrive at my hotel untit a little after noon. I called my office and they said they would call me right back with what I needed to do. I hadn't had anything to eat all day, and after waiting for about four hours for them to call me back I decided to go get some supper, and let them leae a message. I was so beat with all the travelling and lack of food I went to bed at about 7:00 and slept for about 12 hours.

I arrived at the office on the 17th and started the paperwork routine. Then I had to go get a physical, as well as visit all kinds of other goverment agencies to fill out paperwork. I spent most of the 17th and the 18th going through the Chinese paperwork stuff to get my work permit, residence permit, work visa, etc... It's amazing all the hoops foreign workers have to jump through to work here.

I also found an apartment! It's located in the southwest part of the city near my office and the beach. It's not a very big apartment, but it's clean and quiet. It's hard to find a quiet place in the city, especially with all of the traffic. The last time I was in China (2001) there weren't many cars here... some cabs, some trucks, and lots of bicycles. That's changed over the last few years since the Chinese have increased car production and lowered the prices. Now there are a lot of cars, so you don't see too many bicycles on the road... it's kind of dangerous to ride a bike on the roads now. Heck, it's kind of dangerous to be a pedistrian or in a vehicle too. The driving here is a lot different than back in the west. The lines on the roads, the croos-walks, and traffic lights seem to be more like suggestions rather than the rules. It seems very chaotic. If I had my corvette over here I would probably have a nervous breakdown driving it in this traffic.

I was watching the local TV station here the other night and saw a chinese movie that was really funny. I don't know the name of the movie, but the star is a Hong Kong actor named Stephen Chow. I've heard that all of his movies are very funny, so if you get a chance check out some of his movies. The ones I've looked at here were in chinese with english sub-titles.

That's all I'm going to post today. Tomorrow is my first day at work (now that all the paperwork is done), and I'm sure I'm going to be very busy for awhile. I'll post more when I get time.

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