Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Today is my first day of work.

I am at Shanghai Talk right now (known as "Talk" in town). My boss, Shamus, is great. He is Australian and very open and friendly and has me and the other guy like me doing all sorts of work. Besides him, there is only one other staff writer, as far as I can tell, so we'll have loads to do. There was an editorial meeting today at noon to go over August 2007 content. I will be doing a few pieces. One feature on an area of town/commercial center called Thumb Plaza, an environmental piece TBD (I am hoping it will be hybrid cars in China, maybe I can subtly push the GM model they sell here, ha-- not that it will help, there at least 20 times more diesel engine vehicles on the road here than hybrids! My lungs hurt in bed last night), a book review/author interview with a woman who wrote a book about Chiang Kai-shek's wife and a piece on the head chef of a Moroccan restaurant. Once I am a little more familiar with the city I think I will be capable of suggesting/pursuing stories-- right now I hardly know what the hell is going on and feel highly accomplished if I make it directly to where I am going without getting lost. I'm also relatively lost in the whole professional magazine speak.. hopefully my stories don't suck because I have no experience. My guess is they will, though! I aim to at least start at the point of not completely embarrassing myself.

We use mostly email/MSN to communicate within the office but we're all in low cubes right next to each other besides Shamus, who has an office right next to us.

I got lost for an hour this morning trying to find my way to the office from the Metro. I wandered all around and it was a lost cause being that I didn't even know the address of the office (smart.) until some nice security guard's wife let me use her cell phone. I got in at 11am but was still only the second one here. The fun part of transportation here is that it is always 80% or more humidity so if you're outside for more than five minutes, you're already wet/sweaty. Today it was raining so it was a 3 minute window instead of 5.

There were 3 westerners on the subway today. Unprecedented!
Other big news, apparently there have been a lot of tornadoes in eastern China, right by here. They don't have much on-site news reporting on TV so it's pointless to watch it because I don't understand anything they're saying but I read it on ChinaRadioEnglish's website. 14 dead or something high like that.

Michelle and I watched half of "Borat" last night on her laptop. I have never seen it before, I like it. She is teaching English to 10-12 year olds a few times a week but didn't follow instructions to make up lessons plans before arriving so she is screwed-- or would be if she hadn't called her mom, who is mailing her materials from the United States after going to her old elementary school to ask for them. Are most people this connected to their parents at age 20/have parents willing to rescue their children from stupid mistakes like that? I find it a little repulsive. Or, at least, ridiculous. And annoying. In case you couldn't tell.

I'm a little jetlagged or something because I fell asleep at 11pm, woke up at 5am to eat some mango sherbert with mango pieces (this kind of thing is more common than ice cream), then fell back asleep for another 2 hours before my epic walk. I had a meal for lunch today, it's my first meal since getting here because I was too stupid to realize the two translated English menus that were in the apartment corresponded to the dot on the map that was on a different piece of paper and so have been eating random things for the last two days. I thought there would be more people who speak English here, but it seems to be less than 5% of the population who have even rudimentary English skills. I also thought more signs would be written out in pinyin-- it is almost wholly characters (albeit the simplified ones, not the classical). As a result, I think a lot about numbers because they are all I can recognize.

1 comment:

georganne said...

Oh my gosh I can't believe you are all up and running....living, working, getting lost. I was thinking I would check in on you and I had already missed two posts. Oh Carrie, it sounds so exciting, fun and adventurous. I'm loving your observations!!!!
Do you have air conditioning? I used one of those second story/escalator contraptions in Chicago ( Aidy had to help me). Your apt. sounds wonderful!! Simple! Your job sounds great too, you will do wonderful - your writing style is unique and your observations are dead on. Be yourself and you will do wonderful.
The other americans you have come in contact with sound pretty horrid - hopefully all of them won't be as over the top.
It is 117 here - hot as h---!!!!
A former customer is opening a store with six similarities to mine: bird, tree, lower case type font, store content, paper, banner. I am trying to get over this - bless it and call it good - but I am having a hard time with it - the principal of the thing!!!!
xxxooogeo